Of hollow promises and tall claims
Banned terror outfits are routinely seen taking out rallies and pushing for their demands, some of them even collect donations and some are allowed to operate under the garb of charity work
Despite the government’s claims that action is being taken against terrorists across the board and that they are ‘on the run’, questions are being raised on how far the National Action Plan (NAP) has been implemented and whether the government is even serious about implementing it.
Operation Zarb-e-Azb did yield positive results and if we look at the statistics, the number of large-scale terrorist attacks saw a significant decline after the operation was launched, but there are still some loopholes in our strategy against the terrorists. The major portion of the NAP, which was about taking action against extremism and the extremist mindset, has not yet been implanted.
Targeting militants’ hideouts and destroying their networks is certainly important but what is more important right now is to go after the support group of these terrorists.
Banned terror outfits are routinely seen taking out rallies and pushing for their demands, some of them even collect donations and some are allowed to operate under the garb of charity work. This is a complete failure of the National Action Plan but no one seems to focus on this part of the action plan.
When our leaders say the Taliban’s backbone has been broken, do they realise the sympathisers and supporters of these terrorists are still surviving and thriving in the country? The mindset that justifies Taliban’s action is alive and kicking, and the authorities are turning a blind eye to it.
For any terrorist group, support works like oxygen. As a matter of fact, the sympathisers of Taliban are still present among us and they need to be eradicated if we want the action to succeed. Eliminating the mindset that still provides support to Taliban’s action is very important and without it no operation can gain complete success.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)’s provincial government gave a hefty sum of Rs300 million to the Haqqania madrassa in the province notorious for its links to militancy. Its owner Sami-ul-Haq of the JUI-S is known as self-declared ‘father of Taliban’.
Imran Khan defended the move of the KP government and said the money was meant to bring reforms in the madrassa system and the step was taken for bringing the madrassa education into the mainstream. One has to be a special kind of ignorant to think that giving money to a terrorist-producing factory will do any good.
It was hoped that after the 2014 Army Public School tragedy, politicians would finally give up on justifying actions of terrorists but sadly Imran Khan’s move came as a disappointment to many. The civilian and military leadership decided to chalk out a plan to target the ‘facilitators and sympathisers’ of terrorists, but this part of the plan was never implemented. The process of registration of madrassas is not being carried out efficiently and the government is not providing details and facts and figures on how many seminaries have been registered and how many are still operating unregistered.
The need to provide a counter narrative to the narrative of the Taliban is as strong as ever. Zarb-e-Azb’s first phase is complete and the second phase of consolidation is in progress. It is time for the government to step forward and target the mindset that has been providing oxygen in the form of support to these terrorists.
The decision made post-APS was to go after extremism, not just terrorism, so why are banned outfits still being allowed to take out rallies? Why are politicians giving financial grants to sympathisers and facilitators of the Taliban? Pakistan’s policy vis-à-vis terrorism in the past was that groups that are carrying out attacks in Pakistan will be targeted but those that are using Pakistan’s soil to launch attacks in other countries but not directly attacking Pakistan should not be targeted. But the death of 146 schoolchildren finally woke our leaders up and they accepted that the strategy of making a distinction between the Taliban is not going to work anymore, as it is all backfiring. And it was reaffirmed that the action will now be taken against both ‘good and bad’ Taliban.
So why is Pakistan still being accused of not doing enough against groups such as the Haqqani Network? The problem is certainly present and the solution to it is proper coordination between civilian and military leadership. While the military is targeting the hideouts of terrorists and eliminating them, the civilian government should be working on producing a counter narrative and doing away with all sorts of extremist literature present anywhere in the country.
The distinction between good and bad terrorists should end now. There is no such thing as a good militant, they are all bad. Anyone who thinks it is okay to take an innocent life for any purpose cannot be good. Pakistan is not only threatened by Taliban, but their sympathisers and supporters are also a threat to the stability of the country. The government should now focus on ways to eradicate the support group of Taliban and doing away with the narrative that Taliban created and which is somehow still present in our society.