Pakistan's Last Gambit? continues...

What happens in the unlikely event of a Taliban takeover is hard to guess. Pakistan would obviously declare a victory, push out India and run a proxy government in Kabul. But a Taliban takeover also

means a Pashtun consolidation which can have a serious fall-out on Pakistan, especially when there is a noticeably growing dissension within the Pashtuns on the east of Durand. With 25 million Pashtuns in Pakistan, and over two million Afghan refugees, it can be the turn of the Taliban to leverage its ‘strategic depth’ in Pakistan.

The Taliban’s promotion of an extreme version of Sunni Islam and its victory in Kabul will galvanise similar groups in Pakistan, and elsewhere in the world. Several Sunni groups holed up in the tribal areas and in the vast plains of Punjab are battling the Pakistan Army for space and domination and many of them have ideological and operational relationships with or affinity to the Taliban.

With Sunni extremist consolidation taking place in West Asia and North Africa, the emergence of the Taliban will usher in a wave of extremism sweeping not only in Pakistan but across south and

south-east Asia, as well.

Such an eventuality will raise the possibility of further ‘Talibanisation’ of Pakistan which the Army will find extremely difficult to contest, raising fears about the security of nuclear weapons. The Army’s refusal to launch a military offensive against TTP which has openly challenged its authority by specifically targeting key military installations, including GHQ and the ISI, is a clear indication of both its unwillingness and lack of confidence in its capability to come out unscathed from such operations. The past military operations against terrorist groups in the tribal areas have been partially successful but had extracted a heavy price in terms of lives and security. Even after the TTP, in 2012, posted the beheadings of abducted soldiers on YouTube, the Army chose to ignore the extreme provocation.

To be continued...