Peshawar: The cost of managing terror

The killing of over 130 chil­dren in Peshawar by the Tehreek-e-Tal­iban has sent shock­waves across the world. It is a grue­some esca­la­tion of the war against ter­ror and we all lament the loss of life. School chil­dren in many cities in India held can­dle light vig­ils and even the Indi­an Par­lia­ment observed two min­utes of silence in the wake of the attack. PM Naren­dra Modi also expressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pak­istan PM Nawaz Sharif call­ing for a unit­ed front to fight against ter­ror­ism. But isn’t it time for the Pak­istani state to intro­spect?

It is true that Pak­istan has suf­fered great­ly due to ter­ror­ism, but it is also true that ter­ror groups have been used by the Pak­istani state as instru­ments of war. It is true that the Pak­istan army has engaged
ter­ror­ists in the North West­ern Fron­tier Province and Oper­a­tion Zarb-e-Azb has been a suc­cess in crip­pling the ter­ror infra­struc­ture, but it is also true that the state is har­bor­ing, even felic­i­tat­ing
those declared inter­na­tion­al­ly as ter­ror­ists – name­ly Hafiz Saeed. Even though Saeed has been linked to the 26/11 attacks, he has a boun­ty on his head and has even been declared as an inter­na­tion­al
ter­ror­ist by the UN, he freely oper­ates his orga­ni­za­tion, the Jamaat-ud Dawa in Pak­istan, and gets gov­ern­ment sup­port to hold mas­sive ral­lies where he calls for jihad against India.

Pak­istan has seen strong cit­i­zen dri­ven cam­paigns against injus­tice in the past. This year, Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri led major protests against the Nawaz Sharif gov­ern­ment call­ing for his res­ig­na­tion on
charges on cor­rup­tion and vote rig­ging. The protests did not suc­ceed, but thou­sands ral­lied behind a cam­paign against mis-gov­er­nance. In 2007, Pak­istani cit­i­zens protest­ed against for­mer Pres­i­dent
Musharraf’s dec­la­ra­tion of Emer­gency, which spear­head­ed the fall of the for­mer army chief’s regime. The Pak­istan media also ran a wide­ly pop­u­lar PR cam­paign in 2008 called ‘Yeh Hum Nahin’ which tried to
de-mys­ti­fy the mis­con­cep­tions sur­round­ing Islam and ter­ror­ism. This same vig­or, this same lev­el of urgency needs to per­me­ate the Pak­istan cit­i­zen­ry once again to tack­le the threat of ter­ror­ism head on.
Cit­i­zens need to devel­op a no tol­er­ance stance against lead­ers of Islam­ic extrem­ist groups, who are estab­lished ter­ror­ists and con­tin­ue to prop­a­gate war, as well as polit­i­cal par­ties who patron­ize them.

While the US is Pakistan’s prime ally on the anti-ter­ror and eco­nom­ic front, it has also urged the state for self-reflec­tion. When Hillary Clin­ton was US Sec­re­tary of State, she stat­ed that “Islam­abad could
not keep snakes in its back­yard to strike its neigh­bors.” Even in Novem­ber, the Pen­ta­gon issued an assess­ment report stat­ing Pak­istan was har­bor­ing ter­ror­ist sanc­tu­ar­ies. Such state­ments are met with
stiff oppo­si­tion with­in Pak­istan, how­ev­er can this issue be side­lined as com­plete­ly untrue? Is there no cre­dence to the inter­na­tion­al image Pak­istan has got today? Giv­en the extent of the vio­lence in the
nation, it is high time the state real­izes that ter­ror can­not be man­aged, it can­not be con­trolled. But even as state pol­i­cy has per­se­vered such attacks, it is time once again for the cit­i­zen­ry to ral­ly against it. The sac­ri­fice of those Pak­istani sol­diers who have fought against ter­ror­ism and the mem­o­ries of those civil­ians killed in attacks can­not be hon­ored unless there is an unequiv­o­cal stand against every ele­ment of ter­ror­ism. The state can­not engage the ene­my on one end and tol­er­ate the activ­i­ties and expan­sion of known ter­ror­ists and extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions at the same time. The shift in such a stance has to come from the cit­i­zen­ry as suc­ces­sive Pak­istan gov­ern­ments have done noth­ing to amend state pol­i­cy.

No holy war can be waged over the blood of inno­cent chil­dren. There is no legit­i­mate goal or a bet­ter world that the ter­ror­ists are set out to cre­ate. Ter­ror­ism is a can­cer that has to be cut out, it can­not be
nego­ti­at­ed with and it is clear­ly sui­ci­dal to be selec­tive with it. In the eyes of the world, Pak­istan must active­ly take an unequiv­o­cal stance against ter­ror and this can only be dri­ven by the cit­i­zen­ry who
have suf­fered for too long, but pos­sess the will and the for­ti­tude to fight back and elim­i­nate this scourge once and for all.