June 28, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 1, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, June 27: Speakers at a seminar were unanimous that military operations were no solution to the growing unrest and terrorism in Pakistan. They said war against terrorism could only be won when there would be democracy, rule of law and respect to human rights in the country.

The speakers, including leaders of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), human rights activists and experts, were speaking at a seminar on “Fighting terrorism — promoting democracy”, organised by the PPP here on Tuesday.

“Military dictatorship is also a form of terrorism and the people of Pakistan have been facing it since long,” said PPP president Makhdoom Amin Fahim in his brief speech as a chief guest at the seminar.

Mr Fahim said the PPP condemned terrorism in any part of the world as the party stood for peace and harmony. He said the PPP was committed to fighting against terrorism. “We don’t want terrorism of guns, we don’t want terrorism of generals and we don’t want the general (Musharraf) to get elected from the same parliament again,” Mr Fahim concluded.

Earlier, speaking on the occasion, PPP information secretary Sherry Rehman said there was no military solution to the growing unrest and non-state terrorism in Pakistan’s tribal areas. She said the Taliban had not only re-grouped in big numbers in the tribal border towns of Chaman and Khost, but were now in control of several areas in the tribal belt and the NWFP.

She said not only that the three-year operation in tribal areas had failed to flush out terrorists, it had on the contrary given Taliban sanctuaries and the climate to build support among locals, recruit cross-border sepoys and paralyse government.

Ms Rehman said the disappearance and murder of Fata journalist Hayatullah Khan was one of the most gruesome examples of the anarchy that prevailed in the region, and the extent to which the government was helpless in providing protection to its people.

The PPP information secretary said the people in Wana were living in constant fear and suffering under a reign of terror unleashed by both the military and the ‘militants.’ She regretted that the regime was refusing to find a political solution and continued to regard the Army as the panacea for all problems, including terrorism.

The army, she said, resolved all problems through the use of force, rather than through conflict resolution. “This kind of authoritarianism is hardly conducive for the eradication of terrorism from the region,” she added. She said democracy was needed in complex and unevenly developed states whose ties to the world should be stronger and more varied than those crafted by their armies. “The spate of cases of corruption and poor governance that have been reported since October 1999 shows that in the absence of neutral judiciary and accountability, the Musharraf regime continues to abuse its power that it mainly draws from being a ‘frontline ally’ in the terror war,” she said.

She asked: “How can a corrupt, non-accountable and undemocratic government fight terrorism when its own legitimacy is questionable? Because it enjoys little representation among the masses, this government is fighting a terror war that has little or no support among ordinary people,” she said. She was of the view that military operations against terrorists should be undertaken only after exhausting political means to decommission militant-terrorist groups.