...if it weren't for nuclear weapons, Pakistan would be the Congo...
The world, and the US in particular, is yet to respond unambiguously to the continuing adventurism of a nation that should have been declared rogue more than two decades ago
...if it weren't for nuclear weapons, Pakistan would be the Congo...
—US State Department note published by Wikileaks
"Although we do not believe Pakistan is a failed state, we nonetheless recognize that the challenges it confronts are dire... The government is losing more and more territory every day to foreign and domestic militant groups; deteriorating law and order in turn is undermining economic recovery. The bureaucracy is settling into third-world mediocrity, as demonstrated by some corruption and a limited capacity to implement or articulate policy."
Worse, individual leaders were deeply compromised. President Asif Ali Zardari, Sir Jock Stirrup, the then British Chief of Defence Staff told US diplomats, was a "numbskull", even as other senior British officials described Pakistan’s President as incompetent and "highly corrupt". Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, is revealed to have plotted an ‘informal coup’ to dismiss the President. Hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid, earmarked for fighting militants, were being diverted. Crucially, then US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, warned that no amount of US aid would change the Pakistan army's covert support for four major terrorist formations, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani group, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s fighters, and the Lashkar-e-Toiba:
"...there is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance... as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups".
Moreover, extremism was "no longer restricted to the border area", and fighters were increasingly being recruited from the Punjab province, even as "the phenomenon is spreading into northern Sindh as well." Another post notes, "The bad news is that the militants increasingly are setting the agenda." Moreover,
"The government’s anti-terrorism strategy is based on ‘dialogue, deterrence and development’; however, it lacks the military capacity to deter militants and the financial resources to develop the FATA and NWFP. Its historic fallback has been to play for time by conducting negotiations with militants, a disastrous tactic that only has made the extremists stronger."
The country was facing "pending economic catastrophe." Then Special Advisor on AfPak, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, in a May 29, 2009, note, observed that Pakistan was a centre for terrorist financing through Islamic charities. Despite a clear acceptance of these many aspects of the chaos that is Pakistan, the US remained helpless to counter these trends, since it saw itself as being trapped in a "co-dependent relationship" with Pakistan.
The Wikileaks revelations have now forced many of these issues out into the open, and British Prime Minister David Cameron, during a visit to India, stated unambiguously, on July 28, 2010, "We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that [Pakistan] is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world." Despite vociferous Pakistani protestations, he refused to withdraw or dilute his observations.
Fatalities in Terrorist Violence in Pakistan: 2003- 2011
| Civilians | SFs | Terrorists | Total |
2003
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| 140 | 24 | 25 | 189 |
2004
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| 435 | 184 | 244 | 863 |
2005
| 430 | 81 | 137 | 648 |
2006
| 608 | 325 | 538 | 1471 |
2007
| 1523 | 597 | 1479 | 3599 |
2008
| 2155 | 654 | 3906 | 6715 |
2009
| 2307 | 1011 | 8267 | 11585 |
2010
| 1796 | 469 | 5170 | 7435 |
2011*
| 226 | 98 | 384 | 708 |
Total
| 9620 | 3443 | 20150 | 33213 |
* Data till February 20, 2011, Source: SATP
Significantly, KP accounts for the overwhelming proportion of the dramatic drop in fatalities and violence, essentially indicating active disengagement between the SFs and extremists in this Province, as the total killed declined from 5,497 in 2009 to 1,202 in 2010. Terrorism related fatalities also fell in the Punjab, from 441 to 316 over the same period. However, FATA saw 5,408 killed in 2010, as against 5,304 in 2009; in Balochistan, fatalities rose from 277 to 347; while Sindh saw an increase from 66 to 162.
FATA has acquired particular significance for Islamabad, since the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which threatens the country with massive internal destabilization, has now substantially concentrated its forces in this Province. Pakistan’s SFs have, consequently, focused overwhelming attention against this principal sanctuary of the TTP, even as they continue to studiously avoid any action against elements of the Afghan Taliban, the al Qaeda and the various India-directed groups that continue to be seen as serving the countries perceived ‘strategic interests’. The SFs launched major operations in FATA through 2009-10, accounting for the mounting casualties, though the gains of extended operations in the South Waziristan Agency (SWA) and Orakzai Agency have, at best, been cosmetic. Even the limited pressure exerted on the terrorists will quickly dissipate unless operations are taken forward into the North Waziristan Agency (NWA), resulting in further escalation in the hinterland, at a time when Islamabad is struggling to contain terrorism in its core areas of Punjab and Sindh.
Balochistan continued to witness overwhelming and relentless military repression, human rights violations and excesses by intelligence and security agencies, with fatalities rising from 277 to 347. The increase was essentially in the civilian category, and included an increasing number of unexplained ‘disappearances’ engineered by the Intelligence agencies and SFs operating in the Province. SF and militant fatalities declined from 88 and 37 in 2009, to 59 and 14 in 2010.
2009 | 2010 | |||||||
| Civilians | SFs | Terrorists | Total | Civilians | SFs | Terrorists | Total |
Balochistan
| 152 | 88 | 37 | 277 | 274 | 59 | 14 | 347 |
KP
| 1229 | 471 | 3797 | 5497 | 597 | 94 | 511 | 1202 |
FATA
| 636 | 350 | 4318 | 5304 | 542 | 262 | 4604 | 5408 |
Punjab
| 293 | 97 | 51 | 441 | 272 | 28 | 16 | 316 |
Sindh
| 49 | 3 | 14 | 66 | 111 | 26 | 25 | 162 |
| 2359 | 1009 | 8217 | 11585 | 1796 | 469 | 5170 | 7435 |
Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management. Tushar Ranjan Mohanty is Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal