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SEVERAL weeks on from the Army Public School Peshawar atrocity and where are we in our response to what many described as Pakistan’s 9/11?
Well, to my mind at least, not much beyond where we were last week. We have a National Action Plan to tackle extremism but the constitutional impediments and political reservations surrounding the setting up of military courts led to the prime minister calling an all-party conference on Friday in Islamabad.
Frankly speaking, some days back though, while being looked in the eye by the army chief, the response of many of our politicians was predictable. They couldn’t say no. But once out of his gaze, their reservations started to mount.
Any selective implementation of the law will be frowned upon and water down the credibility of the state.
Of course the devil is in the detail. But the prime minister said that there would be “no room for further debate in parliament” on NAP.
So far, there have been three major strands of thought on the issue. Respected rights campaigners have argued that the military courts have no place in the country today as the Constitution and law don’t allow for any such exercise.
Then there are those voices, and there are plenty in this category, who argue that the judicial system in the country has proved wholly inadequate in dealing with terrorism cases and till reform leads to better results, military courts are the only viable means of holding to account such criminals.
And the third category is of the reluctant converts. Those in this category see the argument for military courts as driven by the critical security situation and hence as something that can be a fallback option till the judiciary is up to the challenge but they oppose a constitutional amendment, instead advocating some changes in the Army Act to provide for speedy courts.
One suspects, as reflected in the words of one sympathetic commentator, that with the army now appearing keen, even impatient, to clean up the mess created over the decades by its security paradigm, the politicians will have to fall in line.
So let’s see what the practitioners of the art of the possible come up with in the final analysis. From the cacophony of voices heard on the issue in the media and social media, it seems those who are making their argument based on legality and constitutionalism are losing out to the lynch mob.
The best that those who still wish to adhere to constitutionalism, notably among the legislators who attended the prime minister’s conference, can do now is to ensure somehow safeguards are built in to protect the accused from gross miscarriages of justice since a life once taken cannot be restored.
Alongside all the legal work, it will be of paramount importance for the government and the army to be mindful that every eye in the country is upon them. Any selective implementation of the law will be frowned upon and water down their credibility.
For example, usually well-informed commentator Najam Sethi said earlier this week that a message had been sent to the ‘sectarian’ jihadi outfits that they should lie low and do nothing to embarrass the government and the army.
This would tend to indicate that the prime minister and the military both still believe that certain types of extremist elements are still useful ‘assets’ and they should stay quiet whilst the TTP is being hunted down with vigour to revert to their games later.
Perhaps, being made aware of such suggestions, Nawaz Sharif suspended the police chief of the capital on New Year’s Day because he let off (with a lesser, bailable charge) a leader of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, a radical Sunni group better known by its former name Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), who’d been arrested with several gunmen carrying arms illegally.
This gesture was way too insignificant to inspire much confidence particularly in communities who have been at the receiving end of the acts of terror perpetrated by Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a militant group that broke away from the SSP. From Punjab to Sindh especially Karachi and Balochistan, this group is alive and kicking, not least because, for example, in Balochistan the state, rather myopically, appears to be using its cadres as a franchise to put down Baloch separatists.
From the day the so-called National Action Plan was announced, apart from the divisive issue of military courts, none of its elements were seen as questionable. In fact, it seemed a sensible and comprehensive document.
If there were misgivings, these had more to do with concerns about its implementation. And for these misgivings to be allayed, both the government and the army will demonstrably have to walk the talk that the ‘good and bad’ Taliban is a thing of the past.
This is a must not just in the context of Afghanistan but also within Pakistan. All militant groups, whether their targets are external or internal, have an ideological affinity. They talk to each other and cooperate. Our security apparatus has evidence how even their membership overlaps.
One isn’t naïve. A security apparatus that is stretched on account of internal security duties and operations on the one hand and, at the same time, having to guard against adventurism by an increasingly belligerent and foolishly macho Modi government on its eastern border, can’t be expected to open multiple fronts in one go.
But a current tactical handicap can’t be allowed to become a long-term strategic blunder. The state must not devolve any of its armed functions to any non-state actor and where it has in the past it must distance itself from such a group in unequivocal terms.
One is grateful that no terrorist atrocity has happened in the past week, not counting the now routine murders of some members of the Shia and Ahmadi communities in Punjab and Sindh. But the popular will that emerged after the Army Public School carnage has to translate into visible, broad-based action on the ground, or we’ll be reduced to waiting for the next Peshawar.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2015
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