Afghanistan and Pakistan; A Joint Struggle against Terrorism
December 16th is an unpleasant day in the history of Pakistan. On December 16th 1971 the Pakistani Army lost battle in the Eastern Pakistan, and General Niazai submitted his arms and weapons to the Indian Army Commander General Arura.
If we are to believe coincident, it seems that exactly 43 years after the incident of the loss of the battle in the Eastern Pakistan, on the same date, 16th December 2014, some criminals by the name of Islam and Jihad attacked a school in Warsak of Peshawar, in which 141 students, teachers, and the principal of the school, who was a woman killed.
The Pakistani Taliban Group led by Mullah Fazlullah took responsibility of the massacre, and the spokesman of the group said that they have done it to avenge the killing of children and civilians in Waziristan, who were killed by the Pakistani Forces.
So it is not improper for the Pakistani media and politicians to count it as the worst incident in the modern history of Pakistan after the fall of Dhaka.
Unjustifiable Crime:
Even if the Pakistani forces have been killing innocent people in Waziristan operation, handling, reciprocity and killing those who had no connection with the killing and war, is unacceptable by any standard and it is an unjustifiable crime. It means acknowledging that the crimes of the Americans to avenge the victims of September eleventh incident pulled troops to Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, and the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims who had no connection with the incident of September eleventh, poured. Those who killed innocent people in Peshawar of Pakistan, not only committed a great crime, but somehow considered the crime of the U.S. after the incident of September eleven as justified.
Good Taliban, Bad Taliban:
Pakistani media have criticized the policies of the previous government of Pakistan against the Taliban and even Nawaz Sharif says that “Good Taliban” and “Bad Taliban” does not make sense and they will take actions against all of the Taliban. The Pakistani analysts believe that the terms of Good and Bad Taliban were invented by Maulana Fazul Rahman and Maulana Sami-ul-Haq. In February 2014, member of national assembly and member of Muslim League of Pakistan by the name of Jawed Ibrahim Paracha said that they don’t have any problem with “Patriotic” Taliban. Though, today, Pakistani media criticize the previous activities of the Pakistan officials in the shadow of the massacre incident. But there is also another mistake of the Pakistan Officials regarding the incident which is noteworthy:
When after America’s invasion of Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban took refuge in the tribal areas of Pakistan; TTP gradually took shape as a subset of the Afghan Taliban. From the beginning, the ISI tried to prevent unification of the Pakistani Taliban. The Pakistani Army signed peace agreement with some of them and with some others started war. Today, according to the statistics, the Pakistani Taliban have been divided into 24 groups, including three main groups.
The plurality of these groups was problematic while the Pakistani government asked them to initiate peace talks. Plurality of the groups led to the conditions of small extremist groups that were not acceptable to the government of Pakistan, finally the peace talks faced failure; because those extremist groups were even asking for the cancelation of Pakistani Constitution.
On the other hand, the plurality of groups led to mysterious hands to play some ignorant and stupid activities by some of those groups, so they will do some massacre crimes, and the Taliban also wanted to show themselves as a strong and collective group, in order to avoid internal conflicts within those groups, they stayed silent against those massacre crimes and took responsibilities of all those crimes. Finally, even those who were supporting the mentioned group left them alone, to the extent that the people like Hafiz Sayeed, who are the leader of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, also asked the execution of the Taliban prisoners.
From Waziristan to Sri Lanka:
Regarding the incident of Peshawar, the Pakistani politicians became united and said that if Sri Lanka was able to eliminate LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and was able to win the war against them, Pakistan also can reach its aim. Now the question raises either the conditions of Sri Lanka and Pakistan are similar or not?
The Tamil Tigers were involved in a frontier war in a peninsula, where their siege was possible. With all those limitations, their war with the central government took 26 years. But the shelters of the Taliban are located in deserts between the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders, which give them chance of escape from one country to another and their chance of siege is limited.
If Pakistan is honest about elimination of the Taliban, it is not possible that only the Pakistani Army will eliminate them, maybe because of the mentioned reason General Rahill Sharif and the head of CIA General Rezwal Akhtar reached Kabul the day after the incident of Peshawar. Nawaz Sharif, on his speech of December 17th, said that they agreed with Ashraf Ghani about the joint struggle against terrorism.
Possibility of Joint Operation Between the two Countries:
It seems that both the countries have decided to start operations against the Taliban in both sides of Durand Line. The Pakistani officials explained that the military forces of both the countries will not enter the land of the opposite country during their operations.
So far, the official view of the Afghan Government is not clear about it, but it seems that Pakistan is more interested to operations in Kunar, because it is said that the leader of Pakistani Taliban Maulana Fazlullah is hided there.
Lack of trust between Afghanistan and Pakistan created problems for both the countries to come to an agreement in short term. General Rahill Sharif, in his last trip to Kabul, provided proofs to Afghanistan that the Afghan land is used for the incident of Peshawar. Afghanistan also provided similar proofs for Pakistan, which they rejected.
The Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that both the countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, agreed on the joint operations against the Taliban in both sides of Durand line, but the Afghan Government says that they signed agreement only for mutual coordination in the operation in both sides of Durand Line.
Therefore, there is still lack of trust between both the countries, even if recent events could cause the coordination of military operations between the parties; it would be a valuable achievement.
The End