Pakistan - Extremism unchecked

IF ever an image was emblematic of Pakistan’s progress in the war against extremism — and indeed of the fissures in its society — it is that of the viciously defaced Karachi Press Club walls. Last October, a group of artists had painted them with portraits of women who have made significant contributions to the country in various fields, including Fatima Surraiya Bajiya, Zubeida Mustafa, Yasmeen Lari, Perween Rahman and Sabeen Mahmud. To celebrate them in this manner was to celebrate the progressive ideas they embodied, the last two even having paid with their lives for their efforts towards a more inclusive and egalitarian society. On Wednesday night, those ideas came up against another side of Pakistani society — bigoted, fanatical and misogynistic. In what was clearly a premeditated act, members of ultra right-wing groups demonstrating outside the press club, one of several such protests to counter commemorations of Salmaan Taseer’s death anniversary in the country, spray-painted the walls with profanities and calls to murder.

This is the ugly reality of the state’s much-vaunted ‘fight against extremism’, a fight that it vowed to take on with unwavering commitment after the APS Peshawar attack in December 2014. Two years on, with kinetic operations to dismantle the terrorist network in the northern areas virtually over, the other aspect of the fight — the long, laborious work to stamp out extremism from society — has barely begun. It is not that the state is incapable of asserting its writ: we have seen it do so comprehensively when Mr Taseer’s killer was tried and convicted. The problem is that it chooses to do so selectively instead of sending a consistent, resolute message.

How else can one explain the impunity with which certain right-wing elements continue to menace anyone who rejects their noxious worldview? Notwithstanding ad hoc measures such as the arrest in Lahore of over 100 people — who will undoubtedly soon be released without charge — for attempting to hold a rally to ‘celebrate’ the former Punjab governor’s assassination, where is the concerted drive against hate speech and incitement to violence that should be the cornerstone of the civilian aspect of NAP? Why does the government not robustly demonstrate that it values progressive voices rather than appeasing those who would build a shrine to an assassin?

Instead, the state goes through motions such as the Punjab apex committee meeting on Thursday where it resolved to choke terror funding and launch an indiscriminate crackdown against those providing financial support to terrorists. Yet the province has not seen action commensurate with the fact of it being the heartland of jihadist organisations. On the contrary, well-known centres of radical thought continue to operate unimpeded here while members of right-wing groups are being ‘mainstreamed’ into charitable work. Only when ‘zero-tolerance’ is more than just a meaningless buzzword will there be any hope of us turning the corner.