Pakistan has been waging a war against extremist elements ever since former president and military chief Pervez Musharraf decided to join with the United States and its allies to fight against terrorists in Afghanistan. It did not take long before the militants started breeding within Pakistan itself and striking against the military and civilians.
The number of casualties escalated from 189 in 2003 to 5,362 last year. Of the 55,878 people killed over the past 11 years, 36% were civilians, 11% were security forces personnel and the rest were terrorists. The army has conducted numerous operations and has killed scores of militants, but it has been unable to eradicate terrorism from the country. As well, both military actions and efforts to curb financing of militants have been selective and not aimed at all factions.
Both of the two major political parties — the governing PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) and the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by Imran Khan — appear to have a deliberate blind spot for one militant faction or the other. The former has a strong vote bank in the southern Punjab belt, which for decades has been actively recruiting insurgents to fight in Kashmir, and lately has given birth to the Punjabi Taliban. The latter has been a proponent of talks with militant factions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), formerly called North-West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan.
That is why, after the formation of the government in 2013 by PML-N in the Centre and Punjab, and by PTI in KPK, debate began about ending conflicts through negotiations with the Taliban. But that approach went nowhere as factions within the Taliban kept hitting soft and hard targets.
The final nail in the coffin was the attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi on June 8 last year, which killed 36 people including 10 attackers. Immediately afterward, the army, led by its new chief Gen Raheel Shareef, launched an operation called Zarb-e-Azb in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), targeting militants' hideouts, training facilities and other infrastructure.
The enemy retaliated on Nov 2 with a suicide bombing at the border town of Wagah near Lahore, killing 60 Pakistanis — including women and children who had come to watch a ceremony. Then on Dec 16, seven members from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan took control of the Army Public School in Peshawar and butchered more than 130 children in a gun attack that was the deadliest terrorist outrage in the country's history.
Since the Peshawar massacre, public pressure to eradicate the menace of terrorism has been mounting. The army has renewed its efforts and all political leaders are united in their resolve to avenge the deaths of these children. The moratorium on the death penalty has been revoked and hangings of terrorist convicts have resumed. As well, a constitutional amendment is in the pipeline to establish military courts to try terrorism cases.
In a nutshell, the military is calling the shots while the political leadership is unconditionally agreeing to its demands. This has invited international criticism from the UN secretary-general and the European Union among others. However, the United States is supporting these policy actions as it is counting on the Pakistani military and political establishment to fight the war when Nato forces exit Afghanistan.
However, military operations alone are not enough to end terrorism. It is a deeply rooted problem with both economic and ideological links that need to be severed. What started when Pakistan fed Afghan mujahideen in the American-backed war against the Russian invasion continued after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan.
The "nursery" bred a constant stream of militants who were now rebranded as "freedom fighters" for Kashmir against India. As hostilities with India rose, potential economic and political gains for the two arch-rivals eroded. The worst of the second-generation mujahideen were transformed into the Taliban in the aftermath, yet again, of an American-sponsored war.
However, the world community and the Pakistani public are running out of patience with Pakistani military and political institutions whose double-dealing has led to non-stop conflict. A New York Times editorial last moth pointed out: "The army has long played a double-game, taking American aid while supporting and exploiting various Taliban groups as a hedge against India and Afghanistan, and ignoring the peril that the militants have come to pose to Pakistan itself.
"The extent of cooperation among militant groups in the tribal areas has made the game even riskier; the Pakistani military has long provided support for the Afghan-focused Taliban, even while trying to fight the Pakistani Taliban in recent years. Intelligence experts say the army is still collaborating with the Afghan Taliban in fighting the government in Kabul."
Pakistan has to find a way to stop feeding the many-headed monster it has created. The mastermind of the Peshawar attack reportedly is in Afghanistan. That is why the army chief visited Kabul right after the events of Dec 16 — to seek help from the Afghan military and Nato to combat the terrorists' links there. There is evidence to suggest that the Haqqani network in Afghanistan is linked to the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Pakistan army has decided it must now be indiscriminate in its effort to eliminate all forms of militants.
The concurrent need is to curb the roots of financing the enemy. The militants, whether they are recruited in the country or come from other regions, lack their own economic means to live, plan, purchase arms and ammunition and execute terrorist attacks. Large sums of money are required for these activities and to feed thousands of fighters. Unless authorities can plug the funding conduits, the terrorists will eventually regroup, recruit more members and return to action.
The question is what exactly those channels of funding are, and why the military and political leadership appear reluctant to touch some sensitive areas. The problem is that there are many domestic and foreign hands with direct and indirect links to the militancy, which is supported by a huge parallel economy.
The CIA and other foreign agencies working in the region pump hard cash into the informal economy, and some of that money eventually is used by the militant economy. A strong check is needed on the routing of money and on money laundering.
Evidence suggests that on a daily basis $10 million flows in and out of the country through informal channels in Peshawar, on top of the human resources and weapons that easily come in through the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Given its massive resources, surely Pakistan's military should be up to the task of curbing these movements as well as disrupting the technology being used by the militants.
The problem is not confined to what the media like to call the "lawless" KPK area either; rather, it is deeply entrenched within the larger population. That is why the major political parties have a soft spot for certain militant factions to bolster their vote banks.
In addition, the military establishment has been using informal recruits to run their proxy wars on the eastern and western borders for decades. Can they resolve to weed out all militant factions indiscriminately? Has everyone finally resolved to stop distinguishing between "good" and "bad" Taliban? Is the country mentally prepared to do away with supporting mujahideen in Kashmir?
Thousands of madrassas have been operating across the country for decades, and in many of them the message of jihad is drummed into young people relentlessly. Many of these schools are being unknowingly funded by tens of thousands of households who dole out zakat and sadqa money (funding based on religious beliefs) to madrassas in good faith. Who is the enemy and against whom is the fight?
The need is to change the ideology, which has been carefully inculcated over at least a generation. The effort to change the mindset must be deliberate, across all forums, and those leading it must be prepared for the backlash. The country is in a state of war and things may get worse before they get better on a sustainable basis.