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Friday March 29, 2024

A twisted tale

By Kamila Hyat
June 23, 2016

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

It is easy to sketch out certain pictures and lay them out before people. This of course happens everywhere in the world. The facts we believe to be true are in most cases crafted for us and chiselled into shape by forces that may remain unseen, but who assert a huge influence over the ideas that circulate within a nation or bloc of nations, with the media often utilised to take it forward and project it as a central narrative. Counter-narratives, or accounts from other directions, are of course in our age increasingly rare.

For the past two years we have been told a specific story. It goes as follows: the Taliban and their allies are essentially villains. To protect the country from them, the army has engaged in a valiant effort with the two-year mark since this drive began observed last week. As the battle has continued in the tribal belt, thousands of militants have been killed and large tracts of land cleared. As a result, the country is a safer place for all who live within its boundaries.

The tale is not inaccurate. Indeed, to a considerable extent it is correct with the reduced number of bomb attacks over the last year indicating the truth behind what is being told. But it is important to remember that just a few years ago the narrative was quite different. It contradicted what is being said now. We were informed that if we attempted to take on the might of the Taliban, there would be mayhem in the country and we would all suffer as a result.

It is of course quite possible that those behind the story believed this version to be correct. But then, it could also be that this is what suited the interest at the time. Those requirements changed. What is significant in all this is to remember that an account of events or an assessment of them can be successfully altered to suit a particular purpose. This has happened many times before in our history.

It is also important for us to look carefully at the entire story itself and all its nuances. Certainly, there has been a courageous effort against the militants. It has to a significant extent succeeded in weakening them and at the same time sending out a message to people about military commitment and military belief. The fact that people have supported Operation Zarb-e-Azb, despite the warnings we heard in the past to the contrary, is also something we need to note.

But then there are the twists in the tale. While militants have been described as the enemy, certain elements within that group are still being protected. The ‘Afghan Taliban’, as they have been dubbed, continue to be counted as among the ‘good guys’. Just as other groups are vilified; those that fall under the ‘Afghan Taliban’ umbrella are essentially glorified.

The US Pentagon has recently pointed towards this in a terse statement questioning Pakistan policies. Of course, the Pentagon cannot be taken as a reliable analyst of reality. It has been equally guilty of distorting events to suit its own needs. But it is important that we ask why some militants are deemed to be better than others, or why those who fall under this category keep changing at various moments in time.

The truth perhaps is that militancy is essentially indefensible, as are the extremist ideologies of the Taliban. This holds true of whether they act within our territory or to its West. The confusion being created now has been mirrored in the past by attempts to distinguish between ‘jihadi’ and ‘militant’ forces. These groups have since the 1990s increasingly intermingled, with their operations becoming connected and therefore increasingly complex in their mechanisms.

The essential ideology and belief of these groups, including their defence of the use of violence to meet their ends, essentially holds them together as one group which cannot be separated into different quadrants.

The idea is significant to our current tussle with Afghanistan. It stems essentially from the belief that Pakistan is using specific groups to assert itself in the territory that neighbours it. In the longer run, this can be damaging in many ways. Of course, it is true that Afghanistan and groups allied with it have also made the attempt to intervene in the affairs of Pakistan.

This too is unfortunate, and the continued US presence in this part of the world will add to the element of disharmony and instability. But we still need to move ahead with a plan which can lead us towards a more unified struggle against militancy and allow our troops to act in coordination with Afghan security officials. The presence and work of militants in both countries has a long history of being tied together by not one but many strands. It would be foolish to unravel only some of them.

The most basic idea that we need to keep in view is the fact that militancy of all kinds is essentially harmful. Trying to separate groups engaged in it is much like sifting through grains of sand and attempting to sort them into piles on the basis of certain characteristics. These are virtually indiscernible and the separate grains make up a whole which shifts and moves together with the winds and moulds itself to create shapes that appear on the landscape as a single feature rather than ones which are in any way divided.

We should then be questioning whether there can be any element of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as far as militants go. Most of us have by now come to believe that organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan are essentially evil. By all rational assessment, this would seem to be true. We need also to see how these groups interact with other ones operating in the region and elsewhere.

Despite the policies of the past two years, we have seen militancy make progress. The strange affiliate of Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, seems to have appeared on the scene with a presence in India as well as possibly on our own soil and on that of Afghanistan. Quite clearly, Washington is concerned about these developments. We should be too. They suggest that in one way or the other, militancy is moving on and has yet to be vanquished. It can only be fully defeated when the narrative that surrounds it is a stronger and more definite one.

The discrepancies we have at present weaken the overall story or the notion of an essential fight between good and evil. When too many complexities are added, this concept begins to fade away and there is always the danger that rival ones will succeed and lead us once again to a position where there is disharmony over which groups in our society constitute the enemy and what we should be doing to drive them away.

The Taliban, and groups linked to it in all their various forms, have been here for many decades dating back to the early 1980s. We need to remember this and also recollect all the stories told over this period at various times as we attempt to determine our best strategy for the present age.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com