Earlier this week, the Inter-Services Public Relations said the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group, which operates from Afghanistan, perpetrated the terrorist attack on the Bannu Cantonment that martyred eight soldiers.
The statement recalled that Pakistan has “consistently” urged the interim Afghan government to take action against terrorists sheltering on its soil and vowed that all necessary measures would be taken to counter threats emanating from Afghanistan. But while the current bout of unrest in Pakistan can be directly traced to Afghanistan, its indirect linkages to India are no secret.
As far back as November 2020, then-foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi addressed a joint press conference with then-Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Babar Iftikhar, presenting “irrefutable evidence” of Delhi’s involvement in various terrorist attacks across Pakistan. This was followed this year in January with a press conference from the foreign secretary in which he said Islamabad had “credible evidence” of links between Indian agents and the assassination of two Pakistanis in Sialkot and Rawalakot. Despite this “evidence,” as well as allegations from China and the U.S. of India undertaking extrajudicial killings on its soil, Pakistan has struggled to advance its narrative within the global community. Meanwhile, unrest along the disputed Line of Control continues, with both sides accusing each other of ceasefire violations in recent weeks.
What Pakistan has come to realize is that the militancy engulfing its border areas is a part of India’s new policy of assertion in the region; as publicly confirmed by various Indian ministers. At the May 2023 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in India, the foreign ministers of the neighboring states actually traded sharp comments over such incidents, marking a new low in the Pak-India bilateral equation. Countering this requires a dedicated rethink of Pakistan’s foreign policy with the inclusion of all stakeholders. Unfortunately, an internally destabilized Islamabad is unlikely to have an easy go against an India aiming to attack inside Pakistan from its western border with the help of Afghans whom it can persuade monetarily.