Nasim Zehra — National Security Strategist
Two significant security-related developments within our region, the terrorist attack on India’s Pathankot airbase and growing Saudi-Iranian hostilities, have again put to test the Nawaz Sharif-led government’s ability to deal with urgent and complex situations.
Although the Pathankot attack can have a direct impact on the recent Nawaz-Modi effort to restart dialogue derailed by the Modi government, for Islamabad there is only one valid policy: stay with the January 15 timeline and transparently cooperate with India to identify the terrorists. The ball is now in Indian Prime Minister Modi’s court. Can he bring around the Indian intelligence’s foregone conclusion regarding Pathankot, and engage in a transparent investigation into the attack? Pakistan is already engaged in working on the leads sent by India. However, it would be advisable for Pakistan to perhaps keep other interested countries like China and the US informed of the ‘leads’ on Pathankot sent by India.
Neutral observers must ask many questions on the workings of the Indian intelligence agencies, including not having informed their Pakistani counterparts of a terrorist plot they claim they knew about two days prior to the event.
Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi — Political and Defence Analyst
Extremism and terrorism have become far more complex than domestic crime and violence. Therefore, they require capacity-building by the state to track these groups and the use of strong and coercive methods to effectively deal with them. The state must demonstrate through tough actions that terrorist groups cannot get away scot-free after resorting to violence.
A concerted and holistic approach is needed to cope with these elements, which must include military and non-military or non-coercive methods. International cooperation is needed for exchanging information on extremism and terrorism, building state capacity to control criminal and terrorist activity, curtailing the movement of personnel and funding across the territorial boundaries of states.
These efforts come in conflict with the current notion of globalisation that calls for greater movement of goods, services, investment and trade across state frontiers and geographical divides. The fruits of globalisation cannot be enjoyed by the states that suffer from extremist and violent activity.
Imtiaz Alam — Political Analyst
Given the past terrorist provocations that successfully derailed the peace processes between India and Pakistan, this time the two national security advisors who are supposed to deal with the issues pertaining to terrorism seem to have agreed on how to deal with such provocations by the terrorists. According to credible inside sources, there was a prompt exchange of notes to act in a coordinated and cooperative manner.
Saqlain Imam — Political Commentator
It is heartening to see that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of the Army Staff General Raheel Sharif have said that Pakistan’s territory would not be allowed to be used for an attack on any other country and that Pakistan will fully cooperate with India in the Pathankot attack investigation. Despite such resolve of the civil and military leadership of Pakistan, it would still be extremely difficult for the authorities to eliminate the chances of more attacks.
Pakistan still does not recognise the religious and especially the jihadi networks across the country as a potential source of instability, not only in the country but also across the region. It is of concern that the non-recognition will still take its own toll and no one knows when that structurally fundamental change will take place in the state of Pakistan.
Shaan Taseer — Human Rights Activist
The FBI still maintains that the San Bernardino carnage is “not terrorism”. By their definition, it doesn’t become terrorism until one finds a link with an organisation that the State Dept has declared to be a terrorist organisation, such as ISIS. Terrorism today does not have to emanate from an organisation with an address that you can bomb. It also emanates from the indoctrination spread by the likes of the House of Saud and the Lal Masjid, both of whom worked their evil on the misguided Mrs Malik, and neither of which are on the State Department list of terrorist organisations.
My advice to the FBI is that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck.
Rubab Mehdi H Rizvi — Human Rights Activist
In Pakistan we have had some triumph over terrorism. However we remain deeply concerned that madrassas are producing millions of sectarian extremists every year.
Even as of now the number of madrassa students is larger than the combined strength of the personnel of all armed forces and law enforcement agencies and the motivation is incomparable.