Production of militants and terrorists closes down in Pakistan?

Strategic changes in the Middle East look productive, and there are signs indicating Pakistan is no more a visa-free land for foreign Muslims brothers. The Karachi Airport attack jolted the entire nation and raised serious doubts that Pakistan can survive as a State and that it has an Army that can protect this state.

The Middle East situation, particularly the abrupt rise of the Mujahideens of the Takfiri Wahhabis sect and massacre of Iraqi soldiers by their hands, threatens regular armies of the entire region. The Iraq situation sent a message to the whole world that purist Islamists can divide states, massacre regular armies, and can create new states like that of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) within days.

Thousands of Salafi Jihadis belonging to tribal areas of Pakistan are allegedly fighting along with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The majority of them belong to a new generation of Arab-Pushtuns, Uzbek-Pushtun, and Yamini-Pushtuns youth who were born in tribal areas of Pakistan, and their fathers came to Pakistan for waging Jihad against Russia. These youth have never been in school except for religious madaris, and these youth have no skills except using weapons and killing infidel.

This is clear: it is these youth that will come back to the tribal areas soon after finishing their Jihad in the Middle East. Just imagine if only 15 militants can initiate an exceptionally successful attack on Karachi Airport and can engage 2,500 security persons for 7 hours, what would be the scene if thousands of such militants decided to establish a new state in the Pakistan-Afghanistan areas? This situation is serious, and now the entire nation understands this threat.

The decision of the Pakistan government to launch an operation in tribal areas against the hideout of militants under the code name of Zarb-e-Azb is an exceptional positive step, and the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif has said that the operation will continue until the elimination of terrorism and terrorists in these tribal areas. He also said the menace of terrorism will be wiped out from society by destroying terrorists’ hideouts. While expressing his satisfaction over preparation and progress of the operation so far, the COAS emphasized that all terrorists, along with their sanctuaries, must be eliminated without any discrimination.

This operation is not targeted against valiant tribes of North Waziristan but against those terrorists who are holed up in the agency and have picked up arms against the State of Pakistan.

For the first time during the last 35 years, Pakistan as a nation has accepted that extremism and terrorism cannot bring prosperity to any nation and the country. Civil and military establishments in Pakistan always believed Jihad is not a strategic philosophy but rather a weapon against enemies. Jihadis have been strategic assets for Pakistan’s forces and intelligence agencies.

This lethal weapon of Jihad was not dumped in any military warehouse, but rather it was laying open in Pakistan’s society and the “social radiation factor of Jihad weapon” deformed and defaced Pakistani society during all these 35 years. There is no need to go into details about how strongly Pakistani culture and military leadership has been affected by the radiation factor of lethal weapons laying open in Pakistan’s society.

Thousands of retired and in-service officers and soldiers have been targeted and killed by terrorists during the last 10 years. This corps of martyrs includes one former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who was killed by the TTP. Hundreds of political workers and political leaders became victim of non-stop terrorism, but even losing around 55,000 civilians and around 5,000 armed services staffers, the narrative against terrorism was not clear for Pakistan. Many good Taliban were strategic partners of many religious parties, and there were some bad Taliban who were not with religious parties or with intelligence agencies.

The leadership of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been very honest to accept responsibility of killing and slaughtering soldiers and people, but Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema Islam (Samiul Haq) consider TTP leadership as “sons of soil” and strongly object any action against TTP. JI, JUI, and PTI are not ready to accept that war against TTP is the war to protect Pakistan. Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) call war against TTP as a US-dictated war against “sons of soil of Pakistan.” The whole world was crying that Pakistan is heaven for international terrorist organizations that have their establishments in tribal areas, but religious parties always resisted any operation in North Waziristan.

Now it looks that the nation has stood up against all terrorists including the good Taliban and bad Taliban, because Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif has said that operation in tribal areas is against all terrorists, and the National Assembly has adopted a resolution expressing its fullest support with the decision of the government to launch a military operation by valiant armed forces against militants in the tribal areas which are using the sacred soil for nefarious activities. The resolution was signed and supported by PML(N), PPP, PTI, MQM, and ANP.

The resolution noted that militants were engaged in attacks on security forces and law-enforcing agencies as well as public and private property, resulting in tragic death and injuries to military personnel and innocent citizens and colossal damage to the economy.

The resolution expressed the resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder with armed forces until final victory. It was hoped that the operation would not only help restore peace but also socio-economic prosperity of the people.

Pakistan can stand against terrorists and can defeat terrorists, because Pakistani society is a moderate, loving, and creative society, and there is a strong belief that the Pakistani establishment will not go for any new experiment in the near future and will refrain from supporting extremist and purist Islam, because extremism brings only disasters and death of a society.

Moreover, it has yet to be cleared that will government take action against terrorist production units run by sectarian outfits like of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Punjab and Sindh. Will an assembly line of extremist production units be halted for the time being, or will units will be scrapped forever?

If this operation is without discrimination, then will the Army take action against the Haqqani Network operating from tribal areas?

Another important question is: Will Pakistan take action against thousands of madrassas spreading all over the country, openly training youngsters to be mujahids?

“In the long term, Pakistan’s only salvation will be in redefining it. And yes, that will take a couple of generations if we actually work earnestly at it. Zarb-e-Azb could be the first tiny step and the huge leap, depending on whether we sincerely want to become a peaceful people at peace with ourselves and with the rest of the world”, one Pakistani columnist, Gul Bukhari, commented in one of her latest pieces.

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