Almost on the expected lines, Pakistan establishment led by Prime Minister Imran Khan himself, has embarked upon a virulent campaign against India blaming for allegedly carrying out a blast near the residence of Jamaat-Ud-Dawa (Lashkar-e-Toiba – LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed in Lahore’s Johar Town neighbourhood. It is noteworthy here that the experts cannot afford to ignore carefully choosing to express Jamaat Ud Dawa instead of the LeT. It is very much in the public domain that the LeT mastermind Hafiz Saeed had planned and executed the dastardly terror attack on the Indian Parliament in December, 2001. Although, the Pakistani sponsors of such terror assault tend to delink LeT or Hafiz Saeed’s role in the two decade old terror misadventure targeting other Indian spots as well, the world counter terror experts have been articulating that Hafiz Saeed enjoyed the blessings of the State and was thoroughly trained in executing deadly terror attacks on the Indian targets.
The most recent Johar Town attack near Hafiz Saeed’s location is being conveniently blamed to the Indian intelligence agencies as starkly evident in a press conference of July 5, addressed by the Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf, and the Punjab Police Chief Imam Ghani. Addressing the media, the top functionaries of the Pak government insinuating a high level of sophistication in the Middle East using Pakistani frontmen to make it difficult to establish a direct connection to Indian agencies or money. Obviously rattled by the detonation caused in the vicinity of Hafiz Saeed residence, the key men of the Pakistani dispensation alleged that the attack coincided with thousands of coordinated cyber attacks on the country’s information infrastructure.
There are innumerable cases which can be easily illustrated to
point out the series of terror attacks carried out in various
locations in Pakistan by the local armed cadres who are
fighting for autonomy, more freedom of expression and better
human rights’ treatment from the Federal government
Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Shah Mahmood Qureshi exceeded his diplomatic niceties, as he has done in the past on numerous occasions, and called upon the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to initiate an action against India for mounting terror attack on the Pakistani soil. Mr. Qureshi is conveniently forgetting, with a selective amnesia, that this important Paris based watchdog has not taken Pakistan off the list of countries, still afflicted with terror and as a result Pakistan continues to be in the grey list imposed by an independent agency like the FATF.
Indulging in such unfortunate blame game, Pakistan is losing focus on its own backyard where the home-grown terrorists flourish under the State patronage and have now spun out of control and are often noticed targeting the various infrastructure within Pakistan. In the light of this, it would perhaps be imperative that the Pakistan authorities, especially the all-powerful military and the ISI, take a close look at the growing discontent among the dissenters in Baluchistan, Sindh and even in PoK to know the ground reality instead of faulting India for the terror attacks on its soil.
There are innumerable cases which can be easily illustrated to point out the series of terror attacks carried out in various locations in Pakistan by the local armed cadres who are fighting for autonomy, more freedom of expression and better human rights’ treatment from the Federal government. The Johar Bagh, Lahore terror attack which has jolted Hafiz Saeed and his mentors, has also exposed the incompetence and incapabilities of the Pakistani intelligence and security agencies with so much of military intelligence footprints intruding into the civilian dispensations of intelligence agencies such high profile terror happenings confirm that the Pak intelligence machinery is in tatters. It is, therefore, not difficult to estimate that an abject intelligence failure is causing such spate of terror violence and the Pakistani agencies have little or no whiff of such an incident of massive magnitude coming.
Sources in Pakistan, in the meantime, who are familiar with terror linked developments, disclosed in anonymity, that the Pakistani intelligence and security leadership seems rudderless by the slew of terror incidents and they now need to revamp their intelligence infrastructure, perhaps bereft of further Khaki interference. However, this prescription looks improbable due to multiple agencies interfering with each other in the absence of a clear coordination. And, if this grey area is not addressed, glaring failure to gather human or technical intelligence to prevent terror related recurrences, will continue to rock Pakistan making it more hapless and frustrated.
Shantanu Mukharji is a security analyst and a former National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of Mauritius. Views expressed are personal