devilzzzprey
Politcal Worker (100+ posts)
After the tragic Malala incident, the issue of militancy and terrorism has naturally taken centre stage. It is our number one security challenge. If the base is not secure, the ability to face any external threat is severely undermined.
While much hand wringing is done about it in the media, there are very few concrete ideas on how to tackle it. ‘Kill them all’ is no policy, as many of our so-called liberal commentators would have us believe. The word so called is judiciously used here. Pakistani liberals are the only liberals in the world who believe in war.
They support drone strikes and unadulterated military action. While rightly grieving for Malala they are not ready to spare a thought for women and children killed by drones or who are likely to get caught up in an all out conflict. They never countenance the possibility of a solution, less painful and drastic.
Funnily or tragically the same people completely change tack when it comes to Balochistan. Their militaristic pseudo liberal garb suddenly morphs into the genuine article. Doves get emblazoned all over and the chant changes from ‘kill them all’ to ‘make love not war’.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) wants to break up the country. It has carried out a virtual ethnic cleansing of Punjabi settlers from the province. Its tactics are brutal. Women, children, the aged all are targeted. Yet, this is all invisible to our liberal friends.
In Balochistan they see missing persons and dead bodies and condemn the military. In Fata they see missing persons and dead bodies and praise the military. And also the Americans for their great weapon of peace, the drones. In Fata it is scorched earth; kill them all. In Balochistan, love the killers even if they collaborate with our worst enemies and want to destroy Pakistan.
Only war as a policy is wrong, just as only negotiations as a policy is meaningless. The right balance is captured best though a bit tritely in ‘talk talk, fight fight’. You talk to those who are ready to talk and you fight those who are not. Sometimes you talk and fight at the same time.
The end goal has to be the cessation of fighting and a negotiated settlement. This is what Imran Khan believes in. You can’t kill your way to peace because even if successful it is the peace of the dead. Many dead. Hundreds, thousands perhaps, tens of thousand dead. A virtual genocide.
That is a bad path to peace even if it were possible. And it seldom is. Liberals Pakistani style who should rightly be called ‘eclectics’ - they change their stripes from tigers to doves depending on the conflict – often quote Sri Lanka’s outright military victory as a model. This is typical oversimplification. It was a different battle, different circumstances. Against a minority in an Island with few escape routes. Still it took 30 years. Not really relevant to our situation.
We have to isolate the really bad eggs from those who are reconcilable. And yes, there is no shortage of savages in the Taliban ranks. Those TTP types who claim responsibility for shooting Malala are nothing but savages. Imran Khan condemned them by name when he went to a Peshawar hospital to see her. PTI condemned them. I, the Info Secretary did on behalf of the party on talk shows. Yet the propaganda persists that Imran Khan and PTI are soft on terrorists.
No Sir, Imran Khan is not soft on terrorists. Imran Khan and his party always condemn terrorist attacks and its perpetrators. The difference is that Imran Khan is the only politician in Pakistan who has a comprehensive vision for peace. Based on ‘talk talk’ but never ruling out ‘fight fight’.
Why is ‘talk talk’ necessary? Taliban are neither a monolithic entity nor everyone among them is out to capture the state by force. Many, perhaps a majority, are fighting a private war because their families, their loved ones, their close relatives, have been killed by drone strikes or military action. They want revenge because they have been brutalised and these people do not find it easy to forgive.
They are not the hard-core ideologues. They are more often the foot soldiers or minor commanders. Their agenda is simple. Kill those who killed their kith and kin. If they find a partner for peace they can trust; someone whom they do not consider to be talking with a forked tongue – yes we have made promises and not kept them – they will talk. They can reconcile. They can give up the fight. Provided their opposite number is someone they can trust.
Not all would. There are foreigners out there who gain nothing through peace with Pakistan. There are our own ideologues – Punjabi, Pakhtun indeed all shades of our people – who have no desire to reconcile. They do indeed want to capture the state. They will fight to the bitter end. And we must fight them.
But, the vision that Imran Khan has is that a large majority is reconcilable. They can be won over through a credible peace initiative. This would leave the dead enders, perhaps ten or twenty percent of the total fighting force. Denied of an army they would turn to criminality as some are already doing. They are the ones that can be tackled by force.
So friends Imran Khan does not have a simplistic vision for peace in Fata. In fact he is the only one with a plan. And this extends to reducing extremism all over the country through a total revamping of syllabi to make for a common system of education. He has a vision to cement the cleavages in the mind.
This gulf is what really bedevils us. We live together and share the same land, breath the same air but are divided by an apartheid of the mind. So if we really want to move forward it is this cognitive dissonance, between one people and one nation, that would have to be eliminated. We don’t just need guns to kill extremism. We need pathways to people’s minds.
It is these different elements that constitute the essentials of a plan In Imran Khan’s mind. Not something routinely caricaturised in the media is as a one line agenda of only talking to the militants. This quasi demonization of Imran suits the warmongering liberals – here is an oxymoron if there ever was one – because in the political spectrum his is the only voice calling for winning hearts and minds. Isn’t this what the Americans say all the time?
Guerrillas/militants/ insurgents – chose whatever term you like – swim in a sea of sympathetic people. Deny them this oxygen and they will wither and die. This is in essence is the vision of Imran.
The writer is the information secretary of the Pakistan Tehrik Insaaf
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