Pakistan has long cried hoarse and portrayed itself as a victim of extremism and terrorism. As recently as June 2024, its federal government approved a “reinvigorated and re-energised national counter-terrorism campaign” to eradicate terrorism through coordinated, multi-faceted efforts.
While it is true that terrorism has surged exponentially in Pakistan in recent years, the blame lies squarely with its own rulers and military establishment. After nurturing various terrorist groups for over four decades, Pakistan is now entangled in the self-created chaos it hoped would only afflict its neighbours.
Pakistan’s relationship with terrorism is long and complex. While scholars and analysts generally agree that Pakistan first began ’employing Islamist militants’ as tools of its regional policy during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, however, this is factually inaccurate.
Pakistan’s association with and use of non-state actors dates back to its very emergence as a nation-state in 1947.
Within two months of its existence, the newly created Pakistan pushed thousands of tribal lashkars (militias) to invade and seize Kashmir in what was construed as a holy war (jihad) to reclaim the Muslim majority region.
It followed up this duplicitous use of terrorism in 1965 when Pakistan Army pushed hundreds of armed insurgents, mostly its soldiers, under the so-called Operation Gibraltar, into Kashmir to incite the locals against the state, something that could serve as casus belli for Pakistan against India internationally.
Furthermore, during its genocidal campaign in then East Pakistan (Bangladesh), Pakistani Army used Islamist groups, labelled as rezakars, to fight against the Bangla nationalists in 1971.
For the credit of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military ruler, he institutionalised and incentivised the use of non-state actors in the country’s foreign policy.
The 1980s were a period of global significance, with the Cold War between the US-led capitalist bloc and Soviet Russia’s communist bloc unfolding in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, ultimately tilting towards the West’s victory by the decade’s end.
For Islamabad, Kabul had become a major bete noire due to its refusal to recognise the contested Durand Line — the British-drawn border dividing the Pashtun heartland — and its support for Pashtun nationalists advocating for an independent Pashtunistan since Pakistan’s creation in 1947.
When Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan in 1979, General Zia-ul-Haq, backed by the US and Gulf Arab allies like Saudi Arabia, positioned Pakistan as the frontline state in the so-called “anti-communist jihad”.
The Pakistan Army established an extensive network of training centres, often disguised as madrassas (Islamic schools), along its border with Afghanistan in North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province), led by Darul Uloom Haqqania of Akora Khattak, to produce mujahideen — Islamist insurgents — who would fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Thus began Pakistan’s enduring association with Islamist militant groups whom it continued to use strategically for is regional interests, particularly against India, after Russians withdrew from Afghanistan.
This strategy was bolstered by Zia’s Islamisation of state institutions and the armed forces, embedding Islamist ideology within Pakistan’s establishment.
This institutionalisation of Islamist forces has persisted, with Pakistan’s military struggling to purge their influence from its ranks, particularly under General Pervez Musharraf post the 9/11 era and US-led War on terror. Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, played a pivotal role in the creation of the Afghan Taliban in 1994 and supported their rise to power in 1996, prior to their ouster by the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Interestingly, after 2001, while publicly backing the US, Pakistan covertly provided safe passage to Afghan Taliban and other insurgents into North Waziristan.
After recognising the effectiveness of using Islamist militants in Afghanistan, Pakistan shifted its focus to Kashmir where it had made earlier attempts to incite local unrest.
As such, Pakistan military redeployed the battle-hardened Afghan returned ‘mujahideen’ to fight in Kashmir from 1989 onwards in an attempt to replicate their success against India. Pakistan Army organised these foreign fighters under dozens of militant insurgent groups, known as askari tanzeems, including Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), Harkat-ul-Ansar/Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuA/HuM), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), along with Hizbu1 Mujahideen (HM) and Al-Badr, among others. These groups have been responsible for numerous acts of terrorism in Kashmir, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians and significant destruction of public property.
However, as the saying goes, one cannot nurture a snake in one’s house and expect it to bite only the neighbours.
Pakistan’s policy of using terrorism as a state tool has long backfired, with many of the groups it once supported turning their guns on the Pakistani state from the mid-2000s onwards.
Most notably, Deobandi Pashtun groups, who coalesced under the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2007, have fiercely opposed the state, especially after Pakistan’s decision to join the American-led War on Terror in 2001.
A prime example of an asset gone rogue is the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group.
For years, Pakistan tried to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban, with Hafiz Gul Bahadur being classified as a “good” Taliban leader due to his focus on assisting Afghan Taliban fight the American forces in Afghanistan rather than targeting the Pakistani Army or civilians.
Interestingly, in 2006, after a peace accord, the Pakistani establishment allowed Bahadur to establish a Shura council in North Waziristan, one of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), granting him the authority to enforce taxes and penalties. This effectively made him the leader of the local Taliban in the region.
The Pakistan Army allowed him to maintain ties with the Afghan Taliban, particularly the Haqqani network, to ensure a degree of influence over the Afghan group and demonstrate support against the American forces.
Despite granting Hafiz Gul Bahadur considerable autonomy due to his group’s utility in Afghanistan, Pakistan ultimately faced the consequences of nurturing militant factions.
Hundreds of suicide attacks resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians and soldiers, and caused extensive destruction of public infrastructure, especially between 2011 and 2014.
Under Gul’s watch, North Waziristan became a haven for Afghan Taliban, foreign insurgents, and TTP affiliates, as the Pakistan Army refrained from conducting military operations in the region for over eight years.
The situation changed dramatically after the devastating Army Public School (APS) attack in Peshawar in December 2014, in which TTP militants based in North Waziristan killed over 140 people, most of them children.
This tragedy forced the Pakistan Army to launch Operation Zarb-e-Azb in the region, driving Hafiz Gul Bahadur into Afghanistan and ultimately transforming him into a “bad” Taliban in the eyes of the Pakistani state.
Another failure of Pakistan’s terrorism as a state policy is symbolised by the overall failure of Afghan policy.
While it facilitated Afghan Taliban’s return to Kabul in August 2021 and overthrow the Afghanistan Republican political system, with the hope of gaining strategic depth in the country and undoing the gains of countries like India, whom it presumes adversarial nemesis, the policy went haywire within merely a year.
Its once nurtured militant groups and current nemesis have only been bolstered to continue targeting the Pakistani state institutions.
Despite frequent militant attacks which has left Pakistan’s internally security highly vulnerable, Islamabad refuses to learn from its mistakes and continues to employ terrorism as a policy against its neighbours, particularly India in Kashmir.
The recent surge in terrorist activities in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, carried out by Pakistan-based and sponsored militants, reflects the persistence of this approach.
As such, while Pakistan may launch numerous internal anti-terrorism campaigns, as long as it maintains this duplicity and continues to support externally focussed terrorist groups like those targeting India, it will struggle to achieve internal stability and will remain synonymous with terrorism. The sooner it learns this hard reality, the better it will for Pakistan.