Pakistan struck by multiple insurgencies

Since its inception, Pakistan has been facing both internal and external challenges to its security. Both these threats are interlinked in the context that both of them depend on each other. External hostile agencies take help from the internal terrorist organizations to destabilize our country and vice versa.

Our main external security challenge is that from India. Indian extremist Hindus have not accepted partition till date and have constantly strived to destabilize and even dismember Pakistan. This is supported by the historical facts that are in front of us.  Soon after the partition, they occupied the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir, which was and is a natural and legitimate part of Pakistan.

In 1965, they attacked Pakistan again with the aim to reunite the entire Indian sub-continent under the banner of Hindutawa. 1971 saw the worst example of their Muslim enmity when they crossed the international border of East Pakistan and carved out Bangladesh with the help of their proxy, Mukhti Bakhni. The recent nomination of Modi as the prime minister of India is a bigger threat than that we perceived from previous Indian governments because of his track record and training with the Hindu terrorist organization, RSS. He further ignited the already tense situation on the border with his drama of surgical strike, which created war hysteria in the region. He can truly be considered the biggest threat to the territorial integrity of Pakistan.

On the opposite side of the border, we have the Afghan problem which is as big a threat to our national security as that of the eastern front. Afghanistan has caused problems for Pakistan right from 1947 when they claimed over Pakistani territory and started supporting the so-called Pakhtunistan movement. Afghan Jihad of the 80s further aggravated the situation inside Pakistan with the inflow of millions of Afghan migrants inside Pakistan. That burden was still on the shoulder of Pakistani people when America launched their war on terror against the Afghan Taliban. More and more Afghan people fled their motherland due to American bombardment and started arriving in Pakistan.

Pakistan still hosts more than two million Afghan migrants inside its territory, which is a major security challenge for Pakistan. American presence inside Afghanistan is also a major a matter of concern for Pakistan because of their nefarious designs against our nuclear program, their recent agreements with India for strategic partnership and logistics exchange further glorify that.

In the Islamic world, we are also facing a dilemma because of the Saudi-Iran rivalry based on sectarian lines. Saudi government promotes the strict interpretation of Islam (Wahabi Doctrine), which considers Shias as heretics. On the other hand, Iranian clergy also considers Wahabis and Salafis as heretics and extremists. This has severely disturbed law-order situation in Pakistan over the years and one can expect further fuelling amid sectarian conflicts in the Middle East and the involvement of these two regional powers in those conflicts. Apart from sectarianism, we are also facing ethnic tensions, especially in Balochistan. Balochistan nationalists fought against the state of Pakistan in a low-level conflict in the 1970s. Yet we can see another insurgency going around in Balochistan after the death of Nawab Akbar Bugti.

Another major threat that we have faced for more than a decade and still facing is religious terrorism. Terrorists in the name of Islam are killing innocent people inside Pakistan. They are fully funded by their masters from abroad.

The threats that we face internally cannot be isolated from those that we face externally as we discussed in preamble because it is now an open secret that India and some other hostile intelligence agencies have been funding religious extremists and ethnic separatists through their camps and consulates in the border areas of Afghanistan.