Daily Times

What do the physicians do when the cancer metastasises in the body? They try every bit of the skill to rid the body of the insidious prowler inside. For any remedy to work in such situations, internal resilience of the body plays a supportive role more than any other factor. The good cells have to kill the bad cells to stem their killing tide.

Is operation Rad ul Fasaad preparing the nation to take on the depredations of terrorists and criminals aided and abetted by external and internal sponsors? Was National Action Plan (NAP) not the first attempt at strengthening the national sinews for such an undertaking? It certainly was and was expected to douse the fires of extremism through administrative, legal, educational, and economic reforms.

Despite impressive figures of madaris registered, militants eliminated, and terrorism attempts foiled can anyone claim that the root causes of ‘mischief’ have been addressed?

What could therefore cure us of this ‘fasaad’ unleashed upon us through our deeply ingrained prejudices and sectarian biases? The 21-point NAP is useless until there is a will to root out the causes and enablers of terrorism. The physical violence visited upon people and the state institutions has been begotten out of soft state mentality that baulks at countering the criminals in religious raiment.

The way we are treating our minorities and dissenters like Mashal Khan, is a sad testament to our propensity towards structural violence. The bigger question then rises about the nature and scope of the current army-led and police, paramilitary and intelligence-supported operation aimed at taking out terrorist cells, and crime hatcheries throughout the length and breadth of the country. The focus is on busting terror networks and crime syndicates by attacking sleeper cells of terrorists and their enablers along with active terrorists.

With army in the lead role as the most puissant state institution to fight militancy, some questions about the strategy and approach towards fighting terrorism emerge.

Can the issue of terrorism be countered through a military operation alone? Army is groomed on Clausewitzean concept of Trinitarian warfare based on three elements i.e. army, people, and the government. In conventional warfare, it therefore knows where to concentrate the ‘Schwerpunkt’ against an army, people, or government based center of gravity.

In a non Trinitarian war however, where non state actors instead of states are the main combatants, the Clausewitzean notions of strategy become irrelevant. According to eminent military scholar Martin Van Creveld, the answers about the nature of non state actors, their motivations, their strategy, and relationship between them and society attain primacy in such warfare.

In a short span of a little over two months, the army-led operation has accounted for 108 hardcore terrorists in 15 major operations. A total of 4535 intelligence based operations (IBOs) have been launched apprehending 4510 militants including 1859 unregistered Afghans. 4083 weapons and 622191 ammunition pieces were seized in a country wide de-weaponisation and explosive control campaign.

The operation against terrorism will truly deliver when it attacks intolerance, bigotry, ignorance, and sectarianism concurrently with the kinetic operations being launched by law enforcing apparatus of the state

To gain a comprehensive victory in Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad, we need to attack the narrative that nourishes the monster and proves support to the extremist groups. The epistemic violence visited daily upon young impressionable minds through madaris, websites sub standard educational institutions, and unenlightened religious scholars is nurturing brainwashed individuals with a solipsistic viewpoint, making them only a provocative call away from violence.

The operation against terrorism will truly deliver when it attacks intolerance, bigotry, ignorance, and sectarianism concurrently with the kinetic operations being launched by law enforcing apparatus of the state.

With 15 martyrdoms since start of the operation, the army has blazed another altruistic trail in the service of the nation. National consensus, public support, and the political sincerity are de rigueur for success of the operation. Beset with external threats on two fronts a house divided would offer easy picking for the terrorists and their external sponsors.

Any individual or political entity that sows the seeds of dissension and mars the national consensus against countering extremism and terrorism at this juncture should be shown no mercy. Soft states have never prevailed over non state actors and Pakistan would be no exception. No quarters should be given neither to any militant engaged in terrorism nor to any cleric engaged in hate peddling.

Rule of law, pluralism, and zero tolerance for hate narrative should be foundation sans which the Rad ul Fasaad would meet the fate of several temporary palliatives that we have been administering to fight the cancer of militancy.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; email rwjanj@hotmail.com