Battle for our souls

Let me begin with the obvious: This nation is in the throes of an ideological struggle that is reflected in the entire spectrum of our daily lives, from the theoretical field of school textbooks to the killing fields of armed insurgency and terrorism by a growing band of religious fanatics.

Since the creation of Pakistan we have been trying, in vain, to reach a conclusive answer to this fundamental question: Is Pakistan destined to be a theocratic state? Though the question has not yet been resolved, there has always been a significant minority that did conceive of Pakistan as a state with most, if not all, of the attributes of a theocratic state.

The vision of Pakistan as a theocratic state began unfolding soon after the birth of Pakistan. In fact the first symbolic gesture indicative of the future shape of things was made three days before the birth of Pakistan, on 11 August, 1947, when an attempt was made to censor the speech of the Father of the Nation himself. The speech had ideas too liberal for those who thought themselves to be the legitimate inheritors of the legacy that was Pakistan.

Consider same of the other events that happened later: anti-Ahmadi riots of 1953; Shia-Sunni riots of 1963; emergence of sectarian parties in the early 1980s; radicalisation of the army and ‘Islamisation’ of the legal system by General Ziaul Haq from 1977 to 1988; and intensification of religious extremism by jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan. That process has now culminated in the coming of age of the radical fanatics who now claim their legacy – the state of Pakistan.

This conflict is seen, or made to be seen, as a ‘law and order’ problem, and the failure to deal with it is explained as a failure of law-enforcement agencies. But this explanation fails to explain why the law-enforcement agencies have failed in the decade-long confrontation with the militants. It fails to explain why the more than a million-strong force of the military, paramilitary and the police is helpless against less than 50,000 militants belonging to various groups – scattered all over the place, lacking a unified command, and support of the people.

Raising the oft-repeated chorus of the failure of the law-enforcement agencies can be dangerously misleading for it hides the fact that those who matter in politics, military and bureaucracy haven’t yet decided to move decisively against the militants. The reason for this indecision is that the Establishment – though not dedicated to an extremist brand of Islam – does have a partial ideological affinity with the militants, and respect and sympathy for them as freedom fighters against the Soviets, Americans and Indians.

The indecisive mode of the Establishment is, therefore, the reason why the entire state apparatus appears helpless before the militants. What the Establishment needs is not so much courage to act as clarity to see through the confusing mishmash of different views on past associations, present challenges, and future consequences of what we do or fail to do now.

The militants, on the other hand – having been a party to successful resistance against two superpowers, one after the other – feel strong enough to take on the state of Pakistan that is seen by them as weak, indecisive, bankrupt and isolated. This may be true, but what they refuse to see is that they themselves are divisive, unpopular, and destructive – physically, emotionally and spiritually.

They are divided into scores of separate organisations. Those organisations fall into three distinct groups: first, the ideological jihadis, such as Al-Qaeda and Tehreek-e-Taliban; second, the sectarian dogmatists, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba or its successor, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat; third, the veterans of Kashmiri jihad, such as Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba or its successor, Jamaatud Dawah. These three groups, though on similar ideological wavelengths, have their own separate objectives.

The veterans of the Kashmir Jihad are neither sectarian nor, strictly speaking, ideological in their objectives. Their concern is not Islam as such, but Muslims of Indian-occupied Kashmir. The sectarian organisations, on the other hand, have their focus on the other sects, mainly Shia who, according to their understanding of Islam, are beyond the pale of Islam and have to be eliminated.

The third group – the ideological jihadis – is dedicated to the dream of universal caliphate and domination of its own Wahhabi/Deobandi sub-sect over other sects of Islam. Being aware of its own unpopularity, it rejects the democratic form of governance and doesn’t even believe in preaching and persuasion to promote its own brand of Islam. It intends, instead, to achieve both ideological and sectarian objectives by relentless use of force.

These three groups need to be dealt with separately using three different plans of action. But no plan can succeed, or even devised, unless the major political parties and the military leadership agree to move decisively against the militants. Apart from the soft corner that the Establishment has for the militants, there is a widely-held assumption that action against the militants would be unpopular among the people. This assumption is not borne out by facts.

In a recent survey conducted by an English monthly magazine, respondents were also asked whether they would vote for a party that favours negotiations with the Taliban. Only 32 percent said they would. But 35 percent said they would support both negotiations and military action; 20 percent said they support military action, and 13 percent said they didn’t care about the stance on the Taliban.

In other words, 68 percent of the respondents were not against military action. The income-based breakup of this response is even more surprising. Among respondents whose income was below Rs3,600 (presumably illiterate too), only 25 percent were in favour of negotiations, whereas 46 percent were in favour of military action. This debunks the conventional wisdom that the poor and the illiterate are the main constituency of militant fanatics.

This leaves no excuse for the political and military leadership to resist a decisive action against the militants. Nor is it any more credible that the failure to deal with the militants is merely a failure of the law-enforcement agencies.

The writer is a former civil servant.

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