PAKISTAN FACING NIGHTMARE SCENARIO ON THREE FRONTS

While the kerfuffle between India and Pakistan is possibly tapering off (there have been no new major strikes, other than both sides trying to count how many planes were shot down and by whom, plus Arnab Goswami is repeating yesterday's hysterics) there have been other developments in Pakistan that are more dangerous for Pakistan.

Yesterday the Baloch Liberation Army or BLA attacked the Pakistani Army with IEDs and killed 14 Pakistani troops in Balochistan. Here is a brief video:

Recall that in March the Baloch "hijacked" that train and killed over 200 mostly Pakistani troops. 

Then over in Khyber Pakhtunhwa (KPK) the Pathan people (Tehreeke Taliban Pakistan) have been shooting and killing Pakistani troops almost on a daily basis. Sometime recently eight Pakistani special forces were reported killed. 

A former Pakistani prime minister has said that in the Baloch and KPK areas the Pakistani government has authority only during the day time. At night the local warlords and insurgent groups are in control. In  Khyber Pakhtunhwa the Tehreeke Taliban Pakistan or TTP has already implemented sharia. In parts of KPK, girls are not allowed to go to school anymore. Women are not allowed to go out of their houses without wearing the burqa.

To get an idea of the land area under the 'control' of the insurgents look at the yellow striped area in this map:  

That is about half the land area of Pakistan. Pakistan is in serious trouble.

One outcome of these sudden hostilities with Pakistan on its western borders is that India is now realising that their safest border, where Indian troops have been reduced and redeployed to the west, is India's eastern border with China. The India-China border is absolutely quiet. The fact is the Indians can move their entire armies from the Chinese border and redeploy all of them to the Pakistan border. There is no threat from China.

Likewise Pakistan will find out soon enough that its safest border is actually with India. As long as terrorists from Pakistan do not cross over into India to attack Pahalgam, Taj Hotel, Uri, Pattankot, Baramullah or the Indian Parliament. Not a single Made-in-India  'terrorist' has crossed the border from India into Pakistan and massacred tourists inside Pakistan.  

But when the Baloch and the Pathans really step up their insurgency over half of Pakistan's land area, where the Pakistani army is stretched super thin, perhaps then the Pakistanis will find out that indeed India is their least problematic neighbour. 

There really is no threat to Pakistan from India. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim majority. India does not want either one of them. The Indians are not that stupid.

The other big problem facing Pakistan is that Pakistani soldiers on the ground are not happy to fight in a real shooting war - especially in places like Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunhwa which are as strange to them as China or Korea. The people there speak a different language, their culture is different and they have no common history with Pakistan. Making things more complicated is that the Baloch and the Pashtuns are prepared to die for their homeland. They are defending their homes. On the other hand, the Pakistani Army comes from elsewhere. They are strangers. They are not defending their homeland. The Pakistani Army does not know what it is fighting for. FOF (Friend or Foe) identification is a bit blurry.  

  The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.