Despite Islamabad's proclamations that it no longer distinguishes between ‘good' and ‘bad' terrorists, the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network have been spared by the Pakistan military. The international community must ask Islamabad to clarify its policy on terrorism
The military in Pakistan is still not alert to the extremely negative repercussions of appearing too weak in confronting the threat of terrorism. That is why conceptualisation and operationalisation of Pakistan’s counter-terrorism policies have been inconsistent, contradictory and flawed. The official Pakistani discourse has maintained that Islamabad is unequivocally committed to root out all types of terrorism. But Pakistan’s doctrinal thinking on terrorism — rooted in a bizarrely unsophisticated, one-dimensional and exaggerated understanding of existential threat from India — has remained the same: Distinction between ‘good’ terrorist and ‘bad’ terrorist.
Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs advisor Sartaj Aziz’s latest pronouncement has once again exposed Pakistan military’s inexcusable lack of sincerity in its counter-terror priorities. Citing fears about blowback from terrorist organisations, Aziz reduced himself to defend Pakistan’s lack of decisive action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network. He said, “We have to make sure that we move in a decisive way, but at a measured pace and according to our capacity, and ensuring that the blowback is manageable”.
Common sense will say that his statement meant to convey that seeking a crackdown on all terrorist organisations at once will overstretch the Army and lead to more terrorist backlash. Aziz’s statement highlights a glaring disconnection between the ongoing conflict as it is and as it is seen from the perspective of Rawalpindi. This disconnection should worry Pakistan’s neighbours as it will do more damage than good to the prospects for regional peace.
Despite Islamabad’s repeated proclamations that Pakistan no longer distinguishes between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorists, ‘good’ Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network have been spared by the Pakistan military in its military campaign against terrorist safe havens. But Aziz’s public assertion is certainly an alarming reversal of Pakistan’s officially stated policy. It would be naïve to treat his statement as a clumsy attempt at explaining the existing policy — enshrined in the much-trumpeted ‘National Action Plan’ in 2015 — to treat all terrorist groups as an existential threat that needs to be tackled by their eventual elimination.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office has made no effort to clarify his statement. If what Aziz has said has already been embedded in the official counter-terrorism policy of Pakistan, then it is the abandonment of the National Action Plan. It is a classic example of why Pakistan is in a constant state of negativity and self-destruction.
Has Pakistan ever been sincere in rooting terrorismIJ A skeptical yet reasonable view holds that insurgency has been very profitable for Pakistan, particularly its military leadership. Without the ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the military is set to lose a rewarding revenue stream. Since 2001, the US has provided close to $14 billion in coalition support funds to Pakistan. This is in addition to more than $11 billion in economic assistance to Pakistan funded by the American exchequer.
Although the US has conditioned its aid to Islamabad on meeting certain standards, including “demonstrating a sustained commitment to combating terrorist groups on Pakistani soil”, the US administration has had to waive these conditions on grounds that it was in America’s national security interests to continue the funding despite the legislative conditions not being met. Besides pumping billions of dollars into the pockets of Pakistan’s security establishment, the US has so far been liberal in granting Pakistan access to sophisticated military hardware.
US Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Service, who recently visited Pakistan, as part of a US delegation, may have been fulsome in his praise of Pakistan’s anti-terror efforts and expressed his satisfaction at the improved security situation in North Waziristan, but the price of Pakistan’s unnecessarily obstructionist policies are being felt in the continuous strains in the US-Pakistan relations.
What McCain remarked on his Afghan tour, immediately after his Pakistan visit, should leave no one in doubt about the American perception of Pakistan’s credibility on anti-terror front. He is reported to have told Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah that he had pushed Pakistani officials to take practical steps against the Haqqani Network, which is responsible for several deadly attacks in Afghanistan. Can the two messages be reconciledIJ
Although there is no ‘off switch’ for the Afghan insurgency somewhere in Islamabad, this is not to declare that Pakistan does not control influential Afghan Taliban commanders. In March this year, Aziz candidly admitted that the Afghan Taliban enjoys a safe-haven on Pakistani soil by commenting that “We have some influence over them because their leadership is in Pakistan”.
If Pakistan hopes to keep the already troubled areas in a state of ‘controlled chaos’ whereby its Afghan Taliban assets as well as the Haqqani Network are preserved to be utilised to expand influence into Afghanistan after the eventual American drawdown, then Pakistan is extinguishing the last hope of its own redemption.
Pakistan’s immediate neighbours must be worried about the security implications of Pakistan’s surreptitious turnaround in the fight against terrorism, as reflected in a spate of policy statements from Aziz. The international community must ask Islamabad to clarify its real policy about those terrorists who are operating from Pakistani soil and staging attacks on the Afghan territory. Aziz cannot save Pakistan from condemnation for inaction by saying that “Pakistan cannot fight Afghanistan’s war on its own soil”.
For better or for worse, security developments in the two countries are intertwined, and it is Pakistan’s war as much as it is Afghanistan’s. One should not forget that General Zia-ul-Haq’s intoxication with the Afghanjihad against the Soviets, in unholy alliance with the US and Saudi Arabia, had ultimately bred the nightmare phenomenon of the Taliban. The entire Afghan jihad episode continues to haunt us for its deadly consequences.
There can be no escape from frontal assault on Islamist radicalism and terrorism in all their manifestations. Pakistan cannot fight against some terrorist groups and not against others: It cannot dismantle one without the other. Is it possible to imagine a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, had there been no Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan who were given shelter in Pakistan’s tribal areasIJ Experience and pragmatism strongly recommends that there is no such thing as ‘controlled chaos’ since the chaos created by the hydra-headed monster called terrorism cannot be controlled: It can only be ruthlessly eliminated.
National interest as the primary referent of international politics is not a static concept. Because of being socially and politically constructed, it displays a dynamic nature. While Pakistan’s counter-terrorism strategy has so far remained incompetent in eliminating multiple terrorist networks, the success in implementing it largely depends upon a paradigm shift in its national security narrative. As long as Pakistan’s security establishment does not reinterpret Pakistan’s national security narrativevis-à-vis India and Afghanistan, and accepts the supremacy of civilian leadership, the well-entrenched terrorist networks will continue to harm Pakistan’s security as well as regional security.
(The writer is Assistant Professor, Department of International Affairs and Security Studies, Sardar Patel University of Police Security and Criminal Justice)