Boston marathon blast on 15 April killed four and injured many of US citizens. The perpetrators brothers suspected to carry out the attacks identified as Chechens immigrants, have been characterized by news accounts as nigh incongruent to each other in ideological and social outlook.

The 26 years aged older brother subsequently died in a shootout with police while the younger sibling was finally captured alive by federal law enforcement agencies. In profiling the two, the killed suspect Tamerlan has been portrayed to have espoused religious bent, whereas Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the younger suspect has been described by the acquaintances as liberal, secular and socially active individual besides being an outstanding university student. The pair projects a typical master-follower relationship wherein for multiple factors including biological reasons. The two brothers hailed from a working middle class background and had the privilege of exposure to highly if not most informed social environment in the world which underscores the degree of vulnerability and potential of readiness among youth from any society to assimilate hate narrative with little persuasion by those who do not have its best interests at heart. The underlying motive to execute this violent attack is yet unclear; Dzhokhar’s image however provides a relevant case study for Pakistani context.

Youth in Pakistan including juveniles employed by militant groups as child soldiers, informants, explosive carriers or suicide bombers, not to mention approximately ten million children working as child labourers across the country constitutes nearly 40 % of the total population. The most widely discussed risk associated with Pakistan’s demographic profile is the threat of millions of young, impoverished, and unemployed, succumbing to the blandishments of extremism. Apart from least developed and semigoverned regions marred by socioeconomic disparities and religious orthodoxy, it is no secret that college, university and madrasah students from major urban centres provide the armed groups their principal conflict capital. A recent survey by Ayesha Siddiqa comprising large youth sampling from 15 elite universities of the country from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad has revealed that latent extremism is not confined to less educated and poor segment of the society, it resides more firmly among youth from affluent classes. The research has also indicated perversion of budding studentship into hateful mindsets by insidious ingredients of text books especially in public schools through a focus on a particular brand of heroism, myths and distorted historical facts.

Tamerlan-Dzhokhar’s analogy seen from the perspective of frustrated and disillusioned youth cohorts in Pakistan who are chronically plagued by identity crisis, inequity, lack of intellect and materialism, supplies a useful lens to develop insights encompassing likely scenarios of youth extremism as well as possible pathways for resolution of challenges confronted by them. Regardless of social standing, a key conclusion is the entrenched existence in Pakistan of an explosive sprawl of younger citizenry yearning for an alternative paradigm of hope and material aggrandizement. While this in itself is sufficient to point out presence of huge catch prone to embrace antisocial messages as well as menacing indicator of youth’s future course; more important is the proximity of effective inspirational impact of large scale elder familial siblings on to the impressionable minds of their adolescent kin and kith. A few precedents measurably exemplifies this orientation e.g., Al-Qaida linked doctor Ahmed Javed Khawaja and his businessman brother Khawaja Naveed from Karachi, Lal Masjid fame Maulana Aziz and Ghazi Rasheed, two American brothers of Pakistani descent Raees Alam Qazi, 20, and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 30 arrested in Fort Lauderdale in Florida during 2012 and Jundullah’s head Abdul malik rigi and his younger brother Abdul hamid rigi who was arrested from Pakistan during 2009. The cohesive leadership cadres of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan also substantively manifest role of blood affinities.

In Pakistan while the extended family is the basis of the social structure and individual identity, the influence sphere spans expansively to enfold also those who are associated based on tribe, caste, kinship and creed which highlights abundance of the impending sympathetic youth population to become extremists. The national action plan lying unimplemented since over a decade and inefficacious youth policy by Zardari’s government has failed to produce required results to address needs of this critical mass to any productive measure. A major reason of flawed policies by the past governments and development sector has been undue emphasis on causes as well as sources generating extremism mainly identified in societal collectivity. The diagnosis is hence symptomatic and lack in substance. To the contrary, the evidence demonstrate dire need to depart from this tradition by replacing it with unifocal attention to the family units, which are the real bastion for both to breed radical or healthy mindsets. A context specific engagement programme beginning with a few pilot areas covering both poor and the affluent may be an entry point to initiate a counter extremism endeavour which should emanate from a carefully structured reformation drive at the national level. Apart from employing religious counters to retrieve misplaced minds, conceptual framework for mainstreaming socially marginalized and intellectually single focused should mainly have recourse to sociopolitical and legal instruments to expand thinking modes into nurturing social functioning that builds consciousness of correlative rights not just as liberties, as powers, and as immunities but also as obligations to safeguard neighbourhood, community, society and the country.

In order to meaningfully engage the terrorist organizations, a key feature of such counter extremism efforts should draw upon concordance strategy By implication. it reveals those of us who claim to be tolerant are in effect in denial and intolerant of providing space to hard realities befalling state and society in Pakistan. Metaphorically the solution lies in countering extremism with extremism, the latter connotes acceptance than repellence by creative, dialectical and argumentative professionalism and inclusive dialogue.

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