The anatomy of terrorism in Pakistan

 

Major General Inam Ul Haque, in his articles published in The Herald Tribune on 21  December and 28 December 2023, expresses his opinion on the facets of terrorism relevant to Pakistan. In Terrorism and Pakistan’s Response – the first article- the writer delves into a philosophical search to explain the origins of terrorism and the motivations behind it. He explains that terrorism is considered an offshoot of extremism which manifests itself in both violent and non-violent forms. When violent, extremism morphs into radicalization where the terrorist loses mental equilibrium. Body, mind, and spirituality are the attributes that, depending upon the thinking of the scholars, govern human behavior. Ideally, these three attributes, or at least two of them, should be in synchronicity to achieve balance in personality. 

Terrorism is the blood that oozes out of the patient’s nostrils when he suffers from a brain hemorrhage. Bleeding is the symptom, not the real cause of hemorrhage. Like elsewhere in the world, terrorism in South Asia symbolizes the regional undercurrents caused due to frustrations, complexes, animosities, hatred, and guilts nurtured by the regional players. Like Britain and France during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1543), Pakistan and its neighbors will learn their lessons the hard way, hopefully not in the 21^st Century.

Terrorism is a tactic. Insurgency refers to the scale or type of conflict. Insurgents are usually capable of conducting sustained guerrilla warfare campaigns against regular or irregular armed rivals. Neither concept is mutually exclusive. Moving forward from the Cold War period, the India-Pakistan rivalry has shifted to a lower dimension where proxy operations against each other, in the form of insurgencies, have replaced conventional warfare. Terrorism is the engine that drives these insurgencies.

 In this scenario, nuclear deterrence acts as a stabilizer which prevents the events from getting escalated beyond a certain level. After the 71 War, and particularly after the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, a pattern can be discerned where both India and Pakistan have resorted to an indirect approach to address their mutual differences. The indirect approach is not a new phenomenon in South Asia. In the past, the intervening periods between conventional wars in the Subcontinent were peppered with proxy wars. However, after 1971, these have become the sole instruments of conflict resolution.

If we liken the Kashmir dispute to the eye of the storm, Indo- Pakistan confrontation is like a weather system which has, over the last seven decades, generated a seasonal cycle characterized by 1) major wars (47-48,65, and 71); 2) lesser wars (Siachen-85 and Kargil-96); and 3) proxy wars. Presently we are living in the season of proxy wars. This completes the first cycle of the seasons of confrontation. Apparently, within the cycle, the seasons proceed in a linear fashion: major wars- proxy wars- and lesser wars. However, it is more complex than we think. There are sub-seasons in a season.

We notice manifestations of this approach in the Indian support of various separatist forces in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh, and its infiltration of religious extremists in Punjab. Many Taliban groups are also on the payroll of Indian intelligence agencies. Pakistan is supporting the insurgency in IHK by maintaining that it is a freedom movement. It is logical for Pakistan, a weaker power, to resort to an indirect approach for the achievement of its strategic goal: recovery and integration of IHK with Pakistan. It is another matter though that, over time, the Jammu & Kashmir dispute (an issue for the Indians) is reduced to a set of cliches.

The Pak-Afghan conflict paradigm is driven by Afghan irredentism- the claim by Afghanistan to regain sovereignty over the “Eastern Pashtun Lands”, the name by which the Afghan rulers call those areas where Great Britain, during the three Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839–42; 1878–80; 1919), from its base in India, sought to extend its control over neighboring Afghanistan and to oppose Russian influence there.

If terrorism is a tactic that fuels insurgencies, we should understand that insurgencies never die. They are like festering wounds that keep bleeding for decades, even centuries (Basque, Kurd, Scottish, and Welsh frustrations, driving strength from the respective separatist movements, amply illustrate this phenomenon).

Seven major insurgencies are going on in India’s North East, some of them since 1947. These involve multiple separatist militant groups operating in almost every North Eastern state. These northeastern states, known as the Seven Sisters, are precariously connected to the rest of India by the Siliguri Corridor, a strip of land as narrow as 14.29 miles wide. 

In the recent past, terrorism and insurgencies were fully defeated only in Malaya, and South Africa. The Malayan Emergency, also known as the Anti–British National Liberation War (1948–1960), was fought between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malaysian National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces of the Federation of Malaya, the British Empire and the Commonwealth. The communists fought to win independence for Malaya from the British Empire and to establish a socialist economy, while the Malayan Federation and Commonwealth forces fought to combat communism and protect British economic and colonial interests. The term "Emergency" was used by the British to avoid referring to it as a war. Britain did not approach the Emergency as a conventional conflict and quickly implemented an effective intelligence strategy, led by the Malayan Police Special Branch, and a systematic hearts and minds operation, both of which proved effective against the largely political aims of the guerrilla movement. Although the insurgency was claimed to have been contained in 1960, it was rekindled in 1968 and was fully defeated in 1989. This happened due to Malaysia’s political stability, economic development, and détente between the Malaysian Chinese and the indigenous Bumiputras.

Modern terrorism in South Africa developed mainly during the apartheid period, both by activities of the state and by the liberation movements that continued to the time of the first democratic elections in 1994, which saw South Africa evolve into a fully representative democratic state with equal rights for all.

Saleem Akhtar Malik

3 January 2024