As far back as 2011, the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, warned Pakistan, “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours.”
Eighty-four dead and over 220 were injured in a massive suicide attack on a mosque in the Police Lines in Peshawar on January 30, underlined the wisdom of these words. Over the decades, Pakistan has continued to breed terrorists as ‘strategic assets’, playing lethal mischief against its neighbours. But the ‘snakes’ are increasingly turning against their breeders.
Pakistan has already recorded at least 161 terrorism-related fatalities in 2023 (all data till February 3 from the South Asia Terrorism Portal), indicating a dramatic escalation over the 73 fatalities recorded in the corresponding period of 2022. Through last year, and despite a seven-month ceasefire with the country’s most lethal terrorist formation, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), terrorism consumed 971 lives, a 46.45 per cent surge over the 663 fatalities in 2021.
Pakistan had, momentarily, celebrated the installation of its terrorist protege, the Taliban’s regime in Kabul, but that quickly turned dramatically against Islamabad. The Afghan Taliban is now giving safe haven to its ideological twin, the TTP. More significantly, the Taliban has raised an open challenge to Pakistan’s territorial integrity, rejecting the Durand Line as the permanent border between the two countries and laying claim to the entire Pashtun-dominated territories of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
This is likely to be an irreducible and escalating conflict between the two countries, as Kabul uses both overt and covert measures to undermine the existing border. Repeated clashes have already occurred between Taliban forces and the Pakistan Army, as the former attempts to thwart border fencing. Islamabad has also, repeatedly and ineffectually, asked the Taliban to check the activities of the TTP.
Pakistan is also confronting a full-blown insurgency in Balochistan, with 406 militancy-linked killings recorded in 2022, as against 308 in 2021. Twenty-eight deaths have already been recorded in the province in the current year.
Particularly troubling for Islamabad is the Baloch opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects. On April 26, 2022, Shaari Baloch, the first female suicide cadre of the Baloch Liberation Army, blew herself up near a vehicle transporting Chinese nationals from Karachi University to the Confucius Institute in Karachi, killing three Chinese nationals, as well as their Pakistani driver and security guard.
The TTP has also attacked CPEC projects. On July 14, 2021, a suicide attack on a bus carrying Chinese engineers working on a hydropower project in the Dasu area of Upper Kohistan district, killed nine Chinese citizens and four Pakistanis and injured 28. Several other attacks on Chinese workers and projects in Pakistan have been recorded over the past years. These attacks are particularly disturbing for Islamabad, as the CPEC partnership is the one desperate lifeline Pakistan’s leadership is clinging to, as the economy spirals out of control.
Crucially, the Federal Budget, which secured Parliamentary approval in June 2022, had a total outlay of PKR 9.5 trillion, of which PKR 3.9 trillion (over 41 per cent) was allocated for loan repayment and debt servicing alone. The defence outlay of PKR 1.53 trillion, the second-largest component, took up another 16 per cent, leaving under 43 per cent for all other aspects of governance, and a notional PKR 727 billion for development.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has imposed conditionalities for its ‘bailout package’ that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has described as “beyond imagination”, even as he termed the economic challenges faced by the country as “unimaginable”.
If Islamabad is able to meet the IMF’s stringent conditions, it will receive fleeting relief from the release of the tranche of USD 1.8 billion under the ‘package’. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves had plummeted, from USD 5.8 billion in December 2022, to USD 3.1 billion by February 2, barely sufficient to support three weeks of imports. By January 2023, inflation was at 27.6 per cent, the highest level recorded since 1975.
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Chronic shortages of essential commodities and services are now widespread, including, ironically, massive power disruptions, despite the surplus capacities installed under CPEC projects. The government’s difficulties are substantially worsened by a sustained and disruptive pattern of protests, demonstrations and mass mobilisation launched by ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.
Political instability and the current and severe slew of economic crises will substantially diminish the state’s capacities to deal effectively with the growing security problems, as well as the Afghan Taliban’s escalating challenge along the border. The costs of Pakistan’s decades-long misadventures have now brought a crushing burden to bear on Islamabad.
Ajai Sahni
Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management, South Asia Terrorism Portal
ajaisahni@gmail.com