Unlike Phoolan Devi, Ehsanullah Ehsan was not a victim of social injustice that could have pushed him to join Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as its ‘spin doctor’. He was not a peasant farmer exacting revenge on the Armed Forces to reclaim his land in Okara. He was not a freedom fighter forced to wage an armed struggle against an oppressor or outlaw like Sultana Daku or Robin Hood out to rob the rich to help the poor. The unscrupulous are free to burn the midnight oil to project Ehsan as a poet like Bulleh Shah, a civil right activist like Dr Martin Luther King, a revolutionary like Che Guevara, a missionary like Mother Teresa or a saint like Ghulam Farid, but people of conscience shall always curse him as a savage that he is.
The TTP’s endless sins are known to all. There is not an inch of land in Pakistan that it has not soaked with the blood of innocent people. It has shattered the most invincible of places like the General Headquarters, Naval Headquarters, Air Force Headquarters, offices of intelligence agencies, police academies, army and police recruiting centres, courts, and airports like sand piles. As the self-claimed sole custodian of Islam, it did not even spare mosques, imam baaras, hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, and public gatherings.
No faith permits killing of women, children, and elderly people in war. Islam even urges us to protect the enemy’s trees. But the TTP vandals are alien to any principle of Islam or humanity. Comparing them with beasts would be an insult to the latter because they would kill only for food and attack in defence. Can there be any justification for killing patients at hospitals, little children at schools, and worshippers at mosques? Phoolan Devi was gang raped in front of hundreds of villagers but did she exact revenge on her enemies’ children, mothers, sisters, parents? Did Sultana Daku behead his enemies and play football with their decapitated heads? Did he put a bullet through a school-going girl’s head?
Watch Ehsanullah Ehsan’s confessional video; do you see a guilty and repentant terrorist or a celebrity like the chaiwala.
His beard is smoothly trimmed. He is wearing a starched kameez, waistcoat, and a chic chitrali cap. He is fresh and is smiling. His body language, confidence and composure do not reflect any sign of regret, rather, it exuberates an unshakable faith i.e. he was not arrested but had voluntarily surrendered, thus, it may seem to him that he is not less than a saint or a wali and a full amnesty along with a high-paying job like that of an emissary of peace is his right.
What was the logic behind arranging his interview with Geo Television’s Salim Safi? (Thank God, Pemra blocked it!) It would have just presented him as ‘subhkabhula’ (better late than never) and earned him some public sympathy. It will be one of the worst moves by the government if it plans to spare him like Asmat Mavia, under the cover of an amnesty. The list of Ehsan’s ‘accomplishments’ is long. Each of his ‘feats’ entitle him to legal consequences. The deadly terrorist had proudly claimed on December 4, 2009, the killing of 37 worshippers – most of them serving or retired army officers — in an attack at the Parade Lane Mosque, Rawalpindi, with this statement: “We are not against innocent people of Pakistan, but against those officers and ministers who are American by hearts and minds and Pakistani just by faces.”
After Malala Yousaf zai was attacked, the ‘devil’ had announced that she was spreading immorality.
On June 27, 2012, he released a video showing severed heads of 17 Pakistani soldiers with this message: “We want rulers to end alliance with the US and impose Sharia in Pakistan”. Later on February 17, 2014, he released another video in which TTP terrorists were playing football with severed heads of 23 FC soldiers. This is Taliban’s sharia!
For this ‘poet’, the killing of 141 people including, 132 schoolchildren at the Army Public School Peshawar, and murder of 22 people at Bacha Khan University, Charsadda, was in revenge for Operation Zarbe Azb. The Army will badly hurt its own men — the soldiers and officers — who lost their lives while fighting the TTP monsters. No one will ever send their child to join the Army if Ehsanullah Ehsan was not served justice. No soldier will fight terrorists bravely if Ehsan is given amnesty in the name of ‘doctrine of necessity’. Then, the jails will be good only for politicians, journalists and civil rights activists; and gallows for elected prime ministers! The message sent out will be: you are free to join any terror group, kill as many people as you can. Just don’t forget to surrender in the end. We will make you a hero for life! The doors of repentance are open for any sinner in any faith but the key is the right punishment here. What happens in the hereafter, leave it to God.
The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Islamabad. Email:[email protected]