We aren’t ready for 2016

In this season of looking before and after, we are prompted to reflect on the events and experiences of the departed year and to play with our expectations for the new year.

At one level, this is a very subjective exercise as we dwell on our personal lives and quietly deliberate on our regrets and our plans for the immediate future. But we do need to look at the national drift, against the backdrop of global and regional scenarios.

More than on any new year in the recent past, we have to contend now with momentous developments in the national arena. The year that has ended this week had begun with the promise of a new beginning in the aftermath of the massacre of our schoolchildren in Peshawar on December 16, 2014. And the National Action Plan was to be the measure of how things would change.

So, how has Pakistan changed in a year of struggle against the evil forces of terrorism, extremism and intolerance? To be sure, many battles have been won and Operation Zarb-e-Azb has yielded satisfactory results. Action has also been initiated against religious extremists in the context of sectarian terrorism. Karachi, in spite of tensions between the Sindh government and the federally-guided Rangers, is breathing a bit easily again. These, then, are intimations of hope.

But we should be seriously worried about the lack of progress on the social front. The mindset of the people at large has not sufficiently been transformed. In fact, there is little evidence that the rulers have the capacity to understand the challenge of humanising a society that has long suffered with dark passions of militancy and obscurantism. There are some hints about how this mission may proceed in the National Action Plan but there is general agreement that many aspects of the Plan have not been properly implemented.

Let me refer to Umar Cheema’s investigative report published in this newspaper on the last day of 2015 with this headline: ‘20 men, women, children from Lahore join Daesh, go to Syria’. It has some details of how the female principle of a Lahore-based Islamic centre had left home in September with her four children and had finally informed her husband from Quetta that she was on her way to Syria through Iran to join Daesh.

Quoting a civilian intelligence agency, Cheema said that around 20 men, women and children connected with the same Islamic centre had left to join Daesh, raising alarms about Lahore being a launching pad of Daesh. But the government appears to be in a state of denial about the presence of Daesh in the country. However, as Umar reports, efforts had been made on the ground against the terror outfit with some major breakthroughs.

This certainly is a very alarming report and exposes the weaknesses of the strategy that the government may have adopted after the formation of the National Action Plan. In response to this report, the Foreign Office offered a clarification that Daesh was not present in Pakistan in an organised form. But it said that Daesh’s influence was increasing in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Now, we have this frightened story about the arrest of a man in Karachi on Friday, the New Year day, who was allegedly recruiting young men for Daesh – the Islamic State. The arrest was made by the Counter-Terrorism Department of the police and the arrested person was said to have confessed that he had already sent three militants to Syria and one them was killed in the battle.

Those of us who are conscious of the state of the Pakistani society would not be surprised by these reports. Our rulers have been inexplicably tolerant of the militant outfits, mainly of the sectarian nature, that have operated in different parts of the country. Even now, they do not fully appreciate the potential of our madressahs to breed extremism and a jihadi mindset. The Lal Masjid in Islamabad may serve as an illustration of the flawed thinking of our rulers. Perhaps the catch is that the imperative to change cannot easily be grasped by those who may themselves have contributed to the problem in the first place.

Since my point of reference in this column is the passage of time from one year to the next, I find it difficult to not mention the death of Aslam Azhar in Islamabad on Tuesday. I have felt the loss in a personal sense because I had known him, which was surely a privilege because of who he was and what he had made of his life in these treacherous surroundings. I also feel that any meaningful change in Pakistan and a correction in its sense of direction would demand the vindication of the vision and values of someone like Aslam Azhar. Alas, there is a pathetic dearth of people of his calibre and convictions in our society.

Aslam Azhar was truly the founder of television in Pakistan. It is very instructive that he had almost retreated to his private space during the years when the electronic media had exploded into some kind of a national obsession. This would tell you a lot about who Aslam Azhar was and what our television channels have become. For some years, he was spending his time reading and thinking, far from the clamour and the tumult of our public sphere.

Since I am unable to sort out my personal memories and impressions, I would like to quote from the condolence statement of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. It said: “It is indeed the passing of a cultural era; of a renaissance man – gifted, talented, multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. He had a rare knack for spotting and nurturing talent and encouraged everyone whose life he touched to not accept anything without questioning”.

The statement added: “Aslam Azhar paid the price for not compromising on his integrity and principles during the Ziaul Haq military dictatorship, particularly the right and freedom of expression, free speech and freedom from censorship”.

In my view, there is a connection between who Aslam Azhar was and how we need to rescue our society from extremism and conservatism. But, again, our rulers do not seem to have any clue about the dynamics of progressive social change. So much so, they cannot even allow the ordinary people to enjoy the simple freedom of celebrating the New Year in a civilised manner.

We cannot be sure of what lies ahead in 2016. If the spectacle of how they denied the citizens of Karachi any access to the sea on New Year’s Eve is any indication, our aspirations for change are likely to remain unrequited.

The writer is a staff member.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com