Beyond tactical gains

Elimination of sectarian militants and the campaign against their networks in recent months create the impression that sectarian militancy will soon come to an end. However, these violent organisations have endured crackdowns in the past and are likely to survive the ongoing operations unless some long-term measures are taken to root out this phenomenon.

Asif Ilyas aka Asif Chotu, chief of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and allegedly involved in dozens of sectarian killings, was recently arrested in Dera Ghazi Khan. The arrest has come in the wake of a crackdown on militants launched by the Rangers in some remote areas of southern Punjab (though the Punjab government has officially denied summoning the paramilitary force).

In Sindh, too, the Rangers have reportedly made significant gains in breaking the LeJ network. According to the Inter Services Public Relations, over the past few months the paramilitary force has arrested 97 militants, including three most wanted leaders of the LeJ and Al-Qaeda.

Intelligence reports suggest that in more than 60 percent of terrorist incidents all over the country the trail of suspects ended up in southern Punjab. Three months earlier, Punjab’s apex committee, comprising senior military and civilian officers, had asked the provincial government to get the Rangers deployed in this region for an operation against militants but the provincial government opposed the idea.

After the bloodbath at the Army Public School, Peshawar in November 2014, law-enforcement agencies including the Pakistan Army came down heavily on the LeJ whose close links with other terrorist organisations including Al-Qaeda and the TTP became quite evident during the interrogation of arrested suspects.

Last year, some other top leaders of the LeJ including Malik Ishaq, Ghulam Rasool and Haroon Bhatti were arrested and later shot dead in ‘encounters’ with the police in Punjab; Usman Saifullah Kurd was killed in Balochistan. One can imagine what lies in store for those who are in the custody of law-enforcement agencies these days.

The unofficial, unacknowledged policy of taking down sectarian terrorists in ‘police encounters’ indicates the failure of our criminal justice system in building solid enough cases to convict such felons, even when their complicity in serious terrorist attacks is beyond doubt.

In most cases, terrorists intimidate witnesses with the help of a large network of hit-men. Overall, the government has failed to improve the investigation and prosecution techniques of the agencies dealing with these issues.

The state needs to realise that the extrajudicial killing of terrorists provides only a temporary respite in terrorism. As soon as a known leader is removed from the scene, a new dedicated militant takes over the organisation. In 2002, the LeJ founder, Riaz Basra, was bumped off in Vehari but more ferocious people than him kept the organisation not only alive but also made it more brutal.

The cold-blooded killings of Shias in Kohistan and Balochistan started after Malik Ishaq succeeded Basra. He took sectarian carnage to areas such as the interior districts of Sindh like Shikarpur, which were earlier quite peaceful.

History shows that the elimination of top militants has not been able to defeat the LeJ whose sources of strength are varied – including linkages with other terrorist organisations, bases in Afghanistan, foreign funding, seminaries at home and a lethal sectarian narrative developed by a section of the clergy.

The LeJ has mainly thrived thanks to its close ties with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. During Mullah Omer’s rule, Riaz Basra took refuge in Kabul and fled to Pakistan only when the US-led troops dislodged the Taliban government. The Al-Qaeda, Afghan Taliban, TTP and LeJ are heads of the same monster.

Until the military undertook operations in the tribal regions, LeJ members received training there alongside members of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and used the tribal areas as their hideout. Now they have moved to Taliban-occupied territories of Afghanistan.

Although the Pakistan Army has destroyed terrorist infrastructure in the tribal belt, it cannot stay in the tribal region beyond the next couple of years. Once the army leaves this region, it may again be infested with militants in the absence of a sound administrative and security apparatus. The future of sectarian militancy is linked with the future of the tribal belt.

Similarly, so long as the TTP-LeJ’s bases exist in Afghanistan, the organisation will maintain its presence in Pakistan. No amount of military operations at home will bring durable peace if terrorist havens exist in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Army is too weak and disjointed a force to demolish the TTP-LeJ infrastructure on its territory. The Pak-Afghan border is located in such a difficult mountainous and rugged terrain that it cannot be sealed off to prevent cross-border movement. Border management makes only a marginal difference.

Back home, however, the long-term challenge is to ensure that the LeJ stops receiving fresh recruits willing to die for their cause. These recruits come from Punjab’s low-income sections and are indoctrinated with a violent sectarian narrative at seminaries.

So far, the state has ignored repeated advice from the intelligentsia that it needs to enhance its investment in public education as a part of strategy to combat extremism. According to the latest survey by the police, more than one million children in Punjab are enrolled at 13,700 seminaries while there are 13 million school-going children in the province (Economic Survey 2014-15) are out of schools.

In a province where Rs160 billion has been allocated for a metro train project, around 22,000 positions of teachers are lying vacant at government-run schools for want of funds. Instead of expanding the network of public schools, the Punjab government is getting rid of the existing schools by outsourcing them to NGOs.

A robust public sector school system can be helpful in drying up the recruitment pool of militant organisations. But our rulers are not interested except indulging in rhetoric and publicity stunts.

Email: adnanadilzaidi@gmail.com