INSIGHT: An enemy is an enemy —Ejaz Haider
The attack on the Sri Lankan team was not about Afghanistan. It was an attack on Pakistan, what the Pakistani state stands for, and if I say so, what we, as Pakistanis, stand for — or should
BRUSSLES/BERLIN: Speaking at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers here March 5, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan is facing a serious internal security threat and NATO foreign ministers had reached a broad agreement on the salient features of a strategic review for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Clinton also called for a ministerial-level conference on Afghanistan on March 31, in collaboration with the United Nations, ahead of the April summit of NATO leaders in Strasbourg. Until now, the venue of the Afghanistan conference has not been decided but officials from Afghanistan and Pakistan will be invited to the moot along with key international institutions, donors and regional and strategic nations.
Meanwhile, away from Brussels, in Kabul, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Christopher Dell, noted the same day that “From where I sit [Pakistan] sure looks like it’s going to be a bigger problem. It has certainly made radical Islam a part of its political life, and it now seems to be a deeply ingrained element of its political culture. It makes things there very hard.”
Dell also alleged that infiltration across the frontier from Pakistan’s tribal areas had increased, “possibly as a result of ceasefire deals agreed by Taliban and the Pakistani government”.
As I write this from Berlin March 6, having participated in a Pakistan-specific programme on Deutsche Welle TV this morning, the feeling that there is growing consensus in the outside world on two things hits me with great force: Pakistan is slipping into anarchy; and Afghanistan cannot be stabilised without changing Pakistan’s direction.
Much as one argues, as I have been trying to since I travelled to Europe last month, that Pakistan is very different from Afghanistan at all levels, no one is prepared to buy that argument. Even those who understand the nuances and are fairly empathetic point to how the periphery is folding up towards the centre. They see no determined response from the state to the growing challenge.
They are not entirely wrong. It does not matter whether the state is unwilling or unable to face the challenge. The Lahore attack was completely avoidable. It was a massive security failure: the motorcade route could have been changed every day; the route could have been secured on the ground (and possibly from the air) ahead of the motorcade; a decoy convoy could have been used; etc.
None of this requires high technology; merely common sense and a degree of commitment. Security in such circumstances, where terrorist attacks are an existential threat, should be obviously proportional to what is at stake.
Given how desperate we have been to get teams to come and play in Pakistan, the stakes were very high. Our image and credibility were at stake, as was the future of the game all of us love. Instead of thinking that something like this could not happen, the authorities should have worked on the premise that this could and will happen.
The response, instead, was pathetic, utterly unprofessional and delinquent. The price: very high.
This is just one example.
Terrorism is now a reality. While in many cases it is difficult to draw the line between insurgency and terrorism, in most cases in Pakistan, the issue has been clear. Also real and unambiguous is the fact that those fighting the state will stop at nothing; they are not just reactive, they are proactive.
To say that there may be no danger because Pakistanis have never voted for Islamist parties misses the point completely. These people are not in the business of contesting elections or accepting living and functioning under a democratic overhang. They are inimical to the very idea of democracy and rights.
So, how should the state treat them? Are they any different from an external enemy? No. An enemy is an enemy. The idea of an external enemy presupposes internal stability: one political grouping of people against another. We now have an internal enemy that believes in something radically different from what went into the making of this country.
It needs to be fought and the state has to dispose in this contest whatever it has at its disposal.
This is what worries the West, the lack of will on the part of the state to understand the nature of the threat and the people of Pakistan, at least the majority, to appreciate the stakes.
It is not enough to point to the current situation as begotten of what is happening in Afghanistan. The bombing of Rahman Baba’s mausoleum had nothing to do with Afghanistan but everything to do with the expression of a regressive ideology. Neither is it enough to say that if Afghanistan had not happened, these people would not have risen against the Pakistani state. They gestated in the womb of this state and they challenged the state’s writ much before Afghanistan happened. They killed the Shia, they deprived women of their social and political space, and they attacked the functionaries of the state. All this was ignored by the state because it was using them elsewhere.
They would have challenged the state at the point where the state’s objectives ran contrary to their agenda. Or they would have surreptitiously conquered the state if an upheaval had not occurred.
If the majority of Pakistanis do not accept this threat, they should be prepared to live a different kind of life.
The issue about direction of causality then takes a whole new dimension. Afghanistan, never really a modern state, lies below the line that separates the modern from the medieval. Pakistan, even now, doesn’t. What they have to fully conquer, therefore, is Pakistan. If and when they do it, their medievalism will find, and wed itself to, the technological manifestation of modernity in Pakistan. It doesn’t need saying what that combination can do.
This is not to say that the international community has to ignore Afghanistan and focus on Pakistan. Stabilising Afghanistan is crucial, and so far the international community has not covered itself in glory on that count. My point is to focus, as a Pakistani, on what is at stake here and what needs to be done in the streets of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.
The attack on the Sri Lankan team was not about Afghanistan. It was an attack on Pakistan, what the Pakistani state stands for, and if I say so, what we, as Pakistanis, stand for — or should.
That much at least we should be clear about. The situation is messy; what makes it worse is confusion about who the enemy is and where he resides.
Ejaz Haider is Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times and Consulting Editor of The Friday Times. He can be reached at
sapper@dailytimes.com.pk
