Daily Times

Some events leave a lasting impact on a country. For instance, the massacre that took place at the Army Public School (APS), Peshawar, on December 16, 2014, devouring the lives of more than 100 innocent young students, transformed both the internal and external policies of Pakistan.
Internally, the street agitation being staged by the PTI against the alleged rigging of the 2013 elections has subsided. A National Action Plan (NAP) was formulated to curb terrorism in the country. Regarding terrorism, the priority was to ban organisations promoting terrorism and send to the gallows the perpetrators of terror. To give effect to the latter, military courts for summary trials of terrorists were established and the moratorium on the death penalty was lifted. The 21st Constitutional Amendment was passed in January 2015 to protect these steps for two years and a chain of events followed.
Saulat Mirza started speaking once again. His red and swollen eyes in the video message from Machh Jail, Balochistan, showed how horrible the mode of death through the gallows was perceived and just how willing he was to get his statement recorded once again in detail. The implied message of his video was that there was some disagreement between him and his party, the MQM. He had two grievances. First, in December 1998, someone leading the MQM asked him to go back to Pakistan from Bangkok (where he had taken refuge after murdering the managing director of KESC, Shahid Hamid, and his driver and guard in July 1997) but he was arrested by the police at Karachi airport, thereby implying that someone tipped off the police about his expected arrival. Secondly, none of his accomplices was convicted for the triple murder. Mirza considered that a conspiracy was hatched against him from within the party from the highest echelons to exclude him because, as he claimed, “Whosoever becomes popular in the party is excluded from the party.” Perhaps he thought that by killing dozens of people he had become popular enough in the party to command any leading position and the same fame was the reason for his marginalisation. On the other hand, the grievance of the MQM was that Mirza came back to Pakistan in collusion with some intelligence agency to malign the party. Lately, a new Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has been formed by the Sindh government to investigate the case de novo. It is expected that startling revelations will surface that may affect the political landscape of Pakistan.
Retrospectively, Mirza might not have mattered a lot if an inferno had not engulfed a garment factory in Baldia Town, Karachi in September 2012. More than 250 innocent people were burnt alive just because the owner of the factory refused to yield to the ultimate extortion demand of the extortionists. That single event showed the strength of the perpetrators and their benefactors whereas the same event also disclosed the incapacity of the governments, both provincial and federal, in bringing the culprits to justice. Nevertheless, Pakistan had to wait for the Peshawar school massacre to jolt the state to present the JIT report before the Sindh High Court in February 2015 and point the accusing finger at the MQM.
Externally, Pakistan reformed its policy towards the Taliban of both Pakistani and Afghan origin. On the one hand, Pakistan continued Operation Zarb-e-Azb while on the other hand Pakistan decided to cooperate wholeheartedly with the newly installed government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on the Taliban issue. In the immediate aftermath of the Peshawar school massacre, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif had to visit Kabul to demand action against the chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Mullah Fazlullah, who had taken shelter in Afghanistan. General Sharif also promised reciprocity on Pakistan’s behalf. To that, the Kabul government must have uttered a sigh of relief.
During his visit to New York in March this year, Ghani said that he was “cautiously optimistic” about improved relations with Pakistan and “without sanctuary, a long-term rebellion is impossible. When sanctuaries end, peace breaks out. That is what happened in Central America and Latin America, that is what has happened in Africa.” In fact, in his statements, Ghani clearly said that Pakistan should do its part of the job by ending sanctuaries in its land provided to the Afghan Taliban active against the Kabul government even though both Kabul and Islamabad are striving to cajole some Afghan Taliban leaders into joining the Kabul government.
The question is: why is Pakistan waiting for a bombshell to wake up? Why is Pakistan so compromising that the massacre in the Baldia Town factory failed to shake its conscience to bring about an action plan even at the provincial level of Sindh? Why did Pakistan wait for the Peshawar school bloodshed to take place to rouse from the slumber of inaction and formulate a national action plan? Why did Pakistan think that providing sanctuaries to the Afghan Taliban was part of its policy to have some sort of influence in Afghanistan?
Some people consider that had there been no Zarb-e-Azb, there might have been no attack on the school in Peshawar. Similarly, had there been no Peshawar school massacre, there would have been no NAP and the 21st Amendment, the gallows would not have scared Saulat Mirza, the Baldia Town factory massacre would have been forgotten in the haze of time and there would have been no raid on Nine Zero, the headquarters of the MQM in Karachi. Some consider Pakistan’s decision to join the war on terror in 2001 the point from where the military and the Taliban parted ways, though both sides tried not to become disassociated from each other. The Peshawar school massacre became the pinnacle of that unscrambling. Consequently, like the Taliban, the MQM is worried about its fate but President Ghani must be a happy man.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com