EDITORIAL: DG ISPR Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry’s year-end presser touched up on all the crucial issues facing the nation – not just related to militancy/terrorism – and provided much food for thought for all stakeholders going into a very crucial year for the nation. Indeed, in many ways 2025 will determine the long-term trajectory of Pakistan.
Default risk has subsided yet the economy remains vulnerable to exogenous shocks so long as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) bailout programme is not successfully completed, security will continue to be a very serious concern if the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) insurgency is not properly crushed, and bitter political infighting will need to be settled to achieve the kind of stability that will deliver the fruits of all the sacrifices to the common public.
He was spot on when he criticised the Afghan government for its “failure to curb terrorist activities originating from its soil”, of course, since Pakistan exhausted all possible options before putting its foot down and conducting airstrikes against TTP camps and suicide bomb factories in the bordering Paktika region. That’s created some unfortunate internal political complications, though, since the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) leadership has emerged as the odd political entity that does not agree with this strategy. But to lump this development with the party’s decision to initiate dialogue with TTP back in 2021, when it was in power, and repatriate insurgents back into the tribal area misses the point.
PTI’s policy at the time was unfortunate and short-sighted, no doubt, but everybody knows that the power dynamics of the country, especially when it comes to Afghanistan, imply that such decisions are never the sole jurisdiction of the sitting political government. So, to say that those events had “political backing”, while true, is also misleading because it absolves the establishment of its own role in the process.
And since the military is clearly on the path of self-correction now, going the extra mile to smash TTP safe havens in Afghanistan, it must also accept the mistakes of the past that played no small role in enabling TTP to grow strong and attack the state all over again.
The DG ISPR also touched upon the trouble in Kurram, which shows that it is being taken very seriously at all levels. Yet to confine it to a “tribal land dispute” also misses the point because everybody familiar with the region’s unfortunate history and geography is also aware that this was just one more issue that triggered its sectarian and militant fault lines which have kept rival tribes at each other’s throats for years and decades.
The reasons that terrorists routinely block roads, stop busses and slit people’s throats are rooted in sectarianism, not land disputes. And this trend has not stopped so far only and only because the state always looks the other way instead of confronting it aggressively.
It is encouraging that the establishment is finally willing to look deeper into the many reasons behind resurgent terrorism as well as the prevailing political impasse that is holding back all sorts of progress. It shows the realisation, however delayed, that all such issues will have to be settled amicably for the country to resume its march to progress.
The last few years saw us come perilously close to political breakdown, another insurgency, and nothing less than sovereign default. These problems have only slowly started to go away.
And unless all leading institutions do their genuine best to keep them in the past and chart a more practical way forward, there will not be much to celebrate around this time next year.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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