How many Malalas?

How many Malalas?

 

 

Dr Tariq Rahman
Monday, October 15, 2012
From Print Edition

After a long time, there is some sign of life among the country’s opinion-makers - and not just the liberals. Does it take an attack on an innocent girl to wake up our collective conscience? Or is even this an evanescent phenomenon? How many more Malalas will it take for our public to change its mind about the Taliban?
I saw such a change in public opinion about the Taliban rule in Swat in 2008. Mullah Fazlullah was ruling the valley, and women were being flogged for the least suspicion of immorality. The government of Pakistan had given in and power had been conceded in the name of people’s demand for Shariah. But the Taliban started moving to Buner and the army felt threatened. Soon, media anchors had started talking about action against the militants. Within months the local people were brought to the plains of Mardan and Peshawar and the army moved in to wipe out the Taliban – and did so. But after this brief victory, we went back to our anti-American, anti-Indian rhetoric, blaming a ‘foreign hand’ for everything. The TV anchors were back to condemning drone attacks in the name of our sovereignty and the military’s narrative of not attacking North Waziristan because the Haqqani network attacked Americans and not Pakistanis gained currency again.

Once again I notice a change in the army’s attitude towards militancy. Possibly the attack on Kamra airbase put General Kayani’s back up. But it is not clear whether this change will translate into a wholesale elimination of the terror outfit. I also do not know whether the army now is in any real position to influence any of these outfits and whether the genie can be really put back in the bottle? What I do know is that the genie was produced by our most powerful decision-makers who never told our public the truth. Our lack of public support and confusion and the conspiracy theories that circulate are all a product of lying, evasiveness, double-dealings and double-speak.

Take the policy on drones, which have been allowed by our military and civil governments since 2004 at least. The public was never told that Pakistan was in an alliance with the US and that it was not merely for money – though, of course, money did come in mainly to the army for services rendered. The people were allowed to blame their government as heartless mercenaries, whereas the Al-Qaeda-inspired Taliban blamed our government for being stooges of the west, at best, and apostates, at worst. In short, our decision-makers too wanted to fight the militants but would not say so openly, hoping to fool their own people as well as the Taliban and the Americans. The drones were meant to eliminate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban leadership, and there is some evidence that they did this to some extent at least. Between 2007 and 2011, there were 164 drone attacks that killed 964 militants.

Among these 172 were foreigners. Indeed, a few months later Atiyah Abd-al-Rehman and Abu Hafs al-Shari, both second only to Osama bin Laden, were killed by drones. But a recent study by Stanford and New York Universities claimed that only 2 percent militants had been killed while the rest were civilians. In short, the evidence is contradictory. But one thing is clear anyhow: our people were never told that any other way to fight the militants would probably result in more deaths. Infantry cannot be used; it is used against fighters who stay to fight a pitched battle not just leaders hiding in houses. And even if it is used to fish leaders out, it is a messy affair with many civilian deaths. Air force jets are an even worse choice, as are gunship helicopters, since they kill people indiscriminately in a wider radius than drones.

Moreover, since our people were never told what life is like under the Taliban they know nothing about the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan, very little about Mullah Fazlullah’s Swat and what they have heard of the Taliban rule of Afghanistan they regard as western or liberal propaganda. So, our decision-makers missed the opportunity to unite our citizens against militancy. Among the missed opportunities was that of using the US to fight both their own war and ours too. We never owned the war and it is a wonder our disciplined rank-and-file did not rebel when the army took its selective actions against the Taliban. But from soldier to general there was confusion and nobody managed to identify the enemy.

Our people were also never told that there were 413 incidents of terrorism in Pakistan before the first drone strike on June 18, 2004. Thus the reasoning given by PTI and others that the terrorism we face is because of drone strikes is simply not true. But, since we have made the drones unacceptable to our people by our mendacity, what is to be done? Most of our anti-drone lobby knows nothing about infantry battles and how many people die in them. If Pakistan uses its own infantry, the number of soldiers and civilian casualties will be in thousands. Such civil wars are terrible for a country. In any case the Taliban will hide among the villagers and no infantry can fight its own people without serious rebellions and outrage. Some people still talk about negotiating with the militants. Well, the militants broke all the peace deals negotiated with them earlier so where does that leave us? A heartless answer would be to withdraw from the tribal areas and be content with whatever is left of Pakistan.

Personally, being concerned more with people than land, I would have recommended this option although the nationalists would not hear of it, despite the fact that the Emirate of Waziristan is not really Pakistan. But the reason I consider this a bad solution is that I do not think we can build a Great Wall of China-like barrier to keep the militants outside. That is just not practical at this moment. Thus, we will have an ever-expanding Taliban state, with kidnappings and the occasional raids to keep it going. Moreover, and this is what really bothers me, with what conscience can we leave girls like Malala to be flogged, kept as captives in homes, and killed if they want to study in the new state we will allow to be created?

What right have we to prevent 250,000 children from receiving polio drops? And we – who shout so loudly about the violation of our territory when drones are secretly allowed by our highest authorities – how is it that we have never protested states being formed in our tribal areas? We have not done so because our elite has confused us and instilled so much hatred in us for foreigners that we cannot see that we are committing collective suicide. Just how many Malalas will it take for us to wake up?

The writer is Dean, School of Education BNU Lahore.