A DIFFICULT POSITION
Pakistan’s leaders are in a difficult position. Like India, they are constantly subject to a slow drip of terrorist activity financed and supported from across a porous border; like the Taliban, they feel unable to go after domestic militants who are ideological comrades and militarily helpful.
The TTP has long been a thorn in Islamabad’s side, and it should not have been difficult to predict that the capture of Kabul by their fellow travellers, the Afghan Taliban, would allow them to step up their attacks on the Pakistani security establishment.
The absence of the United States has also changed things: Three previous leaders of the organisation have been killed by US drones, but the generals had to send in their own air force this time. It is uncertain if President Donald Trump’s offer to get this confrontation “solved very quickly” is sufficient compensation for the absence of US military support.
For the generals, the problem is intensified by the fact that they are feuding with the political leadership of the Pashtun-dominated border state of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The province’s chief minister, who remains loyal to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, has warned against fresh military operations in the area. The absence of a political outlet for locals’ frustrations will only strengthen the TTP. Islamabad’s adversarial approach to Afghan refugees – it is acting on a long-standing threat to deport millions of migrants, many of whom have been in the country for decades – has not helped either.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Taliban have grown more confident as the international community slowly accepts their position as representatives of the state. It was probably no coincidence that Pakistan chose to bomb Kabul while the Taliban foreign minister was in India for a week, meeting his counterpart S Jaishankar and being mobbed by students at the seminary where his particular stream of Islamic revivalism was born.
Source: CNA
