Pak-Afghan fresh
war of words
The five-day
siege of Ghazni by Taliban attackers was one of the bloodiest battles of the
long running Afghan conflict. After declaring the siege broken, government
forces have been counting the cost. The toll on the government side is at least
150 soldiers and 95 civilians killed, with an unknown number wounded. The
attack underlined the weakness in Kabul’s armour in trying to quell an
increasingly effective and bold Taliban guerrilla war. President Ashraf Ghani
has visited the city after the fighting ended, although the continuing risk of
attacks by Taliban fighters in the vicinity of, or even hiding in the city, was
underlined by two rockets fired while the president was visiting, fortunately
without any casualties. Ghani congratulated his forces on their victory but his
calls for peace talks, reiterated recently while suggesting another ceasefire
during the upcoming Eid holidays like the previous Eid ceasefire, now appear less
likely to happen any time soon. The siege of Ghazni and the toll of human life
and property extracted by the attackers was bad enough. But what has made
matters worse in its aftermath is the resurrection of Kabul’s charge that the
attack was carried out by the Taliban with the help of foreign elements,
amongst whom Pakistanis were also involved. This has naturally raised the
temperature between Kabul and Islamabad once again and led to mutual
recriminations and a fresh war of words. This exchange was preceded by Awami
National Party leader Afrasyab Khattak’s revelation that the bodies of dead
Pakistanis killed in the Ghazni fighting have been arriving for burial in Pakistan.
Other reports speak of Pakistanis wounded in the Ghazni fighting being treated
in our hospitals. COAS General Qamar Jawed Bajwa, to whom President Ashraf
Ghani appealed for a response to these reports amidst a reminder of the
agreement with General Bajwa on security cooperation, refuted any suggestion of
Pakistani involvement and advised Kabul to look within for the source of the
trouble. An ISPR statement did say, however, that there are scores of
Pakistanis working in Afghanistan who periodically fall prey to terrorist acts
and labelling such victims as terrorists is unfortunate. Moreover, the ISPR
statement continued, different factions of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
hiding in Afghanistan, on being killed or injured, are transported to Pakistan
for burial or medical help.
Pakistan has
been insisting since the military operations in erstwhile FATA that its soil
has been cleansed of the presence of all Taliban, Afghan or Pakistani, and the
Haqqani Network. This neither Kabul nor the world have bought into. Their
counter-narrative makes the distinction between the TTP, which has been
expelled across the border, and the Afghan Taliban Shura and Haqqani Network,
both of which they say still enjoy safe havens in Pakistan. Be that as it may,
a report reveals that an Islamic State (IS) cell was discovered in Dhabeji,
Sindh, one of whose members was the suicide bomber in the Mastung atrocity just
before the elections that killed 149 people and wounded 300 others. What this
shows is that the contagion of terrorism is not confined to the older players
in the field, i.e. the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani Network or the TTP, but has been
added to by the emergence of new players. IS has carved out a niche for itself
in Afghanistan and Pakistan since being forced to retreat in the face of
military defeat in Syria and Iraq. Notably, it is no longer confined to the
poorly policed border badlands, but has entrenched itself in various parts of
Pakistan, as the Dhabeji report reveals. Counterterrorism officials admit in
the context of the Dhabeji cell that IS’s organisational structure is unknown
and its ability to reinvent itself through the emergence of new cells when
older ones are smashed is worrying. Terrorism has so embedded itself in
Pakistan and the broader region that it is sophistry to deny that it poses a
common threat to all states. Instead, therefore, of Kabul and Islamabad (and
GHQ) falling once again into a futile war of words, blame and accusations, the
agreed anti-terrorist framework should be followed to prevent cross-border
terrorism (both ways). Only such cooperation can scotch the hydra-headed common
terrorist threat.
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