Ranting Hafiz Saeed Unrebuked by Pakistan

By Nalin S Kohli

Our hearts go out to the little victims and their teachers of the Peshawar incident. India has mourned, many a time, for its own innocents suffering at the hands of terrorists. The entire region feels for the parents mourning the loss of their beloved ones. Such atrocity by terrorists seeking to justify their barbaric acts of murder in the name of religion is condemned across boundaries. The cry for justice and action against terrorists is a unified one.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly confirmed a telephonic conversation with Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif to condemn the incident and offer any assistance from India. Schools across India observed two minutes of silence to express solidarity, as did Parliament.

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval while visiting the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi to offer condolences summed up the national mood when he stated that "Never in my life, I have seen or heard that people can be so inhuman," and added, "They can descend to such low level, target children in school... it has shocked and stunned our entire nation."

Numerous television panelists from Pakistan publicly appreciated Prime Minister Modi's gesture and the mood across India for their solidarity with the people of Pakistan in this moment of grief. Given the response of the Indian Prime Minister and its citizens, commentators wondered whether a thaw in the relations between the two nations could now be expected.

However, within hours the pubic rant by 26/11 master-mind Hafiz Saeed across television channels in Pakistan blaming India for the Peshwar incident and seeking revenge provided a typically conflicting and jarring note. Even former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf joined the extreme bandwagon by claiming the perpetrators of the crime were those trained by India! And to top it, another 26/11 accused, LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was granted bail by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court.

Unfortunately, the question of normalization of relations with Pakistan cannot ignore realities within Pakistan where several conflicting centres of power co-exist. In a country where democracy isn't firmly established, the army has emerged as the permanent pillar of stability. This in itself weakens democratic forces resulting in perpetual instability through power politics. Add to this the role of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) together with the so-called "non-state actors", an inventive term for terrorists and extremists, and Pakistan becomes internally combustible.

This volatility is exacerbated when another incongruous distinction is made between 'good and bad terrorists'. While the Pakistan army is engaged in a bloody battle against terrorists in areas on its western borders, astoundingly on its eastern borders, terrorists like Hafiz Saeed freely roam and rant against India at will!

These contradictions are evident globally as well. Osama bin Laden was living less than a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad. It finally took US navy seals to swoop down in a pre-dawn raid and kill their most-wanted terrorist.

As a counter-measure, the Pakistani establishment has followed a core strategy of deflecting attention from these contradictions through a stringent anti-India stance primarily fixated on Jammu and Kashmir and devoid of any deliverables. Punishment for the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack seems distant (if at all). Dawood Ibrahim, among India's list of most-wanted criminals, has been living in Pakistan for decades, while Hafiz Saeed appears on television at will.

All such issues raise pertinent questions on whether the civilian government there can deliver on what it promises. Which is what makes "meaningful dialogue" with Pakistan somewhat unsure, even if talks are to be resumed.

Within Pakistan, this is the time for the establishment and civil society to take action against such forces head on and without duplicity. It would be a firm step forward. To feed a fictional narrative that Indian agencies were involved in the Peshawar massacre, in order to fan the frenzy and deflect attention from their own systemic failures, will only drive them farther from the truth and from what urgently needs to be done. This may well be that historic moment when the Pakistani establishment can seriously seize the opportunity to consider constructive and empowering decisions in the path ahead.

While India and Pakistan are not yet friends, it does not mean that we can't be friends in the future. In the meanwhile, given the fact that terrorists like Hafiz Saeed remain free with impunity within Pakistan, perhaps Noam Chomsky would serve well for serious thought - "Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."