Then, Charsadda happened

By the looks of things, war will continue to be glorified and we’ll wait for something like Charsadda to happen again

Just weeks ago, the army, Rangers and police began releasing statistics pertaining to last year’s successes in the military and paramilitary operations in northern Pakistan and Karachi. Reminders were issued that these operations will continue till their ‘logical conclusion’. We said we were winning and that terrorism will be defeated this year. We started comparing the army chief to Sun Tzu, “who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, [and] is the jewel of the Kingdom”.

We welcomed traders’ sentiments in favour of the operations, rejoiced at foreign investments and projects, and chose to question little of the lack of transparency behind the apex committees. We even warmed up to the news of ‘elite’ operations in Punjab. We celebrated our establishment’s supposedly neutral stance in the Tehran-Riyadh affair. And we predicted the outcomes of the ongoing peace talks with our neighbour, where many of our own Taliban are known to have found shelter, on the run from military onslaughts. We even downplayed reports of Islamic State cells and said ‘good riddance’ to fighters exporting themselves to Afghanistan or the Middle East. It was fine, we believed, as long as they were off our territory.

Then, Charsadda happened. The attack on Bacha Khan University cannot be viewed in isolation. It was an eerie reminder of Peshawar, coming just a month after the latter’s one-year anniversary. A day earlier, a suicide bomber had slayed 11 security officials and civilians near a security check post in Jamrud, an hour’s drive from Charsadda. On January 18, six soldiers of the Frontier Corps were killed on the outskirts of Quetta. According to reports, all three attacks have been claimed by factions or members of the Pakistani Taliban, with the one in Charsadda being claimed by Umar Mansoor, the mastermind of the APS attack. A few days back, we saw school closures in Peshawar due to security threats.

The terrorists continue reminding us of their presence and existence — as well as of their ability to hit multiple hard and soft targets in Pakistan within a span of days, using different modus operandi. That’s how the political economy of terrorism often works: not through large-scale devastations that cause the collapse of state systems and institutions, but through calculated violence that prolongs the conflict and is enough to spread fear, keeping the criminal syndicates interested and the war economy running. Why do you think groups would choose to continue employing tactics of terrorism over the last several decades if it was simply a failed strategy?

The two concepts of militarism and militarisation require some deeper thinking in Pakistan now. According to one professor and researcher, militarism is “a set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that stress the use of force and threat of violence as the most appropriate and efficacious means to solve problems. It emphasises the exercise of military power, hardware, organisation, operations, and technology as its primary problem-solving tools”. To be fair, in the post-9/11 environment, militarism has been the standard way of thinking for most states dealing with the menace of terrorism. Militarisation is, basically, the implementation of militarism. Interestingly, it now appears to be the practice equally favoured by our enemies, the local and international terrorist organisations. But to what end?

By no means should we undermine the sacrifices of our security forces or the efforts of our soldiers, commandos or police officers battling the monsters their predecessors once nurtured. But we must call into question the selective implementation of our counterterrorism policy — the National Action Plan (NAP) — and its militarisation, which is a stark reminder of our tendency to look at militancy primarily through a security lens.

Following the APS attack, our militarised responses have included the establishment of military courts and anti-terrorism courts, removal of the moratorium on death penalty, formation of an antiterrorism force to be trained by military experts, and the escalation of internal security operations. But we have fallen short on the implementation of those aspects that can truly bring long-term successes to complement our military efforts: making Nacta functional, countering hate speech and terrorist propaganda, regulating madrassas, dismantling terrorists’ communication networks, and reforming the criminal justice system (including the police), amongst other points of the NAP.

There is no predicting what the logical conclusions to our war on terror will be and when they will be reached, but certain trends are likely to continue and these should make us rethink our militarised responses. More weapons will be purchased and defence agreements will be drafted; the fortification of cities will continue and private security companies will boom; special troops will be deployed to safeguard economic projects; the Karachi operation will escalate and real estate will benefit; ATCs will be established and APCs will be ordered; army men will be recruited into the police and there may be more seminars on police reforms but to no avail. There will be more debates on the non-militaristic aspects of the NAP that refer to countering extremist ideologies and radicalisation, but the short-sighted realists will argue that these are not the need of the hour. So, war will be glorified, soldiers will be martyred, our societies will be securitised, our thinking militarised, and we will wait for something like Charsadda to happen again.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 21^st, 2016.

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