Terror fissures

A report from the US State Department has spelt out some obvious realities. It is a source of immediate concern for the statehood of Pakistan, and cannot be brushed aside as a ploy or a propaganda tool. The ‘2021 Country Reports on Terrorism’ goes on to specifically name the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for overtly and covertly plotting against the government of Pakistan, especially in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. It is making use of its underlying connections with other terror outfits, including Al Qaeda, IS-K, BLA and many others, to stir unrest. These findings are in need of being taken seriously, as the evolving ground realities too point out a dismal picture of law and order, since the insurgents had staged a comeback from Afghanistan, and are proactively implementing their nefarious agenda.

The report has spelt out that the TTP’s resolve is to establish its own version of Shariah. It also pointed out that the government of Pakistan had not so seriously went on to implement the 20-point National Action Plan, as devised in the backdrop of one of the most lethal attacks by the militants in 2014 on Army Public School in Peshawar. The government’s going slow in its efforts to net the abettors and terror-financiers, as was evident from the pressure it had been under the FATF grey-list regime for years, had emboldened the non-state actors.

It is a foregone conclusion that the resolve to nip the terror in the bud went weak with the passage of time, despite glorious sacrifices of the people and the armed forces who were made to pay with more than 70,000 lives in the war on terror. The incoming Taliban 2.0 in Afghanistan and the new wave of terrorism had literally undermined the successes that came our way.

Let’s start picking from where we had left. Rewrite a new terror policy in the spirit of NAP 2014 and the National Security Policy (2022-26), and galvanise all resources to browbeat terrorism, and reinvigorate a stable economic order. This is what the report points out that absence of economic incentives and development enables the disgruntled elements to make inroads.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2023.

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