In Pakistan, terrorism and militancy is mutating itself into something much more dreadful.
A life threatening situation recently developed in a busy market in Lahore, where an angry mob surrounded and threatened to kill a young girl, who according to people in the mob was wearing a dress allegedly inscribed with Quranic verses.
A social media campaign by some religious zealots against the decision of the Chief Justice of Pakistan to grant bail to a member of a heterodox sect forced the Chief Justice of Pakistan to explain his position on matters relating to religious beliefs. This is a Chief Justice who has a fairly good public image as an impartial judge in a deeply fractured society.
Look how the menace of extremism, militancy and terrorism can mutate itself into a much more dreadful threat—even the state itself caves in. The first three months of 2024 have been relatively peaceful—two bomb blasts rocked Balochistan a day before parliamentary elections. Apart from that, no major attack anywhere in Pakistan. But extremism has mutated itself into something much more effective and much more dreadful.
Mainstream journalists and some politicians joining the bandwagon of social media campaigners against the Chief Justice of Pakistan for granting bail to a member of a heterodox sect, purely under Pakistani law—a law and Constitution which make themselves clear that nothing could be incorporated in their main body or network of laws which violates the injunctions of Quran and Sunnah. So, the Chief Justice of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan—who is generally considered impartial, brave, upright and competent otherwise—has been forced to explain himself by delving into the details of religious beliefs.
Khurram Iqbal, an expert on terrorism related issues and a professor in the National Defense University (NDU) told this scribe that the rest of the nine months of this year are unlikely to be as peaceful as the first three months of the year, “The first quarter of 2024 is relatively peaceful. No suicide bombings. And elections passed relatively peacefully. I don’t think this trend will persist for the rest of 2024” he said.
Given the level of fear that permeates our state machinery, I think we should rename Pakistan as the “Fearful Republic of Pakistan.” Remember that Islamabad is a stage, and you are being watched meticulously and continuously by an audience which can go in the direction you set for them. You show signs of fear, and this will not go unnoticed by this extremely perceptible audience called the masses. The extremists will claim miles of ground if one of their social media campaigns could be so successful. The general public—remember that this is a public which has never shown signs of extremisms before recent times—will take cues from those on the stage to concede even more ground to the extremists, militants and terrorists—or those forces who might be on the losing side in the military battlefield, but could claim a victory on the social media and ideological front. God help us.
The massive impact that the medium of television has on the masses and extremists in our society who seem to be engaged in a continuous battle of nerves—and a kind of turf battle - with the state of Pakistan could only be ignored by our policymakers and people of authority at their own peril. On television screens, everything gets mixed up—suicide bombings, political battles for Islamabad, the Chief Justice explaining himself and a colorful fashion show where fashionably dressed up young women engage in a catwalk right besides a Maulvi sahab explaining problems of Sharia.
It is possible that this audience has perceived that the Pakistani parliamentary elections had passed without any major terror attack. There has been no suicide attack inside Pakistan during the last two months—to the best of my knowledge. The two bomb attacks that took place in Balochistan a day before the elections were reported not to be suicide attacks. Khurram Iqbal, an expert on terrorism related issues and a professor in the National Defense University (NDU) told this scribe that the rest of the nine months of this year are unlikely to be as peaceful as the first three months of the year, “The first quarter of 2024 is relatively peaceful. No suicide bombings. And elections passed relatively peacefully. I don’t think this trend will persist for the rest of 2024” he said.
He explains that the people are not optimistic about the situation in Afghanistan, especially relations between Afghan Taliban government and Islamabad, “It has deteriorated to an extent that the Afghan Taliban are likely to keep TTP as a bargaining chip in their dealing with Islamabad,” he said. What will it mean for terrorism in Pakistan is not very difficult to adjudicate.
In the North West, the rivalry between Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and ISIS-Khorasan poses a serious dilemma for Pakistani security planners.
The lull in the first three months of 2024 is being attributed to two factors: Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s visit to Kabul and his meeting with top Taliban leadership is one of them. Target killings of TTP leaders in Afghanistan have increased dramatically, and some of the top leaders of TTP have been killed in Afghanistan. So, it is possible that the TTP has been operationally crippled. The Afghan Taliban don’t take responsibility for target killings, so it is easy to assume who could be responsible. Alternatively, experts also point to intra-TTP rivalries for the target killings.
Pakistan’s security scene is becoming more and more complex with each passing day. In the North West, the rivalry between Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and ISIS-Khorasan poses a serious dilemma for Pakistani security planners. This dilemma becomes a complex security problem in the light of assessments of some western experts that the TTP and Afghan Taliban played a major role in weakening ISIS-Khorasan in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Since the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban and their allied group, TTP have conducted counterinsurgency campaigns against ISIS-K in Afghanistan and the TTP has succeeded in squeezing space from ISIS-K in Pak-Afghan border areas.
This situation poses a serious security dilemma for Pakistani security planners: if they succeed, as they seem to be, in crushing TTP, this will automatically strengthen ISIS-Khorasan in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similarly, the Afghan Taliban government is also facing a dilemma vis-à-vis its policy towards TTP and ISIS-K. Under pressure from Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban have squeezed TTP and have arrested many of its commanders. Reportedly, the TTP have conveyed to their elderly allies, Afghan Taliban that they would be forced to join hands with ISIS-K in case they are pushed to the wall inside Afghanistan.
The first signs that ISIS-K is getting stronger in Pakistan emerged when on February 7, a day before the parliamentary elections, ISIS-K carried out two terror attacks in Balochistan—a region where ISIS-K’s presence is heaviest. Pakistani commentators started to analyze the situation as leading to the emergence of ISIS-K as a big terror threat on Pakistani territory. According to Pakistani experts, before these attacks the operational momentum in Pakistan was falling. ISIS-K carried out fewer terror attacks in Pakistan in 2023 than the total number of attacks in 2022. Last time such a decline was reported was in 2016, when the US military was present in Afghanistan and the Afghan National Army, under the supervision of the US military, was putting a lot of pressure on ISIS-K, which was then based in Eastern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border. Heavy bombing by the US Air force and Afghan National Army dislocated ISIS-K from their base in Eastern Afghanistan. This was the time when ISIS-K fighters started tracking their way into Pakistani territory.
ISIS-K was founded by TTP, al Qaeda, and Taliban fighters as an offshoot of their parent organizations in 2014. The group primarily operates in Afghanistan, where it is engaged in a violent insurgency against the Taliban, and in Pakistan’s KPK, Balochistan, and, to a lesser extent, Punjab provinces. In Pakistan, a further split took place when Pakistani members of ISIS-K started to operate separately with the name of Islamic State-Pakistan Province (ISPP). This group engages in anti-Shia and anti-non-Muslim attacks in and around Quetta and Peshawar. Daesh has had an organizational presence in Pakistan since 2016 but after Taliban regime’s heavy crackdown against Daesh in Afghanistan, many of its members and fighters have started tracking their way into Pak-Afghan border areas and Balochistan.
The religiously inspired Taliban and ISIS-Khorasan are not Pakistan’s only problem when it comes to terrorism and militancy. Pakistani state and society are also facing threats from secular minded Baloch separatists, who have shunned their earlier inhibition against suicide bombing as a weapon of choice against Pakistani security forces.
During the last decade, the military operation in North Waziristan by the Pakistan military succeeded in eradicating TTP terror networks in tribal areas. The operation had on one hand achieved the stated objectives of the Government of Pakistan but at the same time, it drove these terrorist groups to look at other sources of inspiration and resources to sustain their activities. According to military officials, many of the arrested Daesh and TTP members have claimed that hundreds of TTP fighters have defected and joined ISIS. In late September 2014, a pamphlet from the self-proclaimed Caliphate was distributed amongst Afghan refugees in Pakistan demanding them to pledge allegiance to ISIS.
The religiously inspired Taliban and ISIS-Khorasan are not Pakistan’s only problem when it comes to terrorism and militancy. Pakistani state and society are also facing threats from secular minded Baloch separatists, who have shunned their earlier inhibition against suicide bombing as a weapon of choice against Pakistani security forces. On 30 January 2024, two suicide bombers belonging to Baloch separatist groups attacked Mach and Kolpur military complexes in Balochistan. The suicide bombings were a failure as Pakistani security forces successfully engaged and eliminated the bombers before they could explode themselves. But this attack alerted Pakistani military planners to the reality that from here on, the Taliban were not the only terror group in the country which would be using suicide bombing as a military tool against Pakistani security forces. “On a couple of occasions in the past, Baloch separatists have used suicide bombers against civilian targets. But the January 30 suicide attacks on military complexes alerted us to the fact that from now on another group other than Taliban would be using suicide bombings as a tool against the military,” said an official.
During the past three months starting from December 2023, the Taliban have not targeted military personnel or installations with suicide bombings. The Taliban seem to have lost momentum after a military campaign against them by Pakistani security forces in the north west of the country. “We have carried out hundreds of small-scale military raids on TTP hideouts in Pak-Afghan border areas in which on many occasions, we have killed terrorists including suicide bombers. On 2 January 2024, security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in North Waziristan District, on the reported presence of terrorists. During the conduct of operation, intense fire exchange took place between troops and the terrorists, as a result of which 4 terrorists were sent to hell, including a suicide bomber,” reads a press release issued by the media wing of Pakistani military.
Pakistan witnessed the highest number of suicide attacks in 2023 since 2014, with nearly half of them targeting the security forces. An Islamabad based research organization, Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) stated in its annual report that the country experienced a disturbing surge in such attacks, reaching the highest level since 2014. “As many as 48% of deaths and 58% of injuries were inflicted upon security forces personnel. “A staggering 29 suicide attacks were reported, resulting in the tragic loss of 329 lives and leaving 582 individuals injured,” reads the report. “This marks the highest death toll since 2013, when 683 people lost their lives in 47 suicide bombings,” the report stated.
The year 2022 witnessed a sudden and significant surge, recording 15 attacks, resulting in 101 deaths and 290 injuries and this worrisome trend persisted into 2023. Expert maintain that surge in suicide bombings in 2023 and 2022 were the direct result of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan after the American withdrawal. The Pakistani Taliban started to get emboldened by the Taliban takeover and started tracking their way back into Pakistani territory.
Let there be no doubt that terrorism and militancy still exist as a threat. We have only now started to confront and tackle its latest avatars in most of our urban centers.
Meanwhile, the Taliban continued to use suicide bombers as a military tool in the fight against Pakistani security forces, but on a much smaller scale. Most of the time, they failed to reach the military targets and out of frustration, targeted police installations instead. “On 15 December 2023, five terrorists including a suicide bomber attempted to attack the Police Lines in Tank City, however, brave policemen offered stiff resistance. Security forces in the vicinity were immediately mobilized to support the police force and in the ensuing operation, all 5 terrorists were sent to hell,” reads a press release from the government. The sudden decline in Taliban’s use of suicide bombing as a favored military tool could be attributed to the absence of an elaborate infrastructure to support and sustain a prolonged suicide bombing campaign in Pak-Afghan border areas and urban centers of Pakistan.
The Taliban’s two training centers, located in South and North Waziristan, where they used to train suicide bombers, were destroyed by Pakistani military in 2017 military operations. Military officials opined that there is a possibility that whatever explosive material they have managed to procure in the intervening period was used in suicide bombings campaigns in 2023. And now, the Taliban are completely at a loss to understand what to do next. Daesh and Baloch separatists are more active in using suicide bombing as tool against Pakistani security forces then the Taliban now.
This narration was meant to bring home the point that we are not yet done with extremism in its crudest forms. Let there be no doubt that terrorism and militancy still exist as a threat. We have only now started to confront and tackle its latest avatars in most of our urban centers. Its latest avatar is frightening us in the most secure parts of our power corridors. Extremism has a clearly defined ideology, and a strategy. Although there is in fact nothing wrong with the religious reformist movements that spawned in the British colonial period in India, these reformists movements themselves mutated over the years into something much more dreadful. The teaching of these reformist movements lie at the heart of our extremism problem.
These 18th and 19th century reformist movements in British India were centered on the radical principle that believers should consult religious scriptures themselves without the intercession of any worldly religious authority. The Holy Quran was translated first into Persian—the Mughal Court’s official language—and then into Urdu—the language spoken by the majority of Muslims, or at least they were familiar with the language, in Northern Indian. The principle of directly consulting the scriptures was the central axiom of the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband and Al-Hadith movement in 19th century British India.
Social space is dominated by religious groups which are mostly inspired by the teachings of reformists thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries, and they have been committed to weaning society away from the tolerant religious praxis that was developed over the centuries in pre-British India.
Allama Iqbal was also influenced by this principle and could be found advocating this principle in his poetry. On the other hand, the religious praxis or way of practicing religion in the Indian subcontinent—where Muslims were a minority and but ruled over Northern India for centuries—developed as a result of a triangular interaction between religious scholars and Sufis, the Mughal State and society in general, which included not only Muslims, but Hindus and members of other faiths, which were in the majority. This praxis was mellowed and soft, because of the contributions made in its formation by the pragmatic state machinery of the Mughal State, but an equally pragmatic Muslim population which had to share social and territorial space with the majority Hindu population.
Although the concept of majority and minority were invented after the first census conducted by the colonial state, there is a massive debate among scholars as to what the shape of these religious communities in the Mughal period was. Examples of peaceful coexistence, syncretic community practices based on the synthesis of both religions’ principles, and antagonisms between Hindu and Muslims as rivals simultaneously existed in different parts of Northern India. The situation and shape of Muslim communities in Northern India does not fit into present ideological positions that different political and ideological groups advocate for.
Our primary problem could be described as the state's inability to dominate ideological debate where religious beliefs and practices of society are the main topic of discussion. Secular segments in civil society are too weak or too ineffective. Social space is dominated by religious groups which are mostly inspired by the teachings of reformists thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries, and they have been committed to weaning society away from the tolerant religious praxis that was developed over the centuries in pre-British India. Not only was this praxis mellowed, it could also have served the Pakistani state well as a social force against the menace of extremism. Alas, this praxis only exists in the history books now.