absence of their homeland and emphatically mentioned the atrocities inflicted on them.
Obama’s disposition vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue won him enormous respect and laurels especially in the Muslim world. His emphasis on the Palestinian aspirations hiked up the expectations that he would prospectively play a powerful role in the resolution of the perennial problem, but all that now appears to be history.
The promise of peace in the Middle East heartland never came about. What we witnessed instead was a bloody escalation of atrocities against the Palestinian populace, sparing not even the children, the old and the handicapped. The Israelis have, since the Cairo speech, established new settlements, evicting the Palestinians from their homes. The silence of the West on this cardinal and central issue has given rise to fundamentalism in their region. The IS certainly is an enormous problem and needs to be countered collectively, but one must nevertheless sit back in retrospection and study the reasons behind the meteoric rise of the IS. It essentially came about because of the invasion of Iraq by the US which propelled the former Iraqi soldiers to join the Jihadis and IS.
In the same vein the bona fide and genuine struggle against Basher Al Asad’s Govt in Syria was hijacked by the Jihadi elements abetted and aided by the West and their allies in the Middle East. The same Jihadis subsequently coalesced and formed into IS, giving rise to Shia-Sunni schism in fighting across the Middle East. Libya is another case in point where American intervention in order to dethrone Qaddafi resulted in complete chaos. The ongoing civil war between the two parallel governments gave space to the IS to strengthen its foothold.
The story doesn’t end here, the Muslim governments in the Middle East share equal responsibility for creating the condition that breeds violence and extremism. Many Muslim States are either absolute monarchies or sham democracies which disallow the people their political and social rights. Thus when forces — including violent Islamists — challenge autocratic rulers, they find support within the populace. Also when the Western states support Muslim dictators who crush internal dissent, Muslim population’s mistrust of the West grows. For efforts against militancy to succeed some principles and prerequisites must be acknowledged, and that are: proxies must not be used against political rivals and that autocrats in Muslim countries must not be aided in their efforts to counter popular calls and dissent.
Back home post-Peshawar APS, in Pakistan we need to debate and define Pakistan’s worldview and its ambition in today’s world. Will our state be facilitator of religion to help each citizen practice his or her belief freely without impinging on those of others or an enforcer endorsing and imposing a certain belief system? This is the central question which needs to be sorted out immediately without any loss of time.