January 13 , 2015
Following the sequence of recent events in Pakistan can easily lead one into a record of sorts owing to the fact that 32 'active' transnational and 12 domestic terrorist groups are operating from its soil. It is time to analyse, therefore, the fast-moving scenario and the role, plight and plan of action of the Pakistani army, universally acknowledged as the only disciplined and structured organization of the State, which is being called upon to tackle the terror outfits while taking the State forward.
On Friday, December 5, 2014, the chief of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba and now renamed Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Hafiz Saeed, spits venom on India. Early next morning, the top al Qaida commander, Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, carrying an American bounty of $5 million on his head for masterminding attacks on the United States of America and the United Kingdom, is killed by Pakistan's army in an operation in South Waziristan Agency. That very day, again, saw the Islamabad army chief, Raheel Sharif, visiting the Peshawar-based XI Corps headquarter and expressing his "satisfaction" with the "progress" in operations against militancy and "achievements" made so far. One, however, did not have to live long enough to enjoy peace as smack came the retaliatory attack from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan terrorists on the army public school in the XI-Corps-based city of Peshawar on December 16, killing more than 140 and inflicting the biggest blow to the pride, professionalism and prestige of Pakistan's army.
The temporarily shaken army chief, in an unprecedented move, had to scamper to Kabul to take cover and seek the unqualified and unstinted support of the Afghan establishment in organizing "joint operations" and trying to get hold of the mastermind behind the Peshawar mayhem operating from Afghan soil. The rank and file of Pakistan's army as well as the regiment of nine powerful corps commanders - based in Mangla, Multan, Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Gujranwala and Bahawalpur - were angry too. "Something has to be done" was the chorus sung by the army personnel. They were right. But here also lay the danger. What is to be done? And how? Should the army be the sole solution for the problem of terror created by the army itself? If so, what could or would be the duration of the army's high-intensity operation against the very terrorist outfits that were once its proxy foot soldiers, killing, and getting killed by, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and also in India and Jammu and Kashmir, and again facing fire in the same land-locked terrain of Kabul fighting the 43-nation coalition euphemistically called the International Security Assistance Force under the command of the western forces?
It soon became evident that the matter was not as easy as it had looked. The overall outcome and possible consequence of the 'revenge' operation by the Punjabi-dominated army in Pakistan could be so grim as to be a repeat of what happened in Bangladesh in 1971. Why? What is the connection between the 'Bengali sub-nationalism' of the erstwhile united Pakistan and the present-day terror? Yes, Dhaka being more than 2,000 kilometres from Islamabad, without direct access, had the natural advantage and Pakistan's army had the inherent and natural logistical disadvantage. But was not the situation in 2014 totally different from that in 1971? It was. Yet, the best (or worst) part of the present situation is that there does exist a strong subterranean current of Pashtun sub-nationalism, too, which had erupted from time to time in the past, coupled with the heady cocktail of religion, culture and the anti-army virus that constitutes the real menace to the army and strategic threat to the very existence of Pakistan in its present size and shape.
Thus, owing to the extraordinary happenings in Peshawar on December 16, a National Action Plan Committee has been set up, which, in turn, recommended the urgent raising of a 5,000-strong counter-terrorism force to fight the militants. To be deployed in the four provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sind and Balochistan, this force - its preparation and training - will be put under the charge of the army in Pakistan. Clearly, therefore, Pakistan appears to have learnt the lesson of history and taken note of the (im)possibility and futility of its regular army being entangled in a civil-war-type scenario like that in Dhaka 44 years ago. However, Dhaka was a different ball-game, where an aggressive Punjabi army went all out against an unarmed Bengali populace. Pakistan's terrorists of the Durand Line, however, are not known to be either gentle or civilized. They believe in revenge, and that has been their tradition and history from time immemorial.
Even otherwise, as the Pakistani army today is embroiled in counter-terror operations, it does not have any competent substitute to deal with the violence of their former fundamentalist and religious warrior allies. The former friend is now a sworn foe, a situation that India had also faced, though on a much smaller scale, in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, when the friendly LTTE turned into a deadly enemy of the Indian army on foreign soil. What followed was a fiasco of unparalleled magnitude that taught New Delhi a lesson .
For the present, the situation for the army in Pakistan could be grimmer. As is well known, seven of its nine corps formations are India-centric, exceptions being the North-Western Frontier XI (Peshawar) and XII (Quetta) Corps. Hence, an intensified operation in the Pashtun hinterland is bound to affect the army rank and file as no soldier, however well-trained and indoctrinated, ever likes to fire on his own fraternity. In the 1980s, the Indian army faced such a situation when Sikh soldiers mutinied owing to the intense use of troops in urban areas; and that wound certainly took a long time to heal.
Despite all these happenings, Pakistan continues to be in a class by itself. Peshawar appeared to be a lesson worth learning. But who is going to bell the cat? Nawaz Sharif? Not today, may be sometime later. How does the State, reeling under a 24/7 terror threat, accept the release of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi chief, Malik Ishaq, from jail? Ishaq's release comes in spite of Sharif's pledge to eradicate the "cancer" of terror and sectarianism. Has he forgotten January 6, 1999, when the LeJ attempted to blow up a bridge on the Lahore-Raiwind road, close to Sharif's farm house, shortly before he was due to pass down that way? Again, does Sharif remember the year when the LeJ had offered, through a press release, a reward of 135 million rupees to anyone undertaking the killing of Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan and his younger brother, Shahbaz, then the chief minister of the Punjab? What exactly is the message that Pakistan's prime minister is sending, and to whom? Is it a case of the "good Taliban", which is likely to attack the "external enemy" of Pakistan? Similarly, do the likes of Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi fall under this category of the "good Taliban" who could take on India in the east as the army fights the "bad Taliban" in the west?
Thus, the post-Peshawar line seems to be clear. The army would help deploy and operate from behind a new 5,000-strong special force to deal with the 'bad Taliban' in the west. And the east will be the area of operations of the 'good Taliban'. The likes of Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Haqqani network and a host of potential suicide-bombers would or could be diverted from the Durand Line to the Delhi Line - all in the name of tackling terror, and with the conviction of the steady flow of dollars as the US cannot tackle the twin menace of a nuclear and 'terrorist' Pakistan.
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