Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Sunday announced to consult the parliament over the issue of a fresh military offensive against terrorists after former prime minister Imran Khan’s party demanded that any new operation should be discussed in the highest forum. The decision to launch ‘Azm-e-Istehkam’ operation was taken on Saturday at the apex committee meeting of the National Action Plan, a strategy approved in 2014 to eliminate militancy from the country.
A day after the plan was announced, lawmakers from the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) said the matter should have been discussed in Parliament which was the highest forum to decide about any new operation. The Minister first criticised the PTI by saying that the party’s chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) was present in the meeting when the decision was taken, but later also announced that the matter would be placed before the parliament.
“We will also bring this issue to the (Parliament) House where debate will be held on this topic. If they have any objection, when this issue comes to this House, then they can also speak on it,” he said. Khawaja also accused the PTI of siding with terrorists.
“They (PTI) are standing with the terrorists by protesting here today. They are protesting against the martyrs of the Pakistan Army and the army that is still making sacrifices against terrorism,” he said. He also said that the PTI leadership had not backed off from the May 9 stance when the party supporters attacked military installations, as he lambasted the party for changing its stance to serve its interests.
Earlier, speaking to the media outside Parliament House, PTI chief Gohar Khan demanded that only parliament was empowered to take a decision on military operations.
“It is our demand that if there is any operation — whether intelligence-based or full-fledged or in certain districts or villages or tehsils — it is necessary to take this Parliament into confidence,” he said, adding that no matter how empowered a committee was, it could not supersede Parliament.
Former speaker and PTI leader Asad Qaiser repeated the same demand.
“I simply demand that if any decision has been taken about operation, then it be brought before Parliament and Parliament be taken into confidence,” he said.
Later PTI Lawmakers during the parliament session raised slogans against the proposed operation by chanting: “Fata operation unacceptable” and “KP operation unacceptable.”
The announcement to launch a new offensive was made after an apex committee, which was chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and attended by key federal ministers, provincial chief ministers, services chiefs and top bureaucrats.
The decision of new offensive came to light after a high-ranking Chinese official on Friday singled out security as the foremost challenge for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). “Security threats are the main hazards to CPEC cooperation. As people often say, confidence is more precious than gold. In the case of Pakistan, the primary factor shaking the confidence of Chinese investors is the security situation,” Liu Jianchao had said.
Azm-i-Istehkam will be the latest in a series of counterterrorism operations by the Pakistan Army during the last two decades. The most effective was operation Zarb-i-Azb, launched in 2014 by General Raheel Sharif after the Peshawar School attack in 2014.
Operation Raddul Fasaad authorised by General Qamar Javed Bajwa in 2017 aimed to eliminate what was then described as “residual terrorist threats” in the country. Earlier in 2008, a set of operations succeeded to expel rebels from the Swat region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The operations achieved tactical successes, including the reduction of terrorist incidents and the elimination of high-value targets, but they failed to completely eradicate militancy, which should have necessitated a new offensive.
