Pakistan Needs to Make Clean Break With Jihadists

If recent events don’t force Pakistan’s establishment to sever its weirdly codependent ties with Islamic militancy, nothing will.

It’s been a horrendous week for the country, even by its own dismal standards. On October 10, jihadists staged a breathtakingly bold attack on the national army headquarters, taking dozens of hostages. The hostages were rescued in a commando operation, but not before a number of them were killed. And on October 15, extremists carried things further by targeting the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency and two police training sites, murdering many more. To add to the terror, massive bomb blasts in recent days have claimed scores in other Pakistani cities (especially in the frontier region).

The Taliban is engaging in preemptive action, warning the Pakistani security forces to back off before they start a massive operation in the South Waziristan region. Or, in an alternative reading, it is daring the army to come after it in the expectation that winter will bog down the effort.

Following the supposedly successful recent offensive to flush out extremists from the Swat Valley area, the announced South Waziristan campaign seems to mark a final break on the part of Pakistan from the militant network that the country’s fabled spy apparatus, the ISI, has spawned over the years. But in South Asia, things are often not quite what they seem.

Just a couple of days ago, a Pakistani court dismissed charges against Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the vicious attacks in Mumbai last November that killed nearly 200 people. The reason: Pakistani authorities have not taken the elementary step of banning the charity organization that Saeed’s outfit transmutated into some years ago after Pakistan’s government outlawed the initial configuration. And just last week, the Indian Embassy in Kabul was bombed for the second time in two years. Though it is too soon to pinpoint ultimate responsibility for this attack, the assault last year was traced back to Pakistan’s spy agencies.

PBS’s “Frontline” had a superb documentary on Afghanistan this week, which had some Americans openly express exasperation at the support that Pakistani intelligence is giving to Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Taliban and other extremist outfits. (One curious omission in the program was the major reason Pakistan supports the Taliban: to counter India.)

Pakistan’s ambivalence toward the militants is as confounding as it is exasperating. It is apparently based on a threat perception from a neighbor many times its size that assisted in the secession of the eastern half of the country as Bangladesh in 1971. Now, there does exist in India a good amount of hostility toward Pakistan, including a minor revanchist strain on the Hindu right. In addition, India has been quite recalcitrant when it comes to negotiating on Kashmir. But terrorism cannot be used as an instrument of statecraft. And Pakistan doesn’t seem to fully realize that it is harming itself by its actions, since it is a futile exercise to separate extremists into “good” guys who target India and “bad” guys who threaten Pakistan, as The Hindu newspaper of India points out.

“Saturday’s attack on the heart of Pakistan’s military establishment has proved beyond doubt that such distinctions do not exist,” says the paper. “The militant captured alive at GHQ, identified as Aqeel alias Dr. Usman, has links to several anti-India jihadist groups such as the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, and also to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the Sipah-e-Sahaba, the Taliban and Al Qaeda.” e

The Obama Administration has also been pulled into the debate since the aid package that Congress recently passed for Pakistan ($7.5 billion over five years) contains stipulations explicitly asking the Pakistani military to cease aid to all militant groups (including Hafiz Saeed’s) and for the civilian government to exercise control over the army. Naturally, there’s been a huge brouhaha in Pakistan.

But the Pakistani government needs to quit its support of militancy cold turkey. Its coddling of extremism is nurturing a global menace, endangering South Asia and, ironically, jeopardizing the very existence of Pakistan itself. Nothing short of a clean break will do.