THE timing may have seemed poor to some. Pakistan’s military is mired in a security operation in North Waziristan, which is also targeting the Haqqani network. The government has requested Afghan and US help in pursuing militants who have escaped across the Durand Line.
The country is finally ‘doing more’, as it has so often been exhorted to by the US. In the midst of this, US Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Delhi and the US issued a joint declaration with India demanding that Pakistan bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice.
Kerry’s visit to India had already attracted global attention. He participated in the fifth Strategic Dialogue despite his personal involvement in urgent crises ranging from the Israel-Gaza nightmare to elections in Afghanistan and more. He then equated Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) with Al Qaeda and added disrupting its operations to his to-do list.
Focusing on LeT is not merely a savvy PR move by the US.
Pakistanis are bracing for the militant backlash in urban areas from the military operation against the Pakistani Taliban. They’re feeling the toll of the TTP’s internal splintering and growing involvement in criminal activities on a daily basis in the form of hold-ups, kidnaps and erratic attacks.
The thought of taking on yet another militant group — one with sprawling headquarters in the Punjabi heartland and an entrenched presence throughout the country — seems audacious, even ridiculous. But the idea of taking a staggered approach to tackling Pakistan’s militant groups is also fallacious and falls victim to the ‘good Taliban, bad Taliban’ distinction which ignores the reality that groups such as LeT are harming Pakistan even if they aren’t launching direct attacks against its state symbols.
Of course, this is not the reason why Kerry decided to inflame the LeT issue — his concerns are rooted in broader geopolitical considerations. On the most cynical level, criticising LeT is a good way to ease relations with India. This is especially true when faced with a new prime minister who talks tough on terror (and Pakistan), has been denied a US visa for the past decade, and needs some cajoling if US-India relations are to improve.
Washington’s long-running obsession with LeT has long been perceived as an offering to India, a balancing ploy at a time when, owing to the more than decade-long conflict in Afghanistan, the US is more closely linked with Pakistan than India. As Michael Kugelman has written, Kerry in particular needed to say something India wants to hear because of the skewed nature of his personal relationships in the region — he’s very close to Pakistan’s military and civilian elite, but has not spent much time cavorting with Indians.
But focusing on LeT — banned in Pakistan but operating under another name — is not merely a savvy PR move. It relates directly to US interests in the region, which continue to be defined by the engagement in Afghanistan.
Despite the perception that LeT remains focused on the ‘jihad’ in Kashmir, the group has long maintained camps in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces and has been involved in the conflict there since the mid-2000s, reportedly recruiting and training militants to fight alongside the Afghan Taliban. LeT fighters also participated in attacks on US posts in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province in 2008.
A group tracing its origins to the LeT is also accused of attacking Indian consulates in Afghanistan, most recently in Herat in May. A sustained LeT push against India’s presence in Afghanistan could reduce Delhi’s appetite to invest in development and capacity-building there. This is something the US wishes to avoid in the post-2014 scenario, when the world moves on from Afghanistan and funds to prop up Afghanistan’s economy and security forces start to dry up.
The US is banking on Indian involvement in Afghanistan as one source of stability after international troop withdrawal. In this context, any group that threatens to further undermine the fragile situation in Afghanistan — even if it’s via Indian installations — is a cause for worry.
Pakistanis are vulnerable to being swept up in the geopolitical implications of America’s singling out LeT at this time, and might talk themselves out of the fact that the group poses a threat. True, the LeT may not be launching attacks in Pakistan owing to its historic links with the security establishment. But the group is arguably doing something more dangerous: attempting to establish a ‘parallel state’ that erodes government writ and credibility.
The LeT maintains schools, hospitals and mosques throughout the country. Its welfare wings are often the first to provide relief for Pakistanis affected by natural disasters or internal displacement. Its increased presence in Sindh following the floods is one of the reasons for the rise in extremism there. LeT is reshaping Pakistani society in irreparable ways, and it would be tragic if a knee-jerk anti-India or anti-US response prevents Pakistan from taking this domestic threat more seriously.
The writer is a freelance journalist.
Twitter: @humayusuf
Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2014
