Taliban’s propaganda war

To forego defence of the country and look the other way while the nation bleeds is not an option

A few days back when Pakistan Army retaliated against the suicide attack on the military checkpost and mosque in N Wazirstan, the very next day Imran Khan, Sami-ul-Haq and other Taliban supporters, sidekicks and puppets like Hafiz Saeed, Hamid Gul, Sheikh Rashid, Munawwar Hussain etc, as if on cue, protested about ‘civilian casualties’ (while ignoring Taliban casualties), about our army fighting the “America’s war” and the necessity of giving up fighting for “peace talks”.

A mainstream newspaper reported that in this counterattack by the army “non-combatants were among the dead”, at the same admitting that the area was “inaccessible to journalists”. If its reporter was unable to go to the site, how can the newspaper state that those killed were not Taliban fighters? On what basis?

Was all this calumnious chorus just a coincidence? Hardly. Welcome to the world of secret, feverish propaganda war being waged by the Taliban/AQ/jihadists against Pakistan and Pakistan army.

Whenever there has been a face-to-face battlefield confrontation between the Pakistan forces and the Taliban combine, the latter have been pummeled and unable to fight and to withstand the punishing blows of Pakistan forces.

As a result, Taliban have resorted to adopting a strategy of vicious, false and misleading war propaganda so as to create an illusion of invincibility and fighting capability in the gullible, naive and sympathetic minds of our simple people.

It’s ironical that Taliban during their rule in Afghanistan did not allow any photographs or pictures or videos of both men and women because they said that images were un-Islamic. Consequently they banned TV, photography, cinematography, videos etc.

But now out of desperation Taliban intensely employ the use of cameras, camcorders, internet, websites, social media etc to eagerly show the photos of their leaders, terrorists and videos of their propaganda and activities including clips of suicide attacks, IED bombings, etc. Where has their “Islam” gone now? How utterly hypocritical!

Among the tactics Taliban/AQ use in their disinformation campaign is to dehumanise our soldiers and besmirch their integrity by painting them as American agents and that they are fighting America’s war. This enemy has instructed their spies, agents, and enablers embedded in our media, political parties, academia to keep on repeating this mantra, in line with the axiom that if a falsehood is repeated many times people tend to believe that it’s true.

Another tactic in their propaganda machine is their misuse of the religious ideology of Islam to appeal to the people’s emotions of their Islamic faith by alleging that Islam is in danger and they are fighting to defend Islam. This is far from truth. They along with their handmaidens are fighting to grab power and impose their totalitarian and fascism version of our faith.

The bottom line is that Pakistan Army and forces have an arduous, though not an impossible, task of fighting not only Taliban terrorist dressed in civilian clothes and burqas and hiding among civilians but also have to surmount the enemy’s blitz of lies and false and malicious propaganda of “civilian casualties” and “America’s war” and “defence of Islam”.

It is the foremost responsibility of the state, the government and the sworn duty of its armed forces to neutralise and defeat these enemy agents, enablers, myrmidons and cohorts while simultaneously taking on this enemy in the battlefield and finishing it once and for all.

If our civilian government is so gutless, so politically motivated or so fearful in its silence and inaction and chooses not to confront and counter this anti-Pakistan propaganda and their perpetrators, then it falls upon the shoulders of our armed forces to do so.

By default and duty Pakistan forces must drain this venomous cesspool spewing false propaganda that is slowly poisoning the country as they must simultaneously proceed to annihilate this evil, murderous enemy that is inflicting lethal blows upon our nation.

Democracy with its freedom is not a collective, national suicide pact. The government and the people should know that the defence of the nation is paramount. To forego defence of the country and look the other way while the nation bleeds is not an option.

No less than the future of our country is at stake.

The writer is a US-based attorney, author, independent analyst and writer.