Deciding an appropriate title for this
article was a task that required a great deal of thought: can the PML-N save
Pakistan? Can the PML-N government/Nawaz government save Pakistan? They all
mean the same thing, but obfuscate one very important facet of how Pakistan is
governed today: Pakistan is a dictatorship under the guise of a democracy,
where the Prime Minister is the Defence Minister as well as Foreign Minister,
and controls all decision-making (not the processes, of which he is quite
incapable, but the final ‘yes’ or ‘no’) that goes on at the federal level and
in the Punjab province – except for the matters delegated to the Punjab Chief
Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, who “incidentally” happens to be the Prime Minister’s
brother. So the question that this article asks is: can Nawaz Sharif save
Pakistan? And the simple answer – even though the new government has only been
in power for barely five months – is no.
The above picture speaks volumes of
the new government’s anti-terror strategy, or rather, how this strategy (if it
even exists) is working. The PM called for an all-parties conference (APC) –
which has become a political get-together held every now and then ever since
Pakistan’s democratic political parties started developing platforms and forums
to restore democracy and oust the Army from politics – which was delayed after
the PM made a surprise visit to the ISI headquarters on. Instead of surprising
the military intelligence apparatus, it appears most likely that the PM himself
– who has returned to mainstream political life after a hiatus of 14 years –
was surprised by the ISI and their DG about the reality of the situation on the
ground. The PM was accompanied by the Chief Minister of the Punjab province
(and no other province, since he has no other brothers to get elected as Chief
Ministers), the federal Interior Minister, and the PM’s advisor on national
security, the aged Sartaj Aziz, who was comfortably squeezed out of the race
for the Presidential election by a hitherto unknown businessman by the name of
Mamnoon Hussain – a Nawaz loyalist who used to greet the PM with ‘dahi bhallay’
upon the latter’s arrival to Karachi, and then continued this service in Adiala
jail when Nawaz Sharif was ousted in the October 12, 1999 coup. Mamnoon Hussain
was rewarded by the new Chief Executive of the country, General Pervez
Musharraf, with incarceration in the Adiala jail, so that he would easily be
able to provide Mr. Sharif with all Punjabi delicacies and junk food that he
could to curry favour with the one who loves to eat.
During his “surprise” visit to the ISI
HQ, the PM and his team was briefed for four hours, and the PM was briefed in
private by the DG ISI as well. And then the APC – which the PTI, one of the
staunchest opponents of the PML-N, openly welcomed – was called off, delayed,
postponed, what have you. The Federal Information Minister, Pervaiz Rashid,
said on July 21st that
the APC would be
convened after the PTI
Chairman, Imran Khan, returned from his visit to the U.K. In response, Imran
Khan has said – on August 12th –
that “the idea of
[an] APC is meaningless until the government has a counter-terrorism
policy to present before it”. And the Leader of the Opposition, the PPP’s
Khurshid Shah, is disgusted with the incumbent government’s
silence over the ongoing terrorist activities in the country. In addition, he
has appealed to the masses that they should defend themselves “without
expecting anything from the government” since it would “do nothing to protect
their [the citizens’] rights of life and property”; and that the Nawaz
government was “more concerned with collecting funds in the name of so called
progress and prosperity”. This is what the political parties in Parliament
think about the government’s anti-terror strategy and overall methodology to
deal with terrorism in Pakistan.
So even if the Nawaz government comes
up with an anti-terrorism policy, what will it be? Most importantly, will it
rely on use of force, or will it be founded on the principles of honest and
candid negotiations with reliable partners? And who will these reliable
partners be? Will they be the Afghan Taliban, who are fighting a war against
international forces who have “occupied” Afghanistan since 2001 and are eagerly
waiting for 2014 to withdraw (or run away, to be more precise) their forces
from a country that has not be conquered – or “stabilized”, as the West and the
international community would have everyone believe – by any foreign power
since Alexander the Great; and what will Pakistan negotiate with them for?
A peaceful and stable Afghanistan
after 2014 that is not a safe haven for terrorists nor poses a threat to other
countries in the region or the rest of the world? Or will these reliable
partners be the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a so-called “Taliban” militia
that the Afghan Taliban disavow, and who have taken up arms against the
Pakistani state and the Pakistan Army, whose ultimate goal is the destruction
of the modern state of Pakistan which will be replaced with an archaic and
regressive regime where flogging, amputation and beheading will be the form of
justice rather than the due processes of law and the modern system of
investigation and indictment. The TTP have proven themselves to be unreliable
negotiating partners in one form or another since 2004, when they made deals
with the Pakistan Army and/or the political administrations of the FATA
agencies, and then reneged on the terms that they themselves proposed, only to
be pummeled into submission and eliminated from the scene by elements of the
Pakistan Army.
Will it be the Nawaz government’s
overall anti-terror strategy to negotiate with terrorists? Imran Khan has also
supported this stance, but negotiating with unreliable partners is a very
tricky undertaking. Moreover, will there be a clean slate offered to the
Taliban/TTP? Will they face no consequences for the havoc they wreaked on
Pakistan for the last decade or so? Will the more than 10,000 military
casualties and more than 30,000 civilian casualties just be forgiven and
forgotten? Were they just killed to prove a point: that the Pakistani state
cannot deal with the TTP on their own terms, and must negotiate with them on
the latter’s terms? And in the overall “endgame” scenario, considering the
regional perspective as well (the NATO-ISAF withdrawal from Afghanistan and
tensions between the U.S. and Iran), will the state of Pakistan continue to
adhere to its three main principles for “peace talks” with the Taliban/TTP:
that the terrorists must accept the Constitution of Pakistan as the law of the
land; that they must surrender their weapons and cease anti-state and terrorist
activities in the country; and that they must answer for the crimes they have
committed against the nation – the state, its institutions, and most
importantly, the people? Please note that the economic loss that Pakistan
suffered from the War on Terror – which can be estimated to lie between US$ 30
to 50 billion, maybe even more – is not even being considered here, and much
less importance is being given to the recovery from such a loss; after all,
when one considers the loss of life – invaluable and irreplaceable in its act,
and terribly large in its quantification – the loss of money or property
becomes less and less important, as it should.
And despite the Taliban’s “brothers”
(as Shahbaz Sharif called them after they attacked a prominent moderate madrasssa
in Lahore, assassinating a well-known Islamic scholar and voice of reason,
Mufti Muhammad Hussain Naeemi) being in power now, in the federal legislature
as well as in Punjab, the quantum of terrorism throughout the country has only
increased. Before one turns to the recent spate of terror attacks, one must
remember the exact statement made by Shahbaz Sharif in March 2010: he asked the
Taliban to spare the Punjab, and the
PML-N in particular, since the party opposed General Musharraf – who took
dictation from abroad and supported the U.S. War on Terror – so “if the Taliban
are also fighting for the same cause then they should not carry out acts of
terror in Punjab”. This excerpt has been derived from the Reuters news agency. Lest one forgets, if
President Musharraf or President Zardari are proxies or even stooges of the
U.S., the PML-N and the Nawaz brothers are stooges of the Saudi monarchy
without a doubt – and by proxy, the Nawaz government will acquiesce to any and
every demand made by the U.S. through Saudi intermediaries. After all, during
their exile, they were hosted by the Saudi government in a palatial residence
in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Sharif brothers have a lot of favours
to return. If the Nawaz government will refuse American demands to “do more” or
do one thing or the other, the Americans will simply ask the Saudi’s, who will
“request” the Nawaz government to do that particular “one thing or the other”,
and the end result will be the same. The DAWN News was much more aggressive and
unforgiving when it came to Shahbaz Sharif’s apologetic and utterly pathetic
and helpless attitude towards the Taliban; in an editorial titled “Sharif and the Taliban”,
many more questions were raised, and many more accusations were made. Was CM
Sharif asking the Taliban to attack Pakistan in other provinces but not in
Punjab? Why is it so difficult for PML-N to condemn terrorism outright and
without hesitation? Is it because one of their main political operators in the
Punjab, Rana Sanaullah, is “in bed” with banned terror outfits like LeJ and SSP
in order to get them and their cadres to vote for the PML-N? Why is Punjab
witnessing a rise in “encounter killings” by the police, in accordance with how
Shahbaz Sharif and his personal justice system functions? Is killing an alleged
criminal without due process of law and without a day in court not injustice?
Is it not the murder of a fellow Pakistani by law enforcement officers who are
duty-bound to protect and serve all Pakistanis? Which side of the ideological
divide does the PML-N ultimately stand on – is it against militancy in all
shapes and forms, or is it ideologically sympathetic to the ‘justness’ of some
facets of the militants’ cause? In sum, the editorial asserted that according
to Shahbaz Sharif, his party, the PML-N – which now rules Pakistan and the
Punjab province – shares a common cause with the Taliban. The editorial
demanded that he apologize to Punjab and to the nation. No such apology has
been issued so far, and Shahbaz Sharif has been re-elected as Chief Minister of
the Punjab, who controls the Home Ministry portfolio, among many, many others
(and it seems rather strange that the PML-N cannot find enough decent men to
run the federal and provincial ministries – and devote their entire energies
and concentration to the subject of governance that they are supposed to, or
given to, administer – for them, because the entire burden of running these
various ministries and their departments and agencies falls on the poor Sharif
brothers).
Many news agencies and research
organizations are tabulating the amount of terror attacks that have taken place
since the new government came into power. But some major incidents of the past
week alone can paint enough of a picture which can be perused to see how
helpless the Nawaz government is in front of their “brothers”, the terrorists
who are destroying Pakistan piece by piece.
On Thursday, August 8th, a
suicide bomber attacked the funeral of SHO Muhibullah – who was shot earlier in
the morning while shopping with his family for the Eid festival – in the highly
guarded Quetta Police Lines compound. The funeral – and the attack – took place
in front of the Police Lines mosque. The attack killed 30 and injured 60, many
of whom were serving police officials. The senior police officials who embraced
martyrdom in this attack were Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Police Operations
Fayyaz Sumbal, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Headquarters Shamsuddin
and Superintendent (SP) Ali Mehr. The provincial police chief, Inspector
General Mushtaq Sukhera, said, “our brave officers embraced martyrdom but we
will continue sacrificing our lives for the security of our motherland”. Too
bad that these brave men will have to continue sacrificing their lives because
their government is unable to come up with a robust counter-terrorism strategy
that would probably not require the sacrifice of these valuable lives, these
soldiers of the nation who protect and defend the people of Pakistan. IG
Sukhera said, “such attacks cannot demoralise the police force … Terrorists
snatched sons from mothers and fathers, brothers from sisters and husbands from
wives”. Sadly, these martyrs will be added to the list of dead combatants –
already over 10,000 so far – and as the IG said, brave police officers will
continue sacrificing their lives for our sacred motherland, while the PML-N
government and their boss, Nawaz Sharif, enjoys the benefits of being in
government.
On August 5th, security
forces and law enforcement agencies went on high
alert and scoured the
Margalla Hills adjacent to the federal capital, Islamabad, and sent
reinforcements to protect key, sensitive installations after receiving
intelligence reports that the headquarters of the Pakistan Air Force, the
Pakistan Navy, and the Parliament House, along with some high profile
personalities would be targeted in the coming days. Of course, when the
powers-that-be are under threat, all necessary means to prevent terror attacks
and threats against their lives are taken. But when it comes to the common man,
the average Pakistani, they are left to their own devices, and to the Will of
God. On Friday, August 9th, when the entire country was offering
congregational Eid-ul-Fitr prayers, a terrorist attack on a Shia mosque in Bara
Kahu – on the outskirts of the Islamabad – was thankfully foiled because of a
private security guard. According to DAWN News,
the guard opened fire on the bomber as he entered the mosque and killed him.
“He could not explode his jacket” because of timely response by the guard. It
was also reported that another guard was killed while fighting off the suicide
bomber. Earlier on the same day, gunmen attacked worshipers – Muslims offering
Eid-ul-Fitr prayers – in a mosque in Quetta, killing at least 10 and injuring
many others.
This increase in terror attacks is
also being linked to a jailbreak
in Dera Ismail Khan on
Tuesday, July 30th, when Dozens of heavily-armed Pakistani Taliban
(TTP) insurgents freed nearly 175 inmates, including 35 ‘high-profile’ or
‘hardcore’ militants, during a brazen overnight attack. The heavily armed
militants had attacked the prison from different sides around midnight. Armed
with guns, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and bombs, the militants dressed
in police uniforms bombarded the prison before escaping with scores of inmates
after a three-hour shootout. According to police, the gunmen launched their
attack with a series of heavy explosions before firing rocket propelled
grenades and machine guns. The attack began with a huge explosion and several smaller
blasts before security forces engaged the attackers. Military troops were
eventually called in which conducted a six-hour long operation to take back
control of the prison. A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Shahidullah
Shahid, accepted responsibility for the attack; he claimed around 100 militants
attacked the prison, including a number of suicide bombers. As is obvious, this
will make law enforcement and internal security more problematic within
Pakistan, especially because of the release of the ‘hardcore’ militants, who
are not only dedicated to their cause unto death, but are master planners and
strategists, giving terrorists an extra edge over the security forces and law
enforcement agencies of Pakistan.
This was not the first instance when militants
have attempted – and succeeded – to free their captive associates in Pakistan.
Nearly 400 prisoners, including militants, had escaped on April 15, 2012 from
Bannu Jail after an attack by insurgents armed with guns, grenades and rockets.
More than 150 heavily-armed militants had stormed the central prison outside
the restive northwestern town of Bannu bordering the lawless tribal regions.
TTP commander Adnan Rashid, who was serving a jail term for attacking former
president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, was among the freed detainees.
Another question remains to be asked
(and answered): even if the Pakistan government (still) does not have an
anti-terror or counter-terror policy, how does the Pakistan government’s public
relations apparatus – or the Ministry of Information and Public Broadcasting –
interact with the citizenry when it comes to issues regarding terrorism? Does
an advance warning of “so-and-so amount of terrorists have entered a certain
city” help in policing efforts, or does it just exacerbate tensions and
insecurity at an individual level? Has the government – past or present – come
up with any mechanism whereby the citizenry can assist the government and law
enforcement agencies in identifying terrorist hideouts, catching terrorists, and
foiling terror plots? Is the FIA Red Book even publicized as vociferously and
as aggressively as it is supposed to, in a country wracked by a nexus between
localized criminal elements and international terrorists? Is there even a
standard operating procedure issued by the government or by relevant
ministries/agencies about (a) what citizens should do if they have information
regarding an imminent threat or terror attack, (b) what citizens should do if a
terrorist attack – like a gunbattle or a bomb blast – happens, (c) how citizens
can help the government, the military, sensitive agencies and law enforcement
organizations in making their communities (if not the entire city or country)
more secure than it was the day before? It seems that behind their walls of
concrete and myriad layers of human security, the powers-that-be are unaware
about the insecurity faced by the average citizen from a street mugger or
mobile snatcher, from a kidnapper or target killer, or from a terrorist. For if
a mind as simple as mine can ask the questions posed above, maybe there are
some minds – perhaps even entire departments or agencies – that could ask these
questions. Perhaps they should have asked – and answered – these questions
almost a decade ago, and Pakistan would have been a more secure country,
despite ongoing terrorist attacks and terror threats. It has been obvious for
over a decade that while the rulers of Pakistan are safe and secure, the people
of Pakistan are certainly not – and the government, regardless of which regime
is in power, has left the public to fend for themselves: buy guns, hire private
security guards, or just be more careful.
In this way, the government of
Pakistan – again, regardless of which regime or political party occupies the
top slots – is losing space to the terrorists because the latter are not
winning the hearts and minds of the people – they have ingrained themselves as
the main threat to every Pakistani citizen, and have also assured all of us
that the government can do nothing about them and their activities. Therefore,
the list of already inadequate governance services (education, health, water
and sanitation, social protection, etc.) provided by the state of Pakistan can
also include security, safety and peace as one of the services that the
government/state of Pakistan is woefully incapable of providing to its citizens
across the board – no wonder the country’s tax base is so small: because the
people of Pakistan know that their tax money will not get them the services
that the state is duty bound to provide them at the best quality and at the
appropriate time. As the Balochistan IG mentioned, every mother worries every
day whether her child will return home safely from school; every wife worries
every day whether her husband will reach his workplace safely, and will be able
to return home the same day without being attacked in one way or another. And,
mind you, the “free and independent” (yet completely unprofessional and
irresponsible) media of Pakistan does not help – it is conducting psychological
warfare on the minds of Pakistanis and keeping the terrorist threat alive in
our minds, not letting us forget the fear that plagues us on a daily basis. The
media not only informs the general public, but scrambles to get breaking news,
new information, and other things to increase their own ratings, but in the
process, they damage the Pakistani mind to such an extent that every Pakistani
thinks – on a daily basis – that tomorrow, Pakistani will not exist; that
pretty soon, Pakistan will be controlled by terrorists. While foreigners are
more likely to believe this perspective than the Pakistani who lives in
Pakistan, or the foreigner who visits Pakistan, the psychological damage is
done – by the terrorists, and by the equally blameworthy electronic media.
Thank God they started using black and white footage for clips where blood can
be seen everywhere after a bomb blast or suicide attack. But that is all they
have done – they have not done anything (just like the Pakistani government) to
calm the minds of the Pakistani citizenry: that was left to Urdu1 and
“Ishq-e-Mamnoo”, which the local drama industry (now on its deathbed) had many
issues with, despite the fact that all the constituents of this almost-dead
industry (and the dead Pakistani film industry) yearn to go to India to show
their talents and make a buck. The Pakistani drama industry said that TV shows
from Turkey – a brotherly nation and perhaps the only country in the world
where Pakistanis are still respected for the help that Muslims from India
provided to the Turks in their War of Independence – do not reflect the culture
of Pakistan: well, do the item songs in Indian movies reflect our culture? What
about American movies being shown in jam-packed cinemas: do they reflect our
culture? Even their self-serving arguments are stupid, inane, pointless, and
can be easily countered by anyone who has the slightest idea of what “reason”
and “logic” is. From the government to the media to the showbusiness industry,
everyone belonging to these categories in Pakistan – everyone in Pakistan who
feels safe (and is safe) in some way, and is safer than the average citizen –
has proven their duplicity, their deception, their fraudulence and their sheer
treachery in making Pakistan unsafe in one way or the other: by doing
something, they are in fact helping the terrorists and the enemies of the
state, so it is better that they do nothing. If they have to do something, they
should do so in a professional manner, and should keep public interest
paramount. Sadly, “keeping public interest paramount” is what every
governmental agencies and non-government organization claims it is doing, but
66 years have proven that these claims are so hollow that they are emptier than
a black hole (if that is possible according to quantum physics).
As Pakistan’s 66th Independence Day approaches, let us
all remind our newly elected government that governance is not about sitting in
comfortable chairs and eating seven course meals every day: it is about serving
the people, and protecting the peace. It is about ensuring a bright future for
the youth and for coming generations. It is about enforcing the writ of the
state because the state is what identifies the general public as citizens whom
it is supposed to serve – the state, as a structure, gives teeth to the pieces
of paper known as the Constitution and the Civil Penal Code and the Criminal
Penal Code, and makes it known (or, in the case of Pakistan, should make it
known) what the rights and privileges of each citizen are, and concurrently,
what their duties and obligations are to the state, the government, the
society, the community, and to their fellow man. Whether the 2013 elections
were rigged or not, Pakistan is our country and we must own up to it. We must
do anything and everything in our power to save our country from extremism,
from regressive thoughts being taught in all kinds of schools, from the
negative indoctrination that is being forced down the throats of poor,
illiterate children who eventually become cannon fodder in the War of Terror –
who don a suicide jacket to blow up infidels, but end up detonating their
explosives in mosques and end up killing Muslims. It is high time that we, as a
nation, recognize that the root cause of terrorism lies in extremism, in extremist
thought, and in the takfiri ideology that has been promoted by Al Qaeda, which
places moderate Muslims in the same category as non-believers and infidels:
that those Muslims who “conspire” with non-Muslims or the infidel are worthy of
deal, aka wajib-ul-qatl. This ideology is being peddled around by so-called
Muslims despite the fact that the Holy Prophet PBUH has said, according to
Hadith noted in the Sahih Bukhari, that he who saves one person has saved
humanity, and he who has killed one person has killed humanity. What
troublesome, confusing, ironic times we live in.
All that is necessary for the triumph
of evil is that good men do nothing – Edmund Burke said that a long time ago.
If our government is too busy enjoying the privileges of being in power, let us
– as a people, as a nation, devoid of any differences, distanced from all
divides, united as citizens of one motherland, our beloved Pakistan – vow that
we will rid Pakistan from all threats and evils, especially domestic; that we
will not allow internal and external forces to rob us of our peace, both
societal and psychological; that we will eliminate the scourge of terrorism
from our country by focusing on the venom of extremism that is still being
inserted into our nation’s arteries, its bloodlines, its very fabric, by forces
that wish to actually witness a regression that takes Pakistan back not to the
age of the Prophet PBUH 1400 years ago, but to the Stone Age.
Nawaz Sharif, you have received your
wake up call. It does not accompany a pot of “nihari” and a full plate of
“naans” with it, so you may not attend to this call. But the people of Pakistan
have also received a wake up call. Some of them received it too late; some
received it when they saw dead bodies of their loved ones; others received it
when they saw destruction and carnage wrought by those who think that they are
more Muslim than us – when that is a judgment that only Allah Almighty can
make, and these “holier-than-thou” terrorists are thus frauds and charlatans
and culpable of misinterpreting and simply distorting the true teachings of
Islam to serve their own purpose, and will receive the Holy Justice that awaits
them in the afterlife for passing judgments that only Allah may pass. Pakistan
wakes up every day to terrorist attacks – some can be heard, others can be seen
through television sets or newspapers. It is about time that we look to our
national identity, and conglomerate the positive aspects of all our identities
– our provincial identity, our ethnic or sectarian association, our linguistic
affiliation, all our identities – into our express of our national identity:
that we as Pakistanis will stand up to terrorism and will defeat it. That we as
Pakistanis will rise up to the occasion and fight these TTP infidels, these so-called
Muslims waging a so-called jihad in which Muslims are either killed or
disgraces, side-by-side and shoulder-to-shoulder with our soldiers and our
policemen, with our intelligence agencies and our law enforcement agencies. We
as Pakistanis should do everything we can – every little act counts – to show
our security forces and law enforcement agencies that we are with them, that we
support them, and that we appreciate the fact that they are putting themselves
in danger so that we may be safe and live another day. If we are together, and
if we remain together, we shall succeed and we shall persevere. If we recognize
and destroy the forces that aim to destroy us, to divide us and make us fight
amongst each other, then we will be able to celebrate national unity by
recognizing the diversity and variety that makes Pakistan what it is – and
without any single aspect of this diversity or variety, Pakistan will not be
what it is, and what it wishes to be.
This 14th of August, make a pledge to yourself,
to your family, to your loved ones, and to your country – that we will
persevere, because it is our destiny to do so. No matter what government is in
power, no matter who does what for us or who does nothing for us, we shall
overcome. And those who seek to destroy us will themselves be destroyed. These
are not flowery statements. This is the destiny of Pakistan and of all
Pakistanis. We shall persevere, we shall succeed, and one day, we shall be safe
and secure. Let us hope that our government – at the federal and provincial
levels – can help us be safer and more secure, or at least, not undertake steps
that would make us less secure and more vulnerable. In the end, we must rely on
ourselves, till our government proves that it is worthy of governing a
nation-state as great as Pakistan, through its deeds and its actions, through
its policies and their implementation, through its dealing with the citizenry
and with the enemies of Pakistan. While we can wait and see what our government
does, we will not wait and let the enemy attack us: we will wait, but we will
be ready; we will fight the enemy in the physical space as well as the
ideological space; and those who seek to destroy Pakistan will know what
Pakistanis are made of.
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