Beyond Lal Masjid episode

BETWEEN July 3 and 10, 2007, came an event that many people in the country have been calling a great tragedy and mourning. What happened? Two brothers, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid, administrators of a mosque called Lal Masjid, and the teachers and students of an affiliated seminary (Jamia Hafsa) decided that they were entitled to enforce the Sharia on the folks outside.

They abducted and detained persons of whose morals they did not approve, kidnapped policemen and seized their vehicles, and threatened to burn down music shops. They took in scores of militants and stored modern heavy weapons and ammunition in their premises.

Some five months after all this lawlessness had begun, the government moved to stop it. Police and other security personnel were posted outside the mosque and the seminary in the hope of eventually apprehending some of the law-breakers.

The hardliners in the mosque responded by firing at the security force and killed and wounded some of them. At the same time, government representatives opened “negotiations” with the Lal Masjid administrators. These negotiations got nowhere and eventually the security force launched their “operation” to reach and subdue the militants.

In the encounters that followed, a number of security men, and a larger number of persons inside the mosque and the seminary, including not only Abdul Rashid and several militants but also some women and children, got killed and wounded. Politicians and organs of civil society opposed to General Musharraf have been condemning this operation on one or more of the following grounds:

(1) that the Lal Masjid and Hafsa people, professedly righteous Muslims, were within their rights to enforce the Sharia if the government wouldn’t;

(2) that the government had been much too tardy in taking action, and that it should have moved when the mosque had not yet become a heavily armed fortress;

(3) that negotiations with the militants should have been continued even if they were deadlocked, for eventually these men might have got tired and surrendered;

(4) that the operation when it did come was reckless and the force used was excessive, causing avoidable casualties.

Except for the government’s tardiness, adequate answers to these objections can be found. But I do not intend to go looking for them, because there is a larger issue that I want to address. With regard to tardiness, I shall limit myself to a brief comment. General Musharraf and his officials plead that they did not act sooner because the mosque and the seminary housed several hundred women and children and the government did not want them to get hurt. This is not a good excuse.

The Hafsa women occupying the children’s library in January should not have been hard to handle. A dozen or so good, hefty policewomen could have gone in and thrown them out or arrested them. Even in March or April a couple of hundred policewomen, called in from various stations in the province, could have dealt with the women and children in the seminary. The government’s tardiness is indeed blameworthy, and it must take responsibility for its consequences.

There is another aspect of this affair to which I should like to draw attention. Critics of the “operation” belong to groups of the present government’s detractors and opponents. They will routinely condemn its moves even when they are well-intentioned and not even goofy. But their denunciations are almost always one-sided.

In the case under review they speak, with all the emphasis and eloquence at their command, of the government’s errors of judgment and excesses. But they prefer to overlook the criminality of the Lal Masjid and Hafsa “brigades”. Even those who denounced their lawlessness before the “operation” now choose to ignore it.

Men and women are being killed in acts of violence all over the country, allegedly, as a reaction to the Lal Masjid operation. But this kind of violence has been rampant since long before July 10, 2007. Extremism and related terrorism began spreading in the mid-1980s and now they have assumed truly alarming proportions. Can anything be done to stem this tide?

In conversations on the subject it has become customary to say that one must go to the causes and remove them if the problem is to be resolved.

One set of causes relates to the West’s perceived antipathy to Islam and Muslims, American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Musharraf regime’s partnership in the war against terrorism. No government in Pakistan can control western attitudes or American policy.

The present government could, conceivably, withdraw from its cooperative relationship with the United States, but that would be hard to do, because it has neither the will nor the capacity to extricate itself from the wide-ranging and complex network of dependence on western powers, particularly the United States. This holds for other governments in Pakistan as well.

Let us suppose for a moment that Pakistan does walk away from its alliance with the United States, or that the latter begins to work for equity and justice in world affairs, and ask if acts of terrorism within this country will cease.

Surely, it cannot be said that the man who blew himself up and a number of others, who had assembled to greet the Chief Justice outside the district courts in Islamabad on July 17, was moved by his resentment against America’s doings. The same may be true of countless other acts of terrorism that we have been witnessing over the years.

Military rule in Pakistan is also mentioned as one of the causes of terrorism, meaning that some persons resort to terrorist acts out of their deep disappointment with the current system, and it is said that the restoration of genuine democracy will cure this malady. This prescription may have a calming effect on the Baloch insurgents and Sindhi nationalist groups, but that remains to be seen.

It may, however, be recalled that unspeakable atrocities were committed when ethnic conflict raged in Karachi and other urban centres of Sindh during the “democratic” regimes of Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif.

Still another interpretation has it that ignorance, unemployment, poverty, and other deprivations turn individuals to terrorism. They will undertake even suicide bombings because they have nothing to live for. I cannot say that this explanation is all wrong.

But nor can I disregard the fact that the larger proportion of the human race has been suffering all kinds of deprivation since the time of Noah, and yet while the miserable ones did occasionally revolt, they are not known to have turned to terrorism on a significant scale.

Our own times seem to be different from the old days. In any case, the alleviation of poverty and ignorance in Pakistan, even if it becomes a serious objective of public policy, may take 50 years to accomplish. What do we do in the meantime?

Each one of the above-mentioned “causes” may have had a role in building inducement to terrorism. But it cannot be said that the removal of any one of them will make the world quiet and peaceful. In our own area, as important as any of these causes, perhaps even more critical, is the rise of ideological (or religious) militancy.

There are the Taliban and their admirers, such as the Lal Masjid and Hafsa brigades, who believe that others must think and act as they do, and if they won’t, they deserve to be tormented. They have no interest in the integrity of Pakistan. In their reckoning it does not deserve to be kept afloat if it won’t enforce their version of Islam all the way.

This persuasion is spreading. Its proponents are operating parallel systems of administration in even some of the settled districts of the NWFP. It may be possible to counter their argument at a high level of intellectual sophistication, but it is virtually unassailable when it is made to a semi-literate Muslim. He cannot deny the efficacy of the Sharia or the desirability of enforcing it. No wonder then that there is sympathy for the Taliban and their work even in certain areas outside the NWFP.

Where then may we say we are headed? General Musharraf says he can and will eradicate extremism and terrorism if he remains in power, which he says he will. Ms Benazir Bhutto says she can do the same if she is allowed to come to power, but that he cannot. It is not known how he or she will accomplish this mission.

The only way with which either of them is well acquainted (he more than she) is resort to force. He has done it in Waziristan and Balochistan (not to mention Islamabad) without any notable success.

This whole issue came up for discussion among some of my friends at a dinner the other day. Having explored the “causes,” they concluded that nothing could be done to reverse these trends to extremism and terrorism in Pakistan.

It is possible that the Taliban may some day rule all of Pakistan. One of my friends thought that might not be a disaster, considering that Iran under the ayatollahs was not doing so badly. One has to concede that quite a few people in Pakistan might welcome the prospect of Talibanisation.

In any case, we cannot dismiss the possibility that while Pakistan continues to be treated as a single state in international forums, it will in effect be divided between the Taliban types and those who hold (as did the Quaid-i-Azam in his address of August 11, 1947) that the individual citizen’s pursuance of his religion is none of the state’s business. But if one side attempts to force its doctrine upon the other we may have a civil war on our hands.

Uncertainty and instability will continue to plague our public life until we either submit to the Taliban or one of our governments finds the honesty and nerve to say unequivocally that it has neither the capacity nor, therefore, the intention to remake the state, society, and individual conduct in accord with the Sharia.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US. Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Restoring trust in civil service

A FAVOURITE quote about Islamabad used to be that it was only 15 minutes away from Pakistan. Not any more. It has effectively become a part of Pakistan, as of the year 2007, much to the glee of non-residents, who used to envy the peace and tranquillity of this city.

The firing of artillery, machine-guns and hand grenades in the heart of the city (to subdue a mosque) is something that Islamabad had not even experienced in wars fought with India. As if this were not enough, a suicide attack in the centre of Islamabad, rudely awakened the residents of Islamabad from their slumber since the city’s inception. The diplomats posted here have for the first time genuinely started to earn their “hardship allowance” that they had been drawing from their governments for decades.

Moreover, the CDA, in order to give residents a taste of Pakistan, dug up all the roads simultaneously in order to meet some imaginary deadline or perhaps to expend the huge resources made available to them. Driving around Islamabad is no different now than doing so in a rural tehsil town, and the use of a four-wheel drive is more a necessity than a status symbol.

Mercifully, all news is not bad news. There is a lifting of the spirits and an exchange of congratulatory greetings amongst strangers at the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict on July 20 to strike down the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. The public perceives that for the first time in a country led/managed by a single institution, another institution has been reborn.

In civilised countries, there are at least four institutions that work effectively i.e. the parliament, the judiciary, the executive and the press. In a country like ours, the role of all these institutions is taken over by the army whether there is an elected or non-elected government. In the case of the former, the role is implicit, and in the latter, it is explicit.

With the July 20 decision, it is hoped that at least one more institution will emerge, which will provide the checks and balances so necessary to the running of any organisation, even if it is as basic as a household.

Talking of institutions, one is constrained to point out the abysmal state of affairs of the law-enforcement apparatus, not all of it due to its own doing. Take the example of the Lal Masjid operation. The manner of its implementation left a lot to be desired. In Islamabad Capital Territory, the law and order apparatus is headed by the chief commissioner since Islamabad has been deprived of the wonders of devolution.

In addition, there is an inspector-general of police, who commands a large force, recently reinforced by men and material. Then there is the DC supported by his magistrates (a provocative word for the framers of the devolution plan).

Now such an issue as that of the Lal Masjid is a typical law and order one that the civil administration, supported by the police, is trained to handle. To the extent that a local force cannot handle a matter, it is up to their discretion under the rules to call for support from the paramilitary forces and in extreme and rare cases the army in aid of civil power.

Where was the need to convert the crisis into one akin to capturing an enemy outpost? It should have been treated like the Lal Masjid and not the Lal Qila. The training of senior army commanders and field commanders is understandably different from the requirement of a civil administrator tackling a law and order situation.

Under the peculiar requirements of the army, which is trained to operate against a foreign enemy, the prime task of a field commander is to subdue and overrun an army stronghold/position. His performance is judged by the achievement of the task, with little regard to the collateral damage suffered.

It is true that an operation commanded by the civil administration may not have led to total victory, but that was not necessarily the requirement of the situation. Perhaps it would have taken even longer to subdue the militants, perhaps some may have escaped, but there would have been less bloodshed and a perfectly legitimate action by the government would not have been turned against it.

Where is the need to expose the army in every situation and bring the kind of reprisals that one is seeing in the form of targeting cantonments when a perfectly workable alternative is available?

Take the example of the tribal areas. This was always a far-off land which was the source of the smuggled goods in the era of high tariff barriers. It was a land where everyone carried a gun, but where there was zero crime. It was a land which had a mysterious administrative system, which even those in government did not quite understand, except those who had served in the field.

In this form of administration, there was the political agent, a representative of the state, who made no effort to man and police every mile of his territory, but governed through a system of collective responsibility by holding the loyalties of maliks/sufaidposh through policies of carrot and stick. The system worked satisfactorily for years.

The first big blow to the system came when the adult franchise was introduced for the first time in the 1990s, reducing the effectiveness of the maliks to zero. We, in this country specialise in introducing modern systems, some even borrowed from First World countries, without caring to see whether we have done anything to raise the education levels or the income of people whose lives will be impacted by the changes. The introduction of the devolution plan and the ongoing conversion of B areas into A areas in Balochistan fall in this category.

The second big blow came when we introduced the army in the tribal areas and gave it command and declared the old system of administration redundant, corrupt and colonial; epithets which can be affixed with ease to any institution. Obviously, things seemed to improve initially under the power of the gun, but that was not sustained as the actual problems, which were brushed under the carpet in the exhilaration of the early success of the introduction of gun power, started to emerge. The situation became worse than before, because having used all the trump cards, there was nothing left to play with.

Now one hears that the old system of tribal administration is being strengthened again and the post of commissioner in the NWFP has been reintroduced under the title of regional coordination officer. But the damage has been done. The government’s opponents know that it has no trump cards left, having used its maximum gun power already.

Take another example of results achieved by demeaning the civil administration and increasing dependence on military/paramilitary solutions — Karachi on May 12. From press reports, one learns that the wisdom and experience of the local civil administration was not used and the planning to handle the Chief Justice’s visit was done either elsewhere or against its advice.

As events proved subsequent to the fiasco, the same objective of the government, without going into its moral correctness, could have been achieved in a better manner if the experience and wisdom of the local administration had been sought.

Are we going to learn anything from our past experience? It is true that all civil administrators are not competent or honest or possess initiative. But that is not to say there are none available in the system.

If the right man for the right job is selected on the consideration of merit alone, and political self-aggrandisement of the appointing authority is not allowed to come in the way, there are not only enough good men in the civil system, they also have the capability to run it well.

We need to suppress our instinct to change the system, just because we can’t override our political compulsions and select the right man for the right job and repose confidence in him.

In real life, there are no ideal solutions to issues, which are completely black or white. Use of firepower and arbitrary authority do bring very short-term respites, but they are usually followed by bigger and uncontrollable storms. It is time we restored the confidence level of the civil administration (with or without the nazim), reposed trust in it, and spared the army from being exposed in all situations to retain the sanctity of this most pivotal institution.

The writer is a former interior secretary.
tasneem.noorani@tnassociates.net