Pakistan’s Terrorist Problem: The Monster Cannot be Killed Without First Knowing it

Pakistan, alongside India, emerged as a sovereign state in 1947, but unlike India it could not put in place a credible system of governance, and the country has been oscillating between Army rule and the civilian. Without going into the analysis and discussion of individual events and situations, if we look at the situation of Pakistan, as it has developed over the past 65 years, the most profound and undeniable statement that can be made is: Proper and genuine politics have not developed in Pakistan till date. We could move further on to substantiate this statement, but will not, simply because this, per se, is not our subject of discussion here. However, it would be worthwhile to note that the biggest event that happened to Pakistan after its emergence in 1947 was its break-up in two in 1971. Matters of national integrity are topmost on political agendas of a country and define its political landscape but it is shocking to note that this unfortunate event has never become an issue in Pakistan politics, let alone assuming a defining and polarising character, as it should have. This is the single biggest evidence to prove that genuine, people-rooted, issue-based, and visionary politics have yet to develop in Pakistan.

There are perfectly valid reasons for the absence of genuine politics in Pakistan, and these have been well discussed by scholars. Again keeping it brief, one has to note that the state of Pakistan grew out of the Movement of Pakistan, a powerful political movement inspired by Islam, in much the same way as the so-called nation-state of India grew out of the political Movement of Indian Nationalism which in turn was an offshoot of Indian Nationalist thought. In both cases, India and Pakistan, it is a chronologically defined three stage process: Thought, Movement, and State. The key point to understand here is that whereas in case of India, the process of one stage maturing into another was completed in good time, particularly the one from movement to the state, in case of Pakistan the whole process got rushed through. This happened not by the machinations of a single or a group of vested interests, but as a result of a multitude of forces and factors, the discussion of which is simply beyond the scope of this write-up. However, once this key point is understood properly, all what subsequently happened and is currently happening, in Pakistan, between India and Pakistan, and to a large extent in India itself, becomes easier to understand.

An important consequence of the unfortunate state of affairs mentioned above has been a visible lack of a substantive, thematic, and productive political discourse in Pakistan. In the recent times the situation has worsened in this regard, and we find Pakistan politics, as if, trapped in binary constructs, for example, who is bigger enemy, India or USA, fighting terrorism, who’s war are we fighting, our own or USA’s, and so on and so forth. As things change, and new political forces emerge, one has to see how these new actors, those who have not been so far in the driving seat at Islamabad, like Imran Khan of Pakistan Tahreeki Insaf (PTI) or the relatively old ones like Altaf Hussain of Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) are able to handle this discourse, rescue it from binary straitjacketing, and spell out clear policy choices and orientations. As mentioned earlier the real poverty of Pakistan politics is rooted in past which cannot be undone, so keen observers, are keeping a close watch on new actors and their politics. So far things have not been that impressive, but one has to admit that their political agendas have a clear ideological content and a potential to make the Pakistan politics issue oriented. However it remains to be seen how they grapple with the issues of the day, particularly the one of terrorism where the debate revolves round the question ‘who’s war are we fighting’. Imran Khan has made this issue the cornerstone of his politics. It is doubtlessly an issue of outstanding importance, but let us now critically examine in some detail if he seems to have a right understanding of this issue, and a proper awareness of the challenges it poses.

Mr. Imran Khan has been consistently arguing that what the Pakistan Army has been doing in Swat and other places in Pakistan to ostensibly fight terrorism is not Pakistan’s own but someone else’s war which has been imposed on Pakistan. This position is held by so many other groups including all politico-religious groups like Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e- Islam, and Islamist parties, among them Jamati-Islami, the most well organized, cadre-based political Islamist party. As such, it is demanded that the government of Pakistan should disengage itself from the U.S. led ‘War on Terror’ (WT). For the purpose of reference, we will call these parties ‘Parties for Disengagement (PDE)’. Prima facie, PDE have a point because their argument is ‘factually’ correct. WT, as we know, started in the wake of September, 2001 bombings of Twin Towers in New York, and terrorism became the top most issue with United States. A new department, namely, the department of Homeland Security was set up and a host of other remedial measures taken. Quite understandably, all the allies and friends of US had to be helpful in this regard, and do whatever best they could to help US deal with this new threat. That sounds fair enough, but if WT is made out to be equally everybody else’s problem in the same way and to the same extent as it is of United States, that would perhaps look a bit nonsensical, in much the same way as, for example, saying that US Treasury has predicted a huge budget deficit this year, and has advised Pakistan to cut down its government expenditure. How will that help, either US or Pakistan? For its budget deficit it is US, and not some other country which has to take austerity measures. If the PDE are thinking along those lines, which one is not sure they are, and saying that the Pakistan regime should not merely execute US script, they have a point. However, the question more pertinent to be asked is, do PDE have a full understanding of what the menace of terrorism that has engulfed Pakistan, is? How deep and comprehensive is their understanding of the wider picture surrounding the issue of terrorism as it has been projected on to the global political agenda in recent years? The way they have been making a case for disengagement would raise serious doubts about their understanding of the whole affair/matter. While calling for withdrawal from US led WT, they are often heard saying ‘all our miseries are due to a war that is not ours, but nevertheless we are fully involved in. We are fighting for somebody else’. Now whether there is a point in saying so or not, and as noted earlier there is one, the crucial question here is what is the message that goes out. It is not the intrinsic meaning only, but the message that goes out in a given political context, that matters, and in politics one has to be rather over sensitive to that. The message, whether intended or not, that goes out is that Pakistan has no problem, what it is engaged in fighting out, is somebody else’s problem. That may not be what it means, but the call for disengagement by PDE is taken to mean precisely that. Here lies the crux of what we are trying to say in these lines. Any emerging politics that develops on the premise that there is no internal security threat to Pakistan is detrimental to the future of that country. If a real problem is ignored, the ignorance itself becomes a problem, bigger than the original one. The perceived PDE position that there is no problem, is actually a bigger problem. Let us see what is the real truth in this so called WT, so that one can see what is the problem for Pakistan, how big is it, how bigger is the denial of it.

According to the PDE narrative, Pakistan military is engaged in a bloody conflict with militant Islamist forces who are in Pakistan/Afghanistan, and pose a security threat to the West and particularly USA. Furthermore, as the narrative goes, if USA would not ask Pakistan to counter these forces, Pakistan would have hardly anything to bother about because these forces do not pose a threat to Pakistan as such. This is PDE’s colossal misunderstanding, and needs to be turned upside down, and the discourse surrounding it rubbished: These forces are primarily a threat, an existential threat, to the state of Pakistan itself and not to USA. The West in general and United States in particular do not face any immediate military threats to their lands and peoples. After the demise of Soviet Union, USA is absolutely unrivalled as far as military hardware and capability to strike is concerned. True, after a long spell of the West’s colonial and later neo-colonial control of the world, the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979 threw a first major and credible challenge to the West’s hegemony, but it is far from being a military challenge yet. Having said that, it is also true that although U.S. cannot be attacked in a conventional war, yet there have been terrorist strikes in U.S., U.K. and elsewhere by non-state actors seriously endangering the security of people. So the security threats for the West have not altogether vanished and there is a genuine cause for worry. However, the idea that West’s security can be achieved by dispatching armies to remote corners of the world, mountains and forests to prevent ‘militants/terrorists’ from setting off for Western capitals to ‘attack’ is preposterous, and has not been accepted by independent minds world over, nor has it worked in practical terms: terrorism is still on. And that is precisely because huge military expeditions cannot, nor are they meant to, track down potential terrorists. It is, among other things, improved intelligence, tight border controls, enhanced inter-governmental co-operation that can make some difference. The PDE narrative must, as the first necessary step to cleanse the political discourse on Pakistan’s engagement in US led WT, de-link the current NATO (Read : US) engagement in Afghanistan/Pakistan from the issue of insecurity the West has come to face as a result of terrorism. This de-linking will be key to rubbishing the self-serving discourse according to which Pakistan is making the ultimate sacrifice to rescue the West from dreaded terrorists, and in this great project US-Pakistan cooperation is absolutely vital, so much so that if God forbid Pakistan blinks for a sec the plane loaded with dreaded terrorists will take off for Washington and a catastrophe can unfold in 18 hours. Both, US and Pakistan, know this is not true, but can there be a more solid basis for Pakistan rulers to foot in huge bills for the West to pay, and from the other side, is there a more convincing reason for the US rulers to tell its people when justifying their budgetary allocations on these military expeditions? So it is self-serving on both sides, and both, US citizens as well as Pakistanis should reject this logic. US/NATO military expeditions may or may not be geared to security objectives, but they are definitely not geared to hunt down the terrorists.

Saying it is not our war, as PDE does, sends a wrong political message, but should they then say the opposite, namely, this is our war? No, they should not, not at least in the sense the Pakistan government does. The latter takes a here-and-now view of things saying it is our people who are killed, our property that is destroyed, so by killing the culprits we are fighting our own war. This is nothing but fire fighting. They are silencing the flames, the fire erupts as soon as the fire brigade is gone. PDE should not embroil itself in the futile debate of who’s war it is, it should rather focus on what precisely is at stake. As mentioned earlier the West or USA have nothing to lose: they are fighting a war against ‘terror’ which is non-physical target. Their defeat or victory can never be independently ascertained. Depending on what is their next step they can build up, with equal ease, a scenario of victory or defeat. They said they killed Osma bin Laden and some weeks later another killing was reported, again of a high profile target Ilyas Kashmiri, one among the Most Wanted. The moot point is who are these people? Are they public figures with a known record of engagement in public life like, for example, Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein(or for that matter any public figure) who has a constituency on ground, can be held accountable by them for his political opinions, stands, and decisions. The unfortunate truth is that all these ‘dangerous’ figures from Osama to Zarqawi to Ilyas Kashmiri are media figures, and exist in the rather murky world of intelligence. In that world people are(at least politically), at will, created and destroyed, dwarfed and magnified. US did not confirm(nor did it deny) but Pakistan confirmed that Ilyas Kashmiri has been killed in a Drone attack. Speaking on Geo TV, a satellite Pakistani TV channel, on 8th June, 2011, a well-informed senior Pakistani journalist Mr Najam Sethi, while refusing to confirm Ilyas’s death, said Ilyas Kashmiri was so far reported to have been killed seven times.

US victory or defeat being unverifiable, it is the state of Pakistan which is at stake in the current war against terrorism. In that sense PDE can consider it as its own war, but before anything else they need to get a handle on it, they need to understand what exactly ails Pakistan. They need to go beyond clichés and labels, and identify in terms of substance what this problem is, how has it evolved over the years, what are the threats it represents, and what could be the consequences if the threats are left unaddressed.

Understanding the problem
The genesis of the current problem of terrorism in Pakistan (henceforth Pakistan’s Terrorist Problem, PTP), can be traced back to early 1980s when US got involved in the Afghan resistance movement against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One would say that US did what in such circumstances any rival of Soviet Union would have done, and similarly the regime in Pakistan, by fully supporting the Afghan resistance, did what it should have: seizing upon a God-sent opportunity to cultivate a friendly regime on its western border(hitherto extremely hostile and a constant pain), and increase strategic depth against its arch rival, India. However, US did not simply support the Afghan resistance, it got a ‘Jehad’ declared against Godless Communism and ordered its client regime, the Ale-Saud to mobilise ‘Mujahideen’ world over for fighting in Afghanistan. This added a dubious religious dimension to what otherwise was a normal political-strategic move of United States, and all the future troubles, including PTP, originated from here, although, as we will argue shortly, that is not the right place where the blame for the creation of PTP could be pinned on. This also must be noted that the historical context surrounding the US Afghan venture was mainly, if not solely, defined by the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran. Dealing with the ‘issue’ of Iran, which included all options from finishing Iran to containing and isolating it, had become the topmost priority, for US policy makers (and continues to be). In this context the Afghan venture, apart from being anti-Soviet, also acquired a significant anti-Iran thrust in many ways, a detailed account of which is not possible here, nor perhaps required too, but this needs to be understood that this factor had a decisive influence on the subsequent development of political and armed Islamist groups in Pakistan and elsewhere. The Saudi intelligence charged with the job of mobilizing motivated men to fight, enrolled die-hard elements who had a clear sectarian agenda extending well beyond the expulsion of Soviet Union from Afghanistan. The entry of these elements in Pakistan (the base camp for Afghan resistance) marks a major milestone when tracing the genesis and evolution of PTP, but again, this is not the exact spot where the whole blame can justifiably be pinned on. Blame fixing is not our job per se, but looking for the most right spot will ensure that we get as best an understanding of PTP as is possible. We can get to the right spot where the blame for PTP creation can be pinned on, once we address that million dollar question recently raised by a well-known political analyst Dr Shahid Masood during a talk show by a Pakistan TV channel Duniya TV on 23/5/11. Dr Masood said that states do use proxy groups[India does, US does, and so many others], but nowhere does it happen, as it did in Pakistan, that these proxies recoil on the state itself who created them in the first place. So how and why did it happen in Pakistan then? Well that is the question, and our answer is that yes, something important happened: a pure intelligence operation, the Afghan Jehad, as it was commonly referred to, was converted into a jehadist movement with a proper social constituency in Pakistan. This is the crux of what happened, but how? Again stating the basics, it happened through a nexus of Saudi intelligence and its quasi-state religious establishment with Pakistan’s traditional religious groups, institutions and Islamist parties, notably, Jamati-Islami. The Saudi interest was to export its extremist-exclusivist brand of Islam, not as such for Pakistani Muslims to follow, but, through it, deter the influence of the Islamic Revolution from the neighbouring Iran. On the Pakistan side, those who colluded in the project did so to hide their failures, particularly Jamati-Islami which since its inception had failed to make any meaningful forward movement towards their stated political goal which was to create a just political order based on Islamic principles, or (what they sometimes rephrased it as) ‘establishment of ‘Imamati-Saleh’ the Righteous Leadership. If one had to trace the prototype of the present monster PTP, it is this Jihadist Movement (JM henceforth) carved out of an intelligence operation, namely the ‘Afghan Jihad’ through that unholy nexus. And if one had to fix the blame for PTP, it would be right here, i.e. on this nexus. Why? Because, realistically speaking, states, as a matter of fact, do enjoy some monopolies, like the one on violence, as Max Weber so famously said. This is not to say that states can indulge in mad violence, but they use force, and no sensible person raises a voice why states have armies, allocated war budgets, police services etc. etc. Likewise, states launch projects with end product in mind, and employing as means anything that effectively works, as US, and, for that matter Pakistan’s ISI, used ‘Jihad’ and ‘Mujahideen’ to mobilise people in a project which had essentially political-strategic objectives. So, the point that is being made here, is US had a clear purpose in doing what they did, Saudi intelligence too had, and so had the regime in Pakistan, what purpose did the religious and political Islamist parties in Pakistan have when becoming part of what essentially was an intelligence game? It is because of this participation that something like an intelligence operation which could be otherwise started, stopped, speeded up, wound up at will, became simply uncontrollable as it developed into a movement with social space and constituency. Though besides our main focus here, we would like to point out that it is not the question of purpose only, all those religious groups and Islamist parties worldwide, particularly those in Pakistan, who colluded with intelligence agencies to get the young men and send them to battlefield in Afghanistan owe an explanation as to on what ‘sharaie’ jurisprudential basis did they do that. It must be born in mind that matters relating to Jihad, namely, declaration, participation, initiation and calling off, are very serious legalistic matters and can be decided upon only by highly competent and legitimate jurisprudential authority in Islam.

Coming back to our main theme, PTP as it exists now has evolved out of this prototype, the core of which is constituted by the die-hard extremist, violent elements inducted into Afghan Jehad from outside. The JM has, by now, grown into a full-fledged monster, and has been successfully extending its political space, and shaping the public discourse. Soon after inaugurating death and destruction in Pakistan JM made a highly strategic move of seeking legitimacy for their criminal acts, and since there is no dearth of disgruntled political/politico-religious elements in Pakistan, the move succeeded to a large extent. Since then, JM is regarded an unrelenting crusader to put things right in Pakistan. The more they kill, the more credit they get. As human bodies explode en-route to ‘Paradise’ people start finding more and more faults with the system, saying if this was not wrong here, the boy would have not blown himself up. So having successfully sorted out the issue of legitimacy, JM has gradually come to pursue an increasingly narrower exclusivist agenda, using more and more violent methods, and has almost absorbed the element of genuine dissent in a modern state, and opposition to the current political order(not merely the regime) of Pakistan. Thus the universal unrest in post-colonial Muslim societies arising out of the conflict between ruling elites and the general Muslim masses, well noted by social scientists, and evidenced by upheavals in a number of Muslim countries in past and more clearly now in Middle East, has been effectively absorbed by the JM. With core group (mentioned above) remaining in the driving seat, and calling shots, scores of Tahrir Squares lie miserably trapped and immobilised inside the JM. It is difficult to see what is left outside the embrace of this monster. Corrupt and evil regimes are certainly a problem, but a curable one, the bigger menace is the absence or ineffectiveness of the legitimate channels, institutional or otherwise, through which people’s resentment against the existing corrupt order, and their constructive potential to bring about change can productively be routed. These channels, it would seem, have been choked by JM. The point I want to drive home is precisely this: There are always, and more so when the ruling regimes are corrupt, a number of good causes worth struggling for. In Pakistan, for example, such legitimate causes are Islam, dignity & independence, freedom & fairness, Justice & accountability, rule of law & ending corruption etc. etc. It is not that people are not talking about these things, parties are not pursuing them as stated objectives, but there are hardly any initiatives representing these objectives which are truly independent, which distance themselves equally from, both, the ruling regime as well as JM. A lot of instances could be cited, but one would perhaps suffice here, and this relates to the event of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), Islamabad in 2007. The event as it was beamed from TV Channels showed a standoff between two sides, one the government, the other Lal Masjid. For the people of Pakistan the latter represented Islam, and by contrast, the former ‘enemy of Islam supported by America’. One could see all politico-religious and Islamist Parties on the side of Lal Masjid. If JM had not swallowed up everything in Pakistan, there would have been a formidable third position, independent of the other two, distancing itself from, both, the government on account of its reported dubious handling of the matter, and Lal Masjid on account of its creating a law and order problem and endangering the lives of innocent students for nothing. The Islamic position, in particular, would have been more vehemently critical of Lal Masjid than the government, because the latter was in any case seen to be on the other side(fighting Islam), former was disguised as Islam. It would have dismissed the whole Lal Masjid affair as a pure criminal act which had nothing to do with Islam, because it was in violation with the noble sunnah of the Prophet(PBUH), and amounted to create ‘fitnah’(mischief) which according to Quran is worse than murder. And what an irony, the Leader of Lal Masjid uprising when asked what kind of Islam he wants in Pakistan, referred to Saudi Arabia as the model, the place where a woman in labour pain is allowed to die rather than go to hospital alone.

To conclude, we can see that PTP is a serious problem, and cannot be defeated by simple measures. JM cannot be killed, that is a logical impossibility considering the fact that it has brought within its ambit a lot of genuine element, though immobilised. But at the same time it lies at the heart of PTP, and has, therefore, to be neutralised. Two key steps are needed. One, the sources and supply routes through which JM receives money(huge amounts, simply mind boggling) and sophisticated arms have to be fully choked. The monster will start unravelling, but PTP will remain unless second step is taken which requires more constructive energy and commitment. This step would involve a dual action.

On one hand JM’s legitimizing claims have to be questioned and rubbished, for example its claim of being anti-American( in the sense of representing the ‘nationalist sentiment’, that old, and by now obsolete sentiment of negative nationalism associated in past with the so-called Third World countries). It was this JM that made simple minds to believe till as late as 2001 that in their ‘jihad’ America was with them, and only after 2001 when US turned against its own recruits, JM claims to have turned anti-American in vengeance. Also JM’s intentions have to be questioned. It is a fact that JM is highly contemptuous of Pakistan Armed Forces, the only most organized institution Pakistan has been able to develop. We deliberately use the attribute ‘organized’ because that is undeniable, other adjectives may beg questions which we better avoid to keep our focus on the subject. JM is hell bent on undermining it by demoralizing it. A corrupt army may be acceptable to a nation but definitely not an army of cowards. JM aims to show the Pakistan Army in that light.

On the other hand, political processes, structures and governance in Pakistan should truly represent the legitimizing planks JM has appropriated for itself, namely, Islam, freedom and dignity, justice etc.etc. As soon as that happens the monster will completely unravel, all the immobilised genuine content will have been reclaimed, only criminal terrorist component left, which can be easily knocked down by military action.

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Dr. Syed M Inayatullah Andrabi is a well-known figure in the circles of political Islam. Born in Srinagar, the capital city of Indian Held Kashmir, Dr Andrabi has been intimately involved at the intellectual level with the global politics and political issues since his student days in 1980 at Pune (India), where he completed his Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1983 at the Centre of Advanced Study in Linguistics, Deccan College, University of Pune, Pune, India. Upon completing his doctorate he returned home to join the University of Kashmir, first on a post-doctoral fellowship and later as faculty, but could not continue because of the deteriorating security situation in Kashmir, and had to move to United Kingdom in 1994 where he continues to live since along with his wife and five children.