Combating terrorism in Pakistan

One of the finest prescriptions of the living legendary diplomatist Henry A. Kissinger goes: “In crises, the most daring course is often safest”. From the viewpoint of Pakistan’s cherished, age-old values of pluralism and composite tradition, the defence of which is the first and foremost task of its rulers any day, the course of action Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Chief of Army Staff Gen.

Raheel Sharif have chosen against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, which has claimed responsibility for the recent cold-blooded massacre of 132 children and others in Peshawar, is inevitably the safest one. This massacre has offered Islamabad yet another reminder as to how serious the terrorist threat has become to the country’s core values and what might follow if the evil were not eliminated at the earliest.

It is good that in its post-Peshawar fight against terrorism, Islamabad has received the support of several world leaders. In the greater South Asian region, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chinese President Xi Jinping have shown their inclination to reach out to Pakistan in its strike against terrorists. There is a realisation across the regional political spectrum that peace and prosperity of the entire Subcontinent is vital to the interest of all the nations and hence they should all join hands in counter-terrorism.

It is high time Islamabad seized this historic opportunity and sincerely worked together with the nations in the region to fight terrorism. Given their long shared history and culture, Islamabad and New Delhi together can take on the militant Islamists very effectively. There is a lot of substance in New Delhi’s thesis that the fanatic ideology of hatred and violence against humanity is shared in common by radical Islamists of all hues — Wahhabism — Deoband seminary, Tablighi Jamaat, Ahle Hadith and the Jamaat-e-Islami — and hence action needs to be taken against each of them.

Islamabad could appreciate it and not confine its action against a select group of militant Islamists — the Haqqani Network and safe havens of Al Qaeda and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan — alone. Unfortunately, rulers in Islamabad have so far glossed over the activities of anti-India elements like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba chief and 26/11 Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed, his deputy Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, 26/11 planner Zakiur Lakhvi (enjoying VIP treatment in prison). This would not do if a victory over terrorism were to be achieved.

Genuinely liberal and progressive forces in Pakistan — including in its media, academics and legal fraternity — may play a historic role in Pakistan’s war on terror today. The root cause of terrorism in the country has been the lack of an enlightened political leadership. After about a decade of Pakistan coming into existence the great Indian nationalist leader, freedom fighter and then education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad wrote: “Pakistan was the creation of the Muslim League.

The League had hardly any members who had fought for the independence of the country. They had neither made any sacrifice nor gone through the discipline of a struggle. They were either retired officials or men who had been brought into public life under British patronage… In most cases, they could not even speak the language of the areas which now formed Pakistan. There was a gulf between the rulers and the ruled in the new state.”

Things have changed little since then. It is as a result of this continuing leadership crisis in Pakistan that a notorious Deobandi Sunni stream of the puritanical Wahabi-Salafi order, equipped with a distorted version of Islam, has come to guide terror activities and take the country towards the age of darkness. The progressives could reverse this poisonous stream in Pakistan. Time is still on their side. The radical Islamists have little social base in the country.

Pakistan has the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat represented by the Barelvi movement with the largest following. The masses in Pakistan have had a strong syncretistic tradition derived from the curious amalgamation of Islam and the region’s indigenous religions. The progressives could invoke their land’s original values and use their massive social base in strengthening such elements in politics as would be genuinely committed to combat terrorism and spread democracy and development.

The author is a senior journalist based in New Delhi