Pakistan's Response to the Peshawar Attack

LOSING HEAD AND HEART

Maryam Sakeenah

Tragedies like the one in Peshawar are litmus tests for any nation- either bringing out the best, or exposing the bare bones. Pakistan’s response is curiously similar to the U.S response to 9/11. The fact that the U.S’s counter-terror strategy accounts for the genesis of a much more brutal TTP and ISIS is lost to us. In the same manner as the US filled up prisons contravening law and depriving suspects and inmates of fair judicial process in its paranoia after 9/11, Pakistan is all set to establish special military courts in contravention of constitutional procedure, for swift conviction of ‘terrorists.’ The horrors that were unleashed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in the name of national security are a forgotten narrative in the new Pakistan post 16/12.

Our collective response to the tragedy shows a febrile national demand for vengeance. Ironically, we are baying for the enemy’s blood just like the enemy is baying for ours- in the process, we lose the moral high ground we think we possess. In the process, ‘the faces change from pig to man and man to pig, and pig to man again- and already it is becoming impossible to say which was which.’

At present there are two extremist discourses in the country: the first, of course, is personified by the likes of the clerics at Lal Masjid and other fanatical groups, invoking religion to justify fanatical militancy. This religious extremism has come handy for movements like the Taliban who hide behind it for moral cover of their actions. There is, however, another extremist discourse: it comes from the liberals who have joined the chorus for an unrelenting militarist approach in response to the Peshawar attack. This high-pitched chorus decries any counter narrative or stirring of dissent. In the new Pakistan post 16/12, no one can take a different approach to dealing with the problem of terrorism in Pakistan, and have their opinion respected.

Anyone who does not take sides in these extremist discourses and believes in giving a chance to stable peace through justice and effective longterm peacebuilding is termed unpatriotic at best, and a terrorist-sympathizer, even supporter more commonly. There is no room for dissent. In this extremist furore, all hardline stances seem to have suddenly been vindicated. The iron-fisted policies of Musharraf that helped create the TTP are now being interpreted as farsighted wisdom. Frenzied calls for razing madrassahs to the ground or burning down mosques no longer sound outrageous in the spirit of febrile jingoism.

The strongly militarist strategy  gives overweening powers to the army to deal with an issue that requires a more variegated longterm approach. It is likely to turn the country into a military state. The policy is uninsightful as it aims to do more of the same that created this monster, in order to eliminate it. The TTP emerged as a much more brutal and militant force than the original Taliban movement as a result of Pakistan’s disastrous decision to support the US in Afghanistan and sending its forces in the tribal areas to stop support for the anti-US Afghan resistance. This made the fiercely independent Pashtun tribes turn their guns against the Pakistan army and state. A renunciation of this ill-advised national policy is necessary as a first step to heal and rebuild, even as we take necessary firm action against the unrelenting perpetrators. Besides, the clandestine channels of support and funding to these militant groups must be traced and exposed before the nation. The enemy is not just the gun-toting Taliban militant, but his trainer, financier and facilitator. These vital connections have always been the state’s well-kept secret. And now, questions cannot be asked as we give a free rein to the military to ‘exterminate all brutes.’

In the tide of this nationalistic fervour to exterminate the brutes, drone operations in Pakistan suddenly and silently receive endorsement by national consensus. Questions are no longer welcome about civilian casualties or other fallout of the operation in the tribal areas. Answers are no longer deserved by the nation. The supreme ultimate goal is invincible national security, and ‘to this end, all means must give way.’ While the need for security is vital and understandable, bypassing all that is legal and rational and moral ought to be taken with a pinch of salt.   

The deeper problems have to be dealt with through a wider, more insightful non-military approach: combating extremist discourse that misuses religion to justify terrorism and creating an effective counter discourse; listening and understanding, dialogue, mutual compromise and reconciliation; rehabilitation and peacebuilding. There are numerous examples in the past- even the recent past- of how war-ravaged communities drenched in the memory of oppression and pain, seething with unrelenting hate, have undertaken peacebuilding with some success. Possibilities to create the conditions that had led to ceasefires that brought temporary respite to the nation during this war, should have been explored with sincerity.

The series of executions after the Peshawar tragedy is also regrettable on many counts.  Many of these convicts were juveniles when they committed the crime, brainwashed and swayed by passions. Many had confessions extracted through torture. These were the small fry, while the big fish have escaped the noose. So many high profile murderers and criminals go scot free, whereas these brainwashed juvenile offenders from an ethnic minority, a disadvantaged background are picked out selectively for blind 'justice.' Selective justice is injustice. Two such cases which have been highlighted by human rights groups are that of Shafqat Hussain convicted at the age of 14, and Mushtaq Ahmed who was tortured into a confession without being given access to a fair trial.

Our uninsightful reactionary policies reflect a loss of head and heart in the wake of the Peshawar tragedy. In this feverish frenzy of extremisms baying for each others blood, voices of moderation , justice and peace are dying out.  And the rest is Silence.    

Choosing Opinionlessness: On the 'Killed' versus 'Martyred' Debate in Pakistan

CHOOSING OPINIONLESSNESS

Maryam Sakeenah

We gloat over carrion; we gather like vultures to pick up the pieces. We discriminate between dead bodies under labels of ‘halak’ (merely killed) and ‘shaheed’ (martyred). As we do so, we don God’s hat, partaking of what is exclusively His right with a self-righteous audacity. Our opinions on the dead may not be worth a shred but they signify the sides we take in this melee over rotting corpses. And it all reeks of the deep sickness that gnaws into our body politic, the gulley-wide split that gapes like an open-mouthed hydra threatening to swallow us piecemeal- the tectonic gash that runs across us splintering us into opposed camps, eyeball to eyeball.

Pakistan today is a dangerously divided society with intense polarization around ideological affiliation. Reconciliation grows impossible with the unchecked and unabashed media stoking the flames of hate by bringing the sides on head-on collision course with malevolent deliberation. The commercial news media feeds itself on sensationalism, as is clear from the manner in which the Jamat e Islami leadership has been thrown the bait and drawn into the centre-stage of the melee. The result has been an angry storm of ‘with us or against’ us rhetoric. Either one endorses the official version of the narrative or he is with the Taliban- with this rabid logic, JI and PTI’s political opponents have grabbed the opportunity to accuse the two parties of being cohorts and allies of the Taliban. Strictly speaking, these claims are inaccurate, far-fetched and malicious, as both groups explicitly renounce the use of violence for religious and political purposes and while calling for dialogue, have consistently rejected the wayward ways of the TTP. The fecklessness with which Munawar Hasan faced the situation and the recklessness of his impertinent statements have discredited the JI’s decades-long largely non violent political struggle.

The fact that the drone strike killing Hakimullah Mehsud came at the time when the conversation on counter terrorism was being steered away from the blood and iron that had eluded peace exposes the U.S’s unilateralist pursuit of narrow national interest in the strategic region. This makes the targets of the brutal attack look more of underdogs and victims evoking sympathy, the sinner being viewed as sinned-against.

The ‘most allied ally’ only gets a few crumbs thrown its way from the bloody deal that has proven so costly for Pakistan. The enemy laughs at our wounds with sadistic glee; laughs our desperate overtures for peacemaking to scorn. The raw anger this generates drowns all sanity so that sentimental, reckless statements like ‘even a dog killed by the U.S is a martyr’ are made, making Islamic jurisprudence look puerile and inane.

Yet we choose to fight over juristic complexities about life in the unseen world from our entrenched positions. The media directs all attention towards this needlessly long drawn argument even though the conversation should be about strategies to effectively check the Global Bully on the loose. The conversation should be about the utter illegality and unacceptability of US drone strikes in Pakistan. To articulate such a response the nation needs to stand together in solidarity and speak out with a single emphatic, resounding voice. Yet at this critical juncture we seek to intensify divides in order to pep up the news bulletin on commercial television- all at a terrible cost.

The ideological polarization in our society reflected in the media has created an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion bringing social groups into confrontation and clash. The conversation about ‘halakat’ (killing) versus ‘shahadat’ (martyrdom) is not only in vain but calculated to provoke, divide and aggravate. It is not only unwise but ill-intentioned, seeking to disunite and pit some against others on vital national issues at a time when we need standing together. And as we take sides in this battlefield strewn with dead bodies, we forget that sometimes it is all right to be opinionless. Sometimes our opinion is just not the point, at all. Sometimes it is more important to just understand.

We need to understand that the dead we fight over and then forget as the next newsworthy story turns up, are not forgotten by their heirs. And the persistent victim becomes the blinded, insensate perpetrator. That ideas and ideologies are not fought with guns, but understood in order to be deconstructed, exposed and jettisoned. We need to understand that evil begets evil; that hurt transforms into hate and festers, and breaks down all boundaries of reason and logic. We need to understand that dividing ourselves into embattled camps around fixed ideological associations pertaining to faith or the lack thereof is disastrous. We need to understand that our weakness lends strength to the ones who will trample us underfoot in their relentless pursuit of global hegemony. It is in cultivating the ability to understand rather than shouting out our worthless featherweight opinions at each other that we can begin a healing.