THE struggle over producing a list of banned outfits shows that the government is not clear about who should be on the list and who shouldn’t.

Clarity on religious extremist groups means more than going on about ‘zero tolerance’ policies and promising an end to the distinction between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban.

Clarity means being able to, at the very least, name all known religiously-motivated militant organisations operating in the country, telling the public why many of them have been banned, and what action is being taken to shut down their operations and apprehend their activists and leaders.

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None of this appears to be happening. Putting up one list on a government website, only to take it down a few days later, clearly indicates confusion about the enemy to be pursued.

The failure to create actionable guidelines for the identification of assets and funding lines connected with these organisations shows lack of, or worse still fear of, resolute action.

The Senate has been struggling to get a simple list from the Punjab police of madressahs known to have militant links; yet three hearings later it is no closer to obtaining one than it was at the start.

Yet we are told that 19,000 suspected militants have already been apprehended. This claim strains credulity. If it were true, we would be hearing far more noise than we are at the moment.

The religious parties, after protesting vigorously that their seminaries should not be caught up in the dragnet, have gone quiet and those with a presence in politics have returned to business as usual, a clear enough sign that their apprehensions have been assuaged.

How has this silence come about? Have they been given an assurance that their networks will not be touched in the course of fighting terror? And if so, will this assurance weaken the fight or strengthen it?

Without clarity of mind, the ongoing operation will amount to little more than the myriad operations that have come before it. What exactly is stopping the government and the security agencies from defining a terrorist?

What stops them from naming madressahs that are known to be linked to militant organisations? What prevents them from pursuing the assets and funding lines that are known to function within the country’s formal financial system?

The fact that answers are needed almost three months after the awful tragedy in Peshawar and 40 days after the blast in Shikarpur, begs an even more fundamental question: what will it take to realise that wars cannot be won without clarity of mind?

If we have resolved to uproot terrorism in the country, surely the first step in this direction is to be clear on who is a terrorist and who isn’t. How can we claim to be fighting an enemy that we are afraid to even name?

Published in Dawn March 10th , 2015

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