Daily Times

In recurring events, three cross-border violations in a week have strained the relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan once again. The killing of 15 Pakistani soldiers, with four missing, in Dir by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from their hideouts in Afghanistan is a grim reminder that the perpetrators of terrorism operating along both sides of the border are undermining the efforts of bringing peace and stability to the region. The first attack came on Friday in Karakar, Upper Dir, killing two military soldiers. The second attack on a military convoy in Dir on Sunday night killed six soldiers. In a third attack on Monday, 11 soldiers died, of whom, seven were beheaded later. The Pakistan government has strongly protested the attack and has summoned the Afghan Deputy Head of Mission to the Foreign Office. He was told that the Afghan government should stop the infiltration of militants from its side of the border into Pakistan. However, the governor of Kunar has denied any such attack into Pakistan. NATO too has shown indifference to the event saying it had no information about the attack. Pakistan has decided to bring up this fresh issue of cross-border violations in its in Islamabad today with ISAF Chief General Allen John.

Some 100 militants invaded Pakistani border areas of Dir on Sunday to avenge the military operation that uprooted militants out of the frontier regions of Pakistan in 2009. Pakistan has so far failed in its repeated attempts to convince the Afghan government to come down hard on militants fleeing Pakistan in 2009, who have found safe havens in the eastern Afghan provinces, especially after the pulling out of US forces from the area last year. Pakistan insists that several top Pakistani Taliban leaders including Maulana Fazalullah, Maulvi Faqir and Abdul Wali are attacking Pakistani border posts from Afghanistan. In April this year, the Pakistan army informed its counterpart in Afghanistan about the gathering of militants in the hundreds in Kunar, but the information was not taken seriously.

Since June 2011, when cross-border violations began picking up momentum, almost 100 security forces personnel and dozens of villagers have been killed. The Pakistan army posted 8,000 soldiers last September to protect the border along Upper Dir. The Sunday attack is seen as the deadliest attack on the army since the deployment.

The irony of fate, as we may call it, Pakistan is demanding from Afghanistan the same that the latter has been repeatedly requesting — eliminating militants from the safe havens in the border region. The impasse in relations between Pakistan and the US most recently came when an attack on a hotel in Kabul was traced to the Haqqani network that the US believes are supported by the Pakistan army. The Haqqanis are said to have filled the vacuum left by the US forces when they vacated the eastern region. The Taliban fleeing Pakistan are believed to be hiding in that area under the protection of the Haqqanis, thus bringing the notion of bad and good Taliban into ridicule.

If Pakistan is being attacked under the umbrella of the Haqqanis, the time for realization has dawned on Pakistan to withdraw its support from the outfit and begin negotiating peace with Afghanistan as a major initiative in the wake of a drawdown of US forces by 2014. The Pakistan’s insistence to have a major part in the endgame cannot materialize unless there is a realisation that Pakistan has equal stakes in bringing stability to Afghanistan. Though the stoppage of the NATO supply route has its role in driving the two countries apart, the Haqqani factor has a major share in increasing distrust between Pakistan and the US. In its desire to see Afghan forces less reliant on foreign forces after 2014, the US wants Pakistan to dissociate from militantcy, for which Pakistan has to make some tough choices; the biggest being breaking the back of extremists who kill innocents in the name of a religion that they do not understand. *