It’s something that even Hillary Clinton failed to do, but I thought I’d give it a shot.
It’s not always great to see bombs and suicide bombers go off in your neighbourhood, is it ? But that is the unfortunate and the undeniable reality in India’s neighbour, Pakistan today. A very weak civilian-government is in charge, yet invisible in many ways, overshadowed by the real authority, the Army which is waging a war, which could well determine Pakistan’s future as a country (I wouldn’t call it a nation yet, as even Pakistan’s very own Shuja Nawaz thinks so). The problems, as we all know are multi-fold, yet terrorism is seen through a smokescreen, well and truly differentiated and categorized depending on who they fight and who the enemy really is. However, what they’re missing out on is a comprehensive policy on fighting terrorism within the country, in dire contradiction to how they resorted to terror as not a strategy, but a state policy (and still do, against India and Afghanistan).
Military operations are pretty much alright and it’s always fair to discuss strategy and tactic, but where is the policy, I ask ? And the answer I get, from some of the Pakistanis I have interacted with recently, is there isn’t any. And, it’s not just the places where the writ of the Pakistan Government claims to not exist, where there is a problem. It’s well and truly within their eye-lines, at the very heart of where the power is – Punjab. Yet, the response one gets from officials in Punjab (as we heard during the siege at the GHQ and Manawan, near Lahore) is wide and clear – “We do not know of any camps operating in South Punjab”, said Rana Sanaullah, one of the ministers in the provincial government there. Or maybe they do, but there is a visible reluctance in taking control of the situation. There is where, I say, there is a specific distinction they make when it comes to taking on these terrorists. Broad categories first, and not that they ain’t known, anti-India (groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizbul Mujahideen – all umbrella groups, who are waging a supposed ‘jihad’ against India in Kashmir) groups, also described as those who do not fight the state, and hence no action against them, and you have groups like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Punjab (a broad conglomerate of terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Sahiba and the likes, who are taking on the State) and indeed, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in places like Waziristan or Malakand or Swat, where the Army is/was involved in flushing them out. If Pakistan continues to see terrorism and militancy as something heterogeneous – depending on it’s usability, it might very well be seeing it’s end – as an idea, as a concept and worse, as a country. If denial is the only way Pakistan wants to and chooses to live in, might as well wish them luck in that regard.
Secondly, it almost seems bashing India up for the problems in Pakistan has become an everyday affair – and now, it’s coming from everywhere – be it the very articulate, or as the Daily Times editorial called him “the usually factual” Interior Minister Rehman Malik or Pakistan’s Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob (as Foreign Policy labeled this honorable serviceman) – Maj Gen Athar Abbas, DG of the ISPR. It’s almost become a very loose substitute for abdicating their own responsibility for their own people, appealing to their own domestic constituency, which still sees India as Pakistan’s number one enemy and sketching itself as a victim of imported terror, rather than a state that exports it and most importantly, it paints a picture of every authority in that country living in a perennial state of denial. What it doesn’t talk about is the human rights abuses committed by the armed forces in Balochistan, which might have equally fuelled insurgent rage against the State, (instead they prop up the Indian Army’s role in Kashmir) and also, that it’s heart i.e. Punjab has resorted to exploiting the Baloch resources, notably the gas-rich areas in that province. Even, as a matter of fact, the Balochi Regiment in the Pakistan Army consists of Punjabis, rather than the people it is named after. To blame India is supremely easy, but to reach out to the Balochis seems a responsibility, the Pakistani authorities don’t want to undertake. Unfortunately, for Pakistan and Mr. Malik, no one buys these claims, not even Hillary Clinton.
What I hope, Pakistan do is get out of this cocoon of denial as soon as possible and take appropriate action against these miscreants for their own good. As Barack Obama used to repeatedly say about the Republicans in his campaign stumps, “It’s not that they don’t know about it, it’s just that they just don’t get it” – that phrase perhaps surmises the situation in Pakistan. If Pakistan is serious about wiping militancy and talking about this romantic image that the Zardaris and Gilanis paint about democracy, it’s time they act, and act for their own good. Period.
Venkat Unplugged 