As Pakistan enters its 66th year of independence, -it is a good time to take stock of the country’s internal security dynamics in order to understand how these impact upon the overall security and stability of South Asia.
According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies’ (PIPS) Pakistan Security Report, 2011 [pdf], while the country continues to rank “among the most volatile regions in the world”, there has been some improvement in its overall security situation, especially since the later part of 2011. The report states:
“The last half of the year 2011 was a period of comparative peace in Pakistan in terms of internal armed conflict, acts of terrorism and the consequent casualties. A decrease in the number of suicide attacks and drone strikes were the major contributing factors… the security situation is slowly improving as violence has decreased 24 percent in the last two years.”
Given that the country has seen a sharp decline in fatalities caused by suicide attacks and that there have been no significant terror attacks in major cities in 2012, the change in the overall security situation seems significant, especially when compared against 2009-2011.
Yet, it is not a time for complacency. On August 16, 2012, a high value military base right outside the capital Islamabad was attacked by gunmen. Pakistan special forces contained the situation within five hours and fatalities were mostly on the militant side.
Three days later, the government issued a blanket cell phone service ban for 15 hours in four major cities – including Karachi and Lahore – on the Islamic holiday Eid-ul-Fitr because of credible security threats they had received.
These recent events go to show that despite claims made in May 2012 by the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousuf Raza Gilani, that concerns about the security situation in Pakistan were “exaggerated”, the situation on the ground remains fragile and the improvement in the security situation is not all-pervasive.
‘Target killings’ continue in many parts of the country. Karachi continues to suffer its fair share of ethnic and political violence as a result of the turf war that has raged since 2010. Violence continues to dog the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) including its capital Peshawar. These areas continue to bear the brunt of Pakistan’s engagement in the War on Terror.
Balochistan remains in the grip of an insurgency, with the government yet unable to provide a tenable and acceptable solution to address grievances in the region. Rather, as Pakistani journalist and blogger Malik Siraj Akbar pointed out, the violence escalated in early 2012 after “an unprecedented hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs which voiced deep concern over the appalling human rights violations allegedly committed by the army in the country’s largest province of Balochistan”.
There is also a growing concern about the rise of sectarian violence within the country, which has increased since 2007. While the largest number of clashes have been between the Sunni and Shia sects, there has also been violence occurring within the Sunni community, for example, between the Deobandi and Barelvi Sunnis. Huma Yusuf, who is a well-known columnist for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, wrote in her analytical report [pdf] published by the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF.)
Sectarian violence poses a grave threat to Pakistan’s security and stability, primarily because conflict between mainstream religious communities threatens to involve and radicalize greater swathes of the Pakistani population than any other kind of militancy.
Thus it appears that while there is reason for some amount of cautious optimism regarding the relative improvements in Pakistan’s overall security situation, the country still has a long road ahead in its struggle to successfully resolve the complexities of its multi-layered sectarian, ethnic and political issues and help enhance the stability and security, not only within its borders but of the region as well.
For further information on the topic, please view the following publications from our partners:
Coping with a Failing Pakistan, from the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF), Oslo, Norway.
Pakistan After the Floods: Prospects for Stability and Democratic Consolidation, from the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), Singapore, Singapore.
Security Sector Governance in Pakistan: Progress, But Many Challenges Persist, from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Waterloo, Canada.
For more information on issues and events that shape our world please visit the ISN’s Security Watch and Editorial Plan Dossiers.