No one who believes in a modicum of humaneness will say that the use of full force by the state should be the first option before other peaceful methods are tried and exhausted. However, there is neither a timeline given, nor conditions spelled out nor a process explained through which the objectives set forth for the government will be achieved.
Assume that – with or without the use of force – the state of Pakistan succeeds in either taming or making peace with the Taliban in the coming months. They have to be ready for some give and take, though, and one sincerely hopes that a Swat-like situation does not arise after an accord is reached.
One other thing that needs to be considered is that those citizens in areas under Taliban influence who do not carry arms and resist the writ of the state are not further marginalised through this process. When the government talks about taking all stakeholders into confidence, the category should also include those who are nonviolent but may have grievances against state institutions as well as the militants.
The larger question, however, remains: will terrorism of all kinds be eliminated after peace is achieved in this instance? The unfortunate answer is ‘no’. Any focused process of dialogue or use of force can eliminate or mainstream a particular kind of militants but the possibility of the use of terror against the state and its citizens in future will not be eliminated until the sources are correctly identified, isolated and dried up.
This is the real challenge for the elite-dominated state of Pakistan. Acute economic and social dispossession of all kinds, orthodoxy harnessed and promoted among people in the name of faith and Indo-centric internal and external policy options exercised by the state will continue to breed different forms of terrorism in the country. Let us take these one by one.
A country where almost half of the children who are of school-going age are out of school, where maternal mortality claims 75 young women daily, where a third of the population finds it hard to scrape together two square meals a day, where workers live like serfs and the lower middle-class lives in the most undignified of conditions, where only a fifth of the entire population has access to clean drinking water, where the uneducated and unemployed youth are in millions, where farming communities along the rivers and canals get inundated by floods and then remain in camps for times unending, where inhuman debt traps the poor and turns them into bonded labour, where the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of a janitor have little choice but to remain janitors – in such a country will there be no chaos in society, no crime, no disgruntlement with the state?
Crime will be rampant, it will then become organised, this organised crime will turn into mafias and the mafias will then create terror on a massive scale. This is not just a future scenario. Instigated by urban poverty and increased inequality, it has already started happening in Karachi on a large scale. Other cities find higher crime rates than ever before. In terms of politics, Pakistan’s unique socio-political conditions have not let something like the Indian class-based Naxalite movement begin here.
But can we dismiss the possibility of a violent movement along class lines in the future? A violent movement of the marginalised and disadvantaged can also articulate itself in religious or ethnic terms. Anyone who understands the Balochistan issue will agree that it is primarily the economic deprivation and inability to access their own resources that have led to a struggle against the state.
It is time for the powers that be and the classes associated with them to not just think about but also do something to get people out of this grinding economic and social dispossession. However, that would mean giving up the undeserved privileges they enjoy, redistribution of wealth and creating equal opportunities for all.
The other factor, no less important, is a certain kind of religious discourse that the state has either promoted or allowed to take root in Pakistan. From state actions to school curriculum to promotion of political and social religious movements to public messages relayed through media, all strata of the middle class, women and men, are nurtured and encouraged to develop a mindset that is exclusive, paranoid and conservative in nature. There is more hypocrisy than religiosity at the level of the elite and clerics who benefit from such mindset. However, for many ordinary people it becomes a genuinely emotional issue.
In a country, where more than 95 percent of the people practice the same faith, how can their faith ever be in danger? What makes the majority feel insecure because of a small number of non-Muslims who mostly belong to the working class anyway? Why is it only the body of a woman where religion has to be imposed in full? While we may wonder whether it is personal beliefs or social values that make people go out and kill, the fact is that Pakistan has become an intolerant religious society.
When those listening to the oath of the president of the republic find that it is more about his religious beliefs that the state is interested in and less about his ability to competently run the office, their loyalty will rest more with an abstract notion of an Islamic state rather than the interests of a real country in which they live. If the ideal theocratic state that is promised to them – and which will resolve all their issues overnight – is nowhere to be seen, they will take up arms to create such a state and wage a struggle whenever conditions permit.
Lastly, unless our state stops thinking of itself as non-India and widens its understanding of global issues, there will be trouble both within and outside. Our issues in Afghanistan emanate out of our issues with India. I fully recognise that it is not an easy task for the Pakistani state and its military in the wake of four wars, covert operations and espionage in each other’s countries and the hostile coldness shown by India on many occasions.
But it is in our interest to have peaceful borders in order to industrialise our economy, flourish in trade and commerce and bring prosperity to our people. You may be a peacenik or not, this is in our enlightened self-interest – nothing more nothing less. Like many Pakistanis used to say that the hawks in India have not come to terms with the Partition, it seems that the hawks in Pakistan have not come to terms with it either. At the cost of repeating myself in these columns, the premise for Partition in 1947 was to bring peace to the Subcontinent, not to create a neverending rivalry.
We were not liberated from India, which is the impression given to the masses, for instance, by naming the gate at the Wagah border ‘Bab-e-Azadi’ (door to freedom). Both the countries – India and Pakistan – were liberated from British colonialism. Also, it is common sense that you cannot keep non-state militant groups controlled and restricted forever. If they are organised on religious lines, they will also get more ideologically motivated with time and subscribe to some sect or school of thought as well. If they won’t succeed in imposing themselves outside, they will impose themselves upon you.
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
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