Daily Times

One hopes the recent announcement to study a de-radicalisation plan by the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) is not the latest in the never-ending series of jokes perpetrated on the Pakistani people by its rulers — but it does sound like one.

By the sounds of the focus of the DCC meeting, the scope of their de-radicalisation plan may turn out to be too narrow, and therefore ineffectual. Thus timely input from the wider society would be highly valuable. The press statement from the committee that “it was decided in the committee that special attention shall be given to a de-radicalisation programme to motivate youth to engage and isolate them from militancy and terrorism and bring them back to peaceful living” indicates a very specific goal of trying to revert militant youth to normality.

The “need to clearly identify the threat posed by terrorism, including the underlying factors such as ideological, motivational, funding, weapon supply, training and organisational support for terrorist groups and those aiding and abetting the terrorists” is also all very well in terms of anti-militancy, but not de-radicalisation.

The country needs a genuine de-radicalisation effort, with an outreach well beyond an attempt at treating or curing a few hundred radicalised militant boys. The focus of the DCC’s de-radicalisation programme, however, appears far from such a strategy with its references to expanding the army’s admittedly commendable pilot project in Swat to de-radicalise ex-militants.

This problem needs to be viewed from outside just the security paradigm. Security related issues like terrorism surface only at the last and fatal stage of radicalisation and it will not do to remain in denial about all the other stages that lead up to it. It appears the government is speaking of ‘de-radicalisation’ but ‘means’ only an anti-militancy drive with its focus on weapons, coordination between security agencies, and ideologies, etc.

If the fundamentally important fact that militant movements recruit mostly an already radicalised people is recognised, it would become easy to formulate a comprehensive strategy that de-couples anti-militancy from de-radicalisation.

It is a bitter pill to swallow, but a good start would be to recognise that, as a whole, the whole of Pakistani society is quite radicalised and very basic attitude changes are in order to achieve a more gentle society at peace with itself, and therefore less likely to become fodder in the hands of militancy.

I can substantiate this claim with anecdotes ranging from the most minor to the very major. At the supposedly trivial end, I know that I live in a radicalised society when highly educated friends endorse my two-meals-a-day dieting efforts, not with scientific research or proof but with Ahadees and Sunnah, “Haan, patta hai, aan Hazrat (SAW) ney bhi yehi kaha tha” (yes, you know, the Prophet Mohammed [PBUH] also said so).

I do not think I need to cite examples at the more serious end of the spectrum to illustrate my point. What, however, needs to be pointed out here is some of the measures needed to be taken to deal with those. It would be ideal, though, that a national commission is formulated for the purpose, as the radicalised state of our society is no less than an existential threat.

The first and foremost, and clichéd, measure is to bring back the rule of law to at least the settled areas of Pakistan. No new laws are required. Existing laws need to be implemented to bring Mumtaz Qadri, murderer of deceased Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, for example, to justice. His case has to be the epitome of open-and-shut cases, does it not? Letting his case languish, and speaking of de-radicalisation measures, strategies and big words makes a mockery of the whole idea.

Similar is the case of Malik Ishaq of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, indicted in 44 cases in which 70 people were killed. Slowly, over time, witnesses in the different cases against him have been murdered, with the last remaining ones in fear of their lives. So rule of law, then, leads us to witness and judge protection programmes. These need to be strengthened.

Hate speech pundits, who are many times the source, unlike the vessels who commit the physical crime, should now become a serious subject of scrutiny. Many of them often belong to the media itself, a factor that ought not to be allowed to obfuscate and facilitate criminal misuse of principles of free speech. The names of Sufi Mohammed of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), Amir Liaquat, Meher Bukhari, Mubashir Luqman, all popular talk show hosts, and Zaid Hamid, a self-styled security analyst, to name only a very, very few, simply leap to mind. We have laws on our statute books that address the very nature of radicalising hate crimes they commit with impunity on a daily basis. Implementation of these laws would be another good start.

To hastily touch upon a couple of other areas (fairly vast subjects having been written about by many critics already), the revision and re-evaluation of national curriculum text books taught to children should be another facet of the de-radicalisation of society.

Most important of all, and one cannot do justice to it here in a few words, are the various articles of the constitution and ordinances that promote intolerance in society. These need to be taken a vicious knife to to rid society of its lego-moral sanction to vigilantism. Think of the boy gunned down for smoking before iftaar during Ramzan. Think of federal ministers speaking of murdering with their own hands anyone committing blasphemy.

The writer is a journalist and can be reached at gulnbukhari@gmail.com. She tweets at http://twitter.com/gulbukhari