On 12 December 2023, in Daraban, Dera Ismail Khan, Tehrek-e Jihad Pakistan (TJP), a group affiliated to the Tehrek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), launched a suicide truck attack on the army’s check post consuming the lives of 23 soldiers. In response, Pakistan delivered a scathing demarche to the Afghan charge d’affaires and asked for an investigation and strict action against the perpetrators based in Afghanistan.
The situation reflects certain realities: first, the TTP is the mother organization which is spawning new terrorist groups. Second, the TTP terminated unilaterally the truce (and ceasefire) with Pakistan in November 2022, thereby opening the possibility for more attacks on Pakistan. Third, various militant groups affiliated to the TTP have shown their presence in Pakistan, for instance, in Mianwali, where the group attacked the air base in November 2023.
There is another dimension of realities. First, Pakistan is growing antagonism against the TTP and by extension against the Taliban government in Kabul. Second, Pakistan has been persistently exhorting the Taliban government in Kabul to take stringent action against the TTP. Thirdly, Pakistan is fast running out of patience to tolerate terrorist attacks on its land. In short, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are souring. Mutual confidence has hit rock bottom.
Pakistan is growing antagonism against the TTP and by extension against the Taliban government in Kabul.
As apparent, the Taliban government in Kabul tend not to pay heed to Pakistan’s concerns. It is arrogance personified. One of the reasons could be that the United States (US) kept Pakistan out of the loop of negotiations with the Taliban and selected Doha (Qatar) as the place to reconcile with the Taliban. The consequent US-Taliban deal (signed on 29 February 2020) initiated the departure of foreign forces to be completed on 15 August 2021. It was solely a US-Taliban arrangement. This is why the Taliban government feels not obliged by Pakistan.
It is known that Pakistan’s act of merging the former FATA area into the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) in 2018 (through the Twenty-Fifth Constitutional Amendment) annoyed the TTP. Similarly, Pakistan’s fencing of the Pak-Afghan border completed in 2022 added fuel to the fire. Together, both these steps annoyed many offering the TTP some support and acceptance in people opposed to these reforms.
There are certain internal dimensions of the issue as well. Pakistan has found the Afghan refugees taking part in political activities supporting a political party against the others in the streets. Lately, Lahore has become a battleground. The street politics destabilized Pakistan. Second, the Afghan refugees are found to have been involved in the smuggling of goods from Afghanistan and the transfer to dollars from Pakistan, thereby damaging Pakistan’s local manufacturing industry and exhausting foreign currency reserves – the double whammy. The smuggled items also remain out of the ambit of taxation, thereby breeding the black economy. Third, many Afghan refugees are found to have secured Pakistan’s National Identity Cards and even National Passports to travel in the world.
These three factors indicate that the Afghan refugees have gone beyond the given mandate of being refugees and that they need to be discouraged. Recently, Pakistan has started pushing the Afghan refugees back into Afghanistan. Against the recent political mayhem and economic turmoil, Pakistan’s decision has been abrupt to dislodge the Afghan refugees, invited resentment from the TTP and the Taliban government in Kabul.
Pakistan had been a proponent of the Afghan cause and yearned for peace in Afghanistan. However, delivering a derisive demarche to the Afghan representative means that things have gone bitter. The next step could be, as Pakistan has given a hint, to enter Afghanistan in hot pursuit and dismantle the bases of the TTP.
What Pakistan is trying to say is that Pakistan has been left with fewer choices to deal with the TTP – the mother organization sponsoring militant groups under various labels to enter Pakistan and carry out sabotage activities. Pakistan’s quota of tolerance is fast running out.
Pakistan is asking for stringent action against the TTP. Apparently, it is not possible. The TTP is a mirror version of the Taliban (Tehreke Taliban Afghanistan; TTA) which is ruling over Afghanistan. Both the TTP and the TTA share the same ideology of Islamic fundamentalism and implementation disregarding the age the world is passing through. Understandably, it may not be possible for the TTA (the Afghan Taliban) to fall hard on the TTP active against Pakistan.
This point raises the next question: What are the foreign policy choices left with Pakistan to ensure peace on its land? The question must be seen in the background of the frequency and intensity of terrorist activities which the TTP-sponsored groups have been executing in Pakistan. The activities show the resolve of the TTP to keep on finding gaps in the security network and launching attacks, especially when general elections are due in February 2024. Further, against the same background, a confrontation between Pakistan’s security forces and the Afghan Taliban is a possibility in the near future, especially when Pakistan opts for hot pursuit.
In this regard, a caveat for Pakistan is that if Pakistan avails itself of the choice of going in hot pursuit of Afghanistan, Pakistan would be violating Afghanistan’s sovereignty. By doing so, Pakistan may achieve its objective of dismantling the TTP bases, but Pakistan would establish a new precedent. That is, the sovereignty of a neighbouring country can be violated on the pretext of terrorism. The hot pursuit would be tantamount to taking the law into one’s own hands and settling an issue bilaterally, instead of taking the issue to a regional and international forum for resolution.
The hot pursuit comes with two implications. First, Afghanistan’s security forces could also enter Pakistan under one ruse or the other. Second, India would also find a reason to enter Pakistan’s space, as the Indian warplanes did on 26 February 2019 by conducting a bombing raid in Balakot, Mansehra, KPK.
In short, the hot pursuit would not only weaken Pakistan’s stance of respecting international boundaries but it would also invite more trouble, especially when India’s overwhelming presence in Afghanistan is a reality.
The writer is an analyst on national security and Counter-Terrorism. She tweets at @TA_Ranjha.