Zero tolerance for terrorists

And Pakistan’s image problem

The recent flurry of anti-terrorist operations in a couple of the bigger cities – TTP militants nabbed/killed in Lahore and Karachi – justifies Gen Raheel’s appreciation of Intelligence Based Operations (IBOs) at the Corps Commanders Conference. Indeed, as NAP rightly identified, Zarb-e-Azb will never come full circle till it extends to urban centres, which is when it is bound to become incrementally intel-intensive. Yet Pakistan again faces international pressure, as the Conference must have noted. The terrorist attack in India has once again put the spotlight on Islamabad to ‘do more’ about some of the non-TTP militants that, despite the Operation, both the civil and military leadership has kept quiet about all this time.

Much is at stake, to say the least. An unlikely thaw that had been engineered painstakingly hangs in the balance. The Indian leadership has surprised many by acting more responsibly than the cross-section of society paraded on the country’s popular media. Yet Pakistan will have to play ball. And perhaps Islamabad can leverage this crisis as a moment of opportunity, and finally clarify its position on all sorts of militant outfits with any sort of footprint in the country, regardless of how much patronage some have allegedly enjoyed in the past. The future, as PM Sharif and Gen Raheel have repeatedly said, is about “zero tolerance” for terrorists of “all hues and colours”.

The existential war will require such boldness in policy sooner or later. And, as the Indian attacks – in Pathankot and Mazar e Sharif – indicated, the region remains infected with pockets of terrorist groups from Afghanistan to Pakistan to India, even though there are a number of countries actively fighting the war against terrorism. Pakistan needs to come down equally hard on all manner of extremism. And, just as importantly, it must be seen making no distinction between good and bad bad-guys. There is, once again, a moment of opportunity in trying times. It is now up to the leadership to exploit it wisely.