Pakistan - #PeshawarAttack - Anti-militant push: out of steam?

MEETINGS, meetings, meetings — when the PML-N assumed office for a third time at the national level in June 2013, there was a widespread belief (or maybe just an impression) that the party would be more organised, more efficient and better in matters of governance than several, if not most, other governments in the chequered political history of this country. Fast forward 19 months and much of that hope has dissipated, though now it seems that even a modicum of sensible, smart action by the government is elusive.

The PML-N appears to have settled into the following pattern: in Lahore, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif takes notice of crises, requests a report — and then nothing is heard of follow-up actions; in Islamabad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif convenes emergency meetings to respond to crises — and invariably the blame falls on bureaucrats instead of the close circle of politicians on whom the prime minister exclusively relies. Outside those bubbles, the country appears to do little more than lurch from one crisis to the next.

After the Peshawar school massacre, the country was well and truly at a crossroads. Not only was the public behind a serious and sustained effort to fight militancy, the state itself had been seemingly shocked into action. As the government of the day, primary responsibility for organising and building the civilian capacity of the state to take the fight to the militants in the urban and rural areas of Pakistan fell on the PML-N. However, after floating a 20-point National Action Plan, shepherding through parliament the army-demanded 21st Amendment and taking a few, scattered steps against extremist and militant elements, the PML-N seems to have run out of steam — and ideas and the will too. Where is this country’s Peshawar moment now? Energy — gas, electricity, fuel oil, petroleum, etc — is an important element of a government’s socioeconomic policy, but the basic, fundamental crisis in this country was, and remains, the fight against militancy. Where is the government’s urgency on that issue, when Prime Minister Sharif can convene a meeting to discuss the electricity and fuel crises involving the interior minister but not a word on the militancy and extremism issue?

In the wake of the horror in Peshawar, the government appeared to belatedly understand that terrorism is a long-term threat that can neither be defeated through military operations nor be rolled back without dismantling the enabling environment that the extremist mosque-madressah-social welfare network has created. But without any meaningful follow-up actions, the narrative was quickly hijacked by the religious right. Protests against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and unspecified grievances against a non-existent new madressah policy gave the religious right and its extremist partners — in some cases, banned militant organisations — the excuse to turn out into the streets. Instead of pushing back the PML-N appears to have quietly acquiesced once again into a non-policy against militancy and extremism.