
JK News Today Commentary
Pakistan is looking at the options of dealing with terrorists, in short Tehreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan, and finds itself in a quandary. The media, thought leaders, army and politicians are clueless. There is a heated debate whether hammer the terrorists out of business or to sit across the table with them to buy peace.
And there is a firm view within Pakistani leadership and establishment (military that takes most of the domestic and foreign policy decisions) that Afghan Taliban is not cooperating rather using the TTP as a proxy against their country. Islamabad also exploring options to involve foreign countries, especially China, to reach out to Afghan Taliban and prevail to help in getting a way out of the crisis
Pakistan is not only losing lives and properties of its soldiers and civilians but also suffering from an image problem. It is considered as an unstable nation that because of its multiple problems could collapse or implode from within. Its all-time friend China too has developed second thoughts about it as the law and order situation is deteriorating. There is a fear among Chinese nationals working in Pakistan. This fear is more pronounced among the Chinese engineers and workers engaged in building multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. A series of attacks have taken place on Chinese nationals and assets in Pakistan. At one point in time, China had suggested to deploy its own security forces to safeguard its interests. Such is the distrust between the two countries now.
The US has already dealt a severe blow to Pakistan. In the last days of Biden administration , the US imposed sanctions on four entities involved in the missile building programmes, and outgoing deputy national security advisor Finer went to the extent of saying that Pakistan’s missile programme was aimed at targeting America. With this perception in the US, the rest of the West has become more suspicious of Pakistan.
Time and again, Pakistan has accused Afghan Taliban of sheltering TTP and not taking any punitive action against the terror groups operating from its soil. This is an ironical situation. The same Taliban that Pakistan helped to return to power in August 2021 is not helping Pakistan cannot be but a situational and political irony.
There is no clue how Afghanistan is behaving toward Pakistan, but Afghan Taliban also has levelled serious allegations against Pakistan, including that it is trying to destabilize the Afghanistan government. Pakistan did no service to itself when it launched aerial strikes at what it called TTP terror training centres , as Afghan government charged Islamabad with killing innocent and children in these aerial strikes in December last year . Pakistan is in habit of blaming its neighbours for its internal failures.
Here, Pakistan should do some introspection. It should go back to the days when it sabotaged spells of dialogue that the government of India had initiated directly or back channel with the militant groups in Kashmir. One striking example is when Delhi responded to the call of Hizb-ul-Mujahdeen for talks after it announced unilateral ceasefire on July 24, 2000. The militant leaders met with the then Union Home Secretary Kamal Pandey at Cheshma Shahi Guest House to work out contours of the dialogue with the central theme that guns will be given up in return for peace in the Valley. At that time, it was a pleasant surprise for the Indian government. The unilateral ceasefire by Hizb ushered rare spell of calm, though quite fleeting one. Pakistan sabotaged that dialogue. It made the Hizb to withdraw ceasefire. Then Home Minister L K Advani put it quite succinctly that ceasefire announced in Srinagar was withdrawn in Rawalpindi. That happened because ISI harassed and tortured the Hizb leadership in Pakistan
Nobody is sabotaging Islamabad’s anti-terrorism moves vis-a-vis TTP but Pakistan itself. It is not clear as to how to negotiate with the TTP or to go in for kinetic action against the group. Its military and political leadership are standing on two sides of the fence, confused and blaming each for not achieving progress. This dilemma should make Pakistan realize that cross-border terrorism is a cancerous disease that it continues to export into India via Jammu and Kashmir. India has achieved tremendous success in taming Pakistan sponsored terrorism in J&K.
But Pakistan must learn lessons that export of cross-border terrorism eats its exporters. It must reflect on how it did what it did to India and Afghanistan all these years and that may help it in getting to the point of stabilizing itself, though given the stubbornness of its military leadership it looks quite remote.