At war with itself

By Ghazi Salahuddin


Pakistan is at war, mainly with itself. And we have left undefended its most crucial frontier: the minds of the concerned citizens of Pakistan. After all, all wars are initially and ultimately fought in the minds of men.

What this means is that the battle of ideas has not yet been seriously undertaken in a society where everybody, everywhere, is fuming and ranting about what they believe is the gospel truth. One problem is that our fundamental affliction – militancy – has itself become a barrier to a rational discourse on national security.

As we embark on long Eid holidays, dovetailed with the lazy days of Ramazan, we have an entire spread of events to digest. Rarely would one week provide this wide spectrum of our predicaments and disorders.

The focus of this assortment of thought-provoking distractions was the celebration of the Independence Day on Tuesday. Any ritualistic references to the August 11, 1947, speech of Mohammad Ali Jinnah were categorically demolished by the emergence of the issue of some Sindhi Hindus’ migration to India because of what they perceive as their persecution in the Land of the Pure.

It was with reference to the Independence Day that Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani landed into the headlines with his formulations about the prevailing state of affairs. The crux of his speech at the ‘Azadi Parade’ in Kakul was that the war against extremism and terrorism is Pakistan’s war and it does not only belong to the army but also to the people of Pakistan.

There are intimations here of what I have stated at the outset. If people need to be mobilised to go into battle against extremism and terrorism, the weapons to be used are bound to be ideas and knowledge. Unfortunately, the army itself has often subverted this ‘warfare’ through its ideological obsessions. Hence, the 64 thousand dollar question is whether General Kayani’s speech is an indication of some strategic stirrings in the military mind.

If this were not sufficient provocation for those who argue that Pakistan has been duped into fighting America’s war, something patently unholy happened during the most sacred night of the entire year, the Laylat al-Qadr, to highlight this argument. The militants, ostensibly at war against Pakistan and not the United States, attacked the Minhas Airbase of the Pakistan Air Force at Kamra. Nine militants were killed after a gun battle. All the attackers were Pakistanis and belonged to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

It has to be noted that this was the third attack on a military base after the attack on the GHQ in Rawalpindi on October 10, 2009, and the one on the Mehran Naval Base in Karachi on May 22, 2011. So far as other targets of the TTP are concerned, the list is very long and very bloody. Just recall the militarily superb operation of the Taliban when they invaded the Bannu jail and got away with their high value prisoners.

Incidentally, we have a large number of people who tend to put the Taliban on a pedestal. It is usually their aversion to American policies and intentions that manifests itself in a convoluted explanation for the increasing acts of terrorism in Pakistan. A long history of our involvement with Afghanistan also casts its shadow. This process of the Talibanisation of the Pakistani mind, with all its complexity, has apparently interfered with the thinking of our political leaders when it comes to understanding the problems of Pakistan.

In some cases the deception that the growth of extremism and terrorism in Pakistan is entirely rooted in Pakistan’s support for the American war against terror promotes very simplistic and even absurd thinking on how our society should be de-radicalised. The logic is that if we disengage ourselves from what is identified as America’s war, the cancer of extremism will readily be removed from our body politic.

This would mean the dark passions that have been nurtured by Pakistan’s own national security establishment – Gen Ziaul Haq being the chief planter of the seeds – can be exorcised with a sweeping shift in our foreign policy. The struggle to humanise Pakistan is bound to be difficult and painful and will require, at first, a clear demarcation of the battle lines for an orderly clash of ideas.

It so happens that on the very day that was ushered with the militants’ attack on the PAF base, Pakistan had to suffer a greater tragedy in the context of how extremism and intolerance have challenged the very logic of the creation of this country. Its venue was the Babusar Top area of Mansehra district. Try and imagine the scene when terrorists stopped four buses, pulled out their passengers and separated around twenty Shias after checking their identity cards and shot them in cold blood.

The convoy of buses was headed to Gilgit from Rawalpindi and the terrorists who intercepted it were wearing commando uniforms. As happens in such cases, they were able to escape safely from the scene. Now, whose war are they fighting? Because this was not the only incident of its kind, the outrage that it should have caused was not evident in the mass media. We seem to have lost even the ability to mourn our losses.

In fact, I have myself relegated it to the lower half of my column because I find it difficult to come to terms with it, emotionally as well as intellectually. Those killed so mercilessly were not combatants in any outfit. They had not been participants in any movement or campaign. Their only crime was that they belonged to a particular sect, entirely an accident of birth.

Obviously, any strategy to deal with these manifestations of barbarity would demand a sober investigation of the ideas and the forces that have made such actions possible. It is a great irony that at a time when the media is seen to be so powerful and when the higher judiciary is asserting its authority, the nation is not talking to itself in a real sense. There is almost no dialogue informed with relevant facts and necessary wisdom and logic.

In this situation, the ordinary people are troubled with questions to which they find no answers. On the one hand, they feel disturbed by the national drift, by flaming headlines that tell of terrorist attacks and senseless sectarian killings. On the other, the daily rigours of living in the midst of a breakdown in law and order and mounting personal difficulties are becoming unbearable.

Is someone concerned with these matters? Besides, are the ones who are responsible, including our leaders, capable of thinking? Do they know whose war it is when Pakistan is struggling for its existence?


Source: At War with itself