Social scientists are good at studying the anatomy of the past historic events as most of the factors, if not all of them that shaped events, are in their knowledge. But it isn’t possible to predict the shape of things to come as new factors are an unknown commodity until the time of occurrence of fresh events. So after end of the Cold War in the 1990s there was a general hope (or maybe wishful thinking ) for a comparatively more stable and peaceful world where human energy and resources were expected to go into mitigating social and economic problems faced by mankind. But that was not to be.
To use a Marxist term, new contradictions surfaced almost from the ashes of the old world, leading to the rise of new (or not so new) conflicts. Extremist violence, emerging from the ravages of war in Afghanistan and Middle East, turned into dreadful terrorism on global scale. Terrorism or asymmetrical war is a very old phenomena but the new thing about its recent manifestation is its global character. Like every thing else in a globalizing world it has refused to recognize geographic or state frontiers. It first devastated countries of its origin (but not necessarily having the entire responsibility for its birth) like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and the latest one Syria. But subsequently the terrorist cancer could penetrate in to countries considered to be immune to such a menace in the past. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US and the earth shaking response of the then sole super power in a unipolar world changed the world for ever. As if that was not enough other countries also faced similar spectacular terrorist attacks that came to be known as their 9/11s (UK had 07/07 and India’s was 26/11).
The most recent one is the devastating terrorist attack in Paris on November 13 that led to a heart wrenching blood bath. Unfortunately, the first two decades of the 21st century are mainly defined by the dates of horrible terrorist attacks taking place in one country after another.
Complex socio-historical factors have gone into the making of the present phenomenon of globalized terrorism and it is not easy to explain it in all its manifestations. It is also obvious that any effort at analyzing its causes would be almost impossible without getting into the blame game. But despite these odds such an effort is indispensable for eliminating the root causes of this scourge to avoid its occurrence in the future. Socio-economic development in the world has unfortunately been uneven and in many cases even unfair. Economic deprivation coupled with political oppression lead to serious depression, hopelessness and alienation paving ground to abnormal behavior. Ghettoisation of entire ethnic or religious communities along with identity crises creates conducive conditions for the rise of extremist violence. But radicalization on religious lines has become one of the most prominent reasons behind recent global terrorism. Here again the problem is not confined to any one religions as followers of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions have resorted to some kind of violence on the basis of religious extremism. But Muslim community has come under spotlight in connection with extremist violence and terrorism in recent years for obvious reasons.
Religion as faith does not create any problem. But when it is politicized for grabbing power and achieving domination it becomes problematic. It is a matter of record that first UK and subsequently US, as colonial and imperial powers, used communal politics first for divide and rule to perpetuate their empires and subsequently unleashed Islamism for subverting communism. The aforementioned policy culminated in the Afghan war where billions of dollars were invested into the propagation of religious extremism that was aimed at Soviet Central Asia through Afghanistan. Most of the dollars and Petro-dollars went into the hands of the most rabid obscurantists. Wahhabi, Salfi and Takfiri fanaticism found space to expand out of KSA into other parts of the world. This is not to suggest that Muslim states and leaders can absolve themselves from the responsibility of lending their shoulders to western powers for use in the war that created the present mess. Muslim collaborators can in no way justify the barbaric acts of terrorism that have killed numerous innocent women, children and men. The perpetrators of these heinous crimes must be brought to justice and measures must be put in place to stop such tragedies in the future.
But critical analysis of the past policies and corrective measure for future are indispensable for a long term solution of the problem, The gravity of the situation becomes evident when we see the western powers repeating the same blunders in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia, paving ground for the birth of the ultimate monster, IS. Not only that. Publicly declared and executed plans for regime change in different countries of the Middle East and even declaring an intent to create a “new Middle East” could not have been without consequences, as there is a clear implication that the people of these countries are to remain objects of history and that their efforts to graduate as subjects of history will be thwarted. Then there are home grown terrorists in Europe that have made a beeline to Middle Eastern battlefields and will remain a threat as they go back home. The rise of racism and Islamophobia can further aggravate the situation.
Be that as it may, there are a number of lessons for Pakistan. It is particularly vulnerable to religious extremism as the only Muslim country createda on the basis of religion. The consequences of using the “Jihadi” outfits as foreign policy instruments in the post Zia era have been devastating but the country is still not able to jettison them. Unfortunately Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being a country with largest number of banned terrorist organizations still active under new names. Suspected individual terrorists with head money on them lead public processions and put pressure on state to adopt certain policies. Sanctuaries of Afghan Taliban are an open secret. The crackdown on these extremist/terrorist networks cracks up before it cracks down. The country has stated anti-terror policy but it is not implemented. We should make no mistake. Implementation of National Action Plan to curb extremism and terrorism is going to decide the future of Pakistan.
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