Common Enemy

If the menace of cross-border terrorism is anything to go by, there already exists a proper collaboration mechanism, laced with well-established, seamless communication channels, among the world nations to counter-terrorism and accelerate their efforts in tandem to minimize and prevent these threats at home and abroad. However, Iran’s unilateral decision to carry out strikes in Pakistan’s Balochistan province ostensibly to target an anti-Iran, U.S.-designated insurgent group called Jaish al-Adl was one of those audacious moves that could have spiralled into a full-blown disaster if both neighbouring countries had not decided in time to de-escalate from their agitated state. Given the complex relationship between Iran and Pakistan, wherein both countries find themselves caught in the grip of a subtle yet pervasive form of cross-border terrorism, the onus equally lies on both of them to strategically cooperate with each other and make the most of their seamless working relationships to keep exchanging intelligence information on threats to their national securities.

Somewhat surprisingly, this abrupt escalation and military hostilities between Pakistan and Iran, the two neighbouring Islamic countries of Asia, cannot be ruled out as a commonplace occurrence as both nations have usually been peaceful with each other throughout their bilateral history and border skirmishes between them have always been downplayed by both sides or at least contained very close to their porous borders. On this occasion, however, Iran bucked the norm and charted an independent course by unilaterally launching cross-border strikes into Pakistan a day after it had already launched similar attacks inside Syria and Iraq. Be that as it may, what prompted Tehran to adopt such drastic measures against its immediate neighbour is still anybody’s guess since Pakistan is neither a chaotic and fragmented state like Syria nor is it a fragile country like present-day Iraq orchestrated by the global powers that be to serve their specific interests. A country already grappling with the menace of India-sponsored multi-pronged terrorism for decades, Pakistan is one of the most militarily powerful nations and is fully capable of deterring aggression across the full spectrum of threats, as it was rightly done within the next 48 hours when Pakistan launched its own strikes in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province, to target anti-Pakistan terrorists operating from Iran. By doing so, Pakistan, one more time, emerged as a textbook example of restraint and responsible diplomacy, as Islamabad’s first reaction was not a knee-jerk response from the word go. It first recalled its ambassador from Tehran and officially registered a protest with the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, followed by the suspension of bilateral visits.

In a word, a deep sense of sanity must prevail in the end since the matter is now well above the ambit of Tehran and Islamabad, as there are some other formidable forces playing their nefarious role to expand the Middle East war theatre to the rest of the Muslim countries both in Asia and Africa. If the elimination of cross-border terrorism is the shared objective for both Iran and Pakistan, the pressing priority is to find out the common enemy that looks hell-bent on pitting both nuclear-armed Islamic nations against each other. For enduring allies, it’s never a bad idea to forego a standalone battle when it can save them an age-old, time-tested companionship.