The War against Terrorism and Pakistan: Whose War is it anyway?

The War against Terrorism and Pakistan: Whose War is it anyway?

 

 

The dastardly and cowardly attack on a girl barely out of here teens, Malala Yusufzai, by the Pakistan Taliban has ignited a debate in Pakistan. The young Malala was an activist for women’s rights and education. Obviously, the Taliban did not find this to its liking and targeted the young girl for this crime. Hate and prejudice knows no bounds and killers operating under the illogic of either can kill and murder anyone if the beliefs and views of the victim do not accord with their world view.

 

With due respect to the young Malala, her bravery and courage, and prayers for her health and longevity, this, however is not the core thrust of this article.  The article is concerned with the debate that has unfolded in Pakistan over the nature of the war on terror, and Pakistan’s place in this schema. While aspects of the debate border on the ludicrous and idiotic, the thrust of the debate is whether Pakistan is fighting America’s war or whether Pakistan is fighting a war against itself? It is the author’s view that it is a combination of both. America naturally is pursuing militants ensconced in Pakistan’s territory for its security and strategic interests. The question here is: Is Pakistan being used and instrumentalized by America for its own ends with Pakistan as a passive, sulking and acquiescing ‘partner’?

 

The answer is a clear cut now. While America’s strategic and security interests in the region cannot be denied, it stretches reason to believe that the on terror is solely America’s war. It, in the final analysis, is Pakistan’s war. That is, Pakistan is at war with itself. The country must win this war with itself. It sounds paradoxical and ironical to state that the country is at war with itself. This, however, is the prosaic and hard reality. The war is ideological and is being fought over the nature and identity of Pakistan.  This accrues from the competing and contending narratives of Pakistan and its ideological premise. Laying out these narratives and elaborating them would amount to belaboring the point and stating the obvious. However, it may be needed to state that the war is over what kind of state should Pakistan be? Should it be an austere Islamic state with sharia as the law of the land? Should it be a secular land with a complete separation and divorce of religion from the state? Or should it occupy the middle ground?

 

The Taliban and its fellow travelers would want Pakistan to conform to an austere, strictly Islamic state wherein the legal and governing paradigm conforms to what the Taliban believes and holds Islam to be.  That is, an obscurantist version and vision of Islam. This not only is impossible and chimeric but a distortion of the essence and gravamen of Islam.  The miniscule liberal part of Pakistani society wants Pakistan to conform to the principles and spirit of liberalism, secularism and freedom. This too is surreal. The reasons are prosaic: while liberalism and secularlism are fine and high minded in theory but in practice pure practice of either would not suit the temper and mood of the Pakistani people. This mistake of putting a secular and liberal straitjacket on Muslim peoples was experimented by the Shah in Iran and Attaturk in Turkey. The former led to a revolution and the latter led to a country and society which lost its bearings and moorings. What then is the appropriate ‘solution’ for Pakistan?

 

A sober and prudent approach would be a synthesis of liberalism, secularism and Islam. This synthesis may sound like a contradiction in terms but it is doable. And it is this synthesis that may in the final analysis close the fault lines that define Pakistan. This would require a consensus on the nature of the Pakistani state and society which is both bottoms up and top down and would entail a revolution. But this has to happen and will happen if a long term view is taken. Prudence dictates that this happen sooner than later so that innocent lives are saved and for peace to crystallize within and without. In the mean time, the war on extremism and its concomitant, terrorism should continue, The state should seize the initiative and keep the pressure on forces inimical to peace and stability. It is, in the final analysis, Pakistan’s war and it is Pakistan that should fight it with some assistance from the international community. This counter intuitively includes India. Let Pakistan be given all support  in its war against itself. World peace and stability may be contingent on this.