Armed forces carrying out military operation

The horrific incident of 9/11 on World Trade Centre proved to be a turning point in international politics. Without any investigation, America blamed Osama Bin Ladin for that tragedy and decided to invade Afghanistan on the pretext of the war on terror in coalition with its allies. Pakistan is an ally of Taliban found it difficult to choose sides in the war but American secretary of state, Collin Powell, threatened Pakistan with disastrous results in case Pakistan did not support America. It is said that he threatened Musharraf that either you are with us or with them and that you have no second option. In case you sided with them or remain neutral, we will take you back to the stone-age. This compelled Musharraf to turn his back on the former allies and to cooperate with the international coalition.

Most of the Afghan Taliban have graduated from the seminaries based in Pakistan and are ethnically Pashtuns. This provided them with a huge support base in Pakistani Pashtun areas and especially in lawless FATA.  When NATO invaded Afghanistan, Some of the Taliban fighters crossed the border into Pakistan in the guise of migrants and mixed with local population due to cultural similarities. Americans blamed Pakistani establishment for providing safe exits to Taliban to cross the border and to take shelter in Pakistan, which Pakistan denies till date.

Under heavy pressure from the international coalition, Pakistan started military action to flush out foreign militants from lawless border region in 2004. This brought heavy resentment from the local population who considered these foreigners as their Mujahideen brothers. This resulted in an armed conflict between the Pakistan Army and the foreign Islamic militants supported by locals.

This was a new experience for the army to deal with guerrilla warfare and hence sustained some heavy casualties at the hands of militants, who had the local public support. Pak Army thus struck peace deals with local commanders to restore peace in the region. “Shakai Agreement” with Neik Muhammad and “Sararogha Agreement” with Baitullah Mehsud are some of the manifestations of this. Neik Muhammad was killed in the US drone strike, resulting in the breakage of that agreement. Agreement with Baitullah Mehsud was not materialized too. This resulted in an all-out military operation again.

TTP started expanding its support base to the settled areas as well and till 2007, Swat was under their complete control. Provincial Government with the support of Centre struck a peace deal with them in Swat in 2007 for Nizam-e-Adal but was unsuccessful and led to a military action which turned the tide in favor of the government. This limited war continued with full scale till the APS attack in 2014 when the government decided to kill, apprehend or flush-out all the terrorists from the country. For this purpose Operation, Zarb-e-Azab was launched under the leadership of General Raheel Sharif in tribal areas. The effectiveness of the operation was further enhanced by combing operations in the urban centers of the country. A new military operation has been launched under the name " Radd-Ul-Fassad" by the new command of Pak Army to wipe out terrorism.

Though we can’t say that the war is over but our Army has completely uprooted terrorists from their hubs and now a political setup is needed to bring the development of those regions on the same level as the other parts of the country to solve the problem of terrorism forever.

The war on terror has claimed more than seventy thousand lives of our innocent citizens and armed forces with a financial loss amounting up to 130 billion dollars. The recent attack on Quetta Police training center was another manifestation of the losses that have suffered so far but America still has doubts regarding our will to fight out terrorism. This is evident from the recent suspension of Coalition support fund and ban on selling of eight F16s to Pakistan.