EDITORIAL: Whatever contingency plan Pakistan’s military has prepared for another all-out TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban) offensive, especially with the Afghan government not cooperating, needs to be taken out of the closet and implemented immediately.
Enough is enough, after all, and Tuesday’s attack that killed more than 25 security forces in DI Khan, wounding scores more, must be treated as the last straw.
That’s why the demarche issued to Kabul is not going to be enough. Already, the Afghan Taliban, while promising an investigation, have gone back to their usual line that Pakistan’s internal matters are its own problem, indicating that they are still not prepared to take any responsibility for TTP’s presence inside Afghanistan.
A decisive action should have come as soon as TTP resumed its insurgency against Pakistan. The state is, in fact, guilty of first being soft on the Afghan regime, despite promises made in Doha, and then entertaining its ridiculous request of parleying with terrorists bent upon destroying the entire country and all the people in it who don’t agree with their own interpretation of the scripture and their dream of establishing a caliphate in the tribal area.
It was repeatedly cautioned against the policy of appeasement, especially since TTP had already killed more than 80,000 Pakistanis.
And nobody can ever forget its brutal murder of innocent children at the Army Public School, Peshawar, the darkest day in this country’s history.
Yet both the government of the time and the military tried to repatriate TTP fighters into the tribal area, sending plane- and bus-loads of clerics to talk peace with them even as they continued their attacks across the border.
Regrettably, it has taken hundreds more unnecessary deaths for the state to realise what must be done. Yet the future is going to be infinitely more complicated than the past since it is going to require a very tough position with the Afghan Taliban.
Just last month Islamabad warned Kabul of “decisive action” if it didn’t sort TTP out once and for all. And since it has not done it, instead continuing to ridicule Pakistan for its inability to handle the mess, simply rattling the sabre again is only going to make Pakistan look weak. But that “decisive action” also risks pushing the Taliban into open support for TTP and therefore into active conflict with Pakistan.
That is why, should push come to shove, the military must be ready to seal and patrol the entire, impossible border. Surely, the army would have war-gamed this scenario when the insurgency began gathering steam again after the Taliban’s return to Kabul.
Islamabad could not have tried harder to get the Afghans to settle the TTP issue inside their borders. And it’s a shame that by continuing to shelter the militia, which meant hurting Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban chose to bite that hand that’s been feeding them all this time.
They may have won the long war, though not entirely on their own, but they should have realised by now that running an entire country is a whole different ball game. And by alienating Pakistan, they are losing their only surviving link to the outside world.
There’s still time. Instead of brushing aside Pakistan’s concerns, the Taliban must initiate on-ground actions that will round up and eliminate all TTP cadres. Anything less, from Pakistan’s point of view, should signify that the point of no return has been crossed.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023