Friday, March 29, 2024
 
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Pak Army’s fraudulent war on terror



By Manzoor Ahmed



A little less than three months before the dastardly Lahore bomb attack which killed over 72 people on Easter (March 26), the most powerful man in Pakistan told his country that 2016 would see the end of terrorism. That was his promise; he was riding on the big lie he and his army had projected to the people of Pakistan and the world in general that he had the won the war against terrorists.

The Pak Army had launched a major military offensive in June 2014 against terrorist groups holed up in the tribal areas after a series of attacks inside Pakistan, especially against the security forces. The terrorists, many of whom trained by the military, had turned against their masters and attacked the army where it hurt the most. The terrorists attacked the security establishment with impunity and that too not only in the far flung tribal areas but in the heart of Pakistan, the stronghold of the army, in Punjab. The challenge to the authority of the all-powerful Pakistan Army was clear and direct and there was no way the new Army chief could have turned his face from this ignominy from his own country men and agents.

So there was much song and dance when the military operations began with daily twitter updates from the army and select briefings for friendly journalists. The journalists, friendly or otherwise, were however barred from reporting from the conflict zone and were forced to rely on what the ISPR dished out in press releases or twitters. The number of terrorists killed zoomed by day and victory was declared many times over. The final victory was first declared in December 2014, six months into the operation. That was when the terrorists struck at an army-run public school in Peshawar killing over 170 students and exploding the mighty lie which General Raheel Sharif and his army had been propagating.

So the General and his media machine turned the script around and started blaming the famous `foreign hand` (read India) for the attack. Stories appeared in friendly newspapers and channels about the Indian hand and how India was using its leverage in Afghanistan to carry out attacks against Pakistan. It was of course a lie difficult to sustain as the terrorists based in Pakistan claimed responsibility for the horrendous killing of school children.Every one in Pakistan knew that the attack was carried out by groups which once, not long ago, the army propped up to create trouble in Afghanistan.
The General then decided to change tack once more and declared another war on terrorists. By the end of December 2015, ISPR said the army had killed over 3400 terrorists and destroyed some 800 hideouts of terrorists. This was, at least statistically, phenomenal. It was not surprising that the General boasted in the new year that terrorism in Pakistan will end before 2016 is over. He declared thus: “With the support of the nation, we will root out terrorism, crime and corruption and will make peace and justice prevalent in the country.”
What the big claims and the statistics hid were some really dirty secrets. The first and foremost was the fact that terrorists were far from being vanquished, even in the tribal areas. Some groups claiming to be Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were hit badly no doubt. But many were left untouched. Some, who fell in the most favoured status in the books of Pakistan, like the Haqqani Network, were forewarned and given a safe passage to safer sanctuaries away from the military onslaught.
Isnt it strange that ISPR could dish out the number of terrorists killed but have not been able to say categorically whether the military operation has vanquished TTP and the Haqqani Network? There has been a complete silence on the fate of the Haqqanis. This silence is disquieting. So does it mean that all those who were claimed to have been killed belonged to TTP? It is difficult to believe. The TTP over the years had been degrading in numbers and reach, largely owing to the US-run Drone attack programmes. Their numbers were not in any case quite higher. So if all of 3400 killed were TTP guys, then there is hardly anything left of them. But they are very much there as the Lahore suicide attack showed. They have threatened to launch similar attacks in Punjab in the near future.
It is fair therefore to assume that many of those who were killed in the military operations could be innocent civilians—men, women and children fleeing the bombing by the military and the counter attacks by the terrorists. There is no way to find the truth though. If one were to look at the houses and streets in once-flourishing townships of Mir Ali and Miramshah, released by the ISPR, it would be easy to deduce that it is the ordinary people of the region who suffered the most in the army blitzkrieg.
There is much to this line of thinking. Hear what the chief himself said the other day. The media, quoting ISPR statement or briefing, reported thus --``Gen Sharif also cautioned that despite the successes in Operation Zarb-i-Azb, which has decreased the level of terrorist violence in the country, the fight is complex and far from having been won``.
This is what a well regarded Pakistani columnist, Ayaz Amir, wrote in The Friday Times in February this year. He wrote: Terrorist forces have been hit, badly hit, but they aren’t defeated. And their ability to mount maverick attacks such as the most recent in Charsadda is not to be ignored…And the religious worldview, or rather the extremist worldview which is the ideological basis for the assault on the Pakistani state, is still there. Pakistan hasn’t become a more secular or ‘liberal’ place as a result of our war against terrorism.``
Now let us take a quick look at what has been happening after the Lahore suicide attack in March this year. The General of course went on an overdrive and declared that he would finish them all. He announced that military operations would be launched in Punjab soon. Now this was something neither the army nor the civilians wanted. They wanted anti-terrorist operations to continue in the tribal areas and Balochistan, even Sindh (it has been going on in Karachi) but not in Punjab. So within hours of the boastful declaration from the Most Powerful Person in Pakistan (MoPiP), they all went into a huddle. The civilians were not sure what did the General mean by ``operation``? Something like what was happening in the tribal areas---aerial bombing and artillery guns? That cannot happen in Punjab. This is our home, we cannot bomb it, terrorists or no terrorists.
So finally a compromise was worked out, the MoPiP had to be humoured. The army did launch the operations but deployed not artillery, ground troops or combat jets, as it does often in Balochistan and the tribal areas, but local police and levies. Who are they targeting? Read this news from well respected Dawn: ``The operation is being carried out by civil and military law enforcement agencies, including Rangers, police and Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) against ‘hardened criminal and ferraris’, it has been learnt.``
We thought southern Punjab was the stronghold of LeT and JeM. They are the most visible and powerful groups in the region. So far there is nothing to suggest that the military has turned its focus on them or ever will.



(The writer is a freelance journalist based in Kashmir)



(Disclaimer: The views, observations and opinions expressed in above write up of Scoop News are strictly author's own. Scoop News does not take any onus or liability for the veracity, accuracy, validity, completeness, suitability of any of information in the above given write up. The information, facts or figures appearing in the write up in no way manifest the position, standpoint or stance of Scoop News and the Scoop News does not assume any encumbrance or answerability of the same.)



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