Unless we cut off funding which finances these terrorists, this Frankenstein cannot be defeated
DUBAI: It is time for us to take on all terrorists, especially those belonging to the Islamic State, and expose their ugly faces. This is an organisation which, like other terrorists working under the garb of their distorted version of religion, has mostly inflicted pain on Muslims all over world, killing and maiming them, spreading the venom of sectarian strife, and weakening every country with a Muslim majority population, rendering them unable to confront any external threats from those who have very intelligently exploited religion to create this monster.
Today, Islam, a religion which preaches peace, tolerance, patience, acquiring of knowledge and lays stress human values, has been misrepresented and wrongly portrayed. Since these various terrorist organisations have emerged, numerous Muslim majority countries have disintegrated and have been reduced to pariah states, isolated from the international community. Countries like Afghanistan have been reduced to rubble, while others like Iraq, Syria and Libya have been engulfed by civil wars.
Pakistan, the sole nuclear power in the Islamic bloc, is on the radar of those who have masterminded these terrorist groups. They are trying to destroy our institutions and foment ethnic and sectarian strife by exploiting the corrupt bureaucracy and rotten eggs within our law-enforcement and security apparatus.
If we allow these elements to succeed, they would like to disintegrate this country from within. Unless we cut off funding which finances these terrorists, this Frankenstein cannot be defeated. Both, the criminal economy and external finances need to be eliminated with an iron hand. Rampant corruption, money laundering, unchecked flight of capital and the ease with which external financing and the criminal economy is booming serve as fuel for the engine that drives terrorism. Pakistan’s disciplined military under the leadership of General Raheel Sharif must work in cohesion with the elected government, ensuring that the Constitution remains supreme, and that nobody is above the law and faces accountability. Otherwise, history will never forgive our leaders. Laws are there to be implemented, not to be broken as is being done in Pakistan by few within the ruling elite.
Malik Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, July 25th, 2015.
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