Drilling below the surface

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

In another set of the security measures we have become so familiar with, schools in the Punjab were shut down till February 4, though private schools were later given leeway to re-open after desperate meetings were held. Previously, educational institutions had been closed for a week on the rather feeble grounds of ‘extreme weather conditions’. Yes, temperatures had fallen to a low of around 4 degrees Centigrade in Lahore and a little lower in other cities, but this is not really unusual for a winter in the province.

It was quite obvious the reason for the school closure was different, and emanated from a security threat, presumably brought to the attention of authorities by intelligence agencies. Other intense security was also in place in Islamabad and other cities.

All this appears to have come in the wake of the terrible attack at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda last month which killed at least 21. We have seen previous attacks of a similar nature. But will closing schools, losing precious study time in a country where education is already an immense problem and which has one of the largest number of school day holidays in a year really solve the problem? Will it really save us from the militants?

We cannot simply lock ourselves away and then claim success in defeating the extremists. Yes, if we all build basements or bomb shelters and lock ourselves into these, there is a much greater likelihood that fewer or none will die in suicide attacks or other bombings. But this really symbolises a victory for the group that we have come to call ‘our enemy’, a kind of euphemism for the Taliban and linked groups, rather than for the people.

What the people want is a safer environment where they are able to pursue normal life without being affected by security threats, which mean children staying at home and public places kept locked away for the general public. Already, parents have in some cases been asked to pay security fees, despite government orders, as higher walls and barbed wire rolls were placed around schools following the APS attack of December 2015.

The schools look like fortresses – and this is not what we want for our children. The truth is that the barricades on roads, the higher walls, the locked gates, the barriers placed around important buildings which add to the burdens of life for commuters, will in the long run solve nothing at all. They just add to the hardships ordinary people face and we should be asking why they are being punished for the state’s failure to deal with extremism.

The answers lie in common sense. If we are to eliminate militancy, we need to reach into the source of the problem. Let’s use a simple analogy: if someone suffers back pain, merely treating the symptoms with a host of painkillers is not likely to take away what could be an underlying problem. Treatment to cure that problem is required. This holds just as true for the militant menace as well. We need to reach right into the hornet’s nest – or the many such nests that have now been allowed to build up in our country, and eliminate the dangerous elements which live within them. To prevent harm, such an operation would have to be carried out skilfully, but with decisiveness.

The source of militancy lies in the seminaries that have crept up all over the country, in the mosques and other institutions from where messages of hate are spread, in the funding still available to extremist organisations, in the possibility that they still have support from certain important quarters pursuing their own agendas and from the fact that the beliefs they spread stem from hard-line forms of Islam which were allowed into our country from the Middle East.

A key nation which remains amongst our closest allies is perhaps the heart of these schools of religious thought. From here, the seminaries, the institutions, the universities funded by money from oil rich states have spread out all over the world. They have also, in a sense, given rise to groups such as Islamic State, which may have gone well beyond the officially sanctioned religious ideology of these nations but which has been inspired by them.

This matter was discussed in a detailed hearing last month at the Armed Services Committee of the US House of Representatives, with former diplomats and intelligence officials present to answer questions raised by congressmen and women. Somewhat reluctantly, somewhat abashedly, they conceded that Wahhabism, that has roots in Saudi Arabia, was a problem in terms of the spread of Islamic extremism. The answers as to what to do about it were somewhat vague, even as Democratic congressmen pointed out that without addressing this issue, there could be no real hope of ending the hard-line views which now threaten the entire world, including Europe and the US.

Even more than these nations, they threaten us. We have increasingly lost our links to the soft, tolerant religion of Sufi Islam, which was the original school of Islamic belief in the Subcontinent. It produced a culture where Hindus and Muslims visited the same shrines and respected the same Sufi figures who lay buried there. It produced magical poetry and mesmerising music while producing amongst people the idea that all men and women were equal and could speak directly to God in many different ways.

Today, it is hard to believe such a culture once dominated a country where people lived in relative freedom from hatred. Today, that hate and the fear it generates exists everywhere. The closing of schools will not diminish the problem. Indeed, it makes it worse in some ways by adding to the sense of terror – the aim of course of terrorist groups who aspire to create just such insecurities in society.

We seriously need to reconsider the entire matter of extremism in a different context. We need a policy to do so and a way to strike at the core of the problem even if this means drilling deep below the surface. Cosmetic measures will not help. The posting of guards at public places, the presence of troops in a way show that we are a nation at war. This war has kept our children away from schools, our people in a state of almost constant apprehension. We need to brush away these shadows and return to what was once the normal. The ‘new normal’ of intense security cover everywhere is not acceptable. It will also serve no real purpose.

Major strategic rethink is required. Perhaps we need to do so in harmony with other Muslim countries. These countries have suffered far more than the West from extremism. Pakistan, and its graveyards where victims of terrorism lie, is an example of this. The US too must accept the fact it has a role to play in creating the monster it now struggles to defeat. We need a united view, a united policy, a willingness to face up to the truth, to take on powerful nations and persuade them too that their own survival lies in working together to end extremism and ensure a more peaceful world order.

Resorting to temporary, unsustainable measures – as we have done once more – will eventually help no one and shows only just how helpless the government is to protect its citizens. It must cast aside this sense of hopelessness.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com