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Pakistan’s failed purchase of peace

Monday’s terror attack on police cadets near Lahore has made this much clear: Pakistan’s descent into the abyss has not been slowed by its efforts to buy peace with its Islamist enemies, terror groups that have increasingly become arbiters of life and death. Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik has said elements linked to Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, the alleged architect of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, may have carried out the attack on the Manawan police training school. Others believe Punjab-based Islamist groups like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi could have executed it. Since January 1, 2009, groups like these have claimed the lives of at least 129 Pakistani civilians, leaving another 133 injured. Pakistan’s police and military have also suffered grievous losses of life and limb. Just in the week before the Monday attack, six civilians were killed when a 15-year-old terrorist blew himself up inside a seminary near Quetta.

Pakistan’s collective life has been scarred by appalling levels of violence for several years now. The plain truth is that its military, which more than President Asif Ali Zardari’s civilian government shapes strategic policy, remains unwilling to force a showdown with the jihadists. Instead, it is ceding large swathes of territory to the most dangerous among them, including Baitullah Mehsud. Pakistani citizens who only recently voted for a secular government have thus found themselves made subjects of tyrants armed both with the word of God and Kalashnikovs. In part, the Pakistan military establishment acts as it does because it finds the jihadists useful to furthering its objectives in India and Afghanistan. Last month saw the most intense infiltration in years across the Line of Control. Much of the infiltration wave was launched from bases that were shut down after the November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai but have now resumed operations. Proscribed organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad continue to operate freely in much of Pakistan. The government is yet to arrest several suspects wanted for the Mumbai attacks, and grant either India or the United States permission to question those individuals it claims to have held. Western policies, the French scholar Frédéric Grare has recently observed, have encouraged such behaviour. For years, the U.S. and its western allies overlooked the Pakistan Army’s patronage of jihadist groups in return for its counter-terrorism assistance. In effect, the military found itself enriched and empowered by problems it had created — and thus had good reason to create more. If Pakistan is to be pushed back from the precipice, this self-defeating strategy must be abandoned.

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