Time for Introspection

We Pakistanis are a strange commodity. People in general here are quick to point fingers and blame others for their follies despite mounting evidence to the contrary. The inability of our successive governments to properly investigate high profile crimes have led us to believe in conspiracy theories. Pakistan at the moment is passing through a crucial phase and is facing an existential threat. The time has come now to take a united stand against the scourge of terrorism.

Living in a perpetual mode of denial and blaming India and the Jewish lobby will not get us anywhere. The fact needs to be accepted that there is a very strong network of home grown terrorists who are bent upon disrupting the common man’s way of life and impose their medieval and barbaric agenda on the entire country through the barrel of the gun.

The irony is that a large number of these terror outfits were created and actively supported by our security establishment to be used as a proxy in Indian held Kashmir. Now these people have turned into a Frankenstein monster targeting their previous handlers. The situation has come to a point now where ordinary people are even afraid of going for shopping or a walk or even to a mosque. The handling of this crisis which is tearing apart the fabric of this society by the government is less than satisfactory.

There are hardly any examples of where sitting governments have entered into negotiations with terrorists. The repercussions of caving into the demands of terrorists have been quiet devastating. The Indian government set free three hardened criminals in exchange for securing release of passengers of Indian Airline IC-814 which was hijacked by militants and flown to Khandar, Afghanistan. One of them was Mulana Masood Azhar who upon his return to Pakistan formed a militant organization Jaish-e-Muhammad. Members of this group were later involved in several assassination attempts on ex-president Musharaf along with a brazen attack on the Indian parliament which brought the two countries on the brink of another war. The other criminal Omar Saeed Sheikh planned the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Denial Pearl who was later beheaded in the most brutal fashion. His only crime was that he was a Jew. Both these incidents not only brought a bad name to the country but once again proved to the world that Pakistan in a sanctuary for terrorists.

However the current dispensation has already accepted the major demands of these militants. It has virtually surrendered Swat to the militants. This is likely to exacerbate the current situation. Maulana Sufi Muhammad who was earlier jailed as a criminal for taking hundreds of gullible people to Afghanistan to fight against the Americans is now being hailed as a hero. The people of Swat voted for the secular ANP to bring some semblance of peace to their troubled valley. Contrary to their expectations, Swat state will now be ruled by militant obstructionists whose claims to fame are beheading people, destroying schools, demolishing houses and destroying the thriving tourism industry. Cracks are already appearing in the agreement which is yet to be implemented. The murder of the Geo reporter Musa Khan Lala and recent incident of killing of two army jawans who were accompanying a water tanker once again goes on to prove that these militants care less for any deals or agreements. Nizam-Adel or any other system of governance is unlikely to deliver unless there is a complete revamption of the current judicial system. A parallel judicial system is no solution to this growing problem. Further this act of giving into the demands of the militant brigade by the government is likely to set up precedence for other organizations to follow, thus creating chaos and anarchy through out the region.

The ever growing influence of these types of religious vigilantes was recently demonstrated in Karachi whereby a musical night held in a DHA ground was disrupted by stick and bamboo holding boys from a nearby mosque. Later, instead of reprimanding these people, the police instead blamed the organizers for holding the event without permission even though no such permission was required in the past.

The Mumbai attacks once again sent us back into a denial mode. Almost everyone from a common person on the street to TV analysts blamed India for orchestrating this plan to implicate Pakistan as a terror sponsoring state. Now after investigations from the lone surviving terrorist it is clear that these attacks were not only planned in Pakistan but the attackers actually were members of a Pakistan based militant organization which until recently was involved in sending its members to fight against the Indian security forces in Indian held Kashmir. The government was quick to point out that no state agencies were involved. However the fact remains that the perpetrators of this heinous act were recruited and trained on Pakistani soil. Similar reasoning was used by United States to declare war on Afghanistan after 9/11 even though not a single hijacker was an Afghani.

There is a strong need to build a consensus on the issue of terrorism. It is a menace which if not checked now will destroy the entire country. Burying our head in the sand like an ostrich will not get us anywhere. We need to come out of our siege mentality. The entire world is not out there to get us. The threat that we face is internal. Far more people have died in terrorist incidents than in the wars that Pakistan fought against India.

Moreover our military needs to give up on the idea of strategic depth. We need to put our house in order before poking our nose into other people affairs. The government also needs to build a coherent policy. There should be massive funding for education, health and other social services. FATA and other under developed areas should be brought into main stream. Finally the state must have the will to crack down on groups like LET, LEJ and their Afghan and Pakistani collaborators. It is still not too late. This crisis can be tackled provided a unified stand is taken against it.