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Today Islamists amongst us say they are proud of our Pakistan army for killing the islamist insugents - whom do they think they are fooling? We know that they are seeking to confuse and to distort history, and like the talib, they will be held accountable:
Politicians and Rah-e-Raast
Monday, July 13, 2009
Talat Farooq
While our politicians are quick to criticize the role played by the military establishment in the making of the Taliban they have never had the moral courage to confess to their own contribution to the phenomenon. The scourge of terrorism that has hit us in the face is the outcome not only of the short-sighted policies of the establishment but also the support lent to these policies by the politicians. During their alternate stints in the 90s both the PPP and the PML, despite their heavy mandates, were busy settling personal scores rather than questioning and holding serious discussions on the aftermath of Pakistans Afghan policy, in parliament. But more than the PPP and the PML, it is the religious parties that are today in the process of having their cake and eating it too.
Both the JI and the JUI are opposing the ongoing military operation with their senators terming it as drama during a recent senate debate, declaring that it was the military that had created the Taliban in the first place. What they failed to mention was their own contribution to the phenomenon first by actively assisting the military establishment in the 80s and 90s and later continuing to use the institutions of the mosque and madressah to create sectarian and ideological divisions leading to militancy within the society.
The JI, whose anti-military stance today is aired with nauseating repetition, was hand in glove with Ziaul-Haq with Maudoodi himself endorsing Zias initiatives for Islamization in Pakistan. The JI, influenced by the Maudoodian concept of militant Jihad, assisted the Zia regime in conducting the Afghan policy and fighting Americas war in Afghanistan. The mess we are in today is the fallout of the same guiding principle. The JI had no qualms in fighting Americas war in the name of Afghan jihad because, besides the fact that dollars were pouring in, it meant more political power to the mullah in Pakistan. The JI, although at loggerheads with the JUI politically, never breathed a word against the rise of the Taliban from the JUI administered madressahs and training camps after the Soviet withdrawal, nor did it ever denounce them as they fought fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. It is therefore rather hypocritical of them to condemn the ongoing military operation on the basis of killing Muslims and fighting Americas war in Swat and FATA.
The Taliban policy was executed in the 90s during the PPP government with the support of their political ally Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman whose Saudi funded madressahs, with the blessings of the ISI, trained both Afghan refugees and Pakistani youngsters in the art of militant jihad besides indoctrinating them into one-dimensional bigots. The Pakistani students from JUI-run madressahs were fed as fodder to buttress the fighting cadres of Mullah Omar, himself a product of Maulana Sami-ul-Haqs madressah. The Taliban in Afghanistan were reinforced with manpower, funds and weapons from Pakistan as they fought and massacred fellow Muslims. The present cold and calculating Taliban leadership that has unleashed terror on the Pakistanis consists of the same battle-hardened, madressah-bred warriors, whose ruthlessness in spawning sectarianism and terrorism in Pakistan is justified in the name of religion by their supporters. Having grown up in refugee camps and then trained in the JUI-run militant madressahs following the Deobandi brand of education that is sympathetic to Wahabism, the Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani brethren have nothing to do with the egalitarian traditions of the Pashtuns and are in fact the perfect reflection of the Quranic version of mufsidin.
After 9/11 the Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements, supported by their Pakistani sympathizers, crossed over into FATA as a result of Musharrafs two-faced policy that strengthened the Pakistani Taliban. This particular policy was never criticized by either the religious or the conservative parties, such as the PML-N, even as they criticized Musharraf for everything else, with the result that the militants have grown in power with the help of local criminals, drug mafia, arms dealers and foreign hands that have joined them along the way. The latest turn of events has proved unfavourable to them. The bomb blasts in NWFP and the Punjab targeting law enforcement agencies and the civilians as well as the ongoing violence in Karachi are desperate attempts by them to distract the Pakistani army so that local and foreign militants and other criminal elements can continue to use Pakistani tribal territory for their respective vested interests.
Today, the JUI leadership is unanimous in condemning the military operation against their protégés. One would like to ask them why it was okay for Pakistani jihadists to wage war against the non-Pashtuns and Shia Muslims of Afghanistan and why it is wrong for the Pakistan army to dismantle the TTP. Is it that when the maulvis agree to fight it is jihad but when the military takes on the enemy in keeping with its constitutional obligation it is murder? Similarly, the incumbent amir of the JI minces no words in expressing his admiration for the Taliban style of governance in Afghanistan in the 90s. His party is taking out rallies against the ongoing operation, making one wonder why it never protested or held seminars to condemn religious extremism since the start of suicide bombings in urban Pakistan. Is it that to them the lives of the inhabitants of FATA and PATA are more important than the rest of Pakistanis?
As the Pakistani nation suffers, the politicians cannot be absolved of their complicity in the rise of the Taliban in both the tribal and the urban areas of Pakistan. In the present scenario the PPP has had to take the bold decision to take on the enemy while the main factions of the PML continue to sit on the fence. The only two parties who have come out strongly against the Taliban, the MQM and the ANP, are at daggers drawn in Karachi instead of rising above their personal agendas.
The country is at war and the entire political leadership, including the religious, the conservative and the secular, should be addressing the pressing issues of defeating religious extremism, rehabilitation of the IDPs and reconstruction in the war zones, while devising practical strategies for ensuring the writ of the state in the country. They should be seen as building both bridges and consensus by going to their voters. The truth of the matter is that the nation expects the politicians to launch their own operation Rah-e-Raast by retracing their footsteps to the straight path after publicly confessing their wrong doings and then compensating by genuinely working toward a unified ideological front against the Taliban mindset in the tribal and urban areas of Pakistan.
The writer is executive editor, Criterion. Email: talatfarooq11@ gmail.com
The article has so many factual mistakes, and inaccuracies, and a lot of hearsay.
I would have expected a better critique than the above.