Pakistan’s rhetoric against failures The Excelsior 20 Jul 2026
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Pakistan’s rhetoric against failures The Excelsior 20 Jul 2026
Pakistan has been facing setbacks in its operations against groups in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In POK, protests continue with no sign of abating. Sindh is also showing signs of anger. The Pak government officially admitted that in a series of attacks in Baluchistan last week it lost 42 soldiers to BLA (Baluchistan Liberation Army) strikes. Pakistan’s official military spokesperson (DG ISPR), in a press interaction, post this debacle, accused India of backing the growing insurgency with funds and weapon supplies. He also accused Afghanistan of providing shelter to these groups.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharief, followed suit, mentioning, ‘There is no doubt our Eastern neighbour is fully involved in this fitna (evil) in all respects.’ He added, ‘they are providing money to these terrorists and their groups, as well as weapons.’ For Pakistan, India is a punchbag for every internal failure.
India has held the IWT (Indus Water Treaty) in abeyance, irking Pakistan. Pakistan’s failed marshal, addressing his corps commanders mentioned that Pakistan would take ‘all necessary measures’ to safeguard its share of waters under the treaty. While Pakistan’s water woes have been added by holding the IWT in abeyance, it has never followed a stable water policy, despite being advised by multiple global bodies. There are high levels of wastage due to unlined canals, failure to desilt its dams has reduced its storage capacities and it continues with archaic irrigation systems. Currently, all it can do is a drama of threatening India, solely for its domestic audiences.
Anger is simmering in POK. The public is angry at being treated as second class citizens. The movement is led by local residents with genuine demands. Instead of seeking a political solution, the Pak army resorts to what it does best, terming the organization leading the movement as illegal, placing bounties on its leaders and employing brutal force to crush protests. The protestors are now seeking support from Indian Kashmiris as also asking India for food aid, denied to them by Pakistan.
Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s ‘unemployed’ defence minister, even accused the protestors of ‘not being Kashmiris.’ The Indian MEA responded, mentioning, ‘We believe this is a natural consequence of Pakistan’s oppressive approach and its systemic plundering of resources from these territories, which remain under its forcible and illegal occupation.’
Even floods in Pakistan are blamed on India. Hafiz Saeed, Pakistan’s most loved and protected globally designated terrorist, accused India of being behind the floods of 2014. His organization had tweeted, ‘India has used water to attack Pakistan. We are in state of War. India’s water aggression must be taken to the UN security council.’
Movements in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) have been ongoing for decades. They could have been curtailed by multiple means, but the Pak army has never learnt. Its targeting of the Pashtuns in KP is providing fodder to the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) and that of the Baloch to the BLA. Exploitation of resources, without development in these regions, is why the population in Pakistan’s outlying provinces are angry.
The Mukti Bahini in Bangladesh rose solely because of the Pak army’s brutality and refusal to punish soldiers involved in rape and murder. It was Mukti Bahini which acted as the eyes and ears of the Indian army in 1971. Pakistan is repeating the same errors within. Its crackdowns on innocents as also targeting peaceful protests with brute force has alienated communities.
Curbing independence movements needs human intelligence (Humint). When brutality becomes the norm, no one is willing to become informers. Those who do so, in return for funds, are detected and neutralized. Without Humint, forces generally hit in the dark, are surprised as also ambushed. India’s success in Kashmir is largely due to Humint. Gaining of confidence by the BLA and TTP is because those fighting the Pak state are free to move, protected by locals, whom the Pak army suppresses. They attack at will and vanish into the crowd, untraceable, unknown and free to hit another day.
Another factor impacting Pakistan’s failing internal scenario is its relations with its neighbours. While enmity with India is a necessity for continuing the power and funding of the Pak army, its ties with its other major neighbours is equally appalling.
Pakistan had sheltered the Taliban for decades and when NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan, Pakistan treated Afghanistan as its strategic depth and expected it to dance to its tunes. This backfired and now Islamabad considers Kabul an enemy and launches airstrikes on it. Neighbours will exploit internal shortcomings, more so if there is ethnic bonding, or even as a reprisal for similar actions.
In the Indian scenario, Kashmiri insurgents were controlled from Pakistan, leaving India with no option but to eliminate them. On the contrary, groups operating against Pakistan do so from within the state. Most militancy’s in India’s North East have been resolved through dialogue. Rather than engage and resolve differences, the Pak army treats them as the enemy.
In its troubled western provinces, groups challenging the authority of the state, lack the ability to defeat the Pak army and gain freedom but are capable of embarrassing it on the global stage. Simple application of force is never an answer. Success can only flow if forces have support of the masses.
However, the narrow-minded Pak army considers all citizens living in troubled regions as terrorists, failing to separate one from the other, something India has done successfully in Kashmir. Unless it wins hearts and minds it will keep lumbering in the dark, being ambushed at will and captured soldiers killed, solely to embarrass the state. The failed marshal has no interest in matters concerning his primary task but instead believes being a failed mediator as also a wannabe failed foreign minister would garner him global recognition.
Before blaming others, Pakistan’s generals, busy looting the national exchequer and obtaining foreign citizenship, need to evaluate their failures and seek solutions for the future. Blaming India, while attacking Afghanistan and killing innocents is not a solution. No one believes Pakistan’s blaming of India; the world knows which country sheltered Bin Laden as also where maximum sanctioned terrorists are feted by the state and more protected than their political leaders.
About the Author
Maj Gen Harsha Kakkar
Retired Major General Indian Army