Our entire social and political order is indebted to Captain Ahmed Badar—a young officer in the Pakistan Army who laid down his life while fighting Tehreek-e-Taliban militants in North Waziristan. There were twin suicide attacks, one after the other, on a military check post which Captain Ahmed Badar, along with his military companions, was manning.
The story that has reached us recounts that Captain Ahmed Badar and his comrades—both his officer and his jawans—continued to put up tough resistance to a band of militants who continued their onslaught on the check post after the two suicide bombers had detonated themselves. All six officers and jawans of Pakistan Army laid down their lives in the attack and none of them received bullets in their backs. All of them received bullets and bomb shrapnel head on.
I have mentioned the name of Captain Ahmed Badar only - not because the other brave martyrs don’t deserve praise for their gallantry, but because I know his family.
Why do I think our social and political order is indebted to Captain Ahmed Badar? Captain Ahmed Badar was 23 years old, an age in which people generally become socially and politically aware of their surroundings, and the social and political implications of what they are doing in life or how their profession impacts society. An officer or jawan serving in North Waziristan or any other part of the Pak-Afghan border areas is aware of the danger to his life.
What Captain Ahmed Badar did in North Waziristan was to push back the forces of darkness, who want to destroy the social and political order in which we operate.
Pakistani society generally does not take very seriously the developments on our Western border or happenings in the erstwhile tribal areas. We are facing an onslaught from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP); this obscurantist terror group started tracking back into Pakistani territory sometime after August 2021 when the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul. TTP, which fled Pakistani territory after a military operation in North Waziristan in the middle of the last decade, was emboldened as a result. According to international and local experts on terrorism and militancy, the TTP has around 10,000 fighters in Afghanistan and in the Pak-Afghan border areas. The latest UN report points out that Al-Qaeda has established training camps on Afghanistan’s border towns and cities for training suicide bombers for TTP.
There are millions of people who wake up in the morning and go to their jobs in the peaceful environs of Pakistani cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Then there are people whose jobs or professions regularly come into direct conflict with the obscurantist ideology of militant groups—I count myself among these people. The people who want to produce music, drama, poetry, and believe in progressive political and social thought; the people who think Pakistan is not safe for minorities and who want to shout at the top of their lungs that nobody ought to dictate any particular way of life to another segment of the society. And people who want to be unaffected by violence while they engage in their creative endeavors—journalists, story writers, poets, music directors, artists, singers, school and university teachers, and social activists who want to protect minorities, civil right activists, political workers, women rights activists and all other who want to lead a peaceful and life in Pakistani society are indebted to Captain Ahmed Badar.
What Captain Ahmed Badar did in North Waziristan was to push back the forces of darkness, who want to destroy the social and political order in which we operate.
Our middle classes are deeply alienated with the political system, which is no surprise given that it does not serve their interests. But this alienation also means that we tend to ignore the threat that we are facing on our western borders.
There are two problems in this situation. Firstly, the majority of our population don’t have a clear understanding of the kind of threat our social and political order faces. TTP and other obscurantist forces that the group represents have a clear plan to overthrow the social and political order that exists in Pakistan society, or at least deeply disrupt civic life if they fail to overthrow the social and political order.
Ironically, our middle classes are deeply alienated with the political system, which is no surprise given that it does not serve their interests. But this alienation also means that we tend to ignore the threat that we are facing on our western borders. The threat and its actualization will not wait for our urban middle classes to realize that something very ugly is coming our way.
Captain Ahmed Badar is someone who realized this threat—otherwise I don’t see any reason, any plausible reason why he left the luxuries of his middle-class urban life and accepted the call to duty in the rugged terrain of North Waziristan. He knew the situation in North Waziristan could take his life at any moment. But he didn’t dither. He jumped headfirst into the danger and in the process, he became that proverbial landmark and beacon of light that showed the Pakistani nation the path towards stability and strength.
The sense of alienation that our middle classes feel towards the political system is based in the dysfunctional nature of our political system, a dysfunctionality that is chipping away at the political legitimacy without which no political and social order can survive. And this situation is more dangerous than the threat that Captain Badar succeeded in warding off with the sacrifice of his life.
The dysfunction of our system demands that we make some self-correction if we don’t want the blood of hundreds of officers like Captain Ahmed Badar to go to waste. We, as a society, and our nation’s institutions, would do well to engage in some introspection before we meet another tragedy.
We are indebted to Captain Badar, and I think that it is because of the deeply dysfunctional nature of our political institutions that young officers like Ahmed have lost their lives. Our political institutions are simply incapable of resolving the social, political and military conflicts that exist in our society, which in the past several years has resulted in the loss of precious lives, which includes hundreds of officers and jawans of the Pakistani military. For me, Captain Ahmed Badar has become a metaphor representing all these young officers and jawans.
The dysfunction of our system demands that we make some self-correction if we don’t want the blood of hundreds of officers like Captain Ahmed Badar to go to waste. We, as a society, and our nation’s institutions, would do well to engage in some introspection before we meet another tragedy.
Since 2014, we have witnessed a continuous struggle between popular political forces that represent mainstream society, and the military as an institution or the leaders which represent those institutions in the political arena. Since 2014, popular political forces have started accusing military leaders of prosecuting them, victimizing them through deploying the coercive machinery of the state that the military leadership controls, and depriving popular political leaders of their mandate in the 2018 and 2024 parliamentary elections. This hue and cry have for sure undermined the legitimacy of the political system in the eyes of our middle classes. I don’t know for sure, but I’m rather confident in making an educated guess that this upheaval must have affected the military at the organizational level.
The threat that emanates from our western border is real and we cannot wish it away. And we cannot effectively deal with this threat with this dysfunctional political system as our starting point. But first, let’s have a look at what kind of threat we are facing on our western borders. The TTP is not the only threat we face. According to many experts interviewed by this scribe, as a terror and militant organization, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) seems to be standing on a crossroads, where it will have to decide whether to join hands with ISIS-K against the Pakistani military and the Afghan Taliban, or to clash with ISIS-K as a proxy of the Afghan Taliban.
We are indebted to Captain Badar, and I think that it is because of the deeply dysfunctional nature of our political institutions that young officers like Ahmed have lost their lives. Our political institutions are simply incapable of resolving the social, political and military conflicts that exist in our society, which in the past several years has resulted in the loss of precious lives, which includes hundreds of officers and jawans of the Pakistani military.
TTP leaders are said to have conveyed to the Afghan Taliban government their warning that in case they are pushed to the walls inside Afghanistan, and if they have to tone down their attacks on Pakistani security forces in the Pak-Afghan border areas, there may emerge a large-scale defection in their ranks towards ISIS-K. ISIS-K, as an organization, was established in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2014 by the former members of TTP and Afghan Taliban who were more attracted to the radical views of ISIS and with the more brutal form of terrorism the group practiced in Syria and Iraq. “It is not just ideology that fully explains the Afghan Taliban’s inaction against the TTP. Some segments within the TTA are apprehensive that the use of force against the TTP could push thousands of TTP fighters into IS-K’s fodder,” says Dr Khuram Iqbal, security expert and professor at National Defense University in Islamabad.
Some Pakistani observers are of the opinion that Afghan Taliban might face domestic opposition within its ranks in such a situation, “The Afghan Taliban might face delegitimization among its rank and file in such a situation,” said a Pakistani expert. Another development may bring to bear fresh pressure on the Pakistani Taliban. Some private Pakistani researchers told this scribe on the condition of anonymity that in a recent twist in the complex landscape of terrorism in Afghanistan, the ISIS-K has openly criticized and targeted the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in a video release. This marks a significant departure from ISIS-K's previous focus on criticizing the Afghan Taliban and occasionally the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F). The question that arises is whether ISIS-K now perceives the TTP as a threat.
Some observers believe that the ISIS-K has started to consider TTP as an integral part of the Afghan Taliban. With both ISIS-K and TTP maintaining a presence in the Nangarhar and Kunar provinces of Afghanistan, former strongholds of ISIS-K, the possibility of a wave of infighting between the two groups exists. The crucial question emerges: will the Afghan Taliban throw its weight behind the TTP in a potential conflict against ISIS-K? Analysts are pondering what exactly triggered the ISIS-K propaganda campaign against TTP? Whether it is the result of a tussle over the recruitment of fighters from social groups which are traditionally loyal to TTP? No final answer exists on this issue.
On its part, the TTP is no less aggressive towards ISIS-K. The recent 33rd UNSC monitoring report hinted at the Taliban assigning TTP the tasks of assassination of defectors to ISIS-K. The presence of ISIS-K and other terrorist groups on Afghan soil poses a significant threat to regional security, with neighboring countries being direct targets of their attacks. Recent examples include attacks by ISIS-K and TTP in Pakistan, targeting Pakistani security forces and civilians before and on election day. ISIS-K carried out attacks in the Pishin and Qilla Saifullah areas of Balochistan on the election offices of candidates, resulting in the loss of over 25 lives. Simultaneously, the TTP targeted Pakistani police in Dera Ismail Khan, leading to the killing of policemen.
In such a dangerous security situation, confrontation between popular political forces and military leadership would be foolhardy. And only a mindset that has a blinkered view of the security threat emanating from our western border could continue on the path of confrontation with popular political forces. The problem is that our nation’s popular political leaders are not behaving responsibly themselves. For them, politics is another name for continuous adventurism—adventurism that encompasses disruptive social media campaigns aimed at deliberately causing social and political unrest in the society. As if the already existing conflicts are not enough, these popular political forces create artificial conflict that nevertheless hampers consensus on a national scale—the kind that is needed to confront the threat from obscurantist forces.