Will Religious Extremism and Communalism End in Pakistan – Part 2

There is no room for ambiguity in that the dominance of extremism in Pakistan is stronger than in Afghanistan where they have been fighting with the security forces in a large part of the country and are busy in targeting their victims in other cities of the country. Apart from that, they are also engaged in communal bloodshed too achieving desired success on the front. In Pakistan, the extremists have successfully targeted more army officers in Pakistan than they have done in war-torn Afghanistan and have attacked all the important army headquarters in Pakistan. Moreover, they have inflicted irreparable damage to the defence system of the state. Those who consider Islamic extremists a product of the crime of the foreign Kuffar (infidels), will be disheartened to know that these Islamic extremists have killed more Muslims than the infidels have done. Even today their clear targets are common Muslims and their governments where their war with the foreign or western infidels were confined to a limited scale and proved one-sided.

One more fatal ambiguity is growing in Pakistan that the handful of starved and unarmed Taliban has defeated the joint army of thirty modern countries of the world. They are not aware of the fact that this army of the infidels always sent their Afghan counterparts to the front and they provided them guidance and training. During this period, the soldiers of NATO and international army have been killed in ambush which is a part of any war. But no Pakistani intellectual ever said how many local Muslim soldiers and common people died nor are we told where the thirty year old war has led us. On the contrary, we are patted on our backs by newspapers and in our mosques every day for having prevented the greatest infidel Russia from capturing the hot waters and making America bite the dust. We are not told what fate we have met and how much loss and damage we have suffered during all this. For example, we have no idea how much of the national wealth we have spent on arms and ammunitions which could be used to open schools and hospitals. With that wealth we could have provided education to countless poor and helpless children who fell in the trap of militants and communal forces due to unemployment and illiteracy.

The main cause of concern for the Islamic extremists in Pakistan is the fact that the leadership of the army has lately started hinting that the internal elements more than the external ones are fatal for the state. The higher leadership of the army considers that the inner cleansing has become very necessary because for the last few decades many evidences have emerged that show that the extremists got help from inside the army to target the army leadership and the national defence was weakened. On the other hand those intellectuals and politicians can be counted on fingers who consider the war on terror the war of Pakistan whereas on the other hand there are millions of people who consider this war a war of the others into which Pakistan has jumped and caused loss and damage to the entire nation.

The most evident hint of all this practise and exercise is that the whole Pakistani society has come into the grip of militantism. Intellectuals harp on the war every day and the number of armed religious and linguistic organisations is rising. The violence in Karachi is on a large scale and organised on religious and sectarian lines. The MQM which deals with its linguistic opponents mercilessly is facing existential threats from Taliban and other communal forces. Peshawar is fast falling victim of a situation akin to that in Kabul. As the local administration has lost authority in the suburbs of Kabul, the local administration in Pakistan also loses control from the area of Matni, three kilometres from Peshawar. Therefore, the terrorists easily hit their targets in Peshawar and hide there. In the tribal areas, hundreds of Maliks and Mushrans have been killed and peace committees have been dissolved. In Quetta, the communal forces affiliated to Al Qaida and Taliban are engaged in the bloodletting of Hazara Shias and no one has the courage to stop them. These organisations and groups have also made a stronghold in the northern areas of Pakistan where the opposition sect is being targeted. Incidents like that in Nanga Parbat also happen there. In short, no region in Pakistan is safe from the reach of terrorists and communal forces. They hit their targets easily anywhere they want. Both the parties, Pakistan Muslim League (N) and Tehrik-e-Insaf whose pre-poll politics revolved round dialogue with Taliban in the state and the Centre are sitting silently and looking forward to getting any message from the army leadership.

Those simple and gullible Pakistanis who think that the dialogue with Al Qaida and Taliban is the only solution to the problems of Pakistan do not understand that the civil governments and the army are eagerly willing to have dialogue with them but it is the Al Qaida and Taliban who are not serious about it. What Taliban demand as a possibly victorious side Pakistan can’t concede while Hamid Karzai is not in a position to commit anything to them. The western countries are not in a mood to give anything to Taliban.

Whether peace will persist in Pakistan and Afghanistan in future is not the concern of the western countries. What they want to ensure that terrorists will not be exported to their countries from here. The problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan are not the priorities of the west and they know it very well how many the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan are involved in these problems. For the west, the sectarian war in the South Asia and the countries of the Gulf is useful for the west as it exhausts the strength of the warring groups and their attention is distracted. Dividing Muslims on sectarian lines has also not been difficult. Therefore, the sectarian war in Muslim countries serves as a shield for the western countries.

In these circumstances, it is difficult to say that Pakistan and Afghanistan will be able to wriggle out of this tornado as both the countries are the targets of like-minded groups and their internal circumstances are also identical. Some emotional intellectuals consider the nuclear power of Pakistan a manifestation of Pakistan’s strength. In their view, a nuclear Pakistan will not disintegrate so easily. Some also hope that in any difficult situation, the entire Muslim nation will come to its rescue. But the most evident fact is that the bigger part of the Muslim nation is on the verge of a sectarian war and many Islamic countries are going through a tumultuous phase which is being fuelled by the extremists there. Apart from this, two strong citadels of Islam, Saudi Arabia and Iran are not in a position to establish peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan because Saudi Arabia and Iran are to be blamed for at least the internal troubles of Pakistan as they fight a proxy war in Pakistan. Therefore, these Islamic countries cannot be expected to contribute to peace as they can only add to the anarchy there.