Security concerns

In a press talk on Tuesday, the director-general of ISPR, Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said that contacts between the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and militant Baloch organizations and foreign intelligence agencies have been proven. According to the ISPR DG, 436 terrorist incidents have occurred this year alone, in which 293 people were martyred and 523 injured. Security officials have also been martyred this year – 137 in total – while 117 have been wounded. During this period, security forces conducted 8,279 intelligence-based operations (IBOs), in which 1,535 terrorists were killed. Around 70 IBOs are being conducted daily. These numbers paint a grim picture of how terrorism has clawed its way back into Pakistan after several years of peace and calm. Rightly pointing out that terrorist organizations and their facilitators have no ideology, religion or faith, the ISPR DG also reminded the presser how militants and terrorists attack mosques, police, religious scholars, media persons and citizens.

It has been a rising concern among security analysts in Pakistan that after the fall of Kabul in August 2021 to the Afghan Taliban, there have been frequent terrorist incidents in Pakistan. In a briefing to parliamentarians before Eid, the army chief had rightly said that negotiations with the TTP in the past helped terrorists regroup in the country. It is also encouraging to see that the military and civilian leadership understand the reasons behind the sudden spike in terrorist incidents and are not mincing their words. In an interview with VoA earlier this month, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had warned that if the Afghan government did not stop the TTP from using Afghan soil for carrying out terrorist activities in Pakistan, “at some point we’ll have to...resort to some measures, which will definitely – wherever [terrorists] are, their sanctuaries on Afghan soil – we’ll have to hit them”. During his presser on Tuesday, the ISPR DG also revealed that the suicide attack on a mosque in Peshawar in January was carried out by the banned militant group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar on the TTP’s orders and that the attacker belonged to Afghanistan. These are serious charges. According to media reports, Afghan interim Foreign Minister Ameer Khan Muttaqi is expected to visit Pakistan in the next few weeks. Some say this development comes after Khawaja Asif’s recent interview. It is important that when this visit takes place, the government makes it clear to the Afghan Taliban that there will be zero tolerance for cross-border terrorism. However, it must be said that threatening to invade another country’s soil is a statement that should not be made lightly.

Pakistan fought a long, hard and bloody battle against terrorists and was able to successfully eliminate terrorism after a concerted effort by our security forces. At a time when Pakistan is facing a polycrisis of epic proportions, it cannot allow terrorists to weasel their way back into the country. Pakistani security forces have already informed the Supreme Court about their engagement in rooting out terrorism and about the security situation in the country. However, the top court is insisting that elections take place in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa before the general elections in October. In response to a question, the ISPR representative said yesterday that the Ministry of Defence had already given a briefing to the Supreme Court regarding the deployment of troops for elections, which was based on “ground realities”. Security experts say that it would not be possible to engage the security forces in the elections first in two provinces and then across the country when general elections take place. The security situation seems precarious in the country and the chances of elections under the current circumstances look bleak at best.