Pakistan and terrorism

S P SETH

Sometimes it takes a horrible tragedy for a country to be galvanized into recognizing a real threat. Would the Peshawar killings of innocent children by Pakistani Taliban be such an event? One would hope so if all the revulsion this has created among many people in Pakistan is anything to go by.  But it belies belief that the country’s leadership, both at the political and military levels, didn’t know it already. In a sense they created the monster, both the Afghan and Pakistani versions, though there is some satisfaction that even the Afghan Taliban have not endorsed their Pakistani counterparts’ dastardly act of killing the children. Projecting a new determination to go after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that the government wouldn’t make any distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban and would  eliminate terrorism in Pakistan.

Though it has been generally known that the government and the military establishment were selectively supporting and using militant/terrorist groups for political and strategic reasons--the ‘good’ ones-- this is probably the first implied public admission from the prime minister of Pakistan. And this is what created militancy of all kinds, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, that has now come to haunt and threaten the Pakistani state. Will it be possible to destroy intricate linkages, which the state instrumentalities fostered and nurtured over decades? One will have to be an eternal optimist to believe this.

Nawaz Sharif also believes that the government and military are now united in their resolve to eliminate TTP, apparently referring to a new united front, even endorsing military courts to try the terrorists. It is true that there is now an increasing awareness of the need for a united front but to present it as a reality is a bit overdrawn. For decades now, the military has been either directly or indirectly—sometimes brazenly and at other times less visibly—driving the country’s political power. And to imagine now that the government and military will now be as one is hard to believe. The military-government disharmony is now entrenched into Pakistani governance and it can’t just vanish because of the horrible tragedy of the school killings. There is no real tradition in Pakistan of civilian supremacy over its military establishment. It is rather the other way around.

A very important point missing in this equation about government-military relationship is: where do the Pakistani people fit in? They seem to be missing in this calculus. It would appear that, by and large, people are against extremism/militancy/terrorism. This is borne out by recent protests against school killings, as well as from the relatively poor showing electorally by religious political groups and parties. But the people are also disenchanted and frustrated by the system as it operates today. Which is that, by and large, nothing seems to be working for the people. They are the victims of a highly corrupt, self-seeking and self-perpetuating system, with the political/business elite and the military competing with each other to get the most out of it. In the process, the fractious establishment that governs the country does not have much time and energy to put people’s interests and welfare in the centre of governance. Hence, even though people, by and large, are against terrorists, their alternative choice of what goes for governance in the country is not terribly tempting. Which would explain that despite all the violence wreaked on the country by the Pakistani Taliban over many years now, Pakistan lacks a people’s movement/mobilization against such widespread violence threatening its very existence.

A normal state system thrives on two basic tenets: economic and physical security of people. And both are sorely lacking. At the economic level, apart from those who have enriched themselves by mostly foul means, mass of the people are either doing it from hand to mouth or just getting by with no hope about what tomorrow will bring. It is not that anyone would expect Pakistan to create a welfare society. But it would have been quite feasible to create a sense of hope among its people through a well-devised programme of economic development to tap its human resources like, for instance, building infrastructure projects and the likes. At the same time, it would certainly have been possible to allocate more money to health and education to build up Pakistan’s human capital, if necessary, by diverting a bit of the country’s budget from defence. The state must foster a sense that the country is moving forward.

Pakistan, on the other hand, fostered a sense that the country was in a constant state of threat from within and without. The creation of Bangladesh was a singular example of a failure to manage internal contradictions. A shared religion, Islam, was supposed to override linguistic, cultural and regional differences, which simply proved grossly inadequate. The same is happening in some of Pakistan’s other regions, particularly in Baluchistan, where the primacy of a shared religion is simply not working to create national cohesion. At the same time, the Taliban and other militant groups are at war with the state because it is not considered sufficiently Islamic. In other words, a failure to recognize the diversity of factors other than religion (Islam) as a cohesive national philosophy has simply aggravated tensions and contradictions.

In some sense, the creation of Pakistan has tended to embody the politics of an undivided India, thus externalizing some of the contradictions that marked the subcontinent’s politics. In other words, a Hindu-majority India was perceived as a bigger threat now that the subcontinent became two independent states. What was seen earlier as an internal Hindu-Muslim divide, fostered under the British rule became an international issue between India and Pakistan? This had the unfortunate effect of focusing much of the new state’s energies on preparing to face that ‘threat’, as well as managing to keep Afghanistan into its strategic orbit. Not surprisingly then that the country’s military establishment became the dominant element of national politics and discourse. To cut the long story short, this excessive focus on security vitiated Pakistan’s body politic that created all sorts of issues including the rise of the Taliban and other militant groups.

Therefore, any plan of action simply focusing on the TTP and other terrorist groups, laudable and necessary as it is, must be combined with an integrated national blueprint and strategy to lift the people out of their economic misery and create a sense of hope that Pakistan is finally heading towards a brighter future.  

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au