Daily Times

Pick up any newspaper in the last decade or so and we will see the headlines and the sub-headlines screaming of blasts, target killings, suicide bombings and so on. Switch on any TV channel and the same happens. The ‘T’ word is the most dreaded word in the country; and brand Pakistan brings all that is black and bad in its connotation in the local and foreign media. When you see and hear so much of something, you almost become immune. As a nation when a ticker runs on a TV channel that four have been killed or burned alive we just flip the channels stopping only when the score goes up in triple digits. This may be called indifference or emotional fatigue but that was the comfortably numb status most of us were in until the Malala incident happened. The incident has directly punched where it hurts the most. She was the real face of Pakistan — barely in her teenage, living in a terrorism-hit area, with bravery not found in people three times her age, fighting for women’s education rights, with big dreams and aspirations to become a politician when the time comes — a story most of us want to believe and live in. When an attempt to shatter her image and her dreams is made, it is like shattering the dreams and hopes of most of us. The unprecedented fervour in praying for her recovery and demanding a solution to the terrorism problems is understandable.

While all the other parties have a lot to say as far as how bad this scourge of terrorism is, none of them has any clue to a solution. Perhaps this is the reason why when Imran Khan condemns it and then proposes a solution in detail, the exploiters say that he does not condemn it enough, not realising that the other parties will keep on condemning it, as they have nothing else to say. Most past strategies tried so far have failed due to the bits and pieces approach of sometimes doing a dialogue, other times a military operation and, most of the time, nothing. What Khan proposes is a deep-rooted diagnosis of the problem and then an all-encompassing strategy to uproot terrorism.

Khan’s stance has always been that inequity and injustice will nurture terrorism. If you geographically and politically isolate a region, put it in the throes of poverty and illiteracy, kill its economy and, more importantly, its independence and then expect it to be a vibrant modern land of the peaceful, you are really living in a fool’s paradise. The above formula is the ideal recipe of rebellion, of reaction, of retaliation. When the 60 percent of your population lives below the poverty line — which practically means to survive on one dollar a day — where 83 percent have never been close to an opportunity to receive education; where being sick means worse than dying with almost 7,000 people to a doctor, and many members of your family killed by an erroneous drone, and you still expect them to rationally analyse and say, “I understand it is for the larger good,” it is simply a case of insane expectations. In towns like Tank, for miles you see scorched land with hardly any growth of vegetation and plantation; hardly any signs of livestock; with very little housing and almost non-existent signs of human living. You get a sense of abdication, of isolation, of forced occupation and a sense of a very menacing quiet that bodes disruption into a reaction of wild and mindless blasts anytime anywhere.

For terrorists it is an ideal border crossing and a haven of exploitation. From across the border they have infiltrated both North and South Waziristan, sometimes moving one way and sometimes moving the other way. The population may be less than a million and the terrorists may be hardly two to three percent but they have discovered how to utilise the deprivation and the emotion of the locals to their advantage. Instead of the locals turning against them, they have discovered a common enemy in the US. Since the locals have suffered massively due to drones, they manage to divert their anger and resentment at the US and justify their bombings on taking revenge for a foreign invasion.

If you think Khan’s rhetoric is just a vague anti-operation/US stance, let us look at the ground reality logically. So far, government has failed to cope with this problem and neither the government nor the opposition parties have any other solution on hand. Is a military operation the best or the worst solution? The answer to both is no. It is definitely not the best as if it were it would have resulted in a reduction in terrorism after 2004’s military operation in Waziristan. Facts show that instead of decreasing terrorism it increased it exponentially. Data from the Global Terrorism database published by the University of Maryland shows that after the 2004 military operations terrorism incidents increased from 67 to 165 in 2006 and 260 in 2007 while those killed and wounded in these incidents increased from 950 to 3,700. If this is not a proof of military operations increasing terrorism then what more can we say? Thus when Khan says that military operations are not a solution it is not based on his ‘pro-Taliban’ stance, it is based on a factual antiiterrorism stance. When the military starts an operation in this area as an ally of the US, it is perceived as a war against their independence and thus they retaliate by bombing mainly police and army targets to take revenge for siding with the US. Therefore Khan’s explanation that until we get out of the US war, terrorists will keep on exploiting this factor. Add the illegal and immoral killing of people by US drones and you are sealing the fate of enhanced terrorism in the region. As stated by David Kilcullen, the former advisor to General Patraeus, “Every one of these dead represent a desire for revenge and more recruits for the militant movement.”

Thus first uproot the root cause: get out of the US war with and without drones. Facts state that the war has cost us $ 60 billion while the conditional US aid has amounted to approximately $ 12 billion. So all the hue and cry about the economy going down is smashed by these figures in which we have incurred massive losses. Once the locals stop focusing on the foreign threat, they will see the threat from local militants. We must identify through intelligence which are the tribal sects not involved in terrorism? Do what the US preaches to the rest of the world, i.e integrate these tribes in the solution process itself, hold a dialogue with their important jirgas, make them stakeholders in isolating the terrorists and then maybe do a selective and targeted military operation along with the locals in hunting down and nailing militants.

This is the only plausible and feasible strategy based on the principles and facts based on practical reality. Military operations may be a part of it, but so will negotiations. However, the sequence accepted as the best practice all over the world is inclusion, negotiation, isolation and then operation followed by local empowerment and development. All these are strategies but their consensus by the stakeholders of the area and the public and their sequence and timing will determine their chances of being proved right. Imran Khan confused? He is just trying to give a method to the madness, a new rule to the unruly, a new vision in a blind alley. Remember, most untravelled roads are termed chaotic and crazy before becoming well-trodden paths.

The writer is a leadership coach, columnist and a former information secretary of the PTI Punjab and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com