Days after making a deal with the banned Islamist extremist group, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), the Pakistani government has announced that it has made another peace deal with another banned Islamist terror group – the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

It is being reported that the Pakistani military has been behind these peace deals, as it wants to use such Islamists for its own purposes.

The first peace deal the government made a few weeks ago was with the TLP which became prominent in the aftermath of anti-government protest in 2017 in support of blapshemy laws. Later, the country’s top courts investigated and questioned the role of the Pakistani military in orchestrating these protests to undermine the then civilian government, which had a troubled relation with the Pakistan army and the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted by the country’s generals in 1999.

The second and the most recent peace deal that the government has made is with the TTP which came into existence in 2007 after failure of successive peace deals with the then military government of General Pervez Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008. Since its inception 14 years ago, the terrorist group has unleashed a campaign of bloodshed and violence, killing thousands of Pakistani civilians, and soldiers. In 2014, the TTP carried out its deadliest attack in a school in Peshawar city killing 150 people, a majority of which were children, resulting in Pakistan Army to finally launch a full-fledge operation against the group. But it soon emerged that the military had allowed most of the militants to escape across the border in Afghanistan, and now with the acscension of the Afghan Taliban in power there, it is being reported pushed the Pakistani Taliban to make a peace deal with the Pakistani government.

At the same time other banned extremist groups are also demanding Pakistani state to unban them. For example, the banned anti-Shia political party known as Sipah e Sahaba (SSP) originally and which goes by the name of Ahl e Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) today, is demanding that the government unban them. The party is responsible for violence against the Shia sect across Pakistan.

Such appeasement of and deal-making with Islamist groups has been a hallmark of the Pakistani state, and in past such peace deals have always failed, resulting in the terrorists coming out stronger on the other side, with the state’s writ weakening further. But Pakistan seems not to learn a lesson. Or is this what the Pakistani state want? To continue to be a terror factory because such groups serve the strategic purposes of the Pakistani military, that runs the country from behind the shadows.

The Pakistani military has been accused for pushing Islamist militant groups and ideology across its borders to disrupt peace in Afghanistan and Kashmir for several years now. And it has also been accused of using such militants at home to counter ethno-nationalist sentiments among the Baloch and the Pashtuns by Islamizing the population at large.

Alarmingly, Pakistan is making such peace deals with terrorists at a time when it is on a review with the international financial watchdog – the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in failing to stop terror-financing and money-laundering, and has remained on its grey-list for the last three years. Also most of such deals are being done behind closed doors with the country’s military’s involvement while the civilian leadership is being kept out of these vital negotiations, raising serious concerns of transparency and accountability.

On the morning of July 14th 2021, a bus transporting workers through the mountainous  terrain of Kohistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was attacked.The workers, mainly Chinese nationals, were travelling from their place of stay to the Dasu Hydropower project when their bus was intercepted by a car laden with explosives. 

In the ensuing suicide blast, nine Chinese nationals were killed along with a few Pakistani workers.

This attack, which is by far the deadliest in terms of Chinese lives lost, is just next door to the disputed region of Gilgit Baltistan (GB), an area through which much of China’s trade into Pakistan moves. 

GB is part of the ‘Kashmir territory’ which became a disputed piece of land following the India-Pakistan War of 1947, which was fought over the control over the region.

No group claimed responsibility for the bus attack but the modus operandi reflects it maybe the work of local Islamist militants. Many such extremist groups have proliferated in Gilgit Baltistan in recent years and the Pakistani state has chosen to ignore the matter and has even encouraged this radical Islamist expansionism. 

WHY THE ISLAMIST EXAPANSIONISM IN GILGIT BALTISTAN? 

The reason behind this rampant Islamization of GB is that the region has predominantly had a Shia majority, a sect of Islam that the Sunni State of Pakistan views suspiciously, since the 1979 Iranian revolution just next door. And to counter this Shia majority and its influence in the region, Pakistan has encouraged Sunni extremist groups to set up shop in the area. 

In 1974, the Pakistani government abolished the ‘State Subject Rule’ in GB which protected the local demography, but after its abolishment, Pakistanis from other parts of the country could settle in GB. This was one of the first political moves by the government in Islamabad as part of its Islamization process because most new settlers belonged to the Sunni sect, thereby reducing Shia influence which has gone from over 80% to just 39%, in the last 74 years. 

This illegal government-sponsored settlement scheme damaged the social fabric and provoked religious feuds that continue to simmer.

Gilgit Baltistan has witnessed several sectarian attacks aimed at the Shias in the past. The first attack can be traced back to the year 1988 when a large group of Sunni militants raided the land and massacred over 700 Shias. The Pakistan Army which was incharge of the country then,under the dictatorship of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, stood by silently as this bloody event unfolded in front of their eyes. 

In August 2012, as part of a ‘targeted genocide’, multiple gunmen dressed in military uniforms, forced 25 Shia passengers out of the buses they were travelling in and shot them point blank in GB.This was the work of Sunni militant organization, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. In April the same year, 20 people were killed in an attack in Chilas, Gilgit Baltistan. 

PERSECUTION OF SHIAS ACROSS PAKISTAN

The Shia population have been staring down the barrel of a gun, not just in GB but across the country. There are examples of numerous attacks against the Shias in various parts of Pakistan.

Just January this year, 11 Shia coal miners were abducted and shot dead in the Balochistan province by Sunni terrorists. Shia Muslims have often been targeted by Sunni terrorist groups over the years, one of the most brutal attacks happened in 2019 where a suicide attack in a busy marketplace in a Hazara housing society in Quetta, killed at least 21 people. In November 2012, a Talibani suicide bomber killed 23 in an attack targeted at a Shia procession in Rawalpindi. In a similar incident in Karachi, Taliban set off two bombs outside a Shia Mosque. And most recently, a bomb attack on a Shia Muharram procession, left 3 dead and scores injured in Bahawalnagar, Punjab. 

Since the turn of the century, there have been nearly 500 incidents of violence against the Shia population, which has led to over 2700 Shia deaths in the country.

A NEW TARGET FOR ISLAMIST MILITANTS: CHINA

But now it seems the same anti Shia militants are expanding their scope by going after international targets. And this can jeopardize the age-old strategic relations between Pakistan and China because the militants seem to have China as their new target. 

China appears to have taken due cognizance of the evolving situation and has expressed its concern through strongly worded statements such as the one given out by Chinese state owned media house, the Global Times which stated that China will not shy away from deploying its own troops in Pakistan, if Islamabad continues to fail in protecting Chinese nationals and interest in the region. 

Following the bus attack, Pakistan had tried to underplay the seriousness by calling it an accident arising from mechanical failure. This was met with stiff resistance by the Chinese who insisted that it was an attack and even sent its own team of investigators to look into the matter.  Thereby exposing the fault lines in the China-Pakistan relationship.  

Pakistan has created dedicated brigades for the protection of Chinese interests, namely the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Beijing has time and again extended its resources and its support to Islamabad in its fight against militancy of all kinds. It has invested money into creating and training a new Pakistani security force called the Special Security Divisions (SSDs). Two such outfits have been created with 15,000 troops each from the Pakistani Army. 

There has been a growing trend of attacks against Chinese nationals in Pakistan and there are multiple culprits. In April this year, there was a deadly blast at a hotel in Quetta where the Chinese ambassador was staying. Again in July this year, two Chinese nationals were shot at while travelling in a car in Karachi. Like these two incidents, many of the attacks aimed at the Chinese happen in the south of Pakistan where there is an ongoing insurgency by the Baloch population. But the cause of concern for the Chinese is that there is an increasing trend of attacks in the north as well, especially in GB, like the deadly bus bombing. 

It has become crucial for China and consequently for Pakistan, to have a tight control over GB. 

IS PAKISTAN PLAYING A DOUBLE GAME WITH CHINA?

In a move to impress its investment partner China, Islamabad has now decided to grant provincial status to GB, elevating it from an autonomous status and making it the fifth province of Pakistan. This move by Islamabad, seems to have Beijing’s backing as China stands to profit from this move. Now that GB is a province of Pakistan, China can bypass any issue of investment in a disputed region and also makes it easier for them to purchase land for its projects.

But the Sunni Islamist population that Pakistan has pumped in the region, shall become a spoiler for any Chinese advancements as there ought to be a spillover of Pakistan’s ulterior motives. 

But is Pakistan genuinely unable to contain militancy, which has been a result of its own doing? Or is it playing the same double game with China as it did with other international partners where it shakes hands with militants on one side and with international partners on the other. This double game that Islamabad is playing, will not only put the Chinese investment in Pakistan at risk, but such manipulations will also affect the local Shia population who already have felt the brunt of Pakistan’s policies. 

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Thursday retained Pakistan in its grey list and urged the country to do more to investigate and prosecute senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups involved in terror financing.

FATF president Marcus Pleyer said after a three-day plenary meeting of the multilateral watchdog that Jordan, Mali and Turkey had been added to the list of countries under increased monitoring or grey list because of serious issues in their regimes to counter money laundering and terror financing.

“Pakistan remains under increased monitoring,” Pleyer told an online news briefing. “Pakistan has taken a number of important steps but needs to further demonstrate that investigations and prosecutions are being pursued against the senior leadership of UN-designated terror groups,” he said.

Pakistan was added to the grey list in mid-2018 and given a 27-point action plan by FATF to control money laundering and terror financing. In June this year, FATF asked Pakistan to implement another seven-point action plan to address serious deficiencies related to money laundering.

In Thursday’s briefing, the FATF President insisted Pakistan must deliver on the sole remaining item in the 2018 action plan by demonstrating that its investigations and prosecutions are targeting senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated groups.

FATF said in a statement that Pakistan had made significant progress in addressing its “strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies”.

The statement added: “Pakistan should continue to work to address its other strategically important AML/CFT deficiencies, namely by: (1) providing evidence that it actively seeks to enhance the impact of sanctions beyond its jurisdiction by nominating additional individuals and entities for designation at the UN; and (2) demonstrating an increase in ML investigations and prosecutions and that proceeds of crime continue to be restrained and confiscated in line with Pakistan’s risk profile, including working with foreign counterparts to trace, freeze, and confiscate assets.”

The FATF is expected to review Pakistan’s performance on its recommendations during the next plenary and working group meetings between February 27 and March 4, 2022.

In a recent television interview, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan revealed that his government was in the process of negotiating with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a banned terrorist group credited with hundreds of terror attacks in Pakistan, killing thousands of Pakistani soldiers and civilians. According to government’s own estimates, more than 80,000 people have been killed in the last two decades due to terrorism, mainly carried out by the TTP. 

“We are in talks with some of the groups on a reconciliation process,” he said in the interview, given to a Turkish news channel. “There are different groups which form the TTP and some of them want to talk to our government for peace,” the PM further added.

The PM said he is expecting a deal to come out of the talks but again nothing is certain. He also pointed out that he sees dialogue as the only solution and that the government will “forgive” the militants if an agreement is reached.

Pakistan made such peace deals with militants in the past too but they all led to the violent groups being strengthened and challenging the writ of the government even more.

Major peace agreements in the past include the Shakai Agreement in 2004, Sararogha Agreement in 2005, Miranshah Agreement in 2006 and the Swat Peace Agreement in 2009. 

This latest revelation by PM Khan has left many baffled and enraged within and outside Pakistan, especially those among the Pashtun ethnic community, who have been directly affected by the bloodshed unleashed by the Pakistani Taliban since 9/11 when such terrorists were allowed to settle in the Pakistani tribal belt and adjacent areas by General Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator ruling Pakistan until the year 2008. 

Pakistan appears to have a terrible track record of offering peace deals to various terrorist groups. Even now, when the world seems to be questioning the Afghan Taliban and their occupation of Afghanistan, Islamabad has taken it upon itself to campaign for the hardline Islamist group and has been asking the world to accept their occupation as a legitimate takeover. 

Although the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban have different objectives, much of their ideology overlaps and they usually coexist in the same geographical space, and often provide help to each other. There are media reports that the Afghan Taliban are also involved in the negotiations between the TTP and the Pakistani government, but nothing has been officially confirmed. 

Pakistan is also known to host Kashmiri and anti-India militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which continue to operate freely in Pakistan, by running religious schools and mosques across the country.

The state, mainly the Pakistani military, has also been promoting Sunni extremist and terror groups like Sipah e Sahaba (now known as Ahl e Sunnat Wal Jamat – ASWJ) to counter ethno-nationalism in Balochistan, and Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) to divide the vote of the mainstream political parties. 

And while Khan’s government is keen to appease the Pakistani Taliban, the group have denied having such talks and called on its fighters to continue their attacks. 

“Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has never announced a ceasefire. The TTP fighters should continue their attacks wherever they are,” TTP spokesperson Muhammad Khurasani said in a statement, released following Khan’s revelations. The group’s attacks have also seen an upsurge in the recent year, with reports emerging that they have once again started to regroup in the Pakistani tribal belt.

Pakistan’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has categorically announced that the appointment of Director General (DG) for the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) is the prerogative of the Prime Minister, thereby effectively rejecting the announcement issued by Pakistani military a few days ago, in which the military had announced a new chief for the spy agency.

“The appointment of the new DG ISI will be done as per the rules and regulations… The authority [to appoint a new DG ISI] rests with the Prime Minister of Pakistan,” the minister told a press briefing earlier today. 

On 6th October, Pakistan’s military media wing the Inter-Services Public relations (ISPR) had announced a major reshuffle with several transfers and new postings including the appointment of Lt. Gen. Nadeem Anjum as the new DG ISI. He was to replace Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, who was made Peshawar Corps Commander. However, the Prime Minister office, which normally endorses such appointments with an official notification remained silent. 

According to media reports, behind closed doors, Prime Minister Imran Khan told the military chief General Qamar Bajwa that he was not on board with the decision to change the DG ISI which has led to a standoff between the civilian and military leadership. The tussle between the two sides publicly surfaced the first time during the recent National Security Committee meeting, which was attended by Gen. Hameed, as the DG ISI, despite being already transferred out by the military announcement.

This appears to be the first public dispute between Bajwa and Khan, who was brought into power in 2018 with the backing of the military. 

According to insiders, Khan credits Hameed with his victory in office and wants him to continue in the position so that he can secure another term for Khan when general elections take place in 2023. There are also speculations that Khan wants to elevate him to become the army chief next year, when Bajwa finishes his extended tenure in office. However, some argue that with the new law passed by the Pakistani parliament to allow indefinite extensions in the tenure of the army chiefs, it is possible that Bajwa may want to remain in office, and for that reason, he wants a team around him that he can trust, especially within the ISI, and therefore has replaced Hameed with Anjum, so as to strengthen his own position as army chief.

These civil-military tensions come at a time when Pakistan is facing multiple challenges at home and abroad. Inflation has sky-rocketed in the country, touching almost 11%. And then there is the issue of Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan, which Pakistan is also being blamed for, given it provided refuge for the terror group for the last two decades. 

In the past, whenever such civil-military tensions have surfaced, the army, which has ruled Pakistan directly for half of its existence, has been able to send the civilian government home. And such a track record should worry Khan, who is in office with the help of the military, and lacks genuine political support in the country. 

The English Cricket Board announced last week that it has cancelled the tour of its men and women teams to Pakistan, citing security concerns. The English follow the footsteps of the New Zealand team which abandoned its series in Pakistan on the same day it was supposed to play, again citing security concerns. 

These are worrying signs for Pakistan as it once again finds itself in murky waters.

For close to a decade, Pakistan became a ‘no-go zone’ for international cricket following the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus at Lahore in 2009. It is once again stepping into another episode of international isolation because of the worsening security situation in the country.

In the last few years itself, there has been a rise in terrorist related incidents. From 2019 to 2020, there has been a spike of 11% in the number of terror attacks. This trend has carried on from 2020 to 2021 with a 27% increase, as per data compiled by independent observers. 

Even China has come under the cross-hairs of these terrorist groups with attacks against Chinese nationals and interest also on the rise. The latest such attack was in Khyber Pakthunkhwa where a bus carrying Chinese engineers was bombed, killing nine Chinese citizens. This is considered to be one of the deadliest attacks targeting the Chinese in Pakistan.

Who is responsible?

Pakistan has been a victim of terror for long, with thousands of civilian lives lost. The government continues to point to a “foreign hand” behind these attacks, but security experts disagree, citing Pakistan’s hobnobbing with certain terror groups while cracking down on others as a reason for the country’s terror woes.

Pakistan continues to not have a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards terrorism. It has repeatedly chosen to look away with respect to various terror outfits using Pakistani soil as a launchpad for its attacks in the region, as long as their targets are beyond Pakistani soil. Islamabad continues to extend its overt support to many of these groups, like the ones operating against India in Kashmir and also the Afghan Taliban, who lived in Pakistan for the last many years before moving back to Afghanistan after the occupation of the country by the terror group. 

Facing international scrutiny, Pakistan has claimed to take action against some of these terror groups but it is cosmetic and performative, like in the case of Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), who continues to live at his residence despite being convicted, and continues to command the LeT.

Such terror groups help Pakistan in its strategic interventions of subverting peace in Kashmir and countering Afghan nationalism that Islamabad views as a threat to its unity. 

It has recently been lobbying internationally asking the Western nations to recognize the Afghan Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan as a legitimate takeover, despite widespread reports of human rights abuses by the terror group, which has started to target women, minorities and other vulnerable groups in the country.

The good and the bad terrorists

While Pakistan’s support has helped such terror groups to attain power, these very groups also help anti-Pakistan militants by providing them refuge, logistics and other material and non material support, given they have the same Islamist leanings. And hence, as Pakistan continues to ignore those terrorists it considers good as they serve its interests, it ends up being a victim of those terrorists that it deems bad, because most of such groups share geographical, and ideological space with each other.

Now with the recent abandonment of international cricket tours, it appears Pakistan is once again going down the path of isolation due to its own strategic follies. Will this prompt Pakistan to take some real, definitive measures against all terror groups without any distinctions? Or will the world continue to see Islamabad play the blame-game where it takes no responsibility? 

Women & children of ‘Laal Masjid’ in Islamabad are openly supporting the Afghan Taliban. Why does this infamous mosque get away with such glorification of terrorists? Is the state complicit when it comes to such open support for terrorism? What is the history of the

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