Pakistan is committing a grave mistake. It is underestimating the threat that terrorism is posing it at the moment. Terrorism is the baby that it gave birth to and nurtured, in the mistaken belief that it will hurt only the targets that it had listed before the terror groups. This never happens that way, and what is happening in Pakistan is evidence of its repeated follies and blunders.
“It’s an old story that you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually, those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” These were the words of warning by the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, delivered at a joint press conference with her Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar on October 2011. These were the times when America had learned that all its aid to Pakistan to fight terrorism, in its infamous war on terror launched in the post-9/11 era, was working in reverse.
History passed through travelled thousands of unfortunate incidents of terrorism since Hillary Clinton made these remarks more than 11 years ago. She had made it clear to her hosts that they cannot live in the self-belief that snakes move in one direction only, there is an inherent tendency in these reptiles to move in all directions, including the one from where they originate. This applied aptly to the terrorists, who, to an extent follow directions, but in the course of time, they develop their own agenda and bite the hand that feeds them. This is what precisely happened in Pakistan.
Pakistan has suffered several terror attacks, in which hundreds of innocent civilians have lost lives. The most shocking was the massacre of the children of the Army Public School, Peshawar in December 2014. More than 130 children and teachers died in the terror attack mounted by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan terrorists. A lot of hue and cry was made by the political and military establishment, vows were made that the terrorists would be finished once and for all. But that didn’t happen.
Eight years after the Peshawar school massacre, and in between many more acts of terror in Pakistan, the country is unable to finish off the terrorists and their networks, operating within its own soil. At the time Pakistan’s army chief Gen. Syed Asim Munir, during his visit to Miranshah in North Waziristan on Friday, was declaring that the Pakistani army is “determined to take the battle to terrorist,” the TTP claimed responsibility for the attack in the federal capital Islamabad. Gen. Munir had made the remarks while interacting with troops along Pakistan -Afghanistan border.
There are certain inescapable facts – the export of terrorism happens only when it is manufactured in the country. Pakistan missed this point when it trained terrorists to push them into Jammu and Kashmir, to further its decades-old agenda of grabbing the territory through proxy war. It worked on twin objectives; to infuse a sense of uncertainty in the state / now Union Territory, and to make it a staging ground for terror attacks elsewhere in India. There was a third aspect as well – terrorism prompts counter-terrorism measures and that, in turn, leads to cycle of one incident after another. Pakistan weaved a narrative on the counter-terrorism operations in Jammu and Kashmir and played it as a human rights issue at the international level.
This fitted into its anti-India attitude and approach since 1947. It always thought that Afghanistan, a theatre of its strategic depth, will always help it achieve its objectives. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the subsequent response built by the US, by using Pakistan as staging ground to push Russian troops out of Afghan soil, made Islamabad to believe that it has gained international legitimacy to do whatever it wanted across its western borders. It worked to a large extent for some years, and the rise of the Taliban, which it had created in 1990s, to strengthen its hold in the western neighbour, emboldened it further. Despite it claiming to have joined the war on terror, it helped al-Qaeda and the Taliban to grow and gain strength.
US President Donald Trump, in his first tweet on the opening day of 2018- January 1, summed up the deceit that Pakistan had played with the United States. He tweeted: “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No More.”
Now Pakistan is accusing the same Taliban-ruled Afghanistan of engineering and executing acts of terror on its soil. The two countries have exchanged heated words in the recent past after there were fatal cross-border clashes in which civilians and soldiers were killed on both sides. This is a stalemate. Pakistan believes that TTP is being patronized and protected by Afghan Taliban.
The fair conclusion is that the snakes that it nurtured have come to bite it, and the lesson that it is refusing to learn is that snakes are no friends. It should stop manufacturing terror networks, as Afghanistan has shown that come back to bite the hands that feed them.
Views expressed are personal
| Posted by Sameer Khan | 
