DECEMBER 16, 2014 is a sad day for Pakistan. But it is also a day of infamy for those who use Islam to justify evil actions, and a day of disgrace for those Muslims who choose to remain silent in the face of such barbarity.
The killing of 146 students in a school in Peshawar run by the Pakistan Army is one of the most brutal and senseless massacres of innocent people in the hands of Muslim radicals. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack as a response to the Pakistani military's offensive in northeastern Pakistan's tribal areas.
The situation admits of no equivocation in the condemnation of the Peshawar killings, and all those Muslims who stand against the pollution of Islam by the Islamic radicals must not only join voices but also join ranks to defeat the evil phenomenon. And even those who empathise with these groups, if only because of their anti-West stance, must reconsider their position. Silence would be an acquiescence of the TTP killings. We must also remember that distance does not lend protection from such a phenomenon, and the purveyors of radicalism and extremism have their tentacles outside their borders that are ready to replicate their cohorts on the most flimsy of excuses. We as a country, where such a phenomenon is more than incipient, and the other countries of the region, must be on guard.
To ask why of the radicals is futile like reading the Scripture to the Devil. This was a retributive action and, for the TTP or for that matter any other radical or terrorist group, soft targets are the best option to drive home their message. The TTP has carried out their threats they had made in response to the ground offensives against them by the Pakistan army. The TTP, motivated by a convoluted understanding of the religion, feel no qualms in perpetrating the most horrid acts of violence. But this attack may have nothing to do with religion per se, being a so-called revenge attack. But which religion sanctions such brutality? That the students were indirectly linked with the military establishment was reason enough to be made targets of the radicals.
It is perhaps the most severe jolt that the TTP has delivered to Pakistan, and if this does not galvanise the nation to a concerted action against all the radical forces that have been eating at the very core of Pakistan as a nation, then nothing will. But before Pakistan as a state reacts, it would be necessary for its society to become alive and conscious of the forces within that have nurtured these radicals.
However, it would be misplaced to think that the phenomenon that is riding on the shoulders of Pakistan is Pakistan's problem alone. But that notwithstanding, it is in Pakistan where the countering of the problem must commence. And that must be pinned on a counter narrative of the Taliban propaganda and its philosophy that feeds on a distorted version of Islam. However, talking to Pakistani experts and scholars on the issue one gets the impression that Pakistan is yet to formulate an appropriate narrative against the religious radicals. This is quite surprising since it is Pakistan that has been the worst sufferer of extremism and radicalism in the region. Pakistan's policy in combating extremism has been more tactical rather than longer term. The reliance has been more on hard options, where counting dead bodies of extremists was given priority rather than countering their propaganda.
Pakistan must also come to grips with a very hard reality. Its policies over the three decades, starting from the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, have spawned religious extremism. Its use of these elements as proxy against India had given the extremists legitimacy within the country. Some of them are now are biting the hands that fed them.
It must also decide how to tackle the radical sympathisers within the Pak establishment, particularly within the Army, the putative guardian of the state. The following sums up the dichotomy. “A Pakistani Army under the burden of its own Islamism and contradictions always had a confused approach to dealing with the radical Islamists. It wanted to put them down for their disruptive capabilities yet, it also had a nagging acceptance of their jihadist agenda due to Deobandi / Salafi orientation of a very large segment of its own rank and file, its jihadist approach to warfare and self-created perceptions of perpetual hostility with India” (IDSA Issue Brief June 2013)
If pro-radical psyche cannot be purged from the establishment it will be difficult for Pakistan to formulate a long-term strategy to counter extremism, let alone implement it successfully. The consequence of that is only too clear.
By Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)
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