Islamabad, Pakistan: Three political parties and some journalists hailing from KPK who are rejecting Operation Azm-e-Istehkam are those who have their economic interests directly or indirectly linked with legal and illegal business ties with Pak-Afghan bordering areas, claim insiders who were part of a recently conducted study by the Ministry of Interior.
Insiders claim that those who are rejecting Operation Azm-e-Istehkam know that this initiative would clog loopholes within the system that offers edible smuggling, arms deals, weapon trade, and availability of criminals for abductions for ransom, paid killing, land grabbing, and several other unlawful and prohibited activities. Just take an example of the smuggling of petrol from the Iran border, six months ago, there was smuggling of around 15 million liters of petrol per day from the Pak-Iran border. Due to the current military leadership and strict government policies, it has reduced to 6 million liters of petrol per day. Smugglers buy this oil from Iran for 15 rupees per liter and sell it in Pakistan for 230 to 240 rupees per liter. Of this, 30 to 40 rupees per liter are incurred on transportation expenses, indicating that every smuggler who has only four to five employees earns Rs 200 per liter. The estimated earnings of these smugglers are 1 billion and eighty crores per day. The question arises as to where this amount of 1 billion 80 crores is going daily. And this is only the money from petrol smuggling, gutka, tires, food items, and others are not included in the amount. Some of this huge amount of money goes to terrorists, some to the media men from KPK, and some to politicians, government representatives, and black sheep hidden in the judiciary. All these black sheep protect these smugglers. Where there is a crackdown on smugglers, terrorist attacks intensify in Pak-Afghan bordering areas. Terrorists intensify attacks in Balochistan and erstwhile FATA so that the focus and resources of the security agencies are on dealing with them rather than on the border. When the border tightens, some politicians and members of the media start shouting that local people are being exploited, human rights, human rights activists, and so on. The ongoing sit-in in Chaman is also a sign of this. The government has closed the logari system, and built a good trade terminal for local people to shop there and do business under government leadership, but being provoked by these smugglers, the logaris (porters, small transporters) are ready to make big losses for a small profit. These smugglers also make their payments in foreign countries and collect their two-digit money in foreign countries, which hurts the economy of the country.
The Term of Reference (ToR) and targets of Operation Azm-e-Istehkam are yet to be announced, and only the objectives and goals of this operation have been shared with the nation that is to secure a stable Pakistan, certain political parties have started crying over the forthcoming initiative to cleanse Pakistan from radicalism, violence and extremism. Unfortunately, a cadre of journalists mostly hailing from KPK have already joined the band of ‘Na Manzoor’ (We reject) even before knowing what Operation Azm-e-Istehkam would be.
The attack on Chinese nationals in the Besham area was a turning point in the situation because it was understood by everybody who loves Pakistan that terrorists living in Afghanistan are specifically targeting the economic interests of Pakistan with a clear objective to discourage foreign investments in the country. Pakistan is facing a twin crisis because it has been going through the dangerous convergence of a collapsing economy and economic terrorism since 2021 and the route of economic terrorism lies in KPK and Pak-Afghan bordering areas. Financial Terrorism which is also known as Economic Terrorism manipulates Pakistan’s economy and terroristic attacks near ports and land borders (attacks in and around Gwadar Port, Karachi Port, attacks around Pak-Afghan bordering areas) cause extra burden on Pakistan because safe arrival and departure of the products (imports and exports) affected the country’s ability to combat poverty that triggers political destabilization, forcing an even greater increase in poverty.
In the last six months, there have been about 1063 small and big incidents of terrorism. Security agencies conducted more than 2700 operations against him based on secret information. Which is about 126 operations per day. This is a kinetic response by the security agencies. This is the strongest response in any country in the history of counter-terrorism. During these operations, 111 youths have been martyred this year. While 354 terrorists went to hell, which is the highest number in the last three years. If someone reviews the judicial side of the story, it looks pathetic. Anti-terrorism courts were formed to fight terrorism and so far 605 cases are pending including 48 in Punjab, 195 in KPK, and 208 in Balochistan. So far, total punishments have been 217 including 152 in Punjab, 14 in KPK, and 10 in Balochistan. The majority of terrorist attacks are happening in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, while the courts there are doing the least.
For decades, citizens of Afghanistan had been transferring the economic resources of Pakistan as well as US currency to Afghanistan with the support of local businessmen, traders, politicians, and criminal outfits. Parallel systems such as Hawala and Hundi are solely operated through KPK via Afghan citizens sitting abroad from where they send money to Pakistan through Hawala and Hundi and they encourage Pakistanis living abroad not to use banking channels for the transfer of money thereby Pakistani remittances were nosediving. The crackdown on currency smuggling created a hue and cry among a political cadre of KPK but controlling smuggling resulted in the stabilization of Pakistan’s economy within months.
In 2023, Pakistan decided to fix the situation and sent illegal foreigners back to their countries, launching a crackdown on Hawala and Hundi business and edible smuggling to Afghanistan such actions surely harmed the economic and business interests of powerful strata of KPK society including also politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, traders and even journalists and media men. Now all of them are anxious over the announcement of ‘Operation Azm-e-Istehkam’ and they are collaborating to protect their vested interests because many of them understand that Operation Azm-e-Istehkam would be deep-rooted and it would not only just military actions rather it will unearth connections of facilitators of smugglers, terrorists and everybody that is directly or indirectly involved in destabilizing Pakistan and working to discourage foreign investments in Pakistan. By blocking Operation Azm-e-Istehkam, they are trying to serve their economic interests but at the cost of the stability and well-being of their country—-Pakistan. Should patriotic Pakistan not stand against such elements?
