Pakistan’s Last Gambit? continues....

What had further complicated the situation was the fact that the Pakistan Army, over the years, had become more radicalised and “culturally sympathetic to the extremists.” Not only have the armed forces and its intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), been exploiting religion for years as an instrument of covert war, there is also evidence of their office cadre and its rank and file increasingly becoming ideologically aligned with terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) and Tehrik-eNafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM). Ahmed Rashid has argued that FC, a paramilitary force led by officers deputed from the Pakistan Army, is “imbued with jihadist ideas and motivations.” There are numerous instances of regular officers and men from the Army involved in terrorist activities either directly or indirectly as facilitators and trainers for groups like LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).


Even while supporting the US-led Global War on Terror, the Pakistan military did not abandon its terrorist strategy, helping the Taliban to regroup in Pakistan when the USy shifted its militarfocus on Iraq. General Pervez Musharraf, hailed as a strategic ally in Washington, was quietly letting in the Taliban leadership to regroup in Quetta and al Qaeda cadres and leaders to dig heels in the tribal areas. Musharraf’s hasty peace deals with the Taliban in Waziristan allowed the terrorist groups to infiltrate the tribal communities much more effectively. Many of them settled down in the tribal areas, married tribal women and became part of the landscape. Tribal leaders who opposed these foreign elements were killed. So were the maliks (government representatives) in large numbers, allowing the terrorist groups to take control of the main cities like Wana and Miramshah which opened the way for them to wrest the entire tribal areas from the State.

The failure of the Musharraf government to take back the areas from the Taliban and al Qaeda was in part due to the army’s lack of experience in counter-insurgency operations but mostly because it wanted to keep these forces as reserves for future use in Afghanistan, and perhaps against the US itself.

To be continued...