Unfinished business

Despite the fact that there has been considerable success in battling militancy and terrorist elements in the course of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, they can still bite. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) conducted what it would consider a successful operation in Jamrud Tehsil of Khyber Agency on the morning of September 1. A suicide bomber killed himself and two more and wounded about 55 others, at least four of whom have life-threatening injuries. The TTP were quick to claim the attack saying that it was aimed at the assistant political agent of Jamrud, tribal elders and locally recruited Khasadars who were implementing the National Action Plan (NAP). On this evidence, the TTP cannot be considered a spent force, far from it.



Those engaged in the implementation of the NAP are wont to go on record with considerable frequency to say that this or that element has ‘almost’ been eliminated, or such and such a group ‘have been severely degraded’. What is never talked about is the complete defeat or eradication of any of these elements, and there are never reports that they have decided to lay down their arms and take up agro-pastoralism for a living rather than blowing their fellow countrymen and women to smithereens.

The unpleasant reality, rarely voiced, is that terrorism and extremism are neither being defeated nor eliminated, and remain far from being so in both cases. The social conditions that allow extremism to develop remain unaltered; and the decanting of almost a million people in the course of the operation in order to protect civilian lives has done nothing to drain the swamp either. More, it will have added to the pools of resentment that were there in the first place which themselves will deepen as displaced persons return to their homes to find them and their livelihoods ruined. This is the unfinished business that is going to mean that in a potentially short space of time Zarb-e-Azb II is going to have to get into gear, the entire cycle repeating itself. As the Taliban are fond of saying — “You might have all the watches, but we have all the time.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 3^rd,  2015.

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