Pahalgam attack: A leaf out of old Pak army playbook?

Hindustan Times

23-04-2025

ISLAMABAD : It was long apprehended by peace activists in Pakistan. Now, it has happened – a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir.
Well-meaning elements in Pakistan were on tenterhooks when the secessionist Baloch Liberation Army last month attacked the Jaffar Express, killing dozens. At the time, the Pakistani ministry of foreign affairs (MOFA), without specifically blaming India for the incident, accused it of 'sponsoring' terrorism in Pakistan. The peaceniks were worried Pakistan might retaliate, thereby triggering a spiral of tit-for-tat. They hoped that Pakistani chief of army staff (COAS), General Asim Munir, going ballistic in a recent speech would be the response. That hope was belied on Tuesday.
But why did Munir suddenly go off on a tangent with a volley of hostility towards India? And what can be made of the strike in Kashmir, the worst in years?
Salman Raja, the lawyer of ousted Pakistani PM Imran Khan, contended, 'His continued incarceration is fuelling public anger and alienation.'
The Pakistan Muslim League's Nawaz Sharif, as prime minister, attempted to prune the army's powers, but without success. However, the confrontation between the army and Imran Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), who is now in jail, could have caused an erosion in Pakistanis' goodwill towards their army; and its General Headquarters (GHQ) seem to be struggling to combat this slippage.
Indeed, the development has been seen in some academic, media and political circles in Islamabad as a reason for Munir's surprisingly sharp rhetoric – an attempt, in other words, to regain favourable public ratings.
Besides, as Raja put it, Pakistan's foreign policy is 'guided by the vision of the armed forces about the requirements of national security'. Thus, the diatribe against India.
A former director-general of the Pakistan Army's espionage wing, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), said GHQ was losing patience over what they believed was India aiding and abetting the Afghanistan-based Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – which a United Nations Security Council resolution says hopes to 'overthrow' the Pakistani government 'to establish an emirate based on its interpretation of Islamic law' – and separatists in the western Pakistani province of Balochistan.
Sitting across him, a retired senior officer of the Indian external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), who narrowly missed becoming this organisation's chief, challenged the ex-DG of ISI by saying TTP was too small an outfit to pose a threat to Pakistan.
There's a kind of hush in Pakistan; especially in its twin cities of Islamabad, the country's capital, and Rawalpindi, where the GHQ is located and which is looked upon in diplomatic circles as the nation's nerve centre. People at best converse in whispers.
Raja is a graduate of Cambridge University and Harvard Law School. Now in his 50s, he's reputed to be a skilful attorney, and defended Sharif when he was ousted from office in 2017 and his family was accused of having links with off-shore companies. At present, he is not merely counsel for Sharif's arch opponent, Khan, but also secretary-general of PTI.
On a balmy late March evening in Islamabad, Raja drove up in a white SUV to collect me from my hotel. It was after dinner. We went to a café in a parade buzzing with customers at restaurants and other retail outlets, which have mushroomed in Islamabad. A stream of people came up to greet him, reminding him of messages they sent to him, or sought an appointment for a future meeting. In today's complex Pakistani politics, Raja is a quintessential Opposition insider.
Khan, an Oxford graduate, celebrated cricketer and captain of the squad that won Pakistan's only Cricket World Cup in 1992, took the plunge into politics in 1996 by forming PTI.
For over 20 years, he languished in the wilderness, barring winning his own seat and making gradual headway at the provincial level in the North West Frontier Province, now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Then, in a trice, he became the flavour of the season; with the not-so-tacit backing of the puissant Pakistan Army.
There were always competing opinions about Khan's abilities as a politician, even more so about his eligibility to be prime minister. Yet, the men in uniform saw in him an alternative. But within six months of his election as prime minister in 2018 – suspected to have been engineered in his favour – the aforementioned DG, ISI, said the choice was seen as a mistake.
While the kingmakers pondered over how to eject him and whom to replace him with, Khan and PTI's head start in the sphere of social media and his anti-corruption stance enhanced his popularity, even penetrating into significant sections of serving and retired armed forces' personnel and their families.
There arrived, though, a moment when GHQ decided it was time to act. With a chunk of his lawmakers abandoning him under pressure from the powers-that-be, Khan's coalition government was defeated in a confidence vote on April 9, 2022. 'It reflected the basic fault line in Pakistani politics…including the functioning of parliament,' said Raja.
'Every election result is manoeuvred by the Establishment (code for the Pakistan Army and its allies in the top echelons of the civil service) to ensure that no single party is able to form a government on its own. There is always an Establishment-backed party, with sufficient seats given to it, that can help topple a government once the main opposition parties have been given the go-ahead by the Establishment. The PTI government headed by Imran Khan was brought down with the Establishment shepherding the process,' he said.
Asked about the general elections on February 8, 2024, which independent observers were convinced wasn't free or fair, Raja alleged the vote 'was massively rigged, not during polling but through consolidation of results'.
''The actual results recorded at polling stations in nearly a 100 national assembly seats and an even larger number on the provincial assembly elections in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan were changed. This is universally accepted inside Pakistan. Imran Khan's PTI won a landslide victory,' he said.
'The PTI was disallowed from participating in the election as a party. Its candidates were declared independents. Even so, PTI backed candidates won over 90 seats. The actual number should have been closer to 180 seats in the National Assembly,' he added.
Raja said Khan's arrest and detention was part of the latest effort at political engineering by the Establishment. 'Cases against him are silly. The entire judicial system has been assaulted through the Establishment mandated 26th Amendment to the (Pakistan) Constitution and a campaign of intimidation of independent-minded judges.'
Reacting to the amendment enacted last October, the secretary-general of the International Court of Justice, Santiago Canton, indicated that the changes incorporated in it 'bring an extraordinary level of political influence over the process of judicial appointments and the judiciary's own administration.'
'Six judges of the Islamabad high court wrote a letter to the then Chief Justice of Pakistan complaining of surveillance and intimidation to which they had been subjected by the agencies. The main object of this assault on the judiciary is to prevent Imran Khan and his party members from getting justice,' alleged Raja
In the past, the Establishment has done deals, whereby an accused, convicted or imprisoned politician has been let off in lieu of leaving the country. Is such an understanding in the pipeline? 'There is no formal offer. However, Imran Khan has himself alluded to offers requiring him to go politically silent in return for his freedom,' Raja said.
The Pakistan Army and MOFA did not respond to a request for comment.