A layer-cake operation
If militancy and extremism are to be fought, the active cooperation of the Afghan government is necessary


If militancy and extremism are to be fought, the active cooperation of the Afghan government is necessary, and despite preemptive briefings by our forces of their counterparts in Afghanistan, this has not happened. Leading Taliban figures such as TTP chief Mullah Fazlullah are operating out of Kunar and Nuristan provinces of Afghanistan, with calls for the disruption of the mobile phone network on the Afghan side having fallen on deaf ears. On the plus side, there has been little of the expected blowback from the operation, and according to the ISPR, there has been a sharp decline in terrorist acts. The greatest burden remains the internally displaced persons, whose future looks to be truly bleak. They are at the bottom of the layer-cake, and there is no time frame for their return or any publicly-available plan for their rehabilitation, which is going to cost billions of rupees. They cannot go home until the military deems it safe to do so, and the tendrils of radical discontent will already be at work among their numbers.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 31st, 2014.
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