The dynamics of the war against terror

An antagonistic political leadership cannot measure up to the magnitude of the task

The army has finally launched an operation in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) to cleanse it of foreign and local militants. The operation has been initiated on the insistence of the army and in spite of the overt and covert opposition of the ruling political family whose interests, through years, have been so inextricably linked with protecting and patronising the jihadist elements, particularly in the heartland of Punjab.

The prime minister stated in the national assembly the other day that it took him four-and-a-half months of negotiations with the Taliban to decide that a military operation was inevitable. The All Parties Conference (APC) was held in September last year, a good nine months back. The question that automatically arises is: what was he doing for the rest of the four-and-a-half months? Thinking? Gosh, that is so cruel on him!

There is general consensus that the army operation should have been launched a long time ago because this is only the first of a series of actions that are required to cleanse the country of the scourge of militancy, hatred and extremism. The militants holed up there in the NWA are only the vile manifestations of a sickness that grows elsewhere – in the seminaries that are impacting scores of impressionable youth and encouraging them to take up arms against everything that does not agree with their hateful ideology. The lessons being taught in the next-door seminary will have the element of hatred common with what is being taught at other such places, but nothing else because each one of these seminaries is guided by its own brand of Islam and its own brand of venom. That is what has divided the nation among ill-informed and violent firebrands who use the gun to impose their regressive and degenerate writ.

In anticipation of the operation, most of the militants have already crossed over to the other side of the Pak-Afghan border and it is well nigh impossible for even the Afghan government to push them back. The miserly remnants of the militant bands that still remain in NWA will either be killed or these, too, will be able to find their way across the border or filter into the cities and suburbs of the country now that the operation has started. Therefore, I don’t agree with assumptions that the time lost in starting the operation is not relevant in terms of its effectiveness, or that this is going to be a short and clinical operation. I believe that this is going to be a protracted and brutal exercise which will not end any time soon if the objective is to rid the country completely of the scourge of militancy. But, if it is meant to kill a few militants and indulge in some political sloganeering thereafter of having defeated militancy, it would be a cruel joke with the nation which the ruling political family has indulged in ad nauseam.

There are three key stages to the operation that would determine its success or otherwise: one, the military operation in the NWA and elsewhere in the country including the cities and the suburbs where the militants may be holed up; two, the operation to render dysfunctional the defunct organisations including the Lashkar-e-Tayaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Sahaba and all other such outfits and their training centres that preach violence against real and imagined adversaries and, three, regulating the foreign-aided and sponsored seminaries spread over the length and breadth of the country that are incessantly engaged in preaching violence and injecting germs of sectarian hatred that would not be acceptable in any civilised society.

There are three key stages to the operation that would determine its success or otherwise: one, the military operation in the NWA and elsewhere in the country including the cities and the suburbs where the militants may be holed up; two, the operation to render dysfunctional the defunct organisations including the Lashkar-e-Tayaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Sahaba and all other such outfits and their training centres that preach violence against real and imagined adversaries and, three, regulating the foreign-aided and sponsored seminaries spread over the length and breadth of the country that are incessantly engaged in preaching violence and injecting germs of sectarian hatred that would not be acceptable in any civilised society. If we stop at the first, even the second, and claim victory in having wiped out terrorism, it would be a travesty of the operation that has been launched after over 50,000 deaths and, by the prime minister’s own admission, a loss in excess of US$ one billion. It is like administering antibiotics to a patient that is in immediate need of a major surgical procedure. Or, it would be like tackling a few manifestations of violence, but leaving alone the nurseries of hate that produce them by the dozens every day to wage war against the state of Pakistan. If the objective is to kill a few terrorists without addressing the causes that create the scourge, it is an exercise in futility.

Unfortunately, we are still reaping the spill-over of the jihad that we fought so blindly without paying an iota of heed to the detrimental impact this would have on our society and our short- and long-term national interests. We plunged ourselves in it thinking as if our very survival depended on its success. In the process, we refused to learn from our past experience of having pursued such misadventures and having had to pay an enormous price in the bargain. It is as if we were blinded by the passion of our argument without bothering to rationalise its immediate and long-term consequences.

What is even more worrisome is that this approach has assumed the contours of a national narrative that we pursue blindly without bothering to comprehend the destruction that it would cause inevitably. This jihadist narrative has consumed our policy-makers and bulk of our people alike. Through this sickening indulgence, we are trying to compensate for our stark failures and shortcomings as a community of people because a nation we have not been able to become. There is no common voice that we have been able to nurture. It is only a collection of discordant notes that differ from each other in content, essence and spirit, thus pitting people from divergent backgrounds at cross-purposes, even on collision paths. So, we continue to fight each other with venomous words as much as with deadly weapons.

The operation in the NWA is just the beginning of a long battle that will have to be fought to the bitter end to rescue this country from the clutches of the sick and the deadly pursuits that we have embraced passionately through decades. There is neither any reason nor any provision left to continue on this destructive trail any further. There never was. It has already caused enough damage in men, material and spirit, or whatever was left of it. As a country and as a bunch of people, we are perched on the edge of the precipice with nothing down there that would stop our fall. It is all the way to certain oblivion.

The operation in the NWA is just the beginning of a long battle that will have to be fought to the bitter end to rescue this country from the clutches of the sick and the deadly pursuits that we have embraced passionately through decades. There is neither any reason nor any provision left to continue on this destructive trail any further. There never was. It has already caused enough damage in men, material and spirit, or whatever was left of it. As a country and as a bunch of people, we are perched on the edge of the precipice with nothing down there that would stop our fall. It is all the way to certain oblivion.

We should also understand that as long as the factories that produce and promote this deadly narrative are not taken care of, there is no stopping the mayhem that we are perpetually the target of. Treating the symptoms alone will not solve the crisis. It is tackling the causes that may provide us with a respite and space to chisel a future that would not be laced with terror and its equally destructive manifestations.

That is going to be a difficult task. Political parties, defunct organisations, non-state actors and a large number of people of all hues and colours have made lucrative businesses out of promoting terror. They have also made businesses out of extortion, kidnapping for ransom, brutal killings and just about everything else that would cultivate a fear syndrome to promote the petty interests of their own brand of myopic and self-serving polity. Professions are being blatantly used for promoting the causes of terror. Institutions are being subdued into silence so that mega corruption scams would remain unearthed. Prosecution is non-existent. Judiciary is scared to sit on judgement on the perpetrators of terror. There is a preponderant culture of complicity – each group willing, even eager to cooperate with the others promoting the ascendency of petty fiefdoms that call the shots within their domain of influence. The one thing that characterises all such pursuits is the commonality of illicit stakes that unite them in criminal undertakings.

In an environment so grossly vitiated by competing as well as complicit interests, is a remedial action even a remote possibility?

Let’s begin with the prime minister who remains a hostage of his vile interpretation of what a democratic rule is all about: a one-man show that would be paramount and unchallenged. Emerging that it does out of an abominable intellectual paucity and lack of sincerity, it is bound to carry more negatives than positives, if any at all! He appears to be a man driven by a messianic belief that the army and the premier intelligence agency of the country are to be subjugated and controlled without any questions asked. His close coterie of advisors, their later-day proclamations notwithstanding, also remain besotted with the same urge and are incessantly engaged in a vile campaign to lower the morale of those fighting on the borders. This approach is also manifested in the initiatives, or the lack of the same, that the government undertakes including the manner it handled the media crisis and the issues emerging out of the consequent free-for-all masquerade that unfurled on the national television screens.

But the affliction is deeper and more wide-spread than can be gauged from any one act, be it as barbaric as the one committed in Lahore resulting in the death of a large number of people. It is hidden in the mindset that rules this country, in the mindset that the Sharifs have traditionally nurtured as a matter of habit. It is this mindset that is determined on working to the exclusion of all other state institutions, as a matter of fact, at their cost and peril.

But the vilest act has been this effort on the part of the Sharifs to use the little space created as a consequence of the launch of the military operation in the NWA to come down hard on such elements that are challenging their political authority. The brutality of the pre-dawn assault in Lahore under the pretext of removing the barriers on the road to the offices of the Idara-e-Minhaj-ul-Quran is reminiscent of the sickness of the divisive politics of the nineties. This act also reflects the delusional indulgence of the Sharifs to perpetuate a family fiefdom on the country to the exclusion of all others. That’s why one sees an unending trail of the family stalwarts lining up for promotion to the next tier.

On the face of it, the Sharifs have again shot themselves in the foot, a self-destructive exercise that they have mastered through their years in power. They are also notorious for creating an unmanageable situation when none exists and there is also no reason for fabricating one. This day-light brutality is likely to have serious repercussions for their hold on power. On the one hand, it will fail in deterring the parties that are out there challenging the legitimacy of the PML (N) rule secured through a grossly contrived election and, on the other hand, it will unite the opposition in the belief that the Sharifs do not tolerate criticism of their dictatorial and self-centred manner of governance.

But the affliction is deeper and more wide-spread than can be gauged from any one act, be it as barbaric as the one committed in Lahore resulting in the death of a large number of people. It is hidden in the mindset that rules this country, in the mindset that the Sharifs have traditionally nurtured as a matter of habit. It is this mindset that is determined on working to the exclusion of all other state institutions, as a matter of fact, at their cost and peril. This mindset brooks no alternative narrative that may provide a clue to successfully confronting the existential threats that the state is confronted with and this mindset is bent on perpetuating a regressive and degenerate narrative that would take the state back into an embrace with the medieval times and traditions. That’s where they fit in best: with their brutal and insensitive preoccupation with perpetuating their illicit rule on the country.

Can the state afford this regression-laden, all-consuming narrative? Can the state afford to suffer the Sharifs’ megalomania any longer? The future of the state may rest with a quick disposal of these questions.