The unspeakable

Old demons are crawling out of the woodwork and pushing us into the familiar swamp. We are so polarised as a country that it is impossible to speak of matters that affect us all without making it sound like a conspiratorial zero-sum game.

How does one speak of the lack of the state’s resolve to protect the liberty of its citizens? How does one ask what quantum of sacrifices it will take for the state to consider any further loss of young soldiers unacceptable? How does one argue that the growing civil-military imbalance is inimical for democracy and rule of law? Do these questions fall within the domain of introspection or treason?

Here are thoughts expressed after APS in 2014: “Events as brutal and horrifying as the Peshawar massacre can do one of two things: it can permanently change the way we understand and approach the issue of terror, making 16/12 the day we carved in our consciousness that extremists and terrorists would no longer have any room in our midst; or it can keep us grief stricken and angry for a few days till a spate of revenge killings calm our rage and allow us to return to business-as-usual.” It is now clear that we took the latter route. We chose not to fight extremism and with terror incidents down we are complacent once again.

After APS we realised that the “smallest coffins are the heaviest”. What about the coffins of 21-year-old soldiers who fall for their country? Why must duty to the state entail the sacrifice of young lives full of potential? Why must the state be run such that it needs blood to be nourished? The army chief says that: “freedom isn’t free, it costs sons of the soil. Freedom that we enjoy today is owed to so many such brave hearts. Salute to our martyrs.” Who can deny the gratitude we owe to martyrs and their families? But must our 70-year-old freedom continue to cost us sons of our soil? Can’t there be a better way to secure our country and ourselves?

Would we dishonour the sacrifices rendered by our soldiers if we asked whether it is possible to pursue national security goals in a manner that reduces the need for such sacrifices? Can we celebrate our military while holding security policymaking to account? In a country that has lost thousands of citizens and soldiers to the vicious combination of religious intolerance, extremism and terror, must we hide failed ideas and policies behind ‘morale of troops’ and ‘sacrifices of our martyrs’? Is it treacherous to wonder if the state is doing everything to extinguish the need for martyrdom and to enable citizens to grow old leading happy fulfilling lives?

If our state doesn’t consider every citizen’s right of life worth fighting for, can one begrudge its disdain for lesser liberties such as freedom of conscience or speech? Our ‘hard’ state can endure private militias running amok and bands of bigots physically challenging its writ, but won’t tolerate the feeblest dissent or intellectual challenge to established notions of national security. What accounts for this sense of paranoia? If notions of national security rest on firm footing, how will criticism shake them up? And if they will be blown away by the slightest scrutiny, isn’t that a good enough reason to reconsider them anyways?

Why do ‘activists’ continue to disappear? What dangerous ideas was Raza Khan disseminating that he became a threat? What crimes is Zeenat Shahzadi liable for? What nefarious agendas were the bloggers pursuing? Our state’s proclivity for making folks go missing grew post 9/11. The initial justification was that in the face of a new form of warfare, with citizens as enemies, the state didn’t have the requisite legal tools to deal with the emerging threat. It created detention centres to hold those captured during military ops. But as the law didn’t allow such detention, the state didn’t know what to do with the detainees.

To transition from a war-approach to a criminal justice approach while conducting military ops, we saw the promulgation of various laws (Protection of Pakistan Act, Fair Trial Act, Amended Anti-Terror Act), and also the creation of military courts to afford the military a mechanism to detain and punish terrorists while staying within the framework of the law. These laws that allow trial of civilians by military courts fall foul of minimum acceptable human rights standards. But they were justified on the basis that moulding our legal framework in extraordinary times is preferable to forcing security agencies to function in breach of law.

So now that we have laws that vest wide discretion in a security agency to arrest, detail, investigate, prosecute and punish offenders, why are those suspected of ‘anti-state’ activities still going missing? Why can’t suspects be charged and tried while upholding due process of law? The selective accounts of bloggers available in social media makes two suggestions: religion is now being employed (ie blasphemy charges against bloggers) alongside ‘patriotism’ to condemn the missing; the missing now include not just those accused of conspiring against or physically fighting the state, but also those overtly critical of state narrative.

This bodes ill for rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy in Pakistan. The state at present has more ability to shape a grand narrative on any issue than it ever had in recent times. Use of enforced disappearances to silence dissenting or critical voices suggests that the power-wielders have decided that the country can’t risk being a marketplace of ideas. It also suggests that fundamental rights and rule of law aren’t seen as entitlements of citizens that can’t be abrogated but as luxuries to be withdrawn by the state at will. An automatic corollary of this mode of thinking is to view democracy as harmless only if it is ‘controlled’.

We are now witnessing the pendulum swinging the wrong way in our decade long democracy-autocracy cycle. We saw transition to democracy followed by greater role for civilian institutions (including parliament and judiciary) from 2009 through 2013. The year 2014 brought dharnas and reinstatement of the military as the gamekeeper, the political ombudsman and the arbiter of last resort. Of course, had the PML-N government performed or politicos been less self-destructively ambitious and shortsighted, democracy might have prospered. But it hasn’t and its roots and claims to legitimacy are as weak as ever.

The word politics (especially as used in Urdu) is once again shorthand for expediency, crookedness and lack of principles. The standing of our political elite as a whole suffers a fresh blow each day. The issue subjected to most speculation these days is whether there will be an election in 2018. The same old debates about whether we are fit for democracy and whether the kind of democracy we have is a solution to our problems is breaking out in drawing rooms of ‘educated middle classes’. We are unfortunately in the zone where continuity of the democratic process seems to hang by the benevolence of non-political forces.

And we are past pretention. We have had a debate in full public view about the MQM and PSP were helped to become friends again. We have a government conspicuous by its absence. We were told during the Faizabad logjam that the chief had called the PM to advise him on what to do. The mob holding our capital hostage then walked away with the federal government’s credibility and some pocket money. Could the idea of civilian control of the military be any further from reality?

Will the PML-N government survive till March? Will the interim government be in place for only 90 days? Will there be an election in 2018? Old demons are crawling out of the woodwork and pushing us into the familiar swamp.

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu