The geopolitical temperature in West Asia is refusing to come down. Not only the Israeli retaliation against Hamas has completed 100 days, but the events in the Red Sea have proved to be a new flare up bringing a lot of global attention to the region. Even as all this is going on, Iran has sprung a surprise by conducting a surgical strike against Pakistan in the wee hours of Wednesday. Iranian missiles hit a village in the Iran-Pakistan border region that falls in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. According to Tehran, the strike was aimed at Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni Balochi terrorist group which it accuses of being under the patronage of Iran’s rivals in the region.
Interestingly Iran’s surgical strike on Pakistan comes on a day when its foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar Ul Haq Kakar had a meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. Not just this, the navies of the two countries were also conducting a joint naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf on the same day. It also comes at a time when the Pakistani air force has been very active on the social media platform X boasting about its air defence capabilities, but the Iranian strike has exposed the hollowness of its claims. Meanwhile, Pakistan has responded to the strike by saying it is a violation of its sovereignty and Iran has done it despite several communication channels being open between the two countries.
Jaish al-Adl, the terrorist group which was on Iran’s radar during the strike was founded in 2012, operates both in Iran as well as Pakistan. It is notorious for conducting terror activities in Iran which includes an attack on a police station in December 2023 in the southeastern part of Iran that claimed the lives of more than 11 policemen. At that time, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi had accused Pakistan of failing to take adequate security measures thus enabling terrorists to cross-over in Iranian territory and conduct the attack.
Iran shares a 909 km long border with Pakistan which divides the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan from the Pakistani province of Balochistan. The Sistan-Baluchestan province is the only Sunni-dominated province of Iran where almost 2 million of its total 85 million population resides. Jaish has a stated goal of liberating the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan from Iran which it alleges to be facing discrimination and repression in a Shia-dominated country. It is a relatively new terrorist group, but it has posed as a significant challenge to Iran by conducting various attacks including a 2019 suicide attack that killed 27 troops of Iran. It has an Indian connection as well. It was Jaish al-Adl that had kidnapped Kulbhushun Jadhav, an Indian businessman from Iran and traded him with Pakistan’s intelligence agency the ISI for a monetary reward. Later Pakistan had claimed that Jadhav was a former Indian Navy officer and a spy.
Iranian surgical strikes have sent a wave of shock in Pakistan with their top leadership caught completely unaware of Iran’s plan. But people in Pakistan’s neighbouring countries including Afghanistan and India seem to have thoroughly relished Iran’s actions because they themselves are a victim of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. The best take on this has come from Amrullah Saleh, former Vice President of Afghanistan, who in a post on X recalled his interaction with Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. According to Saleh, Musharraf had once boasted to him that Pakistan is not a banana republic where he can send agents and tell the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. But as Saleh also pointed out, Pakistan has indeed become a banana republic and Iranian surgical strikes have completely vindicated this.
For too long, Pakistan has fashioned itself as the self-appointed leader of the Islamic world. It has also left no chance in showing off its nuclear weapons while basking in the glory of being the ‘only Islamic nation’ to have acquired nukes. However, India punctured its claims for the first time when it conducted a surgical strike on Pakistan in September 2016 to avenge the Uri attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terror group that thrives on support and safety from Pakistan. India again conducted a surgical strike on Pakistan in 2019 to avenge the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force had lost their lives. Both instances of India conducting surgical strikes on Pakistan not only called out its nuclear bluff, but the Balakot airstrike also exposed the Pakistani claims of having a superior air defence system. While India showed the way, Iran has followed its path by conducting surgical strikes in Pakistan and targeting terrorist assets in its territory. This for all practical purposes means that Pakistan is now officially a banana republic.
A banana republic means a country that has a weak government and is dependent on the export of one single commodity for its sustenance and that is bananas. However, in the case of Pakistan that single commodity is not even bananas but state-sponsored terrorism! Pakistan has four countries with which it shares a border — India, Iran, Afghanistan and China. Three of its neighbours except China are a perennial victim of Pakistan’s export of terrorism. India has witnessed the worst kind of terror attacks due to Pakistan’s proxy war against India especially in Kashmir. Similarly, Afghanistan has been reduced to a pale shadow of itself due to a decades-long history of conflict. Pakistan had played a key role in the creation of the Taliban that returned to establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 2021. Since then, neither women nor children have been able to live freely or dream of a bright future in that country.
It is a different matter that the same Afghan Taliban which was created and supported by Pakistan has today turned against the country. Afghan Taliban’s support to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has irked Islamabad big time with both countries breaking their diplomatic ties in November 2023. TTP has been emboldened due to the Taliban’s return to power and is responsible for many attacks on Pakistani territory. The same djinn of terrorism that Pakistan let out from the bottle has come to possess this country itself. Meanwhile, all the neighbours of Pakistan are tired with its assurances and empty talks. Iran is particularly worried about Pakistan giving a safe base to anti-Iran terrorists on the instructions from Iran’s strategic opponents in the region and even the United States.
Due to Pakistan’s record as a state-sponsor of terror, all of its neighbours, excluding China, have degraded diplomatic ties with the country. On one hand, Pakistan is struggling with a failing economy and on the other hand, its neighbours are bombing terror camps without even taking its sovereignty seriously. Is Mohammed Ali Jinnah able to rest peacefully in his grave knowing the country he envisioned has turned into a banana republic?
The author is a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She writes on India’s foreign policy. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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