Changing Terror Matrix in Af-Pak Region

There is a perceptible change in security environment in Af-Pak region following the December 1 policy assertion by US President Barrack Obama on Afghanistan and developments thereafter. Obama unveiled his Afghanistan strategy in a speech to the nation at West Point on December 1, 2009 wherein he increased and deepened a US commitment to Afghanistan and outlined a strategy for “disrupting, dismantling, and defeating Al Qaeda and its extremist allies and preventing their return to Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

It mainly involves Pakistan which was skeptical about US strategy in the region and has now been reassured that the US endorses its position as a pre-dominant stakeholder in Afghanistan. With the US implicitly accepting Pakistan as a nuclear capable state with responsibility to safeguard its nuclear arsenal, Pakistan is reasonably sure of no danger to its nuclear assets. The US agreeing to provide massive military assistance, including laser bombs and drones, Pakistan’s weaponisation programme, which is exclusively directed against India will continue unabated. Pakistan has been able to market its spurious doctrine that if it has to fight Taliban and Al Qaeda elements, India must be pressurized to give concessions on issues like Jammu and Kashmir, water etc.

Pakistan is working on a strategic assessment that after the withdrawal of American troops, the main stimulant giving rise to Islami radicalization would disappear. It would thereafter be able to work out a modus vivendi with the radical forces, particularly in Afghanistan that subserves its strategic objectives. This hope and confidence partly emanates from the relationship its intelligence agencies have developed with the Quetta Shura (the Mulla Omar-led Taliban) and its own surrogates like the groups of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Gul Bahadur Khan, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar etc. In this scenario, it feels it will be able to install a government that is pro-Pakistan and amenable to its control and guidance. Pakistan with its emergence as the controlling power in Afghanistan enjoying international support, both of the West and China, would be able to exclude India.

On terrorism front, the West will be satisfied if Pakistan is able to prevent the Islamic groups from targeting the Western interests and the Anglo-Americans will have no compunction in turning a Nelson’s eye to whatever happens within Afghanistan and to the region. Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence is presently busy contacting and convincing various armed groups not to consider Pakistan as their adversary. In the new dispensation, they will have great use for each other and only the groups enjoying a good relationship with Pakistan would be able to share power. This has started eroding the support base of Karzai and has also generated anxiety amongst non-Pashtuns and realignment of forces and relationship between various warlords, private armies, drug syndicates and terror groups.

The West is working on the premise that Pakistan would not be able to cheat them this time and deliver its promises since its own security and integrity will be seemingly compromised if the plan fails. It also feels that in view of dependence of both Pakistan and Afghanistan on the West for money, resources and weapons, Pakistan can ill afford to double cross them.

The March 8 Lahore terror incident is indicative of a new trend that will expose the fundamental faults and inconsistencies in the proposed plan. First, the entire plan is based on factoring in the insurgency situation and the ground setting in Af-Pak area like North Waziristan and South Waziristan. Both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the insurgency is now likely to focus on urban areas and not to vastly unpopulated or low population density areas. The recent attack in Kabul followed in quick succession at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency headquarters in Lahore are indicative that terrorism will now increasingly take on the urban areas if the isolated tribal areas are saturated with concentration of military power are concentrated with unaffordable force levels. Both the Kabul and Lahore attacks used similar modus operandi and were launched in urban areas.

The use of air power and area weapons in tribal areas has led to scattering of terror groups who in smaller numbers are likely to target specific urban targets. The American plan of outsourcing to Pakistan control of Jihadi groups in Afghanistan is deeply resented by democratic forces at one end and Taliban groups who are opposed to the winds of the Haqqanis and the Hikmatyars.

Overall goodwill for Pakistan in Afghanistan is very low and cutting across the tribal loyalties, large numbers of Afghans hold Pakistan responsible for decades of bloodletting in Afghanistan. They are also aware that with Pakistan acquiring a dominant role, the development and reconstruction task following installation of Karzai regime will receive a major setback and Pakistanis will only help channelizing the development funds for personal aggrandizement or bribing the militant groups whose support they crave for.

The jihadi groups in Pakistan want to install what they consider as a genuinely Islamic regime Nizam-e- Shariat, bringing about fundamental changes in the constitutional and legal framework. Any attempt by Pakistani state to buy peace with them by according concessions will only lead to their further strengthening and consolidation. The only other strategy that the Pakistani intelligence will adopt is to divert their attention towards India and project their contentious issues with India as the cause of Islamic Jihad.

The frenzied outbursts of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed on water issue and calling it a cause of Islamic jihad is indicative of this phenomenon. The contention that Islamic terrorism is only confined to Pakistan’s north-west region or peripheral border areas no more holds good. The terrorists have established their bases in South and Central Punjab as also urban areas of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Karachi and all the equipment and weapons that the West is promising to Pakistan will be of little avail in fighting urban terrorism.

If the Pakistan government and the forces that want to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to fight terror they should have first concentrated on convincing the Pakistani establishment that all shades of terror groups, irrespective of their relationship with the regime are dangerous for Pakistan. And no assistance will be provided to Pakistan unless it unequivocally and unconditionally decides to take deterrent action against all of them. Any so-called calibrated approach to terrorism will prove suicidal both for Pakistan and the world at large in the long run. Secondly, Pakistan should have been supported to build its capability in police and investigating apparatus to deal with terror rather than military hardware to appease the army.