The predominant narrative in Pakistan seems to be that India and its intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, are responsible for all acts of terror, including the vicious attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
The logic put forth is that since Pakistan has started acting against the TTP et al, “the Indians want to distract the Pakistani security forces and keep Pakistan internally weak”. The Ministry of Interior has claimed that the rabidly anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terror group has allied with the TTP, implying that the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is killing the Shias at Indias behest.
That Pakistans domestic social, political, ethnic and sectarian rifts could be exploited by any outside power is a real possibility. But it is a different debate. Pinning all violence, including the weekly massacres of the Shias, on India and Afghanistan, however, is a disingenuous cop-out for the state and its functionaries at a time when they should be hunting down the perpetrators.
Instead, the culprits are being brought into the mainstream, projected into the living rooms through prime time television exposure. The patron-in-chief of a virulently anti-Shia outfit, Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, was only recently interviewed by Geo TV where he openly indulged in Takfir of the Shias, without any hard follow-up questions being asked by the anchor.
Seminaries like his have indoctrinated the cadres who carry out the killings with impunity. All this while, the state has either deflected the blame as it is doing now or, even more ominously, given them patronage.
Under the thin veneer of plausible deniability the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi remained joined at the hip. The Sipah-e-Sahaba was nominally banned by General Musharraf in 2002 but has continued to operate openly under a new name. Its leadership neither pretends that it is any different from the original group in agenda or organisation, nor has it severed ties to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
India or the US was nowhere near the Durand Line when the Pakistani security establishment turned both its sides into a jihadist viper pit.
As Hillary Clinton had said, It’s like that old story you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” These vipers, however, do not just have regional designs or associations; their ambition is global and links transnational. –Mohammad Taqi