Last week, the hard work of investigators hot on the heels of the perpetrators of the Safoora Goth tragedy was rewarded when four individuals, allegedly belonging to the same group, were arrested. The events that had been unfolding in Karachi for the past few weeks had created an aura of insecurity and instability, and nothing less than the arrest of the persons directly involved would have sufficed to ease public sentiment. However, while providing some semblance of closure for the deceased victims and their relatives, the arrests have created more puzzling questions for the Pakistani state and society to mull over.
The complexity of the networks of terror in Pakistan is not lost on any observer but the latest arrests have thrown much of the previously established facts out of the window. Previously, it was thought that members of the poorer segments of society were susceptible targets for radicalisation. Feelings of insecurity and exclusion, stemming from low income and its consequences — for instance lack of education — manifested themselves viciously in the form of radical tendencies where the ones who had nothing to lose would venture out to harm the ones who seemingly had everything to lose.
It was thought that no one with a decent education and an adequate supply of rupees to spend would ever choose the path of violent extremism. However, it now has been revealed that the alleged perpetrators of the Safoora Goth carnage, Sabeen Mahmud’s murder and numerous other atrocities were well-educated members of society living wholesome lives. One of the arrested had a business degree from a well-reputed university while another had an engineering degree. Apart from the fourth person, who is a hardened criminal, the other three attackers were living comfortable lives, seemingly removed from the clutches of radical militancy.
Armed with education and advanced mental capacities, the question why anyone would choose to take up actual weapons is an unsettling mystery with far-reaching consequences. What events transpired for the arrested individuals to commit such gruesome crimes is anyone’s guess but one can offer partial explanations that strive to make sense of the events. In the case of the arrested individuals, the association with radical organisations developed over the course of their university education and, for this reason, it would be instrumental to analyse why this was the case.
The undergraduate years spent attending universities are some of the most formative years of any person’s life. Modern academia is a gruelling and demanding establishment for which many students are unprepared at the beginning of their freshmen year. Universities are, by design, places to challenge the prowess of their students through academic and co-curricular activities. However, not only are individuals unprepared for combating the multiple challenges of adulthood at that age but the copious burden of studies leaves no room for developing emotional intelligence and feelings of empathy and inclusion. Because of the twin pressures to study and having to act mature, some students start to feel left out of the spectrum of activities at university and seek to remedy this situation through different means. To add further complexity, universities in recent years have started to incorporate elements of other cultures in the curriculum as well as in other activities.
Now, this is not an undesirable addition on its own but when seen in the context of a culture where sheltered and religious upbringings are the norm, exposure to liberal and — for lack of a better word – ‘western’ values unsettles the fine and artificial balance students have been able to maintain up to that point in their lives. Ours being a majority Muslim society, the values taught at home constantly nudge against the beckoning liberal values taught and observed at university. Students are exposed to other opinions that do not always mirror their own and since some students are not trained to handle uncertainty, a dissonance of sorts is created in young, impressionable minds.
Thus the biggest challenge of university life comes to the fore: how to reconcile internal conflicts, grow up into mature beings and maintain a respectable academic standing, all at the same time? The task to reconcile these is truly Herculean and not for the weak-willed. In such moments of crisis, the unstable, instead of developing an inclusive worldview, cling to the last remaining vestiges of familiar values. Perhaps out of sheer familiarity, the conflicted more often than not tend to lean towards matters of faith and religion, the peddlers of which are abundant in liberal universities too. Interestingly, such are the peculiarities of our society that the more enshrined an individual is in ‘worldly’ values, the harder they fall towards the devout side for resolving inner conflicts.
In this way, rocky minds find safe harbour by exchanging the exotic for the already known. Thankfully, for most, this leads to inner peace, thus providing enough satisfaction to prevent the onset of further existential crises but in rare circumstances — as was the case with the arrested — the amount of dissonance and conflict is such that there is no peace to be had unless fanatical decisions are taken in the name of comforting ideologies.
A bigger question at this stage would be to investigate if the universities are in some way involved in radicalisation of this extreme kind but there are going to be no easy answers to such inquiries. There have been instances where institutions have been found to be complicit in promoting certain sectarian ideas and even the more well-adjusted universities have to cohabit with domestic religious elements in these times.
Furthermore, there is virtually no counselling available to students in most places for maintaining good mental health and psychological wellbeing. The profiles of the arrested point out their initial radical tendencies but it is always difficult to predict if someone will make the move from publishing millenarian blogs and magazines to actually killing innocent people in the absence of comprehensive psychological assessments. In the coming days, as more information pours in, we are bound to learn more about the process of radicalisation in educational institutions but, for now, it is clear there can be no deliverance from our current predicament unless places of education are free from the influence of extreme ideologies.
The author is a freelance columnist with degrees in political science and international relations