The bomb that killed over 70 innocent men, women and children last week in Lahore’s Gulshan Park, especially Christians celebrating Easter, was the handiwork of a TTP offshoot, Jamaatul Ahrar, that had also earlier targeted the Christian community. It wasn’t unexpected, even if there wasn’t sufficient information about which terrorist organisation would strike, where and when. The Taliban had announced that henceforth they would target civilians instead of security installations in order to instill fear, demoralise the public and undermine the national consensus against terrorism. Therefore we can conclude that this is not the first or last attack on civilians by the TTP, despite the fact that the anti-terrorist operations under the National Action Plan have met with a great deal of success in FATA and Karachi.
But the fact also is that anti-terrorist operations in Punjab have not been as aggressively oriented and successful as in FATA and Karachi, despite the claims by the Punjab government that the police has carried out over 50 such operations in the last year or so and killed over 20 terrorists and arrested scores of suspects. These figures seem insignificant considering that the head offices and base areas of all the sectarian and jihadi organisations, whose more extremist cadres have split away to join the ranks of the TTP or IS, are based in one part of Punjab or the other. There are two reasons for this. First, the PMLN is largely Punjab based and has a deeply conservative and religious ethos. So, party leaders are loath to alienate or provoke these religious parties or groups by targeting them. Second, the Sharifs are focusing on winning elections and co-opting as many conservative and religious groups as possible under the PMLN umbrella and the last thing they want is to stir a hornets nest against them, regardless of the national interest. Indeed, the PML is extremely sensitive to averting any popular backlash that recalls the attack on the Lal Masjid during the Musharraf tenure that alienated and angered a significant section of its constituency.
But this is about to change. Just as the attack on the Army Public School provoked the military to take matters into its own hands and win popularity among the public by going after the Taliban, this massacre in Gulshan Park has given the army a popular legitimacy to open a direct front against the terrorists in Punjab by brushing aside the political sensitivities of the provincial government. The Apex Committee in Punjab comprising the chief minister and his civilian aides faces the military across the table comprising several corps commanders and the head of the Rangers. Until now anti-terrorist operations were ordered by the Chief Minister and conducted by the police and intelligence agencies. After Gulshan, however, the corps commanders and Rangers are taking some initiatives on their own following orders from the army chief without regard to the political sensitivities of the Punjab government. It is noteworthy that the Punjab government has consistently rejected the proposal to invite the military to carry out anti-terrorist operations in Punjab under Constitution Article 147 as in Sindh. But de facto the military has now moved into Punjab and we can expect it to carry out a full-fledged operation against all manner of religious extremists. The refrain of the Punjab government that there are no “no-go” areas (political as well as geographical) in the Punjab will be sorely tested by the military by the self-extension of its writ. This is bound to create tensions in the civil-military equation, with adverse consequences as in Sindh.
The rise of the Barelvi sect as a political force on the back of the execution of Mumtaz Qadri is another significant development. The Barelvis were discriminated against by the extraordinary patronage to the Deobandis by the military establishment and Saudis since the time of Gen Zia ul Haq in pursuit of aggressive militant policies in the neighbourhood. Now, led by local firebrands with connections to the Middle East, various Barelvi groups have banded together to revive their collective sectarian fortunes. The dharnas in Islamabad and Karachi are signs of the times, another grim reminder of the deadly consequences of politicizing religion for strategic purposes that have proved to be hollow and ill conceived. The initial “mishandling” by the PMLN governments in Punjab and Islamabad that allowed the protestors to reach and occupy D Chowk in Islamabad testifies to the overly cautious approach of the Sharifs regarding religious sentiment. But it also compares unfavourably with the approach of the new military leadership under army chief General Raheel Sharif which approved the Supreme Court decision to uphold the death penalty to Mumtaz Qadri and then nudged the government to carry out the execution.
Truly, Pakistan is facing its final moment of reckoning. If the tide of religious militancy, intolerance and terrorism is not pushed back now, it will engulf the country in anarchy and implode it from within.