Pakistan is winning its war on terror

[wiseone2]

Your flags say you're Dutch, but you mean the Pakistani forces in your statement?

he ain't Dutch

 

[Meengla]

At least in Karachi, I'd credit PMLN for restoring the peace. My last visit to Karachi was in late 2013; the operation had just started. But I knew it for years that only a political party without deep roots in Karachi--which PMLN was--would be perceived as 'neutral' enough to carry out the needed cleaning up. The two major players in Sindh: MQM and PPP, could not be trusted upon to clean up Karachi.

My family in Karachi was skeptical about my hopeful observation about the PMLN led operation. You know what people say: "We actually live here and so we know better". Or, "Nawaz Sharif is only for Punjab and he doesn't care for Karachi".

But sometimes it requires a 30,000 feet high view to see the bigger picture. Well, I think I am vindicated.

 

[Sully3]

I am a cynic. I think establishment let loose some of the violence to prevent Americans from catching senior Al Qaeda figures. After OBL was killed in 2011 they decided they had no use for some of the proxies and they eliminated those proxies

The ISI had to do what it had to do, the truth is the fight was on our door step for the last 15 years and no matter how much criticism or fingers being pointed ISI has protected Pakistans borders and interest to the fullest.

The OBL operation was a bad time but then again there are too many doubts to the story for it to be be true. Personally think he died ages ago in the mountain area due to OBL's kidneys failing.

 

[PeaceGen]

he ain't Dutch

Then he's in violation of the forum rules.. But i don't really mind.

 

[The Eagle]

No doubt that we are on right track and the only threat remains of political guardianship of these culprits against campaigns gains during election and keeping influence over locals that must be addressed as well. Things are turned into better than before and it can be seen contrary to the past but on other hand, such mindset of a political prisoner must go now as the terrorist/criminal is a criminal no matter affiliated to whom or which party.

A bit of loosening grip on them that mostly ruling elites used to do with understanding of oppositions for political purpose, would sabotage everything and all those sacrifices and hard work of the years. Even still, after such achievements, most political elite try to influence the law system especially when it comes to Police that we can see and ineffective until & unless Rangers took over and we see the change and improvement.

Military has done a lot to curb such threat from northern areas to the south of country as Karachi and has achieved as well but on other hand, seeing the corrupt political system, one can see that there is still a lot to do in future to maintain the peace and growth environment. Any further discount in this subject can be disastrous for the Nation. Internal cleansing is must after secured borders that LEA's have done a lot so the people can enjoy the fruits of such hard work and dedication which only possible after conducting OPs in the rest of country or wherever needed like done in Karachi that too without any influence of politics or these incompetent politicians. Every internal threat whether it is political criminal, a sectarian terrorist or whatever, must be dealt with iron fist without any discount and be hanged in favour of Pakistan as once for all.

We are on right track after a long time w.r.t. growth and prosperity and there are many developmental projects undergoing which are the must for a sovereign nation that can only be moved ahead or further if the peace is maintained and such threats are dealt accordingly. Hopefully, the day will come that the fear of these criminals and terrorist would be equal to zero/none In'Sha'ALLAH.

 

[T-123456]

that's why people loved Raheel Sharif @HAKIKAT @SOHEIL @wiseone2 @T-123456 @Serpentine

General Raheel Sharif was awarded Turkish Legend of Merit in recognition of his services for regional peace and courageously handling terrorism menace.

 

[ADIL SHERDIL]

Pakistan has sacrificed the most in this battle and we will end this plague from our land once and for all . We are not like the countries who only bashes their chest and act that they are the victims and their scarifies but we all now the truth that such countries has benefited from this WOT and who are the one still helping and financing other such groups around the world.

 

[Max]

I am a cynic. I think establishment let loose some of the violence to prevent Americans from catching senior Al Qaeda figures. After OBL was killed in 2011 they decided they had no use for some of the proxies and they eliminated those proxies

You can have your biased opinion but i didnt quoted you here for your opinion, here people object why Pakistanis were so much in love with Raheel Sharif calling them boot lickers. do you see any Pakistani singing song of new COAS Bajwa?

 

[Imran Khan]

we must not stop it until last sectarian - political - extremist or any other terrorist is alive .

 

[I S I]

Pak Army zindabad.

 

[cocomo]

Inshallah it will be rooted out. Justice will prevail and their supporters will also be hanged.

 

[Ahmer Rana]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/pakistan-is-winning-its-war-on-terror/

Over the past three years, the country has seen an extraordinary reduction in violence
Until a few years ago, Pakistan was one of the most dangerous countries on earth. The tribal areas in the north were infested by the Taleban, whose bases stretched to within 100 miles of the capital, Islamabad. Western intelligence agencies feared that the Taleban could seize one of the country’s nuclear installations, then hold the world to ransom. Large parts of the country elsewhere were lawless or terrorised by armed groups.

It would be foolish to claim that Pakistan’s security problems are over. But something extraordinary and unexpected has certainly happened. Since it fails to fit the established narrative of Pakistan as a dangerous nation, it’s gone unacknowledged in the West.


Violence has not just dropped a bit. It is down by three quarters in the last two years. The country is safer than at any point since George W. Bush launched his war on terror 15 years ago.

The change can be dated to a special cabinet meeting called by prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Karachi in September 2013. At this meeting Sharif called an end to Pakistan’s culture of violence. Parts of Karachi, a teeming city of more than 20 million on the Arabian Sea, had been a war zone for decades. All the main political parties employed paramilitary wings and some formed alliances with terror groups including al-Qaeda.

The Taleban had long treasured a secure basis in Karachi, as had religious terror groups. That was a conventional crime industry specialising in kidnap, drug smuggling and extortion (every business had to pay protection money to gangs).

Pakistan’s politicians tolerated this. Pervez Musharraf, the army chief and president, was often accused of allowing the armed wing of Karachi’s largest political party, MQM, to operate with complete impunity.

This policy continued under Musharraf’s civilian successor, Asif Zardari, whose Pakistan’s People’s Party governed Karachi in coalition with MQM from 2008 to 2012. Five years ago we walked around gangster-infested Liyari town in Karachi’s port area with the local mafia don, Uzair Baloch. Baloch (now in jail) told us he could speak to Zardari whenever he wanted. The violence just rose and rose, until Zardari’s replacement Nawaz Sharif ordered his cabinet to Karachi and gave the state’s paramilitary arm, the Rangers, unlimited powers. This was the moment when political tolerance of violence ended.

We interviewed Major-General Bilal Akbar, director-general of Sindh Rangers for the past two-and-a-half years, at his HQ in the south of the city; he has since transferred to be the Pakistani army’s chief of general staff. After asking us to pass on his regards to Nick Carter, head of the British army (with whom he used to play bridge every Friday night when they were both stationed in Kabul), he explained the security situation.

In 2013 there were 2,789 killings in Karachi. In the first 11 months of 2016 there were 592. In 2013 there were 51 terrorist bomb blasts. Up to late November this year, there were two.

Three years ago, Karachi suffered from an orgy of kidnapping for ransom. There were 78 cases in 2013, rising to 110 the following year. This year, there have been 19.



Some 533 extortion cases were reported in 2013; in 2016, only 133. Sectarian killing is sharply down: while 38 members of the Shia minority (who are brutally targeted in Pakistan) were killed in 2013, that figure was down by two thirds in 2016.

Major-General Bilal told us: ‘We have apprehended 919 target killers from the militant wings of political parties since September 2013. They confessed to over 7,300 killings. The daily homicide rate in the city is less than two now. It used to be ten or 15, and during ethnic clashes we could lose 100 lives a day.’

Just three years ago, according to the Numbeo international crime index, Karachi was the sixth most dangerous city in the world. Today it stands at number 31 — and falling.

Six months after he ordered the Rangers into Karachi, Nawaz Sharif took an even more momentous decision. The prime minister, whose initial instinct had been to negotiate with the Taleban and oppose the use of force, yielded to advice from his generals. He sent the army into North Waziristan, the Taleban stronghold on the Afghan border.

North Waziristan had not just provided a base for the Taleban leadership. It was a centre for the manufacture of explosives, suicide vests and military equipment, and for training camps, as well as drawing in foreign fighters from al-Qaeda. It was the epicentre of terrorism in Pakistan, which is why this intractable and remote area had been left alone by the army for so long.

In June 2014, General Raheel Sharif (now a national hero, and no relation of prime minister Sharif) took charge of a massive military offensive, Zarb-e-Azb. Taleban groups responded with a series of atrocities of which the most grotesque was the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, in which a reported 140 children were killed.

That stimulated the National Action Plan in January 2015, hailed by prime minister Sharif as the defining moment in the fight against terrorism. It established special military courts and outlawed terror groups which had previously been given latitude by the state.

At the same time, the army stepped up its operations. According to official figures, it has killed about 3,500 Taleban fighters, destroyed 992 hideouts and cleared 3,600 square kilometres of territory. Nearly 500 soldiers have died.

The Taleban has been gravely weakened. According to Bakhtiar Mohamed, director of the National Counter Terrorism Authority. ‘The army has gone very deeply into every nook and corner of the tribal areas. There is no possibility of any revival of extremism.’

Some of the methods have been brutal. There is very little testimony from the tribal areas, but one expert says Miranshah, capital of North Waziristan, has been turned into a ‘car park’. The MQM complains that some 150 of its activists have been ‘disappeared’ (a complaint which takes a bit of cheek, considering MQM’s own ruthless methods).

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan protests that more than 430 people have been executed since the moratorium on the death penalty (which was imposed by Zardari in 2008) was ended in 2014. The Human Rights Commission is also alarmed about the new military courts.

This is understandable — yet what else should the state have done? Witnesses simply refuse to come forward in the civil system. The same applies to lawyers and judges.

Take the case of Malik Ishaq, founder of the terror group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and responsible for thousands of murders. Mindful of their safety, more then 70 judges and lawyers refused either to hear or to prosecute the case. Finally Ishaq died, say the police, in an ‘encounter killing’.

Then there is Omar Sheikh, the alleged murderer of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2001. Now, 15 years on, the Pearl case has still not been resolved, and Shaikh rots in jail in Hyderabad, 100 miles up the Indus from Karachi.

Not all of Pakistan has benefited from the new security environment, as the south-western province of Balochistan shows. In this mountainous region riven by insurgency and sectarian hatred, terror groups have continued to operate freely. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which some say has support from Saudi citizens, has carried out unspeakable attacks on the Hazara Shia minority. The leadership of the Haqqani network — part of the so-called Afghan Taleban — has migrated from the tribal areas to Quetta, the provincial capital. Isis is on the rise.

There have been three major incidents this year, including a terrible attack on lawyers in Quetta. Many of the young lawyers of the city had assembled at a hospital to mourn a murdered colleague, when a suicide bomber struck.

The Pakistan state has long been accused of tolerating and even abetting groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi because they serve its strategic interests. Some local people in Balochistan believe that LEJ is little more than an enforcement arm of the state, licensed to carry out brutality which cannot be meted out legally. But even here there are hopeful signs. Sartaj Aziz, adviser to Narwaz Sharif, told us that LEJ is the next target.

There are other cheering developments. The Sindh Assembly has just passed a bill to prevent forced conversions of Pakistan’s remaining Hindus. But there is a long way to go, and the progress could easily be reversed. There is the possibility that the Taleban has simply fragmented, making it more unpredictable, dangerous and erratic. Some of the successes are merely tactical: structural reform to the police and the judiciary are essential to enforce the other measures.

Meanwhile, Britain continues to harbour the MQM leader Altaf Hussain in lodgings in west London, to the fury and bafflement of Karachi police. He and his organisation both deny claims of terrorism and extremism, declaring that they ‘always act within peacful political structures’. But one high-ranking law enforcement official told us: ‘I calculate there have been 7,540 violent days in Karachi in the last 30 years. On 99 per cent of those days that violence has been incited by Altaf Hussain. I calculate he has been responsible for 35,000 deaths. Just sitting in London. Imagine the reverse scenario — if Gerry Adams had been masterminding IRA terror from Karachi.’

#Alhamdullilah

 

[Tamilnadu]

Peace in Pakistan is linked to Peace in the region..both are inter connected and both have to go hand in hand for lasting peace.

 

[Green Arrow]

Yes We have done extremely well in this WOR but we also need to take care of Madrassa reforms and religious extremism which is also a bigger threat for Pakistan.

 

[xyxmt]

Yes We have done extremely well in this WOR but we also need to take care of Madrassa reforms and religious extremism which is also a bigger threat for Pakistan.

we keep repeating this line which was recited to us by Westerners because it fits their agenda. Like anything else in life there maybe some madrassas teaching hatred and extremism but what we have learned in recent years that most of the killings were carried out by non-religious elements for financial reasons and some by criminal elements supported by foreign hands. I dont think anyone of TTP lunatics could recite Ist Kalma yet they were considered the holy warriors of Islam, again another propaganda...anyway I am sure agencies are keeping an eye on Madrassas too and if they find anything wrong no one can save them. So far non of the suicide bombers found to be a member of any madrassa.