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Thursday March 28, 2024

Lessons from Paris

Legal eyeThe writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.Notwithstanding ‘root causes’ and honest efforts to understand them, there can be no justification for the Paris attacks just like there was no justification for the Mumbai or Peshawar attacks. An overwhelming majority of Muslims see their religion as a source of

By Babar Sattar
November 21, 2015
Legal eye
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
Notwithstanding ‘root causes’ and honest efforts to understand them, there can be no justification for the Paris attacks just like there was no justification for the Mumbai or Peshawar attacks.
An overwhelming majority of Muslims see their religion as a source of peace and goodness and denounce the likes of Al-Qaeda, TTP and Daesh. But we need to acknowledge that an expansionist extremist religious ideology has proliferated within Muslim populations over the last two and a half decades, which aims to conquer Muslim states, convert Muslims into intolerant zealots, and then expand to ‘conquer’ the rest of the world.
There are lessons for us embedded in our own critique of western policies that we hold responsible for feeding the scourge of terror. It is rightly pointed out that in terms of sheer numbers, and in terms of the number of attacks and deaths, Muslims have been the worst victims of terror. Whether it is Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan or Pakistan, the immediate object of terrorists operating there is to conquer the home state and convert ‘misguided’ Muslim majorities into ‘real’ Muslims. In short, predominantly the immediate target of terror is Muslims and states comprising Muslim majorities.
While we pleadingly make these points to wade of bigotry and bias against Muslims, why does it seem that Al-Qaeda and Daesh-style terror is a western and not a Muslim problem? In the aftermath of 9/11, 7/7 or Paris, our immediate concern becomes the racial hate peaceful Muslims will face across the world. We complain that the west values its lives more than ours. We lament that Paris matters more than Beirut. So if the west values its lives, we don’t we value ours? What explains the lack of anger and outrage against terrorists within Muslim states when Muslims are the prime victims?
Why is it that a barbaric attack on our children in an army school resulted in the army forcing a consensus against terror groups attacking the state, but the loss of 50,000 lives over a decade didn’t force a rethink of our security policies? Why is it the sacked prayer-leader of Lal Masjid is still free to propagate his ideology of hate and advocate support for Al-Qaeda and Daesh and TTP in the heart of Islamabad, jeopardising the safety as well as the freedom of Muslims in a Muslim majority state to practise their religion as they deem fit? Is it the west’s failure and disregard for Muslim lives the enables Maulvi Abdul Aziz to thrive?
Many have pointed out that it was the US-led western coalition’s attacks and regime change policies that destroyed existing governance structures in Iraq, Syria and Libya and created the vacuum that provided the perfect sanctuary, recruitment field and nursery to make Daesh the force it has become today. Many argue that the threat to Europe comes primarily from Europeans raised in marginalised Muslim communities who have now sworn allegiance to Daesh. Thus terror in Europe is partly the product of flawed policies that have resulted in lack of assimilation of migrants within those societies.
Doesn’t the same logic apply to Pakistan? We located our jihadi factories in Fata during the 1980s and 90s, which turned against the state after Pakistan’s U-turn re Afghanistan post-9/11. We then sent our military into Fata initially to make pacts with terrorists and subsequently to fight with them. Didn’t these disastrous national security policies wipe out the authority of traditional structures of governance in Fata, both tribal and civil, and create a vacuum that nurtured terror? What has Pakistan done over the last decade to fill the vacuum in Fata and assimilate residents of tribal areas into Pakistan with full citizen rights?
We know that the US, backed by Europe, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, has been pushing for the ouster of Syria’s Assad and supporting those willing to fight him. It is alleged that a large part of that support has resulted in empowering and strengthening Daesh. The priority of this alliance seems to be to oust Assad first and then deal with its unintended consequences – Daesh. Russia and Iran (and Hezbollah) are standing with Assad and against those fighting Assad for being the greater evil. The new proxy cold war between US and Russia seems in full play now, with the Middle East being the theatre, and Daesh a beneficiary.
It is apparent to anyone watching this game from the sidelines that defeating Daesh is not the number one priority of competing world powers. If it were, the US wouldn’t be funnelling arms to insurgent groups that find their way to Daesh, Turkey wouldn’t be purchasing oil from Daesh, and Russia, US, France and Turkey wouldn’t have conducted their own airstrikes in Syria. To the naïve, the pursuit of contradictory policies by western and Muslim states alike that end up bolstering Daesh and increasing the threat it poses to states and citizens across the world seems plain stupid. But the contradiction perseveres.
The US made the grave mistake of distinguishing between good and bad jihadists in Afghanistan in the 1980s, based on who was attacking their enemy’s interests. The US-led coalition is making the same mistake in the Middle East today. Pakistan has also drawn the same false distinction between good and bad terrorists based on immediate targets of terrorists in question. We know full well that terrorists are ideologically driven weapons. Once assembled and trained, the target can change. How can a rational state elect to employ weapons that can malfunction anytime for reasons beyond its control and turn against it?
Take Zarqawi’s case. A Jordanian by birth, he ran a militant camp in Afghanistan before moving to Iraq to fight US troops, to joining Al-Qaeda, to making Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq his main thing, to being considered the founding father of the group that became Daesh. Ilyas Kashmiri is another example. An ideologically motivated weapon, his focus and targets ranged from Kashmir and Afghanistan to Pakistani politicians and military heads. The distinction between active, sleeping and extinct volcanoes is equally applicable to terrorists. The only safe terrorist is an extinct terrorist and not one sleeping.
If cultivation of ‘assets’ by states competing for influence and for continuation of proxy wars in the Middle East seems unintelligent, doesn’t the same logic apply to those supporting the Afghan Taliban or the TTP or their murderous cousins? If the US and Russia pursuing policies that keep in play the terror groups that aim to kill US soldiers and citizens and blow up Russian planes seems mindless, how should we think about security policies being pursued by Pakistan and India that nurture non-state militant groups that plan and carry out attacks in India and Pakistan?
To fight and defeat terror we will need to address its supply and demand sides. How useful is blowing up targets in Fata as long as factories preaching the decadent ideology of hate and violence in the name of religion and producing foot soldiers of terror are alive and well? Maulvi Abdul Aziz is a test case. If the state can’t address the danger posed by one who continues to threaten the state, celebrate terrorists and spread vitriol from the heart of its capital, let’s just wind up NAP and be done with the hope of a progressive, tolerant and safe Pakistan.
On the demand side too, if we can’t build effective and just governance structures that deliver citizen services and enforce their responsibilities, angry youth will keep becoming foot soldiers for radical hate-mongers.
Here the test case is our tribal areas. If we cannot build structures in Fata and Pata (now that the state has seized these territories through military operations) that are capable of serving the tribal people while enforcing the state’s writ, let’s not expect milk and honey to flow through those mountain passes once the military withdraws.
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu