How the US-Pakistan alliance in the 'War on Terror' hijacked itself

After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power, Pakistan should move away from the Western counter-terrorism (CT) discourse, which has spawned during the last two decades of the so-called “War on Terror" (WOT). 

In its place, Pakistan should forge an indigenous security narrative to create much-needed public ownership to confront extremism. 

Terrorism in Pakistan predates the WOT and  it did not end with the US exit from Afghanistan. On the contrary, due to the WOT and a host of other factors, including Pakistan’s dichotomous CT and regional policies, terrorism and its underlying causes have worsened. 

Today, radical and extremist outfits are more entrenched in Pakistan’s political landscape than at any point in its history. To reverse the extremist tide, Pakistan should take a long view of the problem, for which an indigenous discourse with strong public ownership is essential.

Concurrently, Pakistan will also have to address its national identity crisis that potentially opens the room for radical and extremist groups to (re)define its national identity in line with their self-styled narrow worldviews. Arguably, a doctrinal shift in internal security policies  would only provide a temporary respite, as witnessed in the past, but addressing the perennial question concerning Pakistan’s national identity is necessary for a long-term solution. 

Without popular support, reversing the rising tide of extremism would remain an uphill task in Pakistan. In 2015, following the massacre of 153 schoolchildren and staff members in Peshawar by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a consensus, enshrined in a 20-point road map called the National Action Plan (NAP), was devised to fight extremism. However, the implementation on the NAP has dissipated in the last few years.   

One of the WOT’s major lessons is that the kinetic capabilities are necessary, but not sufficient means to overcome extremism. A range of non-kinetic measures within the myriad local conflicts is equally important for devising holistic policy responses. 

So far, Pakistan’s internal security policies have confronted extremist groups through kinetic measures. Now Pakistan should devise the much-needed non-kinetic approaches to address the root causes of extremism and radicalism. 

The blowback of narratives

The security discourse that developed in the shadow of the WOT either treated extremism in Pakistan as an outcome of its alliance with the US or the negative spillover of the Afghan conflict. To be precise, Pakistan provided logistical support to the US and NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan and granted basing rights of the Shamsi and Shahbaz airbases to the US in Balochistan and Sindh provinces for drone operations. 

During this period, domestic measures taken against extremism, such as stationing troops on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and madrassa reforms, in Pakistan were viewed as the war of necessity imposed by the US in return for the economic and security assistance. Every US “do more” demand from Pakistan strengthened the local perception that the latter was fighting the former’s war along its northwestern borderlands.

Furthermore, the post-9/11 Western discourses, barring some exceptions, stereotypically viewed Pakistan as a security threat, an enabler and abettor, or worse, the sponsor of extremism. This cliched characterisation of Pakistan in the Western discourses undermined the efforts to evolve an indigenous security narrative against extremism. 

For instance, the US drone strikes in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), now merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, violated Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty and strengthened the extremists’ narrative that the Pakistan Army was doing America's bidding. Especially, the civilian casualties in the US drone attacks in the ex-FATA region undermined the writ of the Pakistani state. Hence, the evolution of an indigenous security discourse remained hostage to Pakistan’s conflict-prone alliance with the US.

As opposed to Western discourse – which portrays Pakistan as a security threat – the fact of the matter is that Pakistanis are the main victims of militant violence emanating from the country. In the last two decades, as many as 80,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives to terrorism, in addition to incurring a whopping $150 billion in economic losses. 

This is not to suggest that the Pakistani state’s ill-considered policies in Afghanistan since the 1980s have not played a part in promoting a culture of religious intolerance and militancy in the country. Undoubtedly, the flawed state policies remain the most critical variable of the myriad challenges of extremism and radicalism confronting Pakistan today. 

However, the situation has evolved significantly in the last twenty years. Therefore, without factoring in the local contexts and nuances of a complex and diverse threat landscape, the monocausal explanations blaming state policies alone for all that is wrong in the Pakistani society is over simplistic and reductionist. While owning this uncomfortable reality, the underlying purpose of devising an indigenous security discourse in Pakistan should be to initiate a bold debate in the country following the US exit from Afghanistan.

In retrospect, the WOT had a paradoxical impact on Pakistan’s diverse threat landscape. On the one hand, it made the threat landscape more complex, lethal and pervasive. For instance, in the last twenty years, the number of militant and insurgent groups has increased in Pakistan. Extremists have permeated all segments of Pakistani society. Unlike the conventional view that extremists and terrorists are drawn from Pakistan’s peripheral tribal areas and primarily educated in madrassas, recent trends have underscored the ingresses of extremism in Pakistan’s educated, urban middle and upper-middle classes as well. 

On the other hand, the WOT compelled Pakistan to reorient the training manuals, strategic doctrines and threat perceptions of its security forces from conventional warfare against India to fight asymmetric conflict against a plethora of non-state violent actors in the ex-FATA region and Balochistan. 

Also, Pakistan established a well-defined institutional infrastructure to deal with extremism. For instance, Pakistan has created the National Counter Terrorism Authority in 2009, the country’s premium CT body, and Counter Terrorism Departments in the police department  at the provincial levels along with passing new laws to facilitate the fight against militancy.   

One step back

The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan has emboldened  Pakistani extremist groups. Some of them have already become aggressive in their activism, bordering on vigilantism and violence,  demanding a Taliban-style theocratic rule in Pakistan. In a way, the Taliban victory in Afghanistan is redefining Pakistan’s conflict-prone relationship with a range of religious and radical groups.

In the age of social media, Pakistan would find it difficult to gloss over the dichotomies and paradoxes which emanate from its convoluted identity crisis. As long as the jury is out on what was the purpose of Pakistan’s creation, an Islamic or a moderate Muslim state, the country will recurringly witness Shariah movements such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi, trying to violently redefine the country’s national character in line with their narrow worldviews. 

Consequently, Pakistan’ efforts against extremism will move in circles unless the question of national identity is not addressed holistically.  

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan is both a challenge and an opportunity for Pakistan. The efforts to reverse the tide against rising extremism will require a generational effort under a whole-of-state-and-society approach. In this generational effort, youth, which is 64 percent of Pakistan’s population and is expected to rise to 230 million by 2030 and 280 million by 2050, should be the core focus.