Daily Times

“And by that destiny to perform an act Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come

In yours and my discharge” — Shakespeare’s Tempest, Act 2, Scene I.

Pakistan’s military operation dubbed Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan (NW) is in its second phase now. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) has issued statements that the army has cleared the terrorist hotbeds in Boya, Degan and parts of Mir Ali as well. The continued US drone strikes have reportedly taken out scores of al Qaeda operatives and several Punjabi Taliban in the Datta Khel area. The Pakistani defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif has stated, “The army has managed to eliminate the terrorists’ command and control centre in the NW tribal region.” At the very least, the defence minister formally conceded what many of us have said for years, i.e. NW was allowed to become the hornets’ nest where the local, regional and transnational jihadists consorted freely. Denying the jihadist zealots the sanctuary from where they have launched attacks on both sides of the Durand Line and as far as London and New York would be a welcome development were the other reports from the region not so disconcerting.

The Pakistani media has underplayed the fact that while many terrorist safe havens in NW were destroyed, the jihadist cadres and their entire leadership escaped unharmed. Local tribesmen and journalists had consistently been warning about the jihadists fleeing with their ability to launch attacks intact. And then came a slew of vicious terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan. While the Afghan security forces foiled the attack on Kabul airport and killed the six attackers — some of them speaking Urdu — the suicide bombing in Urgun, Paktika, killed dozens of innocent people. The Afghan Taliban claimed the airport assault but distanced themselves from the Paktika attack. The Afghan authorities have squarely blamed the Haqqani terrorist network and the ISI for the Kabul airport attack, saying that the intent was to scare away international airlines from flying into Afghanistan. Both the Kabul and Paktika attacks have the fingerprints of the Haqqani terrorist network all over them, reinforcing the concern expressed in this column that the terror group was not targeted in the present NW operation.

It is safe to say that the past clearly is the prologue as far as Pakistan’s relationship with the Haqqani network goes. These ties date back to the mid-1970s, flourished over the past decade, and seem to have weathered the Zarb-e-Azb tempest. Pakistan originally harboured Jalaluddin Haqqani long before the Soviet arrival in Afghanistan to use him against the late Sardar Daud Khan’s government, which it claimed was supporting the Pashtun and Baloch nationalists east of the Durand Line. Jalaluddin Haqqani had graduated from the Deobandi seminary Darul Uloom Haqqaniyah in 1970 and even campaigned in its founder Maulana Abdul Haq’s election campaign that year. When the ISI enlisted over 1,000 Afghan Islamists against President Daud Khan in 1973, he made the cut. He had moved his terrorist shop to NW roughly by 1975 and launched his first jihadist uprising against Daud Khan in August that year from the same unfortunate town of Urgun, Paktika that has just buried scores of its citizens slaughtered by a suicide sent, in all probability, by the Haqqani network.

In 1980, Haqqani set up his madrassa (seminary), Manbaul Uloom in Danday Darpa Khel about two miles from Miranshah and where the Pakistan army’s XI Corps’ local headquarters stand today. As the former head of the ISI’s Afghan bureau, Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf notes in his book, the only time the Pakistani military overtly fought the Afghan and Soviet forces was when Haqqani was injured in the 1986 Afghan assault on his base at Zhawara, a few miles inside Afghanistan. The Afghan government forces had captured the base and had started blowing up the tunnel complex and ammunition dump that the Haqqani-Pakistani combine had painstakingly built there. The Pakistani intervention on Jalaluddin Haqqani’s behalf turned the tide and the Afghan government forces were beaten back. The Haqqanis have since remained Pakistan’s most allied allies among all the Afghan jihadist factions. After Jalaluddin Haqqani retired from active jihadism, his son and chosen successor Sirajuddin received the same patronage and provided the same deadly services. Jalaluddin Haqqani’s brothers and other sons have lived in Islamabad’s vicinity while Sirajuddin has been known to visit Peshawar and Tall. As Zarb-e-Azb unfolds it seems that Pakistan has not cut the Haqqanis loose and still considers them its best and most lethal bet against Kabul.

By all indications, the Haqqani gang’s terrorists have dispersed into Pakistan and Afghanistan and its leadership, including the lynchpin Sirajuddin, has relocated to the settled areas of Pakistan. The Wall Street Journal reported last week: “Both leaders and foot soldiers of the Haqqanis, an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban that has been based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan for decades, left the area just as the operation began on June 15, said locals and militants.” The Afghan Taliban has bragged to other media outlets that with their ranks swollen with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) cadres spilling over from Pakistan, they are able to launch attacks deep inside Afghanistan. The plans to offload the ‘bad’ Taliban — the irreconcilable TTP men who attack Pakistan — onto Afghanistan are coming to fruition. Pakistan appears well on the way to re-enacting the 2001 dismantling of the Afghan Taliban only to be put back together in 2004-05. Preserving the Haqqani network indicates zero change in Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan. Mullah Omar’s Quetta shura already remains outside the scope of Zarb-e-Azb and, along with the its Haqqani network allies, seems all geared up for another round of ruthless violence and bloodshed in post-US withdrawal Afghanistan.

It would be pertinent to see how the US, which is providing $ 300 million in the Coalition Support Fund to Pakistan, contingent upon the latter’s action against the Haqqani network, vets Pakistani claims. The Haqqani network did not come to NW with the US’s arrival in Afghanistan and will not leave after the US leaves. President Hamid Karzai, however, is right in lamenting in a recent interview that the US stalled holding Pakistan’s feet to the fire over the issue of the Taliban and the Haqqani network’s sanctuaries. Admiral Mike Mullen once described the Haqqani network as the ISI’s veritable arm. Pakistan is not ready to sever that arm and lose its menacing leverage over Kabul. The ISAF commander General Joseph Dunford’s recent testimony at the US Senate Armed Services Committee should ring alarm bells. The past is the prologue to looming death and destruction in Afghanistan through proxies like the Haqqani network as the US is about to exit the regional stage.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com
and he tweets @mazdaki