Daily Times

It is becoming increasingly clear that sooner or later, all of us will have to resign to a fate of perpetual fear and endless violence in our lives. No matter how many voices are raised and no matter how many steps are taken, the cycle of extremism and intolerance just refuses to break. Devoid of anything to lose, the peddlers of hate roam freely on our streets, hawking their millenarian messages of which there are quite a few subscribers in this atmosphere of insecurity and uncertainty. In the face of it all, the timid remain hidden out of fright and the brave ones that stand against injustices are brutally silenced.
After the shocking attack on a school in Peshawar in December last year, we had resolved to confront the enemy. Consequently, we launched ourselves on an invasive path of damage control but, as is the fate of all half-measures, we fell short. Yes, there has been a decrease in the frequency of terrorist attacks since last December but the attacks that do happen now are twice as brutal and appalling. Shock and awe reigns supreme both for the insurgents and the counter-insurgents, and every time one side finds a chink in the other’s armour, devastating results follow.
One such event took place last week when the cruel murder of 44 Ismailis in Karachi in broad daylight sent shivers through the collective imagination. Complacency had kicked in after the small triumphs handed to us in the counter-terrorism drive and, satisfied with our ways and means, we had even started indulging in the good old pastime of politics. But all it took for us to wake up from the stupor was the loss of 43 innocent lives, and it seems that all that posturing and all those hangings have been for nothing.
Tucked away neatly, far away from the national mainstream, the Ismailis have a reputation of minding their own business but they have now been brought into the coldblooded routine of the contemporary Pakistan lifestyle in the most horrid of ways. The irony of the situation is that the forgotten amongst us finally attain citizenhood only at the cost of their lives; anything and everything else is insufficient. As states go, we are a particularly indifferent system as far as minorities are concerned but, when faced with such terrifying events that thaw even the stone hearted, we never lose an opportunity to include more (dead) citizens to the tally.
However, to call the attack “an intelligence failure” is to give too harsh a verdict. After all, our surveillance capacities in urban centres are quite limited and even if they were any better, it is almost impossible to find the more extremist needles in this extremist haystack. But intelligence failures notwithstanding, we would first need to identify who the enemies are, since such mundane aspects of contemporary crime carry with them burdened connotations in our dear republic. The militant card has been overplayed quite a lot and accepting that the National Action Plan (NAP) has failed to provide security is too painful. Also, since whispering Islamic State’s (IS’s) name is tantamount to scratching the ‘dark mark’ in the eyes of those in charge of our security, we cannot allow for such naiveté to foster as well. The only remaining option — the most convenient one, of course — is to invoke the oft-used ‘foreign hands’ argument, without providing any credible evidence whatsoever.
In this way, accepting the fact that fighting fire with fire can only do so much is taboo in Pakistan. The truth is that the state’s indifference towards the poor, the marginalised and the disadvantaged helps to further perpetuate this cycle of intolerance. Without any civil avenues to resolve the grievances of the masses, the public will always turn to other ways, out of which violence remains the most visible route.
Even in the face of a heavily militarised state with a record number of death penalties handed down to the convicted, the terrorist threat refuses to go away. Prime Minister (PM) Sharif has been murmuring sweet nothings about “tougher decisions” but it will not do any good when we refuse to even acknowledge the root causes of this malaise that has been haunting Pakistan. The limitations of our current stick-and-stick approach are becoming all too apparent. No matter how many foot soldiers you eliminate from the networks of extremism, the system that begets such mindsets remains in place. The assembly lines of extremism are churning away and will need to be dismantled before we can even begin thinking of reforming the already indoctrinated.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and we are the most desperate bunch right now. But what more can be done when we already have full-on military operations and death penalties? How can we transform this republic of suffering into a place of comfort? Here is an opinion: unless we can create separate avenues for the practice of religion and state affairs in the public and private lives of Pakistani citizens, we can forget about eliminating extremism from Pakistan. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is undesirable in most circumstances but our current predicament demands that we aspire to a different ideal, an ideal based on humanistic respect and tolerance where the socio-cultural advantages of religion, especially towards binding the community together, work in tandem with the administrative benefits of laical law. Until that day comes and we learn to live with each other’s flaws and accept our differences, the hatred that flows in our blood will never wane.

The author is a freelance columnist with degrees in political science and international relations