Why Won't Pakistan Act against the Haqqani Network?

Umair Jamal

Terrorism, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Defense, Security, South Asia, United States

"Pakistan’s commitments to sincerely support the Afghan peace process lack substance."

The Pakistani Taliban’s brutal attack at an Army Public School in 2014, which killed more than 140 children, forced the country’s powerful military into launching a massive military operation against militants based in the tribal regions along the Afghan border. While for years, the Pakistani leadership is known to have patronized and sheltered various militant groups for different security related reasons, to everyone’s surprise, this operation promised to decimate all terrorist groups:  “All foreign fighters and local terrorists will be wiped out without any exception,” including the Haqqani network, said the military.

On November 5, 2014, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, a senior commander for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in a Pentagon hosted press conference noted that Pakistan’s military operation in the country’s tribal areas had “fractured” the Haqqani network and the group’s ability to strike in Afghanistan had been reduced significantly. “They are fractured. They are fractured like the Taliban is. That's based pretty much on the Pakistan [operations] in North Waziristan this entire summer-fall,” Anderson said.

However this apparent major doctrinal shift in Pakistan’s strategic security and defense policy has proved another hoax. Before the operation, Pakistan Army’s media wing in a statement said that this will be an indiscriminate operation and when the soldiers “go there, they will eliminate everyone,” and by that the spokesperson meant “any terrorist who is on the soil of Pakistan right now within the area of operation.”

 The military operation named Zarb-e-Azb, as announced has targeted all foreign or local militant groups except those who had left the region before the operation. Reportedly, the Haqqani network was tipped off before the start of the operation and moved its assets across the Durand Line, border dividing Afghanistan and Pakistan.