Pakistan’s Taliban challenge: With over 100 attacks in two months, Islamabad faces grim security situation

Apart from its serious political and economic challenges, Pakistan is faced with a grim security situation. Over 100 attacks have taken place during the last two months that included the capture of the Counter Terrorism Department in Bannu and a suicide attack in the capital Islamabad. These and a host of other attacks were carried out by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban) who had sanctuaries in Afghanistan. Pakistan did not see this coming a year and a half ago. In August 2021 there was much exultation, euphoria and back-slapping over the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. It was seen as the crowning glory of Pakistan’s two-decade-long duplicitous covert support to the Taliban despite being part of the US ‘War on Terror’. The then-prime minister, Imran Khan, claimed that the Afghans had broken the shackles of slavery, whatever that was supposed to mean. The reasons for the euphoria were obvious. For the last two decades, conventional wisdom in Pakistan held that an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban would bolster Pakistan’s security for at least three reasons: Such a government would ensure that India did not get any space in Afghanistan. The Taliban would recognise the controversial British-era Durand Line as the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan suppressing the nationalistic aspirations of the Pashtuns in both countries. They would defang the TTP. Part of Pakistan’s euphoria was also due to the notion that with the Taliban coming to power, India suffered huge losses in Afghanistan that included an investment of more than $3 billion since 2001 on development and reconstruction projects. Seeing its relations through the lens of a zero-sum game, Pakistan saw the Taliban victory as hugely bolstering its influence in Afghanistan at India’s cost and was touted as a massive failure of Indian strategy. A year and a half after the Taliban captured Kabul the euphoria has vanished, the mood is grim and Pakistan’s policy is in tatters. None of its three objectives has been met while its security has been severely compromised. India is back in Kabul at the request of the Taliban who are keen that India restart infrastructure projects and no less than Mullah Yakub, the defence minister and son of Mullah Omar, has offered to send Afghan military officers to train in India. The Taliban have not recognised the Durand Line, and they are unlikely to do so. Worse, they have removed parts of the fence in some areas, terming the Durand Line issue as unresolved and the fence as dividing brothers. In their earlier avatar in the 1990s too, the Taliban had refused to recognise the Durand Line on at least three occasions according to Mullah Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad. Finally, the Taliban have declined to act against the TTP and instead have only facilitated talks between the outfit and Pakistan. The talks and the ceasefire have broken down and the TTP has carried out several attacks in several parts of Pakistan, including Islamabad the capital. Links of the TTP and the Afghan Taliban are deep because after the US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, it was the tribal elements of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that had sheltered them. Today, those elements are grouped as the TTP. Under Pashtunwali, (the unwritten code of the Pashtuns) the Afghan Taliban have an obligation to provide the TTP shelter in Afghanistan to return the favour. The TTP’s long-term goal is to establish an Islamic regime in Pakistan based on shariah as defined by them. However, of late, they have articulated a more nationalist line. Noor Wali Mehsud, the TTP amir, told CNN in an interview that his group aimed to make the tribal districts of Pakistan (along the Afghan border) independent. As such, the TTP was trying to project itself as a Pashtun nationalist group. Its new rhetoric is consistent with the Afghan Taliban’s position of not recognising the Durand Line as an international border. Pakistan has also assisted the growth of the TTP by following a policy of appeasement. It was at its behest that the Taliban facilitated peace negotiations with the TTP. Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire that allowed the TTP to regroup and reorganise inside Pakistani territory. The state also allowed hundreds of militants to return to their homes in Swat and other districts of KPK. Most of them had fled to Afghanistan after the military operation in 2009. The resurgence of the militant network in Swat is a consequence of such a policy. Pakistan thus has a problem with both the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban. The concern for Pakistan is that while the Taliban have challenged the Durand Line and hence Pakistan’s territorial integrity, the TTP is seeking a reversal of the  merger of the former FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province. Taken together, this Pashtun pincer from both sides of the Durand Line could mainstream the idea of a larger Pashtun-inhabited area that could grow into a separatist movement, severely denting Pakistan’s territorial integrity. Obviously, Pakistan’s decades-long policy regarding Afghanistan and counter-terrorism has failed since it has allowed terrorism to reappear in the very areas it was supposed to have been removed from. Hence, Pakistan is searching for a revised strategy to effectively deal with the situation in Afghanistan and the TTP. Pakistan’s  National Security Committee that recently met over two days came out with a formulation that repeated old clichés like ‘zero tolerance for terrorism’ and that no country would be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists and that “Pakistan reserves all rights in that respect to safeguard her people”. Clearly, the Afghan Taliban and the TTP have rattled Pakistan and are testing its resolve to protect its territorial sovereignty and fight this wave of terrorism. So far, there does not seem to be a comprehensive strategy to deal with the threat except contemplating kinetic action against the TTP inside Afghanistan and even the creation of buffer zones in Eastern Afghanistan. Reports indicate that Pakistan has undertaken undeclared kinetic actions against TTP targets in Afghanistan including the elimination of some top leaders. Kinetic military action, however, is not a long-term solution: it is more in the nature of firefighting, tackling the symptoms. Moreover, attacking targets inside Afghanistan could well provoke the Taliban and lead to a war of attrition. Pakistan is also handicapped due to the political instability and deep polarization in the country. With Imran Khan’s party, the PTI ruling in KPK and Khan himself being sympathetic towards the Taliban, Pakistan’s predicament can well be imagined. It is significant that the TTP, while threatening the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PMLN) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) with dire consequences, has remained silent about the PTI, clearly showing where their sympathies lay. In an ideal world, the Pakistan leaders would re-assess reality and look at Afghanistan as a trading partner as its own National Security Policy (NSP) claims — prioritising geo-economics instead of geopolitics. Given the dominating military mindset, this, however, seems unlikely at the moment. Hence, unless Pakistan can pull a rabbit from the hat, its security problems are likely to grow in the coming weeks and months. The author is Member, the National Security Advisory Board and the author of the recently published ‘The Pashtuns: A Contested History’. Views are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.