New Delhi: The situation nowadays created in Pakistan for soldiers is not less than ‘walk on the sword’ where enemies are always there, But attacks from terrorists are an extra gift to them.
According to the Pakistan-based political experts, Pakistan’s first war against terror, the brutal and bloody conflict that was inflicted upon the people of Pakistan due to Al Qaeda and the September 11, 2011 attacks, caused untold pain and suffering in Pakistan. But maybe that almost decade-long conflict taught the Pakistani elite the wrong lessons.
You cannot learn lessons without some pain – but sometimes, the pain you feel teaches you the wrong lessons.
Pakistan’s second war against terror is already more complex, and more dangerous than the first.
Pakistan’s second war against terror began sometime in 2020 or 2021, much like the first one began sometime between 2004 and 2007 – without anyone in Pakistan wanting to acknowledge that a new war had begun. No matter what happens now, remember this: history repeats itself only at the margins.
How it proceeds from here will depend on how quickly Pakistan revisits some of the lessons it has internalized since 2014. To process this, consider a couple of plot lines that shaped the first war against terror.
According to the media reports and history, On January 13, 2006, eighteen died in a missile strike on a small compound in Damadola, Bajaur. Ten months later, on October 30, 2006, more missiles rained down, this time on a madrassah in Chenagai, Bajaur. Eighty-two individuals perished that day. No senior leaders of Al Qaeda or the TNSM or any of the other key terrorist groups that we know today as the enemy died in those strikes in Bajaur.
Over 300,000 Pakistanis were displaced from their homes. The morning after the January 2006 Damadola missile strike.
The second incident was, Lal Masjid. On July 6, Lt-Col Haroon ul Islam was shot by terrorists holed up inside Lal Masjid in Islamabad as he valiantly led an operation to cleanse the mosque of the insidious terrorist network that had come to inhabit it. He embraced martyrdom on July 8, 2007. Nine other members of the world-class Special Services Group also embraced Shahada during that operation. A total of at least 102 fatalities were recorded during the Lal Masjid operation, with allegations that the real numbers were higher.
(_Vinayak Barot)