Pakistan pays a heavy price for nurturing terror. Can it destroy the killing machine now?

Relatives mourn at the funeral of Mohammed Ali Khan,15,one of the students killed in the Peshawar school attack; Courtesy: ReutersPeshawar. Terror. The rhyme is as much a cruel coincidence as it is tragic. The capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, one of South Asia's oldest cities and an ancient centre of learning, has suffered massively at the hands of terrorists since Pakistan got embroiled in the Afghan jihad nearly 35 years ago. But even for a city so used to the blood of its innocents being spilled, the horror of December 16 was incomparable: at least 132 students and nine staff members of the Army Public School and College (APSC) mowed down in cold blood by Taliban attackers on what should have been just another day at school. One of Pakistan's deadliest attacks and the world's worst terrorist assault on children after the 2004 Beslan school massacre in Russia."Terror jolts Pakistan" was not just a front page banner headline but a reflection of the national outrage sparked by the massacre. But in some senses it was also an obvious and not unknown emotion in a country that has supped and gambled with Islamist militants and been schizophrenic to the alarm they frequently trigger. More than 50,000 people have been killed since Pakistan joined the war on terrorism following the al Qaeda attacks on the US in 2001. And like many times in the past, Pakistanis have called on the government to take decisive action to put down the Islamist insurgency.The difference this time, at least in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, seems to be in the response of the Pakistani establishment. Shaken by Peshawar's Terror Tuesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to avenge "every drop of the blood of our martyred children". As a first step towards urgently taking on the insurgency, he announced the lifting of a six-year-old moratorium on capital punishment, which is thought to have emboldened terrorists to carry out brazen attacks with impunity.In a much more significant move, Sharif declared that Pakistan would stop making a distinction between "good and bad Taliban" and claimed that the country was united to defeat terrorism and a counter-terrorism plan would be formulated in a week's time. The resolve is seen as a reflection of the outrage on the streets. "After this attack, I don't see any sympathy left for the Taliban among the people," says Rahimullah Yusufzai, the Peshawarbased editor of The News daily and an expert on militancy. "Everybody now talks of revenge." Ordinary Pakistanis share the sentiment. "If these beasts are not tackled sternly, they will turn Pakistan into another Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan," says Rauf Khalid, who runs a garments shop in Islamabad's Aabpara Market.Yusufzai anticipates intensified military operations against the militants in their strongholds in the lawless tribal belt along the Afghanistan border, long seen as the epicentre of global terrorism. Other commentators say the extremists have penetrated the basic fabric of Pakistani society and it needs a robust strategy to turn the tide. But the inevitable questions follow. Is this the decisive flashpoint that will force Pakistan to abandon its ambiguous policies on terror and go after the Frankenstein's monster? Will the civilian, military and religious establishments truly come together to purge the insurgents? Is Pakistan willing to abandon militants it has long used as proxies to gain influence in Afghanistan and fuel the insurgency in Kashmir? Or is this yet another episodic outpouring that will fade with time, until the next bloodbath?Homegrown MonsterUnder pressure from the US, Pakistan launched an offensive-officially called 'Zarb-e-Azb'-against the Taliban in their bastion of North Waziristan tribal region in June, reportedly killing more than 1,800 militants. But the school attack in Peshawar demonstrated the Taliban's ability to strike vulnerable targets across the country at will.Peshawar lies next door to Khyber, another tribal area where the military has launched separate operations to hunt down militants who fled the North Waziristan offensive. Analysts say the growing public anger could force these operations to be extended to other tribal regions in the coming weeks.Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif and head of the ISI spy agency Lt-Gen Rizwan Akhtar rushed to Afghanistan to coordinate efforts against the militants who operate with impunity on both sides of the long, porous border. Pakistani officials maintain that the Taliban opposed to Pakistan enjoy safe havens in Afghanistan and orchestrate attacks from there. Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, is suspected of hiding in Afghanistan's eastern province of Kunar.Traditionally, the civilian leadership has had virtually no say in security and key foreign policy issues such as ties with Afghanistan, India and the US as well as the defence policy, as the military exclusively handles these. With the financial support of the US and Saudi Arabia, the security establishment nurtured Islamist militants to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, many of these militant groups joined the insurgency in Kashmir.Though Pakistan officially abandoned support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after joining the US-led war on terror in 2001, the Pakistani establishment is known to have maintained support for anti-India groups as well as the so-called "good Taliban" to preserve its "strategic interests" in Afghanistan. The militants termed as "bad Taliban" turned against Pakistan after the shift in its policy and began an insurgency. This homegrown insurgency intensified as these Taliban mounted a campaign of attacks across the country after the military action at Lal Masjid, a major militant bastion in the heart of Islamabad, in 2007.Time to strikePakistan's military operations over the years are said to have targeted antistate militants and spared the "good Taliban". Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan's de facto foreign minister, sparked a controversy in November when he maintained that the "good Taliban" battling the US are not Pakistan's headache. "When the US attacked Afghanistan, all those trained and armed by us were pushed towards Pakistan. Some of them were dangerous for us and some were not. Why must we make enemies of them all?" he was quoted as saying. Aziz's remarks, made in an interview to the BBC's Urdu service, came despite the army's repeated assertions that the Zarb-e-Azb operation would target militants of all hues.Analysts say Pakistan has no option now but to pursue militants without any discrimination if it wants to eliminate Islamist insurgency. "The chapter of 'good' and 'bad' Taliban should be closed forever," says retired generalturned-security analyst Talat Masood.But analysts also say the terrorists cannot be defeated by military means alone and that the political leadership needs to join hands and mobilise public opinion against them. Pakistani politicians have often been reluctant to condemn Taliban atrocities for fear of a backlash. Imran Khan, the former cricketer whose party stood second in the general election last year and now rules Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has been dubbed "Taliban Khan" for his opposition to Islamabad's support for the war on terror. Khan has maintained that the Taliban insurgency is fuelled by the American "occupation" of Afghanistan and has urged his government to open talks with homegrown militants.In fact, some provincial ministers from Khan's party are even reported to be paying extortion money to ensure their safety from Taliban gangs. In recent months, Khan has focused his attention on staging big protest rallies to force the Nawaz Sharif government to quit over allegations of election rigging.But after the Peshawar massacre, he withdrew his call for a countrywide shutdown against the government and attended the all-parties conference convened by the prime minister.A man comforts a young boy standing at the hospital bedside of his schoolmate injured in the attackAnalysts say Pakistan's leaders must capitalise on the anti-Taliban sentiment generated by the attack and go all out against religious extremism. Sharif's declaration that there would be no differentiation between "good and bad Taliban" is a milestone in itself as it is the first such public affirmation by Islamabad, they say. But whether this marks a paradigm shift, a 180 degree turn, is too early to conclude. "It is an opportune time to turn the tide against the militants if our leaders succeed in mobilising public opinion," says Masood.Zahid Hussain, security analyst and author of Frontier Pakistan: The struggle with militant Islam says Sharif's statement indicates a shift. "I think this policy is articulated by the PM himself because he is under a lot of public pressure to do something against these groups. The army will go along with the government because after this incident there is a popular demand that this problem be fixed. The army is likely to take action against these groups in coordination with Afghanistan and the visit of the army chief to Kabul is an indicator of that." Pakistan and the rest of the subcontinent are keeping their fingers crossed.To tweet on this story, use #PeshawarTerrorTo read more, get your copy of India Today here.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Dec 19, 2014 00:03 IST--- ENDS ---

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Pakistan pays a heavy price for nurturing terror. Can it destroy the killing machine now?

Pakistan pays a heavy price for nurturing terror. Can it destroy the killing machine now, asks Sajjad Khan.

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