Pakistan - Defeating terrorism

By Taha Najeeb Khan

NAP has little to show for itself  

A little over two months ago a bunch of homicidal maniacs made kids in a Peshawar school (APS) recite the Shahada – Muslim declaration of faith – before mercilessly opening fire on them. The perpetrators of this elaborate, diabolical horror were not runaway escapees of some remote lunatic asylum as one might imagine. They were in fact men of deadly certainty. Not concerned with worldly attainments, these murderers, like most radicals, had celestial ends in mind.

This certainty, a morbid obsession with themes of afterlife, is born of a peculiar worldview that dismisses all of life as nothing more than a brief conduit to more eternal ends. And such a worldview is in turn rarely, if ever, born out of a vacuum. It is more like a seed sown in a landscape primed for such harvest. And it is precisely this seed, planted generously in the fertile landscape of the militant Islamist’s imagination, which is now bearing its fruit, poisonous and fatal, with alarming proliferation.

Renowned biologist Richard Dawkins described this phenomenon as deadly memes spreading and perpetuating in the minds of their victims in much the same way that parasites perpetuate and multiply through host manipulation.

To recognise as such is critical in understanding the very nature of the beast that has ravaged and mutilated Pakistan, and much of the Muslim world, especially since 9/11. As per one study, terrorist attacks occurred in 93 different countries in 2013. However, more than half of all attacks (57%) and fatalities (66%), and nearly three-quarters of all injuries (73%) occurred in three countries: Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Pakistan was ranked number-2 as having the highest number of terrorist attacks after Iraq.

Post-Peshawar tragedy, there was talk by Sharif’s government of escalated action against the terrorists. The good Taliban bad Taliban narrative was finally chucked out the window. There was broad consensus that the Taliban and all their hideous offshoots are bad. Then there was the 20 point NAP which was resolutely passed to ensure escalated action against cannibals who go by different acronyms — TTP, JeM, LeT, etc. The NAP called for summary execution of terrorists. The moratorium on death penalty was swiftly lifted to proceed with these hangings. There was also the contested decision to setup military courts for speedy trials and executions. While the former is an indictment of Sharif’s vacillation on the issue – he had at the time of his election lifted the moratorium and then later after Taliban threats re-enacted it only to lift it again post-Peshawar – it is nevertheless a desperate measure that is necessary given the desperate times. As for the latter, it is yet another mutation of an already abused constitution, but again, with the snail-paced judicial system we currently have in place, this may be the only practical solution at the moment. Then there was the commitment to strengthen and render effective NACTA, a commitment that has been regurgitated several times without any concrete follow up.

Post-Peshawar tragedy, there was talk by Sharif’s government of escalated action against the terrorists. The good Taliban bad Taliban narrative was finally chucked out the window. There was broad consensus that the Taliban and all their hideous offshoots are bad

The government also promised to ensure that madrassas will be adequately regulated and registered. This too happens to be work in progress, a long exhaustive project, but worthy of sustained commitment nonetheless. Internet regulation of terrorist/Jihadi propaganda is part of the plan as well. How effectively the government is able to execute that remains to be seen. Suffice it to say that the PTA has so far displayed incredible ineptitude in the world of cyber regulation, with proxy servers and back channels making accessible most of the content that is officially blocked by the authorities. Where the government seems to be taking concrete action is in dismantling the communication networks of terrorist organisations by way of tracking and blocking illegal SIMs.

Finally, there was talk of cutting off funding of madrassas that peddle terrorist ideology. This again is an ambitious project, considering that most of the funding comes less from official channels than private charities and back channels that may be much harder to track down. Also, there is reason to doubt how serious the government is on this point considering the divided loyalties that exist among those in power, some of whom deem the funding of seminaries and madrassas as a deeply holy exercise. Besides, most of such funding comes from none other than Sharif’s second home, Saudi Arabia, so it remains to be seen how effective the government can be in working with Saudi Arabians on something that has been their raison deter for decades. For all we know, Saudi princes are making merry in Baluchistan and Sindh with their annual bird hunting games that our servile government annually sponsors.

The government also promised to ensure that madrassas will be adequately regulated and registered. This too happens to be work in progress, a long exhaustive project, but worthy of sustained commitment nonetheless

The concern is this: in spite of its many promises, the 20 point NAP has little to show for itself. One hoped that the Peshawar massacre was the last in a terribly long, grotesque series of horrors that have long hyphenated Pakistan with terrorism. Sadly, that hasn’t happened. In the space of few weeks, there have been massive attacks at Imambargahs in Shikarpur, Peshawar and Islamabad. The Shi’a have yet again become a target of Sunni radicalism. And this perhaps speaks to a larger issue: that as much as we think, somewhat justifiably, that terrorism is a product of bad policies enacted in the past, but it is also as much, if not more, a product of dangerous and divisive beliefs. While it can be argued that TTP kills to avenge its own maimed and murdered, but how does one go about explaining the daylight killings of Shi’a, Ahmadis, and Hindu/Christian minorities? What has the poor Christian living in some shanty slum done to invite the ire of these merchants of death, other than simply belonging to a different faith? An Imambargah is not the White House or the GHQ where cynical strategies are devised in the midst of cigar smoke by a bunch of hand rubbing, moustache twirling reptiles. An Imambargah is just a place of worship like a mosque, temple, synagogue, church or Gurdwara. Why would it come under such malicious attack if not for a radical takfiri worldview that regards as apostates those of a different belief system and deems, additionally, the killing of such perceived apostates as a religious duty? In this, the TTP and its local variants are similar to ISIS that kills Yazidis for exactly the same reasons. And this has nothing to do with western imperialism, colonialism, cold war, and the familiar litany of indictments levelled on the west. This has everything to do with a certain radical ideology that demands uncritical conformity by way of its propagation through cultural and societal practices and memes, that blares out of our own mosques five times a day, that was elevated to a fever pitch in Zia’s era and has been cynically manipulated by our own military and intelligence agencies for strategic leverage in Kashmir/Afghanistan, and has sadly warped many young minds through dramatic distortions of facts and history with the aid of school and college textbooks to the point where mainstream people find it easier to criticise the actions of militant radicals and not so much the ideology that their actions are based on. And then we wonder why we celebrate a murderer like Qadri while reform minded Muslims like Ghamdi are forced to live in exile.

Yes, there may be some fresh and commendable action points in the NAP, but this is as much an ideological battle now as it is a physical one. Till the likes of Maulvi Abdul Aziz and Hafiz Saeed remain to live another day, the victory belongs to the extremists.