My kitchen and bathrooms were infested with cockroaches — not due to lack of cleanliness. These places would be sprayed every day and great results would be achieved. I would issue a press release that in a pre-dawn ‘operation’, I consigned 50 cockroaches to hell. The rating hungry TV channels would run it as ‘breaking news’. The newspapers would carry it with big front-page headlines. The army of anchors would hail it in talk shows. But I could never rid cockroaches. Within hours, hundreds of them would attack my kitchen and bathrooms again and I would launch another operation with a new name to frighten them. But to no avail!
I also held talks after talks with the cockroaches but they would not listen to me. I also convened ‘All Parties Conferences’ after ‘All Parties Conferences’ and a consensus was developed i.e. the ‘operation’ should be extended to the entire house and all types of ‘good’ and ‘bad cockroaches’ should be instantly killed. The media also supported this strategy. The entire house was sprayed; hundreds of cockroaches were killed but they would again assemble in the kitchen and bathrooms the next day in the same numbers.
The international media was making fun of my ‘operations’. But I did not lose heart. I went into seclusion for a week and found the solution. The filth in gutters was the source of cockroaches. I have been spraying the wrong places. When I cleaned all the gutters, the cockroaches were never seen in the house.
I thought to share this experience with our policymakers who have just launched another military operation against terrorism. Its name is also catchy like the dozens we had launched in the past -Operation Raddul Fisad (operation against evil). The new operation is giving instant results — four militants were killed here and six there, just like the cockroaches.
We have been killing terrorists since 2002 when Musharraf launched Operation Al Meezan in the Fata. Hundreds of terrorists were killed and arrested. Had it been successful, there would have been no terrorism and no new operation. Since this was not the case, so we launched Operation Rahe Haq in 2007. We killed terrorists here and there under this operation but we were not satisfied. So we launched Operation Sherdil in 2008. Between 2008 and 2009, we launched four new operations: Zalzala, Sirate Mustaqeem, Rahe Nijat and Rahe Raast. In 2011, we launched Operation Kohe Safaid. In 2013, we launched Operation Zar-be-Azb. And now, in 2017, we have the latest ‘model’ of operations — the Raddul Fisad.
Looking at the state of terrorism, extremism and intolerance in Pakistan, all the operations were fruitless. None, including the military courts, could ‘terrorize’ the terrorists. The emphasis was always at killing them at one place or another. Terrorism can’t be defeated with such a myopic strategy. The right strategy is targeting the source of terrorism i.e. the thinking which makes people terrorists.
We all know that seminaries don’t produce peace activists. They are divided by sects. One sect treats another as ‘infidel’. How can the product of seminaries be peaceful, tolerant and moderate? Similarly, clerics on the pulpits of mosque spread hatred against the followers of other sects. They can at least educate the followers about the importance of cleanliness which in Islam is equivalent to half faith. But no cleric would every use pulpits to tell you that you should not throw your garbage in the street.
Both the sectarian and Jihadi leadership is allowed to hold public rallies and make fiery speeches. The sectarian leadership promotes the agenda of takfeer and the Jihadis talk about spreading Islam in every part of the world through shamsheer. Hafiz Saeed threatens India to take Kashmir back by force. Speeches like this can’t make us a peace-loving society. They are turning Pakistan into a ‘Darul Fisad’ (house of evil). Just one ‘Raddul Fisad’ is not enough.
Terrorism and peace are products of two opposite ideologies. Military operations can’t defeat ideologies. Destructive ideologies can be defeated with constructive ideologies. Pakistan, till this day, is supporting the negative ideology. It will have to replace every negative ideology with a positive one. It will have to find the areas where the negative ideology is being educated and promoted. Start from the schools books as the first step and then you can come to the Constitution!
The writer is a journalist/researcher based in Islamabad. Email:[email protected]