Why do we have to fight missions impossible?

IF given a choice where would you like to live--Pakistan or UK? Today perhaps many would ask for a third choice as well, if there was one to spare. But for many it would have been a simple choice if the question had been asked before 7/7. And indeed, it was almost a year before 7/7 that I was asked by Dawn if I would like to do a foreign stint in the UK. Of course, not to live there, but for a two-year assignment. Even before the offer had been made, I had said yes.

While professionally the last 10 months or so have been highly satisfying for me, I could not but notice some very unwelcome parallels in the happenings in the two countries in this period. One had never heard of monsoons in these parts of the world. But the UK was lashed by torrential downpours at the same time that a ferocious monsoon was visiting Pakistan. Both were struck by devastating floods almost at the same time. Though the widespread destruction in life and property that Balochistan is suffering as a result is far too big compared to the damage sustained by the flood-hit areas in the UK, still the toll here was extremely hurtful. And both have been in the grip of terrorist threats almost at the same time with almost the same frequency all these months. As the high drama of the three failed terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow at the weekend ended with no casualties but eight arrests, the Pakistani security forces mounted a police-paramilitary operation in Islamabad to retrieve a mosque and a children’s library which had been forcibly occupied by extremists wanting immediate enforcement of Sharia in the country. It is still not very clear how many have died so far in the continuing operation.

Besides, I found peace-loving Britons of Pakistani Origin (BsPO) as much a harassed lot as their brethren in Pakistan. Both have acquired an uncanny knack to be in the news all the time but for all the wrong reasons. There has never been a dull moment for either the people in Pakistan or for their distant relatives in the UK in the last ten months or so. The two seem to have become all at the same time both the victims and perpetrators of terrorism. To understand this strange phenomenon one has just to go through the media reports of recent months which detail Taliban’s sudden surge in the settled areas of the NWFP and even up to Islamabad. The human cost of this development in Pakistan has been enormous. Scores of people have been killed in the name of Islam and scores of others have died while trying to challenge the writ of the government with gun powder.

And seemingly not to be left behind, the radicalised BsPO have been found to have indulged in a number of abortive terrorist attacks in the last ten months or so in the UK. Most have been arrested and sentenced to long jail terms. But their unintended victims have been the very community to which they belong. I am not particularly referring to the Glasgow graffiti inciting violence against Pakistanis after the three failed terror attacks here last weekend, or to the possibility of young Muslim doctors being refused jobs in the NHS after the uncovering of an alleged terrorist cell in Glasgow hospitals. If such things had not occurred so frequently, perhaps the British Muslims as a community or those of Pakistani origin in particular would not have felt all that concerned. Even the population at large which is largely tolerant and lives by the motto of live and let live would have gone about its life without giving the matter a second thought.

But the frequency with which these incidents have been taking place is much too regular to go unnoticed. And every time such an incident occurs which is very often and the perpetrators are traced back to Al-Qaeda in Pakistan the entire community of BsPO would feel as if all of them were in the dock. The British law does not discriminate on the basis of religion, race, creed, gender or colour. But after every time such an incident would occur finger pointing towards British Pakistanis would get started even before the persons behind the incident are identified. So, it is but natural for BsPO to suffer from a feeling of being discriminated against without having given any reason to be treated so.

The difference between what is happening now and what had happened during the time the UK was grappling with the Irish terrorism is that while the present day terrorists do not give any prior warnings, the earlier ones used to tip off at least a few minutes before the bomb went off so that the civilians could get out of the range of the explosion. This difference makes the present day terrorist almost inhuman and, therefore, someone to be ostracised from human society. And that is what is eating the BsPO who regard this country as their own with all its positives and negatives and would not go to Pakistan even if promised the world itself.

It seems as if the war on terror and of terror both are being fought by Pakistanis the world over. Every time a failed terror attack is uncovered here, inevitably the perpetrators, most of the time BsPO, are traced to some terrorist training camp run by Al Qaeda in the no-man’s land straddling Afghan-Pakistan border, which in fact is no border at all, where Mr. Bin Laden and Mr Zawahiri are said to have set up their headquarters in some inaccessible mountain. It seems Mr Bush and Mr Bin Laden between them have turned Pakistanis into Palestinians. Both seem very angry. Both seem to have embarked on missions impossible. But cannot that anger be put to some positive use rather than wasting it on wars that cannot be won? Anger has destroyed people, societies and nations. But anger turned into missions possible has given birth to brilliant ideologies, enduring ideas and great civilisations.

Theatre of the absurd

POOR old Shakespeare may well be turning in his grave if news has filtered down about how literally his words are taken in Pakistan. In writing “all the world’s a stage”, I don’t think that he meant that the full ignominy of being all too human should be played out under the full glare of the media spotlight, with raucous catcalls from the front benchers. But the world is our stage, we insist, and we take care to beam our antics into millions of living rooms across the world.

The nature of our comedies, self-scripted over a few decades, is very black indeed. Which is why one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry – or both – over the events in Islamabad during the past few days.

What’s worse is the fact that the diversionary tactics have succeeded. The showdown at Lal Masjid, as one television channel put it, supplanted the previous day’s headlines: that the Supreme Court bench dealing with the reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry dismissed the “scandalous” and “vexatious” government application, suspended the licence of the state-appointed advocate-on-record and fined the government of Pakistan a hundred thousand rupees. And banned unauthorised access to intelligence operatives inside superior courts’ offices.

There is plenty to amuse in the spectacle of a man at bay trying to escape in women’s clothing; after all, it’s in the finest traditions of Laurel and Hardy. And surely it’s laughable that eight-year-old children shout “this is jihad” and wield sticks at busily-whirring cameras. That those cameramen take close-up shots of the people wounded in the crossfire but do nothing to help, must certainly be worth a chuckle or two. There is a precedent, after all, from Karachi on May 12.

Speaking of precedents, remember the March 16 rally in support of the chief justice that turned violent in Islamabad? In a television interview, the general asserted that at the same time as the electronic media were broadcasting images of lawyers and demonstrators fighting running battles with well-armed law-enforcement agencies, he had looked out from the balcony of the Presidency at the Supreme Court and had found not a single demonstrator. Funny . . . he never saw a thing!

Another comedy sequence took place a few days later at a police picket outside Islamabad, which had no doubt been instructed to let none of the men in black – ie, lawyers recognisable by their black suits – into the capital city’s territory. A reporter from this newspaper wrote the story of irate bankers, businessmen and other professionals trying to convince our guardians of the law that their coats weren’t, in fact, black but “look, dark grey or navy blue and can we please be allowed to get to work now?”

To return to the Lal Masjid events over the past few days, it is sobering to realise that much of the world is privy to Pakistan’s dirtiest secrets, including the country’s citizens — except apparently our leaders whose actions suggest that they believe, mistakenly, that such information remains confidential. For example, international press agencies, channels and newspapers have raised the question of Lal Masjid’s relationship with the country’s intelligence agencies, how far the government was itself complicit in prompting the showdown, and for what purpose. National newspapers have carried statements by lawyers who claim that the government is using the Jamia Hafsa card to divert attention from the judicial crisis. And having seen on television the sophistication of the Lal Masjid brigade’s weaponry and protective gear, a lot of people across the country are drawing their own conclusions about the sources.

Whether or not this will make any difference, is arguable. This, at least, is true: Maulana Abdul Aziz should take heart from the fact that whoever his friends in high places are, better, stronger and wilier men than him have, on numerous occasions, been thrown to the wolves by those same ‘friends’.

Postscript

Time was when negotiations with dissident groups were carried out by government functionaries — but that role too has apparently been privatised and farmed out to television channels.