Sectarianism must come to an end

What is happening to us? Forty-two people killed in Quetta simply because they were taking part in a religious congregation? Ample and bloody proof, if any were still needed, of the sectarian fault lines within Pakistani society.

How have we sunk to this level of madness and insanity? How have we reached the point where innocents are slaughtered simply to provoke more slaughter, more death, more suffering and more grief?

The wave of condemnation generated by the Quetta attacks has focused primarily on the perpetrators, but with much criticism also directed at the authorities.

Of course, both are to blame. The former for directly committing acts of murder: the latter for failing to stop them (not to mention the post-massacre rioting). But blaming Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (if indeed, they were behind the attack) or inept administration and policing is not enough. To understand the madness that was manifested answers have to be sought further afield.

Start with Pakistan's previous military dictatorship (under Zia) and the decade of plunderous and inept civilian rule that followed it. Both generals and prime ministers failed to appreciate the danger inherent in their tolerance of armed religious groups. Both allowed the monster of sectarianism to grow and strengthen. We are today paying the price for their mistakes of yesterday.

But not everything can be blamed on the past. Pervez Musharraf seized power promising to eradicate the menace of sectarian violence. Looking at the casualty figures for Quetta alone - 42 dead in Muharram, 50-plus last July, eight police cadets in June - it is clear that he has a very, very long way to go.

True, years of neglect have allowed the sectarian monster to become so strong that it will take years for the government to contain it. True also, the performance of the police and judiciary in Pakistan leaves much to be desired.

But what of the failure to match words with on-ground action? How many times have we heard strong rhetoric from the president? How many times have we seen that strong rhetoric fails to translate into arrests, convictions and punishments?

Political expediency, unwillingness to stir up a hornet's nest, policy interests, incapacity, fear - whatever the reason, the government is guilty of half-heartedness in its battle with sectarianism.

So far then, the list of culprits reads as follows: religious extremists, inept administration and security services, and governments (both previous and current). Reading through this list, it is obvious what needs to be done next: extremist groups must be rendered ineffective; the administration and police must start doing their jobs properly; the government must match words with deeds. Even if all this were done tomorrow, though, we would still be menaced by sectarianism - because one culprit remains.

Sectarian violence is the extreme manifestation of sectarian sentiment. Sectarian sentiment is the perception - nay, belief - that Shias and Sunnis are different. It is each group looking on the other as precisely that: 'the other'. Such sentiment starts in society, where 'society' refers both to those who spread sectarian sentiment (notably religious leaders) and to those who listen to them and take it in: you and me. We, our society, are the remaining sectarian culprit.

Look at Shias and Sunnis in Pakistan today, and you could be forgiven for thinking they belong to separate religions. Such is the degree of, if not antipathy, then at least difference between them. Such is the sense in which they see each other as 'someone else - not one of us'. Most disturbing is the fact that such notions are held by the extremist fringes and by those in mainstream society.

Much of this differentiation stems from conviction, but much is deliberate. Just as ethnic leaders seek to accentuate differences between ethnic communities, so sectarian leaders have sought to accentuate the differences.

Regional power politics also played a role. The Islamic Revolution in Iran was followed by an export drive; the power struggle between Iran and the Arab world manifested itself as a proxy sectarian war; the Afghan jihad created - as by-products - armed sectarian groups; and as seen, previous Pakistani governments, in the pursuit of other policies, turned a blind eye to the growing sectarian monster. All these factors aggravated sectarianism in Pakistan.

But the bottom line remains the same. Whether political disputes, varying interpretations of religious practice, deliberate differentiation or regional politics - none of this makes for separate religions or ideologies. None alter the fact that Shias and Sunnis are followers of the same religion.

By regarding them as different, separate and irreconcilable, it is we who promote sectarianism. We create the foundations from which sectarian killers launch their deadly attacks. If sectarian violence is ever to become a thing of the past in Pakistan, it is our thinking - the notions of 'differentness' we hold - that has to change.

e-mail: iffatidris2000@yahoo.co.uk.

Russian poll cynicism

"The mentality of power in Russia today is absolutely similar to that of the Soviet Union," said Irina Khakamada, candidate in the Russian presidential election. But why is she surprised?

President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to get at least three-quarters of the votes cast on March 14, was a loyal member of the KGB for fifteen years before he jumped ship as communist rule was collapsing in 1990. Indeed, her own candidacy, for all the novelty value of seeing a Russian woman of Japanese descent sharply criticize Mr Putin from a right-wing perspective, is believed to have been encouraged by the Kremlin to lend credibility and colour to an election that is really a foregone conclusion.

The credibility problem arises because Mr Putin has forgotten all the subtlety that was drilled into him as a KGB agent. The KGB was by far the most intelligent part of the communist apparatus (large parts of which were brain-dead), and by the late 80s, as the old totalitarian controls weakened, you occasionally met a KGB officer who was openly contemptuous of the party's insistence on 'elections' in which the sole official candidate won by 99 per cent. It was unbelievable and embarrassing, they would complain, and quite unnecessary: 95 per cent of the vote would do.

That is the difficulty with Mr Putin. In a genuinely free election, with strong opposition candidates and critical media coverage, he would still win a second term as president by a comfortable margin.

Russia is more stable than it was four years ago, the economy is growing at a decent pace, and the war in Chechnya is more or less contained, apart from sporadic bombs in Moscow. Unfortunately, he was not satisfied with a comfortable margin. He wanted more, and he could only get it by destroying the free media.

When independent newspapers and television chains emerged in Russia in the early 90s after the fall of Communism, they had to operate in an economic environment where advertising revenues were rarely enough to cover their costs.

Given the reflexes of the Russian bureaucracy, state-owned but editorially independent media like the British Broadcasting Corporation were not a promising option. What happened instead was that some of the billionaire 'new rich' started subsidising media outlets, or even buying up whole papers and networks.

Rich people exploiting media ownership to promote their own political preferences are not exactly unknown elsewhere: think of Rupert Murdoch in the US, Britain and Australia, Conrad Black in the US, Britain and Canada, or Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

In Russia, however, the rich people were hated for having made their fortunes out of the chaotic and corrupt privatisation process, and there was no tradition of press freedom.

When Mr Putin began to pick off the billionaires one by one, jailing them or driving them into exile on corruption charges, his popularity actually rose. Few people objected as the independent media withered or passed into the ownership of the state or of conglomerates owned by Putin cronies.

The biggest independent TV channel, NTV, was taken over by the state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom three years ago, and TV6 was closed on various financial pretexts two years ago. The last critical voice among the four main terrestrial channels in Russia, TVS, was closed down by the government last June "for the benefit of the audience" and replaced with a sports channel.

There is no official press censorship in Russia, but self-censorship is now so pervasive that official controls are hardly needed. In the parliamentary elections in December, pro-Kremlin parties won more than two-thirds of the seats in the Duma. Having seen how it now works, all of Russia's well-known opposition leaders, who would normally be running against Mr Putin, have decided to sit this election out.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who won 30 per cent of the vote running against Mr Putin for the presidency in 2000, has asked an obscure member of the allied Agrarian Party to stand as the candidate of the Communist block this time.

Ultra-nationalist demagogue Vladimir Zhirinovsky is letting his bodyguard, former boxer Oleg Malyshkin, run in his place. Even Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the liberal Yabloko Party and perennial presidential candidate, is refusing to run, saying that "free, equal and politically competitive elections are impossible."

Alexander Konovalov, director of the Institute for Strategic Assessments in Moscow, recently compared the half-dozen nonentities running against Mr Putin in this election to 'background dancers', adding that "our political life has been replaced by the ritual of installing the leader."

The opposition candidates are unlikely to win twenty percent of the votes between them; the only way Mr Putin can lose is if the turnout falls below 50 percent of eligible voters and invalidates the whole process.

This has happened a couple of times recently in Serbia, another country where massive cynicism about the political process has turned off the voters entirely. - Copyright

State of internal security

Dawn carried a report on Feb 29, headlined 'Multiple threats prompt red alert at Karachi airport.' The reason for the 'red alert' was attributed to the 'presence of Osama bin Laden in the border area' of Wana, Waziristan.

This was a rather baffling scenario. Why on earth should Karachi airport be placed on high alert as part of one of the biggest ongoing manhunts in Wana miles away? Specially now that we have a string of international airports in Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, etc. Wouldn't Islamabad or Peshawar, being closer to the quarry, have made a more rational choice for the state of maximum alert?

Was it because Karachi airport is better fitted for operations of the giant C-17 transports of the United States Air Force? I would take Mr Seymour Hersh's word for it who referred to USAF C-17s "landing every night at an airbase in Karachi" - ostensibly as part of the American (spring) offensive Codenamed Ops Sec (Operational Security).

Mr Hersh is best known for his sensational stories about Pakistan's nuclear research and development programme. In his latest article in The New Yorker, he offers a detailed account of the Khan affair, and, besides his own comments on the subject, he goes on to quote a former UN weapons expert, Robert Galluchi, as branding Pakistan as the "most dangerous country..." for the United States.

Mr Hersh's unmistakable penchant for enlarging things beyond their size notwithstanding, can his perceived image of Pakistan as a threat to America be dismissed as a piece of yellow journalism? The mere fact that his description was used by one of America's most prestigious periodicals adds yet another coat of dark grey to Pakistan's none-too-bright image abroad.

Introverting Mr Hersh's description of Pakistan, it should not be hard to see its terrifying relevance internally in the context of the widespread spectacle of sectarian, tribal and terrorist violence from one end of the country to the other - Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, the NWFP and the federal capital itself - all originating from a common source of sectarian intolerance and polemical disputations.

The Quetta bloodbath of March 3, claiming close to 50 killed and over 150 injured, happens to be the latest in the bloody cycle of violence. Just a day or two before that, violent attacks occurred at a Rawalpindi imambargah through the saddest month of our calendar.

The gory events happened in spite of the show and actual deployment of security forces - para-military and regular - in and around the areas attacked. Just about 24 hours before the Quetta carnage, the president and prime minister were reported closeted in their longest-ever meeting lasting four hours reportedly to discuss plans to ensure communal and sectarian harmony during Ashura.

Now what kind of a state authority is this and how much weight it carries if plans perfected at the highest executive level and orders duly issued are followed only in the breach?

President Musharraf pledges to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and deal sternly with elements "involved in spreading hate materials". He can justifiably claim credit for suppressing the evil, but not for eradicating it root and branch.

The pre-9/11 jihadi lore and its euphoric promise of reward in this and the next world continues to warm the hearts and minds of the diehards, no matter how depleted in number and strength. In an emotionally-charged crusade, it's not so much the head-count as the spirit of a handful of fiercely committed individuals that matters.

At a meeting between a number of senior government officials and leaders of the Jihad Council in the middle of February, the jihadis' insisted that they would "keep the fight on."

Although essentially rhetorical, even a small mishap along the LoC could seriously jeopardize the on-going India-Pakistan peace process and, in turn, adversely impact on the state of internal security. A disturbed LoC could mean anything from a tense India-Pakistan stand-off to an actual re-opening of guns.

What compounds the situation is the widening divide between the centre and the MMA-led provinces of Balochistan and the NWFP. Islamabad's para-secular stance appears to be at odds with the commitment of the two provinces to enforce the Shariat over there.

The redoubtable NWFP Chief Minister, Akram Khan Durrani, has said: "The enforcement of Sharia is our ultimate destination, to be achieved at any cost..." His government would not be "part of the federal government" and would refuse to "compromise on principles."

Mr Durrani's counterpart, Balochistan's Chief Minister Jam Mohammad Yousuf, though not so vocal about Sharia enforcement, remains as committed to it in keeping with the MMA manifesto. The MMA has now decided to withdraw support to the Jamali government.

MMA Secretary-General Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri announced his party's decision at a recent (March 4) press conference in Peshawar. His party would support any "substantial move" to bring about an "in-house change." The move, if implemented, would widen the centre-NWFP divide to jeopardize the future of the precariously held together Jamali government.

Even a broad-brush picture of the 'multiple' threats facing national security would reveal areas of real concern. These are: constitutional, law and order, tribal, centrifugal, sectarian, terrorist violence and intolerance, incremental erosion of civil society, controversies raging about the role of the army and its damaging impact on its image, political murders, and at least two abortive attempts on the life of the president himself.

Last but not least is the soaring price spiral of the basic necessities of life - flour, meat, vegetables, cooking oil and petrol. What good are 12 billion dollars in our foreign exchange chest except as a national trophy on the mantelpiece?

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.