NEW DELHI: The lull in headline-grabbing terror attacks appears to be over. But do the recent suicide attack on the Bagram air base outside of Kabul, a key United States military installation in Afghanistan, and the failed car bombing in New York City’s Times Square mean that the “war on terror” (a phrase that the Obama administration has deliberately sought to avoid) has reignited?
Although America and the West may have felt as if jihadist terrorism was declining in its ferocity, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, no such feeling of false security ever took hold. Indeed, the question in this region is not whether the war on terror can be wound down, but whether Pakistan, which in many ways has become Islamic terrorism’s nexus, is doing all that it can to fight it.
Here is a simple formula for assessing a country’s approach to combating terrorism: credibility + transparency + integrity of approach = legitimacy and effectiveness. Let us apply this formula to Pakistan.
Analyzing the failed Times Square bombing, Ambassador Zafar Hilaly, a well-respected former Pakistani diplomat, wrote “that nowhere else today have so many armed foreign outlaws been able to use the territory of a sovereign state to wage war for so long, and with such impunity, against other countries. [Those] who roam …unchallenged have become … partners … in a war against the country itself.” The Taliban in Pakistan, Hilaly concluded, have become an “autonomous force beyond … control.”
Pakistan, after joining the US, as an “ally” in the war on terror now appears to be paying a high price domestically for becoming a “rented state.” A vast majority of Pakistan’s citizens deeply resent America’s presence and influence in their country. This growing alienation probably played a considerable part in US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying that deteriorating security in nuclear-armed Pakistan “pose(d) a mortal” threat to the US.
Following the Times Square bombing attempt, Clinton issued an even harsher judgment: “if a terror attack like the New York bombing were to be successful and found to have originated from that country, there would be very severe consequences.” Clinton also said that Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are known to “some” in Pakistan.
Eric Holder, the US attorney general, was even more explicit about the Times Square episode: “We know that they (the Pakistan Taliban) helped direct it. And I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence that they helped to finance it. They were intimately involved in this plot.”
US President Barack Obama has termed the Pakistan Taliban a “cancer” in the heart of Pakistan, and its origins are not shrouded in mystery. In December 2007, about 13 militant groups came together to form the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and chose Baitullah Mehsud as their leader. Mehsud was reported killed by an airstrike from a US drone in August 2009.
The TTP has an estimated 30,000-35,000 adherents from all of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the near lawless regions where the writ of Pakistan’s government barely reaches. The TTP’s stated objectives include jihad against the Pakistani army, enforcement of sharia law across the country, and a plan to unite with the Afghan Taliban to fight the NATO forces in that country. The failed Times Square attack demonstrates the TTP’s growing transnational ambitions (but also that the group’s reach exceeds its grasp, at least for now).
Despite a supposed offensive by Pakistan’s government against the TTP in some of the tribal regions, a recent documentary reported that the group is now recruiting young children to carry out suicide attacks. Indeed, there were nearly 60 suicide attacks in Pakistan in 2009, compared to only two in 2002. According to Brian Fishman, a terrorism expert at the US Military Academy at West Point, the growth in suicide attacks poses a severe challenge to Pakistan, for a “whole milieu of militant groups, and individuals have come together ideologically … to embark on mission(s) that Al Qaeda set(s) for them.”
Bruce Riedel, the Afghanistan-Pakistan policy coordinator on Obama’s National Security Council, stresses that Al Qaeda’s growing cooperation with the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other like-minded groups is the most dangerous development in the effort to reduce global terrorism. “The notion that you can somehow selectively resolve the Al Qaeda problem while ignoring the larger jihadist sea in which [Al Qaeda] swims has failed in the past and will fail in the future,” Riedel argues.
Given this analysis, however, Obama’s “Afghanistan-oriented” policy is doomed to failure. The US would certainly like Pakistan to eliminate the leadership of the Taliban, both Afghan and Pakistani, but will not lean too heavily on Pakistan’s rulers to accomplish this goal. The price to be paid for this political squeamishness is exacted in blood.
Ambassador Hilaly has pointed to the way forward: “To succeed today, it (is) essential that first and foremost the power of the armed groups within Pakistan be broken. Without an all-out effort to do so, the terrorized population will not lend us support.” But the US, let alone the Pakistani government, may not have the will to act with such determination.
Jaswant Singh, a former Indian foreign minister, finance minister, and defense minister, is the author of Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence. This commentary is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with Project Syndicate, www.project-syndicate.org.
