Murder of a minister

The murder of the minister in broad daylight says a lot for the confidence and the impunity with which terrorists act.

The murder of the federal minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, was yet another reminder that this storm tossed country has become inured to assassination and murder. Not a leaf stirred when the Taliban slaughtered and disembowelled their victims and strung them up in Khorbani chowk in Swat two years ago. Instead, deals were struck with the murderers. Representatives of a nuclear power with a half million-man standing army went cap in hand to negotiate and were elated that they had reached an agreement. Muslim Khan stood and mocked a whole nation on television for prattling on about democracy. Cowardly anchors made out that the devil was not as black as was being painted. Others went further and said it was no good casting out devils; we must accept them and be at peace with them. Following the army action, when the Taliban threat receded somewhat, the same people who had counselled a compromise with the enemy went about boasting that they had never known fear.

The belated albeit brave army action in Swat cannot compensate for our earlier lassitude, nor hide our true instincts or our fear of confronting real issues and how terrified we have become. Before she returned to Pakistan for the last time, Benazir Bhutto and I discussed the challenges posed to Pakistan by extremists and how to deal with them. I sent her an extract of the speech made by Maximilien Robespierre before the Convention in Paris on February 5, 1794. “We must crush both the interior and exterior enemies of the Republic or perish with her. And in this situation the first maxim of our policy should be to conduct the people with reason and the enemies of the people by terror.”

Several months later, I was sitting across a composed, but obviously exhausted, Benazir Bhutto. Reports were reaching her about the number of dead at the procession that she had led earlier that night. Suddenly, she said out of the blue, “Zafar, Robespierre was right.” I recall feeling glad and also fearful. Glad because the pussyfooting about taking on the Taliban would end when she became prime minister and fearful because a bitter civil war, the intensity and duration of which was unknown, would follow. But Benazir would not have cared because she believed it was better to die once than live continually in fear.

In contrast to her uncompromising stance, the present government’s approach towards extremism sacrifices principle to expediency and marries old timorous opinions to new facts. Instead of terrorists and their associates being dealt with summarily, petrified judges of the anti-terrorist courts are letting them off on one pretext or another. As a result, Taliban safe havens are proliferating within our cities and their tactics are becoming more daring.

The murder of the minister in Islamabad in broad daylight says a lot for the confidence and the impunity with which terrorists act. This cannot go on any longer. If this government has lost the fight, other hands must pick up the burden. Unless Bhatti’s murderers are arrested and punished, that is, the people are provided justice; we are on the surest road to national downfall. There is also another blasphemy and that is injustice, which is no less tolerable.

We owe it to ourselves and our great religion that the small and hapless Christian minority of Pakistan, who have entrusted their security to us Muslims, should not have to live in fear and dread, even as they look for opportunities to leave Pakistan. Besides, there is the risk that unless we protect our minorities, an unspoken indictment will be drawn up against a whole people, that is, us. The international media, is, in some respects, already launched on this task. It’s not enough to pretend that we do not care. We must, as a responsible member of the international community. The errant amongst us must be eliminated. It is no more purely a local matter; it has wide international repercussions. Actually, Bhatti’s murder will have wider repercussions in the West than Taseer’s. Already, the Pope has condemned it and so too has Obama, the EU, etc. Pakistan’s tattered image is being further shredded. As murder piles on murder, our reputation grows. Soon it will stand, ‘like an African King’s palace, on a foundation of dead bodies’. Let us act rather than wither in despair.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2011.