Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has taken charge. He says enough is enough, there are no “good” Taliban and he will personally “lead the war against terror of all shades for my people and my country and take it to its logical conclusion, come what may”. These are strong, heady words.
Meanwhile, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the interior minister in charge of formulating and implementing anti-terrorism policy, has readied a 17-point draft policy for presentation in a multi-party conference.
It appears that the civilian leaders have scrambled into action by the swift response of the army chief, General Raheel Sharif, to the Peshawar massacre when he caught the first flight out to Kabul to coordinate anti-terrorism measures with the Afghan and American authorities and followed it up by executing two terrorists condemned by a military tribunal.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. This isn’t the first time we have heard politicians make such tall promises and then consign them to the dustbin when faced with the prospect of a consequential blowback. Indeed, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan promised nine months ago to deliver and act upon a forceful and comprehensive strategy to root out terrorism but then immediately opted for talks with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which miserably failed to deliver and spurred Gen Raheel to launch a military operation in Waziristan.
There are three core dimensions of this problem.
The first relates to the existence of radical “Islamic” groups and non-state actors – whether sectarian like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and its offshoots, or jihadi like the Lashkar-e-Tayba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, etc, or TTP and its splinters – who are all linked to one another in an organic ideological network which nourishes and sustains the terrorist stain on state and society. Action against the TTP alone will not suffice while retaining the others as “assets” for foreign policy objectives in the neighbourhood because many TTP groups are rooted in these non-state parent actors and recruit their cadres from these “asset-bases”. Will the political and military leadership have the vision and courage to make a paradigm change in foreign policy?
The second is bringing state and society on one page in terms of the mechanism for tackling terrorism. In order to do this, the government will have to fashion laws and systems for successfully catching, interrogating and prosecuting terrorists and their sympathizers. But achieving a national consensus on this is easer said than done. The military also wants the civilians to give it sweeping court-martial powers under the Army Act of 1952. But this is something the courts and politicians are loath to concede to an overarching military that is already the dominant, and problematic, factor in statecraft.
The third is revising the entire narrative of the idea and ideology of Pakistan as an exclusivist “Islamic” state based on a singular Shariah identity rather than an inclusive “secular” state based on the Islamic “principles” of equality, pluralism and brotherhood of man. This involves revising our textbooks, regulating our madrassahs, monitoring our mosque-khutbas and acting against hate preachers. But there are no Ataturks on the Pakistani horizon as far as the mind can see.
To be sure, small steps can be taken to manage, if not eliminate, the scourge of terrorism. Military courts can be established in the main terror-infected regions. The judges and media can be seriously advised to show spine and responsibility. A special highly competent prosecuting agency for terrorism-crimes can be set up. The most aggressive and unrepentant mullahs can be detained and prosecuted. Sectarian groups can be challenged. Civil-military intel coordination can be made better and more effective.
For starters, there are three areas where progress will indicate a seriousness of purpose in the civil-military leadership. First, since Gen Raheel Sharif has probably committed himself to a quid pro quo for obtaining the help of the Afghans and Americans to eliminate Mullah Fazlullah of the TTP in the borderlands of Afghanistan; he will have to bring Mullah Umar or the Haqqanis to the negotiating table with Kabul under threat of abandoning them and denying them safe havens in Pakistan. This objective must be accomplished quickly before Kabul and Washington lose faith in the Pakistani army chief like they did in his predecessor General Kayani.
Second, PM Nawaz Sharif must signal his resolve on three fronts: he must put Maulana Abdul Aziz in the locker and take steps to remove the terrorist stigma attached to Islamabad’s Lal Masjid; he must prosecute the LJ leaders who preach and practice sectarian murder regardless of the party-nomenclature under which they operate; and he must convict the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre so that the world acknowledges our commitment not to meddle in the internal affairs of our neighbours.
Third, he must seriously engage the military leadership in a concrete, result-oriented discussion on national security paradigms, the nature of the internal vs external existential threat to Pakistan and the role of non-state jihadi-actor-assets in Pakistan. Without this, there can be no long-term solution.
Meanwhile, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the interior minister in charge of formulating and implementing anti-terrorism policy, has readied a 17-point draft policy for presentation in a multi-party conference.
It appears that the civilian leaders have scrambled into action by the swift response of the army chief, General Raheel Sharif, to the Peshawar massacre when he caught the first flight out to Kabul to coordinate anti-terrorism measures with the Afghan and American authorities and followed it up by executing two terrorists condemned by a military tribunal.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. This isn’t the first time we have heard politicians make such tall promises and then consign them to the dustbin when faced with the prospect of a consequential blowback. Indeed, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan promised nine months ago to deliver and act upon a forceful and comprehensive strategy to root out terrorism but then immediately opted for talks with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which miserably failed to deliver and spurred Gen Raheel to launch a military operation in Waziristan.
There are three core dimensions of this problem.
The first relates to the existence of radical “Islamic” groups and non-state actors – whether sectarian like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and its offshoots, or jihadi like the Lashkar-e-Tayba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, etc, or TTP and its splinters – who are all linked to one another in an organic ideological network which nourishes and sustains the terrorist stain on state and society. Action against the TTP alone will not suffice while retaining the others as “assets” for foreign policy objectives in the neighbourhood because many TTP groups are rooted in these non-state parent actors and recruit their cadres from these “asset-bases”. Will the political and military leadership have the vision and courage to make a paradigm change in foreign policy?
The second is bringing state and society on one page in terms of the mechanism for tackling terrorism. In order to do this, the government will have to fashion laws and systems for successfully catching, interrogating and prosecuting terrorists and their sympathizers. But achieving a national consensus on this is easer said than done. The military also wants the civilians to give it sweeping court-martial powers under the Army Act of 1952. But this is something the courts and politicians are loath to concede to an overarching military that is already the dominant, and problematic, factor in statecraft.
The third is revising the entire narrative of the idea and ideology of Pakistan as an exclusivist “Islamic” state based on a singular Shariah identity rather than an inclusive “secular” state based on the Islamic “principles” of equality, pluralism and brotherhood of man. This involves revising our textbooks, regulating our madrassahs, monitoring our mosque-khutbas and acting against hate preachers. But there are no Ataturks on the Pakistani horizon as far as the mind can see.
To be sure, small steps can be taken to manage, if not eliminate, the scourge of terrorism. Military courts can be established in the main terror-infected regions. The judges and media can be seriously advised to show spine and responsibility. A special highly competent prosecuting agency for terrorism-crimes can be set up. The most aggressive and unrepentant mullahs can be detained and prosecuted. Sectarian groups can be challenged. Civil-military intel coordination can be made better and more effective.
For starters, there are three areas where progress will indicate a seriousness of purpose in the civil-military leadership. First, since Gen Raheel Sharif has probably committed himself to a quid pro quo for obtaining the help of the Afghans and Americans to eliminate Mullah Fazlullah of the TTP in the borderlands of Afghanistan; he will have to bring Mullah Umar or the Haqqanis to the negotiating table with Kabul under threat of abandoning them and denying them safe havens in Pakistan. This objective must be accomplished quickly before Kabul and Washington lose faith in the Pakistani army chief like they did in his predecessor General Kayani.
Second, PM Nawaz Sharif must signal his resolve on three fronts: he must put Maulana Abdul Aziz in the locker and take steps to remove the terrorist stigma attached to Islamabad’s Lal Masjid; he must prosecute the LJ leaders who preach and practice sectarian murder regardless of the party-nomenclature under which they operate; and he must convict the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre so that the world acknowledges our commitment not to meddle in the internal affairs of our neighbours.
Third, he must seriously engage the military leadership in a concrete, result-oriented discussion on national security paradigms, the nature of the internal vs external existential threat to Pakistan and the role of non-state jihadi-actor-assets in Pakistan. Without this, there can be no long-term solution.