General Pervez Musharraf is enraged by terrorists. He says he wants to don his SSG uniform and blast them all to smithereens. We share his sentiment. But we are not terribly enthused by the government’s stale “law and order” approach to the problem.
Many of these terrorists are motivated by religious passions. Others are clearly agents of foreign powers seeking to destabilize state and government. Together, they have laid our country low. Foreign tourists and businessmen are afraid to visit Pakistan or invest in it. Enforced work stoppages in the wake of terrorist violence greatly hurt the economy. The targeting of Shia professionals, especially doctors in Karachi, has scared them into seeking refuge abroad. In short, an environment of violence, fear and loathing has confirmed the awful perception of Pakistan abroad.
The worst offenders are religious fanatics. Last year, over 300 Pakistanis died at their hands. This year, the score already exceeds 150. Karachi is the current hot spot and Shias are the main target. For weeks TFT has reported on what is brewing in the city, why the police is unable to handle the problem, why the issue defies purely administrative measures. Yet the government’s fixation on dusting curative prescriptions off the shelf rather than attempting preventive solutions, despite the continuing failure of this approach, suggests that the state is tied up in knots.
To be sure, the government could do worse than ban sectarian parties and “de-weaponize” society, improve intelligence gathering and motivate the police. But is that all that needs to be done?
Did General Musharraf’s order to hang Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who assassinated an Iranian Consul General in 1990, deter the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi from killing dozens of Shia leaders subsequently? Has General Moinuddin Haider’s “de-weaponisation” campaign deterred the terrorists from using deadly weapons? Has any government’s “sincere” exhortation to shun sectarian strife ever led to any meaningful results? Has the continuing re-organisation and revamping of the police and administration succeeded in deterring terrorist violence? Indeed, on a general note, it is worth asking whether the voluminous criminal procedure code (law) has ever deterred hardened criminals and motivated terrorists from committing crimes?
The fact is that no administrative force can ever be sufficiently equipped or motivated to match the raw passions of religiously blinded warriors or foreign-inspired mercenaries. The fact is that the theory of deterrence is fine as far as it goes logically and rationally, but it doesn’t go too far when it is countered with the opium of the masses. The fact is that every government since the time of General Zia ul Haq has been helpless in the face of the sectarian menace because he stripped the constitution of its secular spirit and enabled pan-Islamic ideas and religious leaders to erode the hitherto neutral organs of the state like the army, ISI, judiciary, police and political parties. The fact is that when a nation-state so dominated by one religious sect makes it a matter of policy to sustain and promote the religious ideas and beliefs of the majority sect, we cannot expect it to stay neutral in passionate schismatic disagreements between the various sects. The fact is that powerful elements in the state apparatus, even when they disagree with majoritarian sectarian prejudices, are ever ready to condone or ignore them for so-called “strategic” external policies. The fact is that our strategic foreign campaigns and wars are not being fought by professional soldiers of our army but by religiously inspired warriors belonging to the majority sect and dominant provinces. The fact is that the sectarian militants are neither Mohajirs nor Sindhis but hail from the Punjab and NWFP which also supply a majority of the manpower of the army, bureaucracy, police and judiciary. The fact is that the weapons of war are stored by the religious warriors not in safe homes or underground cellars which can be raided by the police but in places of worship and indoctrination where no unholy encroachment may be made. The fact is that there is an organic link between sectarian violence in Pakistan, the rise of indigenous religious militias to overwhelm infidel peoples and places and the retaliatory “foreign-hand” behind inexplicable acts of terrorism in Pakistan.
Generally speaking, when we talk to army officers, civil servants, judges and journalists, we are struck by the similarity of their views with ours regarding concerns about the dangerous domination of Pakistan’s civil and security discourse by the warriors of the majority sect. Yet when we talk to the same set of people in the loop of the national security establishment led by the intelligence agencies, we find a reproachful shrugging away of the problem. It is as though “it is a small price to pay for our security” which cannot be entrusted to the faint-hearted. Is that a fair response?
No, it’s not. The price is getting beyond our national outreach. The poverty of state philosophy is impoverishing us in myriad ways, of which the current exodus of doctors, scientists, businessmen and capital is only its most cruel manifestation. Thus General Musharraf would do well to reflect on the real and underlying causes of terrorism instead of fuming mistakenly about it.