Peshawar Attack: Pakistan is still in the State Of Denial

On the fate­ful day of 16th Decem­ber 2014 when Pak­istan was remem­ber­ing the tragedy of loss of its east­ern wing, anoth­er tragedy took place. Sev­en armed ter­ror­ists moti­vat­ed by reli­gious zeal wreaked hav­oc in a school in Peshawar and killed 132 chil­dren and 9 staff mem­bers. Pak­istan has suf­fered many grue­some ter­ror­ist attacks dur­ing last 13 years but this one was unique and it has been dubbed as mini 9/11 for Pak­istan. Appar­ent­ly, this attack brought all the polit­i­cal par­ties of Pak­istan on same page and it was unan­i­mous­ly agreed to form an action plan to root out ter­ror­ism from Pak­istan. But still Pak­istani nation at large is in a state of denial about the real cause and per­pe­tra­tors of ter­ror­ism.

All major polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers of Pak­istan open­ly declared that ter­ror­ists have noth­ing to do with reli­gion of Islam and that ter­ror­ism has no reli­gion. This is a nega­tion of a basic fact and reflects the state of denial preva­lent in Pak­istan. Ter­ror­ists who butchered 132 chil­dren in Peshawar were Mus­lims, beyond any doubt. They were inspired by reli­gious ide­ol­o­gy which moti­vat­ed them to sac­ri­fice their lives for the cause. Tehreek-e-Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP), the orga­ni­za­tion which claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the attack has waged Jihad against Pak­istani state for their demand of imple­ment­ing Shari­ah. In the pres­ence of a num­ber of evi­dences, deny­ing the reli­gious denom­i­na­tion of the ter­ror­ists and declar­ing them to be uncir­cum­cised infi­dels is noth­ing but a fur­ther proof of the state of denial. This will not only pre­vent from solv­ing the issue but it will fur­ther exac­er­bate the mat­ter as the real cause of ter­ror­ism, i.e. reli­gious indoc­tri­na­tion, is denied.

Madras­sas are still the pri­ma­ry breed­ing ground of reli­gious extrem­ism and mil­i­tan­cy in Pak­istan. Irre­spec­tive of who is run­ning these sem­i­nar­ies and what their motives are, it can­not be denied that root cause of ter­ror­ism in Pak­istan is unchecked net­work of thou­sands of sem­i­nar­ies in Pak­istan. When gov­ern­ment expressed its inten­tions to reg­u­late these sem­i­nar­ies, reli­gious estab­lish­ment react­ed aggres­sive­ly. They termed any attempt to bring reli­gious sem­i­nar­ies under the law a threat to Islam. Play­ing the Islam card is a favorite past time of the cler­gy­man and their most com­mon­ly used method of sur­vival. While the state’s com­pla­cen­cy is expressed by Fed­er­al Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Chaudhry Nis­ar Ali’s state­ment in which he came to the res­cue of sem­i­nar­ies by say­ing that only 10% of the sem­i­nar­ies are part of the prob­lem and the rest are just impart­ing reli­gious edu­ca­tion. For­mer Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Chaudhry Shu­jaat Hus­sain has also defend­ed the sem­i­nar­ies by reject­ing the notion that sem­i­nar­ies have any role in ter­ror­ism. When the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan is sym­pa­thet­ic to the source of the prob­lem then how it can pos­si­bly be resolved?

More­over, the com­mon cit­i­zens of Pak­istan are also in a state of denial about the ter­ror­ists. The nation­al dis­course on ter­ror­ism is that it is relat­ed to the waar in Afghanistan and that all the ter­ror­ists are for­eign sabo­teurs who dis­guise as Mus­lims. Many edu­cat­ed Mus­lims can be seen argu­ing to defend this dis­course. The pub­lic dis­course on ter­ror­ism is shaped by right wing colum­nists, con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians and the cler­gy­men who have enor­mous influ­ence on the opin­ions of com­mon Pak­ista­nis. How can it be expect­ed from Pak­ista­nis to ratio­nal­ly under­stand this whole issue when one of the most pop­u­lar evan­ge­list in the coun­try, instead of con­demn­ing the ter­ror­ists, explains the Peshawar school inci­dent as an expres­sion of the wrath of God? Such an atti­tude lies at the core of whole issue of Tal­iban­iza­tion because with­out get­ting a clear pop­u­lar sup­port of the peo­ple, it is not pos­si­ble to defeat the threat of ter­ror­ism.

If truth be told, the root cause of ter­ror­ism in Pak­istan is the pol­i­cy of using jihad to achieve for­eign pol­i­cy objec­tives. In order to exe­cute this pol­i­cy, a con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da has been pushed in the main­stream of Pak­istan for last three decades. As a result the intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal dis­course in Pak­istan has con­tin­u­ous­ly drift­ed to the rightwing. Due to igno­rance and lack of aware­ness, an aver­age Pak­istani cit­i­zen is gullible and vul­ner­a­ble to accept any agen­da as plain truth. As long as such state of denial con­tin­ues, no action plan, mil­i­tary courts or col­lec­tive polit­i­cal effort can erad­i­cate the men­ace of ter­ror­ism. Inci­dents like Peshawar school mas­sacre will cre­ate a short lived uproar and when the dust set­tles, every­thing will be back to nor­mal again.