Recently there have been a series of violent incidents across Pakistan. The murder of senior Pakistani military personnel in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack, the church bombing in its western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KPK) and more recently coordinated bomb attacks in the urban areas of Sind and a bomb blast in Quetta ( Baluchistan) are all indicative of a coordinated policy to exploit Pakistan’s vulnerabilities and create new ones. The TTP leadership senses weakness when it sees mounting political pressure on Pakistan’s government to adopt the dialogue option especially when political leaders demand a pullout of the military from the western insurgency infested areas and threats to act against the US/NATO by blocking the supply routes. This is evident from the TTP leader’s statement that Pakistan backing off from a dialogue (that has not yet started) would be considered a betrayal and would lead to consequences. The reality of the environment in which this dialogue will proceed must be understood to determine the chances of its success. Linked to this appraisal of the environment must be a realistic consideration of the US policy on drone attacks in Pakistan. All the facts indicate that there may be a temporary respite or reduction in the number of attacks but that these will be resumed (after the US pullout is completed) in support of stabilization operations that will continue in Afghanistan. The TTP has demanded an end to such strikes as a condition for dialogue. A US congressman has muddied the waters further by stating that Pakistan has capacity to stop drone strikes if it really wanted them to stop. Earlier a story in the US media (timed with the Pakistani Prime Minister’s visit to Washington) had alleged that the Pakistan government was complicit in the drone attacks. As long as the US continues to call its actions a ‘war’ against terror, the drone strikes will remain an instrument of war fighting – it is unlikely that there will be a shift from war to law enforcement against terrorists. War spawns more war – as the spread of Al Qaeda franchises and the turmoil in the Middle East indicates. As part of its reality determining exercise Pakistan must factor in external involvement in using Pakistan soil for terrorist attacks in China’s Sinkiang province, the recent Iranian report that the Pakistan-Iran Pipeline project may be abandoned, the incident of the killing of Iranian border guards on the Iran-Pakistan border, the Pakistani judiciary’s concern over petroleum smuggling from Iran and its investigation into 1900+ missing containers or at least their lethal contents in Karachi (an incident promptly denied by the US Ambassador in Pakistan) and finally the series of attacks on the trains in Pakistan – very vulnerable soft targets – and the implications of such activities. There is also the political in – fighting and the inordinate delay in some policy decisions that could lead to a coordinated intelligence estimate of the multiple threats and a decision making tier that could develop responses to the overall threat picture that spells out the reality.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 05:47:28 +0000
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