Since the nation is waging a war against terrorism, it is about time that every part of the nation is dealt with with the same authority and force irrespective of its ethnicity or location.
A video in which a young boy recites a poem praising the religious spirit of the Taliban has recently (re)emerged in the social media. Although it may have been shot before Operation Zarb-e-Azab was launched, it still stays relevant today and raises some important concerns. The clip shows a large hall located inside a mosque (probably) filled with a few hundred people sitting on the floor. They wave their flags with excitement as they listen to the 11-year-old disciple who claims: “The Taliban have come, the true representatives of the religion of Ahmed (Muhammad) have arrived, now the Christians and the Jews are screaming (with fear).”
Behind him, on the stage, we see a cleric perched on a high chair with a few armed guards standing on each side of him, their rifles stretched out, their bandoliers slung across their shoulders. Just a few steps down, on the other end of the stage, is a small group of enthusiasts huddled together like the choir in a church carrying their own microphones. They stay quiet during most of the recital except in the middle when they interrupt the vocalist for a short time and start chanting slogans in favour of the Taliban too, calling them the saviours of Pakistan, announcing their victory to rule the country in the near future.
Had this programme been held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or FATA, it would not have caught many eyes since we realise the infrastructure of these radical organisations runs deep in the Pashtun areas. The regulatory authorities and intelligence agencies, on the other hand, although they make tall claims about their presence throughout the country, lack penetration within the banned outfits that operate without fear. And because of that failure, the information we obtain from our sources stays vague and inaccurate, unable to cover the fundamental elements — the three basic Ts — of a good report: type of attack, its target and the timing of the assault. A congregation like this in FATA would not strike us as surprising and, to be honest, that situation will not change for a while. It would require years of focused and coordinated effort to break their infrastructure and replace it with a somewhat functional government framework. Keeping that in mind, the military operation — if we believe it has been started to take down every violent organisation — has just begun and is not yet in any position to yield conclusive results.
The problem with this short clip, however, is that the people in the video are not Pashtuns. They are Punjabis. Everyone, including the chief cleric wearing the black robe with golden lining, his bodyguards, the chanting choir, the young lad and the people sitting in the mosque can be recognised as someone from Lahore, Faisalabad or Sahiwal. I base my assessment on their non-Pashtun accents, their facial features and their clothes, including their unique shalwar kameez, their caps, shawls and turbans. No, not southern Punjab, where the presence of the Taliban has been reported for a while; they look like people from central Punjab, the heart of Pakistan, a place where the activity of these organisations is supposed to be minimal or absent.
If this video is professionally identified and confirmed to have originated from Punjab, it would confirm the fears of many experts who have either been ignored or defied by the Pakistan Muslim League-N’s Punjab-based administration. These analysts, worried about the worsening law and order situation, have pointed out on numerous occasions that the Taliban phenomenon is not limited to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or FATA, and that Punjab may need as strong an operation cleanup as Karachi or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And since the nation is waging a war against terrorism, it is about time that every part of the nation is dealt with with the same authority and force irrespective of its ethnicity or location. We cannot afford to play favourites any more: acting against one group and turning a blind eye to others. We did that exercise in the past and suffered from its backlash, a lesson that we must not forget and the price we must not be ready to pay again. Whether we like it or not, we need to work on every seminary, every school and every mosque in Punjab that has connections with the extremist groups. Along with that, we need to investigate every preacher, every cleric, every student and every donor. Without taking these measures, our efforts to eliminate religion-based violence would be rendered useless, the sacrifices of our soldiers would be wasted and the loss of civilian lives and capital thrown away. Is this the path we are choosing for ourselves and for our generations? Or will we stand firm and support firm action?
Remember, we have seen a trend of worsening extremism in central Punjab for years now. And, for years, we have done our best to deny it, defuse it, justify it or sometimes even twist it by giving it a non-religious colour. For instance, a Christian community was burnt down in the small city of Gojra, a tehsil of district Toba Tek Singh located in central Punjab just a few years ago in which eight people were killed, including four women and a child. Then, Aasia Bibi belonged to Sheikhupura, another district of central Punjab. Rimsha Masih’s incident, too, took place in Islamabad. Shahzad Masih and Shaima Bibi were burnt alive in Kasur, 20 miles south of Lahore, the capital of the province. And, in the end, Governor Taseer’s assassination resulted from the same phenomenon. I agree they are isolated incidents to some extent but we have to understand that all these events had religious undertones. What we are asking the administration, both civilian and military, is to consider all of them as a continuum of the same process, get to the bottom of it and do what has been long overdue: eliminate extremism, a problem that almost always eludes our attention.
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