Can we bell the cat?

Published May 16, 2015
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

THE cycle of violence gripping Pakistan has become endless. The brutality of the killers, whether spurred by a warped sense of divine sanction or some other corrupted ideology, appears to know no bounds. So, so many citizens now live in perpetual fear. Where do they go from here?

Is it the fate of Pakistanis to witness one carnage, a flurry of official meetings followed by big words that this will be crushed and that won’t be tolerated, expressions of outrage by social media users, condemnation by talking heads on TV, and then to rewind the tape to the beginning and wait for the next massacre? It seems so, doesn’t it?

No matter who you talk to the despair seems to be getting deeper and deeper; a feeling of utter helplessness at having to live with a daily dose of murder, mass murder and mayhem; all the majority would want is to be able to eke out a living in relative security, to be able to provide for their families and somehow create a future filled with some peace for their children.


If members of the peaceful Ismaili community can be targeted, just imagine what fate awaits those more defiant of the forces of darkness.


In Pakistan 2015 that’s a tall ask. Almost impossible.

You can blame Bhutto for conceding significant ground to the intolerant as rank opportunism, lampoon Ziaul Haq for being ideologically committed to embedding an obscurant, hate-filled version of religious philosophy so deep in society that it now appears to be a part of its DNA, or go even further and criticise the Objectives Resolution as the mother of all that ails us today.

Or as easily blame the civilian leaders who have since shared power with the military whether behind a democratic façade or otherwise; who have always lamented the lack of leeway permitted by GHQ in formulating and implementing policies, but who have no explanation when confronted with the fact that even the GHQ couldn’t stop them from amassing staggering fortunes.

You can turn all your guns on suicidal policies followed in the name of providing the besieged, under threat and relatively small state of Pakistan with strategic options in its never-ending tussle with the subcontinent’s billion-strong villain India. You can say it and believe it too that India never reconciled to its division and has applied every sinew since independence to correct what it sees as an historical atrocity.

Like so many, you could find other external drivers of your pain, with the US being a hot favourite with considerable justification; Saudi Arabia and what it exports could be another, especially if ‘evidence’ such as a recent intelligence report in one newspaper on the International Islamic University of Islamabad can be corroborated. And don’t forget to blame Iran or your commentary will be seen as biased and dismissed without being taken seriously.

You could even pull your hair out if that makes you feel any better. But there is nothing you and I can do to fix it. That’s why utter despair and gloom have strengthened their vice-like grip on so many of us as we watch the slide into chaos, anarchy and more madness. It may be OK to term incidents such as the Shia Ismaili massacre in Karachi madness because what we can’t fathom we often see as inanity, but believe me there is method to the madness of these mass murderers.

They wish to overwhelm all with such brutal violence that they get complete submission to their dark ideology and their medieval practices. If members of the Ismaili community, who are wholly uncontroversial and known to mind their own business and keep a low profile, can be targeted, just imagine what fate awaits those more defiant, challenging and questioning of these forces of darkness. They wish to break down any resistance and extinguish whatever defiance is left. Why else would Sabeen Mahmud be targeted? Taking nothing away from her courage, she represented no potent threat; merely token defiance and a faint hope when viewed against a broad canvas.

As the recent visit of China’s leader demonstrated, we sit in a land of grand opportunities. What we make of what’s on offer (and it isn’t charity to be given no matter what the circumstances) is up to us. For such grand projects to start and be completed, for investment inflows to happen based on the realisation of the huge expected profits, the spectre of the so-called failed state will hardly be an incentive.

Only a fool would say the fight is going to be easy or expeditious. It won’t be. But the time has come (if it has not bypassed us already) for a national consensus on what sort of resources are needed to be devoted to this existential threat. Words and patchy band-aid solutions were never enough. Now they seem ludicrous considering the magnitude of the threat that stares us in the face every day.

It is time to roll out and implement each point agreed in the National Action Plan for a start. Selective, piecemeal implementation would be a recipe for failure. Spiralling ‘blowback’ from such actions can only be capped when all organs of the state and its citizenry are on the same page, when the effort is broad-based and indiscriminate. When no distractions are permitted and no red herrings tolerated.

For long we have been clever by half and duplicitous. Telling the world one thing, doing something else and now that policy is exploding in our faces. If blaming external forces for destabilising Pakistan is part of a strategy to motivate the security forces personnel taking on the extremists hiding behind a façade of faith, it could work. But if it reflects a deeper thinking that the main source of our woes lies abroad and isn’t amidst us 24/7, then God help us.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2015

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