Until a few years ago, Pakistan was one of the most dangerous countries on earth. But now the country has won its war against terrorism, normalising the war-like situation in parts of the country, a British journal reported yesterday.
It would be foolish to claim that Pakistan’s security problems are over. But something extraordinary and unexpected has certainly happened. Since it fails to fit the established narrative of Pakistan as a dangerous nation, it’s gone unacknowledged in the West, says a report published on Spectator.co.UK.
Violence has not just dropped a bit. It is down by three quarters in the last two years. The country is safer than at any point since George W Bush launched his war on terror 15 years ago.
The change can be dated to a special cabinet meeting called by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Karachi in September 2013. At this meeting Sharif called an end to Pakistan’s culture of 
violence.
Parts of Karachi, a teeming city of more than 20mn on the Arabian Sea, had been a war zone for decades. All the main political parties employed paramilitary wings and some formed alliances with terror groups 
including Al Qaeda.
The Taliban had long treasured a secure basis in Karachi, as had religious terror groups. That was a conventional crime industry specialising in kidnap, drug smuggling and extortion (every business had to pay protection money to gangs).
Pakistan’s politicians tolerated this. Pervez Musharraf, the army chief and president, was often accused of allowing the armed wing of Karachi’s largest political party, MQM, to operate with complete impunity.
This policy continued under Musharraf’s civilian successor, Asif Zardari, whose Pakistan’s People’s Party governed Karachi in coalition with MQM from 2008 to 2012. 
Major general Bilal Akbar, director-general of Sindh Rangers for the past two-and-a-half years, said: “We have apprehended 919 target killers from the militant wings of political parties since September 2013. They confessed to over 7,300 killings. The daily homicide rate in the city is less than two now. It used to be ten or 15, and during ethnic clashes we could lose 100 lives a day.”
Just three years ago, according to the Numbeo international crime index, Karachi was the sixth most dangerous city in the world. Today it stands at number 31 – and falling.
Six months after he ordered the Rangers into Karachi, Nawaz Sharif took an even more momentous decision. The prime minister, whose initial instinct had been to negotiate with the Taliban and oppose the use of force, yielded to advice from his generals. He sent the army into North Waziristan, the Taliban stronghold on the 
Afghan border.
In June 2014, General Raheel Sharif took charge of a massive military offensive, Zarb-e-Azb. 
Taliban groups responded with a series of atrocities of which the most grotesque was the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, in which a reported 140 
children were killed.
That stimulated the National Action Plan in January 2015, hailed by Prime Minister Sharif as the defining moment in the fight against terrorism. It established special military courts and outlawed terror groups which had previously been 
given latitude by the state.
At the same time, the army stepped up its operations. According to official figures, it has killed about 3,500 Taliban fighters, destroyed 992 hideouts and cleared 3,600sq km of territory. Nearly 500 soldiers have died.
The Taliban have been gravely weakened, according to Bakhtiar Mohamed, director of the National Counter Terrorism Authority. “The army has gone very deeply into every nook and corner of the tribal areas. There is no possibility of any revival of extremism.” 
Some of the methods have been brutal. There is very little testimony from the tribal areas, but one expert says Miranshah, capital of North Waziristan, has been turned into a ‘car park’.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan protests that more than 430 people have been executed since the moratorium on the death penalty (which was imposed by Zardari in 2008) was ended in 2014.
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