‘Isolated incident’?

EDITORIAL: The caretaker foreign minister’s remarks, that the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) attack in Chitral was an “isolated incident” and “probably not sanctioned” by the Afghan government, has raised a lot of eyebrows, and rightly so.

That’s because a senior representative of the government, even a caretaker one, is supposed to know that the first thing that matters right now is not who masterminded and/or allowed the hit, but that terrorists crossed the border from the Afghan side, yet again, and used high-grade weapons with lethal effect inside Pakistan.

This fact alone triggers a specific line of action, with subsequent investigations pinning the blame and determining appropriate action. Since TTP has itself taken responsibility, it is clear that the Taliban government has not controlled them despite a string of similar attacks and repeated reminders from Islamabad about the agreement reached in Doha, so Kabul does indeed have a lot of explaining to do.

It is important to note a disturbing trend in sections of Pakistan’s politicians of trying to isolate the Taliban regime from responsibility for the terrorism in Pakistan.

Not long ago former prime minister Imran Khan dedicated one of his viral video logs to explaining that one specific attack was claimed by the so-called Islamic State (IS), and the Taliban couldn’t be blamed because they were also fighting them on their own soil.

He, too, conveniently ignored the fact that the Afghan government must answer for illegal cross-border movement, involving Afghan nationals, with the sole purpose of engaging in terrorist activity in Pakistan. It must explain its dubious behaviour – promising a clamp down all the time yet taking no action on the ground.

It is one thing for the average Joe to express such opinions in public, but it is very dangerous for the political elite to take these positions. The military, on the other hand, appears very firm in its resolve to root out this menace once and for all this time.

Time has already taught us that previous operations, so successful at the time, eventually reversed because the terrorists found sanctuary across the Durand Line. This time they’ll have to keep at it till they not only defang the snake, but also behead it.

But, to be realistic, this fight is likely to first get much uglier. Whether it was the Americans or the Afghans themselves that left Nato-grade weapons behind and ran when the Taliban came back no longer matters; that’s something to be taken up on a diplomatic level with America and Afghanistan. Right now, the priority is to crush terrorists and terrorism.

And, as the military adjusts to the enemy’s use of night goggles and advanced sniper rifles, the government will also have to improve its approach. It’s clearly not enough to issue statements and make angry phone calls to Kabul. A line needs to be drawn, and that will make this affair a lot more complicated.

It’s not just the peace that TTP is breaking, of course, it’s also the economy. And nobody needs any reminders, especially in Islamabad, how that could give the kiss of death to all efforts to stay solvent in the face of a very serious threat of sovereign default. This, then, is a very fluid situation and the attack in Chitral, with due respect to the foreign minister and ministry, was definitely not an “isolated incident”.

Let’s be clear that it’s not just the military that will win us this fight. The government will also have to carry out a swift and targeted political offensive. Yet for now, it seems that as the military fine-tunes its strategy, the government also needs to sharpen its diplomatic knife.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023