Just like an addict who is adept at finding excuses for his addiction and can spin yarns on how he proposes to clean up his act, whenever Pakistan comes under international pressure, it indulges in “pleasant lies”, insincere assurances and plain old-fashioned dissembling to convince the world that it is all ready to get over its addiction to jihadism and detoxify itself. For 20 years now, Pakistan has taken the world for a ride on the issue of draining its swamps of jihadist terrorism. After every incident of terrorism which turns international focus on the jihad factory that runs with impunity and the connivance and complicity of the Pakistani state, Pakistan makes a show of indulging in frenetic activity against the terror infrastructure in the country.

But like an addict who has no intention to quit, and only makes a show of quitting to mislead everyone—so too with Pakistan.

Since the beginning of this century, when international pressure started mounting on Pakistan to end state support to terrorism, Pakistan has followed a playbook on how to deceive the international community. In the last two decades, every time the world breathes down Pakistan’s neck after an outrageous terror attack, there is a set sequence that follows.

First, Pakistan denies having anything to do with the incident. Instead of being contrite, they play the victim. There is an attempt to deflect attention by blaming the real victims and building bizarre conspiracy theories. For example: Ajmal Kasab of 26/11 infamy was kidnapped from Kathmandu and framed by Indian intelligence, 26/11 was the handiwork of Jews who didn’t report for work in the Twin Towers, Osama bin Laden’s body was brought from Afghanistan and shown recovered from Abbottabad to give Pakistan a bad name, and so on and so forth.

When this doesn’t get traction, they talk of “root causes” and seek evidence. In his book Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, revealed that evidence is sought not to move against the terrorists but to cover up tracks in the future. In other words, the idea is to find out what the other side knows, figure out what went wrong that led the tracks back to Pakistan and made deniability difficult, and ensure the same doesn’t happen when Pakistani terrorists attack the next time.

When denial fails, and pressure becomes unbearable, they announce with a lot of fanfare a crackdown on terror groups. Of course, they insist that the crackdown is not under any international pressure but is being done in Pakistan’s own interest. This script never changes. From the security forces to the media to politicians, everybody sings from the same sheet. It is invariably pointed out how, unlike previous occasions, this time the crackdown is for real and will be taken to its logical conclusion, which in Pakistani lexicon is short-hand for the terror groups being back in business with months, if not weeks. As for being “real”, it is supposed to be so either because a military dictator has announced it, or because a popular government which is in complete control is taking action, or even because both civil and military authorities have together decided to get rid of the terror infrastructure. Pull out official statements, speeches and remarks of top politicians and generals (serving and retired) and editorials and op-eds in the media from the past, and it is always the same snake oil being peddled to the gullible and desperate to believe interlocutors from the international community.

When the crackdown commences, there is a full drama which can really be summed up as “inaction replay” or, if you will, the re-run of an old movie albeit with new characters and in a new setting. Headlines are emblazoned with news of organisations banned, their offices sealed, their accounts frozen, their cadres and leaders “arrested” or “detained”, and their establishments and operations either seized or taken over by the Pakistani authorities. The flurry of action—banning the same groups over and over again, confiscating the same assets that had been confiscated during the last crackdown, freezing accounts which have already been emptied because the groups and leaders were forewarned—somehow manages to convince, or at least convey, to the world that Pakistan is finally acting.

The pressure eases and everybody goes into a wait-and-watch mode. This also happens because even as Pakistan makes a show of going after terror groups and networks, they urge their international interlocutors to show patience and appreciate the predicament that Pakistan finds itself in. Pakistan goes all out to inform everyone of the onerous task it has undertaken and seeks to impress upon them the fact that this job cannot be finished overnight. It is made out to be a long battle against extremism and jihadism which cannot be rushed through because the jihadists are embedded in society, exercise influence and—if pushed too hard—could have a terrible backlash which Pakistan can ill-afford.

The world is asked to cut Pakistan some slack because bottling the jihadists isn’t a tap or switch that can be turned off or on at will. Pakistan even tries to cash in by seeking assistance—mostly monetary and military equipment—from Western countries and often gets rewarded, despite not delivering on its commitments.  

Within a few months, it becomes clear that the entire action against jihadist terror groups was an eyewash, aimed only to defuse the immediate crisis, not to dismantle the terror infrastructure. The Pakistanis of course acquire an air of injured innocence by pleading that they were genuinely and sincerely acting against the jihadists, but since they are a democracy and have rule of law (okay, this is stretching the limits of credulity and is laughable, but this is exactly the line they take) they are helpless before the judiciary which intervenes and gives relief to the terrorists. Besides the fact that the prosecution presents a very weak case and terribly flimsy evidence before the judiciary, the courts are more than happy to become hand-maidens of the “deep state” in protecting, not prosecuting, the terrorists.

Within months, everything is back to what it was. The terrorists operate with impunity, the Pakistani state denies any involvement with them and demands evidence to take action, and the world in general and India in particular wring their hands in despair, wondering how they got taken for a ride yet again. And it turns out that the long rope that they gave to Pakistan to clean up its act was used by Pakistan to hang the resolve of the international community out to dry. India too has been guilty of buying into Pakistan’s alibis. Right from the time General Pervez Musharraf proscribed the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad in January 2002, India has shown great understanding for what it imagined was a difficult task being undertaken by Pakistan. In fact, India set a very low bar for judging Pakistan’s sincerity. The general line in India was that we know this will take time but as long as we see a clear break in the state support for the terror groups, we will think Pakistan is moving in the right direction.

While taking such a line could be justified if India was dealing with a normal country, in the case of Pakistan, it betrayed the sheer ignorance, vacuity and total lack of understanding. The thing is that when Pakistan says it needs time, then it means that they have absolutely no intention of doing anything substantive to curb the jihad factory. All that they will do is cosmetic action, which will wash away once a few weeks or months have passed. Every single excuse Pakistanis make is to buy time which can be used to avoid action long enough that the demand for curbing the jihad industry loses salience.

The fact of the matter is that when the Pakistan state decides to do something, then it virtually does it overnight and doesn’t let anything come in the way. Take for example the way they got rid of the Sunni terrorist Malik Ishaq. This was a man who had confessed to killing over a 100 Shia Muslims. He was the head of the Sunni terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and enjoyed enormous influence among the Sunni extremist circle. For 20 years, he was kept in prison but lived like a VIP. The army used his “good” offices during the attack on the GHQ. He was also approached on other occasions to intercede with all sorts of despicable characters. Whenever action was demanded against him, the same excuses of the sort being trotted out to avoid crushing Masood Azhar and JeM were used in his case. And yet, when it became know or was alleged that he was making a beeline for the ISIS, all stops were pulled out. Malik Ishaq, his two sons, his closest associate and his two sons and around 10 other associates were “encountered” one night. And that was the end of the matter.

The same happened with the Barelvi extremist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan which had wreaked havoc throughout the country on the Asia Bibi blasphemy case. As long as the party was useful to cut Nawaz Sharif’s vote bank, a hands-off approach was adopted. It was said that they represent a very sensitive religious sentiment which if fingered can put the whole country to flames. And yet once the TLP leaders called for a rebellion against the generals and held the judges wajib-ul-qatal (worthy of being murdered), overnight the party was reduced to a non-entity—its leaders incarcerated, its cadres beaten up and bludgeoned into submission, and its organisation virtually dismantled. There was not a peep out of anyone when this happened.

There are any number of examples that should inform people in the international community about how when the Pakistani state wants to do something, neither the niceties of law, nor the considerations of human rights—and certainly not the fear of backlash—deter it from acting. For over a decade, despite constant exhortations by the US to “do more”, the Pakistanis desisted from military operations in North Waziristan—the terror central. The excuse was that the military was overstretched and that there was a fear of a terrible backlash. But the moment the military decided to conduct the operation, less than a 100 soldiers died and there was virtually no backlash.

The thing is that Pakistan doesn’t need time to act against the terror infrastructure. Nor does the world need to cut any slack for Pakistan to give it time to move against the terrorists. What is needed is to change the strategic calculus of the Pakistani military and “deep state” to force them to act seriously against the jihadists. The moment the world, or India, cuts some slack, it removes the urgency to change the strategic calculus and in fact disincentivises Pakistan to kick its addiction to jihadism.

Pakistan acted against Malik Ishaq, the TTP and the TLP because they had started posing an existential threat to the Pakistani state. The internal threat they posed incentivised Pakistan to crush them. This means that not until there is an existential threat—military or economic or even diplomatic—from outside, Pakistan will not move against the jihadist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jamaatud Dawa and JeM. Once this threat from the international community becomes imminent and palpable, there will be no excuse proffered, no time sought, no hemming and hawing by Pakistan. In other words, unless the cost (imposed from outside) of not acting against jihadists far outweighs the costs of acting against the jihadists, Pakistan will never take any meaningful action against its terrorist proxies.

With Pakistan once again making a song and dance about clamping down on the jihad factory in that country, it is imperative that the pressure is not slackened and strict metrics are used to judge the seriousness and sincerity of the operations that Pakistan’s claim to be conducting. Otherwise, this latest crackdown will end up like the others before it: a big zero.