How many Malalas does it take?

How many more Malalas will it take for our public to change its mind about militant groups associated with Taliban?

Malala, the innocent girl who struggled for continuing her education when her native Swat was ruled by Maulana Fazlullah’s faction of the Taliban, lies between life and death. However, after a long time, there is some sign of life among the country’s opinion-makers — and not just the liberals! So, does it take an attack on an innocent girl to awaken our collective conscience? Or is even this an evanescent phenomenon? How many more Malalas will it take for our public to change its mind about the militant groups who are associated with the Taliban?

I saw such a change in public opinion about the Taliban when it was ruling Swat in 2008. Maulana Fazlullah was ruling the valley and girls were being flogged on even minor suspicions of immorality. The government of Pakistan had given in and power had been conceded in the name of the demand of the people for the Sharia law. But then the Taliban started moving towards Buner and the military felt threatened. One after the other, media anchors started talking about taking action against them. Within months, the local people were brought to the plains of Mardan and Peshawar and the army moved in to wipe out the Taliban and it did so. The rumour factories proclaiming that the Taliban did not exist or were foreigners and that Americans carried out the bombings attributed to them stopped churning out their trash. But after this brief victory, we went back to our anti-American, ant-Indian rhetoric, which implied that the ‘foreign hand’ had to be blamed for the kidnappings for ransom, the throat-slitting of people suspected to be spies and the harshness of the laws of the Taliban in the areas they controlled. The anchors were back to condemning drone attacks in the name of our sovereignty, and the narrative that North Waziristan should not be attacked because the Haqqani network attacked Americans and not Pakistanis, gained currency again.

Once again, I notice a change in the military’s attitude towards militancy. Possibly, the attack on Kamra put General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s back up. But it is not clear whether this change will translate into a wholesale elimination of the terror outfit or whether the India-focus of the military will save anti-India outfits like before. I also do not know whether any of these outfits are really in the control of the military now or is it that they have all broken away from their mentors and the genie cannot be put back in the bottle? But what I do know is that the genie was produced by our most powerful decision-makers and they never told our public the truth. Our lack of public support and confusion, and the conspiracy theories which circulate, are all a product of lying, evasiveness, double-dealings and double-speak.

Take the policy on drones. These were allowed by our military and civilian governments since 2004 at least. The public was never told that Pakistan was in an alliance with the US and that it was not merely for money, though of course, money did come in, mainly to the military for services rendered. The people were allowed to criticise their government as heartless mercenaries, whereas the fact was that the al Qaeda philosophy, one which the Taliban also concurred with, blamed our government for being stooges of the West at best and apostates at worst. In short, our decision-makers, too, wanted to fight the militants but they would not say so openly hoping to fool their own people, as well as the Taliban and the Americans. They did fool their people but neither the Taliban nor the Americans. The drones were meant to eliminate the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership and there is some evidence that they did this to some extent. On March 9, Major General Ghayur Mehmood, GOC of the Seventh Infantry Division, said that between 2007 and 2011, there were 164 drone attacks, which killed 964 militants. Among these were 172 foreigners. Indeed, a few months later, Atiyah Abdurrahman (August 22, 2011) and Abu Hafs al-Shari, both second only to Osama bin Laden himself, were killed by drones. But a recent study by Stanford and New York University claimed that of those killed in drone strikes, only two per cent were militants, while the rest were civilians. In short, the evidence is contradictory. But one thing is clear. Our people were never told that any other way to fight militants would probably result in more deaths. The infantry cannot be used as militant leaders would simply run away when foot-soldiers march towards them. Infantry is used against those who stay to fight a pitched battle, not leaders hiding in houses. And even if it is used to fish leaders out, it is a messy affair that can cause deaths of many civilians. Air force jets are an even worse choice as are gunship helicopters since they kill people indiscriminately in a wider radius than drones.

Moreover, since our people were never told what life is like under the Taliban, they know nothing about the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan, very little about Maulana Fazlullah’s Swat, and what they have heard of the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, they regard as Western or liberal propaganda. So, our decision-makers missed the opportunity to unite our citizens against militants. Among the missed opportunities was that of using the Americans to fight both their own war and ours too. We never owned the war and it is a wonder that our disciplined rank-and-file did not rebel when the army took its selective actions against the Taliban. But from soldier to general, there was confusion and ambiguity and nobody identified the enemy.

Our people were also never told that there were 413 incidents of terrorism in Pakistan before the first drone strike on June 18, 2004. Thus, the reasoning given by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, among others, that all terrorism is because of drone strikes is simply not true. But, since we have made the drones unacceptable to our people by our mendacity, what is to be done? Most of our anti-drone lobby knows nothing about infantry battles and how many people die in them, so they give no answers.  If Pakistan uses its own infantry, the number of soldiers and civilian casualties will be in thousands and such civil wars are terrible for a country. In any case, the Taliban will hide among the villagers and no infantry can fight its own people without causing serious rebellions and outrage. Some would prefer negotiating with the militants. Well, the militants broke all the peace deals that were negotiated earlier, so where does that leave us? A heartless answer would be to withdraw from the tribal areas and be content with whatever is left of Pakistan. Personally, being concerned more with people than land, I would have recommended this option, though the nationalists would not hear of it despite the fact that the Emirate of Waziristan is not really Pakistan. But the reason why I consider this a bad solution is that I do not think we can build a Wall of China like wall to keep the militants out of what is left of Pakistan. That is just not practical. Thus, we will have an ever-expanding Taliban state with all the kidnappings and the occasional raids to keep it going. Moreover, and this is what really bothers me, with what conscience can we leave girls like Malala to be whipped, kept as captives in homes and killed if they want to study in the new state we will allow to be created? What right do we have to prevent 250,000 children from receiving polio vaccinations? And we, who condemn the violation of our sovereignty loudly when drone strikes are secretly allowed by our highest authorities, why do we never condemn the states that have been formed in our tribal areas? We have not done so because our elite has confused us, bewildered us and has filled us with so much hatred for foreigners that we cannot see that we are committing collective suicide. Just how many Malalas will it take for us to wake up?

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2012.