NAP: giving up too soon

What we can learn from the cricket field is to not give up too soon. Of course, taken away from the context of sport – where a change in team selection, a twitch to the batting order, can make all the difference – this policy is less easy to apply. But it is still significant to attempt to follow through on things, rather than declaring them too difficult or too complicated.
This is what has happened in the case of the National Action Plan, devised after the Peshawar school carnage of December 16, 2014 as a means to combat terror. According to reports, critical components of the plan have simply been dropped or set aside on the basis that they are too difficult or too complicated to implement. This is not encouraging, especially as the ‘discarded’ aspects include the action recommended against proscribed groups and the reform of seminaries.
Presumably, now, we are to simply allow these groups to spread hatred and violent chaos as they please, while permitting the usually desperately poor children who attend madressahs to be brainwashed into believing the various kinds of misinformation or distorted information imparted to them. Surely we have given up too soon; signed our own death warrant when there is still life to be nurtured within us.
There is visible evidence of this life. It was on display at the Lahore Literary Festival held in February, at the event in Karachi held a few weeks before and at the Horse and Cattle Show put up in Lahore in March after an 11-year interval. The organisers of each of these deserve credit for moving ahead with them and providing people some sense of normalcy despite the security threat. The corridors of security gates, the huge deployment of police and troops at the Fortress Stadium and the barricades on roads are a reminder of the unnatural situation we live in, and will continue to live in, until something is done to push away the fear and the sources from which it bubbles out, covering more and more of our society and affecting almost everyone.
The shadow of fear will continue to deepen until we act against the forces that have brought it in with them. If we refuse to move against them it will grow until it completely enwraps us. It is true that working to clamp down on the various outfits that operate in the country is not easy. This is mainly because we have allowed them to grow and multiply over many years. What could have been a relatively simple task a decade ago, even simpler two decades ago, has been complicated because we have allowed extremist groups to grow and spit out their venom further and further into the heart of mainstream society.
As they have done so these forces too have become more dangerous, splintering to form various factions which are hard to track down and destroy. They are also led by men willing to use greater violence than ever before. The school killings in Peshawar were an example of what they are capable of, and the dark inspiration of Islamic State will only drive them forward. We cannot refuse to act, just as we cannot afford to ignore the madressahs that have crept up in virtually every street-corner, meeting people’s need to educate and feed their children while reflecting the failures to offer this through public sector schools and welfare nets to protect those most urgently in need.
In shelving critical challenges linked to militancy, we are ignoring the fact that this puts us at much greater risk. The myopia is terrifying. When we refuse to look into the distance we in fact add to our problems. This is the mistake we made in the past; we are making it again. Components of the National Action Plan, agreed on by all major parties, should not be abandoned. Doing so quietly amounts to
what is essentially a crime against people. It is being committed without informing them, without bringing them into the picture, and there is in this inherent deceit.
What would lead a government to act in this way? Many of the forces we need to move against are based in Punjab and responsibility for the proliferation of these forces lies with the provincial government as well. We need to assess and better understand the reasons for this.
Is it a lack of commitment, a lack of ability or simply a desire to delay unpleasant, messy business? All three factors are almost certainly involved. Certainly, in the past, groups such as the extreme anti-Shia outfits, have grown because they were allowed to. Somewhere this links back to policies originating in the 1980s when the late General Ziaul Haq began promoting a particular ideology and deliberately created schisms to weaken society and strengthen his authoritarian rule. Other complicated equations were created as well, and in many ways they continue to be carried forward because our political leadership is unwilling to look beyond the short-term and recognise the destruction that lies not very far away if we continue to function in this manner.
We are perilously close to this. Already, we need guns and sandbags to make us feel safe, or at least enable us to pretend they make us feel safe. In truth they signal the terrible truth about the nightmarish world we have allowed to creep in all around us. It would take courage to try and break free from this. To take on extremist groups and reduce the role played by seminaries in creating particular ideas which float more and more freely everywhere around us would require courage; a considerable amount of courage.
The government would need to be prepared for reprisals by extremist outfits and a considerable amount of dissent within society. There would be hostility in face of possibly increased disorder for months, possibly years. But this is a risk we simply have to take. Allowing militancy to grow deeper roots by ignoring the fact that it exists is simply not wise.
The NAP had built hope that we would be able to create a better future for ourselves by going out against terrorism with all the force available to us. There had been general agreement on this. What we see now is deeply disappointing. As soon as attention has faded away, the focus shifted at least partially, the resolve and eagerness seems to have dissipated. This of course is the easy way out.
It seems we wish to always take the road sloping downwards, the one that is easiest to walk on, ignoring the fact that as we continue to do so the inclines will rise steeply, making it harder and harder for us to climb back up. This is a process we have already seen unfold over the past decades.
We are doing nothing now to bring it to a halt and the strategy of looking away will of course allow all kinds of evil to grow till they truly reach a point where it becomes impossible to overcome them and repair the damage they have inflicted on virtually all of society in one way or the other. We must consider carefully if we are prepared for this to happen or if we still wish to do what we can to prevent such an outcome by showing fortitude and determination.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com