All hat and no cattle

KARACHI: Neither the tears and trepidations of US President Barack Obama nor the mass killings at Blacksburg, Santa Barbara and Columbine are grave enough events for the US to change its gun laws. Nearer to home, neither the massacre of its 141 schoolchildren nor the scores of attacks on its minorities are important enough for Pakistan to change its stance towards curbing weaponisation, militancy or extremism. While startling and significant gains have been made by Operation Zarb-e Azb, its civilian counterpart, the National Action Plan can best be described by the Texan saying, “all hat and no cattle”.

The occupants of the Lal Masjid and Jamia-e-Hafsa, the hate volcanoes emitting weekly lava from their pulpits, Mumtaz Qadri still enjoying taxpayers’ hospitality and the mushrooming growth of Islamic State facilitators are the exclusive domain of the interior ministry. Why is the interior ministry evasive on these issues? It needed to formulate and announce a comprehensive plan for complete de-weaponisation much earlier. It failed to do so. It failed to take any step to demand the surrender of 12 million illegal weapons and eight million weapons with fake licences. On the contrary, gun licences continue to be issued to those in positions of power and influence. One would like to question if the interior ministry is batting for Pakistan or for the other team.

In the US, a Congress controlled by the National Rifle Association is the principal obstacle to changing the gun laws. Regretfully, in Pakistan, parliament is itself a promoter and proliferator of weapons. President Obama concluded his teary speech on gun control by telling his countrymen, “We can’t wait anymore.”

Can the people of Pakistan, too, give the same message to their reluctant and well-armed parliament?

Naeem Sadiq

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2016.

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