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| India-Pakistan |
| Status quo and insurrection |
| 2007-04-15 |
| Najam Sethi The outlook is bleak. After four weeks of inspired dithering, the government has succumbed to the Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa jihadis. Chaudhry Shujaat, whose political career rests on alliances with the mullahs, has been tasked to neutralize them. Apparently, the intelligence agencies, various ministries and even some well-meaning columnists are wringing their hands in despair because they are opposed to “sorting them out”. But they are all wrong in their prescriptions because their diagnosis of the problem is wrong. The official diagnosis/prescription formula goes like this: These are a couple of mad maverick mullahs who have little public support but great nuisance value; therefore, there is no need to use force because that would only give them media headlines and public sympathy in the run-up to elections, with the judicial crisis still simmering and anti-government fronts boiling over in Balochistan and FATA. Instead, the prescription is to engage them in “talks” and make some concessions – land and money to build new mosques and promises to uproot “brothels” and other “un-Islamic ills” from Islamabad and other cities . But will this concession suffice to appease Islamic revolutionaries wired for suicide bombing? Logically speaking, the government should then prepare to make the same concessions to copycat blackmailing mullahs and madrassahs all over the country. Already, the Islami Jamiat i Tulaba has been emboldened into beating up “un-Islamic” students at the Punjab University in Lahore (where the vice-chancellor is a retired general) and openly proclaiming the “Islamisation” of the campus. In Peshawar, Maulana Qureshi, head of the 17th century Mohabat Khan Mosque and president of the Muttahida Shariat Mahaz (MSM), has warned the government to close down “brothels” or else “the Mahaz will launch a jihad against them”. More mullahs are likely to follow suit if this issue is not “closed” swiftly. Brothels, billboards, veils, music, film, haircuts, dress, schools – there is no end to the “concessions” that will be demanded in the name of jihad and Islam. Indeed, if the threat of provoking militant resistance and suicide bombing by the Jamia Hafsa students has unnerved the government it should step down and hand over power to the FATA mullahs and Taliban who have raised not one but many brigades of suicide bombers to resist the government’s war against terrorism. One variant of this opportunist approach is to say that, while force is not the answer, a dialogue coupled with the “threat of force” may be the right way to handle the issue. But this is a non-starter. If force as an option is already ruled out then the “threat of force” in any context is meaningless. In fact, herein lies the answer. In many situations, the threat of the use of force is more effective than the use of force itself. But that strategy requires a credible demonstration of the mental will and physical ability to deploy and use massive force. In this situation, General Musharraf was required to show the iron fist of the police and military, not proffer the velvet glove of Ejaz ul Haq or Chaudhry Shujaat. There were a hundred ways of doing that at the outset. But when the government leaked word that “force was not an option”, the mavericks were emboldened to extend their agenda from seizing a library to forming vigilante groups for the enforcement of virtue in the twin cities and establishing an “Islamic space” in the heart of Islamabad. The situation is so pathetic that this high and mighty government cannot even block the mullahs’ website on the internet. So if the government wants Chaudhry Shujaat to succeed in his negotiations, it should physically and mentally demonstrate its ability to “sort them out” immediately. One way to do that would be to cordon off the area, deploy troops and make ready to smoke them out. Then negotiations might succeed in disarming them. But, of course, the problem is much deeper than that. The maverick mullahs of Islamabad are just one outcrop of a developing countrywide jihadi resistance to a cynical state establishment that once trained and nurtured them and now wants to put a lid on them. For a variety of well known reasons, this is unfortunately happening in the context of rising anti-Americanism (which is a political sentiment) and anti-Westernisation (which is a cultural sentiment). Both these sentiments are stimulating a return to religious faith as a symbol of measuring and stating identity in an alienating, insecure and globalizing world. The failure of the nation-state and nationalism in Pakistan is increasingly manifest. So what is the way out? Clearly, we need a fresh restatement and refurbishment of the nation-state so that it truly reflects the aspirations, hopes and dreams of ordinary Pakistanis, a state that is based on democratic institutions that inspire popular confidence and are able to productively channel the energies of the people, a state whose writ is accepted as a measure of the social contract between rulers and the ruled rather than forcibly imposed from above and therefore liable to be resisted. But the rub is that, despite an early promise of radical reform of state and society, General Pervez Musharraf seems to be digging in for the status quo which is actually a recipe for Islamist insurrections. |
| Posted by:Fred |