War of minds
The actual existential threat comes from fast spreading mindset from ideology misrepresented by proponents as Islamic.
A decisive victory in the North Waziristan campaign, which is all but assured and is not likely to take long in coming, would at best serve as no more than a symptomatic relief and that too only on a temporary basis.
The immediate consequence of this victory, it is feared, would more likely than not, appear in the shape of a series of brutal blowback across the country , mostly in the densely populated cities where the terrorists have already established sleeper cells of well-trained and committed suicide bombers and die-hard commandos.
It is possible that our intelligence agencies and the police have already identified these sleeper cells and are in the process of neutralising them, hopefully as successfully as our troops are doing, smoking out and eliminating the terrorists in the on-going war for peace in North Waziristan.
However, even a total victory on this front is not likely to help the country eradicate the menace of terrorism for good.
Backed by lethal weapons and ammunition purchased from clandestine gun runners using the millions flowing in from dubious foreign and domestic sources, the misguided protagonists of a distorted version of Islam seem to have impressed the unknowing and terrorised many into submission.
So, it is only to be expected that our intelligence agencies would also trace the mainsprings of these sources and plug them for good.
But even this is not likely to effectively lessen the threat being posed to the very existence of Pakistan.
In fact, the actual existential threat facing this country comes from a fast spreading mindset of a kind sprouting like a torrent out of an ideology misrepresented by its proponents as Islamic and misunderstood to be so by the teeming unlettered millions.
We have reached this point of almost-no-return not by any accident or because of the shenanigans of external forces inimical to the very existence of Pakistan. It was a well-planned strategy conceived by a ruling elite driven by superpower ambitions that has brought us to this sorry state of affairs.
The fulcrum of this strategy was Jihad. We began using jihad as a foreign policy instrument soon after the CIA had vanquished the Soviet Union using this instrument successfully with the help of our ISI and youth drawn from the Muslim world. The madrassas set up by the CIA for the purpose were readily adopted by Pakistan and the students graduating from these madrassas were recruited for this jihad which was fought for 10 long years, one on the side of the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and the other in Indian-occupied Kashmir. This was the time when we also started playing tricks with our education system to turn the nation into a horde of intolerant bigots.
A number of studies have been conducted to probe these wilful changes in school syllabi and many appeals made by those who should know for reforms of the curriculum and the syllabi to bring them in line with the idea of Pakistan as propounded by the Quaid-e-Azam.
One latest study, Education Reform in Pakistan, released on June 16 by the International Crisis Group, while discussing the quality of education in the public school sector laments that it has remained abysmal, “failing to prepare a fast growing population for the job market, while a deeply flawed curriculum fosters religious intolerance and xenophobia”.
It also talks about the poorly regulated madrassas and religious schools “contributing to religious extremism and sectarian violence”.
“An over-emphasis in textbooks on Islamic interpretation, not just in religion classes but also in history, literature and the sciences, has been used to create a discourse of national identity that validates the politically dominant military’s domestic and foreign policy agendas.
In the opinion of the authors of the study the curriculum has been “used, for instance, to galvanise popular opposition to their main adversary, India, and support for jihadi proxies in Indian administered Kashmir and Afghanistan.
“An authoritative study of the revised 2006 curriculum found that books on social sciences ‘systematically’ misrepresented Pakistan’s history and included ‘distortions and omissions’ with history ‘presented in a way that encouraged students to marginalise and be hostile to other social groups and people in the region’.”
Published in The Express Tribune, June 25th, 2014.
The immediate consequence of this victory, it is feared, would more likely than not, appear in the shape of a series of brutal blowback across the country , mostly in the densely populated cities where the terrorists have already established sleeper cells of well-trained and committed suicide bombers and die-hard commandos.
It is possible that our intelligence agencies and the police have already identified these sleeper cells and are in the process of neutralising them, hopefully as successfully as our troops are doing, smoking out and eliminating the terrorists in the on-going war for peace in North Waziristan.
However, even a total victory on this front is not likely to help the country eradicate the menace of terrorism for good.
Backed by lethal weapons and ammunition purchased from clandestine gun runners using the millions flowing in from dubious foreign and domestic sources, the misguided protagonists of a distorted version of Islam seem to have impressed the unknowing and terrorised many into submission.
So, it is only to be expected that our intelligence agencies would also trace the mainsprings of these sources and plug them for good.
But even this is not likely to effectively lessen the threat being posed to the very existence of Pakistan.
In fact, the actual existential threat facing this country comes from a fast spreading mindset of a kind sprouting like a torrent out of an ideology misrepresented by its proponents as Islamic and misunderstood to be so by the teeming unlettered millions.
We have reached this point of almost-no-return not by any accident or because of the shenanigans of external forces inimical to the very existence of Pakistan. It was a well-planned strategy conceived by a ruling elite driven by superpower ambitions that has brought us to this sorry state of affairs.
The fulcrum of this strategy was Jihad. We began using jihad as a foreign policy instrument soon after the CIA had vanquished the Soviet Union using this instrument successfully with the help of our ISI and youth drawn from the Muslim world. The madrassas set up by the CIA for the purpose were readily adopted by Pakistan and the students graduating from these madrassas were recruited for this jihad which was fought for 10 long years, one on the side of the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and the other in Indian-occupied Kashmir. This was the time when we also started playing tricks with our education system to turn the nation into a horde of intolerant bigots.
A number of studies have been conducted to probe these wilful changes in school syllabi and many appeals made by those who should know for reforms of the curriculum and the syllabi to bring them in line with the idea of Pakistan as propounded by the Quaid-e-Azam.
One latest study, Education Reform in Pakistan, released on June 16 by the International Crisis Group, while discussing the quality of education in the public school sector laments that it has remained abysmal, “failing to prepare a fast growing population for the job market, while a deeply flawed curriculum fosters religious intolerance and xenophobia”.
It also talks about the poorly regulated madrassas and religious schools “contributing to religious extremism and sectarian violence”.
“An over-emphasis in textbooks on Islamic interpretation, not just in religion classes but also in history, literature and the sciences, has been used to create a discourse of national identity that validates the politically dominant military’s domestic and foreign policy agendas.
In the opinion of the authors of the study the curriculum has been “used, for instance, to galvanise popular opposition to their main adversary, India, and support for jihadi proxies in Indian administered Kashmir and Afghanistan.
“An authoritative study of the revised 2006 curriculum found that books on social sciences ‘systematically’ misrepresented Pakistan’s history and included ‘distortions and omissions’ with history ‘presented in a way that encouraged students to marginalise and be hostile to other social groups and people in the region’.”
Published in The Express Tribune, June 25th, 2014.