Crisis in Pakistan – Afghan relations & Escalation in Terrorism

Ladies and gentlemen, this is C. Paul Singh, President NISSMAT International at this end. A very good evening and thank you all for joining us. I extend a very hearty welcome to all our delegates and to our eminent speaker of the evening. NISSMAT has so far conducted about 136 webinars, interactive sessions, and now we have launched for the last few weeks the YouTube panel discussion also. Your response to our webinars or interactive sessions has been overwhelming, and that is how we also had the encouragement to start now panel discussions.

Today's interactive session is on crisis in Pakistan, Afghan relations and escalation in terrorism. This session is being addressed by a very eminent speaker, a well-renowned world authority on terrorism, Dr. Ajai Sahni. Let me introduce NISSMAT. NISSMAT was started in 1990. It started training courses in the field of private security, safety, security management and technology. Now NISSMAT has become a think tank and we have about 90 scholars who are providing inputs to us from time to time in the field of security, safety and other topical subjects. NISSMAT has now established four wings and we are now on the first wing, that is the NISSMAT forum.

Let me introduce the moderator of today, Major General Deepak Mehta, who was commissioned in Rajputana Rifles in 1972. He is a third generation officer in the army, postgraduate in defense studies from Madras University. He has attended advanced management programs at the Management Development Institute at Gurgaon. Also he has seen active operations in J&K, both in counterinsurgency and along the line of control, commanded an infantry battalion in J&K during the height of the insurgency phase and was also wounded. He commanded an infantry brigade during ops Parakram and Meghdoot. Subsequently he raised the first information warfare cell of the army as a pilot project, has instructional appointments also and staff appointments. Major General Deepak shall moderate this session.

Let me say a few words to introduce the subject: crisis in Pakistan, Afghan relations and escalation in terrorism. It is rightly said that in politics there are no permanent friends and enemies and there are only permanent interests. At one time Pakistan was very, very jubilant about the removal of the Ashraf Ghani government in Kabul and the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Today the position is different. Initially Talibans were considered to be a valuable strategic asset for Pakistan security and for anti-Indian policies. Now the original Talibans seem to be drifting out of Pakistan and even they are somewhat going out of the umbrella of Afghanistan. Also, Pakistan security forces are facing direct attacks from the TTP. It seems these Taliban terrorists have safe havens in Afghanistan.

Though Pakistan has been making efforts in the past to smooth over the growing rift between Islamabad and Kabul, yet it has not succeeded. The frequency of clashes has been going up in Pakistan, even with the so-called pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul, as they call it — they initially called it a pro-Pakistan regime when Kabul was taken over by the Afghan Talibans. The issue between the two countries is not possible to get resolved easily. The shaky relations with neighboring Afghanistan have made this situation all the more worse for Pakistan. Our speaker Dr. Ajai Sahni, as I told you, is one of the well-known authorities on terrorism, will address this session and will go into further details about the crisis, Afghan relations and escalation in terrorism. Thank you very much. With these words I pass on the session to the moderator of today, General Deepak Mehta. General Deepak Mehta, please.

Thank you sir. Before I introduce the president and the eminent speaker, I just want to make a few points with regards to this interactive session. We have people viewing this interactive session from the UAE, Kenya, Zambia, Bangladesh and a large number from India. This interactive session is sponsored by the Premier Consultancy and Investigation, which is a leader in the field of risk management and advisory enterprise. It's also sponsored by Premier Shield Private Limited. I want to make it a point here that this NISSMAT gives a platform to the sponsors; if you want to, you can get onto the NISSMAT website and you can put in your bid for whatever you want to sponsor.

And now coming down a few words on the president. Mr. Paul Singh is the president of NISSMAT. He joined the central police service in 1962. He underwent the initial training at the central police training college at Mount Abu in Rajasthan in India. He was also alumni of the prestigious National Police Academy at Hyderabad, where he completed an advanced police training. In a number of senior police appointments in a number of states in India, he was picked up and made responsible to raise a new police force, that's the Rapid Action Force, to deal with the communal riots, and he was the first boss of this organization. In recognition of his outstanding performance during his service, he was decorated with the president's police medal for distinguished service, Indian police medal for meritorious service, special police duty medal with bar — that he got it twice. He got a Sena medal, which is an army award, and a number of other commendations and rewards. After retirement, he was conferred with the prestigious award, the security personality of the year, by the president of India in the global security conference. Presently he is advisor, Asian Professional Security Association, that's India chapter, honorary director general, Central Association of the Private Security Industry, and he is also an association of the private detective and investigations India.

Coming down to the eminent speaker that we have — the president has introduced him in certain words, but a few more. He is the executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management. He's a publisher and editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review and a project director of impact. He served as a member of the Madhukar Gupta Committee for Restructuring of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Presently he's a member of the police modernization and strengthening committee of the state of Uttar Pradesh. He has researched and written extensively on aspects related to conflict, politics and development in South Asia, has participated in the advisory projects undertaken by the various national and state governments. He has jointly edited with Mr. KPS Gill on the aspects related to terror and containment, perspectives of the Indian internal security, global threats on terror, to include ideological, material and political linkages. He has lectured at numerous professional institutes, appears frequently on the aspect of terrorism and insurgency in the electronic and print media. Dr. Ajai Sahni, on to earth please.

Thank you General Mehta. Thank you Mr. Singh. The topic in some senses is so familiar, because we hear of it almost every day, and I think it is important for us to begin to focus on some elements of nuance to see where this trajectory is actually going: what is the contestation, and what is the scale of contestation, and who are the winners and losers. It is very obvious that Pakistan's so-called strategic depth strategy has not quite turned out as they had hoped for, as they had expected.

Well, I think something even more basic — both countries are afflicted with relatively high levels of violence even today, but this needs to be put into context. Take for instance Afghanistan in 2021, which is the year in which the Taliban, on August 15, takes over Kabul, but the preceding year is a year of continuously escalating violence. You had 27,752 fatalities in the country. In 2022, you had 2,942 fatalities in total in insurgency and terrorism related violence. This is very important. It is important because when you read the news, you will constantly have this strident commentary on Afghanistan of how many people are being killed — daily incidents of violence, atrocities, what they do against women, what they do against civilians, what they have been doing against members of the previous regime who have been targeted, and so many of them have been killed, tortured, killed, otherwise targeted.

But you must understand that we have come from a situation where 15 to 30,000 people were being killed in a year, and we are now at a situation where you have about under 3,000 people dying in 2022. This is a group, the Taliban — when I say 27,752 people killed, more than 21,000 of these were in the terrorist category, overwhelmingly from the Taliban, drawn from the Taliban. Some of them were from the Islamic State as well and some other smaller groupings. But this is a group that can absorb tremendous violence. It accepts tremendous violence. People say the Taliban will come under tremendous pressure because of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and the humanitarian crisis is grave. But this again is a group that does not concern itself with anybody's welfare. Their eyes are on the next life. Their eyes are on the hereafter and their interpretation of the written word of the faith. So they have the capacity to endure tremendous and continuous violence and deprivation over a very long time to come.

Pakistan on the other hand is a settled state. Whatever our assessment of the quality of governance etc., it is a settled state. It has continued and persisted with its internal difficulties and turmoils for decades at end. But it is a state that appears to be continuously weakening. Now here again we have to put a balance on things. For instance, if you look at the medium term, the last roughly five odd years, we see from 2019 onwards a continuous decline in violence till 2022 — sorry, a continuous increase in violence till the present. So in 2019 you just had 365 fatalities; goes up to 506, goes up to 663. Last year there were 971 fatalities, and they have already had, till the end of February, over 277 fatalities in this year.

However, before we start — and there is this tendency: oh, Pakistan is, you know, going to disintegrate, Pakistan is at a cusp. Pakistan in certain perceptions has been disintegrating from its very creation. So for those who are getting their hopes up in terms of the suffering in Pakistan, I would suggest a certain moderation, because if you go back to 2009, 11,317 people were killed in terrorism and insurgent violence, and Pakistan survived. So there is, yes, a progressive in a sense weakening, some very dramatic, and this is something that always in our assessments we have this proclivity: wherever a major incident occurs in Kashmir, we are back into, you know, the 1990s; something happens in Punjab, oh, we are back into the Khalistan era. And so we also interpret major incidents. You had a terrible incident in that mosque where — sorry, last month, in January — where 84 people, policemen, were killed, mostly policemen were killed in a mosque, and immediately there was this sense that the security forces will collapse, that there is a disintegration. I don't think any of this is going to happen. There is going to be a progressive challenge, and this will be overlaid by the other challenges Pakistan is facing, which I will come to.

But it is important, when we look at these trends of escalating violence in Pakistan, to understand how and when they started. If you go back to the data, you will see that the Taliban Pakistan activities within Pakistan begin to escalate immediately after the Doha agreement, February 2020. Now how does this happen? Why is it connected? It is connected simply because both the Taliban and its ideological twin the TTP, who had also been supporting it and fighting shoulder to shoulder in Afghanistan with them, begin to see a victory in Afghanistan more or less imminent, despite the terms of the agreement which said that America will withdraw if the Afghan Taliban adheres to a whole series of terms and conditions. None of those terms and conditions were in fact adhered to, and America still withdrew. So you can understand the degree of confidence that has come into the Afghan Taliban itself and its partner Taliban Pakistan.

Now as this violence began to escalate, Islamabad — or Rawalpindi, depending on who you think is in charge in Pakistan — but Pakistan remained quite indifferent to the threat, because the escalation was small and there was this conviction that once the Taliban comes into power, all we have to do is tell them to hand over the Taliban Pakistan and everything will be all right. Now what we are seeing instead is a tremendous consolidation of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan: not only an escalation of operations, but from August 2020 to the present the Taliban Pakistan has been either reunifying and absorbing other groupings — many of its own splinter factions, 21 local militant groups including a number of Pakistan groupings, a number of breakaways of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan itself, and even the elements of the al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent have merged with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

So now we have, instead of this fragmented set of movements, a single fairly coordinated, centrally commanded grouping, which according to Pakistani estimates has an armed strength of more than 7 to 10,000 personnel. And this is not a conventional force. This is a terrorist force. And we have seen through our own history that a few hundred or a thousand or two terrorists, well organized, motivated, can do tremendous harm to a target country.

Then we see of course the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, a very rapid consolidation across the Afghan landmass. Everyone, including the limited resistance forces in the north, are first of all dispossessed, though they have now started gathering force again. The resistance forces are now beginning to expand some of their capacities and capabilities in the northern areas of Afghanistan. That has resulted in some escalation in violence. The Islamic State has become extremely active in Afghanistan. So these are pressures, but the military hold of the Taliban over Afghanistan is very, very significant.

Now after the fall of Kabul, you see the Taliban emerging — I would suggest pretending to emerge — as a facilitator of peace talks between the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Islamabad. So you suddenly had, you know, Sirajuddin Haqqani comes in and he brokers a ceasefire in October 2021 for 20 days, but it very rapidly sort of collapses. However, in 2022 in May, again, this time the Taliban Pakistan says that we'll have a ceasefire; that is extended and then extended again and again, and it carries on in name right up to November 28th, 2022 — 7 months of a notional ceasefire. But both groups, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Pakistan army and the Pakistani covert services, carry on systematic operations against each other throughout this phase. So while there is some deceleration in violence, there is very continuous and targeted violence, particularly against the leadership of the Taliban, including the leadership in Afghanistan, where you have several strikes which are against top leaders which are attributed to the Pakistani intelligence agencies. Then this is used as the grounds for a breakdown of the peace talks, and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan says we don't want to talk to you anymore, and it calls upon its cadres to launch operations against Pakistani security forces everywhere in Pakistan. So theoretically and abruptly the violence has gone out of just the north — the Pakhtun north, Balochistan — and now is a threat across Pakistan.

Now you talk about the other critical friction point over here: that's the Durand line. Please understand that no government in Afghanistan has ever accepted the legitimacy of the Durand line. This includes an almost completely dependent regime of the Taliban the last time around. This is very important. That regime was far more dependent on Pakistan than the current regime is. But it never conceded the Durand line as the permanent border. And now we are seeing that this border is being constantly contested by the Taliban in Afghanistan. They have said clearly that this is an illegal line which has divided a nation, because they see the Pakhtun as a nation — or Pashtun, as you may call it, as a nation — and repeated at the highest levels there have been several assertions to this effect.

Not only several assertions, there has been armed conflict between the Taliban forces and the army. There has been an air attack by the Pakistan air force into Afghan territory killing, I think, roughly 47 civilians. In this case, there have been a multiplicity of other attacks. Pakistan has fenced off a large proportion of the border, which fencing is being contested by the Taliban, and they have mined large areas all along the Durand line, to which of course Afghanistan has protested, demanded that maps of the mines be handed over to them. This is a friction that is not going to end. There are other groups in Afghanistan also. The Hisbut Afghanistan, for instance, has said that the Durand line must be completely removed, and it has added moreover that diplomatic conferences and meetings will not solve this issue. What does that mean? That means this has to be settled by armed violence.

So you have had many frictional sort of incidents all along the Durand line. Major clashes have occurred. They have exchanged artillery and mortar fire between Taliban forces and Pakistan forces. Many Pakistan and Taliban security personnel have lost their lives, and many, many civilians have also lost their lives. So we are talking about a situation where, for instance, you know, their deputy foreign minister, Abbas Stanikzai — he sort of warned Pakistan that if we rise against the Pakistani interference, no one will be able to stop us. And we must understand how seriously this is to be taken. Understand that these are people who have defeated a superpower, and they point it out. They say — after this air attack, the spokesperson for the Taliban had said — we have defeated a power which had far greater air superiority than Pakistan has.

Goodness, you must understand that they have a completely different pattern of operation. So simply saying Pakistan has so many, you know, soldiers, so many planes, so many tanks — none of this worked. They defeated a coalition of the most powerful armies in the world. And this is a conviction in their heart that we can do this and we can do it very easily with Pakistan. So this will continue. This is not something that is going to in any way be diluted over time. If anything, it is going to escalate.

We also are aware that they have created a whole new — what they call a specialist istishhadi force. Istishhadi is martyrdom force, to operate in — this is Taliban — now I shifted back to Taliban — under the patronage of the Taliban, the Taliban Pakistan has created this martyrdom force and has declared an autonomous government in two zones: you know, what they call the north zone — Peshawar, Malakand, Mardan, Gilgit-Baltistan — and the south zone, which is Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Kohat. All these areas, they said, these are ours. We are governing them and we will govern them through the use of terror, and we will govern them through the use of martyrdom forces. So this constitutes to my mind the most serious potential threat.

And we must remember that when I talked about more than 11,700 fatalities in 2009, that was again the Taliban in Pakistan. They had been brought to the table, they had been pushed to the wall, both by negotiations and very, very harsh military operations. But that was a different kind of thing. That war was different, because these people had at that time occupied and challenged conventional forces conventionally. This time around they are going to be fighting an insurgency or a terrorist campaign against a conventional force. So we will see a tremendous amount of difficulty.

This difficulty is very naturally going to be influenced by the relative weaknesses of both governments. When we go outside the purely security sphere, everything actually impinges in the end on security: if your economy is collapsing, if your administration is failing, if there is so much political fission and friction within the country that governments cannot function, where government after government in the provinces is, you know, simply walking out — two PTI governments in the two most important provinces, KP and Punjab. The PTI governments simply say we will go to the elections again, and the Supreme Court has now forced the federal government to declare elections soon. So all these factors are going to be coming in together. These factors do not have the same quantum of force in Afghanistan, for the reasons that I gave when I started off talking about Afghanistan: that that is not a conventional government. It is a government that does not give a very high priority to the welfare of its people, is not responsive to street demonstrations or protest or power. Whereas the Pakistani government has repeatedly collapsed before street pressure again and again in different contexts. So Pakistani political fissures are going to be far more influential in defining or undermining Pakistan's capacity to respond, as compared to the Afghan quasi state or regime that has been established.

Now I think the most critical factor of the present situation is economic. Of course, again you will say, but Afghanistan is bankrupt. Again, it doesn't matter quite as much as it matters that Pakistan is approaching bankruptcy. You know, it's like someone who has nothing to lose and someone who still has something, a great deal, to lose. And the economic crisis in Pakistan is unprecedented. They haven't had anything comparable for 50, 60 years. You have the Pakistan rupee down to 274 rupees to $1. Inflation last year was 31.5%. Food inflation was 45%. Transport prices increased by almost 51%. Foreign exchange reserves down to 3.2 billion with the central bank. This is enough to, you know, finance imports for a few days — I mean, or maybe two or 3 weeks. This has never been the case in Pakistan. They've never fallen quite so low before in terms of foreign exchange, and their interest rates have gone up to 17%. This is the highest in almost a quarter of a century. Their exports are shrinking. Exports to all the countries with which they have their principal trade, which is within the region, have gone down by almost 12%.

So Pakistan is now in an economic crisis. It is in a political crisis, and it is getting sucked into a very serious security crisis, in which the methods that they used against the preceding regime in Afghanistan very effectively to defeat the coalition and the Kabul regime — the western coalition and the Kabul regime — are now potentially going to be turned against themselves. And we have seen the efficacy of those methods. We have seen that they have already defeated one superpower, the Soviet Union, in '89, and now they have defeated this other coalition led by the sole superpower of the world at that juncture. So if this friction at this juncture turns against Pakistan, turns into a sustained campaign against Pakistan, in the current circumstances where Pakistan is internally so weak, I feel that there is the possibility of an existential challenge to at least the integrity of the country. Thank you, and I would like to hand it over to the discussions.

Excellent. Thank you very, very much Dr. Sahni. I have a question to ask. Initially the TTP were basically Pashtuns which were operating on the eastern side of the border of Pakistan. Now if they're going deep into Pakistan as you had mentioned, are they joining up, tying up with other insurgent groups within Pakistan, or do they have the domain or the capability of going deep into Pakistan?

They have always had a capability. You see, in the last cycle also — first of all, as I said before, a tremendous number of other groups have actually joined the TTP. So you have had this kind of consolidation of terrorist enterprises. Moreover, they have a number of terrorist groups that were earlier thought of as sarkari groups, you know — the Jaish-e-Muhammad, the Lashkar. Now Jaish and Lashkar have actually been fighting in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban, and now see themselves as brother groups to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and to the Afghan Taliban. So there is a presumably evolving sharing of networks. Then even in the last cycle of escalating violence, after the Lal Masjid, and when the Tehrik-e-Taliban came into existence in 2008 — the escalation 2009, '10 — there were operations in the Punjab. There were operations even far down as in Karachi.

Yes, that's right. You remember that?

In Karachi they had also formed sort of alliances of opportunity with the gangs that were dominating Karachi at that juncture. So will this all be repeated? We cannot predict, but do they have the capacity to extend? The other thing, very crucially, is what is the ideological position of the Taliban in Pakistan? It is Islamist fundamentalism, and if it is Islamist fundamentalism, it will have an eventual appeal across Pakistan as long as we see a continuous loss of credibility or faith in the state. So there is very, very significant potential for this group.

Okay. One more very, very crucial thing, a very surprising thing, is that the Pakistan government of course asserts that some of the operations in south Balochistan, which is Baloch rebel area — correct — have been jointly executed by the Baloch rebel groups and the Taliban Pakistan. Now this cannot be confirmed, but the important thing is that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has in fact made statements supportive of these operations. So this is a very, very extraordinary factor that has emerged over there. So even if the Baloch start coordinating — they may not have a long-term interest in shared objectives, but they start coordinating — other Islamist groupings see that there is — I mean, they're bound by their interpretation of extremist Islam. So there is a potential of all these currently dominant groupings, because most of these groupings had become more or less ineffective apart from the Baloch insurgency. Karachi had settled down. There was very little, you know, terrorism manifesting in Punjab. NWFP — sorry, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — did continue to see occasional incidents. But now all these broken and defeated groupings will see an emerging success and are likely to cleave to it.

And this emerging success also has safe havens across the border, across what we could now progressively see as a hostile border. Yeah — not across a friendly border. Because the Taliban, having been reminded repeatedly that they should take action against Taliban Pakistan on their soil, have simply turned around and said there is no Taliban Pakistan in Afghanistan — which is precisely what Pakistan kept saying all the time about the Taliban under the earlier dispensations.

Another question I have. When the Taliban came into power in Afghanistan, the ISI had a major role to play in placing their own people in it, like Sirajuddin Haqqani who is the interior minister, and you have another group — what do you call the leader, Akhundzada. You mean to say that Haqqani has not been able to stop this thing at the behest of Pakistan?

You see, two things to understand over here. First of all, there is tremendous friction and rivalry between the Akhundzada group and the Haqqani group, and in fact there is, you know, this whole talk of the Kandahar group and the Kabul group, which is not just Haqqani. The Kabul group is not just Haqqani but all the Doha negotiators, what are called the moderates. Yeah. So these are people who are eager to do business with the rest of the world. Whereas the Kandahar group headed by Akhundzada are the arch conservatives who say, you know, to hell with the world, the only law is the law of the faith. So this conflict is there. But please understand, however much Sirajuddin Haqqani may be indebted to Pakistan, he cannot and will not say that I accept the Durand line. Yeah. So whatever else he may push. Number two, please understand, if the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is flourishing in Afghanistan, it is an association — the principal group to which it has long been affiliated is the Haqqani faction within the Taliban.

Absolutely.

So these are all, you know — too clever by half is what Pakistan has been. So they thought that they could forever manipulate. You can never — after someone or a grouping has tasted blood, it will never be your faithful and subservient.

Sir, you see, the situation depicted by you obviously shows that the Afghan terrorists, or Taliban I would say — Taliban who were a little less desperate earlier have become much more desperate and they have started going against Pakistan itself, with the result that terrorism in a way has increased in Pakistan. The Pakistan economy, as you know, is absolutely at zero point. The Pakistan political system is also in crisis. Imran Khan is going about with a lot of rallies and all, and talking against the present government. Imran Khan's party still holds two provinces of Pakistan under it. With all this crisis, when the Afghans are getting into a desperate shape and trying to create problems with Pakistan, will not Pakistan like to divert, on the basis of fundamentalism — I will say on the basis of religious fundamentalism or on the appeal of mullahs, as I call it — all these fundamentalists, to be diverted gradually towards India? What impact can it have? I mean, it is a situation of crisis for Pakistan, all right, but is it not a situation of worry for India also?

I'll break that into two sections, sir. One is that the Afghan Taliban is doing what it is doing out of desperation. I disagree there. In fact it is doing all that it is doing out of a tremendous and unexpected consolidation.

Consolidation.

Not desperation. It is now far more confident of itself. It has got the entire Afghan landmass. Yes, there are some little operations that kill 20 people here and 30 people over there, but those numbers don't matter to these people. These are people who have for decades sustained a relentless flow of suicide squads. So there is no desperation in Afghanistan. The desperation is in our minds, because we think that they think like us. How can you have an entire population where 90% of the population is today food deficient? Even the worst government in our part of the world, even the worst government in Pakistan, could not be indifferent to a factor like this. The Afghanistan government, Taliban government, would like to address these issues, but it is not an existential issue for them. So don't attribute their actions to desperation. In fact, their actions are now evolving — consolidation and relative strength, relative to what they expected. They thought that they would be fighting for god knows how long within the country. But here there is only a small amount of fighting going on in a few theaters. So none of that — the Afghan government is not under that kind of pressure.

Now comes the second thing. If the TTP increases its operations in Pakistan, would Pakistan not like to divert —

Yeah, those forces, Islamist extremist forces, to India.

Yes sir. As it has always sought to do in the past. Now that is not a choice that is really available to Pakistan at the same level as in the past, again for a multiple set of reasons. First of all, the principal threat comes from Taliban Pakistan, and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan's objective is Pakistan. There is nothing that Pakistan can do to say why don't you send your forces against the kafir in India.

That's right.

Nothing is going to convince them. The TTP has declared the Pakistan state murtad — apostates. The kafir can still be tolerated under circumstances. The murtad cannot be tolerated. Its only punishment is death. If you embrace and betray Islam, in their imagination, the only option is death. So the Taliban Pakistan cannot be turned towards India.

Now of course, when the Taliban took over Kabul, I remember there was so much of commentary in India that now, you know, there will be a wave of terrorism, because all these people will be released from Pakistan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot.

And I think I had written right then that none of this is going to happen. Look, the Taliban, even if it wants to send people to India — do you think it has greater capacities than the inter-services intelligence? The inter-services intelligence has fully supported this movement of Islamist terrorism in India since the very beginning. And Pakistan is a richer, better endowed, more populous state — far more people doing nothing who could have been sent into India. So I do not believe there is going to be any kind of dramatic escalation in terrorism directed towards India as a result of the Pakistan Afghanistan dynamic. I don't think that is going to happen. Our threat remains Pakistan and the inter-services intelligence.

However, that threat has also shrunk because of Pakistan's deterioration of capacities, its economic crisis, its loss of support from America, even its loss of support from China. You know, everybody talks about this all-weather friendship. But if you see the trajectory over the past few years, the last two years in particular, you see China finding it more and more difficult to support Pakistan. That doesn't mean it's going to pull out. Pakistan is extremely important for China at a strategic level. So it will continue to support Pakistan, but the support is not quite as enthusiastic as it was, say, 2 years or 3 years ago. So from every side they're coming under pressure: economically, in domestic dissent and friction, loss of support from the entire west, global focus on Pakistan — because every time it tries to do something in terms of support of terrorism, any major or explicit act of terrorism against India, the global interest lens comes onto it.

Okay. Anyone else want to ask a question to Dr. Sahni? Dr. Suri, Ms. Suri — unmute kar.

Very informative and detailed lecture given by Mr. Sahni, and he has clarified most of the issues: what is happening in Afghanistan, what is the link between TTP, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And I don't have any question to ask him. He has completely explained, right from the beginning to the end, what has happened after the Talibans came to power in Afghanistan and what happened at the Durand line, and all these things he has fully explained. I am grateful to him. Thank you.

Thank you sir. I have one question, Doctor. You know this chap al-Zawahiri — he was sort of a guest in Afghanistan.

Yes.

And he was done away with a drone attack. The drone could not have flown for a very long ride. So apparently there's some talk to say that the Pakistanis had given the air corridor for the drone to go. Would that be one of the rift points between Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Absolutely. Explicitly. In fact, the Taliban has made statements saying that Pakistan has been paid millions of dollars by America.

300 million, I believe.

Sorry?

Yeah. But then, after the air attacks sir — please — after the exit of the US military from Afghanistan, and now Pakistan is no longer a frontline state for the US, and therefore the dependence which Pakistan had from time to time, or the aids which Pakistan had from time to time from the US, is naturally getting absolutely nil and diminished, and therefore with no assistance coming either from the International Monetary Fund or from any other place, except for a few dollars here, a few billion dollars for the flood relief — they have not gotten it. In case the Pakistan government or Pakistan collapses — because they don't recognize the Durand line as well — so in case the Pakistan government collapses under its own sins or under its own pressure, and it comes ultimately under dominant influence, or it comes under Afghanistan, when they say all right — in respect to the fact, they said they're friends, and Imran Khan once commented that Afghan has broken the shackles of slavery, and this is what — no shackles of slavery. They have forgotten that the Pashtuns are over here also. My point is that how will our — you know, India — I mean the covert and overt operations — will India have to be very careful with this? What do you think about that? Because maybe it's a — I'm not concerned, because the Pakistan army is no match, no question, with the Indian army, but still India has to be careful and undertake certain operations, which maybe you may call covert or overt operations, where they have to contain. And you also referred yourself that there are also certain al-Qaeda groups also.

Mhm.

And so this situation is very dangerous, by the side of our border, close to India. So don't you say that there has to be some thinking in this process, or maybe there is thinking already?

Well, I'm sure the security services and the intelligence establishment will be looking at all these questions. In fact, as I said earlier, others have been far more, shall we say, agitated by the developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan than I have been. They feel that far more threat is, you know, going to be directed against India than I think. Nevertheless, whatever — you know, just because there is a difference between your assessment and my assessment does not mean that I think that, you know, nothing is going to happen and everything is fine in India. Look at what they are doing in Punjab.

Yeah.

Look at the fact that, sir, for more than 30 years they have kept these Khalistani terrorist leadership as guests of the state.

Yes.

Again emerging — I mean, any new people who want to cross the border and become Khalistani terrorists or drug dealers are welcomed, and there are opportunities there. Yes. So it is not as if the Pakistani state has completely abandoned its idea or its ambition or its war of a thousand cuts. Its capacities to sustain such a war, particularly its capacities to sustain such a war on two fronts now, is becoming more and more circumscribed. Do we need covert operations or other operations? I don't understand overt operations in these circumstances. I do understand overt policies and strategies — economic strategies can be adopted.

That's right.

In fact, when we talk about contemporary warfare, if you look at the literature across the world, people are no longer talking about conventional confrontations between major states. I mean, that hasn't gone away. We can see Ukraine happening even today. But by and large, the imagination of the war of the future is non-contact warfare. And within the instrumentalities of this warfare are a whole range of what are thought to be non-lethal weapons. The economy is one of the first things. Information warfare is another. The manipulation of domestic politics in the target state.

I have one more point, sir. You see, with this insurgency coming in a very big way in Pakistan, the security forces, be it the police force or the armed forces, they get involved in it. China has invested a lot of money in this CPEC and Gwadar — they're building dams, they're making industries. Would a situation ever come where, to protect their own infrastructure, the Chinese send in their own troops?

Yeah, China. Sir, please — I interrupted you. Would you complete that? You got my point, sir?

Yes, I got your point, sir. Now, China has been trying to say that we are going to get our own forces to protect our projects for many years. Pakistan has been trying to reassure them constantly that we will provide. Now they have raised a special force to protect the economic assets developed by China. But this is unlikely to satisfy China over a protracted period of time. Will China send in its troops? Now we have to find out what is going to be the level of Chinese engagement over time. Please understand that the Chinese commitment to CPEC projects went up from 42 billion to 62 billion to 65 billion.

Correct.

And all these were supposed to be completed by 2030. We are in 2023 now; only 25 billion has been spent.

That's right.

And if you see the past three years, no new projects have been started.

And they're going through Balochistan.

Exactly. Yeah. Because — and the Chinese seem to be extremely sensitive to the loss of even a single Chinese life. They are not willing to pay that kind of price in blood. So if the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan violence grows sufficiently to threaten these projects, these projects will be put on hold. As I said before, China is not going to abandon its ambitions in Pakistan.

No.

You can see the map and you can see that line that they are trying to draw from Kashgar to —

Absolutely.

— the seaboard. You can see the kind of string of pearls that they are trying to bring all around the ports of Karachi and Gwadar. So Pakistan is integral to their, you know, worldview. But how much will they invest in a shaky Pakistan? They have made it very clear: you have got to get your governance in order, you've got to get your economy in order. Even the very small proportion they have — of course, on whatever terms there may be, they have given most of their aid to Pakistan as loans — but why are the projects collapsing today? Because the very small component of investment that Pakistan was to generate —

That's right.

— is not coming.

That's right.

Pakistan today is not even being able to meet its power bills, electricity bills, to the Chinese companies which are generating electricity in the new CPEC projects. Whatever — I mean, some people say the pricing was completely irrational, but whatever it be, it was the pricing they accepted and are now no longer being able to pay. So from a commercial perspective, China will tend to dilute or translate its projects from Pakistan owned projects progressively to Chinese controlled regions. So we are seeing a process of potential colonization by China.

Thank you sir. Thank you very much. And I think it's a very illuminating interactive session that we've had with you sir. I'll request the president to call it today.

Sir, it is always — I mean, I have been interacting with Dr. Sahni from time to time earlier also, but after he comes on our webinar, he adds a tremendous value to all our webinars whenever he joins, and there's no doubt about his erudition and scholarship on the subject of terrorism in Southeast Asia. In fact he is an authority, in a way. We are very grateful to him for always accepting our invitation as and when we questioned. He has gone into details about the fatalities which have occurred in the recent wars, how the TTP terrorists are trying to dominate over the Pakistan forces, how Pakistan is crumbling in a way, yet there are some hopes that it may revive its economy, though the political crisis is there. And also on certain questions — China's reaction to it, and some questions as to what will be the impact on India — all have been explained in very great detail in a very illuminating and informative manner, and he has given excellent data for every year, and I don't know how much he remembers by heart all these data. I only want to say thank you very much.

As far as the government is unwilling in a way, or is incapable of stopping the terrorist inroads across the border of Pakistan as at present, an overwhelming feeling has developed in Pakistan that the Talibans have betrayed their trust, so-called. They had that, after the new government, the Taliban — we have full trust with the Taliban and we could do anything. The Taliban seem to have betrayed the trust; they have realized it. I also had the anxiety to know how India will be impacted. He has explained at length. All these things have been explained at length. I think it needs a few more sessions if we go into it, and I think the next would probably be — I requested — panel discussions on this subject, which we will bring on the YouTube. With these words I thank you once again for having accepted my invitation and having given this very, very illuminating deliberation to the delegates present here.

Thank you for having us.

Our next session — please display the banner. Next session: panel discussion. Growing women harassment, need for effective policies in India. We are having this panel discussion with Ms. Brinda Adige, who is a woman activist, founder and director of Global Concerns India, and the Chancellor, Noida International University. In March we will give you all the details, and all the delegates are requested to join us in this session. It is due on what date? Please show the date. Natasha, please show the date. 13th March.

Yes sir. Okay. It is the second week of March. We'll come back to you with all the details and write to you. Please keep joining us and encouraging us. Thank you very much. Thank you all the delegates. Thank you Dr. Sahni. Thank you moderator. Thank you everyone else who's present there.

Thank you. Indeed, I'm indebted to all of you. Thank you.

Thank you Dr. Sahni. It's a wonderful talk we've had from you, and I think we'll have much more in times to come — much more, much, much more. We need to have a full-fledged panel discussion; probably that will be much more effective, because the time was very limited and we couldn't go into details of many other things, ramifications of this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you sir.