The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base at Badaber, outside Peshawar, came under a pre-dawn terrorist attack this past Friday. The security detail comprising of airmen and buttressed quite effectively by the army’s rapid response force were quick to confine, contain and eliminate the 13 or so attackers. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the brazen attack in which about 30 people — half of them offering or getting ready for the morning prayers — perished. Several airmen and an army officer, Captain Asfandyar Bokhari, were killed in the line of duty. By all accounts the fallen officer and men fought selflessly to defend the Badaber facility. Hats off to them; they almost certainly averted a much larger loss of life, which the terrorists most likely aimed for. Unlike the PAF bases in Peshawar and Kamra, which were attacked by the TTP in 2012, there is hardly any tactical or strategic value attached to the Badaber base anymore.
The Badaber base was originally founded as a listening outpost for the US air force and was the takeoff site of the CIA’s notorious U-2 high-altitude, long-range reconnaissance plane, which was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, within roughly a year of the base’s inauguration. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is said to have encircled Peshawar in red on the map after the U-2 was brought down and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, captured. The PAF camp, called the ‘scheme’ by locals, has been a non-flying base since perhaps the mid-1960s but was a lively oasis of peaceful life for the PAF personnel and their families. US-built housing, movie theatre, sports complex and a school were all part of the Badaber charm. A game of cricket and ice cream socials at the base were always great fun. It started wilting after the air headquarters, once located five miles away, was moved out of Peshawar in the mid-1980s but even the rump facility has administrative offices and residential quarters. It is one of the two PAF facilities closest to the tribal areas, the other being the Kohat base to its south. The base sits a hop away from Kohat Road, Peshawar, without much of a land cushion, making it an attractive soft target for the terrorists, even without any strategic assets there. The TTP, however, remains on the run and was neither looking for nor perhaps capable of scoring any tactical or strategic victories. The attack was terrorism in its crudest form, with the aim to inflict maximum casualties, grab headlines, energise a jihadist base and perhaps take advantage of the souring ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
While stopping short of blaming the Afghan government, Pakistani officials were swift to claim that Afghan territory was used for the attack. The assertion seemed based on the intercepts of voice communication, i.e. mobile phone exchange between the attackers and their handlers. It is, however, well known that several Afghan mobile services also work for dozens of miles east of the Durand Line in the tribal areas. Chances are that the GPS coordinates of the handlers are either not known to the Pakistani authorities or do not lead to Afghanistan. The media reports that five terrorists were confirmed to be of Pakistani origin while the others might be foreigners took the wind out of the Pakistani claim’s sails. Regardless of the origins and location of the handlers, over a dozen attackers, clad in Frontier Constabulary (FC) uniforms, could not have made their way to Badaber from Kunar or Nuristan, Afghanistan or, for that matter, from Darra Adam Khel in Khyber Agency next door, on the morning of the attack. Just like the attacks on the PAF bases in Kamra and Peshawar and the Army Public School (APS), Peshawar, the terrorists had to have had local sanctuary and logistical support for days prior and indeed a mole inside the targeted base.
The media has reported the Badaber base authorities had been warned twice recently by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa counterterrorism department about an imminent attack. Whether that warning was heeded and, if so, in what way, is not known. What is well known though is that almost all TTP honchos had escaped unscathed from first the Swat operation and then Zarb-e-Azb. Barring a couple of TTP men like Muslim Khan, who was arrested way after the Swat operation and allegedly died in custody, none of the jihadist linchpins are known to have been arrested or killed by the Pakistani forces. The TTP’s former emir, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike — an event memorialised by certain Pakistani leaders virtually wailing at his death — while his successor, Fazlullah, was able to escape from the Swat operation. Some of the jihadists were alleged to have set up shop across the border in Kunar and/or Nuristan, Afghanistan, in the exact same areas that have been a Pakistan-friendly jihadist hotbed for decades. The US and ISAF forces pulling out of those border regions in 2011 did not help the situation and the possibility of a pocket or two of the TTP types having survived there cannot be ruled out conclusively.
Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani’s categorical statement that his country “has never nor will it ever allow its territory to be used against other states” followed by a phone call to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif offering condolences is a welcome sign. Dr Ghani has previously taken action in the border regions, including drone use, to flush out any terrorists that could potentially threaten Pakistan. More due diligence followed by action to smoke out any lingering elements may be in order. Afghanistan stands to gain little from a tit-for-tat use of jihadist proxies but has a world to lose, including the moral high ground it has held all along. Thankfully, Dr Ashraf Ghani’s policy and practice of zero tolerance for terrorism of all shades has been abundantly clear not only to the outside world but also to any potential adventurist inside Afghanistan.
The Afghan president’s calls to Pakistan “to jointly fight alongside Afghanistan all terrorist groups without discrimination so that peace and stability are ensured” will unfortunately fall on deaf ears again. Pakistan has spurned such requests in the past and indeed has wilfully squandered opportunities to become the anvil to the hammer of Afghan and US forces in the past decade and a half. It is also unlikely that, going forward, Pakistan will quit picking and choosing between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. For assorted expediencies, the kid-glove treatment to the known jihadist-infested religious seminaries, the Afghan Taliban and the India-oriented jihadists did not change even after the APS attack and are likely to remain the sine qua non of the Pakistani attitude to jihadist terror even beyond the Badaber attack.
The writer can be reached at [email protected] and he tweets @mazdaki