When it comes to social experimentation and political innovation, the list of accomplishments of our state can be classified as a checklist for diagnosing psychopaths. Ghazwa-e-Hind, erecting a green crescent flag on Delhi’s Red Fort, strategic depth and assets, Taliban, Jihadi militias and mainstreaming are some of the colourful concepts and creatures, which have come out of this Frankenstein’s lab we so naively refer to as an Islamic Republic.
Last week, the mayhem which shook the capital and then spread through various cities like a virus was a manifestation of this neurosis which still resides in the heads of our policy makers. It took the current government four years to achieve a GDP growth rate of over five percent, billions spent on anti-terror operations, several millions in projecting Pakistan safe for FDI and countless extravagant visits of emissaries to dispel the impression of Pakistan being an unstable, dangerous state. But when it was time for all this hard work to bear fruit, the state started to tear itself apart in a psychotic spree of mass religious hysteria.
Nearly two months ago Reuters reported that the ousted Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif rejected the plan to mainstream jihadi outfits when the military’s high command pitched the idea. As per one of the ‘wise guys’ of our defence intelligentsia, General (retd) Amjad Shoaib, the intelligence agencies had been working on the mainstreaming project since 2014. However, the military did not bother to seek permission from the political leadership beforehand, kept working on the details and went with the plan anyways.
Two prototypes, the Milli Muslim League (MML) and Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLRL) were launched for the by-elections of NA 120 and NA 4. The voting trend of both constituencies suggests that these newly branded organisations have a noteworthy electoral base and capacity to mobilise resources to attract voters. One cannot help but wonder, how these new entrants have managed to eclipse the performance of former heavy weights such as PPP and Jamat-e-Islami.
In one of his press conferences, DG ISPR General Ghafoor highlighted the constitutional rights of organisations and individuals to take part in the political process, to rationalise ‘the mainstreaming project’. Given our tragic democratic history, the GHQs newly found love for democracy and constitution is admirable. Regrettably, brokering political settlements is also a violation of the constitution which bars military personal from being a part of any “political activity whatsoever”. Furthermore, previous such experiments have resulted in mutated, short lived and dysfunctional political entities such as The Convention Muslim League, Tehreek-e-Istiqlal, IJI, MMA, MQM and PMLQ.
The fundamental constitutional rights to engage in politics cannot be stretched to the limits of absurdity. If these radical organisations have their constituency then so do Neo-Nazis in Western democracies; states must draw the red line somewhere
Members of jihadi outfits have been radicalised and militarised for decades. Some of them are criminally insane, others have had connections with the global terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda in the past. The memory of sectarian violence from the 1980s and 90s is still fresh in the national conscience. The political mainstreaming of sectarian assassins, criminals and terrorists without programs of psychiatric evaluation, rehabilitation and counselling to help them relinquish their radical ideologies is foolish and dangerous. Hence, it is not only a question of legitimacy of the mainstreaming project, there are much larger concerns regarding the catastrophic consequences that lie at the bottom of this political tempering. Our national behaviour towards extremists and militants is already being examined and questions by The United States of America, which still happens to be our ally in the War on Terror.
The intellectual bankruptcy which drove the mainstreaming project has already started to show results. The month of November was particularly traumatic for the state in this regard. The chief of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Hafiz Saeed after his release from state custody branded the former PM Sharif as traitor for seeking peace with India. Saeed also cited this ‘national betrayal’ as the reason behind Sharif’s disqualification by the Supreme Court. Electoral candidate of TLRL from NA 129, who also happens to be a retired major, appeared on a news channel and pledged to murder Nawaz Sharif for blasphemy. Major Zaheer vilified Sharif as an enemy of Islam and stressed that god had bestowed him with the divine duty to murder the former PM for his treacheries. In another video message, went viral on social media, a young Pakistani expat in Germany placed a bounty of one million on the head of interior minister Ahsan Iqbal.
The board of Sunni Ittehad council issued a fatwa to declare voting for PMLN as haram. Electoral campaign banners of MML and TLYR had similar tone to propaganda posters from Nazi Germany. The state decision to hang the murderer of Governor Salman Taseer was openly challenged and various members of the ruling party were condemned as heathens, heretics, blasphemers and infidels throughout the campaign.
In the midst of this bigotry, the self-exiled commando General Musharraf came up with his own theories to support the mainstreaming project. His party, APML announced a political alliance of twenty-three organisations, which includes various radical organisations, ear marked for the mainstreaming project. After his incessant lectures on enlighten moderation, General Musharraf who happens to be a self-proclaimed liberal, revealed in his televised interview that he was the biggest supporter of LeT and admirer of Hafiz Saeed. By drawing amusing parallels, he claimed that his political values as a liberal did not clash in any way with the ideology of radical militants. The more one listens to the contradictory ideas of the General, the more one realises that there is nothing sadder in politics than a gloomy old dictator who aspires to become a political philosopher in his twilight years.
The mainstreaming project has exposed the dysfunctional relationships between state organs. The panic of the government, followed by the embarrassing terms of surrender to the demands of the mob besieging the state capital raises many questions regarding the judgement of all state institutions. The national discourse regarding de-radicalization should be pursued through dialogue based on reason and logic with primary objective of eliminating this poison from root and stem, not to nourish it through state patronage or surrender.
Sadly, the objectivity is being displayed by fatwas of infidelity, blasphemy and pledges to commit murder. The national discourse is communicated through abusive rants of foul mouthed jokers, who claim to be the scholars of sacred Islamic theology.
The fundamental constitutional rights to engage in politics cannot be stretched to the limits of absurdity. If these radical organizations have their constituency then so do Neo-Nazis in Western democracies; states must draw the red line somewhere. The objective of the state should be to detox society of radicalism instead of metastasizing this cancer. The methods adopted will only mainstream the radical ideologies, instead of the radicals. Rationality demands to assist and help these radicalized individuals to become a contributing and functional member of society before they seek to take part in the electoral process as political workers.
Seventy years is not a long time in the history of nations but it should be enough to learn lessons from national mistakes. Deep state factors have been tempering with political process, derailing democracy from its natural evolutionary path for seven decades and there is not a sign of learning curve in sight. The logical conclusion drawn from the perpetual blunders of this political engineering, only raises questions on our national sanity. Because doing something over and over again and expecting different results is precisely what Einstein described as insanity. We have turned Jinnah’s Pakistan — The laboratory of Islam into the nightmare of Frankenstein’s Lab, which creates monsters.
The writer is a research student of Political Economy at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at [email protected] Twitter: @abdalian4ever FB:adnan.hafeez.549
Published in Daily Times, December 5th 2017.