APS, ISIS, and losing our anger

With each new name, the zombie movement in the Middle East grows creepier — AQI, ISIL, ISIS, and now Da’ish are carving up countries (if ones the British had already carved up in the ’40s). Having let the press decide for us, we’re stuck with the least appropriate title of all: ‘the Islamic State’ — for a criminal enterprise.

That lends them dignity. ‘Da’ish’, on the other hand, is similar to the Arabic word for ‘trample’, and ISIS lashes anyone caught saying it. But to call the rivers of gore in Mesopotamia a ‘state’ of any kind (let alone of the Islamic persuasion), is a crime.

The Taliban disagree. Also in disagreement is Lal Masjid’s women’s wing, vowing support for their brothers in Iraq and Syria, besides asking they “cut off the hands that (the infidels) extend towards our modest sisters”. They may want to reconsider whose hands require chopping.

Because while the ladies of Lal Masjid bow to ISIS, ISIS has put out a pamphlet on how it treat its ladies. A recent press release instructs its fighters how to enslave the women it captures, given their ‘unbelief’.

And as the circular makes clear, it is permissible to buy them, sell them, beat them and rape them. Prohibitions include torture, beating for pleasure, and selling the girl if she’s pregnant.

But ISIS has gone far beyond perversions on paper. Stories trickling out of Iraq include captured women strangling one another to escape rape. According to the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry, Da’ish has already executed over 150 women and girls in Fallujah, for refusing to marry their men.

Imagine, for a second, the same in Pakistan. A Pakistan worse than it already is for women — hard may it seem — with the kind of values Lal Masjid’s ladies wish to assign their fellow citizens. The kind that allowed ISIS to crucify ‘apostates’ last year. The kind that allowed Boko Haram to murder thousands in Baga. And the kind that allowed the Taliban to butcher our children in Peshawar.

The nature of the beast is the nature of cancer, blacking our bloodstream. It’s already eaten Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, each in various hues of civil war. We’ve teetered on the edge since 1979, and only began pushing back in 2004 (or, for some, since last July). To think ‘that could be us’ is irrelevant: we’re already there.

The tragedy is we never tried to stop it. The ’90s Nawaz Sharif sort of tried: he sort of cracked down on sectarian thugs, when they began bombing his motorcade. For the most part though, it was business as usual, Shariat Bills in tow. The cancer went undiagnosed, let alone cured.

General Musharraf sort of tried too: he banned sectarian outfits. He turned up his nose at the Taliban next door. He preached to his people the joys of moderation. But that didn’t last either: banned groups showed up with new names, the MMA was propped up in K-P, and ‘counter-terror’ meant selling our citizens to Dick Cheney’s black sites.

Mr Zardari, to his credit, never tried at all.

Then December 16^th happened. Only after Peshawar’s parents paid a price too terrible to talk about, did this become Pakistan’s war. But how to win it?

Thus far, the prime minister has made container jokes, rehashed 20 points of nothing, and bowed to the army on military courts in five minutes flat (Air Vice-Marshal Shahzad Chaudhry sahib very graciously disagreed over our need for said courts last week, and a gentleman of vastly greater wisdom, one who served his country, can be disagreed with, but not rebutted). Roshan Pakistan is losing interest in becoming post-terror Pakistan.

But so is Naya Pakistan. Imran Khan’s party seemed to have forgotten about APS for weeks on end. And in a truly terrible showing, when Mr Khan did show up, his party men called bereaved, broken APS parents “plants” and “ANP workers”.

This exposed Mr Khan to something he’s been unfamiliar with since his October wave in 2011: blistering criticism from all sides. The chairman changed track, said the parents’ protests were justified, and thought to refocus on developing K-P. But the PTI also requires refocusing on APS, and the wider issue of terror it’s been hazy on for too long.

The military leadership meanwhile wishes to turn the page, and is showing the kind of commitment to counter-terror one could only have dreamed of in previous dispensations — good, bad and ugly Taliban included.

But armies, as Garcia Marquez put it, are trained in the science of death. Hammering away at the Taliban won’t make Fata a better place, it won’t reform our curriculum, and it won’t protect our minorities from ourselves. For that we need the state.

To motivate the state, we need our anger.

Already, those who want we forget our anger are among us: the religious parties that pout in a corner, the sectarian outfits that suddenly sprout angel wings, the policemen who refuse to cooperate with Jibran Nasir and Islamabad’s marchers, the cowards who heckle the APS parents.

But after Aitzaz and Safwat and Bilal Omer and Tahira Qazi and entire Hazara families, we cannot forget. Having lost the best of Pakistan to this war, Pakistan has nothing left to lose anymore. We’ll push the state ourselves.

Even a state like this one, with our gas gone, and petrol drying up. Mr Sharif has outsourced national security to the military, the centre to civil servants, Punjab to his blood relations, and street support to sectarian crazies.

And in case we think of losing our anger for the slightest second, consider the past week. As the APS reopened, and our children treaded the halls where their fellows had fallen, Mr Sharif picked the most breathtaking of places to be instead.

The House of Saud, days after it lopped off another Pakistani’s head for drug trafficking. But the PM wasn’t the only ex-protege paying a visit: the second was ISIS, killing three guards along the border, and vowing to take down Riyadh. The same gents the Saudis funded in Syria are now coming to silence them via Iraq.

One would imagine, for a fleeting moment, Mr Sharif understood the irony.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th, 2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.