Of strategic depth.

Byline: Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

THE dastardly attacks which took the lives of over 40 mostly Hazara civilians in Kabul and Nangarhar earlier this week barely raised an eyebrow in the Pakistani mainstream. The attack on the maternity ward of a hospital which killed and maimed newborns was especially gut-wrenching. Yet aside from a couple of perfunctory condemnations from official places, and a news item or two, there was virtual silence on this side of the border.

In the aftermath of the attacks, the Taliban apparently denied responsibility. The theory goes that there are now more militant Islamist groups that control swathes of Afghanistan, including IS. Such matters are notoriously hard to investigate at the best of times. But the real question is not which militant organisation orchestrated the killings but why violent ideologies of hate continue to proliferate in the name of Islam in Afghanistan, and, for that matter, in Pakistan as well.

It is an old story but it merits repeating here: the genesis and spread of militant Islam in this region is not a renegade phenomenon, but due to the patronage of the Pakistani state. What was for decades in establishment circles known as strategic depth - the simulation of Afghanistan as a 'fifth province' - dovetailed with the American, Saudi and, for that matter, much of the Western bloc's geopolitical designs in the 1980s. And then, infamously, things went pear-shaped for the establishment after 9/11 when Washington turned against its erstwhile allies in the name of the 'war on terror'.

This is an old story and it always ends badly.

Whether or not strategic depth is still a cherished ideal within the security establishment is, many decades later, by the by. Millions of young people in this country have bought into the idea that there can be a 'good Taliban' that fights 'foreign infidels' in Afghanistan. But there can be no more painful indicator of the ideological engineering that has taken place within Pakistan than the fact that logics of 'strategic depth' apply to ethnic peripheries in our own country. There is, for instance, growing evidence that militants are increasingly resurgent in the recently merged tribal districts of KP that border Afghanistan. How, given all that has taken place in this country since 9/11, is it still possible to maintain the myth of 'good Taliban'?

Let us be clear: all of the propaganda in the world does not make for a peaceful and prosperous country. Pakistan's...

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