The carnage in Quetta

Just as the nation was being convinced by claims that the backbone of militant outfits in Pakistan had been broken, the attack in Quetta brought such assertions into question.

The barbaric and unfortunate incident has eliminated an entire generation of top lawyers in Balochistan’s provincial capital. Given the enormity of the situation and the incompetent manner in which the state responded – with empty statements and hollow condolences in the aftermath of the attack – the anguish and frustration of the masses was justified. However, a few things need to be put into perspective and analysed dispassionately.

Conceptually, military operations (combing or intelligence-led) can only improve the security situation for a short period of time, without restoring peace. Even the most efficient and successful counterterrorism operations can only bring the frequency of violent incidents down but not their incidence altogether.

This is exactly what is happening in Pakistan. Unfortunately, this is likely to remain unchanged in the foreseeable future: violence will exist in different forms, shapes, and manifestations with varying gaps in their occurrence, unless social, political, economic and ideological motivators of such violence are not addressed.

In other words, the attack in Quetta and similar incidents in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan have exposed the premature success claims of Operation Zarb-e-Azb and stretched the efficacy of a heavily militarised counterterrorism approach to its limits. Unfortunately, rather than learning about what needs to be done further, we are repeating tried and tested formulas: extension in Rangers’ powers in Karachi and Sindh; acceleration and intensification of combing operations in Balochistan; fencing the Pak-Afghan border in Fata and expanding Zarb-e-Azb beyond North Waziristan.

Perhaps our over-simplistic assumption is that repeating this approach ad infinitum will eventually deliver peace. The problem is that when our best bet against extremism and terrorism is exposed, we trip and either try to externalise internal failures or conveniently blame the political leadership or the civilian law-enforcement institutions for ‘security lapses’.

As such, the attack in Quetta took place not because the National Action Plan was not implemented judiciously, combing operations were not carried out, or intelligence coordination among different law-enforcement agencies was not ideal.

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned factors, the trigger factors of the conflict which can spark violence at the slightest ignition or eruption are still present. To put it differently, these operations have only swept the surface – resulting in a temporary calm in a highly volatile and fluid environment where an ethno-separatist movement, sectarian militants, and transnational militant networks like Al-Qaeda and IS are operating and competing simultaneously.

Another confusing factor is the apparently conflicting responsibility claims of the attack by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) and IS-Khurasan. This indicates that there are some gaps in our understanding of these groups and their relationship and alliances with each other which begs us to remap the militant landscape, update our knowledge of these groups and fill existing gaps for accurate threat assessments.

The question that arises is whether JuA is now formally aligned with IS-Khorasan, or whether the two militant groups are informally cooperating and coordinating their attacks in Pakistan.

In the past, JuA has worked with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Jandullah. Therefore, a cooperation or even formal allegiance by the group to IS will not be surprising. IS and JuA have identical ideological outlooks and the reputation for being extremely brutal and ruthless. In retrospect, JuA separated its path from TTP after the inception and rise of IS in Iraq which had inspired the JuA commander Abdul Wali aka Khalid Omar Khurasani, arguably the most dreaded militant commander in South Asia.

The Quetta attack bears the signature of IS-style attacks like those witnessed in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa. Since early 2015 some attacks in Pakistan have been claimed in the name of IS, like the killings of the Ismaili Shia community in a bus attack in Karachi in 2014. However, this is for the first time that Amaq, the official news agency of the terror group, has owned an attack in the country.

It seems that the terror outfit is formally opening a new front in South Asia. If true, this could mark the beginning of a new bloody phase in Pakistan’s fight against violent extremism. Pakistan’s fight against militancy is far from over and needs a combination of hard and soft approaches by evolving smart approaches to counter-extremism and terrorism rather than solely relying on military operations.

The attack is a wakeup call and asks from us now to revisit our approach to internal security and understand the linkages between internal security with regional and global geopolitics. Pakistan will not be able to restore peace in isolation as long as a regional roadmap for countering extremism and terrorism is not evolved. This is why putting an end to our differences with Afghanistan and restarting the stalled Afghan peace process is so crucial to Pakistan’s internal security situation. Also, IS is emerging as a long-term security threat at the regional level and will require Pakistan to work with other stakeholders including China, Russia, Iran, Central Asia Republics (CARs) and its South Asian counterparts.

Pakistan’s redundant approach to internal security, rooted in the cold war mindset, has not been helping its cause. The world is changing rapidly and our political and military leadership need to show more flexibility in their decision-making, our diplomatic corps have to be more imaginative and our civil society along with the intelligentsia and academia need to come up with local answers (solutions and models) which can be used as an antidote to violent extremism. We have a generational struggle ahead of us.

The writer is an associate researchfellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.

Email: isabasit@ntu.edu.sg