Understanding the militant narrative

And how to counter it

After every militant attack on Pakistan by non-state actors, which kills innocent people, especially our kids, people anxiously look towards their guardians for the solution to this menace. The ruling elite seem to be in an urgency of doing ‘something’ that would calm the masses. The COAS visits Afghanistan, politicians vow to fight back, ISPR issues positive messages that we have almost caught the culprits, media instills nationalism and tales of sacrifice, launching of new military operations, more arrests are made and the likes. Upon critical review, it seems that some random actions are carried out to somehow convince the people to follow through towards a goal which is nowhere in sight. This ‘something’ clearly lacks a serious thought process in solving the crises.

The recent attack on Charsadda University with numerous casualties points out that you cannot defeat an enemy that has a strong ideological narrative by military operations and brute force alone. There are many pseudo-intellectuals who think that TTP is a bunch of brainwashed bearded people somewhere in Swat or Waziristan or Karachi and can be rounded up and killed. Well, I think they have tried and failed miserably for the last 8 years. We are still at the same position which General Musharraf pushed us into, General Kayani escalated to higher levels and now General Raheel is moving zealously to end.

When I say that General Musharraf pushed us into this, I am referring to the events that led us to the formation of TTP in December 2007. One needs to understand that it did not just pop up one morning from amongst Pakistan tribal regions and vowed to kill Pakistan military personnel and civilians. TTP was built on a reactionary narrative to a brutal reality of drones and military operations faced by Pashtuns which was coupled with the ideological aspect of jihad and aided by the exploiters across the borders.

The pretext can be well understood by the book “Inside Pakistan Army” by Carey Schofield in which she explains how Americans pushed Pakistan army for military operations on their own soil. The first operation launched by Pakistan Army named “Kazha Punga” in June 2002 in South Waziristan was based on CIA intelligence in which we lost two officers and 10 soldiers. Then the second operation was launched on October 2003 at Angoor Adda in which 10 million dollar bounty was paid to Pakistan for killing Al-Khadr. Afterwards, six major military operations were launched to stop the attacks from Pakistani soil at the Americans before 2007, along with four drone strikes.

A drone attack in 2006 on Bajaur seminary facilitated by Pakistan Army killed over 80 children. It turned out to be the APS attack for the tribal region. Pakistani citizens were already facing a reaction to these military operations with 24 suicide attacks from 2002-06, with over 400 fatalities but Bajaur attack changed the dynamics of the situation in Pakistan. In 2007 alone, there were 58 suicide attacks killing over 800 people and the trajectory has not gone down ever since with over 270 suicide attacks from 2008-15 with an average of around 350 fatalities each year.

Pakistan’s initial military strategy against TTP was to make it unpopular, isolate it from general public and finish them off with military operations. This strategy did not work and will never work until the basis on which TTP recruits its people is sincerely identified and focused. For instance, the tribal killings by American drones was raised to unprecedented levels with a total of 385 drones after the formation of TTP which killed 3,392 people on Pakistani soil. Military operations like Rah-e-Haq, Rah-e-Rast, Sher Dil, Black Thunderstorm and the very recent Zarb-e-Azb were launched against complete regions where people in hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes. They were forced to live miserable lives in camps while their whole life belongings were either destroyed by bombings or stolen.

These killings, military operations and displacements created a reactionary narrative of injustice against the Pashtuns and they were forced to retaliate with utmost craze. It needs to be understood that revenge and standing up against atrocities fuels TTP and motivates its followers to give the ultimate sacrifice, blow themselves up and punish the forces and even the general masses. And every escalation of the military operation inevitably produced blowback in the form of severe terrorist attacks.

The second aspect that TTP gets its support is by coupling this resistance with jihad and Islam. This makes the movement extremely lethal and includes non-Pashtuns. This is reinforced by Quranic verses and Hadiths which explicitly mention that those Muslims who are allies of the kuffar are amongst them. On such basis, they declared that the army soldiers and officers were kuffar and claimed that they are waging jihad against the Pakistan Army. Interestingly, steps taken by the forces consolidated their thinking, like allowing drone strikes, operation at Lal Masjid in Islamabad, ban on all jihadi groups, rolling back Kashmir jihad, strict surveillance of mosques, ulema and madrassas, arrests of members of non-militant Islamist parties etc. These steps help spread the movement to all parts of Pakistan which now has become much more than simply a Pashtun resistance. The practical flaw in dealing with the second point was to consider advocates of non-militant Islamists to be the basis of militant thought. It is either naivety or a deliberate agenda to elevate the problem.

The third aspect that aids TTP is foreign agencies like CIA and RAW. Episodes of Raymond Davis and Blackwater and cross-border support by Indian consulates have been the highlight of media several times which denote some amount of influence by these agencies on TTP. Since it is a loose network of several small groups, infiltration into them is easy. The more TTP kills people, the more people favour military operations in tribal areas which America is continuously demanding. RAW has more historical reasons to create instability in Pakistan and TTP is the new tool to trigger that.

Incredibly, there is considerable denial about the atrocities that are being committed against the tribal people and that their narrative is evil, un-Islamic and not popular. This denial leads rulers to frame policies that create more atrocities and injustice in the society and further strengthening the militant narrative. The government narrative that “it is our war and the enemy is only Islamist motivated” is far from truth for tribal regions and especially Pashtuns. Chaudhry Nisar understands well that Bajaur and Lal Masjid episodes have already turned out to be a mess for Pakistanis and opening up more venues would mean more terrorist reprisals. The fact needs to be accepted that military operations and brutal tactics against our own people have resulted in far more terrorist attacks in Pakistan than they have reduced and have generally made things worse, not better. The basis of militant narrative needs to be cured rather than its symptoms.