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AT a time the country is facing an existential crisis of scary proportions and the troops are finally taking on the militants in North Waziristan, there appears an urgent need to fine-tune many aspects of the strategy if the challenge is to be confronted successfully.
Where the disconnect between the military and the civilian leadership doesn’t present a happy sight, the government’s lethargic, foot-dragging in key areas and the thinking of some elements in the army don’t provide much comfort either.
Having a profile in mind of Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs and national security adviser to the prime minister, it was unlikely that he was deliberately trying to embarrass the GHQ when he told the BBC that Pakistan was targeting militants selectively as it had no cause to go after groups that didn’t threaten the country.
The Foreign Office jumped in with a damage limitation statement while Mr Aziz himself said he was quoted “out of context”. Both feeble attempts if you ask me. Frankly, the statement didn’t even show the army in a bad light necessarily even though it has definitely played favourites until recently but actually spotlighted how out of touch the man in charge of the Foreign Office appeared.
The government, army and opposition must be on the same page if Pakistan is to survive as a viable entity.
In an interesting coincidence, the statement came almost simultaneously with an army-facilitated media visit to North Waziristan where the officers in command of the operations left no stone unturned to impress upon the journalists how all groups were being targeted including the Haqqani Network and the erstwhile ally and now actively hostile Hafiz Gul Bahadur.
All other factors notwithstanding, the army commanders’ view, as reported in newspapers, that the entire population of the two major semi-urbanised centres of North Waziristan was a willing participant in the ‘crime economy’ as it aided and abetted illegal activities including kidnap for ransom, was a bit rich too.
Yes, a bit rich because these were the words of the representatives of an institution which abandoned this very population to bloodthirsty hordes in its strategic depth obsession via numerous ‘peace deals.’
How can they now blame helpless civilians who must have been forced to do many things they did to save themselves and their families from the wrath of the Taliban? Is this the reason that the return of the IDPs is being delayed indefinitely or are there other reasons?
It is really important for the long-term success of the operations that the army commanders on the ground, even as they remain under constant fire and take casualties, do not give sweeping, contemptuous statements against a whole population.
This thinking and how it manifests itself in actions can drive a permanent wedge between the locals and the soldiers who are there to primarily clear the area of the murderous fanatics who had taken it over unchallenged and return it to normality before handing it back to its owners, the residents.
In the long-term this counterterrorism operation will succeed or fail, and with it the fortunes of the state, on the quality of intelligence gathering. And intelligence gathering, without the bulk of the local population backing the action or worse still hostile to it, will always be found wanting.
As for the government, how much importance it attaches to the ongoing fight against militancy in the country is evident from the fact that the body created to collate and centralise all terrorism-related information/intelligence and possibly direct action against it, the National Counter Terrorism Authority, remains dysfunctional.
Some anti-terrorism legislation may have been passed but the investigation and trial elements of serious crimes, including terrorism, have received little, if any, attention. The result, as so competently recorded in this newspaper by reporter Imran Ayub on Thursday, is a spate of extrajudicial killings, all put down as deaths in the so-called encounters.
Even though Imran Ayub’s report kept its focus on the ongoing operation in Karachi, it won’t be far-fetched at all to extend his argument to all troubled areas of the country including the tribal areas and Balochistan.
There is no denying the fact that Karachi is losing a policeman a day to terrorists and unidentified hit squads and the soldiers involved in operations in the tribal belt are also taking constant casualties. But if the government were to act with vision, enforcement of the law could be ensured with the people’s basic rights also intact.
If the governing party ignores this aspect, it’ll do so at its own peril. Mounting public anger at both no improvements in the law and order situation and denial of basic rights could eventually pose a challenge much more real and potent than for example the Imran Khan ‘dharnas’ that the government appears so obsessed with.
The dharnas should provide good reason for improved quality of governance, for better delivery to the people, rather than a cause for paralysis. If the government chooses to react to this challenge as if it were besieged it’ll write its own obituary.
In the ultimate analysis, the government and the army, and even the opposition, will have to sing from the same hymn sheet if Pakistan has to survive as a viable, vibrant, pluralistic state in the comity of nations for such are the existential challenges it has brought upon itself.
The militant threat is real. Very real. We need only look at what’s happening in many parts of the Muslim world to understand what ramifications unchecked intolerance, hate-filled ideologies coupled with denial of rights can have. The question is will we learn from the tragic travails of others? Or wait till we experience every ugly consequence of not doing anything ourselves.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, November 22th , 2014
