| 08 May 2004 | Saturday | 17 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
The Afghan quagmire
The horrifying bombing inside a mosque in Karachi's historic Sindh Madressatul Islam during prayers on Friday has taken a tragic toll of innocent lives and brought us face to face again with the fires of sectarian hatred stoked by religious extremists and terrorists.
At least 14 people died and more than 80 were injured, many critically, when a bomb placed by an unidentified man exploded in the midst of the congregation at the Hyderi mosque.
The impact of the blast was so severe that the 40-foot-high ceiling of the mosque was badly damaged and splattered with blood. This is the second deadly attack of its kind in the last two months, the earlier one being a suicide attack on an Ashura congregation in Quetta when 44 lives were lost.
The frequency and lethal nature of recent bombings and sectarian attacks seem to suggest that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies whose job it is to prevent such occurrences are sitting idly on the sidelines doing practically nothing as the incidence of crime and violence mounts.
Every time a bombing takes place and innocent lives are lost, every senior government functionary expresses his resolve to track down the killers and bring them to justice and promises that elements behind such acts will be rooted out.
And then all is forgotten about promised preventive and punitive action until another bomb blast occurs or another spree of religious or sectarian violence takes place.
Karachi is dotted with security posts and barriers and citizens going on their daily business are checked and harassed, and yet the trouble-makers appear to enjoy the freedom of the city and strike at will.
This kind of approach is inherently flawed and will never lead to a reduction in terrorism because those who carry out such acts will always be a step ahead of the government and its preventive and control agencies.
Ministers, or their masters, who keep on telling the public that the law and order situation in the country is under control or that extremism is being dealt with effectively should instead spend their time formulating strategies that succeed in preventing acts of terrorism.
To be sure, this is not an easy task, especially when one does not fully understand the forces at work behind suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism, but how many attacks must take place for the government to realize that something is missing in its anti-terrorism strategy? One can understand that once, or perhaps twice, a terrorist attack catches the law enforcement agencies off guard, but for them to be caught unawares most of the time is inexcusable and, when one looks at the cost of such inaction, criminal.
Time and again, the president has reiterated that the government is committed to stamping out religious militancy, extremism and bigotry and wants to eliminate the scourge of sectarianism from Pakistani society. Such words need to be backed up with actions.
Administrative measures, mostly taken only after some bombs have exploded and lives lost, are not enough. The government also needs to do something about the nurseries - the madressahs - some of which breed bigotry, intolerance and hatred for those belonging to other faiths and sects and to come down harshly on mosque imams openly preaching sectarian hatred and militancy.
In the longer-term, that is the only way sectarianism and intolerance in society can be curbed and violent acts of terrorism curtailed. It should also be realized that religious intolerance cannot be entirely separated from general intolerance, and that ultimately we have to cut ourselves away from the policies nurtured over the decades that have created our present bigoted state of mind.
Meanwhile, although the feelings of anger and frustration generated by the Friday tragedy are understandable, the problem will not go away by random violence on the streets, and everyone should act with restraint.
The Afghan quagmire
The mess America has made of Iraq has diverted the world's attention to that country from its first target in the war on terror: Afghanistan. Which is not to say that things are progressing there smoothly under the interim government led by Mr Hamid Karzai.
The truth is far from it. The central government's authority is confined to the capital and its peripheries, leaving the rest of the country at the mercy of tribal warlords many of whom are also supported by the US for fear that the remnants of the ousted Taliban could reunite and pose a challenge.
This is particularly true for the Pakhtoon-majority provinces bordering Pakistan and extending deep into the south of Afghanistan. In the north, General Dostum's forces continue to hold sway, defying the central authority and being often involved in armed clashes with rival militias led by those nominally bearing allegiance to Kabul.
The law and order situation in the provinces is so bad that the UN was forced last November to suspend its humanitarian aid programmes after the killing of a foreign aid worker.
It has since called back all its international staff working for 30 of its agencies in the southern and eastern parts of the country. As is the case with the Karzai government, the role of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, is confined to ensuring security in the capital alone.
Another, and perhaps more dangerous, problem over the longer term is poppy cultivation on an extensive scale. Since the fall of the Taliban regime in December 2001, an increasing number of Afghan farmers have gone back to cultivating poppy, making Afghanistan the single largest source of opium and heroin in the world today.
The illegal drug trade out of the country was worth $2.3 billion last year and the turnover this year is expected to exceed three billion dollars. Presumably anti-Taliban, the warlords overseeing poppy cultivation and benefiting from the drug trade are fast becoming a law unto themselves.
Under the prevailing circumstances, it is hard to see how an election can be held in September - originally scheduled for June - and an effective elected central government put in place. With the US announcing its plan to pull out 15,000 of its troops from Afghanistan this year, there are fears that the move would plunge the country back into a civil war. Given the emerging scenario, the possibility cannot be ruled out.
The prospect of any further destabilization of Afghanistan continues to haunt its neighbours, particularly Pakistan, which has borne the brunt of the post-Soviet withdrawal civil war there in the form of refugees, increased drug and gun smuggling and acts of sectarian terrorism.
The world community's pledge at the recent international donor conference in Berlin, to provide $8.2 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation work in Afghanistan over the next three years would be meaningless unless some order is restored in the country and conditions created to begin the reconstruction work.
If the past is any guide, the Karzai government cannot do so on its own. There is, therefore, a pressing need for the international community, particularly the US, to come forward and evolve a mechanism whereby tribal militias are disarmed, poppy cultivation and trafficking in drugs stopped and the central government's writ extended to the provinces.
There is a lesson that needs to be learnt from the long spell of civil war that engulfed Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, and the subsequent emergence of the Taliban militia in its wake. The world can disengage from Afghanistan prematurely only at the risk of turning it into a festering wound for the whole region.