Return of Taliban terror in Pakistan: how the country became a victim of its own contradictory policies
This story first appeared in The Indian Express
Fifteen years ago, the Pakistani security establishment sought to make a distinction between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The good Taliban were the Afghan Taliban and other groups that served Pakistan’s interests in the region, including the Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP’s) return to acts of terror, extortion and hostage-taking has turned the clock back for Pakistan a decade — although the situation is still not as bad as it was then — and has severely undermined its relations with the Afghan Taliban that the Pakistan government and Army accuse of harbouring the group.
An angry exchange of words on January 2 was indicative of how the promise of having the Taliban in Kabul has gone wrong for those at the wheel in Pakistan. From a cocky ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed drinking tea with aides at Kabul’s high security 5-star hotel Serena in September 2021, telling the Afghan media that everything was going to be fine, to Pakistan Home Minister Rana Sanaullah threatening to bomb TTP hideouts in Afghanistan, it has been a long 16 months in their ties.
To Sanaullah’s statement, Ahmad Yasir, a member of the Doha-based Taliban, responded with a tweet saying Afghanistan was not Syria, nor Pakistan Turkey (referring to Turkey’s bombing of Kurds in Syria). “This is Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. Never think of a military attack on us, or else you may end up with the embarrassing repeat of the [post-Bangladesh War] agreement with India.”
Soon after this exchange, Pakistan’s National Security Council put out a strong but more measured statement at the end of a two day meeting on this and other issues facing the country, including the tanking economy.
“No country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists and Pakistan reserves all rights in that respect to safeguard her people,” it says. “Pakistan’s security is uncompromisable and the full writ of the state will be maintained on every inch of Pakistan’s territory”.
But it is unclear what it can do to achieve this.
Taliban takeover in Afghanistan emboldened the TTP
The TTP, which has old links with the Afghan Taliban, became active once again in the north-west tribal areas of Pakistan (earlier FATA, but now part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) after the Afghan Taliban captured Kabul.
While some in Pakistan, including former Prime Minister Imran Khan, hailed the victory of the Afghan Taliban as the victory of Islam over America, some far-right religious parties declared the day was not far when sharia would be implemented in Pakistan. A Gallup poll around that time found 55 per cent of over 2,000 respondents to be in favour of sharia law.
Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, the former Pakistan Army chief who retired from office two months ago, had warned at the time that the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan’s old enemy TTP were “two sides of the same coin”. Moderate voices in Pakistan had warned of a blowback on their country that has proved prescient. A matter of concern at the time was the release of a large number of TTP prisoners from jails in Kabul by the new rulers of Afghanistan.
Emboldened by these events, the TTP, whose leaders declared that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan that was a model to replicate in Pakistan, broke a long lull in their attacks inside Pakistani territory. They also started asserting themselves in the tribal parts of KP province, asking men not to trim their beards, and extorting money from residents of the area as a kind of “tax”.
Fears that the TTP would open Pakistan’s doors to the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) — the two are linked — were also high in the minds of Pakistani officials.
It took a major massacre for the Pak Army to really go after the TTP
For long, the Pakistan security establishment’s reflex policy has been to buy peace with the Pakistani Taliban instead of fighting them. Critics of the Pakistan Army and this policy said the force had got so used to outsourcing its battles to terror groups and being preoccupied with its own businesses, that it was no longer a fighting Army.
For its part, the Pakistan Army was concerned it should not be labelled as “fighting our own people”. This was a lesson the army had drawn from the commando attack ordered by former President Gen Pervez Musharraf on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007, which was widely criticised in Pakistan, and which led to the creation of the TTP.
It was only after Pakistan’s ruling elite panicked at the TTP’s silent takeover of the scenic Swat Valley during 2008-09, that the army decided to carry out its first big operation against the group, projecting it as a proxy of India’s R&AW.
But the Pakistan Army’s most serious operation began after the TTP massacred 132 students and 17 teachers at Army Public school in Peshawar in December 2014. Many TTP leaders and cadres fled to Afghanistan at the time.
But in 2021, the Pak Army switched back to betting on peace
The safe havens of the TTP on Afghan soil remained a point of contention between Pakistan and the pro-India Ashraf Ghani government. But with the Ghani government gone in August 2021, and the Afghan Taliban, which owed its victory to Pakistan in some measure — large numbers of Pakistanis were patting themselves on the back for this — in power in Kabul, the TTP seemed to have got more energised.
From September 2021, as the TTP intensified its war in Pakistan, the Pakistan Army decided to sue back for peace. In any case, Imran Khan, then the Prime Minister, had always been a votary of talking to the TTP and for understanding “the Taliban way of life”. Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, the ISI boss who was transferred out as corps commander Peshawar, led the talks.
The Pakistani military wanted the TTP to stop the violence and enter the mainstream, but the TTP’s main demand was a demerger of the FATA areas from KP province, perhaps with the intention of making this an enclave, with passage rights for Afghan Taliban. Though a truce was declared in June 2022, the talks were going nowhere, and the TTP walked out.
On November 29 last year, when Gen Asim Munir, the new Pakistan Army chief took over, the TTP declared they were ending the truce. Since then there has been a sharp spike in attacks by the TTP, including a suicide bombing in Islamabad, the first such incident in the capital since 2014.
On December 20, the TTP took policemen and army officials hostage at a counter-insurgency centre in Bannu, while releasing all other inmates. When talks for the release of the hostages failed, the army launched a huge operation that ended with the killing of 33 TTP cadres, and two Special Service Group commandos.
Pakistan’s dealings with the Afghan Taliban have gone off-script
From Pakistan’s point of view, the most satisfactory outcome of the Taliban victory in Afghanistan was the sidelining of India, which had a two-decade run of developing infrastructure and providing other assistance to the country.
But the two sides fell out over their differences on the Durand Line — the Afghans have never accepted it as an international border with Pakistan, and to the ire of the Taliban, Pakistan does not want to allow unrestricted crossings across the Line.
Further, the killing by the United States of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul in July 2022, has contributed to the tensions between the two sides, with question about the Pakistan security establishment’s role in the incident.
The expectation that Pakistan would play a big role in the new Afghanistan under the Taliban has been belied. Unlike the last time, Islamabad has joined the rest of the international community in not recognising the Taliban regime. Curiously, it is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister in the Kabul regime and an ISI protege, who is said to be sheltering the TTP in south-eastern Afghanistan. According to long-time Haqqani and TTP watcher Antonio Guistozzi, Sirajuddin Haqqani is using the TTP as leverage against Pakistan. Ayesha Siddiqa, the Pakistani analyst, believes this may be intended to clear his own name in Afghanistan in l’affaire Zawahiri.
Fifteen years ago, the Pakistani security establishment sought to make a distinction between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The good Taliban were the Afghan Taliban and other groups, including Sunni extremist groups and, in the broadest sense, included groups that served Pakistan’s interests in the region, including the Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The TTP were the bad Taliban, because they were targeting Pakistan, its civilians and security forces, and other state symbols such as infrastructure. Now the good Taliban and the bad Taliban are on the same side. Pakistan seems to be caught in a contradiction of its own making.