Political assassinations: have we learnt any lessons?

ISLAMABAD:

October 16, 1951, stands out in the history of Pakistan as a date when the first prime minister of the country, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot dead during a public rally in Rawalpindi’s Company Gardens, damaging the foundations of a fragile democratic structure of the newly-born nation.

The bullets fired in 1951 at the Company Bagh, later renamed Liaquat Bagh, led to the first major assassination but, unfortunately, it was not the last attempt as PTI chairman and former premier Imran Khan has become the latest to join the long list of politicians, who have faced such attacks.

The shootings and terrorist attacks that have continued with frequent intervals for more than seven decades took the lives of several politicians, including former premier Benazir Bhutto, her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto, Gujrat’s Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, Punjab’s former home minister Shuja Khanzada and ex-minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti.

Several others, including Khyber-Pakhthunkhwa Assembly member and ANP’s Bashir Ahmed Bilour and his son Haroon Bilour; religious scholar and ex-senator Maulana Samiul Haq; MQM’s Syed Ali Raza Abidi; and PTI’s Sardar Soran Singh were also killed in such attacks.

Just like Imran, PML-N’s incumbent Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal has also survived an assassination attempt.

Benazir was murdered on December 27, 2007 by a suicide bomber.

She had just finished an election rally in Rawalpindi.

Her brother was shot dead along with six associates in a police encounter near his home in Karachi on September 20, 1996, during her tenure.

Zahoor Elahi was assassinated in Lahore in 1981 by Al-Zulfikar, reportedly, by a terrorist organisation led by Murtaza Bhutto. It claimed responsibility for the attack.

Khanzada was assassinated in a suicide attack at his political office in Shadikhan, Attock on August 16, 2015. A militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, had claimed responsibility for his murder.

On March 2, 2011, gunmen had killed Bhatti, who spoke about blasphemy law and championed the rights of the country’s beleaguered minorities.

A suicide blast in the Qissa Khawani Bazaar area of Peshawar had killed K-P senior minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour along with eight others in December 2012. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for that blast. His son was killed in a suicide bombing during a party meeting in Peshawar on July 10, 2018.

Maulana Samiul Haq, who was known as the “Father of Taliban” for the role his seminary Darul Uloom Haqqania played, was killed at his residence in Rawalpindi in November 2018.

MNA Abidi was shot dead on December 25, 2018, outside his residence in Karachi.

Singh was gunned down in a targeted attack near his house on April 22, 2016. The attacks have continued in the country and scarred the consciousness of nation.

The spectre of political assassinations continues to haunt Pakistan. The flames have not yet been extinguished and the wounds are still gaping.

“We haven’t learnt any lesson from the past. In fact, the frequency of violent attacks has increased,” Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) President Ahmed Bilal Mehboob said.

He added that there had hardly been any plan chalked out to carry out politics in an organised and civilised manner.

The PILDAT president recalled that the only serious effort to deal with violent and extremist incidents as well as the mindset that led to them was the National Action Plan (NAP), but everyone forgot about it in a year or so after its birth.

“Democracy weakens where violence and extremism prevails,” Mehboob said. He regretted that democracy did not work in societies, where political opponents were labelled as traitors.

“Political rivals oppose each other across the globe but they refrain from labelling each other as traitors to gain political capital,” he lamented. “Traitor means eliminating the opponent and that’s what we have been witnessing for so long,” he added.

Commenting on the attack on the PTI chairman, he said that the reaction over the incident suggested that the tragedy would be used for political gains as the statements from the party leadership did not carry a reconciliatory tone, which could help in putting out the fire of intolerance and polarisation.

Analysts, while regretting that polarisation was at its peak, said the political leadership as well as the nation would have to come together to take meaningful action to prevent such attacks.

They added that attempts were also required to cool down the political temperature.

Regardless of the political affiliation and differences, they emphasised there was a dire need to sit together as violent attacks leading to assassinations were sending a shocking message to the world.

Madiha Afzal, the author of “Pakistan under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State”, tweeted: “Political environment in Pakistan was already incredibly tense. The attack on [Imran] Khan today upends it altogether—and is likely to further political instability.”

Afzal, who is a fellow at the Brookings Institution, added: “I’ll take a Pakistan where history doesn’t repeat itself with such gruesome regularity.”