The emptied barrel of hope

In the grim aftermath of the December 16, 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, as parents laid children in graves, the sense of shock running through the nation was powerful enough to ignite hope that something would now be done, some genuine measures put in place to tackle militancy.
The politicians too – as they gathered for the All Parties Conference called after the massacre – had seemed determined and willing to work together to prevent the terrorists from claiming more lives and forcing more parents to perform those last rites for children torn apart by bombs and bullets.
But as the parents of the APS students reminded us at their highly dignified press conference last week, nothing has really happened. They pointed out that some of those who physically carried out the siege may have been apprehended; but the forces behind them remained untouched, the roots from which violence grew still in place. This of course is true.
It explains why the killings continue, with Karachi recently becoming the centre for violence with sectarian killers targeting minority communities. Other groups, which link together to create a cycle of evil, appear to have gone after foreigners based in the city, killing some, threatening others and accusing them in some cases of working against Islam.
It is hard to believe that this cycle cannot be broken. The chains that link it together must have weak points, and surely we, as a state, have tools powerful enough to cut through them. But it seems there is no one willing to pull open the right drawer in the tool cupboard and bring them out.
In other words, for reasons that still need to be investigated further, we lack the commitment needed to take on the killers. Perhaps a lack of courage is also a factor. We know policemen who have taken on militants have been slain. So have politicians – the ANP can narrate a long history – and activists, lawyers others who have attempted to speak up for victims of violence or injustice. Others have fled, some choose silence and almost all who oppose terrorism or other violence are more cautious than before. The line between valour and foolishness has always been a thin one.
Individuals have the right to choose where to stand. The state doesn’t. In our current situation the state’s primary duty must be to secure its citizens and itself. It needs to explain why after almost two decades of the creation of the fiercely anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 1996, the group remains active and able to kill. It is now being named as being behind the massacre of the Ismailis in Karachi.
We have no way of knowing if this is true, but certainly the group has been involved in other massacres, including those of the Hazaras in Quetta, a community that today stands decimated and locked behind tall barriers intended to protect them. The walls of course also imprison and ghettoise. It is obvious that the killing of Riaz Basra, the key founder of the LeJ in a 2002 police encounter in Vehari did not stop the group. Neither has the hanging early this year of another of its founders, Akram Lahori.
The third man seen as being pivotal behind the setting up of the group, Malik Ishaq, was released from jail in December last year after the state failed to prove the multiple charges against him including involvement in the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.
It is really groups that need to be taken apart and not individuals. This is perhaps why our present policy of executions may not work.
There are other groups we should have been able to eliminate. Jundullah, founded in 2013 by the late Hakeemullah Mehsud is one of these. It too has claimed responsibility for multiple massacres including the one in 2013 of nine foreign mountaineers and their Pakistani guide at the base camp of Nanga Parbat. Surely, a state with an intelligence presence as large as ours and with multiple security forces should have been able to shut down these groups or at least badly cripple them. Why we have failed is a question that needs to be asked far more loudly and far more openly.
If a lack of will is genuinely involved, then we need to understand why this is the case. Do our political leaders really not recognise that militancy will destroy us? Do they not recognise that to a large extent it already has? Are they waiting for further mayhem – the day when more and more communities become involved in the wars being waged? There are signs already of divide between Sunni groups. In a country comprising mainly Sunni Muslims, this would obviously be disastrous. The fact that we have turned our guns on minority groups is bad enough. We do not need more violence.
Yet even as we apparently sit back and watch it unfold there is a pretence of normalcy. The prime minister launches train projects; other members of government hold luncheons and preside over functions. Naturally, we cannot expect the affairs of government to come to a halt. But we do need to inject a sense of urgency into the situation and openly acknowledge the fact that we are locked in a state of war. This war may, at some level, involve foreign agents but essentially it is one being fought amongst our own people and led by the groups we have allowed to take up arms and gain a greater and greater grip on the public’s mindset.
What is worth talking about is the fact that this grip can be broken. Many ordinary people, notably the young, still accept that the killings, the violence and the hatred are unjustified and that essentially humanity should prevail. Others put forward similar views. But the problem is that this mass of citizens has been made more or less helpless. Their voice is almost never heard. The candlelight vigils and small protests led by ‘civil society’ do not really include them.
We need a campaign at a far wider level. The media has the power today to play an enormous role in leading it. So do educational institutions. We have begun to hear more and more about the role of some, including the Saudi-funded International Islamic University in Islamabad, set up under General Zia and closely monitored by the Saudis, in spreading obscurantist views and preventing us from fighting the tunnel vision that has already afflicted more and more people in our society.
Broad ranging policies are required to alter this; to address groups working at various levels in our midst and preventing people from rediscovering the tolerance and sense of harmony we have essentially lost.
We need to ask whether our government is capable of taking such measures. Does it wish to? And if it doesn’t is it really willing to preside over a country in which death comes almost every day and there is less and less security? This is so despite the many meetings and subsequent statements insisting that everything possible is being done to stop the militant menace and give back a lease of life to a nation which seems at times to be on the verge of what amounts to collective suicide as multiple groups go about the task of killing each other for motives that are often unclear.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com