If somebody thought the attack on Malala Yousufzai, a 14 years old young girl fatally wounded by Taliban gunmen on October 9, 2012 in Swat Valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, amounted to Pakistan ‘moment of action’, it was sheer delusion. Then there were others, including leading commentators and analysts who insisted that this life-threatening assault had united vast sections of the Pakistani society into condemnation of Taliban. Unrealistic and incorrect assumption indeed (No sane person in Pakistan had even supported brutal murderers masquerading as religious Taliban). Equally mistaken were those who thought this attack was the ultimate trigger for an over-due military push (against the Haqqani Network and its Pakistani surrogates those are Pakistani Taliban led by Hakeemullah Masood, head of the dreaded Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, TTP and other Taliban factions) in North Waziristan. And finally, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman gave all those conspiracy theorists a lie when he brushed aside a question on whether he was in Islamabad to reiterate the demand on North Waziristan.
‘On (the) particular question of a North Waziristan (offensive) or any other question, that is the decision for the Government of Pakistan and solely for the Government of Pakistan,’ Grossman said on October 21, 2012. Shortly before leaving Pakistan, Grossman also underscored thatthe US, Pakistan and Afghanistan were working on new strategies to bring stability in the region through mutual cooperation of the working groups, and hoped thatPakistanis and Americans could stand up together and eventually realize the goal of eliminating the Al-Qaeda from this region.
For all real-political reasons, Grossman statement seem to signal that the relentless demand for a crackdown on all Al-Qaeda-linked militants, including the Haqqanis is most probably off-the-table ´ at least for the time being.
In fact, signs for this hold-back had begun emerging few days before Grossman arrival;in the run-up to his Islamabad visit, very senior US officials of the State Department had dropped strong hints that the Obama administration had ´ probably grown wiser after a vicious campaign for almost year and a half to force Pakistan military into North Waziristan.
During back-ground discussions ahead of Grossman talks with the Pakistani leadership, US officials sounded pretty about what they believed were the successes against Al-Qaeda in the past decade; the core objectives of intervention in Afghanistan i.e. to degrade and weaken the Al-Qaeda as well as to delink the militia from the Taliban have been achieved, said one very senior official. The US now believes Taliban and Al Qaeda are distinctly separate, and that the Afghan Taliban were almost equal stake-holders in the reconciliation process. The official also underscored the need for a renewed focus on political reconciliation in Afghanistan through an intra-Afghan dialogue.
And herein lies the catch; if the US is positioning itself to reenergize its contacts with all Afghan opposition factions, how would it then continue blowing hot and cold on Pakistan to go after the Haqqani Network. It would have been a contradiction to askPakistan crackdown on the Haqqani Network, but pursue talks with them within the US-Afghan reconciliation framework.
US officials have also attached fresh expectations of Pakistan in the reconciliation process as well as expressing hopes of taking lead regional states on board for charting a new, all-inclusive initiative for peace and regional stability.
The latest US re-positioning also upstages the hitherto held view ´ largely resting on the rhetoric resonating out of Washington ´ that an all-out military operation would serve as the ultimate solution for Pakistan radicalization challenge. This, many argued, would be the much-needed strategic rethink.
But based on the empirical evidence ´ it is tempting to ask whether a military operation in North Waziristan could be equated to the strategic rethink that Pakistan desperately needs. Strategic rethink implies a severing of the nexus that has existed between the military establishment and some Pakistani and Afghan non-state actors such as Mullah Omar Taliban, the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba (a local militant group without regional outreach and headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed). Militants presumably draw their strength from this nexus and hence there is need to break it. But whether an all-out campaign in NW would symbolize the end of this relationship between state and non-state actors is a highly questionable presumption because, while the strategic rethink (divorcing all non-state actors for good and thereby sucking their socio-political support dry) is a must for the Pakistani society to face off religious radicalization, an operation in NW may only result in more chaos and bloodshed in mainland Pakistan. For the outsiders, a move into North Waziristan would symbolize a strategic rethink (within Pakistan military establishment). But frankly, given Pakistan proximity to Afghanistan and its skeptical view of the Indo-Afghan-Americanalliance, the strategic outlook of the General Headquarters (GHQ) that is primarily driven by the India-centric paranoia, is not likely to change even with an offensive in North Waziristan. Pakistani society needs a much more comprehensive approach on the issue of Al-Qaeda inspired religious radicalism ´ radicalization of minds ´ than a military activity in North Waziristan which is likely to entail more violence and ever more political polarization within the society.The strong challenge for Pakistan ´ even if the US demands on North Waziristan are over, is the ability and willingness of the civil and military leadership to take tough strategic decisions, rather than waiting for a miracle to happen. Pakistan survival lies in containing and neutralizing the creeping militant thinking and inspiration that largely flows from groups nestled in North Waziristan.