The public discourse might indicate otherwise but the issues of war and peace are never off-focus from Pakistani decision-making processes. Pakistani decision-makers always find themselves dealing with the issues of war and peace. Never a decade passed in our history when Pakistani decision-makers were not stuck in one security situation or another which could ultimately and potentially could have led to a full-fledged war. Variedly this war could have been a full-fledged inter-state war like a war between Pakistan and India or a civil war within the country. We only believe what our media tells us—in the present day, the media wants us to believe that our military leaders and our military formations are completely focused on the situation on our western border—Pakistani Taliban-led militancy and terrorism. But the situation we are facing as a state is much more critical and complex as far as the question of war and peace is concerned.
The Pakistani Taliban are backed by a powerful segment of the Afghan Taliban, a ragtag militia group that now controls the vast resources of the state of Afghanistan—resources that include military resources, financial resources that come from revenues, and vast natural resources that lie buried in the territory of Afghanistan. Besides, the Taliban or Afghan states they control bestow on them a kind of internal political legitimacy. The question is how the Afghan Taliban are using this internal political legitimacy and vast resources to feed the Pakistani Taliban. All the foreign militant groups based in Afghanistan, including Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), are being hosted by the Taliban Interior Ministry and their Intelligence services. One key example of how the Afghan Taliban are sharing the vast resources at their disposal with the Pakistani Taliban is the case of how the Pakistan Taliban got hold of a vast cache of American weapons that the withdrawing American troops left behind in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban used these American weapons in their operations against Pakistani security forces. But Pakistan’s security threats are not limited to the Taliban or the situation prevailing on our western borders. The military situation on our Eastern border is far from stable and normal. The disruptive military technologies that have found their way into the inventories of Pakistani and Indian militaries create a situation, where a small spark could lead to a military crisis far worse and far more destabilising than what this region has so far witnessed. India is amassing weapons systems specifically aimed at undermining Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence. Pakistani officialdom never desists from making its desperation visible so that the enemy doesn’t take any chances testing its conventional military capabilities. The patterns of weapons acquisitions on both sides indicate a military situation that is far from normal and stable. The political temperature, however, indicates a mutual feeling of indifference and coldness beneath which is simmering a hostility that can come to the surface with the slightest spark.
Back in the early years of the first decade of this century when the Pakistani military entered Pak-Afghan border areas, following American pressure to flush out tribal militants who were involved in attacks on NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan, there developed a tacit or an indirect understanding (through the offices of American diplomacy) Indians will not militarily provoke Pakistan on its Eastern border. Despite this 2002 twin-peak military crises happened. There was a terror attack on the Indian parliament following which India mobilised its military on the international border. I am a bit surprised by the total focus of Pakistani military leaders, Pakistani media, and Pakistan military’s media wing, ISPR on the situation we are facing on our western borders.
The media reports indicate that TTP is involved in hit-and-run operations in Pak-Afghan border areas, and they don’t seem to be interested in holding territory. They may be now not capable of holding territory
During the past three months, ISPR didn’t even hint at the Indian threat in any of the documents that it issued to Pakistani and international media. ISPR’s complete focus is on Pakistani military troops fighting Pakistani tribal militants in Pak-Afghan border areas. For the last three or more months ISPR almost daily reported on the military's encounter with the tribal militants in Pak-Afghan border areas and its encounters with Baloch separatists in Balochistan. ISPR press releases during this period narrate the stories of small-scale raids on militant hideouts or direct clashes between militants and Pakistani troops. These press releases don’t narrate the stories of large-scale operations. All large-scale operations carried out by the Pakistani military in the Pak-Afghan border areas happened while American military forces were still present in Afghanistan and while Washington was still financing Pakistani military operations against the militants.
The situation on the western borders is again highly unstable—attacks on military installations, civilians, and government targets have become a norm. Clashes between the militants and Pakistani troops are becoming a regular occurrence. Occasionally militants have launched concerted and planned attacks on Pakistani security forces. However, as far as the media reporting reflects the situation on the ground, we can conclude that no part of erstwhile tribal areas is under the control of the Pakistani Taliban. This is primarily due to the heavy presence of Pakistani land forces on the ground. Early this month Pakistan Air Force carried out cross-border strikes on TTP hideouts in Afghanistan. This was since TTP launched cross-border raids on Pakistani posts on the border. The question that boggles the mind is: Does the situation on the ground in Pak-Afghan border areas, not require a large-scale operation against the militants? In 2009, 2014, and 2017 Pakistani military entered Pak-Afghan border areas on a large scale.
There were parts of erstwhile tribal districts that were under the control of Pakistani Taliban then. Those large-scale operations were meant to re-capture Pakistani territory then. Don’t we need such a large-scale operation now? ISPR press releases only narrate the story of small-scale raids and intermittent clashes between militants and Pakistani troops. How long does the present phase of small-scale military operations last? Previously, large-scale military operations lasted only for a few months. Are we looking at a prolonged period of military activity in Pak-Afghan border areas? Is there a fear that Pakistani forces would, at some stage, must tackle the threat from the Afghan Taliban directly? There are reports of a powerful segment of Afghan Taliban providing material support to TTP. The Air Force raid on the TTP hideout on the Afghan side of the border reinforced this fear. Are we looking at a renewal of a civil war-like situation in our border provinces, with the Afghan Taliban playing an active role in this? What kind of time of military activity are we looking at? Pakistan’s economy will be facing a highly perilous situation in case of the return of a civil war-like situation in our border provinces. The media reports indicate that TTP is involved in hit-and-run operations in Pak-Afghan border areas, and they don’t seem to be interested in holding territory. They may be now not capable of holding territory. In that case, Pakistan’s problem is more sinister—TTP then would be able to disrupt civic life in Pakistan. That is more dangerous and worrisome.
Pakistan’s problem is that its development and progress in every field have been stunted by the way we run our affairs like a police state.
Pakistan cannot afford an open-ended period of military activity on our western borders. There must be some time limit that we must impose on these small-scale operations against the militants. We cannot become a normal country unless we restore normal civic life in Pak-Afghan border areas. There are experts, who believe that the problem of TTP could not be delinked from the large problems of foreign militant groups that Afghan Taliban are hosting inside Afghanistan. This includes Al-Qaeda, regional militant groups from China, Central Asian states, and Iran. ISIS somehow finds itself on the wrong side of the Afghan Taliban, but it has emerged as a major security threat for regional neighbors of Afghanistan including Pakistan from its bases in Afghanistan. TTP has in the past hobnobbed with ISIS, but recently the two organisations are not on good terms. What will be the cumulative effect of the presence of all these groups—whether they are friends with each other or are fighting each other will be irrelevant—in Afghanistan and Pakistan's security situation is not very difficult to predict. The major failure of withdrawing Western powers is their inability to establish a viable state structure in Afghanistan that could have provided a centralised administration to Afghanistan—a country with a deep-rooted history of tribal fragmentation.
Pakistan’s security worries, however, don’t end at this point. We have a much larger military threat on our Eastern border to take care of. India has been among the top two importers of weapons from countries as diverse as Russia, the United States, and France. Some of these arms acquisitions are clearly aimed at undermining Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent—the central pillar of Pakistan’s security architecture. India is also in the process of amassing disruptive military technologies like military use of AI and swarm drones into its inventory. The West is especially an accomplice in creating a military situation in South Asia that could prove to be highly destabilising in case of a military crisis. Are we waiting for another mass casualty attack to start seriously thinking about instituting military confidence-building measures between Pakistan and India? I think we should seriously start thinking about what a future military crisis between Pakistan and India will look like. Will Pakistan and India need the amassing of troops—mobilisation and counter-mobilisation of troops on the international border—this time to show their aggression? Or simply swarm drones be their preferred military tools to punish each other while avoiding a direct military conflict? The use of drones and use of Artificial Intelligence in the military targeting of opponents in the GAZA and Ukraine Wars has transformed the way enemies will fight future wars, especially if they must pick targets in urban areas, like what the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are doing in GAZA.
Pakistan’s problem is that its development and progress in every field have been stunted by the way we run our affairs like a police state. We don’t have any institutions to examine the threat to our security. Pakistan's military and its institutions act as decision-makers, think tanks, and experts in pondering the military and security threats that emerge on our horizons. Anybody questioning the official line is deemed as a security threat and is treated like any dissenter is treated in a police state. Therefore, we don’t have any serious debate on the vital security situation that we face. We have no option except the official line, which most of the time is a product of fossilised bureaucratic minds. It is not that we are not facing these situations of war and peace on our western and eastern borders. It is that our national security culture doesn’t allow us to differ from the official line and advocate sometimes out of the box.