The crucial second front

Where victory is nowhere near in sight

Sometime back I wrote that militarily defeating the Taliban/Jihadi enemy on all battlefield fronts, rather than meekly seeking a stalemate, was a prerequisite to Pakistan’s survival, state’s existential viability, country’s progress and people’s prosperity.

Unfortunately that comprehensive, crucial victory is nowhere near in sight. As recent events indicate the enemy is inflicting some heavy blows in Pakistan’s mainland, the second front of their declared war against our country. From Quetta to Gilgit-Baltistanto Peshawar to Karachi the enemy is attacking ruthlessly, almost at will, causing immense damage to life, property, morale and image of the country.

Broadly speaking, the Taliban/Jihadis in their war against the state and people of Pakistan have opened up two separate fronts as part of their strategy: the first front in the northwest tribal areas and the second in the mainland, the heart of the country, with its humungous urban and rural areas.

In the first front, our armed forces are confronting the enemy, sacrificing the lives of its soldiers, though fighting this enemy in a haphazard, piecemeal manner without a grand strategy for annihilation of this enemy and victory. Still the army has been partially successful in eliminating thousands of enemy combatants and defeating the enemy in quite a few operations.

However, in the second battlefield front, and a battlefield it is, in our cities and villages that the army has even failed to show up, to defend and fight the blood-thirsty enemy, giving it a free rein and open field to attack, bomb, kill and destroy at will.

This vast front of urban and rural areas inhabited by the majority of Pakistan’s 180 million unarmed people presents an almost illimitable number of soft targets, targets that are virtually indefensible by civilian law-enforcement agencies. How many people, how many homes, how many mosques, how many shopping centers, how many schools and hospitals, how many streets and buildings can be successfully defended with round-the-clock trained and fully armed police guards? Not many.

The enemy can literally pick and choose from this endless array or smorgasbord of vulnerable targets in our city streets and village pathways. No surprise then as to how and why the Taliban/Jihadi enemy has been so hugely successful in this civilian front, inflicting the majority of casualties here, estimated to be about 40,000 out of the total of our 48,000 people and soldiers killed.

In addition, their attacks and bloody onslaught have devastated the country’s economy, hurt business and investment, banished the game of cricket, our national pastime, and all in all created a climate of paralyzing fear and intimidation throughout the country, crushing the national spirit and shredding to pieces the writ of the state.

As is obvious from the above, it is this second country-wide front, with all its infrastructure and population base which is of far more critical importance for the viability and the very continuity of the state than the first smaller, borderline front.

It is a fundamental principle of war strategy that in order to prevail over your enemy you have to defeat the enemy in all fronts of the battlefield. To achieve victory on one front and to ignore and be devastated in another front will not vanquish your enemy. A selective approach, at best, will only prolong the war; at worst it will make the enemy stronger and more unyielding.

If engaging with the enemy in the second front is as critical as combating the enemy in the first front then appropriate strategy must be sharply tailored to effectively fight, eliminate and subdue the Taliban/Jihadi syndicate in this battlefield front of cities and villages. Full collaboration of the police, agencies and all the citizens would be essential in this endeavour.

Since the enemy has infiltrated various segments of our society and has established a vast network of agents, informants, suppliers, supporters and other enablers inside our borders, then at least a two-prong strategy should be employed all across this big front by the armed forces.

Firstly, all agents, infiltrators, supporters, suppliers etc of the enemy embedded in the police, law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, in the armed forces itself, in the bureaucracy, in the media, in the academia, in the mosques, madrassas, in business, in the various militant and religious groups etc. must be identified, purged and effectively disabled.

Secondly, all the hard core militants all across the cities and villages must be targeted and eliminated and their base structures, hideouts etc. attacked and destroyed completely.

Agree that such a massive offensive, with the possibility of spilling more blood and entailing violence on an unprecedented scale may seem to be a tall order, easier said than done. But in the face of the horrific, blood stained alternative, what other choices we have if not to defeat this enemy by any means at any price?

Taking clue from the West, it’s fashionable to attribute these lethal blows by the enemy in our mainland front to ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ – as if these two elements themselves have physical ability to carry out these attacks. ‘Terrorism’ is just a tactic, among other tactics, that is employed by the Taliban/Jihadis in their war against the state and people of Pakistan.

People talk about elimination of ‘terrorism’ by Taliban/Jihadis in our mainland, which is fine, but terrorism is not an auto machine which can stop by itself by condemning it or censuring it. As stated above terrorism is simply a tactic employed by our human enemy. To stop or eliminate the use of this tactic or method of terrorism by the enemy you have to physically disable and militarily defeat the Taliban/Jihadis in both the battlefield fronts.

Verbally persuading this enemy not to commit terrorism in our land has not and will not work unless the enemy is on the verge of being defeated and wiped out. As long as the enemy goes virtually unchallenged and as long as its use of terrorism especially in the second front is an unmitigated success in realization of its war objectives, it will inexorably continue to employ the tactic of terrorism.

And to defeat the enemy in all the fronts, especially in the second front, a defensive strategy will fail as is becoming increasingly evident, given the formidable magnitude of the area and the seemingly limitless soft, vulnerable targets to defend and the limited resources of the country.

The only viable and effective strategy for our armed forces to secure victory and vanquish the enemy on this front is to go on the offensive as outlined above. Failing to fight the enemy in the second front is not an option for our armed forces and for our people – unless we want to say goodbye to the state of Pakistan as we know it.

Absent an all-out offensive, the miasma of terrorism will continue to shock us daily with the news of devastating attacks, each more audacious and horrifying.

To those who say that we should not commit the bulk of the army to go full throttle against this most vicious and bloodthirsty enemy, that we should save the army, my response is: Save it for what? Save it to defend the eastern border with India? But what if there’s no country left to defend by the time India attacks? To preserve the army as it is the strongest institution of the country? But what if the Taliban/Jihadis outflank it from north to south and encircle it while it continues to sit in its bases as the country around it burns in flames?

During the 67 years of our nation’s existence we have built our armed forces with the blood and sweat of some of the finest of our men and with a large portion of our precious treasure and resources.

This enemy has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of our people, inflicted immeasurable destruction of our country in all aspects. If the army cannot or will not defend it from this menace now, then when? The time to fulfill its duty is now.

The writer is a US-based corporate attorney, author, independent analyst and writer.