Image Credit: Reuters
This week saw intense military clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani forces struck targets across Afghanistan in retaliation for terrorism against Pakistan perpetrated by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, an Islamist group vowing to overthrow the Pakistani government and impose the same harsh version of sharia law seen in Afghanistan.
Over the course of the last few months, Pakistan has experienced terror attacks attributed to Tehreek-i-Taliban. These include a suicide bombing at a police academy that left 23 dead, and obvious and public attack on the authority of the Pakistani state. This comes off the back of other attacks targeting the security forces, including an attack on a Pakistani military convoy that killed six soldiers on October 5th.
Both the Taliban and Pakistan’s government have made claims and counter claims about the recent clashes. On the one hand, the Taliban claim to have killed 58 Pakistani soldiers, with Pakistan countering that only 23 had died. Furthermore, there has been confusion about border crossings, with both sides claiming to have seized control. Social media has even seen users sharing modified maps showing Pakistan appearing to take Afghan territory and establish a “New Durand Line” border.
The Pakistani state and media typically refer to Tehreek-i-Taliban as “Fitna Al Khawarij”, a religiously-charged name based on a sect of Muslims in early Islamic history. In British terms, this naming would be like the British state referring to the IRA in Northern Ireland as “Papists”. While this would be extremely odd in a western context, in a devout Muslim country like Pakistan, this naming convention only heightens the stakes, with the Pakistani state essentially declaring Tehreek-i-Taliban not just terrorists, but heretics.
The violent clashes mark a sharp departure in relations between the Taliban and Pakistan. The previously warm relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban stretches back to the 1980s, when Pakistani intelligence supplied arms and funds to the mujahedeen rebels who were fighting the Soviets. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, Pakistan was one of only three countries on earth to recognise the Taliban government.
For decades, the country’s government have stirred up Islamism as an animating force in both domestic and foreign policy. This has included training, funding, and arming Islamist militants, and the Taliban offered Pakistan expertise and a secure base to do this. Pakistan allowed the Haqqani network to use it as a secure base for attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had long played a double game, claiming to support the coalition while simultaneously backing Islamist groups that were fighting it.
Islamist groups backed by Pakistan include Lashkar e Taiba, a group responsible for the Mumbai massacre in 2008 killing 175 people. The same group were also implicated in attacks in Kashmir April this year, killing 26 people.
The attacks on tourists by Lashkar e Taiba provoked a decisive series of strikes into Pakistan by India, and the attacks, codenamed Operation Sindoor, were a huge embarrassment to the Pakistani military elite. Attacks in the contested line of control in Kashmir is one thing, but strikes into Pakistan itself have embarrassed the military. It also sent the message that Pakistan’s military cannot defend the country, provoking Tehreek-i-Taliban to launch its latest attacks.
For Pakistan, the situation with Afghanistan is worrying. Pakistan is already next door to India, whose conventional military capacities and demographic advantages threaten Pakistan. The last thing Pakistan wants or needs is for its northern and eastern borders to become as potentially vulnerable as its eastern border with India. Decades of riding the tiger of militant Islamism has now come back to bite Pakistan. As they say, when you ride the tiger, it is not always easy to dismount without getting bitten.
Michael McManus is Director of Research at The Henry Jackson Society
