Terror Chicken Comes Home To Roost In Pakistan
Since Nine-Eleven happened, the Americans invaded and quit Afghanistan two years ago. But the terror chicken, hatched even earlier to promote the ‘jihad’ during the 1980s, remains roosted in Pakistan, endangering the whole region.
One of the more serious recent attacks on September 29 this year, on a Shia congregation at Mastung, Balochistan, has been traced to a seminary that was established by the family of Khalid Mohammed Sheikh, the Al Qaida leader and a 9/11 mastermind. Two of his relatives were found to be involved. Over 50 persons died and 100 were maimed. A convicted Sheikh has been in a Pakistani jail since 2004, awaiting re-trial, also a clemency plea.
The investigations into the Mastung suicide bomb attack have shown that “the masterminds of the attack were Mosaib al Baluchi and Dawood Badani, close relatives of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who were later arrested and taken to Guantanamo by American forces,” Pakistani analyst Zahid Husain writes (Dawn, October 4, 2023).
True to its form, however, Islamabad blames its current spike in terrorism on the Afghan refugees it is evicting, the Taliban back in power in Kabul, the arms left behind by the US and “two neighbours” – just everyone else but its policies and actions that have fomented, even exported, terrorism. The inevitable damage caused to its own polity is palpable.
“Terrorist attacks have become almost a daily affair. The return of terrorism presents a most serious challenge to a nation mired in multiple crises,” Husain writes, citing a report recently released by the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS). It reveals “a staggering 57 per cent escalation in militant violence nationwide over the last quarter” (July-September, 2023).
Husain ominously adds: “Almost 1,100 people, including 386 security personnel, lost their lives to militant violence in the first nine months of the year. The CRSS report notes that the number of fatalities from terrorist attacks this year has increased, with KP and Balochistan having suffered 92pc of all fatalities since the beginning of the year.”
The recent clashes in Bajaur are believed to be a spillover of the conflict between IS-K and the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan. “A large number of local JUI members, who fought alongside the Afghan Taliban, have returned home after the end of the war. The conflict has now spread to other areas in KP and Balochistan, giving a new twist to the ongoing militant violence,” Husain says.
Husain, and other analysts, Pakistani and foreign, point the situation to persistent political instability and economic stress. Presently, Husain writes that “as the caretaker government silently watches the situation drift toward anarchy, the task of fighting terror has been left solely to the army.”
However, with the Islamic State digging into Pakistan, it is not just the tribal belt along the western border. “Terrorist attacks have become almost a daily affair. The spate of killings across the country demonstrates the expanding capacity of militant groups to carry out increasingly audacious operations,” Husain noted.
Amidst all this, Pakistan finds various alibis. It seeks justification for its current forced eviction of unregistered Afghan refugees, of whom over 200,000 out of an estimated 1.7 million have returned to a war-ravaged Afghanistan. It blames the refugees, some of whom have been in Pakistan for decades, for the spurt in terror. The United Nations has cautioned against human misery, the US has urged it to go slow, and the political parties and sections of Pakistani intelligentsia are strongly critical of the move.
The terror spike shows the rising clout of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the umbrella body of Sunni militants. The CRSS report points to sophisticated military equipment found on those captured or killed. The departing American forces left this behind. The Kabul regime of the Afghan Taliban, according to Pakistan, has made it available to the TTP. Right or otherwise, it is a convenient alibi to blame Kabul and the Americans, as a feed for political propaganda, with national elections due next year. All this, analysts say, may be of no use to Pakistan, either in fighting militancy or in its diplomatic dealings or the political discourse.
