Acceptable loss?

Legal eye
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
We are all witness to a genocide being carried out in Pakistan. The perpetrators are not nameless or faceless, even though our proclivity for conspiracies – coupled with the refusal of our ruling elite to state facts as they are – might have nurtured confusion in this regard.
The identity of the victims is, however, not disputed. Shias are being killed for being Shias. Ahmadis are being killed or persecuted for being Ahmadis. Christians and Hindus are being killed or persecuted for being Christians and Hindus. Those who have stood up to speak against the killing and persecution of people in the name of religion have also been killed for being apostates.
Acceptable loss is the damage that is deemed an acceptable cost of doing business. It appears that the lives being claimed by terrorism is an acceptable loss for our ruling elite while they go about conducting business in the way that they have all along.
We like blaming General Ziaul Haq for all sorts of social, political and security ills that bedevil our state and society today. But Zia has been dead a long time. What is stopping us from moving away from what he left us with? Zia agreed to construct, sustain and nurture jihadi factories on our soil and use non-state actors as a component of our national security policy.
Shouldn’t the loss of over 40,000 lives in a decade have provoked a rethink? There is little evidence suggesting that the thought of employing non-state actors in pursuit of our national security goals has been banished forever.
Do our security policymakers really believe that American exit from the region will render non-state actors acceptable once again, that the Taliban and TTP will head to Afghanistan and consume themselves with blood games there, that Lashkar-e-Taibas and Jhangvis will exclusively focus on India and Kashmir and that consequently our internal security challenge will dissipate?
Zia forced religious morality into our constitution and our law and confused our notions of sin and crime. What was stopping the present parliament (with a majority of centre-left parties) from tearing out the requirement of being ‘sadiq’ and ‘ameen’ from Article 62 of the constitution or consign the Objectives Resolution to being a preamble only when it passed the 18th Amendment aimed at cleansing the constitution of adulterations introduced by dictators? What was stopping the ruling regime from amending the blasphemy law that everyone agrees is not just susceptible to abuse but is in fact abused?
Zia encouraged bigotry within the society. What stopped the subsequent enlightened moderates from trying to reverse social bigotry? Deeniyat became Islamiat at some point and khuda hafiz became Allah hafiz. Judges started to perceive themselves not just as the enforcers of law but also defenders of public and private morality.
Court proceedings began to commence with public recitation of the Holy Quran. Khakis prohibited entry of those wearing shorts in parks. Personal faith and religious convictions became a public matter and slowly it became acceptable for some to enforce their view of religion and faith on others.
It is growing bigotry within our society (inspired by a certain interpretation of religion) combined with violence on the one hand, and a state that has formally taken upon itself to enforce religion and morality in the society and a security policy that has incorporated use of non-state actors as a strategy to pursue national security goals on the other, that explains proliferating terrorism within Pakistan.
Within this larger context we have reached a point where there exists no public space to challenge the armed and violent bigots and the state seems to have been held hostage by non-state actors.
Without addressing the factors shaping this larger context it would be foolhardy to believe that the menace of terror can be nipped through law enforcement measures alone. Terror after all is a tactic. Unaccounted flow of men, material and money across Pakistan might have enabled terrorists to carry out their designs with impunity and augmented their ability to inflict greater loss.
But at the heart of the problem is the self-righteous belief of some that it is all right to kill in the name of religion and the willingness of our state agencies and political parties to tolerate them within our midst, so long as they can be harnessed to simultaneously promote the goals of these agencies and parties.
If the FC had properly checked the water tanker carrying the explosives the 100 Hazaras who died might have been saved. But Hazaras and other Shias will continue to be attacked so long as the LeJ is alive and well.
Even if the LeJ is routed, what about those who attack Ahmadis who are alive or dig up graves of those who are dead? What about those who kill Christians and Hindus on allegations of blasphemy or even those who speak up against the abuse of blasphemy law? What about the TTP that takes special pride in slaughtering our soldiers and policemen? How does one negotiate with barbaric terror mongers?
We can no longer treat terrorism and its solutions as a localised affair. The killing of Hazaras in Balochistan, Shia professionals in Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar and bus passengers in Gilgit are all connected. Similarly the TTP might not carry a bulk of its operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but militants are certainly using Karachi and other metropolitan cities to get lost between operations (a form of R&R if you may).
Our response to terror has to be nationwide. Demands to increase FC in Quetta or hand over the province to the army will achieve nothing. The time for knee-jerk reactions is gone.
Edmund Burke had argued that, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” In our present state of turmoil no half measures will help. Rehman Malik might be the biggest nincompoop around, but can that justify the PML-N’s alleged eagerness to enter into a seat adjustment pact with the ASWJ/SSP? Do we not remember Rana Sanaullah embracing Ahmed Ludhianvi in a Punjab by-election and running a joint electoral campaign? Can we continue to practice a form of politics in which it is acceptable to court even the devil if he has a vote?
We need to eradicate state sponsorship or acceptance of non-state actors. Saying that the army has no operational links with militants and the LeJ does nothing other than inspire cynicism. To argue that the army has no interest in not attacking militants when militants are slaughtering soldiers isn’t good enough either. Actions speak louder than words. The logic of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ still holds good. But the role of non-state actors in Pakistan has evolved.
They are no longer controlled extensions of our intelligence agencies. They are free agents who have a mind of their own and willing to render their service to the highest bidder. They will agree to work with the state if state policies promote their ideological and financial interests and not the other way round.
To argue that the interest of the Pakistani state might stand realigned with that of non-state actors once the Americans leave this neighbourhood is a recipe for making Pakistan’s national security and foreign policy permanently hostage to bigoted forces of retrogression.
And we can also no longer skirt the unhealthy relationship between our state and religion. To say that terrorists’ interpretation of religion is wrong and that Islam is a peaceful religion is unhelpful no matter how valid. In terms of ideology it is always the more radical views that inspire action. Religious moderates simply have no leverage with religious extremists.
So as long as the state remains in the business of enforcing religion and the society accepts such role, it will remain acceptable for some to enforce their religious beliefs on others by force. We must return religion to where it rightfully belongs: a private matter between the citizen and God.
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu