War
without End
Ajit
Kumar Singh
Research
Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management
On April
13, 2016, at least seven policemen and four ‘criminals’
were killed in an exchange of fire in the Kacha
(riverbed) area of the Indus River between Districts of
Rajanpur and Rahim Yar Khan in Punjab Province. While
eight ‘criminals’ who sustained injuries managed to escape,
22 policemen were taken hostage by the 'criminals'. On
April 14 four injured policemen were released but the
remaining 18 were still in captivity.
On April
7, 2016, unidentified militants shot dead at least three
Shias at the Najaf Imambargah (Shia place of worship)
in North Karachi Town, in the provincial capital of Sindh.
On April
4, 2016, Feroze Shah, the personal assistant to Muttahida
Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Mohammad Ateeq, his daughter
Tasbiha (8), and a city warden, Abid, were killed in a
targeted attack while they were travelling in a van that
looked like a Police vehicle near Furniture Market in
the North Karachi Town.
On March
31, 2016, at least five people were killed and several
others were injured when a blast occurred inside a vehicle
on Kashmir Road in the Jani Khel area of Lakki Marwat
District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
In the
worst attack of 2016 so far (till April 17), at least
74 people were killed and more than 300 were injured in
a suicide
blast inside the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park
in the Iqbal Town area of Lahore, the provincial capital
of Punjab, on March 27, 2016. Significantly, a large number
of people, mostly Christians were present in the park,
celebrating Easter.
According
to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism
Portal (SATP) database, 831 terrorism-linked fatalities
have already occurred in Pakistan in 2016, including 222
civilians, 102 Security Force (SF) personnel and 507 terrorists/militants.
The country has also recorded 82 major incidents (each
involving three or more fatalities) resulting in 715 fatalities
(183 civilians, 68 SF personnel and 464 terrorists). Further,
43 blasts accounting for 176 deaths and over 520 injuries
in the current year.
During
the corresponding period of 2015, Pakistan had seen 1,334
terrorism related fatalities, including 351 civilians,
107 SF personnel and 876 terrorists. The country witnessed
111 major incidents resulting in 1,021 fatalities (147
civilians, 59 SF personnel and 815 militants) in this
period, as well as 83 blasts accounting for 214 deaths
and over 398 injured.
Through
2015, Pakistan recorded a total of 3,682 fatalities, including
940 civilians, 339 SF personnel and 2,403 terrorists/militants
as against 5,496 fatalities, including 1,781 civilians,
533 SF personnel and 3,182 terrorists/militants in 2014.
The number of major incidents also declined from 402 (accounting
for 4,173 deaths) to 322 (resulting in 2,923 fatalities)
over this period. Similarly, 2015 recorded 216 incidents
of bomb blasts resulting in 495 deaths, down from 388
incidents resulting in 840 deaths recorded in 2014. Moreover,
as against 25 suicide bombings accounting for 336 deaths
in 2014, year 2015 recorded 19 such incidents resulting
in 161 deaths.
Terror-related
fatalities have sustained a declining
trend in Pakistan since the peak of
2009 when fatalities totaled a staggering 11,704 (2,324
civilians, 991 SF personnel and 8,389 militants). 2014
saw a transient aberration in the trend, with 5,496 fatalities,
a marginal increase, on year on year basis, from 5,379
fatalities recorded in 2013. All four Provinces of Pakistan
– Balochistan, KP, Punjab, and Sindh – along with the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Pakistan
administered Kashmir (PaK) recorded declines.
Operation
Zarb-e-Azb
(sharp and cutting) launched on June 15, 2014, in
the tribal areas of Pakistan has been significant in bringing
about this relative improvement. During the operation,
domestically oriented terror groups have been targeted
with full military might. Director General (DG) of Inter
Services Public Relations (ISPR), Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem
Bajwa, claimed, on December 12, 2015, that since the launch
of the operation “3,400 terrorists [were] killed, and
837 hideouts from where they were carrying out their terrorist
activities [were] destroyed... Success came at a heavy
price as 488 valiant officers and men of Pakistan Army,
FC [Frontier Constabulary] KP [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] and
Bolan and Sindh Rangers sacrificed their lives, while
another 1,914 were injured.”
Most recently,
on April 3, 2016, ISPR claimed that SFs had ‘cleared’
4,304 square kilometers of area in the North Waziristan
Agency of FATA and “restored the writ of the Government
in all areas especially in remote areas of FATA.”
Despite
the rhetoric of "not discriminating among terror
groups", however, Pakistani Forces have carefully
avoided inflicting any harm on terrorist formations which
serve perceived ‘state interests’. Islamabad’s policy
of selective targeting of terror groups leaves the environment
that breeds terrorism intact. The Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan (HRCP) in its annual report released in
March 2016 thus observes
The year 2015 could be flagged as one in which Pakistani
state took some definitive steps to recover its
lost writ in places as diverse as rugged mountainous
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and thickly
populated and crime-infested Karachi... The military
crackdown on some of the militant groups sheltering
in the country's northwestern tribal areas brought
terrorist attacks down by almost half... Plainly
the war was not over yet. Ending extremism required
that there should be no pick and choose... .
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Crucially,
as SAIR has repeatedly emphasized, Islamabad continues
to allow terrorist groups serving its supposed strategic
interests in neighboring Afghanistan and India to operate
with impunity from its soil. In the most recent and brazen
move, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)
founder and Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JuD) 'chief' Hafiz Muhammad
Saeed reportedly set up a Sharia’h (Islamic law)
court in Lahore to dispense "speedy justice",
taking up citizens' complaints and issuing summons carrying
a warning of strict action in case of non-compliance.
This is the first instance of such a parallel judicial
system to be established in the Punjab province. JuD claimed
the ‘court’ only offers arbitration and resolves disputes
in accordance with the Islamic judicial system, but failed
to justify the summons. The impunity with which Saeed
operates clearly confirms the support he receives from
the Pakistani establishment. Saeed is the mastermind of
the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai (India) and in 2012 the United
States (US) put a USD 10 million bounty on his head.
Further,
despite repeated US calls to target the Haqqani Network
– one of the most vicious terrorist formations operating
from Pakistan into Afghanistan – in Operation Zarb-e-Azb,
no visible action in this direction has been taken thus
far. Significantly, according to an April 13, 2016, report
published by the US National Security Archive, "a
series of DIA cables (from January 11, 2010, and February
6, 2010) show that some funding for Haqqani [Haqqani Network]
attacks are still provided by the Pakistan Inter-Services
Intelligence Directorate, including $200,000 for the December
30, 2009, attack on the CIA facility at Camp Chapman."
At least 10 people, including two female American CIA
agents, Jennifer Lynne Matthews, who commanded the base;
and Elizabeth Hanson, a targeting analyst; were killed
in the attack.
Meanwhile,
the genuine grievances of people across Pakistan are being
brutally suppressed. Specifically referring to Karachi
(Sindh) and Balochistan, the HRCP report observed
And
while statistics suggested that things had improved
in Karachi after the paramilitary operation in the
country's biggest city, little attention was paid
to complaints of rights violations at the hands
of the security forces... In Balochistan growing
concerns related to enforced disappearances, extrajudicial
killings, and torture remained unaddressed.
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Similarly,
PaK continues to suffer under repressive
measures administered by Islamabad.
In a rare reaction, anti-Pakistan protests rise sporadically
in the region. In a recent cycle of such protests, according
to a September 29, 2015, video report, people in large
numbers in several areas of PaK, including Muzaffarabad,
Gilgit and Kotli, were seen protesting against the Pakistani
establishment, demanding freedom, raising pro-India slogans,
and asking for jobs and other rights. The Pakistan military,
according to the video, used brutal force to suppress
these protests. Further, an October 2, 2015, report quoted
Senge Hasnan Sering of the Institute for Gilgit Baltistan
Studies, based in Washington, DC., stating, "We
are under a silent invasion from China. We are staring
at ethnic cleansing: Pakistan since the late 1990s has
already effected the settlement of around 3.5 lakh (350,000)
Urdu-speaking Sunni Muslims in GB which makes for nearly
a fifth of the population now. They also run terror camps
here. China is into a lot of projects here from mining
to highway-making and a huge number of Chinese workers
have also settled here." Most recently, on April
14, 2016, anti-Pakistan protest erupted again in various
parts of PaK over lack of employment to local youth. Protesters,
owing allegiance to Jammu and Kashmir National Students
Federation (JKNSF) and Jammu and Kashmir National Awami
Party (JKNAP), raised slogans against the Pakistani Government
and said that preference was being given to Pakistani
youth over Kashmiri youth. They also raised slogans demanding
an independent Kashmir. Police, meanwhile, resorted to
a heavy baton charge on the demonstrators. Reacting to
the latest round of protests and state responses in PaK,
India’s Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren
Rijiju tweeted, on April 14, 2016, “Situation in Pak occupied
J&K region is always disturbing. Pak has never given
any value to maintaining human rights. Not 1st time that
human rights violation is visible in PoK specially by
Pak Army & their security people.”
Extra judicial
killings by state agencies and their proxies remain rampant
across Pakistan, more specifically in Balochistan.
Through 2015, 247 civilians were killed in Balochistan,
of which some 114 were attributable to one or other militant
outfit. The remaining 143 ‘unattributed’ fatalities are
overwhelmingly considered the work of the state apparatus
and its surrogates. Of the 3,600 civilian fatalities recorded
in Balochistan since 2004 [data till April 17, 2016],
at least 922 civilian killings are attributable to one
or other militant outfit. Of these, 361 civilian killings
(205 in the South and 156 in the North) have been claimed
by Baloch separatist formations, while Islamist and sectarian
extremist formations – primarilyLashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ),
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
and Ahrar-ul-Hind (Liberators of India) – claimed responsibility
for another 561 civilian killings, 554 in the North (mostly
in and around Quetta) and seven in the South. The 361
civilian killings attributed to Baloch formations include
at least 153 Punjabi settlers since 2006. The remaining
2,678 civilian fatalities – 1,621 in the South and 1,057
in the North – remain ‘unattributed’. A large proportion
of the ‘unattributed’ fatalities, particularly in the
Southern region, are believed to be the result of enforced
disappearances carried out by state agencies, or by their
proxies, prominently including the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Aman
Balochistan (TNAB, Movement for the Restoration of Peace,
Balochistan). The large number of unattributed civilian
fatalities strengthens the widespread conviction that
Security Agencies engage in “kill and dump” operations
against local Baloch dissidents, a reality that Pakistan’s
Supreme Court has clearly recognized.
Thus, the
Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) noted, on January
1, 2016, that approximately 463 people were forcibly ‘disappeared’
while 157 mutilated bodies were recovered from Balochistan
in 2015. Nasrullah Baloch, Chairman of VBMP, observed,
“The VBMPS report is based on documents received from
Missing persons’ families, human rights organizations
and political parties," adding that number of enforced
disappeared persons in 2015 could be higher, as the Government
recently admitted to having arrested 9,000 people under
NAP from Balochistan in 2015.
More worryingly,
seeds of religious intolerance that have been systematically
sown in Pakistan since its inception in 1947 – and, indeed,
even earlier, during the struggle for independence continue
to yield their bitter harvest. According to the Annual
Report, 2015, of the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF), between July 2013 and
June 2014, 122 incidents of sectarian violence occurred
in Pakistan, resulting in more than 1,200 casualties,
including 430 fatalities. The report, noted, “Pakistan
represents one of the worst situations in the world for
religious freedom for countries not currently designated
by the U.S. government as ‘countries of particular concern’…
Pakistan continued to experience chronic sectarian violence
targeting Shi’a Muslims, Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, and
Hindus.” Similarly, the Jinnah Institute of Pakistan in
a report titled State of Religious Freedom in Pakistan
2015, stated that, during the period 2012-2015, at
least 543 incidents of violence were carried out against
religious minorities in Pakistan. Shias were targeted
on at least 288 occasions during this period, followed
by Hindus (91 occasions), Christians (88 occasions), and
Ahamadiyas (76 occasions). According to partial data compiled
by SATP, Pakistan has recorded at least 3,021 incidents
of sectarian attack leading to 5,233 deaths and 9,904
injuries since 1989. 53 of these incidents, resulting
in 276 fatalities and 327 injuries, were reported in 2015
alone.
Unsurprisingly,
Farahnaz Ispahani, media advisor to the president of Pakistan
from 2008 to 2012, thus observed, in an interview published
on January 2016, “When Pakistan was being formed in 1947,
Pakistan’s population of non-Muslims was 23%, today we
are somewhere between 3%-4%. So there has been a purification
(sic) of minorities.” This ‘cleansing’ process
continues unabated. According to an April 16, 2016, report,
about 11,500 Pakistanis are currently seeking asylum in
Thailand, a 51 percent increase over the previous year;
with Christians constituting the majority among them.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is now reported
to have begun issuing identity cards to Pakistani asylum
seekers residing in Thailand. Separately, in another such
development, the Government of India on April 17, 2016,
announced that it proposes to simplify procedures for
grant of Indian citizenship to minority Hindus who have
fled Pakistan. Though the exact number of minority refugees
from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan living in India
is not known, rough estimates suggest there could be as
many as 200,000 such people, mostly Hindus and Sikhs and
primarily from Pakistan.
Meanwhile,
Pakistan now appears poised on the brink of another cycle
of political turmoil in the wake of the Panama Papers
revelations relating to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. [The
Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5 million
files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest
offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The documents show
the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive
offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among
143 politicians, their families and close associates from
around the world known to have been using offshore tax
havens.] According to recent revelations Sharif’s three
children own three residences in London’s Mayfair District,
where the average price of an apartment is £1.8 million.
Just one of these properties is worth more than 1,700
times the average national income of Pakistan, at 153,000
per annum. Soon the opposition began demand for resignation
of Sharif and impartial probe. Amidst increasing political
turmoil, Sharif left for London on April 13, 2016, for
‘medical treatment’, triggering speculation about an imminent
military coup. Indeed, Imran Khan the leader of the Pakistan
Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Sharif’s most trenchant political
opponent, and who had been making an effort for long to
destabilize
the regime, urging Pakistanis to
rise against Sharif declared, “This is a godsend opportunity
for us.” Hasan Askari Rizvi, a prominent political analyst
based in Lahore, however, observed, “He (Sharif) is not
threatened to that extent. However, if all political parties
join hands, then Nawaz is in real trouble.”
Nevertheless,
the bitter rivalry between the all powerful Army and the
Sharif Government persists. This was evident in the manner
in which Sharif’s dialogue with India was abruptly scuttled,
astonishingly, by a Statement from Pakistan's High Commissioner
to India, Abdul Basit, on April 7, 2016, declaring that
the peace process between Islamabad and New Delhi had
been ‘suspended’. Demonstrating the sharp divisions within
the power centres in Pakistan, Pakistan Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Nafees Zakaria stated on April 8, 2016, that
the peace dialogue between the two nations will continue.
Regrettably,
despite continued and blatant violations of international
norms, Pakistan continues to receive generous aid from
US. The Pakistan Senate Defence Committee was informed
on April 14, 2016, that the Coalition Support Fund (CSF)
had disbursed USD 13 billion since 2002. The US Congress
in 2015 also allocated USD 100 million for improving border
control mechanisms between Pakistan and Afghanistan. During
the Pakistan-US strategic dialogue in February 2016 in
Washington, the Pakistani side sought a special package
of USD Eight billion for security and development in the
FATA over the next five years. CSF refers to money from
the Defense Emergency Response Fund (DERF) that is eligible
to be used to reimburse coalition partners for logistical
and military support to US military operations. Pakistan
started getting money under this scheme to help US in
its war on terror launched in Afghanistan in the aftermath
of the 9/11 attacks. The US Department of Defense’s (DoD’s)
2015 fourth quarter report on the CSF program shows that
in the fourth quarter of 2015, the US reimbursed a total
of USD 1.6 billion in CSF for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. Pakistan
received the majority of the funds given in this quarter
at a total of $ 712 million.
The US
has also ‘reimbursed’ Pakistan another 7.95 billion for
‘other security-related expenditures’ since 2002, and
continues to supply high-end military equipments to Islamabad.
On February 12, 2016, the US Government disclosed that
it had approved the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.
The deal includes up to eight F-16 fighter jets built
by Lockheed Martin Corp, radar and other equipment valued
at USD 699 million. The Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation
Agency, which oversees foreign arms sales, stated that
it had notified lawmakers about the possible deal. Though
the US argued that the F-16s will bolster Pakistan’s Air
Force (PAF) ability to conduct counter-insurgency and
counter-terrorism operations, experts have long argued
that their principal use would be against India, in the
event of war. Vikas Swaroop, Spokesperson of India’s Ministry
of External Affairs, tweeted on February 16, 2016,
“We are disappointed at the decision of the Obama Administration
to notify the sale of F-16 aircrafts to Pakistan. We disagree
with their rationale that such arms’ transfers help to
combat terrorism. The record of the last many years in
this regard speaks for itself.”
While USA
is, by far, Pakistan’s most generous donor, Islamabad
benefits from aid from a multiplicity of other sources
as well, prominently including the International Development
Association (IDA), Japan, the European Union, United Kingdom
(UK) and Germany, among others. While such aid flows are
now increasingly being questioned, they have not been
interrupted. Notably, during a debate in the European
Parliament in Strasbourg on 14th April 2016,
on “Human Rights Situation in Pakistan: in particular
the attack in Lahore,” Alberto Cirio, Member of the European
Parliament (MEP), raised the issue of the killing of minorities,
specifically Christians and Baloch, in Pakistan. Subsequent
to the debate, in a private interview, Cirio, stated,
“the world community has failed to call the Pakistani
bluff of seeking financial support from the West to fight
the very terrorists that it nurtures and supports.” He
called on the international community to stand united
against this Pakistani blackmail, before it acquired a
more sinister edge, with Pakistan supplying tactical nuclear
weapons that it is rapidly developing, to its favored
terrorist groups, to target Europe.
The aid
given to Pakistan to help US in its war on terror has
long been misused by Islamabad to help terror groups subservient
to its policy of exporting terrorism. Despite nearly 2,381
US troops, another 1,134 International Security Assistance
Force personnel, and tens of thousands of Afghans killed
as a result of this strategy by Pakistani proxies, the
US and the ‘international community’ have failed consistently
to hold Islamabad to account even for the money it receives
from the West, purportedly to fight terrorism.
Pakistan
continues to operate under the cover of global impunity,
even as terrorism emanating from its soil targets the
world community, mainly neighboring Afghanistan and India.
The blowback of this policy of export of terror has brought
untold misery upon the people of Pakistan, but the country’s
establishment appears to continue to consider this an
acceptable price to pay for its myopic ambitions.
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