The writer served as executive editor of The Express Tribune from 2009 to 2014
But do we have the time to change course before the onrushing train of world public opinion crashes into Pakistan?
On the face of it, however, it seems only an impossible Houdini act can snatch us from the jaws of the oncoming challenges. Indeed, we have missed this bus so many times that it has now stopped coming our way.
Still, there are a number of steps that we could quickly take to convey to the world that this time at least we mean what we are saying, so that those who are driving the onrushing train take their foot off the throttle for a minute or two as they take a closer look at what we are offering.
The first step that needs to be taken urgently is to remove foreign policy from national pride and link it up with national interest even if it appears on the face of it to be a move for appeasement, especially towards our enemy number one — India. The next step is to immediately proceed against all those who were allegedly involved in the Mumbai massacre of November 2008.
Those who have worked on this case believe that we have enough evidence to get a guilty verdict from the courts against its alleged perpetrators.
Next, we must stop testing China’s friendship by having Beijing block a proposal by the US to designate Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist.
Pakistan had the choice to go after the non-state actors (NSAs) immediately or dismantle their infrastructure gradually. The first option was considered too dangerous as the militants, it was feared, would morph into many groups once their leadership was arrested and jailed, making it impossible to monitor the splinters. So, the second option was adopted. This was based on the theory that if one tried to jump from the top of the ladder, there was this possibility of ending up with broken limbs. It was therefore decided that we would climb down the ladder one step at a time.
The gradualism theory seems to have done us no good. We seem to have lost a lot of limbs already. We have lost as many as 53,000 Pakistanis, including 7,000 security personnel and suffered a massive dent of $120 billion to the economy.
More importantly, we have lost a lot of ideological space to the distorted version of Islam propagated at gunpoint by these NSAs. This ideology has spread like wildfire from Fata to Punjab and Karachi, to rural Sindh and Balochistan.
As a result, Pakistan has become a pariah state, almost. No country wants to play cricket here and our tourism has taken a big hit. Even our most secure establishments, like the GHQ and the naval and air force installations have come under attack.
We consistently deny the presence of safe havens for the Haqqani Network in the tribal belt, or the existence of the so-called Quetta Shura or/and Peshawar Shura. But let us make doubly sure that this is what the actual truth is.
We took a long time going into North Waziristan despite the heavy price the nation kept paying all these years in terms of men, money and the all- important ideological space.
There were said to be about 3,500 foreigners in North Waziristan, about a few scores of Arabs, a thousand or so children of Arabs from Pashtun mothers, some tourist jihadists, and a sprinkling of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and Uighurs.
It used to be argued that if we tried to send boots into the region, the jihadists would use the civilian population as human shields resulting in colossal collateral damage. If we bombed them from the skies, the collateral damage would be equally enormous. Using gunship helicopters would be disastrous because the terrorists would shoot them down.
The inordinate delay in launching this war for peace has also injected a large dose of trust deficit between Islamabad and Washington, and two of our immediate neighbours — India and Afghanistan — continue to suspect our intentions and accuse us of playing a double game.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 9th, 2017.
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