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ANALYSIS: The good, the bad and the ugly Salman Tarik Kureshi
The distinction between good and bad insurrectionists is meaningless. To do deals with the good ones, as opposed to the bad ones, will only be a repetition of past tactics. And will bring us that bit closer to a final collapse into anarchic state failure
In a previous article, welcoming Prime Minister Gilanis announcement of military action against the insurgency in Swat, three questions were raised by this commentator:
[B]First: is this meant only for Swat? What about the rest of the NWFP; what about FATA, particularly the two Waziristans; what about the alleged Taliban GHQ in Quetta; what about the killer squads, arms caches and sleeper cells scattered all over Pakistan, from Islamabad to Karachi? Will these all be taken out by our men in khaki?[/B]
Since then, of course, our armed forces, following formidable initial success in the Swat/ Malakand campaign, have announced preparation for a major assault on South Waziristan and Baitullah Mehsud of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan. We also learn that a Mr Turkistan Bhittani, another formidable warlord, has broken away from the TTP (perhaps not unlike some of our parliamentarians, known for forming forward blocs when changing allegiances) and will now be fighting on our side. Thus, Mr Bhittani is no more amongst the ranks of the bad anti-state terrorists, but will join the ranks of the good anti-state terrorists. And this is a development we are expected to applaud as a portent of the forthcoming victory of the state!
Now, I do not know whether there are accusations against Mr Bhittani and am unwilling to consider anyone guilty until proven so, but there is surely a principle here. Good Taliban or bad Taliban, both factions stand accused of extreme violence, of cold-blooded mass murder and of waging war against the state of Pakistan. There are no accusations more heinous than these: the most vicious kind of murder and the highest kind of treason and given that these criminals regularly misuse the sacred name of Islam the most sacrilegious blasphemy.
Is there then any distinction between the good Taliban and the bad Taliban? Are they not equally ugly? Equally deadly for our state and society?
One realises that selective amnesties and tactical battlefield alliances are necessary parts of serious counterinsurgency campaigns. But and this is the point such adjustments need to be highly selective and well thought through. Otherwise, one is simply unleashing a further species of monster to fight the monsters one has already unleashed.
Let us remember that, as the great Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong said, Power grows from the barrel of a gun. Mao therefore proceeded to capture the guns, first from the Japanese occupation army and then from the Kuomingtang government of Chiang Kai-Shek. After his revolution came to its conclusion and the Chinese state was re-established, his enormous country was still awash with guns and those who had wielded them.
Let us be clear of the truism that the nature of states is such that they must enjoy a quasi-monopoly of armed force within their territory. If a state is not to collapse and fail, if a society is to not to become critically dysfunctional, it is necessary for the military, the paramilitaries and the police to establish and rigidly assert exclusive control over serious weaponry. Side by side, those individuals who are adept at the use of such weaponry must be subject to the disciplines of the security organs of the state.
Maos government understood, back in 1949, that the presence of all the leftover weaponry from the war and the revolution would pose critical challenges to the Chinese state they intended to build. Therefore, they set about absorbing their own partisans, as well as the many other arms-wielding Chinese citizens, into the Red Army.
Similarly, the countries of Europe, replete with former Resistance fighters after World War II, carefully absorbed them into various arms of their government. The Americans used their GI Bill to fund university education for demobilised soldiers. And so in Vietnam. And in Cambodia.
In the aftermath of great wars and/or revolutions, which have left behind an enormous detritus of weapons and armed, militarily experienced persons, the means of absorbing those weapons into the states armoury and those persons into remunerative employment have been vigorously pursued and implemented by most countries.
We, too, live in a country bristling with guns and bulging with bombs left over, we are told, from the jihad in Afghanistan. And it is the armed and trained remnants of the partisans who fought that war whether as mujahideen or as Taliban that are responsible for the disorder and terrorism in our country.
Minimal common sense and at least some honesty of purpose would have suggested precisely the kinds of prescriptions that have been followed elsewhere. But our elites beyond even the bounds of ordinary common sense further equipped these warriors, made deals with them, pampered them as intelligence assets and sought to use them to project the force of the Pakistan state beyond our borders.
There are three kinds of persons, other than the legitimate state actors, who bear arms: straightforward criminals; the armed brigades associated with certain political parties and movements; and the insurrectionists and terrorists lumped together under the rubric of Islamic militants.
Now, all societies have their criminal underworlds and Pakistan too is richly endowed with such. Whether Karachis car and cell-phone snatchers, the dharels of interior Sindh, the badmashes of Punjab, ordinary murderers or the drug peddlers universal in our pious country, there is a colourful variety of armed law breakers to be found in our towns and villages. After all, every society, every country, has its dark underside. Crime pays (or not) everywhere in the world. And everywhere criminals are organised and armed.
But Colombia and the United States and Russia and Italy and all the other countries with armed criminal gangs are in no way threatened with state failure or social collapse. Do criminals erode the foundations of a society or a state? Not really; they are too marginal in the wider sweep of social processes. Society does not collapse; the state does not fail.
But it is something else that has happened in Pakistan. The proliferation and arming of certain, fitfully favoured political groups most prominently in the 1980s, but prevalent before and continuing thereafter and the establishments failure to adequately confront them is where the serious destabilisation of Pakistani society began. It was a short step from there to todays large-scale militias of armed militants and terrorists, against whom the Pakistani authorities claim to be fighting their war on terror.
Let us also be clear. The distinction between good and bad insurrectionists is meaningless. They are all guilty of the same, incredible level of criminal behaviour. To do deals with the good ones, as opposed to the bad ones, will only be a repetition of past tactics. And will bring us that bit closer to a final collapse into anarchic state failure.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet
The distinction between good and bad insurrectionists is meaningless. To do deals with the good ones, as opposed to the bad ones, will only be a repetition of past tactics. And will bring us that bit closer to a final collapse into anarchic state failure
In a previous article, welcoming Prime Minister Gilanis announcement of military action against the insurgency in Swat, three questions were raised by this commentator:
[B]First: is this meant only for Swat? What about the rest of the NWFP; what about FATA, particularly the two Waziristans; what about the alleged Taliban GHQ in Quetta; what about the killer squads, arms caches and sleeper cells scattered all over Pakistan, from Islamabad to Karachi? Will these all be taken out by our men in khaki?[/B]
Since then, of course, our armed forces, following formidable initial success in the Swat/ Malakand campaign, have announced preparation for a major assault on South Waziristan and Baitullah Mehsud of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan. We also learn that a Mr Turkistan Bhittani, another formidable warlord, has broken away from the TTP (perhaps not unlike some of our parliamentarians, known for forming forward blocs when changing allegiances) and will now be fighting on our side. Thus, Mr Bhittani is no more amongst the ranks of the bad anti-state terrorists, but will join the ranks of the good anti-state terrorists. And this is a development we are expected to applaud as a portent of the forthcoming victory of the state!
Now, I do not know whether there are accusations against Mr Bhittani and am unwilling to consider anyone guilty until proven so, but there is surely a principle here. Good Taliban or bad Taliban, both factions stand accused of extreme violence, of cold-blooded mass murder and of waging war against the state of Pakistan. There are no accusations more heinous than these: the most vicious kind of murder and the highest kind of treason and given that these criminals regularly misuse the sacred name of Islam the most sacrilegious blasphemy.
Is there then any distinction between the good Taliban and the bad Taliban? Are they not equally ugly? Equally deadly for our state and society?
One realises that selective amnesties and tactical battlefield alliances are necessary parts of serious counterinsurgency campaigns. But and this is the point such adjustments need to be highly selective and well thought through. Otherwise, one is simply unleashing a further species of monster to fight the monsters one has already unleashed.
Let us remember that, as the great Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong said, Power grows from the barrel of a gun. Mao therefore proceeded to capture the guns, first from the Japanese occupation army and then from the Kuomingtang government of Chiang Kai-Shek. After his revolution came to its conclusion and the Chinese state was re-established, his enormous country was still awash with guns and those who had wielded them.
Let us be clear of the truism that the nature of states is such that they must enjoy a quasi-monopoly of armed force within their territory. If a state is not to collapse and fail, if a society is to not to become critically dysfunctional, it is necessary for the military, the paramilitaries and the police to establish and rigidly assert exclusive control over serious weaponry. Side by side, those individuals who are adept at the use of such weaponry must be subject to the disciplines of the security organs of the state.
Maos government understood, back in 1949, that the presence of all the leftover weaponry from the war and the revolution would pose critical challenges to the Chinese state they intended to build. Therefore, they set about absorbing their own partisans, as well as the many other arms-wielding Chinese citizens, into the Red Army.
Similarly, the countries of Europe, replete with former Resistance fighters after World War II, carefully absorbed them into various arms of their government. The Americans used their GI Bill to fund university education for demobilised soldiers. And so in Vietnam. And in Cambodia.
In the aftermath of great wars and/or revolutions, which have left behind an enormous detritus of weapons and armed, militarily experienced persons, the means of absorbing those weapons into the states armoury and those persons into remunerative employment have been vigorously pursued and implemented by most countries.
We, too, live in a country bristling with guns and bulging with bombs left over, we are told, from the jihad in Afghanistan. And it is the armed and trained remnants of the partisans who fought that war whether as mujahideen or as Taliban that are responsible for the disorder and terrorism in our country.
Minimal common sense and at least some honesty of purpose would have suggested precisely the kinds of prescriptions that have been followed elsewhere. But our elites beyond even the bounds of ordinary common sense further equipped these warriors, made deals with them, pampered them as intelligence assets and sought to use them to project the force of the Pakistan state beyond our borders.
There are three kinds of persons, other than the legitimate state actors, who bear arms: straightforward criminals; the armed brigades associated with certain political parties and movements; and the insurrectionists and terrorists lumped together under the rubric of Islamic militants.
Now, all societies have their criminal underworlds and Pakistan too is richly endowed with such. Whether Karachis car and cell-phone snatchers, the dharels of interior Sindh, the badmashes of Punjab, ordinary murderers or the drug peddlers universal in our pious country, there is a colourful variety of armed law breakers to be found in our towns and villages. After all, every society, every country, has its dark underside. Crime pays (or not) everywhere in the world. And everywhere criminals are organised and armed.
But Colombia and the United States and Russia and Italy and all the other countries with armed criminal gangs are in no way threatened with state failure or social collapse. Do criminals erode the foundations of a society or a state? Not really; they are too marginal in the wider sweep of social processes. Society does not collapse; the state does not fail.
But it is something else that has happened in Pakistan. The proliferation and arming of certain, fitfully favoured political groups most prominently in the 1980s, but prevalent before and continuing thereafter and the establishments failure to adequately confront them is where the serious destabilisation of Pakistani society began. It was a short step from there to todays large-scale militias of armed militants and terrorists, against whom the Pakistani authorities claim to be fighting their war on terror.
Let us also be clear. The distinction between good and bad insurrectionists is meaningless. They are all guilty of the same, incredible level of criminal behaviour. To do deals with the good ones, as opposed to the bad ones, will only be a repetition of past tactics. And will bring us that bit closer to a final collapse into anarchic state failure.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet