Pakistan’s Political Crisis Exposes A Wider Regional Security Threat

The instability of Pakistan amid the recent Imran Khan political crisis highlights a wider regional geopolitical security threat. The arrest of the former prime minister demonstrates a growing divide over Islamic jihad activity in the country, particularly in the Kashmir regions and other territories where sectarian violence is commonplace. Jihad activity has been growing in Pakistan for a long time now, especially when considering major indicators, such as the fact that Pakistan is still the comfortable home of the notorious Mumbai bomber mastermind Dawood Ibrahim, and that 9/11 jihad terrorist Osama bin Laden lived comfortably secluded in Pakistan for years until his death.

There is a parallel security threat being created in geopolitics with this regional rise in Islamic jihad activity, which involves the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative For Multi-Sectoral Technical & Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). Both organizations provide a gateway for Islamic jihad activity over a wider regional area. For SAARC, the regional relations of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan are troublesome, and for BIMSTEC, the steep rise of jihad activity in Bangladesh is seen as problematic, as their actual headquarters are located in the country. India has the greatest security threat from these two organizations, because they have long land boundaries with their jihadist neighbors.

BIMSTEC focuses on technology, fisheries, trade, energy, tourism and transport. Also, the central headquarters of BIMSTEC in Bangladesh is seen as a source of creeping Sharia in the region. The UN is beholden to accept Sharia law through the Cairo Convention on Human Rights, and also contains the largest voting bloc of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Both of these factors are mechanisms inside BIMSTEC to exert political pressure from the UN on member nations, thereby creating a rise in regional jihad activity. Furthermore, the UN leadership is heavily populated by the OIC member nations, which constitute the decision-makers of the organization. They decide on such bizarre nominations as electing Iran to a commission on women’s rights.

The UN’s far-left, green Agenda 2030 is also pushed onto the signatory nations through BIMSTEC, which gives the UN more direct authoritarian control over the economies of these nations, as in the case of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and eventual collapse. Part of the economic collapse of Sri Lanka was blamed on ultra-green farming practices and a “Green Tax” that was launched in 2019 to meet Agenda 2030 targets. However, what makes the aggressive green policies suspect is this fact:

Sri Lanka is a low carbon emitting country with per capita emissions of around 1.02 tonnes/per person2 , and its development pathway has remained low-carbon-intensive. A recent analysis of the interplay between per capita emissions and human development, picks out Sri Lanka as a rare example of a country that has achieved both high human development and managed to keep CO2 emissions well below the long-term average needed to contain global warming targets of the Paris Agreement3. [from the 2021 UN report found here]

So why did Sri Lanka need to implement such aggressive green policies, considering its low GDP? Political pressure for these radical changes, akin to extortion for aid benefits, was forced onto Sri Lanka from the UN through agencies including BIMSTEC, which suggests a possible secondary means of attack from jihadists, who already destabilized the country with the horrific 4/21 Easter attacks.

The suicide bombings of the Easter attacks targeted both tourists and Christians over a large area. In the aftermath, the image of Sri Lanka as a safe tourist destination was severely damaged. This was the beginning of the political and economic crisis there. The Sri Lankan government may not have collapsed without the Easter attack and the Sharia-led UN interference through BIMSTEC. So jihadists attacked two vital areas of the Sri Lankan economy: tourism and farming. Note that tea farms are traditionally a major export for Sri Lanka.

The suicide bombers in the Easter attacks were radicalized in the SAARC and BIMSTEC regions, as has been the case with so many other terrorist attacks. Thus it is clear that all of the counter-terrorism measures in these two organizations have failed dismally. The question must be raised: what exactly are these two regional organizations doing to prevent the recruitment of citizens in their member states by jihad groups, which directly leads to acts of Islamic terrorism? The root causes of Islamic jihad activity are still allowed to flourish in SAARC and BIMSTEC nations, which is one explanation for the dismal failures of their counterterror measures.

Another negative aspect of BIMSTEC is its Sharia-compliant resolution on controlling online speech. BIMSTEC can be seen as source of exporting Islamic blasphemy laws to its member nations, as online criticism of Islam is strictly prohibited. It should be put into context that in the past, Pakistan has been very vocal about controlling online speech in the West through fierce political pressure, under the guise of combating “Islamophobia.”

The same jihadist groups from Pakistan are also operating inside Bangladesh, so Pakistan is given more political leverage through BIMSTEC, where these jihadist groups now form a unified political front between the two countries. This is in contrast to the 1970s civil war for independence in Bangladesh. This unified political front of jihadists exerts more political power through SAARC, of which both Pakistan and Bangladesh are members.

Now, examine the collapse of Myanmar, also a BIMSTEC member nation, for a chilling comparison of collapsed governments within BIMSTEC. The massive 2017 terror attack by ARSA in Rakhine State destabilized the country. It was led by a Saudi imam who was trained in Pakistan. The subsequent humanitarian crisis was created though BIMSTEC, which is supposed to control transport in the Bay of Bengal. It allowed a huge influx of illegal migration through the Bay. The illegals would continuously come into Rakhine state on fishing boats at night from Bangladesh in the time leading up to the terror attack, to form a legion of military support for the ARSA terrorists, who later fled back to Bangladesh.

Examine the similarities of the Myanmar situation to the collapse of Sri Lanka for a regional blueprint of jihad: a terror massive terror attack to ignite the problem; the terrorists were inspired by Wahhabism; Saudi-funded madrassas in both places were recruiting civilians for a long time; both terror leaders were imams with deep connections to Saudi Arabia; and finally, after a massive terror attack, the OIC-led UN mounted a secondary jihadist attack to collapse the nations. Although these are complex situations, the similarities expose some disturbing common elements in a proven timeline which leads to a pattern, or blueprint, of jihad centered around BIMSTEC and SAARC. This jihad is being waged against small Buddhist nations in the region from an organized network of jihadists under the direct leadership of the OIC-UN alliance. No alliance exists for Buddhist countries to defend or protect themselves from such a powerful jihadist attack.

SAARC has a history of being contentious in the region. Summits have been canceled due to the tensions between India and Pakistan. However, SAARC has a more direct problem with the potential for exporting jihad to the region, as its representatives actually have year-long diplomatic SAARC stickers in passports for free and open access to all of the signatory nations. So SAARC can freely export teams of jihadists to India and the other member nations directly from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, with the same top-level immunity that is reserved for actual diplomats, who need this top level immunity for national security reasons. This has been going on for decades now. Jihadists have long recognized SAARC passports as a portal to create their own jihadist and criminal networks in the surrounding region, without any international scrutiny. The net result is a rise in Islamic jihad activity throughout the SAARC nations, and a serious national security threat for each member nation.

In a regional geopolitical context, the current political tensions in Pakistan that are related to the sharp rise in Islamic jihad activity found in SAARC and BIMSTEC nations naturally leads to questions of national security in the surrounding countries. The perennial fears of nuclear weapons (use an online translator to read that in English) among other advanced tactical weapons of mass destruction, becoming accessible to Islamic jihadists is a frightening possibility. These weapons may easily fall into the hands of the Islamic State through a political crisis manufactured by jihadists. Or the systemic pro-jihad activity of these two regional organizations may enable the launching of another jihadist attack on a member nation, as we have seen in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, which would allow for the rise of a jihadist faction that would inherit possession of advanced weapons as a result of the government’s collapse.

Both possible outcomes have the same horrifying results from the same two regional organizations, BIMSTEC and SAARC, that both have some direct responsibility for the increase in Islamic jihad activity within the region. These organization need a massive security overhaul, or complete dissolution, as the world moves into the new reality of regional security threats resulting from the expansion of Islamic jihad activity.