There will no denying the fact the main reason for terrorism and Talibanisation is the rampant corruption. The officials in Pakistan and maybe, other countries of the world, have been promoting terrorism and Talibanisation just to achieve their ulterior motives. There are still rulers in Pakistan who have been favoring talks with the Taliban and terrorists. It is ironic to note these rulers have been enjoying full support of US President Bush.
There is still debate in Pakistan whether terrorists or the Taliban are criminals or otherwise. According to the tribesmen, if Pakistani rulers consider that terrorists or Taliban are good people then they should establish a base for them in Pakistan. The tribesmen consider that the Taliban and terrorists are criminals. All those who have been breaking the law and killing innocent people are criminals and they must dealt with as criminals. Holding talks with them will be a criminal act. Why have the rulers been supporting a handful of these elements?
According to an editorial comment, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, finally committed on Sunday in Larkana that she “would not talk to extremists who had shed the blood of innocent Muslims”. She made her stance clearer when she added the “precondition” of disarmament: “extremists should respect the law of the land” and she “was ready to talk to those who did not carry weapons”. In sharp contrast, unfortunately, the political line taken on the subject of terrorism by the APDM opposition is that the government should first accept the “precondition” of de-linking itself from the “American agenda” and then talk to the terrorists in Waziristan and Swat.
Who should submit to a “precondition”? The government, by abandoning the American agenda of fighting terrorism, or the terrorists, by laying down their arms? The opposition thinks that the government should give up the policy of killing Pakistani citizens at the “behest of the Americans”. And some leaders actually think that doing so would automatically make terrorism go away; others think that talking to the terrorists on their preconditions is the only way out. Indeed, some TV reporters interviewing people in Swat said on Sunday that the people of the area favoured negotiations with the local warlord Fazlullah. The TV reports strongly suggested that the people suffered because of the suspension of all economic life in Swat and had little confidence that the government would win against Fazlullah.
But Pakistan has had a taste of set-piece “talks” in the case of Lal Masjid. The consequence of this “negotiation” has unfolded in the shape of loss of all legal standing on the issue of Lal Masjid in the eyes of the Supreme Court and the people at large, and a continuation of the defiance of the writ of the state by the Ghazi clan now running it. The “negotiation” failed in the judgement of the government after which an operation was undertaken. But this is not how the media reported it. It reported that the government botched the talks and then also botched the operation which was unjustified in the eyes of the media. So the government, completely at a loss about how to handle Lal Masjid, lost Pakistan a legitimate right to handle terrorism. Significant sections of the media thus played into the hands of the terrorists because the government allowed it to give full coverage.
The mistake made by the German police in the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack should have been reviewed by Islamabad. Eight terrorists killed nine athletes after taking them hostage following police chief Schreiber’s act of allowing the storming of the Olympic village in full sight of the TV cameras. Before attacking the terrorists, the German police failed to clear the people and the journalists from the area. The terrorists exploited the presence of TV cameras to win the battle. They watched local TV and saw the “secret” commando attack coming against them.
In the case of Lal Masjid, TV journalists faced two negative aspects of the state. They were hostile to the state according to the universally accepted rule of seeking accountability of the government; and they felt natural resentment at being repeatedly pushed back from the scene of the encounter. On the other hand, TV journalists had no way of holding the clergy of Lal Masjid to account: they were not well-versed in Islam and had been trained from their childhood not to challenge a cleric. When one woman journalist repeated the safe cliché of la ikrah fi din (there is no compulsion in Islam) to the danda-bearing girl-vigilantes of Lal Masjid, she was told that the edict applied only to non-Muslims; upon which the woman journalist simply shut up, little realising that her TV channel had lost the national argument to the terrorists.
Once again the country is girding its loins to abandon the state to the terrorists. What will be the grounds on which the “talks” will be held with the warlords? Will the conditions be laid down by the government, which has lost the status quo, or the warlords, who preside over the new one? How can any sane person say that the warlords should lay down the terms of negotiation? Meanwhile, the government will have to walk the slippery slope of gradual abandonment of more territory under the pretext of Islamising it.
The End
