Bajaur bombing

With at least 40 dead and over 150 injured, attack represents worst fears of critics of Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy

The suicide attack on a JUI-Fazl rally in Bajaur has removed any doubt that terrorists have regained the ability to conduct devastating attacks in Pakistan. It has also raised a massive question mark over the role of the Afghan government and should seriously force its sympathisers to rethink the situation. For several years, ‘experts’, including top elected and unelected government figures, assured us that terrorism would end, or at least decline, once the Afghan Taliban took control of the country. Instead, the years since then have seen the resurgence of the TTP, and now, Daesh, which is believed to be behind the attack on the JUI-F rally.

While the TTP’s rise has been explained away as the Afghan Taliban’s unwillingness to crack down on a group that means it no harm — some TTP and Taliban leaders are also reportedly quite friendly — the Taliban consider Daesh to be their main rival, meaning the Afghans are supposedly trying to fight the group. When law enforcement first appeared to have gotten a handle on terrorism, the few attacks that did take place were directed at security personnel, mostly at checkpoints. Even the January attack in Peshawar that claimed over 80 lives was at a mosque in a police compound. This was supposed to reassure civilians that the terrorists couldn’t break through into ‘settled areas’. But the Bajaur attack invalidates this argument. With at least 40 dead and over 150 injured, the attack represents the worst fears of critics of Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy, as even right-wing religious conservatives are under threat, what to say of the overwhelming majority of the more moderate majority of the country.

The ‘stable Afghanistan’ argument always focused on how the Taliban regime would stop terrorism. Since this has proven to be patently false, Pakistan needs to put its foot down. Stability in Pakistan should be the priority. Kabul needs to be shown — not just told — that failure to stop cross-border terrorism will have consequences for the Taliban.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2023.

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