Pakistan - A new year, a new plan: Will it be effective enough?

BY AHAD AWAN

A confused nation takes a hard line against a long-time enemy posing as a friend

The Pakistani nation in general and its leadership in particular has been extremely divided and confused, especially about who our enemies really are. If you are not sure who your enemies are how can you even come up with a plan to fight them. Using the word ‘plan’ was a little exaggeration as this nation has always acted without a plan. You keep bleeding them, keep on killing their men, keep killing their women, keep killing their soldiers, and the best reaction they will give is call an All Parties Conference (APC) and agree on a single point agenda: Let’s bring the killers to the table and start a dialogue. That, at least, used to be standard practice.

Who will be leading the dialogue, who will be assisting, who will be facilitating and even whom to have dialogue with and what will the dialogue be about, they did not know. All of a sudden you attack a school and brutally murder over 150 innocent citizens of which 133 are children below the age of 17, and they will react in an aggressive way.

Pakistan has lost more than 50,000 lives to the war against terror. Yet, surprisingly, even that number was not enough to build up the courage to fight the enemy that has been killing innocent people for years. They had to get their little flowers massacred to finally realise that the time to fight has come.

Now that they have decided to fight, they are still confused about the degree to which they will fight. Which areas, exactly, are to be cleaned? Just Fata or the whole country? Whether to hang the killers or to keep feeding them till they die? Which courts will build up the courage to try and sentence them to death? Are military courts the only viable solution? These are the questions which they are finding hard to answer.

With the two Sharifs leading the nation in these times and the rest of the political leadership backing them, it’s time for them to take the hard line and start an intense crackdown

With the two Sharifs leading the nation in these times and the rest of the political leadership backing them, it’s time for them to take the hard line and start an intense crackdown. After PTI and PAT decided to launch a crusade against the Sharif government, the army proved it was not interested in taking over.

Same old ways of corruption by its senior ministers, incompetent officials and the rigging allegations by opposition parties are a constant source of insecurity for the government. The ‘extraordinary’ circumstances created after the Peshawar tragedy have united the political leadership, but they still don’t have a clear vision of what to do. They seem to have asked the military to take the lead and promised it ‘unconditional support’. And by unanimously green-lighting the National Action Plan, they have given themselves the lollipop that they are the ones making decisions. In reality, though, the ‘force’ is deciding matters. They said yes to extending the scope of Operation Zarb-e-Azb to urban cities and took the bitter pill of setting up of military courts to try terrorists.

Military courts: blessing or curse?

‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ is the main thing feared when it comes to military courts. Giving a ‘free hand’ to such courts was termed a soft coup by some while others welcomed the decision as they believed that there was no other way out and were disappointed over the performance of the judiciary. The judiciary, led by then Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, was a little too ‘afraid’ to take a hard line against terrorists, some say. Though it is expected to decide cases without fear or favour, but in a country where no one’s life is safe, judges couldn’t deliver justice. This justification is enough to support the setting up of military courts that would ‘deliver’ justice the way it should be.

The APC has now given the go-ahead to make amendments to different clauses of the constitution to give military courts a constitutional cover. Will this cover be enough to keep a check on military courts?

Few in uniform have a soft heart for militants

At a time when the entire leadership has taken the decisive stance to deal with the terrorists the hard way, there are a few elements in the military and the political arena who still have a ‘soft heart’ for the militants. They still patronise them and consider them strategic assets to be used against the ‘real enemies’ of Pakistan. Though the national consensus is that the militants are our enemies, these elements still share cordial relations they built and nurtured since the Soviet war. Some, apparently, are still confused about their real friends and foes.

Will hangings do the job?

First post-Peshawar tragedy step Sharif took was to lift the moratorium on the death sentence, enforced by former President Asif Ali Zardari to please the Europeans. This led to hanging of various high profile terrorist like Dr Usman, the mastermind of GHQ attack and attack on the Sri Lankan team. This was the first message sent to the terrorists, that their time was up. Though hangings are not the solution, but this is going to be a symbol for mess makers that days of mercy are over.

The APC has now given the go-ahead to make amendments to different clauses of the constitution to give military courts a constitutional cover. Will this cover be enough to keep a check on military courts and protect the government from another soft coup in the future? Time will tell.