Daily Times

When compared to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Afghan Taliban strike us as a group of moderate nationalists with a religious tilt entangled in a web of local traditions and tribal pride. Of course, there was nothing moderate or reasonable about the Taliban; after all, the memories of public executions of innocent women still haunt us. However, the puritanical interpretation of Islamic law (sharia) by the Iraq based jihadi organisation, its intolerance for other religions, its hatred for women’s freedom and its culture of beheadings of foreign journalists is so vicious and inhuman that it can only be considered the manifestation of a sick mind that must not be confused with any religion, let alone Islam.

Of late, if you notice, the rigidity in explaining Islamic laws by such groups has turned into a new frenzy; it is as though their clerics revise their own interpretation of the sharia on a regular basis, scavenging every rule that may contain even a shred of clemency to replace it with pure savagery. My question is: why do we see this trend? How did this process start? You guessed it right, this brutality started exactly where you think: Pakistan. As I recall, one end of the puzzle lies in the tribal belt on the western border of Pakistan, the area covered with dry, rugged mountains that run between the two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Here, the combination of a failed and ineffective US invasion of Afghanistan on one side and the military operations of the Pakistani army on the other side gave birth to the infamous Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Once organised under the pretence of Islamic doctrine, the TTP butchered thousands of Pakistanis irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity or age. From neonates to the 80-year-old cancer patient and from a young male college graduate — the only breadwinner of the family — to the newly married pregnant female, it declared everyone an enemy.

Along with mass killings via their suicide bombings — its signature strategy — the TTP also terrorised Pakistanis by releasing videotapes of the decapitations of soldiers, by promoting the target killings of minorities, by kidnapping the rich to extort ransom money and by sponsoring sectarian outfits. Petrified by its ruthlessness, the hapless people almost knelt before it on their knees to negotiate a peace deal that, most of the time, the terrorists refused. And when they did agree, the pact would not last long. Once the TTP had squeezed maximum benefits, it would walk out of the pact like a glutted, fully relaxed feline after devouring its prey.

Just as the militants wrecked our cities and towns, the TTP’s predecessors, the ‘milder’, ‘more reasonable’ Afghan version, focused on fighting foreign forces and avoiding civilian casualties. This is why the TTP became the bad Taliban and the jihadists on the other side of the border turned out to be the good Taliban. This distinction draws no confusion in Pakistan while, for the west, the difference between the two groups, if there exist two groups, seems to be none to minimum.

Similarly, in Iraq, after 10 years of dismal US performance, violence has returned, stunning the entire world with its lightning speed, thundering power and disconcerting vigour. This hurricane goes by the name of ISIS. It maintains strict discipline like a professional military, follows a strict chain of command and carries on with enormous resources. Its activities also extend beyond the boundaries of a single country, unlike the TTP, involving Iraq, Turkey (indirectly) and Syria. Put it all together and I assure you that you will draw the same conclusion as I did: the war against ISIS will require more time, commitment and financial support than it took to capture Baghdad.

Looking at this unsettling yet growing phenomenon of Islamic extremism, when the whole world fights a war on terror, should we not ask: why do we fail to contain a distorted religious philosophy that we believe is inhuman to begin with? Does our strategy suffer from a basic flaw? Can you tell me any other plan put forward by the world except for using force?

In my opinion, the war after 9/11 should have been fundamentally fought against religious extremism and the decision to invade Afghanistan should have been the last option, once all other avenues to capture or kill Osama bin Laden had failed. Instead, we witnessed a knee jerk response from the US like that of the Hulk becoming angry, losing control and killing thousands of people with its robust firepower, destroying the whole nation and essentially sending it back to the Stone Age. What comes next from the remains of a war-wrecked Afghanistan is not rocket science to figure out: a cunning, more extreme form of resistance. Some resentful Afghans also believe that they were left alone by western powers to suffer under the tyranny of the Taliban and that afterwards the west penalised them again for not resisting the tyrants. Attacked from both sides, they lost their livelihoods, their families and their loved ones. Besides that, they also lost their identities, brushed under the same generic name, the Taliban.

The real battlefield did not have to be the desert mountains of Kandahar; rather, they should have been the schools, the universities, the madrassas (seminaries) and the mosques. The fight, likewise, needed to be more ideological than physically focused on raising the collective conscience of pupils above the sectarian and religious divide, teaching them to challenge their own intolerant tendencies, encouraging them to question the rigid rules of their so-called faith and even daring to take on the clerics preaching violent messages. We did nothing of that sort and now have to deal with the mindset that only worries about guns, bullets, tanks, bombs and the 72 virgins in paradise.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com