IT is said ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and in this day and age of instantly available images, transmitted in near real-time, one this week said it all: the photograph of one of the most lethal sectarian terrorism figures in the country.
Hitherto most of Malik Ishaq’s videos and photos showed him with a smile, almost a mocking one, playing on his lips, surrounded by supporters, many of them armed to the teeth, and with a swagger that spoke of supreme self-confidence.
He had every reason to be chuffed and feel he was invincible. In newspaper interviews, the firebrand leader of a faction of the murderous sectarian outfit, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), had owned up to the murders of over a hundred Shias, also having been charged with some 70 such killings at different times, but was never once convicted.
Does Malik Ishaq’s killing indicate the final act of abandonment of the ‘good Taliban, bad Taliban’ policy?
Endless stories spoke of witness intimidation, and where it didn’t work, of elimination; of prosecutors being reminded of the fate of their colleagues who didn’t oblige in the past and of judges browbeaten into ordering acquittals.
Where the trial was ordered in prison for safety concerns, a judge is said to have refused to preside over the proceedings after apparently receiving a phone call. In another reported incident a judge buried his face in his hands when Malik Ishaq got up and started to rattle off his children’s names.
It can be said with certainty, there was state collusion in keeping this man free to carry on directing his murderous organisation whether from inside prison, and he spent a decade and a half running his bloody network from behind bars, or after securing his freedom from the superior courts a few years back.
Published accounts, never contradicted by the military, have said he was flown from prison in southern Punjab to the GHQ in 2009 when the military’s citadel in Rawalpindi was attacked by militants and a building was taken over by them along with some hostages. He was asked to convince the leader of the terrorists to surrender to the authorities.
He didn’t succeed. The siege ended when Special Service Group commandos stormed the building, killing all of the attackers and capturing their leader alive. Usman was an army medical corps paramedic deserter and was recently executed.
Another reported incident, again not contradicted by the army, suggested Malik Ishaq was asked by former army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to stop his sectarian murder campaign to which he is said to have responded: General Sahib, hum aapke bachche hein, lekin humein aisa karne ko naa kahein, jo hum nahin kar sakte. (Sir, we are like your children but please don’t ask for the impossible.)
Why wouldn’t such a man have huge self-confidence and an air of invincibility about him? He could literally get away with murder a hundred times over. Therefore, when he was picked up by Punjab police about a week ago for the investigation of some sectarian murders, everybody ignored the report, thinking it was one of those non-stories and he’d be freed in a few days.
Then Pakistan woke up to the startling news of his death, in what police said was a shootout with his comrades who attacked a police convoy carrying him and other LJ prisoners to free them near Muzaffargarh, sometime in the small hours of Wednesday. But till images started to circulate on the social media, many like me were finding it hard to believe the man who directly ordered or inspired hundreds of murders with impunity across the country was no more.
The most dramatic photo showed his blood-soaked corpse with bullet wounds on the tiled floor of the mortuary. His eye, frozen open in death, stared into the distance as if in disbelief at what had happened to him. His apparent disbelief was equal to what many experienced across Pakistan. The photo was clearly more eloquent than a thousand words. The reality started to sink in.
As it did, a spate of questions started to storm though many minds. Was this incident exactly as the police said it happened? A determined and fierce yet failed attempt by LJ activists who tried to free their leader and all of them died in the resultant shootout?
Or was this a typical ‘encounter’, a staged extrajudicial killing because the security forces had given up hope of securing a conviction in court. If it was the latter course, no law-abiding citizen would condone an extrajudicial murder. (At the same time, I suspect, the protest at this particular incident would be far less vociferous for obvious reasons.)
In either case, it represented a stiffening of the spine of the Punjab police which for years has preferred to cut deals with sectarian groups, like most political parties — most notably the governing party — and not enforce the law.
If that is indeed the case, what has changed? Does it indicate the final act of abandonment of the suicidal and doomed ‘good Taliban, bad Taliban’ policy by the military establishment? If that is the case then one can only wholeheartedly welcome it.
When the law-enforcement effort in Karachi, despite all its shortcomings, was targeting and hitting hard TTP leaders/cadres as well as Lyari gangland key figures/minions, there was little protest. Since the heat has turned on MQM’s militants, there is a lot more protestation witnessed even on the social media.
The one question constantly being raised was that while the MQM was being hammered, sectarian groups were apparently largely being left alone because of the old nexus between the security forces and their non-state arm, these proxies.
Malik Ishaq’s killing will go a long way in correcting what appeared to be an anomaly. If now the operation is extended to southern Punjab sectarian sanctuaries and they are also taken on vigorously in Balochistan, public confidence in the state will be boosted significantly. The results will be there for all to see.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2015
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