The terrorist’s mindset

Reference to Urban Soul. Isn’t Saudi Arabia a disctatorship?Recommend

Abid Sabib: I don’t know who you are, I don’t have any desire of knowing who you are or what you do or where you live. Since I am a sort of public person and have been commenting on national and international public affairs for more than three decades both in the national as well international media, I feel disappointed by your insinuation “Or you don’t want to do so because the answer could unveil your own friends in the intelligence agencies!”: This is what you say when you don’t have an argument. What you wrote also reflects a typical Pakistani mindset, throw some dirt on anyone who has a different point of view or has not said precisely what you want him to say. As a public person and with a track record on taking on the corrupt of Pakistani society, despotic rulers, including those whom you refer as “my friends” I would not let you go free for saying what you did. The attitude you reflect is also typical of feudalistic culture–intolerant of diversity and denying others legitimacy if they have some other explanation of some issue than the one you been drilled in your mind. May be, you didn’t capture my argument or had intellectual depth to appreciate it. May be you need to climb certain notches up the bar of integrity to engage intellectually on such an important subject as the “terrorist mindset”. Or, may be, it is sheer lack of knowledge or any capacity to learn with open spirit and expose yourself to alternative explanations. And finally a free, priceless advice; grow up, reflect deeply on what you said, and stop throwing dirt if you lack the merit to engage intellectually and make an argument.Recommend

Interesting article and a very interesting debate. i have no doubts in saying that I whole-heartedly stand by Rais sahab’s arguments. What people like Mr Abid need to understand is that in a country as diverse as Pakistan, we cannot afford to undertake initiatives that crush dissent, either through force (as seen under military rule) or even through the public sphere. In Pakistan, what we now need to understand is that the main need of the time is to undertake a holistic approach to understand the real causes of terrorism. It is very easy to cite conspiracy theories and blame RAW-Mossad and the CIA for everything wrong that is happening in Pakistan. The really hard part is that to undertake a self-introspection that is very much required in order to get to the root causes of terrorism.

A read through of journalist Steve Coll’s book ‘Ghost Wars’ gives a good account about how the ISI and Pakistan’s military establishing actually created these extremist infrastructures in order to maintain their own strategic interests in Afghanistan. Taken from a military point of view, the strategy succeeded. Pakistan was able to erect a pliant regime in Afghanistan and it also managed to bog down the Indian Army in Kashmir.

But however, thats where tactics end. Generals are not taught to think about socio-economic impacts of military strategies. Trainings given at military academies are more about fighting wars. Trainings that soldiers get enables them to think about everything in terms of targets achieved. Generals are not taught to manipulate and plan and administer good governance. Thats the job of politicians. And the fact that Pakistani politicians have consistently failed to administer good governance is clearly reflected from the fact that even when the game of prime-ministerial musical chairs was going on between Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, this extremist infrastructure continued to be strengthened under the watchful eye of Pakistan’s military establishment.

It was the failure of our politicians to rein in this infrastructure. It is this failure that we need to address with the intention of coming up with good actions and governance. My major criticism of Benazir Bhutto is that as against all the grandiose ideas that she had penned down in her autobiography ‘Reconciliation, Islam, democracy and the West’, she consistently failed to act and administer good governance when she was Prime Minister twice. As against popular perception, it would be right, in my opinion to say that as against what President Zardari and the notorious levels of sycophancy which are now prevalent in the PPP, the prime destroyer of the legacy of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, (who i think was the best leader we had after Quaid-E-Azam) was none other than her own daughter.

For certainly, I believe that as most of Pakistan’s problems, including terrorism, were nearly self-inflicted, the solutions to these problems should come from within our society. this for sure cannot happen till the time we do not use our cultural, racial and ethnic diversity as a strength.

We need a vibrant and multilingual news media that can channel a variety of opinions throughout the length and width of our nation. Kudos to Express Tribune for coming up with such a good forum for debate.!!!Recommend

The root causes of terrorism are so many and mutually cohesive thus it’s hard to determine what formulates the terrorist mindset. Social deprivation, isolation could be one of many factors. However this alienation is due to lack of initiative on part of the west to engage the Muslims in a constructive debate and the failure to enlightened Muslims to counter the militant propaganda.Recommend

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