With the government’s cease fire with Taliban having expired, military has recently resumed operations against suspected anti-Pakistan militants. Airstrikes in Khyber last week killed 37, and Air Chief Marshal Tahir Rafique has said that PAF is ready to tackle all challenges. While all of this was going on in the headlines, however, another operation was taking place in North Waziristan where 300 Pakistan-based jihadis launched a cross-border attack into Afghanistan.
This raises several important questions. Is the Pakistan military still operating under the false belief in ‘Good Taliban’ and ‘Bad Taliban’? How could such a large scale militant operation be carried out without the knowledge of intelligence agencies? And what does it mean for our own national security if our Western border remains so porous that hundreds of foreign jihadi militants can come and go without detection?
These questions are not likely to be asked openly in our current media environment, but they should be weighing heavily in our minds anyway.
