From APS to Charsadda

The grisly attack on the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, one month after the first anniversary of the APS Peshawar attack, is both symbolic and strategic. The mastermind of the APS massacre, the dreaded Taliban commander, Khalifa Mansoor is reportedly the architect of this attack as well. The selection of the target, Bacha Khan University, and the timing of the attack – Bacha Khan’s anniversary – is not coincidental but deliberate.

The APS attack scarred our nation’s psyche; and by targeting the Bacha Khan University the terrorists have reopened these half-healed wounds. The terrorists patiently waited and struck when premature success claims couched in fancy statistical data – showing a decrease in terrorist violence – came out. The terrorists unleashed a deadly wave of attacks after the army chief announced 2016 to be the year terrorism would be eliminated. More importantly, the terrorists have hit us where it hurts the most: Pakistan’s future generation.

The Bacha Khan University attack has broken the brief lull of violence in Pakistan. The preceding two suicide attacks targeting a polio vaccination team in Quetta and a security check-post in Jamrud highlight the terrorists’ outreach in mainland Pakistan. They have demonstrated their ability to hit soft-and-hard targets using multiple methods.

The more disturbing aspect of these incidents is the resurrection of the terrorist infrastructure of Pakistan-focused militants in Afghanistan. It seems that the assets and capabilities of militants have remained intact, and were likely moved across the border to Afghanistan before the launch of these operations. After initial setbacks due to operations Zarb-e-Azb and Khyber-I, the militants seem to have evolved and adapted to new realities and circumstances.

By definition every terrorist attack is an intelligence failure. The Bacha Khan University attack has yet again exposed the failure of the state’s intelligence apparatus in providing timely and accurate intelligence which might have prevented the attack. In counterterrorism operations, law-enforcement agencies are blind without such information. Moreover, the attack has shaken public opinion in the premature victory claims of the security forces.

This attack provides an opportunity to reevaluate the successes and failures of the military operations in Fata and other parts of Pakistan. More importantly, it is essential to look at the limitations of a ‘militarised counterterrorism policy’, and identify factors that are beyond its scope. In addition to Zarb-e-Azb, Pakistan direly needs a ‘Zarb-e-Fikar’ to be able to defeat extremism.

Given the hybrid and non-linear nature of terrorist threats confronting Pakistan, overreliance on the military as a solution to everything – military courts, paramilitary troops for urban policing, the formulation and execution of internal security policies – is unwise and over-simplistic. The state should utilise the multiple tools at its disposal to fight the hydra-headed monster of terrorism; of these tools the military should be one, but not the only.

The terrorist threat confronting Pakistan is imaginative, resilient and long-term. It transcends borders and does not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. It evolves, adapts, regenerates and mutates into newer forms and shapes. It is smart and clever.

The disputing claims of responsibility for the Charsadda attack is a classic good cop-bad cop strategy by Taliban groups. It is common knowledge that Khalifa Mansoor is Mullah Fazlullah’s right-hand man. He claimed the attack and Fazlullah’s spokesperson Muhammad Khurasani denied it. This has been done deliberately to create confusion and it has been done before.

A similar strategy was adopted when the incumbent civilian dispensation was negotiating with the militants in 2014; on the one hand, Taliban representatives were talking with the government committee, and on the other hand, they targeted a Christian church in Peshawar and the Islamabad district courts under a different name.

To cope with this ever-changing threat, Pakistan will have to develop a systematic and structured counterterrorism mechanism, with professional and specialised approaches. The questions of reforms in underperforming civilian law-enforcement agencies, outdated and outmoded intelligence apparatus, slow functioning criminal justice system and defunct Nacta can no longer be brushed under the carpet.

At the end of the day, society plays an important role in defeating extremism too. A state alone cannot achieve it. A cursory look at the response of the Pakhtun intelligentsia to the Bacha Khan University attack is enough to reveal that their patience is wearing thin with the state’s incompetence to protect them. On top of that, externalising the threat to cover internal security lapses is like salt on their wounds. Sentiments that ask for a stop to the glorification of their miseries as sacrifices and the cold-blooded murder of their community members as martyrdom because of the incompetence of a few should serve as an eye-opener to the state.

The policy failures in Fata now risk the disenfranchisement of the Pakhtuns as a whole. Pakistan cannot afford to alienate its Pakhtun population who have endlessly suffered and sacrificed. The people of the tribal areas have been victims of a four-pronged dilemma: wrath of the militants (Al-Qaeda and Taliban groups), the collateral damage of the Pakistan Army’s sledgehammer counterterrorism approach, the US drone strikes that killed more civilians than militants, and the blow-back of the conflict in Afghanistan. They are still facing the horrors of an uncertain future. In the future, a new generation of disenfranchised young people awaits us if we do not address the issue in totality.

Today, more than ever, Pakistan needs a new narrative – a narrative that is rational, pluralistic, tolerant and progressive. This narrative may take different shapes and forms for different sub-national units. The legendary Pakhtun leader Bacha Khan’s universal message of non-violence should be a good starting point.

The writer is an associate research fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Email: isabasit@ntu.edu.sg