Daily Times

Just as Pakistan was starting to witness yet another round of political violence in Karachi, a three-day national seminar on de-radicalisation, organised by the Pakistan Army, concluded in Swat earlier this month. Politicians, military leaders and opinion leaders from Pakistan as well as guests from other countries, attended the heavily guarded gathering. The full text of the lectures delivered and the conclusions of the seminar have not been made public yet but several speeches were instantly available through traditional and contemporary media.

Regardless of the merits or demerits of the event, the Pakistan Army deserves an acknowledgment for arranging the programme and for inviting a few token speakers who quite forcefully disagree with the army’s approach to handling the domestic and foreign affairs. One had hoped though that now when the word ‘de-radicalisation’, in its unhyphenated form, has entered the lexicon of counterterrorism, the people and intelligentsia of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA — regions worst hit by terror — had a more robust representation at the seminar.

Despite being in the top tier of the countries battered by terrorism in the name of religion, Pakistan is a relatively new entrant to the arena of establishing de-radicalisation programmes, the stillborn National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) notwithstanding. In his concluding address, Prime Minister Gilani made some remarks about the revival of NACTA, changes in the laws and criminal justice system, and the training and empowerment of the law enforcement agencies. But conspicuously absent from his — and General Ashfaq Kayani’s — speech was a candid acknowledgment of the genesis of terrorism coupled with religiosity, and how to go about developing a counter-narrative to that, if at all.

In a slick manner, General Kayani stuck to his current mantra, i.e. the army is subservient to the civilian institutions and will act in a circumspect manner in aid of the political leadership. While emphasising the ‘holistic’ nature of and taking full credit for pioneering the de-radicalisation programme, he said: “De-radicalisation effort was a result of the demand placed on the army by the post-operation environment. Driven by the detention of thousands of miscreants after the operation, our de-radicalisation programme was built around four pillars: de-radicalisation of juveniles, de-radicalisation of selected ‘reconcilable’ detainees, de-radicalisation of families of selected detainees to which they would fall back on release and the de-radicalisation of certain villages in general, from which the bulk of militants had originated.”

General Kayani — likely speaking for domestic consumption — was on the dot though in stating that military means alone cannot defeat extremism and the militancy that follows it in tandem. The General, prima facie, wants to treat a metastatic cancer but appears content to put a band aid on its minor manifestations without even trying to name, let alone exploring for the primary disease and attempting to remove it. Not a word was uttered about how a region that had voted overwhelmingly for centre-left political parties in February 2008 fell to the terrorists in under one year. It was Afzal Khan Lala of the Awami National Party (ANP), who pointed out in his speech that the militants were imposed on Swat from outside and the administration did not just stand idle but gave massive patronage to the terrorists. General Kayani was remiss in defining the contours of his ‘counter-radicalisation’ vision or how the jihadists came to rule the roost in Pakistan, in the first place.

This hapless job was left for Mr Gilani to tackle, who — speaking unmistakably to foreign audience — said: “The challenge of unintended radicalism and consequent terrorism is complex and a real barrier to a common goal of peace and stability. What we have witnessed today is a consequence of history and has an internal, regional and global context. Without a dispassionate strategy appraisal we can go wrong in our assessment and policy formulation on re-radicalisation (sic)…Pakistan’s security paradigm owes its genesis to traumatic events of the US-led Afghan jihad, inept post-Cold War handling of Afghanistan by the west, festering regional conflicts and post-9/11 war in Afghanistan.” Before emphasising his four ‘Ds’ of the de-radicalisation programme viz “dialogue, development, deterrence and defeating the extremists”, Mr Gilani went on to blame everyone and their uncle for imposing jihadism on Pakistan. The fifth ‘D’ might as well be denial!

The preponderance of research on de-radicalisation comes from work with four broad categories of groups and individuals. The first such group is the violent criminals, especially gang-members, who have been studied well, including their rehabilitation. However, research on how the organised political violence ends is still quite sparse. The work with Nazi and neo-Nazi groups in Europe, former communists in Europe and Japan and the radical Islamists in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, is where most of the current ‘best practices’ and benchmarks of success or failure and recidivism have emanated from.

There is growing awareness among the experts worldwide that defeat on the battlefield alone might not be enough to make the militants abandon violence. Just as prevention of new recruitment into radical and violent movements is imperative, so is the endeavour to induce de-radicalisation (implying renouncing violence and violent ideology), disengagement (abstaining from violence for personal, family or societal reasons without renunciation of violence), rehabilitation and the so-called ‘counter-radicalisation’ (preventing radicalisation), which is becoming pivotal to the counterterrorism efforts.

The de-radicalisation, disengagement and rehabilitation cannot succeed without first conducting an honest root cause analysis instead of a symptomatic treatment approach. The building of a counter-narrative requires serious introspection and asking hard questions. Laying the blame at others’ doorsteps suggests pathetic insight, if not outright dishonesty. It is imperative to look at the blunders committed in the name of national security, strategic depth and ideological frontiers, if one seeks real solutions. Ideological and religious reconstruction requires both words and actions. In an environment, where upright leaders like Salmaan Taseer are slain and rationalist scholars like Javed Ahmed Ghamdi are forced into self-exile, while assassins like Mumtaz Qadri are feted and terrorists like Malik Ishaq go scot-free, it would take far more than a seminar to defang, deglamorise, delegitimise and discredit the terrorists.

The state has to disown the violent characters and delusional security paradigms it has hatched over the past several decades. To orient the militants to de-radicalisation, the state has to reorient inwards rather than eyeing Kabul or Delhi. Otherwise, the de-radicalisation programmes may appear to be yet another deceptive fad to milk the foreign cash cows rather than a determined effort towards reform.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/mazdaki