News Analysis: Recent terror wave poses new challenges for Pakistan

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, October 31, 2020
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by Misbah Saba Malik, Li Hao

ISLAMABAD, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- A surge in terrorist incidents has been witnessed recently in Pakistan with militants attacking soft targets like seminary and tough ones including trained soldiers. The recent wave of terrorism has raised concern among the public on the one hand and made the Pakistani government and military more resolute to remove the remaining traces of militancy from the country on the other hand.

In October, over 30 people including soldiers and seminary students were killed and more than 130 others got injured in separate terrorist attacks in the country's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh provinces. Pakistani experts and officials believe that there are multiple reasons behind the current string of terrorism, and the country has the capability to overcome the challenge through joint efforts of government, military and public.

The opposition parties in Pakistan are currently holding protest rallied across the country while the "external forces" including Pakistan's regional rivals are attempting to take the opportunity to weaken the country by resorting to terrorist attacks, said Mir Sherbaz Khetran, a research fellow with renowned think-tank Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.

Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province used to be sanctuaries of terrorists. The Pakistani military has conducted several major operations to eradicate militants and their sleeper cells in the tribal areas, which bore fruit and militancy was contained in the country to a great extent, but the off and on continuation of small attacks on law enforcement agencies (LEAs) still continue.

Recently, the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) of Pakistan told the country's Senate in a report that 3,990 terrorist incidents took place from January 2015 to September 2020, adding that 3,384 people including 1,457 personnel of the LEAs were killed and 8,436 others injured including 2,569 people from the LEAs.

However, in NACTA's report, a continuous decline in terrorist incidents was witnessed with 1,139 incidents in 2015, 785 in 2016, 741 in 2017, 584 in 2018, 482 in 2019 and 259 in the first nine months of 2020.

Speaking to Xinhua, Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political scientist and military analyst, said that 90 percent of terrorism had been controlled by the extensive armed offensive of the LEAs and Pakistan is trying to eliminate the remaining 10 percent by intelligence-based operations and monitoring of the potential extremist elements.

"Some of the militants were killed, and others fled to Afghanistan after military operations. They are very weak now, but sometimes they regroup and carry out attacks to demonstrate their presence. It is a challenge for intelligence agencies to stop these torn militant groups from resurging."

Currently, Pakistan is striving to remove its name from the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body, which placed it on the list in 2018 for not meeting the criteria of restricting terror financing and money laundering.

In a meeting of FATF held in October, the organization showed satisfaction over the progress made by Pakistan that has successfully complied with 21 out of the 27 action items, but asked the country to promptly complete the remaining action items by February 2021.

Talking to Xinhua on condition of anonymity, a former police chief of the country's northwest Peshawar city who currently works with an intelligence organization, said that the recent surge in terrorist attacks at the time when the country's performance is being evaluated by FATF is an attempt by the "regional rivals" to exert pressure on Pakistan in the forum by giving an impression that the country failed to take effective measures against terror financing due to which terrorist incidents keep on occurring in Pakistan.

"It is very important for Pakistan to get a clean chit from FATF, otherwise if it gets blacklisted, it will be isolated in financial terms in the world and attracting foreign direct and private investment to which the current government is paying a lot of attention, will become impossible. The recent terrorist incidents especially the one on the seminary is an open attempt to malign Pakistan for failing to provide security and stop terror financing," the official said.

The official said that the continued infiltration of terrorists into Pakistan from the country's northwestern border and consequent regrouping of terrorist groups especially in tribal districts, and orchestrating of terrorist activities by hostile intelligence agencies of foreign countries through their own elements as well as proxies are other major reasons of the current surge in terrorist activities.

"In the context of the Afghan peace process, the surge in terrorist activities may be used as a hedging tactic to pressurize Pakistan to continue nudging the Afghan Taliban to agree to a broad-based peace agreement instead of sidelining other stakeholders," the official added.

The official also termed poor community over-watch and lack of synergistic response from the LEAs or intelligence agencies major vulnerability which is being exploited by terrorist outfits to deteriorate law and order situation of Pakistan.

Meanwhile, to curb the recent surge of terrorist incidents, the LEAs and intelligence agencies across the country have been on high alert with the Pakistani security forces and police having killed and arrested several terrorists in October.

The official said that terrorism will be controlled in Pakistan because it is not so easy to carry out terrorist activities in the country as it used to be, due to efforts of the LEAs. "Border fencing with Afghanistan will also play a major role to control the penetration of militants into Pakistan through the border. There are high chances that the number of terrorist attacks will sharply decline in Pakistan after the completion of the border fencing."

The country's Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa had a meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday to discuss internal and external challenges faced by the country in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks, the Prime Minister Office said. During the meeting, Khan said that the recent efforts to stoke violence in Pakistan will fail and the entire nation is united against the cowardly acts of the enemy.

The meeting came a day after Bajwa expressed resolve to fight militancy until it meets its logical end. "The entire nation had demonstrated unprecedented unity in rejecting terrorists' narrative (in the past), and today also we are one under same passion and sentiments," Bajwa said. Enditem

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