The rights to life and liberty are not given by any constitution; they are natural and hence recognised by the constitutions as being inalienable and universally respected. Therefore, the most vital touchstone of a modern and respected state is its track record of human rights, not just economic development or military prowess. The abusive and rogue states sooner or later fall into the category of failed or failing states. They become international pariahs and liabilities for their own people, making them the victims of untold strife, misery and mayhem.
There are many hulks of failing states that dot the world map. But why is Pakistan being bracketed with the ‘failing’, ‘most dangerous’ and ‘terrorist’ states when it has a developed administrative infrastructure, a relatively mature polity, a disjointed but buoyant society, and a promising though mismanaged economy? The simple answer is: because it does not respect its citizen’s human and civil rights. But when I say ‘it’, I mean those who control and dominate the state’s internal and external polices; and when I say ‘citizens’ I mean the conscientious objectors, the common men, the persecuted minorities and the marginalised labouring sections, which cumulatively form a huge majority of the population.
Without going into the history of human rights abuses and social repression committed with impunity in this country, I would restrict my account to the three recent abuses of the constitutional rights: the killing of a celebrated journalist in violation of, inter alia, the freedom of [removed]Article 19); the assassination of a Baloch professor abusing the right to protect one’s culture and identity (Article 28), and a massively disastrous attack on the Upper Dir by the Taliban terrorists exposing the state’s continuous failure to ensure the security of citizens (Article 9).
First, Saleem Shahzad was killed because he refused to give cover to the security apparatuses’ organisational maladies as well as operational failures. And that is the job of an investigative journalist: probe into the deeper and hidden aetiology of a cancerous malaise, and that at a time when the country badly needs to get to the truth that lies behind its continuous failure to stem the rising tide of all-round terror and violence which threaten its very existence. But instead of paying heed to the facts and truths uncovered by Shahzad, it was assumed that killing him would also cure the underlying terse malaise.
In fact, killing the messenger to kill the message is a typical fallacy committed in desperate times, but at a humungous cost. No wonder, Shahzad’s ‘message’ has echoed far and wide, thanks to his courage and the burgeoning portals of the social, local, national and international media. As a result, the innards of our compromised security structures are pretty much ‘out’, to the embarrassment of its custodians. Moreover, his killing has further tarnished the country’s image. Already, the international community was perturbed over the fact that as many as 16 journalists had been killed in Pakistan during the last year alone.
Saleem Shahzad’s gruesome murder has raised vital questions: how long will it take to cleanse the country’s image of being the ‘most dangerous’ state in the world? How will Shahzad’s killing reconnect the economy with the badly needed international capital, finance and trade? How is our security establishment going to convince the world that Pakistan is a victim, not the perpetrator of terrorism when the local and international media views it with suspicion? But alas, only true statesmen, whom we lack, can answer these questions, not the hubris-ridden generals and their myopic minions.
Second, Professor Ghulam Hussain Saba Dashtiari was killed in Quetta last Wednesday. He was one of the thirty other academicians who have so far been killed in Balochistan during the last three years. It is generally assumed that the pro-Baloch academicians have been eliminated by the security agencies and the non-Baloch by the nationalists. Either way, it is the state’s failure. Professor Saba was known to be a scholar and avid lover of his culture, which is not a crime, rather desirable for this multi-cultural polity.
But he was killed because his quest for his socio-cultural identity and political rights was mixed with secessionism. It is the fatal mistake that our guardians committed in the former East Pakistan, and miserably failed. Few would deny that during the anti-colonial struggle, Muslim Bengal was as much if not more an enthusiastic supporter of Pakistan as the Unionist-led Punjab. But scores of Bengali students, intellectuals and academicians were persecuted and even killed when they refused to yield their cultural and political rights to an establishment that treated them a priori as anti-state.
Unfortunately, the same mistake is now repeated in treating the smaller nationalities in the remaining but still establishment-controlled Pakistan. Instead of leaving political disputes to be resolved by the politicians through a political process, which of course sometimes take years and decades, overnight military solutions are imposed over and again. Balochistan is undergoing the fifth military operation but the security and political situation is getting only murkier and graver by the day.
Blinded by narrow security policies, the security agencies are ignoring the sociological changes that have transformed the social and political make-up of Balochistan, and also of Sindh. A new, politically active, culturally conscious and intellectually developed middle class has emerged out of the feudal and tribal backwaters. No matter how helpful the pro-establishment feudal and tribal leaderships may prove to Islamabad, they cannot keep the rising middle class marginalised through force. The state has to accommodate this class administratively, politically and socio-economically.
Moreover, nationalist and cultural voices are now connected to the local and global civil and human rights movements. Therefore, the state’s heavy-handed policies, which worked in the state-censorship era of the 1950s through to the 1990s, are no more workable. Mass communication has made it impossible for the rogue state and non-state actors to secretly commit crimes against humanity and get away with them. Sooner or later, the culprits are brought to book. Argentina, Chile, Turkey, Serbia and Bangladesh are some recent examples of states prosecuting generals and politicians for human rights-related and other crimes.
Third, the recent terrorist attacks in Upper Dir have yet again debunked the claim that we have ‘broken’ the back of terrorism. Among the hundreds of attackers were reportedly Afghan and local Taliban, including those ejected from Swat, which re-establishes the known fact that the terrorists’ regional network continues to threaten the state and society.
As these tragic events demonstrate, the security apparatuses’ failure to act under the constitution is engendering discontent among the media, smaller nationalities and citizenry, and causing the international community to suspect its intent. It’s time the penny dropped.
The writer is a lawyer and academic. He can be reached at [email protected]