President Barack Obama had in March 2008 dubbed Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) abutting Afghanistan as the “most dangerous place.” The reasons; these semi-autonomous regions – governed by a draconian British colonial era set of laws called the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and enacted in 1902 – had degenerated into literal no-go areas and become a hotbed of militancy, terrorism and crime. The 31st Constitutional Amendment Bill in the national legislature on May 24, followed by approval in the upper house – the Senate – a day later, constitutionally consigned FATA to the dustbin of history.  And on May 27, the penultimate day of its tenure, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly drove the last nail in the coffin of this historical injustice by passing the KP-FATA merger bill with a two-thirds majority. This meant the completion of the legislative formalities required for mainstreaming the FATA regions i.e., taking them out of the federal control and placing them under the provincial government. The seven FATA agencies – spread over 27,200 km2 – will now become districts and the six Frontier Regions (FRs) too will be merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “During a meeting of the FATA Reforms Committee, Chief of Army Staff Gen Javed Qamar Bajwa had asked me to settle the issue of FATA once and for all,” Chief Minister Pervez Khattak told fellow lawmakers on the occasion, resonating a similar passionate appeal by Bajwa during his interaction with top newsmen and anchorpersons on March 9. The rush with which it all happened from Islamabad to Peshawar provided clear indications of this anxiety at  the military’s General Headquarters (GHQ)  – as Sharifs and their prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi seemed to dither and were seized with other priorities, including their defense in cases related to four flats in London allegedly owned by the Sharif family. Also, when Sharifs tasked Sardar Mehtab, the then governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to develop a...

Following years of acrimony and extreme hostility, Pakistan-Afghan relations appear to be breaking out of the geo-political logjam. A string of positive vibes since Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s April 5 Kabul visit suggests realpolitical pragmatism may be guiding this turnaround. As Taliban and Daesh continue to ramp up violence all over Afghanistan, four major developments stand out for mention; US Sanctions on Iran, Pak-Afghan ministerial meeting, and the World Bank approval for the new Peshawar-Torkham expressway. Most vibes – as far as Pakistan is concerned – are positive and offer fresh opportunities to repair and enhance relations with Kabul. Firstly, in their landmark meeting on May 15 at Islamabad, Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai and Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. (retd) Nasser Khan Janjua agreed to “take a fresh start, bridge existing gaps, build formal mechanism of cooperation in all areas of mutual interests and take collective actions to strengthen trust between the two countries”. The new engagement mechanism is the Afghanistan Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity (APAPPS), a set of seven principles that commits both a) to take tangible steps Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation, b) effective actions against fugitives and the irreconcilable elements posing security threats to either of the two countries, c) deny use of their respective territory by any country, network, group or individuals for anti-state activities against either country, d) put in place a joint supervision, coordination and confirmation mechanism through liaison officers for realisation of the agreed actions, e) avoid territorial and aerial violations of each other’s territory, f) refrain from public blame game and instead utilize APAPPS cooperation mechanisms to respond to mutual issues of contention and concerns, and g) set up working groups and necessary cooperation mechanism as per APAPPS. Accompanying the...

What is new in Nawaz Sharif’s latest pronouncement on Mumbai attacks? Practically nothing. The only uniqueness attached to it is the proverbial “coming from horse’s mouth”; a three-time elected PM, all of a sudden waking up to revive the memories of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, indirectly hinting that his country allowed the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to cross border and stage those spectacular attacks. This way, he opened the floodgates (in Indian media) to another barrage of slur on the country he ruled thrice. Whatever spin Sharif himself or his cohorts put on his “out-of-context” statement, we need to look at it from two perspectives: one is about the abundance of documentation on Mumbai attacks, most of which implicates Pakistani militant groups (LeT, JeM, etc). Even former IG Tariq Khosa wrote about it in daily Dawn (August 2015): “Pakistan has to deal with the Mumbai mayhem, planned and launched from its soil. This requires facing the truth and admitting mistakes. The entire state security apparatus must ensure that the perpetrators and masterminds of the ghastly terror attacks are brought to justice. The case has lingered on for far too long. Dilatory tactics by the defendants, frequent change of trial judges, and assassination of the case prosecutor as well as retracting from original testimony by some key witnesses have been serious setbacks for the prosecutors.” Then came another similar statement from General Mahmud Ali Durrani, who briefly served as the national security advisor, “I hate to admit that the 26/11 Mumbai attack carried out by a terror group based in Pakistan on November 26, 2008 is a classic trans-border terrorist event.” He made these remarks at the 19th Asian Security Conference held at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in March 2017. Durrani was swift to also clarify, “I know (this) for definite. I have very good information that the government of Pakistan or the ISI (Pakistan’s spy agency) was not involved in 26/11 (terror...

Our heads hang in shame and hearts bleed as survivors and families mourn the brutal deaths of at least 29 in the twin suicide bombings in Kabul on April 30. On April 22, an IS-K suicide bomber attacked a voter-registration center in Dashte Barchi, an area of Kabul where many Shi’a Afghans live. This followed another IS-K suicide attack on crowds gathered in Kabul to celebrate the Persian New Year in late March leaving a trail of death, with at least 31 innocent Afghans. These two attacks were, according to ISIS, were carried out by two bombers named “Kaaka al-Kurdi” Khalil al-Qurashi, suggesting they were both of Kurdish origin. They also turned out to be the deadliest for media, making it at least 36 journalists/media workers since 2016. These statistics beg the question as to whether one can decipher the ever growing footprint of Daesh /ISIS in Afghanistan’s already precarious circumstances? Apparently its almost impossible as there is little method in the madness that the ISIS is piling on Afghans. Afghan intelligence and security officials believe that Daesh is present in nine provinces from Nangarhar and Kunar in the east to Jawzjan, Faryab, and Badakhshan in the north and Ghor in the central west. Since June 2014, when ISIL proclaimed itself to be the Islamic State, according to a running count kept by CNN, this amorphous group has “conducted or inspired” over 70 attacks in 20 countries, including Afghanistan (excluding Syria and Iraq though). Escalation by ISIS , and the launch of Al-Khandaq operation by Taliban coincides with at least 215 missions on various targets inside Afghanistan by the US Central Command Combined Air Operations since January this year (a UN report recorded 950 air strikes in 2017, while the US Air Force’s figures for 2017 were 4,361 strikes during 1,248 missions). These missions since January this year, have largely targeted, though not restricted to, Islamic State of Khorassan (IS-K). One of its commanders in northern Afghanistan,...