Militancy and the state

Islamic radicalism and militancy figure prominently in the political and societal landscape in and around Pakistan. This has created serious internal security problems and exposed Pakistan to a host of diplomatic pressures at the global level.

Though groups engaged in violence are found in many countries but no one has received as much global attention as the Islamic militant groups based in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several reasons explain this attention.

First, most of these groups have developed global outreach. The activities of Al-Qaeda and Taliban (Afghan and Pakistani) have implications for many countries. Some Pakistan mainland based militant groups are found to be periodically active in Afghanistan, Iran and India. These movements have challenged the interests of the United States and selected western countries. A good part of terrorist activity in the West is linked with the Taliban movement or Al-Qaeda. The Taliban are based in Pakistan and Afghanistan but the Al-Qaeda movement has its cells in several Islamic countries, especially those suffering from internal strife.

Second, the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in building up some groups and supporting others is well-known. The decade of the 1980s and the 1990s witnessed this relationship in action. Though the policies have changed since then but it is difficult to suggest if Pakistan’s intelligence and security apparatus has given up on each and every militant group.

Third, international attention is also drawn towards Pakistan-Afghan groups because the US intelligence network cooperated with Pakistani counterparts in the 1980s to create such groups in Pakistan to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Some conservative Arab countries also helped this effort. After the exit of the Soviets from Afghanistan, the US and the Arab partners left Pakistan alone to deal with these groups. Pakistan’s security and intelligence establishment deployed some of these groups to pursue its strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir, giving a new lease of life to them and creating a new space for their role that also enabled new groups to emerge.

For Pakistan’s security and intelligence establishment, militancy had instrumental relevance. Therefore, it was easy for them to change their policy towards militant groups after September 2001. However, most of these groups treated militancy as an article of faith and were not willing to opt out of it when Pakistan’s interest dwindled. Further, Pakistan’s support and their access to weapons and money gave them a sense of power which they did not want to lose when Pakistan decided to abandon the Taliban. They viewed Pakistan’s changed policy as betrayal under American pressure.

These militant groups continued to function in Pakistan because these had built societal support through Islamic-denominational networks of seminaries, mosques and parties. The institutions and organisations associated with Deobandi, Wahabi/Salafi and Ahle-Hadith Islamic traditions generally support or sympathise with militant movements. In the mid- and late-nineties, the students of some Deobandi seminaries went to Afghanistan to support to the Taliban engaged in military confrontation with their rivals.

The growing anti-American sentiment in Pakistan has also helped these militant groups to mobilise support. The Punjab-based groups that function in Indian-administered Kashmir often cash on anti-India sentiments that increase manifold in a situation of increased tension between India and Pakistan.

The persistence of religious extremism and militant movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be attributed to a couple of other factors. The Taliban had virtually been knocked out of Afghanistan by the time Hamid Karzai assumed power on December 22, 2011. It took the Taliban almost three years to resurface mainly because US administration failed to deliver on economic development and reconstruction. They did not offer much hope to the Afghan people with the exception of some sections of the populace living in major cities. Most Afghan refugees that returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan were disappointed because of the lack of economic opportunities. The US made unsuccessful attempts to buy off war lords and delayed the attempts to building state institutions failed and it was quite late that serious attention was given to building the administrative and security system.

The issue in Afghanistan was not the restoration of the administrative and security systems but their establishment from the beginning. The Karzai government does not reflect the ethnic spread in Afghanistan. Its administration, the army and the police, are dominated by ethnic minorities like the Tajiks and Uzbek; the Pashtuns that constitute almost half of Afghanistan’s populations are extremely poorly represented. In the new Afghan National Army, the Pashtuns are not more than 5 percent. These factors caused much alienation in Afghanistan, enabling the Taliban to return and entrench themselves.

In Pakistan, poor governance and the failure to address socio-economic problems and unemployment make the ordinary people vulnerable to extremist Islamic appeals. However, the growing trends of religious extremism and militancy can be traced to the Islamic ideological and sectarian mindset that has gripped Pakistan over the years since the mid-1980s. It views the domestic and global affairs as a function of the perceived dichotomy between Islam and the rest of the world. This worldview is coupled with the articulation of the notion of fighting holy wars to protect Islam and Muslim lands from the onslaught of the followers of other religions and civilizations. Anti-Americanism is integral to this jihadist mindset. Pakistan’s state apparatus patronised this mindset for over two decades, enabling it to seep deep into the society, beyond Islamists circles.

Even after pulling back from supporting militancy, Pakistan’s government and security agencies failed to create an alternate worldview to neutralise the Islamist-Jihadi mindset, whose followers are now engaged in violent confrontation with the Pakistani state.

All this shows that Pakistan’s problems are located inside the country. No purpose will be served by attributing these to the outside adversaries of Pakistan. Externalisation of domestic problems reduces the will and capacity to cope with these problems.

The federal government needs to improve its performance by resolving some, if not all, the socio-economic problems of the common people. Only then its effort to change the Islamic-Jihadi mindset can succeed. It should also make sure that the civilian and military officials do not neutralise the policy of regulating the activities of militant groups. The state education and the media can play an important role in reshaping the mindset.

The writer is an independent political and defence analyst.