Operation Azm-i-Ishtehkam: Dynamics of Pak-China relations playing out

Analysis

By Arun Anand

Pakistan has announced to launch a fresh counterterrorism campaign, Operation Azm-i-Ishtehkam, across its tribal belt in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The announcement has created a political storm with most opposition parties refusing to back the government’s plan which is fostering a climate of fear amongst KP residents who worry yet another mass displacement. However, this operation is not happening in a vacuum as it comes on the heels of sharp public criticism from China, following a recent spike in terrorist attacks targeting Chinese nationals and projects. The actions of the Pakistani government demonstrate a lack of responsiveness to domestic opposition, suggesting a diminished level of autonomy and sovereignty. This is particularly evident in its relationship with international backers such as Beijing, whose influence appears to significantly impact Islamabad's internal policies.

Pakistan’s security situation has continued to deteriorate with militant groups targeting state forces and their installations repeatedly. According to the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies, Pakistan witnessed 789 terrorist attacks in 2023, a six-year high, resulting in 1524 fatalities, including nearly 1000 civilians. Moreover, in the first six months of 2024, Pakistan has already seen 812 fatalities in 485 incidents of terrorism, predominantly in in KP and Balochistan provinces.

It also included a series of attacks against Chinese-linked projects in the third week of this March, leaving 5 Chinese nationals dead. For instance, on March 20, militants belonging to the Majeed Brigade of Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) attacked the Gwadar Port Authority complex, a highly guarded premises. The complex hosts the administrative office of the China-built and operated Gwadar Port, the flagship project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). 

In the second attack, the BLA militants targeted Pakistan Naval Station (PNS) Siddique at Turbat on March 25. Interestingly, this Naval Air Station is responsible for the security of the CPEC projects in the region. The next day, on March 26, militants struck again and this time in Bisham, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s Shangla district. A suicide bomber from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistan Taliban, targeted a bus carrying Chinese engineers working at the China-constructed Dasu hydroelectric generation station, killing five engineers and their Pakistani driver. The inability of Pakistani forces to effectively secure their own security installations, as exemplified by the incident at PNS Siddique, has raised concerns regarding their capacity to safeguard critical infrastructure projects such as the Gwadar Port.

Following the Bisham attack, Beijing consistently reprimanded Islamabad for its inability to secure its nationals and projects. In one of the strongest rebukes for the Pakistani establishment, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) asked Islamabad to take swift and tangible security measures to “hunt down the perpetrators” of these incidents. The growing pressure forced the Pakistani government to suspend several senior officials for ‘dereliction’ in their duties to secure the convoy of Chinese workers.

Beijing even delayed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s visit to China, which was initially scheduled in the month of May, with media reports claiming that the Chinese officials preconditioned it to Islamabad’s express commitment to launch a largescale counterterrorism campaign. In a now-deleted report, Business Recorder claimed that President Xi Jinping’s administration asked the Shehbaz Sharif government to launch a fresh military operation “against terrorists including Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) to crush them once and for all.”

Interestingly, Liu Jianchao, a senior Minister of the Communist Party of China (CPC), reiterated Beijing’s demands for a decisive campaign against terrorism on June 21. Addressing an all-party gathering in Islamabad, Liu Jianchao emphasised that strong counterterrorism measures were needed to address Pakistan’s internal security woes, and impressed that these threats were “the main hazards to CPEC cooperation” and “a major challenge undermining investor confidence.” Merely a day later on June 22, Pakistan’s federal government announced a comprehensive national counterterrorism campaign to “combat the menaces of extremism and terrorism in a comprehensive and decisive manner.” It stated that this “reinvigorated and re-energised” military operation in KP and Balochistan will “integrate and synergise” all national resources to defeat terrorism and stabilise the country.

As such, the chronology of these events makes it implicitly manifest that this military campaign, despite domestic opposition, is being dictated by extraneous actors, in this case, due to Beijing’s persistent pressure, like other operations in the past where the United States pushed the country into taking action against the extremist groups.

It may be recalled that the Pakistan Army, under President General Parvez Musharaf, as part of America’s war on terror, launched largescale anti-militancy operations in the Waziristan region (formerly Federally Administered Tribal Agency (FATA)) in 2004, which took the shape of a low-intensity war. Surprisingly, as the Pakistan Army failed in defeating terrorist groups and stabilising the tribal belt, General Musharaf, under the Waziristan Accord of 5 September 2006, ceded the control of FATA to militant groups. This paved the way for these groups to form the Pakistan Taliban in 2007 which has since become the most formidable security challenge for the country.

As Pakistan’s security continued deteriorating from 2011 onwards, the US and China, both forced the Pakistan government to launch Operation Zarb-e-Azb in 2014 in KP. For the US government with its forces in Afghanistan, this military campaign was necessitated by the growing attacks by the Afghan Taliban, aided by TTP, from Pakistan’s tribal belt. For China, which sought Islamabad’s enhanced participation in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and awaited the formal launch of the CPEC, the Pakistani government needed to stabilise the country and demonstrate its ability to secure its projects and personnel. The same goes with the Radd ul Fassad operation of 2017 which aimed to consolidate the gains of the Zarb-e-Azb. In other words, the Pakistan Army failed to achieve its objectives and was hence forced to continue its military operations.

What is evident from these military operations though is that the Pakistan Army has failed to achieve its objectives in defeating terrorism. On the contrary, its conduct in KP and Balochistan has been marked by persistent human rights violations such as enforced disappearances, which have not only sustained the grievances of the locals but pushed many of them to join the militant ranks against the Pakistani state. As such, given this egregious history of Pakistan’s security forces, the fears of the locals are not unfounded in the context of new military operation and it seems unlikely that the newly announced military campaign will fare any better.

Furthermore, while China’s investments in Pakistan, which have bound the two countries together, may have helped Islamabad with much-needed infrastructure development, it is an open secret that these investments anywhere and everywhere have come with strings attached with Islamabad being no exception. Yet the brazen manner in which Beijing has pushed Islamabad into declaring this largescale counterterrorism operation not only demonstrates the extent of its influence but also raises rightful concerns about Pakistan's growing subservience to China. Therefore, it becomes implicitly clear that the Chinese authorities are exploiting their strategic investments in Pakistan to pull the strings and directly influence its national policymaking, even dictating its internal security policies.

Ideally, this should have become a moment of introspection and strategic recalibration for the Pakistani authorities, as the country needs to balance its internal security requirements with the growing influence of its assertive neighbour. While Islamabad must ensure the safety of Chinese nationals and projects or for that matter any foreign developmental partner, along with its own citizens and assets, yet it should not come at the expense of national sovereignty or the well-being of its own citizens. Pakistan cannot allow itself to become a vassal for yet another foreign power, as it did with the United States for more than six decades.

Disclaimer: The paper is the author’s individual scholastic articulation and the facts and figures quoted are duly referenced, as needed, and are believed to be correct.

The writer is an author, columnist and distinguished fellow with Usanas Foundation. He has authored more than a dozen books.