FROM THE WILSON CENTER ASIAN PROGRAM
Pakistan’s Militancy Response: Too Little, Too Late
For
years, the U.S. government has pushed Pakistan to crack down harder on
militancy. And for years, Islamabad has largely refused. Instead, it has
dithered as extremist violence has spread across the country. Last
week, investigative journalist Umar Cheema revealed that Pakistan’s
previous government used a secret counterterror fund to purchase jewels,
rugs and even sacrificial goats.
Yet the tides may be turning.
Last week, Pakistan was rocked by a rapid succession of bomb
blasts—including attacks on consecutive days that killed Pakistani
soldiers in the northwest and near military headquarters in Rawalpindi.
In response, the military launched air strikes in North Waziristan—a
tribal region bordering Afghanistan that shelters the Pakistani Taliban,
or TTP (which attacks the Pakistani state), as well as the Afghan
Taliban and Haqqani network (which attack the Afghan government and U.S.
troops in Afghanistan). Pakistani troops have waged limited operations
in other tribal areas in recent years, but North Waziristan has largely
been spared.
Initially, Islamabad described the North Waziristan strikes as
retaliatory in nature, and not a precursor to a larger offensive. Yet in
recent days, Pakistani media reports have revealed that the government
and military are planning a full-scale offensive in the tribal areas in
March.
These developments would represent a dramatic turnaround for
Islamabad, which has largely called for talks, not war, with militants.
On January 27, a majority of parliamentarians from the ruling Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party voted in favor of a military operation
against the TTP. On January 28, a top PML-N official, Rana Sanaullah,
declared that the country was “on a war footing.”
But then, the very next day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced
the formation of a committee to take another look at peace talks with
the TTP. He insists that he won’t authorize an operation in North
Waziristan “without consensus of all stakeholders”—even though many
opposition leaders, including the fervently pro-talks Imran Khan, have
said they’d throw their support behind an offensive.
What’s going on here? The government may be trying to pick a fight
with the Pakistani military, which is less enthusiastic about
negotiations. Perhaps officials want to launch talks on the assumption
that they will fail and therefore help generate more public support for
military action. Or maybe Islamabad is just confused, indecisive, or
scared (PML-N candidates refused to condemn the TTP during last year’s
election campaign, and party officials have even asked the TTP not to
attack their Punjab province bastion). Yet one thing is clear: If
Pakistan does ultimately implement a more muscular countermilitancy
strategy, don’t plan on it being a rousing success. On the contrary, it
may create more problems than it solves.
Consider the timing of a North Waziristan operation. The good news is
that a March start would enable Pakistani forces to fight after the
worst of the brutal Waziristan winter. Yet by announcing the operation
at least a month before it’s meant to start, Pakistan has also given
militants an opportunity to prepare—and to flee. This may well be
intentional; the military has no desire to target the Afghan Taliban and
Haqqani network. Pakistan’s security establishment regards them as
strategic assets that contain Indian influence in Afghanistan. Pakistani
officials have stated their intention to go after “anti-state” groups, a
qualifier that essentially rules out operations against not only the
Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network, but also vicious Punjab
province-based organizations with ties to the Pakistani state—including
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which targets India, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ),
which takes aim at Pakistan’s Shia Muslim minority.
Telegraphing the operation in advance gives North Waziristan-based
assets ample time to migrate across the porous border to Afghanistan.
Tipped-off TTP forces will also flee there (others will migrate to
different tribal areas). Afghanistan is where TTP chief Mullah Fazlullah
was based for several years before he replaced Hakimullah Mehsud as the
organization’s leader last fall. And it is where, according to
Pakistani intelligence and some analysts, the TTP receives state
protection. A North Waziristan operation could worsen already-icy
relations between Islamabad and Kabul.
This is all bad news for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. With
international forces leaving the country, Washington is desperate for
some semblance of an orderly, peaceful withdrawal. This won’t be easy
with masses of TTP fighters coursing into Afghanistan from Pakistan—and
also with Waziristan-based TTP operatives surging into nearby Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa province, where they could attack NATO supply vehicles that
pass through the area.
Another troubling thought is TTP fighters and their allies fleeing to
Pakistani cities, where the group already wields tremendous influence.
Even now, according to the journalist Ahmed Rashid, “it may not be far
off” when the TTP takes control of swaths of Karachi, Quetta, or
Peshawar.
Islamabad, to its credit, has anticipated this problem. It has
pledged to wage operations across the country to ensure that jihadists
fleeing military firepower in the tribal areas don’t find havens in
settled Pakistan. However, such operations could send the country into
paroxysms of the very violence they would be meant to eliminate. Attacks
on militants would surely beget more attacks by militants.
More ominously, thanks to new counterterrorism legislation, the
Protection of Pakistan Ordinance (PPO), security forces will be given
legal cover for their use of force. This is particularly troubling for
residents of Karachi, where the city’s paramilitary forces have a
reputation for brutality, and of Quetta, where the Pakistani military
has waged a bloody campaign against Baloch separatist
insurgents—including abductions and beheadings—that invariably affects
civilians. Little wonder prominent Pakistani human rights activist Asma
Jahangir has warned that the PPO could turn Pakistan into a “security
state.”
As always, it’s Pakistani civilians that would suffer the most. Urban
residents could be targeted by the swelling ranks of city-based
militants or victimized by armed forces operating with impunity. In the
tribal belt, locals will suffer from military assaults, which are often
indiscriminate and frequently displace civilians (according to tribal
elders, 70,000 people have already fled from North Waziristan in recent
days). International human rights groups have also accused the military
of detaining people without charge and of staging extrajudicial
executions during previous military offensives.
Ultimately, this more-robust-but-still-limited countermilitancy
policy would fall short. Not only have extremists entrenched themselves
throughout Pakistan, but their ideologies have as well. A truly
effective strategy would need to target not only Pakistan’s wide array
of extremists—including those the security establishment has long
regarded as the “good” fundamentalists—but also their ideologies and
sources of funding. This would entail an enormous effort that ends, once
and for all, any state sponsorship of militancy; that revises
educational curricula and textbook language; and that stems the growing
influence of hardline Wahhabi and Deobandi Islam—and the Saudi financing
that helps propagate such views.
These steps, while essential, are overambitious. A more practical and
effective strategy—particularly if accompanied by police reforms—would
emphasize better law enforcement and fairer justice: terror attacks
should be thoroughly investigated, and perpetrators promptly prosecuted.
Militant leaders such as Hafiz Saeed of LeT and Malik Ishaq of LeJ may
never receive lifetime prison sentences (they currently live free in
Punjab). Yet it’s essential that Pakistani officials respond to the
savage attacks orchestrated by these men’s organizations with more than
mere verbal condemnations or compensation packages for victims’
families.
Of course, given Sharif’s decision to revisit the peace option, plans
for a more robust countermilitancy policy could be jettisoned. Yet the
stakes have never been higher. With alarming frequency, children are
blown up, polio prevention workers gunned down, and religious minorities
massacred. Reportedly, capital flight is rampant and elites are sending
their kids out of the country. Conditions are so bad that officials in
Peshawar recently cancelled a public launch of Malala Yousafzai’s book.
In the words of Margaret Thatcher, this is no time to go wobbly.
This article originally appeared on The Diplomat.
Link from The Wilson Center: http://wilsoncenter.org/article/pakistan%E2%80%99s-militancy-response-too-little-too-late