Deploying Dr Tahirul Qadri to march on Islamabad with his minions, whether to squeeze concessions out of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) or to regain the sectarian ground lost by the Barelvis, was a horrible idea no matter who conceived it. Chances are that none of his foreign patrons initiated the move but might have looked the other way once it was already underway. A domestic imprint was unmistakable. Dr Qadri first became known to most of Pakistan through the state-owned Pakistan Television in the General Ziaul Haq era when he did a series titled Fehm-ul-Quran on the Quranic exegesis. He has himself claimed in his Urdu lectures — though denying it elsewhere — that he was the main, if not the only, character responsible for inducing Ziaul Haq to impose the blasphemy laws in Pakistan.
This is where it gets tricky. Using the clergy ostensibly to neutralise the terror perpetrated in the name of religion is a double-edged sword. No clergyman of any denomination comes to play without his own agenda. If the agenda is not anti-Shia or anti-Deobandi, it might be anti-Ahmadi or strongly in support of the blasphemy laws. After delivering what they originally bargain for, the clergy are likely to demand their pound of flesh. And in most cases it is quite literal. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto discovered that at his peril. The Wahabi-Salafi militants carried out Pakistan’s proxy wars but exacted a toll inside the country on their ideological and sectarian adversaries.
Another problem with Dr Qadri’s march was underestimating the response of the anti-Barelvi groups of all shades. While the Sunni Barelvis of Hanafi denomination perhaps remain a large, if not the largest, individual sect in Pakistan, they have never had much political success on their own. The Barelvi political clout has potentiated and benefitted from the secular outfits like the PPP or the Muslim League before it. Having Dr Qadri as the face of a ‘paradigm shift’, where the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi combine is neutralised and its militant wing clipped, was a non-starter. And after the fizzled out march Dr Qadri has not only lost face but the Barelvi groups have lost political ground too. The anti-Barelvi coalition, which gelled around Mian Nawaz Sharif, has come out with an energised base and is likely to reap dividends in the coming elections. Someone either did not think it through or just set Dr Qadri up for a debacle.
Of course, we may never know who ordered this latest hit on the democratic dispensation but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it sure seems to be a duck from those marketing the new anti-terrorism doctrine. What is more distressing though is not the absence of an actual doctrine, barring General Pervez Kayani’s few good speeches, to fight terror, but the cavalier attitude and gimmicks like Dr Qadri’s march in the face of an existential threat. More than a decade after 9/11, the ISI representative had the nerve to tell the Supreme Court of Pakistan that they were holding suspected terrorists based on “moral authority”! It would really be funny if it was not so tragic. Add to this the opinion pieces by ex-military personnel eulogising the army action in Balochistan, citing an interview with the ISI’s director general no less, and it is hard to miss that it is business as usual. Yet the equally cavalier diplomatic corps in Islamabad continues to buy into, and keeps writing home about, this ‘change of heart’ theme. Perhaps it just fits the plans for the US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan to believe that the Pakistani establishment has successfully weaned itself off its addiction to jihadist proxies and can be trusted with safekeeping of Afghanistan come 2014.
But is this myopic approach not what brought the region to its present state? And has this ‘replace a bad jihadist with a good pliable one’ not been tried in the past too? Now the idea is that somehow only some sections of jihadists and a few of their leaders are bad, misguided or — going by the new and improved Green Book — induced by the Indo-US-Zionist forces to target the mother ship. If only the bad apples can be sorted out, we will be good to go. The bet is that once the US leaves Afghanistan, the jihadists that had come home to roost will fly the coop again and get busy there. There is a certain thought that considers the Salafi Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) as Pakistan’s bulwark against the Deobandi-Wahabi Taliban! But has this formula not been tried — and failed — before? The Afghan Mujahedeen were too unruly and corrupt and were replaced with the austere and disciplined Taliban. Assorted Kashmiri outfits were raised to replace the previous ones who got out of control. Unfortunately, the civilians left the security establishment to carry on with its shenanigans then so long as they were allowed to continue in power and are doing it again.
Indeed some politicians like Asfandyar Wali Khan have been trying of late to develop consensus against the terrorist menace and his Awami National Party (ANP) has called an all parties conference (APC) on the issue. But with utmost respect one must ask if Mr Khan seriously believes that something he did not do for five years can be achieved in the last five weeks of a lame-duck government. The ANP despite being physically in harm’s way throughout its tenure was relatively secure politically compared to the PPP, which faced political storms of its own and others’ making. It had the opportunity to champion a serious rethink to formulate an anti-terrorism strategy. Raising awareness at home and abroad was also part of its mandate. A party that made tremendous sacrifices against terrorism had a right, not just an obligation, to capture and mould the national narrative against extremism. A befitting remembrance for the martyred ANP leader Bashir Bilour would have been an anti-terrorism legislation bearing his name, not a redundant ritual of the Senate nominating him for the Nobel Prize. But somehow it did not happen.
The ANP’s reaching out to all parties, including the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, is certainly a welcome move but like the army’s so-called new doctrine, may be too little too late. Perhaps it still is better to begin late than never, but it would require a substantially superior and consistent effort than an APC or a revised chapter in an obscure book.
(Concluded)
The writer can be reached at [email protected] and he tweets @mazdaki