Murder and Confusion

The slaying of a kidnapped Pakistani police officer in Afghanistan shows that all is not well in the Af-Pak region. Pakistan’s Foreign Office confirmed on Wednesday that the body of SP Tahir Khan Dawar has been recovered along with his service card by Afghan locals in Nangarhar province.

The police officer hailing from North Waziristan was kidnapped in Islamabad on Oct 26. On Nov 13, a senior K-P police official said a source had informed them about the discovery of the body in Nangarhar and it was later followed by appearance of pictures on social media. The pictures on social media showed the body of a man clad in a pair of trousers and a shirt with a piece of paper on his chest.

His blood-smeared face and arms showed he was tortured to death. The hand-written note in Pashto carries the name of Wilayat Khorasan, the name the Islamic State militant organisation uses to refer to the Af-Pak region. It mentions SP Dawar with his first name and said the “cop who had arrested and killed several militants has met his fate.” The note also warns others not to follow the same path otherwise they also would meet an identical fate.

SP Dawar was head of the Peshawar rural police circle when he was kidnapped. He had survived two suicide attacks in Bannu before he was kidnapped. Questions arise as to the motives for his killing. Now it will be premature to pin down the blame on anyone or any group. The true picture would emerge only after completion of investigations of the case. One thing is clear forces of destabiliation, religious militants or those of other varieties, are active in the region.

Their aim is to harm Pak-Afghan relations and to scuttle hopes of peace and stability in Afghanistan. The possibility of India being behind the incident cannot be ruled out considering its increasingly aggressive stance against Pakistan and its opposition to CPEC and the Belt and Road initiative. All this, however, at this stage is mere conjectur.