Are we winning the war against terror? The plain and simple answer is No. There is no use living in denial. Few years down the road, our God given country will be more like Afghanistan or Somalia, no ifs and buts knowing the quality of our managers of statecraft - past, present and future. We are fighting an ideology with military means.
Military can never win the war of minds. We are all terrorised, irrespective of wherever we are and live in constant fear for serious injury to anyone near and dear to us. Not a day passes that we do not watch on the TV with anxiety, another attack somewhere some place in the country. They have attacked GHQ, FIA, Air Force complex at Kamra, Police stations, hotels and even a girls university in Islamabad. Target shooting is another dimension added to the arsenal of terrorists' weapons of terror.
They killed a young brigadier of Pakistan army serving with the United Nations on peace duty. Wherever you go, you see people otherwise busy with their work in offices dividing their attention divided on the air waves constantly beamed by some news channel. TV is now a ubiquitous piece of equipment, thanks to the PTV monopoly having been broken. Once the news gets through in real time, it is all over the mobile phones people trying to reassure themselves of the safety of their near and dear ones who are out on work or school etc.
So which place is safe is hard to tell. Perhaps we are all vulnerable, wherever we go. The administration reacts unintelligently by ratcheting up road blockades, purportedly to screen out the dangerous people, or by closing down all educational institutions or by making access to almost all of public offices difficult if not impossible.
Road blocks provide for an ideal attractive target for hundreds of casualties to a potential terrorist keen to make big news. Children are sitting at home losing their precious hours that should have been spent in acquiring education to become good citizens in the future, to shoulder the responsibilities for clearing the mess we have passed on to them.
In order to appear to be doing something, the government has decided to attack known or suspected places where the terrorists are believed to be hiding. South Waziristan has been chosen is the latest target. Swat was an early example of this understanding of phenomenon. People are asking how long this last will. There are various opinions.
One is that the military will not be able to sustain casualties of troops and will hasten to declare victory in two to three months time that it takes for the military to show visible signs of fatigue from an operation and quickly withdraw to the cantonments, leaving the helpless civilian part of the government to face the unintended consequences of the military doctrine, pursued so assiduously to seek strategic depth in Afghanistan.
There are those that think that this war will last a decade or so before fatigue sets in and we have some peace. In this regard are cited the long civil wars of Lebanon and Ireland. The one lasted about 15 years and the other 25 or so.
That the terrorists will disperse or merge with the rest of the population, anywhere of their choosing and not be destroyed, has not perhaps registered with the militarists not has it been made part of the equation in its fight against terror. There are no islands either of militancy or of tranquility.
Even international borders do not provide immunity for the militants from filtering in and spreading their tentacles across the entire spectrum of society. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and India are equally vulnerable to the menace. Attack on hard targets like the 'audacious' (oft-applied adjective) attack on GHQ should alert the policymakers to the extremely serious threat from infiltration of the security outfits.
The surviving terrorist of the GHQ attack, who is alive, is reported to have the past military background. Couple of years back the terrorists had struck the SSGs in their bastion. This was during the watch of Commando Musharraf. There is no way of knowing who among the security forces secretly subscribe to the religious philosophy of the terrorists or are in empathy with them, thanks to our emphasis on Islamisation starting in 1977.
I for one suspect that there will be sizeable number who considers the conflict as a holy war against infidels deriving support from the Americans. The militants that were nurtured so carefully by our intelligence outfits to fight the evil of communism in Afghanistan were used as assets after the Russian withdrawal and American abandonment.
Will the army sacrifice this weapon of strategic assets? We have to understand that the war is no more Americans' only. It is very much our own. The religious elements have acquired so much strength and power that they can encroach on any piece of real estate to build a mosque or a madressah even in Islamabad. It doesn't matter if the mosque or the madressah is protruding right onto a road or some park or some such public amenity.
We lack experience of fighting an insurgency on a national scale. There are long-term and short-term measures to combat terrorism. In the short-term the following measures must be adopted: A regional approach to combating terrorism is the starting point. India and Pakistan must sincerely bury their hatchet if they wish to succeed in eliminating the menace that is fast-enveloping the region.
Long-term measures involve education, education and education. It must not be forgotten that the first message the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) received from Allah was 'Read" and ironically we are the least educated religious community in the world. Education divides a fanatic from a normal person. No one educated enough will like to fasten a jacket full of explosives around his/her waist and blow himself up after destroying some innocent lives.
Our order of priorities place education at the lowest level and our performance for the last six decades testifies to this shameful conduct. Ideology can only be fought with education. Habits of secularism, which means live and let live, have to be inculcated in schools and colleges and zero-tolerance shown for intolerance.
A second area for focus should be the creation of job opportunities and establishment of good infrastructure. Score of religious channels that inculcate fanaticism and narrow outlook should be banned for spreading hate. Only recently, some Ahmadis were killed as a consequence of such sermon on a popular TV channel. There is no need to be squeamish. Desperate situation demands bold decisions. The state must acquit itself of its responsibility to its citizens by taking the bigoted head on in our fight for survival.
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