Stocktaking in increasingly dangerous times

The political and military leadership has held long sessions to revisit the National Action Plan (NAP) and has come up with a high-profile ‘monitoring committee’ to supervise and coordinate the war on terror.

In a necessary change of guards, National Security Adviser to the PM Gen (r) Nasir Janjua takes over the command of homeland security as terrorism takes a new bloody turn mixed with intensifying multiple proxy wars.

The biggest failure is Balochistan where, instead of being empowered to negotiate with militant nationalists, a lame-duck provincial government even failed to start a reconciliation process engaging rebellious youth. As ‘pick, kill and dump’ operations continue, they are further fuelling rather than quelling the insurgency and allowing RAW and NDS to exploit cleavages to pursue their countervailing leverages against our support to popular resistance in Indian-administered Kashmir and the Afghan Taliban’s bloody offensive against Kabul, respectively.

We are yet to see the establishment of a rapidly deployable counterterrorism force, except the army doing the job all over. Banned outfits continue to dominate the streets of Pakistan since they somehow are still not considered ‘bad Taliban’, and the Afghan Taliban are yet to be pressurised enough to either opt for a ceasefire and negotiate or leave, despite the COAS’ strict prohibitive directions which he unequivocally issued in July.

On all other points, the performance of civilian authorities remained dismal, having been unable to ban active banned outfits, eliminate religious extremism and sectarianism, curb hate material, and stop funding and communication networks (appeals for and collection of funds are again on the rise. Recruitments for jihad are yet again picking momentum for Kashmir, with eye-catching Wani posters on the streets to attract youth to jihad.

Reforms in the criminal justice system and civilian armed forces, the police in particular, are yet to be launched. Most disappointingly, the deeply conservative team of the prime minister, except Pervaiz Rasheed and Ms Maryam Nawaz, could not undertake any genuine effort in evolving an alternative national democratic narrative to counter religious/sectarian violent narrative, and reforms of syllabus – whether of public schools or colleges or seminaries.

Rather, the interior minister not only promoted the extremist narrative, but also wasted the federal government’s energies in fomenting trouble with the Sindh government in violation of the 18th Amendment. The Sindh and Balochistan governments were rendered toothless in contributing their bit, while Punjab remained more or less a ‘no-go area’ for a much-needed military operation.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s sincere efforts to reach out to the Afghan and Indian governments to promote cooperation instead of conflict met with resistance, to the advantage of hostile proxy wars. He was even accused of pursuing ‘personal businesses’ rather than national interests.

Actions did not match the most timely calls by the army chief not to spare any terrorist and not to let Pak territory be used for terrorism against other countries. And his extraordinary offer to bring an end to all kinds of proxy wars did not find willing buyers across Pakistan’s hostile borders with Afghanistan and India.

Even if General Raheel Sharif and his men left no stone unturned in crushing at least the ‘bad Taliban’, the ‘good Taliban’ continued to nullify whatever international credibility Operation Zarb-e-Azb had gained and they continued to promote sectarianism, militancy, jiahadi narrative. A section of ‘good jihadis’ have shown great enthusiasm to de-legitimise the Kashmiris’ indigenous movement for freedom and are provoking the armed forces to cross over the LoC.

When Pakistan is still embroiled in its existential war against the monsters of terrorism that Gen Ziaul Haq and his Western masters created and his successors, except for Gen Raheel Sharif, didn’t feel the need to reverse, only suicidal elements can push Pakistan into even a worse quagmire of proxy-and-counter-proxy-wars.

The proxy wars that India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are now increasingly fomenting are in nobody’s interests. They will destabilise the whole region to the benefit of terrorists and religious extremists – sectarian Islamist terrorists and Hindu communalists.

The ironies are immense: if the Muslims, Dalits and other minorities are being demonised in India, various ethnic and religious minorities are also being castigated in Pakistan; if India is externalising endogenous causes to fascistically repress the Kashmiris and other minorities and Dalits/SCs, etc, Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus and ethnic minorities, the Baloch in particular, are feeling it difficult to survive in Pakistan. Indeed, the mutual hostilities between Kabul and Islamabad and India and Pakistan are adding to the animosity against one another that, in turn, mutually reinforces extremists, communalists and aggressive militaristic elements on either side.

Nobody in the world wants this three-sided conflict become yet another unredeemable region of self-perpetuating conflict with nuclear weapons-in-waiting to fulfil the death-wish of Mutually Assured Destruction. Since war between India and Pakistan has a great risk of briskly turning into a nuclear conflict, both countries have found ways to fight out through other subliminal means, proxy wars being the preferred tool of bloody point scoring on a daily basis.

Quite despicably, such subversions put their poor respective foreign offices in most embarrassing positions every other day, having to churn out lies to cover up their not-so-secret subversions and counter-subversions. These unbridled proxy wars may turn into a regular war any time when a mass blood-letting drives people to force their timid governments to go to war. We must beware this eventuality; and all concerned in the region should take a road of conflict-management, rather than letting it get out of hand.

No doubt, the full implementation of NAP should be the top priority to win our existential war against our principal enemy – terrorists of all hues without any exception. It is necessary, but not sufficient. Unless, following the great military Chinese genius, we stop what damages us more than our nemesis. Without a peaceful neighbourhood and cooperative neighbours we cannot even defeat our own terrorists who are freely available in the free terrorist markets to be hired to commit crimes against the humanity.

By raising the ante against India, which Delhi has further raised against Pakistan with the much-criticised speech of Prime Minister Modi, we will serve his purpose of diverting attention from the Kashmir imbroglio or help him externalise what he insists is India’s internal matter. Kashmir should be left on its own undeniable democratic merits, rather than making it an Indo-Pak conflict over territory.

Let the two powerful national security advisers meet to bring an end to the cross-border proxy wars/terrorism, and let foreign secretaries resume their business on composite dialogue. And this is what the world, including China, wants us to do. But don’t forget Afghanistan; the stakes of peace there are doubly higher for us since Af-Pak peace is indivisible. Do not let RAW use the over 2500 kms porous border to send paid mercenaries that we once trained.

Therefore, even if you fully implement NAP, without peace with neighbours, terrorism cannot be defeated without joint efforts by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Central Asia, China, Russia and Nato. The continuity of the democratic dispensation and war-tested commander is essential – but with a changed security paradigm for a peaceful neighbourhood.

The writer is a senior journalist.

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