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ATTIRED in a necktie and suit, to many the first such public image of the interior minister, it took a dapper Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to reach Washington D.C. to open up his heart about the extremist challenge at home.
The interior minister who, along with his old Aitchison College mate, the PTI leader Imran Khan, was livid to the point of shedding tears of rage and sorrow when the mass murdering terrorist head of the TTP, Hakeemullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike, seems to have come a long way to now recognising the threat posed by extremism.
Where the prime minister may have been motivated by a fear of the terrorist backlash to initially opposing any operation and backing talks with the TTP, both the interior minister and the PTI leader seemed to favour a dialogue on ideological grounds.
So-called religious leaders who spew venom and hate at will are still free to do so.
Both these figures, to varying degrees, preferred to live in an Alice in Wonderland-like world, in having romantic notions of how these terrorists mainly represented a popular uprising in the Pakhtun tribal belt against the foreign (read US) troop presence in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Speaking at the US Institute of Peace this week, Nisar Ali Khan said the Army Public School carnage last December changed all that: He said that it “changed the mindset of even those elements who thought the military option was not the only option and looked at it with suspicion”.
Since the interior minister is now on the right track, or at least says he is, we’ll grant him the courtesy of distancing himself (and Imran Khan since he didn’t name him either) from the ranks of ‘those elements’ who looked at the military option with ‘suspicion’.
Against the backdrop of at least three serious attacks against imambargahs in recent weeks, the latest of which coincided with the interior minister’s D.C. visit, he was candid in saying the country would have to work overtime to combat the sectarian issue, as he called it.
“They live among us, speak the same language we speak, wear the same dress and eat the same fruit. That’s why it is difficult to trace them. It is also difficult to trace their communications as they use word of mouth,” he said of the terrorists.
Where the interior minister was recognising the existential threat posed by terrorism in distant D.C. the army’s chief spokesman Maj-Gen Asim Bajwa tweeted condemnation of the Rawalpindi imambargah attack and said “the recent spate of terrorist attacks” were meant to “divide” the nation.
The civil-military leadership may well be on the same page about how insidious the sectarian attacks may be but both have failed in demonstrating any will to deal with such attacks and what leads to them.
So-called religious leaders with mainly a sectarian agenda who spew venom and hate at will are still free to do so without any apparent fear of the state writ or the grip of the law. Despite what the National Action Plan against terrorism proposes there seems to have been little or no visible action against purveyors of hate.
If the army leadership believes the recent attacks (read against imambargahs and Shia mosques) are an attempt to divide the nation, one would also like to hear what the ‘lead player’ in this fight against terrorism has done to give a shut-up call to leaders of outlawed parties who often act like they themselves are the law.
The army and the government may have come round now to recognising the extremist threat but would they admit that many (much-maligned as having a nefarious agenda) liberal writers and even politicians have tried over the years and failed to draw their attention to this ticking bomb.
And the failure to identify the threat was not an innocent lack of understanding: it was due to the grandiose extraterritorial ambitions of the state, often delusional to the point of being suicidal, as we are finding out now. So, are we prepared now to abandon the use of toxic-ideology proxies as tools of state policy?
Are we prepared to act against all the sectarian murderers, who turned to this vocation full-time (from part-time) once their path to the jihad in India-held Kashmir was blocked by the demands of the international community, with the same vigour as the TTP or do we still nurse ambitions involving them in the future?
For now the civilian politicians are getting the flak because the much-needed police and administrative reform as also other critically important areas such as local government elections have seen little progress, while our soldiers are sacrificing their lives. That these delays are often attributed to the narrow self-interest of this political party/group or that makes things worse.
But for this long-drawn out fight against terrorism to conclude successfully in the longer term, there will need to be complete clarity about where the military stands on its reliance on such armed non-state actors who have time and again pursued their own agenda whether sectarian or otherwise to the detriment of the country.
If action against such groups is on the drawing board and will be phased in as planned later, it is fine. If the action is awaiting an internal exercise to quietly identify and purge militant sympathisers in the khaki ranks, even then it is fine. What will be disastrous is if no such action is planned.
For historical reasons, the Lal Masjid leadership is seen as a threat by the military. Why then aren’t some of the avowed allies of this leadership seen with similar suspicion when their agenda is clearly to divide the country on sectarian lines?
For now, the sacrifices of the soldiers on the frontline and an admittedly effective spin machine is keeping the army policies safe from scrutiny and criticism in the mass media. But if some essential issues are not addressed this ‘immunity’ may not last for long.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2015
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