Up and against it
Quite a pickle, the one that the security establishment has gotten itself into. For some time now, it has been clear that our boys have been carrying on with a pick-and-choose approach to the clampdown on militancy. The problem, and here comes the nutcracker, is that if they don’t extend the offensive towards their favourites, the Americans will let us have it; first, by cutting off our aid and later, even by expanding their military footprint beyond Afghanistan into our very soil. And if our security elite do finally start targeting everyone, the militants are going to be about as calm as a hornet’s nest, something that the recent spate of terror attacks are a cruel reminder of.
Both sides are inching up, screaming for attention. A US senate committee voted the other day to make a billion dollars’ worth of aid conditional on action against militant groups, which includes the now infamous Haqqani network. On the other hand, we have been seeing several attacks by militants after a relative lull in activities of the kind. Like the bomb attacks in Karachi and Peshawar.
Granted, the brunt of the blame is to be directed towards our military leadership but our political government isn’t helping either. Consider interior minister Rehman Malik’s assertion the other day that the Haqqanis were “sons of the soil” who were an outcome of the Soviet Afghan jihad. Taking sides, are we? So whereas the army merely denies complicity with, and knowledge of, the Haqqani network, the honourable minister has actually gone ahead and presented the Haqqanis in a good light. Perhaps he needs to realise that reading the Americans a history of the Soviet war and its fallout doesn’t exactly have the effect it once did; we’ve used up billions of dollars from those guilt trips. Especially now that Pakistan’s official stance is one that is against these militants, regardless of the factors that contributed to their creation.
It is about time our smoke-and-mirrors policy stops. Beyond a point, there isn’t a nuanced position on the issue: we are either with the militants or against them.
