My personal belief is firm in this saying that “Offense is the best defense” and this has been very truly applied and exercised during the 1980 era Afghan war. There have been thousands of articles, books and analysis published to cover that war and everyone has probably his own reason to take the credit but there is no question that Pakistan stood against a super power with initially no help from the world. I have started my arguments from the 1980 era war due to a very logical and historical reason that it was only due to leadership, courage, firm stand and belief on Pakistan’s capacity and strength and with help of Allah Almighty, we as a nation managed to handle the Soviet challenge.
The motto was very clear from our leadership at that time that we should fight this war on Afghan soil where an occupation had taken place, in other words we adopted an offensive policy that could be labeled as General Zia’s offensive doctrine. Critics of Pakistan previously had been saying that American military aid and other help contributed solely to winning this war. This is not at all true. The US jumped into this war after two years, at end of 1981 when they were sure that Pakistan was capable of resisting the invasion.
I am sure most of our people may not have thought that this 1980 era war with USSR provided a unique opportunity to the armed forces of Pakistan and intelligence services to polish their capabilities in case they would have to fight an enemy much more powerful and technologically superior.
Successful engagement in 1980 era Afghan war proved effectiveness of the offensive policy because Pakistan has certain advantages like language links, better connections with local tribes and effective intelligence network. Furthermore Pakistan had strategic links inside Afghanistan by having economical and cultural relations. Strategic links do not mean physically capturing the area but cultural and economical ties play important role in order to establish a potential strategic depth.
The current situation is not very much different to the 1980 era, we have almost the same scenario as before in that western forces are present in Afghanistan while India is always present in the east. India had some access to Afghanistan during the Soviet presence but this has increased very much with NATO being in Afghanistan.
The current situation in the region is very hostile and challenging for Pakistan because of the ongoing war in Afghanistan and presence of anti-Pakistan government in Kabul which is more inclined towards India. Many officials of the current Afghan government have personal relations with New Delhi, especially with Indian intelligence agencies. The Indians have set up consulates in major cities in Afghanistan along with an intelligence network near the Pakistani border. India has got major economic and defence related projects from the Afghan government and is involved in rebuilding and restructuring the entire network of highways in Afghanistan. The Afghan government is fully supporting the Indians to set up their foothold in the country so that Pakistan would never be able to get strategic depth again. Moreover, current Afghan government officials mostly belong to Tajik and Uzbek ethnicities and hold ties with these neighboring governments. This link also supported Indian ambitions to set up relations with Central Asian states of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in all aspects, especially in the economic and defence fields.
India has established military installations in both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, not a very good sign for Pakistan in the longer and short term. If we analyze this situation while keeping in mind India’s Cold Start Doctrine, that is mainly focused for a real war time situation, we might arrive at a better conclusion by joining these two pieces together that India’s advancement in the Central Asian region and establishing foot hold in Afghanistan and Central Asian states is basically part of their long term doctrine in Central Asia. We might also correlate somewhat Pakistan’s internal situation in some areas to Indian presence inside Afghanistan which is the result of RAW and Afghan agencies joint venture. All the aforementioned scenarios emerged after the US declared India as “strategic partner”. India with her huge population and considerable size is really a huge market for the United States and western nations.
We have to keep in mind that it is in the interest of western nations to establish economic relations with India since they believe that an economically stable India will serve their interests more effectively. As we all know that China is developing its infrastructure very rapidly and might be able to present herself for a parallel super power after the current decade. This partnership between India and the United States is the result of that fear. Moreover, having said about India’s advancement towards Central Asia, this is a historical fact that India cannot sustain Indo-Central Asian relations for very long time due to the vast gap in ethnic roots and cultures. India is just using cheap economy tactics to expand its foreign influence. The day when Pakistan would be able to offer better economic viability to Central Asian countries India’s so-called smart game will be minimized. CPEC has given a unique opportunity to Pakistan to nullify Indian influence from Central Asia and this is the sole reason why Indian are in panic and want to sabotage it at any cost. CPEC is actually a threat to Indian economic and expansion plans.
Pakistan is potentially capable of both culturally and ethnically penetrating strategically into Central Asia. Pakistan’s tribal folks and ethnicities maintain deep roots and relations with Central Asian cultures. Having said this, it might be established that Pakistan still is in the position to review her strategy and start thinking about penetrating into Central Asia more aggressively. The positive conclusion of the ECO summit 2016 in Islamabad is a good step in this regard.
The objective of mentioning Indian involvement in Afghanistan and Central Asia was just used as a pre-text for describing even a bigger scenario that is shaping up rapidly. Afghanistan has become a potential home ground for the world’s most notorious intelligence agencies performing effectively and working as a team to obtain a single goal i.e. how to shift the axis of war from Afghanistan to Pakistan. In order to achieve this objective, many anti-Pakistan groups have been planted over time. Some of them claimed to be fighting for Islam such as Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (both Swat and Waziristan TTP). Some claimed to be fighting for separation such as BLA and associated groups. All of these groups are heavily funded by foreign powers and are able to continue their operations without significant hurdles. If we analyze all these factors separately and carefully we see a very dangerous plan was formulated against Pakistan by our enemies. TTP Swat was focusing in the area where the Silk Road passes starting from China and all the way up to Gwadar. So the bigger agenda is clear, how to best cut Chinese supply line and influence reaching upto the Arabian Sea through shortest land route passing through Pakistan. Next if we see the map carefully, this route from our northern areas to Gwadar has to pass through Baloch areas where the Indians were trying to create problems and Kulbhushan Yadav’s capture is clear proof of such notorious plan. So it might be proved that wherever this road link from China to our coastal areas passes through, we see violence in some form present there. This cannot be just a coincidence but is a highly sophisticated conspiracy against Chinese economic influence in Pakistan.
If we look at TTP in Waziristan, we see all notorious elements from all parts of the world are present there in one form or another. Some of them were remnants of the Afghan resistant groups from 1980 Soviet war times while some were brought by Indians and their allies from unknown places to be planted there as Taliban. No one really knows who these rough and oddly bearded people were from and what was their origin. Some who were killed were found to be non-Muslims according to a few video clips that were distributed showed they were not circumcised.
Moreover, Indian Raw was actively involved in destabilizing Karachi and had funded heavily creating political and terror assets. Political activists and other criminal elements were involved in Karachi in creating chaos and anarchy. This great city has seen much bloodshed in past few decades and our economy was hurting as well due to foreign funded proxies. The situation in Balochistan was also ignited after the killing of Akbar Bugti and Indian RAW tried to benefit from the situation and started helping exiled Baloch leaders like Brahmadgh and Harbiyar.
Pakistan army, intelligence agencies and our defence analysts reviewed this situation and decided to counter threats one by one. By the grace of Allah almighty, we have crushed TTP Swat and Waziristan and most of their leaders were killed or are under arrest. It is crucial now to have a military cantonment there to ensure peace and stability. Our intelligence planners dealt with situation in Karachi with continuous Rangers operation due to which the situation has greatly improved and peace is coming back to Karachi. Also successful engagement of our army and civilian leaders with Baloch insurgents resulted in surrender of large numbers of insurgents with most of them returning back to normal life. This was a clear win for our agencies against RAW. Most of the RAW-NDS proxies have been eliminated from Pakistan and remnants are being dealt through operation Rad ul Fasad launched by the military.
Also, majority of the TTP related terrorists have already been dealt through previous operations like Rah-e-Nijat, Zarb-e-Azb followed by the current Rad-ul-Fasad and Khyber 4. The number of violent groups present in Waziristan was estimated to be in the thousands with additional reinforcements from our so-called friends in Afghanistan. One of the dangerous aspects noticed during all the above operations is that as the Pakistan military started operation RAH-e-Nijat, Afghan and NATO forces amazingly evacuated their posts thus leaving open ground for TTP terrorists fleeing from Pakistan into Afghanistan. Our enemies are trying to move the Afghan war axis into our tribal areas and then finally into Pakistan finally.
In order to achieve this final goal, a serious of bomb blasts occurred throughout Pakistan to create lawlessness and fear among citizens. The panic in our enemies could be seen as our military was progressing towards TTP strongholds and gaining successes over these foreign funded elements. The enemy’s panic was because of shortness of time. Their plan was to accomplish their agenda by 2015 and damage Pakistan just like Yugoslavia but there are unseen obstacles they have to face in Pakistan. These problems cannot be calculated by any means as they are divine in nature such as our enemies miscalculating Pakistan’s capabilities in Swat operation.
Our adversaries did not digest the TTP defeat in SWAT and Waziristan because this was their main tool to shift the axis of war into Pakistan. They will try to save their assets if found to be in danger or fear of being captured by the Pakistan army. The echo can be heard once in a while about unknown choppers picking up TTP leaders on the run and hiding them in safe locations in Afghanistan. The single point of interest for Pakistan is to keep the axis of war away from its area of jurisdiction/borders and resist AF-PAK strategy set by NATO and other allies. Pakistan is telling the world and all stake holders that the Afghan war cannot be fought in Pakistan.
The AF-PAK term was first introduced by the Obama administration and its objective was to designate Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single theater of war operations. Richard Holbrooke who was the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan has defined this term as “First of all, we often call the problem AF-PAK, as in Afghanistan Pakistan. This is not just an effort to save eight syllables. It is an attempt to indicate and imprint in our DNA the fact that there is one theater of war, straddling an ill-defined border, the Durand Line, and that on the western side of that border, NATO and other forces are able to operate. On the eastern side, it’s the sovereign territory of Pakistan. But it is on the eastern side of this ill-defined border that the international terrorist movement is located”.
This definition clearly tells what the objective was and the final goal to shift focus of war to Pakistan. Generally the Pakistani people, media houses, military and intellectuals did not like this AFPAK term due to the simple reason that this term/ strategy put Pakistan on the same level as Afghanistan. This was definitely not the case.
Afghanistan has no effective government and the country is completely destabilized while Pakistan is not destabilized. Pakistan has a functional powerful judicial system and an independent powerful media. It is a democratic country with a functional parliament and a strong army. This AFPAK term got huge criticism due to the fact as defined by Richard Holbrooke that NATO is able to operate in Afghanistan and able to control insurgents but just due to Pakistan, since NATO is not allowed to operate across Durand line in Pakistan, the problem exists there.
After enormous sacrifices and successful operations, the Pakistan army has finally managed to overcome all TTP and BLA related challenges and we now see that rouge elements of TTP are taking refuge inside Afghanistan with the help of RAW and NDS. Although Pakistan has started a huge economic activity under Chinese OBOR vision and China Pakistan Economic Corridor is now a reality, both China and Pakistan must keep a close eye on developments in Afghanistan and watch RAW NDS nexus. Also China should help Pakistan and try to resolve their differences with Afghan government. Keep in mind that peace in Afghanistan is not in India’s interest.
Pakistan is currently in the phase of strategic policy paradigm shift about ongoing war against terrorism in Afghanistan. For the first time in the country’s history, Pakistan is stepping away from its traditional US bloc and getting closer to China and Russia. The membership of SCO bloc is a clear example. In addition, Pakistan’s role is pivotal for Chinese led OBOR vision due to flagship CPEC project under OBOR and SCO member countries are largely in favor of this economic corridor (CPEC).
Through CPEC, all central Asian land locked counties will have access to the Arabian Sea for developing trade and commerce. So in short, with the successful military operations by the Pakistan army against Indian/ NDS proxies and initiation of the CPEC project, the so called AF-PAK doctrine has died.
Pakistan is the only country to suffer more than US$150B worth of economic loss plus thousands of civilian and military personal lives since the war on terror started in Afghanistan. Instead of acknowledging these sacrifices, the demand to Do More from USA and NATO is unjustified. This is the time now for the world to do more and help economic rehabilitation of Pakistan.
