The writer is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She tweets @MadihaAfzal
The last week has seen some of the worst violence in Pakistan’s recent past, a worrisome beginning for our new government. In Quetta on June 15, at a funeral in Mardan on June 18, at a Shia madrassa in Peshawar and across Karachi on June 21, Pakistani terrorists killed dozens. At least one of the terrorists, the Quetta bomber, was a woman. Our media bravely reports on the details of these incidents, showing footage from each attack site. Our leaders never fail to condemn the attacks. When a militant group claims responsibility for an attack, we are told its name. We know the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) destroyed the beautiful Ziarat residency, so significant to our country’s history, and that the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) was responsible for the set of attacks in Quetta, in the female students’ bus and in the Bolan Medical complex. When the attackers are unknown, the media refers to them correctly as dehshatgard. We are also told they are namaaloom afraad, unidentified gunmen, a suicide bomber, and so on.
But does the average Pakistani know anything about the BLA beyond its name? Who are its members and its leader? What is its ideology, what is it fighting for? For that matter, does he or she know these details about the LeJ? Does he truly understand all of this about the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is responsible for so much destruction? Obviously, those who are informed and curious about these matters can figure out the details, but shouldn’t the media and the government make an effort to inform the public about the facts, on our proliferation of television channels? Wouldn’t an hour of television be better spent on this than repeating the usual political discussion ad infinitum?
These killers are systematically destroying Pakistan’s past and our promise for the future: killing enterprising members of our newly elected government, ambitious female university students, nurses working to save lives, and countless others. Isn’t it time we had a national conversation about them? At this point, our media focuses only on the numbers of people killed and on showing the destruction at the site of each attack, with the killers mentioned passively. What we need is a public information campaign about the attackers and to give the public aggregate statistics about the havoc they have wreaked on Pakistan.
What will this accomplish? Once the public sees a face to the terrorists and learns more about their groups, we can direct our anger at a tangible entity, rather than the amorphous dehshatgard. Once Pakistanis see concrete numbers about how much destruction these terrorists have caused in Pakistan, terror groups will lose support in the population. Ultimately, a loss of public support will serve to weaken militant groups: after all, such support is essential for these groups to operate and survive.
What is holding back a public information campaign led by the media and the government? Is it fear, ignorance, or ambivalence? Fear is understandable, because these killers are after our blood. But ignorance and ambivalence cannot be condoned. If it is indeed ignorance, the media and the government are failing at their jobs. Either they don’t fully understand the importance of informing the public, or they themselves are ignorant about these groups, and not making an effort to understand them better. Ambivalence is even worse. It implies a certain defensiveness of Pakistani militants, a residual support for them, or, in some circumstances, outright sympathy or collusion with them on the part of certain elements of the government and the media.
But this assumes we all know who the killers are. The reality unfortunately is that many times, we don’t. That is a failure of our criminal justice system: of botched police investigations, of not apprehending the attackers and of the judicial system in failing to hold them to account. Fixing this is easier said than done.
But there is a step that can be taken right away. If this new government wants to address the terrorism problem head on, if it wants to retain any credibility at all, it will have to engage in a public information campaign against the terrorist groups that are perpetrating attacks. The media will have to follow suit. This will ultimately lead to these groups’ decline.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 23rd, 2013.
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COMMENTS (17)
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well said madhia.
Madam! Since, you are no longer holding the Pakistani nationality, it is suggested you write in USA about the 'good' and 'bad' in your multi-cultural and racial society. Stop worrying about this piece of mud and dirt, which is 10,000 kilometers away. For example, pork laced bullets for Muslims (Huffington Post), what the USA did wrong in Afghanistan and Iraq and the drone policy (Foreign Policy), USA's meddling in Syria and why Muslims should not be racially profiled in the USA. This is food for thought and will give you steel fiber and win you lots of fans in USA. You can steal the march on human rights for all nationalities and also in the future, maybe, stand up for US Senate elections. This inward looking policy will give you the power of introspection. Salams and have a very nice day. (ET: This comment was sent on Shaban 13, 1434 and not posted).
@ABC:
Also I would really like to see some proper data on how many civilian causalities are there in drones. If anybody has something please give me a link.
The following sites will give you data on Drone strikes. They provide the Dates, Places and Number of Casualties. You can cross check/ corroborate the same with Newspaper reports etc.
http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone-data/
@ABC:
Also I would really like to see some proper data on how many civilian causalities are there in drones. If anybody has something please give me a link.
As you know, in a war like situation finding 'prper data' is impossible. However these two links can give you a picture that somewhat closer to 'proper data' in the sense that they give you Dates, Places and Numbers which can be cross checked with published Newspaper reports or corroborated with local sources.
http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/
Who are the terrorists?
According to Hazrat Sir Zaid Zaman Hamid, these are uncircumcised Hindus masquerading as Pakistanis. He has 'seen' it with his own eyes.
Don't you trust him?
In Pakistan the answer to everything is drone attacks.
What no one asks IK and others if the talban are only attacking us in revenge and they are just angered tribals then where do the families of Pakistanis who have been killed by taliban go to suicide bomb the taliban?
I have personally seen a family who lost their father and husband in a taliban suicide attack. I still cannot to this day forget their grief and pain. I honestly say that if someone gave them the opportunity to kill taliban they would probably take it. So should the 40,000 grieving families of Pakistanis siege waziristan the epicenter of talibani monsters? We all love our families as much as any tribal loves theirs.
Also I would really like to see some proper data on how many civilian causalities are there in drones. If anybody has something please give me a link.
"----If this new government wants to address the terrorism problem head on, if it wants to retain any credibility at all, it will have to----"
That is the big * if *.
@author, Agree with all you say. There is currently no hope of a respite because when the politicians dither and have some alleged links with LeJ and the like, no progress can be made. Pak security agencies are incompetent and lack resources, strength and the will to fight terrorism. in the last six weeks, on average, 63 people have been murdered in Karachi alone. Some country Pakistan.
The Establishment is too involved in spreading misinformation to expect it to come clean with the truth. A lot of the terror groups are groomed by the Establishment. The BLA is fighting for the right to self-determination of the Baloch. Do you think the Establishment would admit this? Instead, it is pointing the BLA for terror attacks committed by LeJ, TPT etc. Islamist groups. Even the Pakistani press has not been honest about the aspirations and oppression of the Baloch.
Brookings Institution should have info on these groups. Its not explored in Pak because these are uncomfortable topics that most Pak citizens avoid and be dishonest about. We don't discuss or introspect these things due to our prejudices, fears, irrationality and unwillingness to take responsibility, partly due to our own immoral culpability, hence denial.
Better living in a paranoid conspiracy fantasy of foreign backed enemies than actually admit that there's another ethnic (Baloch) separation on the way due to our hegemonic discrimination and indifference (Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun, etc), or that these Wahhabi/Salafi/Deoband/Sunni religious extremists are our co-religionist citizens borne amongst our privileged majority, encouraged by the religious nationalist state itself. Its easier to be outraged about the former and there's more sympathy for the latter, even though they're the largest threat. And no, many times we do find out who are responsible for many of these attacks (some groups are kind and evil enough to let us know), but simply choose to do little about it or go about it the wrong way.
I would tell you who these people are but your own paper won't allow it. Taliban's and laskar e jhangvi are all the same. They have one ideology, either agree with their version of Saudi salafi takfiri Islam or die. Can you imagine these grown up shooting unarmed teenagers studying in a madrassa. Just their funding from Saudis and their partners and we will have so much peace in our country.
Does violence achieve anything? It achieves nothing but piles of dead bodies. So why should anyone use violence? It is certainly a futile exercise.
National debate? Public information campaign? But its so easy just to believe conspiracy theories and what everyone heard from their mamo who knows someone, who knows someone who saw a star of david tattooed across a captured militant.
This is an excellent suggestion. May I add that the media should give human details of the people killed. A key problem with our media and is possibly the weakness of the quality of journalism and journalists as professionals is to take a detached approach to reporting. Rather than human details, they tend to focus on numbers and give a generalist approach to the stories. Give us human stories: the dead people have names, mothers, wives and husbands, children. What are they feeling at the loss of a loved one, their shock and misery. People connect with people, not with statistics. Once the average Pakistani starts to feel the pain of those who have lost a loved one, will they start o pressurize the IKs of this world. The problem is, I am sorry, to say, the poor quality of journalists, and their training.
Since you don't live in Pakistan you probably don't know much about these groups, but we know exactly who they are and what they are after. In a nutshell. all these groups are one way or the other fighting with Pak army for siding by Americans and for brutually killing their tribe/family members over the last 10 years. We, the people of Pakistan, paying a price for being easy targets. God bless us all and our country!! Its a big mess and getting messier by day since we don't have a strategy to deal with the situation. The best strategy implemented by our security apparatus is trial and error - and one can easily tell - there is more error than trial!
I completely agree with you. The question every Pakistani should ask is what is the name of the female bomber - where does she come from - why did she become a terrorist - and perhaps then you will have the answers.
What surprised me as an indian was that other than Kasab who thanks to enterprising pakistani journalists was identified as a pakistani from a certain village (nothing beyond that has been in the public domain - like who lured him to terrorism, who were his friends, where did he stay while in training) etc - the other nine whose names and villages are in the public domain have not been investigated by anyone.
The last journalist who showed some appetite for grass-roots level reporting - saleem shahzad was shot dead - perhaps that is why we have a dearth of real reporting.