Pakistan’s Future In Jeopardy

By Farooq Ganderbali

The recent attack in Pakistan has clearly showed it to the world that Pakistan has become the punching bag for terrorists. The country is being repeatedly dealt with blows and in reaction it just swings from one end to other.

There is no war on Pakistan and nobody from outside is attacking it. The country is simply at war with itself. It has reached this point just by the ill gotten policies of its rulers. The sins of the past are visiting Pakistan. All the Frankensteins created by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence are now attacking their creator. Buoyed by gaining sway over Swat, the Taliban is on a high. And, they would try to advance deeper into Pakistan in a bid to establish their writ. In this, they would get ample support from groups like Al Qaeda, LeT and Jaish which espouse global jihad. This would destabilise the region and make it more insecure than it already is.

India has been drawing attention to the dangerous situation in Pakistan over the last so many years. All that India had predicted about Pakistan is coming truer in every respect. Even US is affirming to the fact and working in collusion with India to stabilise the region. While unveiling the US Af-Pak policy last week, President Obama announced annihilation of al Qaeda its principle objective. Days before Obama announced his government’s Af-Pak policy, AP reported that Afghanistan’s intelligence chief had accused ISI of helping Taliban militants to carry out attacks in his country. Afghanistan has repeatedly called on Pakistan to sever all links with the Taliban, which came to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s with significant support from the ISI.

Pakistan seems to be in no mood to change its policies regarding using terror as a tool of foreign policy. They have destroyed Afghanistan by using this tool and are now killing their own country. In spite of Pakistan now facing the brunt of terror attacks, ISI’s patronage to Taliban and motley terror groups it nurtured to bolster its anti-India mission of death by a thousand cuts is unlikely to wilt away any time soon. Even though the political establishment of Pakistan is uncomfortable about this truth about the ISI, they hardly have any control over the agency.

The assault yesterday on a police school and a wave of spectacular attacks underline Pakistan’s weakness and the danger posed by Islamist militants to the future of the nuclear-armed nation. Around 35 people were in this brazen attack which turned Lahore into a war zone capital.

According to terror experts the latest attack was a defiant message to US President Barack Obama, who has put Pakistan at the heart of the fight against al-Qa’ida, tripling US aid in a strategy that is aimed at reversing the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Obama recently termed the violence in Pakistan “a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within.” He asked Islamabad to demonstrate its commitment to eradicating the extremists for the sake its own country.

The terrorists want to tell Obama and his Western allies they cannot be contained as Obama desired, and are still as powerful and strong as they have been for years now. The attack proves the weakness of the state institutions and shows that a mere half-a-dozen professionally trained terrorists can take anyone hostage and occupy any establishment they like.

In most of Pakistan major cities urban terrorism is in vogue. The Lahore police academy attack was similar to March 3 assault on Sri Lanka’s cricket team, in which seven members of the cricket squad were injured.
The second attack in the Lahore area this month indicates that the net of violence is spreading.

According to media reports these terrorists have killed 1700 people in less than two years in Pakistan in number of attacks. And the intensity and frequency is increasing with every passing day. The terrorists pose a direct threat to Pakistan’s state and society. Such attacks again prove that there seems to be lack of governance in Pakistan.

These repeated attacks show total failure on the part of the Government’s law-enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies. Pakistan’s future is at massive risk.

Pakistan shelters a number of extremist groups, spanning banned Islamist organisations like Lashkar e Toiba in the east, to the Taliban and al-Qa’ida in the west.

Top officials in the US, Pakistan’s key ally, have openly accused elements in the country’s powerful intelligence agency of abetting al-Qa’ida.
The sooner Pakistan understands the dangers from terrorism, the better it will be for them. World can enhance its security to minimise the effects of terrorism emanating from Pakistan. But with isolated Pakistan, it will be just an implosion in waiting. The state will collapse like a pack of cards. The country that was born for the cause of religion will be undone by the extreme elements of the same cause.