It is time we realised that drone attacks will not stop until we accept who the real enemies of Pakistan are.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: As expected, soon after the November 21 drone attack on a Hangu madrassa, both the federal government and its counterpart in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) started trying to outdo each other in threatening the attackers with dire consequences. But no one is ready to answer one fundamental question: what were the commanders of the Haqqani network doing in the seminary at the time of the attack? The Haqqani network is part of the Afghan Taliban but operates from Pakistani soil. It is worth highlighting that Hangu is not a part of Fata but of K-P which is under the PTI’s firm control.
Pakistan needs to come out of this perpetual state of denial and have the courage to call a spade a spade. It needs to get to the bottom of this — the ideological difference between militants and the rest of Pakistanis, who believe in a nation-state. These militants have the full backing of the country’s religious leaders, who feel no shame calling dead militants martyrs, and Pakistani soldiers sacrificing their lives while fighting terrorists as not worthy of being called ‘shaheed’.
If a state is ready to take this abuse against its own soldiers, then no one can help Pakistan. It is time we realised that drone attacks will not stop until we accept who the real enemies of Pakistan are.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2013.
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