Pak air base attack result of 'proxy war' in Kashmir - Kashmir Watch

Pak air base attack result of 'proxy war' in Kashmir

Islamabad, Aug 17: Referring to the attack on the Pakistan Air Force base in Kamra, an editorial in a Pakistani daily has said this and other similar attacks, are in many ways, an outcome of Pakistan's skewered security policies, such as of ''strategic depth'' and of instigating proxy wars in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
According to the editorial in The Express Tribune, the ''assets'', or at least some of them that the state used for these proxy wars, particularly the military and its agencies, have now turned against Pakistan.
A group of militants attacked the PAF base in Kamra and kept the security forces at bay for over four hours. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has accepted responsibility for the attack.
The first thing this audacious raid shows is that, despite a general drop in the number of attacks, the militants are still able to strike at will at
some of the most well-guarded security installations in the country, it said.
A few days ago, a media report revealed that intelligence reports received by the home department claimed that the Taliban were planning to attack the PAF on the 27th or 28th of Ramazan. As this forewarning was not enough to halt the militants' progress in Kamra, some would say that it shows Pakistan's security forces just aren't prepared to take on the militant threat, it added.
An investigation into the attack must be held and its conclusions made public. There are many questions that need to be answered and the public must be kept informed. Perhaps, the most important question is whether the militants had any inside help, the editorial said.
However, those in the military are not the only ones who need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Even society at large has refused to confront the obvious: that these militants are home-grown and not part of some diabolical American or Indian conspiracy, and failure to recognise even that basic fact is, perhaps, one of the reasons Pakistan is unable to extricate and wipe out terrorism and militancy from its root, it said.
Conspiracy theories and denial only end up helping the Taliban as it allows it to deflect the blame away from the society and heap it on foreigners. This mentality will not help in defeating the menace of militancy and terrorism. There is a need to decide on a broader strategy to tackle militants. Foremost among any strategy should be to tackle the TTP head on and at the same time, dispense the past strategy of using ''strategic assets'' as part of Pakistan's foreign policy, it concluded. ANI