Why is Pakistan failing to combat Islamism?

On the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad a shrine to Mumtaz Qadri, an assassin of the Pakistani governor and lawyer Salman Taseer who was defending a Christian woman Asiya Bibi accused of blasphemy, is being built. Once completed the shrine will include a mosque and an Islamic school.

The complex is being funded through donations. The fact that there is enough people willing to donate to fund a large shrine to an executed killer is indicative of the increasing strength of Islamist sentiments in Pakistani society.

The construction of the shrine coincides with an upsurge of protests by clerics in support of the country’s strict blasphemy laws. The four days of protests ended when the government promised not to amend the statues. This approach to Islamists is mirrored in the Pakistani army and government.

In the past three years Pakistan’s army under Gen. Raheel Sharif has claimed to be successful in decreasing the number of people killed by terrorist attacks from 5,379 in 2013 to 1,720 in 2016 and restoring order to Pakistani cities. However, Sharif failed in eliminating the heads of Taliban and Al-Qaeda who are still hiding in Pakistan. While their groups shifted their operations into Afghanistan increasing instability there. Gen. Sharif’s actions might be part of Pakistan’s deliberate strategy to destabilize Afghanistan.

Kabul had just started to take control of the country and now it faces a new wave of jihadists in its tribal regions. So while Afghanistan has to deal with renewed insurgency, in Pakistan Gen. Sharif enjoys immense popularity.

While in the east of the country Pakistan’s army has actively abetted activates of Islamists groups like Hizub-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) in their fight against the Indian army in Kashmir. JEM has been implicated in the bombing of a Pathankot Air Force Base in India. This caused India to retaliate with surgical airstrikes, which have undermined Pakistan’s army policy in the region. The civilian government has tried to use this as an excuse to wrestle the Kashmir policy out of the army’s hands.

Besides allowing Islamists to operate in the country’s border regions Pakistan’s military has also permitted them to infiltrate their intelligence service, the ISI. Its intelligence officers have been providing financial aid and training to Taliban fighters. While on the front lines ISI officers have tipped off Taliban fighters to U.S. air-strikes so they could escape.

On the civilian front things are not much better. The government under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has done little to stop the growing influence of Islamic parties. Instead, he has actively abetted the Islamists with his secular Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) entering a coalition with the Islamic Jamaat Ulama-e-Islami (JUI) party after the 2013 elections. However, such a move was unnecessary because the PPP won a decisive majority and did not need a coalition partner.

Islamic terrorists are also gaining more influence in the government. In the border province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa the HUM was able to get its political wing, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), to enter a governing coalition with other religious parties.

The HUM’s leader Syed Salahuddin has ties with Islamic terror groups like Lashkar-al-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. So JEI allows Salahuddi to wage jihad on the ground in Kashmir while trying to implement Islamist policies through legal means in the government.

What is perceived as a failure to adequately tackle Islamic extremism is a deliberate policy on the part of Islamabad to maintain influence in the region with the use of jihadists as proxy forces. By pushing the Taliban into Afghanistan Pakistan makes sure that its neighbor remains unstable and will not be able to threaten Islamabad’s standing.

Pakistan also has interests in keeping the conflict in Kashmir going. Since independence Islamabad has claimed that the Muslim majority states of Jammu and Kashmir should be part of Pakistan. However, these regions are administered by New Delhi, which considers them part of India. The two countries have fought inconclusive wars over the region in the past, but the situation has become complicated since both became nuclear powers in the 1990s. So the Pakistani military decided to utilize jihadists as proxies in order to exhaust the Indian army and eventually drive them out of Kashmir.

This support of Islamic terrorists to achieve geopolitical objectives does not come without a cost. The recent Indian surgical air strikes show that New Delhi will not stand by while Pakistan’s military continues its support for jihadists. While on the civilian side the HUM has its own political party, which it uses to push Islamic policies in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

If Pakistan continues its jihadi friendly policies relations with India will likely continue to deteriorate and Islamic parties will continue gain more power. By accommodating jihadists in exchange for their help Islamabad might be sowing the seeds of its own downfall.