Pakistan has been hit by a spate of terror attacks recently, extensive military operations had reduced the incidence of terror attacks to a great extent for the last couple of years.

This new ‘wave of terror’ has transpired just as the country is poised to make its debut as a global trade destination. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor has been progressing satisfactorily, foreign investment has been rapidly multiplying and Pakistanis have never been this hopeful about the future before.

The concentrated ‘bad media’ by Western mainstream sources has also failed to dissuade investors, CPEC has proved hard to sabotage as it is also owned by China which has sizable equity investments. $30 billion have already been harnessed in the project and investments could even touch $100 billion by the time it is complete. The Chinese are major stake-holders with a 40-year lease of Gwadar port, it is not really in Pakistan’s hands to roll back or stop the project, even if a portion of the corridor is damaged with an attack, the project does not get shelved. The current proxy war has three significant aims, firstly to ‘slow down or stop’ the CPEC mega-project, secondly, project Pakistan as the latest ISIS playground and thirdly, to destroy investor confidence by labelling Pakistan as an unsafe destination.

The timing happens to coincide with these recent developments;

• The new synergy in the Kashmir freedom struggle after the martyrdom of Burhan Wani.
• CPEC achieving its milestones notwithstanding the media war against it.
• China-Russia-Pakistan talks with the Taliban.
• The election of Donald Trump.
• A new Pakistan Army chief assuming office.

The string of attacks started with an incident of suicide bombing on Mall Road in Lahore, two smaller incidents also took place on the same day. The Lahore attack was claimed by the Jamaat -ul-Ahrar branch of the ‘Pakistani Taliban’, this was followed up by a devastating attack on a Sufi shrine at Sehwan in Sindh, the perpetrators taking responsibility as ‘ISIS.’ The intent is to create an evident pattern of ‘ISIS presence’ since November, even though such an outfit could never occupy land here to declare its occupation like it has done in Syria and Iraq. Anyhow, this ISIS phenomena claimed its first attack on a Sufi shrine in November in Baluchistan province , it also took responsibility for a deadly attack on police cadets in the city of Quetta last year. and now the Sehwan blast in which 88 people were martyred.

This trend could continue, as Brig Samson Simon Sharaf writes, “Middle East, Afghanistan and Ukraine comprise a triangle of instability. Russian intervention in the region was a matter of time. It came first in Ukraine followed by the Middle East. Now it is also getting involved in Afghanistan. The space of ISIS is shrinking in the Middle East. The theatre along with the ISIS threat is shifting to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The regrouping of old hands with new names has already taken place. A loud battle cry has been made in Lahore and Sehwan Sharif. Militants are more emboldened in attacking security forces along the Pak-Afghan Border and also in depth. Ultimately, this new game will hit CPEC.”

Realistically though, the ‘ISIS’ attacking Pakistan is more than a decade old, it is the same proxies with the same handlers, only the names are new. Sure enough, the Lahore blast investigation revealed that the website of terror outfit Jamaat-ul-Ahrar is operated from the city of Chennai in India according to the IP address.

The intention might be to turn Pakistan into another ISIS war theatre, neglecting to consider the reality that it is a nuclear power with a very capable army. In the past, foreign media has mostly blamed Pakistan and attached ethnic or sectarian motives behind most attacks but this time ISIS was being named even before it took responsibility. This impression is propagated on purpose by Indian media as the intention is to create the perception that Pakistan is not suitable for investment or tourism.

Destabilizing and weakening Pakistan is India’s’ idee fixe’ since 1947, it just cannot co-exist and has declared its intentions publicly at times. Ajit Kumar Doval’s tirade against Pakistan is one example, especially as he is the Indian National Security adviser for the present Indian government. His paper Internal Security — Need for Course Correction is a must-read for understanding the Indian psyche;

“The Indian security establishment has become lax in its attitude towards Pakistan, Indian foreign policy must re-gear itself to go on the offensive against its enemy Pakistan by funding, arming, training and directing non-state actors to wage a campaign of chaos within Pakistan by exacerbating existing sectarian and ethnic differences through violence. India will never be secure until Pakistan is destroyed, China is silenced, and Muslim and Sikh anti-state groups in India are forever extinguished.”

Ever since Doval became NSA, the Indian proxy war against Pakistan received impetus and terrorism peaked in Karachi, FATA and Baluchistan. The ISIS project in this part of the world is his doing as he made trips to Syria and Iraq to hire mercenaries for Afghanistan, there have been reports in Indian media about seven Indian companies that are involved in the supply chain of over 700 components used by ISIS to construct improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Doval’s plan is to engulf Pakistan with ISIS terror attacks to turn it into another Syria or Iraq and the Afghan intelligence agency NDS helps him execute his strategies.

There is a lot of testimony and evidence available where this RAW/NDS nexus is concerned. Only last year, a serving RAW officer Commander Kulbhushan Yadav was caught by Pakistani intelligence agencies, he disclosed that he managed a massive network of proxies involved in ethnic and sectarian terror attacks in Karachi and Baluchistan. This terror infrastructure was made possible with the collusion of RAW and NDS, mercenaries would filter in from the Pak-Afghan border for carrying out terror attacks, leaving India clear of suspicion. India has maintained five consulates in Afghanistan, out of which three are located near the Pak-Afghan border for organizing these terror proxies.