Author: Editorial
Publication: Dawn
Date: July 9, 2009
URL: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/provinces/16-jihad-and-the-state-hs-06
Twice this week President Zardari has spoken
about the root of Pakistan's problems with religious extremism and militancy.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the president said that the military's
erstwhile 'strategic assets' were the ones against whom military operations
were now required. And in a meeting with retired senior bureaucrats in Islamabad
on Tuesday, Mr Zardari was reported in this paper to have said that 'militants
and extremists had been deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve
some short-term tactical objectives'.
The president is right, and we would add the
policy was wrong then and it is wrong now. It cannot be any other way. How
is it possible to rationally explain to the people of Pakistan that the heroes
of yesteryear are the arch-enemies of today? The militants' religious justifications
remain the same; what's changed is that the militants were fighting the state's
'enemies' yesterday but have turned their guns on the state and its allies
today.
Perhaps more than anything else impeding the
defeat of the militants today is the inability of the security establishment
to revisit the strategic choices it made in the past and hold up its hand
and admit candidly that grave mistakes were made. Should we have ever used
jihadi proxies to fight the Russians in Afghanistan? Should we have ever supported
the idea of armed jihad in Kashmir? Should we have ever sought to retain our
influence in Afghanistan through the Taliban? If any of those choices ever
made sense, then we should have no complaints about the rise of Talibanisation
in Pakistan because we created the climate and opportunity for them to run
amok.
Blaming the US's invasion of Afghanistan is
no good - the first and foremost responsibility of the state is to ensure
the security of Pakistan, and allowing an internal threat to create a space
for itself is anathema to that idea. Whatever the catalyst, the fact remains
that it was because a jihadi network was allowed to flourish inside the country
that we were left exposed to its eventual wrath against us.
The fault is of course not ours alone. The
US, obsessed with the Soviet enemy, happily colluded in the creation of Muslim
warriors. Our Middle Eastern and Gulf allies were happy to create a Sunni
army to counter the 'threat' from post-revolution Shia Iran. But, at the end
of the day, it was Pakistani soil on which they were primarily nurtured. Because
they were raised in our midst we should have always been wary of the extreme
blowback we are now confronted with.
