The South Asia Intelligence Review has issued a report criticising the view of violence in Pakistan's Punjab province as an overspill from the tribal areas and the North West Frontier province. The report concludes that the Punjab faces particular social and economic problems that leave the province vulnerable to jihadist infiltration, building upon the grievances of the poor.
“A deeper scrutiny indicates that the state of affairs in Punjab is, in many ways, precarious - and this will have far-reaching consequences for Pakistan,” SAIR says in its report. An inadequate police force, vast militant networks and a sense of deprivation and injustice among the people, particularly in South Punjab, all combine to create an unstable environment, it says. “As disorder spreads in the other provinces of Pakistan, its heartland, Punjab, is bound to come under intense pressure in the immediate future.”
The heartland of Pakistan is vulnerable to revolution and violence. If the heartland burns, then the army, overstretched and thinned, will prove unable to defend the current regime.
Circumstances in Punjab are, at the moment, certainly not as bad as conditions in the Frontier or FATA. There is, however, an environment, as also the essential dramatis personae, for a Frontier-like scenario to emerge in Punjab. The TTP-Al Qaeda combine and other jihadi groups like the LeT and LeJ have, in fact, over the years, ably exploited the favourable circumstances prevailing in the region not only to build a strong and vast extremist network in Punjab, but also to escape adverse state action. In the absence of a situation marked by escalating militancy and widespread violence, military deployment in Punjab may not be a viable proposition. Crucially, it is not clear whether the Pakistan Army, which is dominated by Punjabis (estimated to approximately 65 per cent of the Force), will be keen on fighting their own.
