Another soul searching article published in Daily News of today. I appologoze to fellow members for copying 3 articles and pasting in different threads. However, I am deeply moved by this event and IMO more it is discussed, the better it is for understanding the tragic event that is resulting in so much blood letting.
Lal Masjid lessons: the good, the bad, the ugly
By Adil Najam
The writer teaches International Negotiation and Diplomacy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, US, and is the founding editor of Pakistaniat.com
A lot is being said by many about the tragic, but inevitable, end of the Lal Masjid debacle. Much of it is unsatisfying. Even more is hollow sloganeering. Some is absolutely outrageous. Maybe it is too early for meaningful introspection to take place. Maybe we, as a nation, are still in that zone of shock and mourning where anger replaces analysis and only inane recriminations can be traded. But even as spin masters turn this national moment of tragedy into cheap political theatre, we need to step back to ponder hard about what lessons can be derived from the still smouldering ashes of Lal Masjid.
The good: There is nothing that is 'good' about what happened in Islamabad on July 10. Nor about what had been happening at Lal Masjid in the many months before that. However, honest analysis demands that we identify those trends that are at least pointing in the right direction. Three, in particular, deserve attention.
First, the government did show remarkable restraint to enable the 'civilians' within the mosque to exit before the real hostilities began. Starting from several thousand people only a few hundred hardened extremists and militants were left for that final battle. The government deserves credit for carefully creating the opportunities and incentive for non--combatants -- nearly 90 per cent of those originally in the compound -- to leave before the bloody end came. The end, of course, was much more bloody than it should have been. The militants should never have been allowed to cause the deaths of so many innocent people; but more on that below.
Second, even though many have vociferously opposed the Lal Masjid operation -- for its timing as well as its execution -- very few are publicly supporting the activities or tactics adopted by the Lal Masjid leadership. Even the religious parties that are now making political mileage out of the tragedy have distanced themselves from the criminality of the kidnappings, extortion, and vigilantism that were at the core of the Lal Masjid agenda. This does not imply a societal rejection of Abdul Rashid Ghazi's Talibanist agenda, but it does suggest that the bulk of political and societal opinion remains unsupportive of extremist tendencies and violent tactics.
Third, there is a clear recognition -- certainly within society and hopefully also on the part of the state -- that militant tendencies need to be curtailed promptly. There is a realization that militancy does not wither away with time; that delay causes escalation, emboldens militants, and encourages more violence. The tragedy is not simply that things ended the way they did, but that they were allowed to escalate to a level where they could not have ended otherwise. The redeeming corollary is the realization that next time around we need to act well before things get out of hand. This realization is clearly evident today, but it could be easily forgotten tomorrow.
The bad: There are too many things that went badly. Three concerns, however, are particularly important. The first relates to the role of the state, the second to the role of politicians, and the third to the role of the media.
First, the government had no real negotiation strategy. In stark contrast to the careful planning that seemed evident in encouraging non-combatants to leave Lal Masjid, no thought was invested in convincing the militants that their cause was unjust and their actions futile. There was no attempt to cordon off Abdul Rashid Ghazi's channels of communication. This is sad because there is so much that we do know about how to deal with militants in crisis situations but also because this could have saved innocent lives. That ultimately there was talk of 'compromise' solutions, to be brokered by Chaudhry Shujaat and MMA leaders, was itself an indicator of the utter absence of a meaningful negotiation strategy.
Second, we are now witnessing the most crass attempts at harnessing political mileage out of a national tragedy. In trying to co-opt the sympathy for those who died in the incident, the MMA is playing a very dangerous game by shrouding the criminality that had led to this situation in the cloak of religiosity. Even more absurd are the theatrics coming from politicians like Imran Khan and Altaf Hussain. Although on opposite sides of the argument, neither's view on this situation derives from their held and stated beliefs. They are symptomatic of the many others who are using Lal Masjid to advance their current political agendas. It may be true that this is what politicians are supposed to do. But not for tragedies of this magnitude.
Finally, there is the role of the media, especially the electronic media. There are many legitimate questions that the media is asking that deserve to be answered. But there are also a few questions that the media needs to answer. Should the media be providing unfettered means of communication to miscreants in a police standoff? Does this put the lives of citizens and security officials at risk? How does the media manage the risk of becoming an unwilling accomplice in misinformation and incitement to violence as seemed to happen here? We all understand the pressures of live coverage but at what point does the desire to become the first channel to 'break the rumour' become ethically questionable? The government has no right to impose restrictions on the media, but shouldn't the media itself draw a line for what is socially responsible reporting and what is not?
The ugly: sad as the events have been, the real ugliness may yet lie in the future. It is a folly to argue that the Lal Masjid operation has made things worse. But it has certainly brought the many deep divisions in society to fore. Battle-lines that were always real can no longer be ignored. Let us highlight just three societal cleavages that the Lal Masjid saga has made bare.
The first cleavage is the continuing confusion between religiosity and criminality. Even though society has rejected the criminality of the means adopted by the Lal Masjid leadership (kidnappings, extortions, violence), the context of the location (a mosque) and the sensationalization of events has brought to fore the very real danger that Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his cohorts will be remembered by some as 'martyrs' and, maybe, even as heroes. Whether society remembers Lal Masjid as a religious debacle or as a criminal action could determine how it reacts to future militancies from mosques. If it turns out to be the former then the sanctity of the mosque and the sovereignty of the state will both be trampled.
The second concern is how we now view everything through the lens of the so-called 'War on Terror' (WOT). The ease with which we transfer the responsibility for our own demons on George Bush and his WOT is clearly based on the realities of the world we live in. But it is also based on the convenience of being able to use the WOT as an excuse to ignore our own ugly realities. Of course, WOT is not irrelevant to what transpired at Lal Masjid. But it is disingenuous to believe that what happened was entirely because of WOT. The number of people who actually believe that this was the case points to a disturbing attitude of deep societal denial.
Finally, there is the deepening cleavage between state and society. The difference between Lal Masjid and other similar situations -- e.g., the 1993 standoff at Waco, Texas -- is that in our case the state had such little credibility that each of its actions was deemed suspect by the media and the public. There was constant chatter that this was a 'topi drama' orchestrated by intelligence agencies. There were incessant rumours about how the operation was orchestrated. There were unending doubts about its timing. All of this was not simply a display of our inherent cynicism, these were manifestations of a society that has no trust in its state. This was not just a lack of trust in the government, it was a lack of trust in the state. And that is a truly ugly cleavage.
Email: adil.najam@ tufts.edu
