Fighting our War

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice in Alice in Wonderland. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” replied the Cat. “I don’t much care where …” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “… so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.” Alice in Wonderland might seem an infantile way to approach the subject of counterterrorism/security policy. However, the policy so far has been to have a policy. We have walked long enough and with exactitude reached the middle of nowhere.

‘War’ has always been an elusive term to define precisely. Yet, surely after a certain point, the realisation that there is a state of violent conflict, should sink in, after thousands dead perhaps? That point may finally have arrived. The Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, has said that the mayhem in our streets and mosques is “our war”. The army chief in his recent speech has reaffirmed that the primary threat is internal. We seem to be, at least for this moment, (pray to the Lord that this lasts) in a somewhat unique situation where the top civilian and military leadership seem to be in agreement that this war has to be fought.

Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s much cited and now cliched saying that “war is continuation of policy by other means” has policy as a prerequisite for a war. The interior minister announcing the formation of a rapid response unit and a Joint Intelligence Secretariat is a welcome move. However, a distinction, perhaps, is in order between policy and strategy. Briefly, the distinction being between the political purpose/s that the war is set to achieve and the operational manner in which it will be achieved. The rapid response unit and Joint Intelligence Secretariat is strategy. Extremely important, however, is that this will have to follow a policy (which we are told is being drafted) and a clear one.

The security policy will have to identify the enemy in unambiguous terms. The legal frameworks have to be changed. Fata still has the 1848 Frontiers Crime Regulation (FCR) (with tinkering over the years) allowing a political agent to act as the viceroy. With no regular law enforcement, no enforcement of fundamental rights, no proper judicial system; do we have sovereignty in Fata to lose? The Anti-terrorism Act of 1997 is an obsolete and insufficient law; that needs to be scrapped completely and a new legislation enacted. The formulation of a national security policy requires all the stakeholders; the political and armed forces leadership, the civilian bureaucracy and the police forces of the provinces to be on board. This certainly is too important a task to be left to the Ministry of Interior alone and kicked down to a section officer.

To be against ‘terrorism’ is a banal position like being against ‘cancer’, nobody is for it, not even those who blow people up or run cigarette factories. They just define their acts differently. Policies are ideological statements. Our malaise now is well beyond a single military operation. From Peshawar to Quetta to Islamabad, the barbarians are inside the gates and strapped with suicide vests. The policy will have to be to enforce the conclusive writ of the state on anybody who chooses to use violence to enforce a world view and refuses to accept constitutional supremacy. Strategic assets should now be a part of our not-so-glorious history. The sanctuaries in Waziristan, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in Quetta, the hate preaching seminaries in southern Punjab and elsewhere are all part of the same assault.

Consensus is a fig leaf; agreement of all is neither possible nor desirable. Critical mass support, however, is still needed. We have seen that happen in Swat and with promising results; the state failed, perhaps, later in the reintegration. The narrative of us as a people and the kind of state we want to be is the starting point for any policy. There are times and issues for political point scoring and opportunism; this is not it. The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) chief minister (CM) recently reportedly said that he has not seen or knows of the Taliban. What valour from the party of change? The K-P CM and ministers do not attend funerals of the martyred police officials and not even those of their MPAs. They expect the brave soldiers of the police and the armed forces to lay down their lives while fighting for the country while they are not displaying the common decency to condole with the families. It is certainly not the fear of the nonexistent Taliban which restrains them, right. What the K-P government does not realise is that it can plead and surrender all it wants, in the words of Churchill, choose dishonour yet they will still get war. As another ANP leader is killed, how one misses Mian Iftikhar Hussain and Shaheed Bashir Bilour. Mian Iftikhar Hussain speaking immediately after the martyrdom of his only son was the gold standard of moral clarity and courage. Hence, reports of the ANP’s alliance with the JUI-F, even for a by-election, sink the spirit. The ANP has fought with valour and does not need to make a Faustian bargain for an assembly seat or two.

The present K-P government has one strategy; cowardice. The K-P government can legitimately say that national security policies and operations are the domain of the federal government. Yet, voicing their idiocy and cravenness regularly, loudly and publicly, they hinder the attainment of a critical mass, of a national narrative and hence undermine any policy. The PTI and the K-P government are fighting this war all right; they are just on the wrong side. The showdown will happen with or without them; however, at the present trajectory, history will not be kind to the PTI on this count. The PML-N has its own demons; the deals with the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and being soft on the LeJ are not compatible with any National Security Policy.

It has become a standard practice to cite the US talking with the Taliban as a reason for us to make nice as well. The US also plans on exiting the region in 2014, are we planning to exit too? If it makes anyone feel better, then by all means believe that this war started in 2001, and all was rosy before; now that it has started, shall we fight or roll over and die?

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2013.

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