Latest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa explosion demonstrates deteriorating security environment along Pakistan’s western frontier

Islamabad, Sep 28 (IANS) The explosion in Dera Ismail Khan city of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which claimed lives of 13 people and injured 20 others over the weekend, should not be seen as an isolated attack, but as another warning from a rapidly deteriorating security environment along Pakistan’s western frontier, a report has detailed.

“A reported explosion in Dera Ismail Khan is part of a broader escalation that has already drawn Pakistan into retaliatory strikes inside Afghanistan. The immediate danger is not that Turkey and Saudi Arabia will be pulled automatically into Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaign, but that an expanding insurgency could turn into another interstate conflict. How the three allies respond will determine whether the Mecca Pact develops into a credible security mechanism or remains largely a declaration of political solidarity,” Yusus Kanli wrote in ‘Middle East Transparent’.

Saturday’s explosion came days after an attack on the police facility was reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kohat on September 18, which claimed the lives of at least 24 people. Following the attack, Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Kunar and Paktika provinces and claimed that 28 militants were killed. Taliban accused Pakistan of killing civilians, and the United Nations also confirmed the death of a man, a woman and a girl.

The emerging sequence is more consequential than a single bomb, as militants carry out an attack inside Pakistan and Islamabad blames networks sheltering in Afghanistan for the attack. Following the attack, Pakistan launches strikes in Afghanistan, which the Taliban describes as aggression, the report mentioned.

Pakistan has been facing attacks from several insurgent organisations instead of one single identifiable enemy. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the most prominent threat but Shura Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen, led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, took responsibility for the Kohat attack.

The greatest danger is that Pakistan considers the Taliban an active belligerent instead of an authority which is not able to or not ready to suppress the TTP. Once that threshold is crossed, an insurgency becomes a conflict between the two nations, and civilian deaths intensify that transformation as the Taliban faces public pressure to retaliate.

On August 7, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement. Under the pact, an attack on any one country would be considered as an attack on all three nations. The agreement reflected the shared commitment of the three nations “to further strengthening their collective security and to promoting peace, security, and stability in the region and beyond, in pursuit of a secure and prosperous future”, according to a statement released by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The Agreement is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression, and stipulates that any armed attack against any one of the three States shall be regarded as an attack against them all. It further provides for the enhancement of all aspects of defence cooperation among the three States,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs mentioned.

The information shared publicly regarding the Mecca Joint Agreement does not indicate an integrated command, standing forces, permanent headquarters or a detailed process for threat assessment and activation. Furthermore, the three nations have not mentioned whether the agreement covers insurgencies, terrorism, proxy attacks and disputed cross-border operations in the same way as conventional aggression by another country, according to the report in Middle East Transparent.

“Dera Ismail Khan exposes this ambiguity. A bombing inside Pakistan cannot automatically activate collective defence. The allies would first have to determine who conducted it, whether the perpetrators received external direction and whether the incident constituted an armed attack under the agreement,” Yusus Kanli mentioned in a report in Middle East Transparent.

“Automatic activation without reliable attribution could allow a militant organisation to manipulate the alliance into confronting Afghanistan—or another regional power—through a false-flag or deliberately ambiguous operation. Conversely, refusing to offer Pakistan any meaningful assistance would damage the pact’s credibility,” it added.

–IANS

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