Roots of terrorist violence in Pakistan

It was arm-twisting by the Obama administration that made the Pakistan Army launch its all-out assault on the militant groups in the tribal areas in June 2014. For the first time, the Pakistan Air Force was deployed extensively to target militant hideouts. A lot of collateral damage, in the form of civilian casualties, resulted in the wake of the military assault in North Waziristan. Many analysts, in fact, are of the view that the formation of the Pakistani Taliban was in response to the first military assault ordered by the then military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2004. FATA is an area of 27,270 square kilometres, but this small territory hosts around 45,000 fighters from many militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Al Qaeda, Jaish-e-Mohammed, the LeT and the Pakistani Taliban.

Public opinion surveys have consistently shown that the majority in Pakistan are of the view that it was the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that led to the rise of terrorism in their country. The cycle of violence and terrorism can be traced back to the tight security embrace between the U.S. and Pakistan, which dates back to the days of the Cold War. In the 1980s, the U.S. played a key role along with its proxies such as Saudi Arabia in arming and training the “Mujahideen” forces in Pakistan to fight against the Soviet-backed progressive government that was in place in Afghanistan at the time. Out of the “mujahideen” emerged the rapacious militias controlled by warlords and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban itself was formed with the covert backing of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the ISI. Washington was also unwavering in its support of the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq. He was the man responsible for encouraging a Wahhabi version of Islam in the country. He injected religious bigotry and sectarianism into many aspects of daily life in the country. It was his predecessor, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, though, who first formalised the role of religion in the country’s Constitution and banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. The U.S. and the Saudis funded Zia liberally as he built new madrasas (religious schools) across the length and breadth of Pakistan.

Pakistan had come a long way since Independence. “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed. That has nothing to do with the business of state,” Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-i-Azam, had said in his inaugural address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in 1947. Today, sectarianism has become a factor fuelling terrorism in Pakistan. Militant groups have been busy targeting Shia mosques and businesses and bombing churches. The notorious blasphemy law, which came into being during the days of General Zia, has been widely misused. Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer was shot by his bodyguard, an extremist in police uniform, for speaking out against the law. “Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jehadists,” the scholar and commentator Pervez Hoodhbhoy noted in an article.

According to Hoodhbhoy, “militant jehad” became part of the culture on college and university campuses. Armed groups had started openly recruiting students for jehad in Afghanistan and Kashmir. It was only after the events of 9/11 that the Kashmir issue faded into the background with the focus almost completely shifting to Afghanistan. If the Afghan Taliban is successful in once again wresting power in Kabul or completely destabilising the country, Kashmir could once again figure prominently on the radar of the “jehadi” groups.