With the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, a garrison town of Pakistan, one would like to hope that the international and Pakistani narrative that heavily implicated the Pakhtun tribesmen in the Af-Pak region on the side of al Qaeda, a narrative based on wrong assumptions, would tend to change. This means a hope to acknowledge — it should have been acknowledged right after the post-9/11 US attack of al Qaeda in Afghanistan — that the war on terror in FATA is not a drama of the tribal honour, revenge or hospitality, but logical fruition of the deliberate state policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the misguiding narrative refuses to go away from many fronts informing the public on the war on terror.
A latest example from the US is an article, ‘The Code of the Hills’, by a former political agent of South Waziristan, Mr Akbar Ahmed, in Foreign Policy dated May 6, 2011 (see the link: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/06/the_code_of_the_hills). The article, which associates the FATA tribesmen with the Arab al Qaeda-led terror due to the tribal notion of honour, is highly misleading. Together with a Waziri tribesman, I have written a response to Mr Ahmed’s article and submitted to Foreign Policy for publication. We are anxiously waiting to hear from them. The magazine keeps publishing misguiding literature about the Pakhtun. We would now expect the magazine to give us an opportunity on its pages to response to some of the misinformation.
Foreign Policy has been a credible source of information and insights. But in the context of the war on terror, the magazine has degraded its standard and damaged its credibility, at least in the sight of the Pakhtun intelligentsia and all those non-Pakhtuns who have knowledge about the ground reality in FATA since 9/11. A case in point is the comment of a fellow columnist, Dr Mohammad Taqi (‘A passport to dystopia?’, March 3, 2011, Daily Times). Dr Taqi suggested Foreign Policy revisits its first editorial to restore the credibility of the magazine.
On the Pakistani front there has at least been one welcome sign of the change in the narrative on the war on terror: a recent post-Osama presentation by journalist Kamran Khan on a private TV channel (see the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVa8BO0X3zs&feature=player_embedded). Khan categorically rejected all the conspiracy theories that implicate Indians, Americans or Israelis in the terrorism in Pakistan. He presented a long list of deadly acts of terrorism around the world as well as in Pakistan and rightly pointed out that only and only Pakistanis or people linked with Pakistanis have undoubtedly been involved in such acts or at least their planning was originated in Pakistan. He said this has been the logical outcome of the state policy in the last three decades that used violent jihad as a tool in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. Pakistan is losing the war on terror and the time is running out. It is vital for the survival of Pakistan that its military and civilian government join hands to destroy the homegrown terror networks with a single-minded determination. This is the only way for Pakistan to step on the path of peace, development and prosperity.
Now, this coming from Kamran Khan is indeed a pleasant surprise. I have always heard people from FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who keep viewing the Pakistani media, complaining that Mr Khan misguides Pakistani public by projecting the military establishment’s pro-Taliban and anti-democracy point of view. Many of the same people happily welcome the changed outlook of Kamran Khan. A prominent Pakhtun social activist, Idrees Kamal, circulated the video clip of Kamran Khan’s presentation on multiple e-mail lists with these words: “Wish more people had courage to speak and accept the truth in Pakistan: For the first time Kamran Khan speaking the truth. Watch and listen please! We hope that the Pakistani media and the rightist patrons of the Taliban, soon come to senses.”
The Urdu media has a much wider outreach to the people of Pakistan than any English media based in this country. Pro-Taliban and pro-al Qaeda journalists dominate the country’s Urdu media. In this context Kamran Khan’s changed voice is important since he speaks from the Urdu media. His voice would hopefully indicate an alternative, closer to the reality narrative on the war on terror to audience of the Urdu media, which has bombarded baseless conspiracy theories and is pro-violent jihad.
Minus Kamran Khan the rest are the same in Urdu media, the same old conspiracy theories shifting the responsibility of all the jihad terrorism in Pakistan on the US, India or Israel and absolving the military establishment’s policy, the jihadi networks in Pakistan as well as the ‘brotherly’ Arab states, Saudi Arabia and UAE, sponsoring violent jihad in Pakistan. A case in point is the recent discussion of Dr Shahid Masood on a private TV channel. The discussion was conducted in the aftermath of the daring and devastating attack on PNS Mehran, Pakistan’s most important navel base. There was nothing new in Masood’s view, minus one thing: he openly justified the Pakistani security establishment’s nurturing of jihadi proxies for foreign policy objective in Afghanistan and Kashmir. He asked: “Did other states in the world today not have proxy groups for state objectives?” And so why is Pakistan being maligned for having the proxy groups, he implied.
Which other countries in the world have proxy groups that have imposed so much death and destruction on them internally and have caused so many fiascos for them abroad as the jihadi proxy groups of Pakistan have done to this country? The list of damages done by the proxies and the accompanying culture of religious bigotry against the people of Pakistan is endlessly long, but let’s take an example from FATA. Hundreds of tribal leaders have been killed all over FATA since 2003. Their families hold the proxies as well as directly the ISI agents responsible for the targeted killings of their relatives. The wider society in Pakistan may not know those tribal leaders, but locally they were people of immense respect and social influence. They have been loyal to the state and have always cooperated with the state authorities in FATA even under draconian laws like the FCR.
Is this the reward of their lifelong loyalty to the state: targeted killing by the state proxies in collusion with the state agents? Is it that questions like these would not be lurking in the minds their family members? Due to utmost fear of the ISI and the Taliban, the families and communities of the tribal leaders cannot speak openly. But could we expect that these families and the communities will be as loyal to the state as they were before the target killings?
All the jihadi proxies and their state mentors in FATA are achieving is to alienate people from the state. I do not know of any other country that has the foreign policy or proxy groups linked with the policy that alienates its loyal citizens from the state. Journalists like Shahid Masood are doing great injustice to this tortured country by defending the state’s policy of keeping jihadi proxy groups. It is important for the survival of this state that more journalists like Kamran Khan come forward to challenge the fake narratives of fellow journalists, like Shahid Masood.
The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban