Dealing with non-state actors

One step forward and two steps backwards is how one can look at the story of Pakistan as a state that is faced with many challenges and is not ready to give up on its ability to struggle, sustain and survive. The latest protests by the followers of TLP clearly showcases how in a given timeframe non-state actors in Pakistan can become more powerful than the state itself. Exposed to the worst accesses of ideological politics, the state bleeds and suffers at the hands of religious zealots for whom ends seem to justify painful, brutal and unjust means.

The whole issue can be viewed through four perspectives: political, legal, social and ethical.

First of all, the government mismanaged the whole affair and damaged its own credibility when it bowed in front of the TLP over its demands, thus sending a wrong signal of weakness and submission. There is a growing sense in public that TLP was created to cut into the PML-N right-wing votes in Punjab — much like Gen Zia facilitated the creation of MQM to cut into the PPP votes in Sindh. If the government goes soft in dealing with TLP then this will politically reinforce the public notion of this perceived reality. The government utilised the borrowed time of more than 10 months poorly and if it had followed up on what it agreed with TLP in November 2020, it could have found a middle way. The dynamics of the issue has now considerably changed and the government would do well to stop see-sawing on the issue and take a clear stand.

Legally, as a first step, TLP should be banned as a political party, its fund-raising capacity curbed, and its assets including all the bank accounts frozen. Government’s legal onslaught against the organisation has to be definite and firm.

Socially, the strategy to deal with TLP has to be based on utilising the electronic and social media to highlight the accesses it has committed in the past and continues to commit. The government decision to come down hard on the promoters and facilitators of their narrative is also a step in the right direction. In the long term the fight against extremism is rooted in our education institutions and the ability of the state to make that switch from madrassas to public schools. But for such violent non-state actors, the time has come for the state to impart ‘special education’.

To me the ethical dimension of the issue is more important. It relates to how non-state actors in Pakistan view the rights and wrongs of human behaviour and how they manufacture excuses to unleash their reality — the reality as they understand on the willing consumers devoid of any educational or intellectual base. The current reality that the state and its law-abiding subjects apprehend is absolutely different from the notional idea about the state of things that these overzealous religious activists have. Theirs is a virtual reality — virtual not in the modern sense of a reality mediated by informational technology but an illusionary reality proliferated and promoted by their one-dimensional religious thinking.

So, what can the state do about it? The strategy should not just entail using iron hand against such organisations, but also re-integrating them into the society as reformed and responsible citizens. To me there is only one way this can happen and that is by following the Chinese model. China has established educational and vocational training centres in Xinjiang province for millions to benefit from. The US and the West call them concentration camps, but China’s position on the subject is very clear. It says that it had to create these centres to “counter terrorism and alleviate poverty”. It does not want terrorists but a large workforce that is knowledgeable and skilled and is capable of meeting the requirements of the current era. According to an estimate, of Xinjiang’s total population of more than 25 million, about 8 million people have been ‘re-educated’ at these educational and vocational training centres.

Pakistan as a state has come a long way in fighting terrorism. Had the Soviet Union not invaded Afghanistan and the US not decided to counter it, we could have been a country at peace with ourselves. It is not every day that the established superpowers of the world execute military invasion in your neighbouring country. TLP and all other non-state organisations are the gifts of these invasions whose spillover effects span four decades.

It is now up to us as a state and as a nation to clean this up. We have built a fencing system at our frontiers to prevent outside forces from operating proxies and executing acts of terrorism in our country. But what about the known extremists and terrorists within the country? We must make a network of such ‘educational and vocational training centres’ at the periphery of our major cities. All those challenging the writ of the state must be transported and kept there. All political parties should join hands in ensuring that a legislative bill for the creation of such educational and vocational centres is passed with absolute majority in both houses of the parliament.

If the politicians don’t agree to this, the government must hold a referendum and seek the opinion of the public who are unlikely to say a ‘no’ given their continued suffering. The outside world may term such an arrangement a human rights violation, but if our national interest necessitates such an arrangement then there is nothing more supreme. Didn’t the US create Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp when its national interests dictated so?

No one should be allowed to blackmail the government if it responds to the acts of terrorism and extremism by arresting those involved in them and detaining them in these re-educational and vocational centres for a specified period of time. Send them back to civil society only when they have learnt a skill and have been re-educated and reformed. Sending them to jail will make them even more uncivilised. More so, the jails neither have the capacity (99 operational prisons with a capacity of 45,000 inmates) nor the resources and environment to implement this re-education and reformation strategy.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2021.

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