After last month’s attack on the Mehran base, top analysts and ordinary citizens alike are emphatic that the country will never be the same. It boggles the mind how armed terrorists were able to casually scale a back wall, destroy two maritime surveillance aircraft and wage a protracted gun battle in Karachi.
The Pakistani Taliban said the attack proved that they were still united and powerful. Most observers, however, believe that the attack only proves that there must have been help from the inside. How did a dozen men manage to launch an assault of this magnitude and ferocity against a military base? It is this incongruence — 12 terrorists toying with the armed forces of a country — that gives rise, rightly, to the rumours of insider collusion.
It is obvious that such an elaborate attack would have needed a considerable amount of intelligence gathering. Even if the terrorists did not have any help with getting past the security cordon and into the base, they had to have had considerable knowledge of the base’s layout, strategic assets and schedules. But was this intelligence passed on by radicalised members of the armed forces or, more dangerously, have terrorist organisations effectively penetrated Pakistan’s police and armed forces?
The possibility of complicity is real, especially since there have been precedents of armed forces personnel actively abetting militancy. Perhaps most disturbingly, no one in Pakistan’s powerful military establishment is willing to thoroughly discuss the content of WikiLeaks cables that detail the radicalisation of low-rung military personnel, particularly airmen. Neither is the establishment willing to take a bold public stance against all militant outfits — whether they target Pakistan, India or the US.
The Taliban have, once again, openly declared war against the Pakistani state and its citizens. They have executed countless attacks and brutally killed thousands. If indeed there were military personnel who colluded in the attack on the Mehran base, then they were directly enabling the murder of their own people, and the destruction of their own state, society and economy. What depths has Pakistan reached if soldiers, who are charged with guarding the country, are instead working to destroy the state apparatus?
This is an emergency wake-up call — not just for Pakistan’s citizens, but for its neighbours too — and warrants the most stringent questions. The government and the military need to introspect; they have to conduct a detailed probe and offer their citizens and the world an honest appraisal of where things stand.
Many analysts allege that Pakistan’s military makes distinctions between militants — that they aggressively hunt some groups but actively encourage others. The Taliban, for instance, are pursued vigorously but the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), obsessed with destroying India, is considered a strategic weapon and supported. Even Shaharyar Khan, Pakistan’s former Foreign Secretary, admitted as much in a recent interview. The Lashkar’s boss, Hafiz Saeed, lives freely in Lahore delivering anti-India speeches and inciting people to wage war. Within Pakistan, according to the columnist SK Sharma, the Lashkar operates “over 180 schools, 80 madrassas, several charitable organisations and technical colleges besides publishing houses, farms and training campuses”.
But there is no such thing as a good terrorist and a bad terrorist, there never was. All terrorists, despite their cause, must be seen by Pakistan’s government, military and ordinary people for what they are: destroyers of people and countries, enemies of peace and prosperity. Pakistan’s streets, weary and bloody, yearn for its people and its government to stand up to religious extremism.
The only way forward is for Pakistan to obsessively purge extremist ideologies and sympathies from all levels of their society. The use of religion as a political tool began under Zulfikar Bhutto and was taken to an extreme by Ziaul Haq, who enshrined it in the constitution. Decades of accumulated religious fanaticism now threaten to rip Pakistan apart. For the country to survive and extricate itself from this chaos, the starting point will be to undo the Islamisation that the country has gone through. The solution lies in rekindling the secular spirit and constitutional integrity of Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
Along with this, it is important that Pakistani policy, particularly military policy, moves towards being terror-centric from its traditional India-centric focus. The latter has not achieved much, but has cost a great deal of credibility. One hopes that General Kayani will realise this and take a tough line against fanatic rogue officers and generals especially since it is now clear that his own troops might have divided loyalties.
As journalist Mosharraf Zaidi has written, a critical long-term solution will hinge around tackling the country’s severe education crisis. He tells us that nearly 40 million Pakistani children do not attend school. The government must partner with private sector and non-profit organisations to drastically improve the access to schools and to well-qualified teachers for all sections of society and all regions of the country. For the common man, the appeal of fundamentalist organisations is more utilitarian than people imagine. These organisations are able to provide what the government should, but cannot: education, healthcare and social support.
The tragedy of Pakistan, therefore, is that its people often believe that only some terrorists are dangerous killers but others are righteous, generous warriors. The masses are not livid for the thousands of lives that have been lost in the hundreds of suicide bombings and terrorist strikes. The people seem ready to protest against drone attacks and American violations of Pakistani sovereignty, but shy away from condemning the Taliban’s murderous campaigns against its own citizens. Everyone continues to point fingers, but no one is willing to introspect and accept blame.
Invariably, while pointing fingers, a familiar and convenient recourse is to dust and bring out the old ‘foreign hand’ conspiracy theories that blame the Indian government and their intelligence agencies. Sadly enough, such theories are often aired on Pakistan’s television channels by a variety of ‘experts’ — Zaid Hamid’s rants are only too famous in India, for their comic value. But why are people of his ilk, the merchants of hate, even allowed into television studios? Who are the special interests who support him?
But it really is time for Pakistan to wake up to the fact that India is not the real enemy. India has the most to gain, in both economic and political terms, from a peaceful, democratic and friendly Pakistan. As a Pakistani journalist and peace activist wrote recently, “Those who think that India is the enemy need to wake up and realign their goggles.”
The writer can be reached at [email protected] and at twitter.com/rakeshmani