John Bolton, a prominent US foreign policy hawk, has taken some controversial positions over the years. So it’s unsurprising that he made some eyebrow-raising comments about Pakistan in a recent interview with Bharat FM, a US radio station for Indian-Americans. And yet, his comments weren’t just controversial - they also appeared to be out of step with current realities in Pakistan, and especially the country’s security situation.

“I’m really worried at the macro level that Pakistan remains vulnerable to a terrorist takeover of the government,” Bolton said in the interview. “There are already significant terrorist elements in parts of the Pakistani military.”

Bolton warned of an “absolute worst-case scenario” where “the Pakistani Taliban or others” will seize power. Such fears about Pakistan are not new - but they were more prevalent in the past, when there was genuine reason to be concerned. 

Pakistani Taliban’s reign of terror
 
Back in 2007, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP- Tehreek-i-Taliban) launched a horrific campaign of terror that would produce seven years of relentless attacks on state targets, including military bases (they targeted civilians indiscriminately as well). The most well-known hits on military targets were assaults on the Army’s General Headquarters building in 2009 and on a major naval aviation facility in 2011. But there were others too, including an attack on a mosque on an airbase in 2015. 

The TTP wasn’t only blowing up state targets, it was also seizing territory - and in 2009, it took over the Swat region, only 60 miles from the federal capital in Islamabad. It was at this point that analysts began forecasting the possibility of state failure.  Insurgency expert David Kilcullen warned that Pakistan could experience internal collapse within six months. In 2011, President Barack Obama said that Pakistan was the one thing keeping him up at night.

Connection between Pakistani army and terrorists

There were also reasons to be concerned about connections between the Pakistani military and terrorists. Adnan Rasheed, a senior Pakistani Taliban leader captured in 2014, was a former air force technician. In 2012, four Pakistani military officers, including a brigadier, received jail sentences for their ties to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a global organization that is nonviolent but espouses extremist views and has some influence in Pakistan. And in 2014, a man who had been expelled from the Pakistan Navy for radical Islamist views led an unsuccessful mission to seize a Pakistani warship and use it to attack an American vessel. At least five naval officers were later convicted for their role in the mission, and all were charged with having links to ISIS.

However, much has changed since 2014, when Pakistan’s military launched a counterterrorism offensive against the TTP that disrupted the group’s network and badly degraded its capacities. The number of overall terrorist attacks has fallen by 85 percent over the last decade, with similar drops in fatalities from such attacks. Pakistan’s security situation has improved dramatically.  

While recent reports indicate the TTP is trying to mount a comeback, with the group’s current leader having been reunited with some splinter groups with the parent organization, the TTP remains a shadow of its former self. It still carries out some attacks, mostly in the northwest near the Afghanistan border. However, it doesn’t stage attacks with the intensity that it did previously - and it certainly isn’t in a position to topple the government. The only other major violent anti-state groups currently active in Pakistan are ISIS along with several separatist militant organizations that periodically stage attacks, but the clout of these groups is limited.

Additionally, new research suggests that fears of Pakistan’s military colluding with terrorists are overblown. David Smith, a retired US military officer, published a study for the Wilson Center in 2018 based on observations of Pakistani officers at the Pakistan Army Command and Staff College over a 37-year period. One of his main conclusions was that “fears of ‘Islamization’ within the Pakistani Army officer corps and its susceptibility to radical religious influence are exaggerated.” According to Smith: Nearly all the Pakistani students, including those with more conservative religious views, expressed the attitude that religion is a personal matter that does not influence the performance of military duties.

They also see little value in Islamic governance, preferring democracy and civilian governance in overwhelming numbers. The study also uncovered no evidence of the influence of proselytizing Islamic organizations like Tabliqi Jamaat or more radical groups like Hezb-ut-Tahrir at the Staff College.

Pakistan provides enabling environment for extremism

This isn’t to suggest we become complacent. Despite major counterterrorism successes, Pakistan continues to provide an enabling environment for extremism. Hate speech and conspiracy theories are still propagated by school textbooks, by some religious leaders, and on television. New hardline religious political parties malign religious minorities.

And the legacy of the Pakistani state’s sponsorship of some terror groups - mainly those used to help pursue its objectives in Afghanistan and India - means that the infrastructure of terror will prove difficult to dismantle (though Islamabad has made progress in curbing terror financing networks, amid strong international pressure).

Still, it’s one thing to say Pakistan remains vulnerable to terrorism. It’s a far different thing to say Pakistan remains vulnerable to a takeover by terrorists. 

If one wants to talk about, to use Bolton’s words, “absolute worst case scenarios” for Pakistan, one can talk of economic collapse, water scarcity, or nuclear conflict with India.

But to talk about terrorists seizing power is to talk about something that, at least at this moment in time, can’t even be categorized as a remote possibility.  

(The writer is Asia Program Deputy Director and Senior Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. The views expressed are personal)