FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2024
In a 1965 speech to the UN Security Council, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister and former President of Pakistan, declared a thousand-year war against India. Former Pakistani Army Chief and military dictator late General Zia-ul-Haq gave form to Bhutto's “thousand years war” with the “bleeding India through a thousand cuts” doctrine using covert and low-intensity warfare with militancy and infiltration.
This doctrine was first attempted during the Punjab insurgency and then in the Kashmir insurgency, using India's western border with Pakistan.
The fanatical countries like Pakistan, who always consider their actions from the prism of violence forgets that history always reveals that no violence can bring peace, it only begets violence. Pakistan started it from the very day of getting independence by attacking Kashmir.
Since that very day till now, Pakistan’s policy has been to create a lacerated disharmonious relation with India, but the irony of fate today is that the patron of terror is facing the brunt of terror attacks against its security forces and civilians. It seems that the tables have turned and now Pakistan is getting a taste of its own medicine.
Since the ‘70s, Pakistan has been arming different factions within Afghanistan. During the 1980s, Pakistan, which was host to more than two million Afghan refugees, was the most significant front-line state serving as a secure base for the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet intervention. In the 1980s the US, through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), granted Pakistan wide discretion in channeling some 2-3 billion US dollar worth of covert assistance to the mujahidin, training over 80,000 of them.
Even after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, serving and former Pakistani military officers continued to provide training and advisory services in training camps within Afghanistan and eventually to Taliban forces in combat. After the defeat of the Soviet Army, the Pakistani military diverted the Afghan mercenaries towards Kashmir to wage a bloody insurgency against India. Today, the same Taliban has made life miserable for Pakistan.
Sectarian strife remains a challenge to the Pakistani state and a danger to its citizenry. Large-scale sectarian attacks, which killed thousands in the 1980s and 1990s, are the evidence suggesting sectarian animosity is spreading into larger parts of the Sunni Islamist milieu.
In previous decades, Deobandi Sunni groups, particularly Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, instigated much of the violence. But two distinct new forces, the Salafi Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) – the local Islamic State branch – and Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (Labaik, for short) – a hardline political party and violent protest movement whose followers come mostly from Pakistan’s Barelvi Sunni majority – have now taken the lead, reconfiguring the nature of the threat.
Pakistan has been facing a rise in violence in the wake of the Taliban seizing power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Throughout this year, terrorists and separatists have targeted security forces in Pakistan. Not only the Taliban, but also the rebels from Balochistan have been repeatedly attacking the military installations in Pakistan.
At least 14 Pakistani soldiers were killed last month when militants ambushed two vehicles carrying security forces in the country’s restive south-western province of Balochistan.
Another 23 soldiers were killed on December 12 and dozens injured in Pakistan after militants rammed a vehicle containing explosives into the building in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the Afghan border.
Hillary Clinton famously warned Pakistani leaders 13 years ago, “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours.” Her words have come true.
Even after ostensibly becoming an American ally in the Global War on Terror in the aftermath of 9/11, Pakistan never seriously disarmed all jihadi groups operating from its territory.
The human toll of Pakistan’s continuous patronising of militant groups has been immense. Some 16,225 terror attacks have been reported in Pakistan since 2000, resulting in 66,601 deaths, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a website that tracks terror attacks across the region.
But Pakistan has clearly not learnt any lesson as it continues to harbour terrorists with an ambition to wrest Kashmir from India. Recently, Pakistan’s care-taker Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar said that the “people of Pakistan were ready to fight 300 battles for Kashmir if war is imposed on us”. Pakistan should set its house in order first.
Due to its own doing, Pakistan is facing all kinds of political, economic and security problems. Despite its growing internal problems, our western neighbour is wasting its waning resources against India, which is too strong to be harmed.
It may not be a distant case when there may be a repetition of 1971, with more fragmentation of Pakistan. In fact, former Pakistani PM Imran Khan has on record warned that if the establishment “did not take the right decisions”, Pakistan would be broken into “three parts” – Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh. Is anybody listening?
