VIEW POINT: ...reaping the whirlwind

Last Sunday night's terrorist strike at the country's largest airport in mega-polis Karachi overshadowed another horrific incident that took place the same evening in a remotely-located small border town, Taftan. There sectarian terrorists bombed two small hotels. The attack in Karachi claimed 19 lives of security personnel and civilians, and the other of 24 civilians - all Shia pilgrims on their way back home from Iran.
The scale of human tragedy was about the same. For obvious reasons, the airport attack, even though not the first of its kind, shook the nation to its core and grabbed international headlines. For it was a direct challenge to State power. The one in Taftan was a sectarian hate crime. Yet it too reflected the State's weak control. And both emerged from the same disease afflicting our rulers: mercenary adventurism.
The Zia regime and those who followed him sowed the wind of which we are reaping the whirlwind. He offered mercenary services to the US to wage the so-called Afghan jihad in exchange for a huge sum of dollars - a lot of which went into his and cronies pockets - and allowed the Gulf countries to fund the founding of sectarian seminaries to promote their individual and regional interests. His successors continued the policy in their own short-sighted self-serving ways. The idea of using jihadists caught the fancy of our defence establishment to seek 'strategic depth' in another country and also to launch its own adventures abroad creating an army of radicalised militants, who like in so many examples from other countries, were to eventually get out of control. Meanwhile, successive civilian governments courted sectarian extremists to use them for political gains, lending them power and legitimacy in the process.
Those who say our Taliban problem has nothing to do with America's war need to pay some attention to what the then US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said on the subject in November 2010. She told ABC television, "Part of what we are fighting against right now, the United States created. We created the Mujahideen force against the Soviet Union [in Afghanistan]. We trained them, we equipped them, we funded them, including somebody named Osama bin Laden. And it did not work out so well for us." And, of course, our establishment's subsequent decision to replicate the model in pursuit of its goals has not worked out for us, either. And creating sectarian extremists at the behest of certain Gulf governments has turned this country into a battleground of their proxy war.
Now that we are where we are, there is no choice but to square up to both types of terrorists, who are known to have a nexus. The way forward was never going to be a simple 'bomb them' approach pushed by some commentators, but a combination of both talks and fight. A seemingly well-informed press report indicates the security forces have attained substantial success in behind-the-scenes efforts to separate the 'reconcilable' militant groups from the irreconcilable ones. The powerful Mehsud faction has come under effective control of a pro-government leader Khan Said alias Sajna. The old deals with North Waziristan-based Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Mullah Nazir in S Waziristan still hold. In another important development last week, a jirga comprising some 60 tribal elders met with KPK Governor Sardar Mehtab Abbasi and Corps Commander Lieutenant General Khalid Rabbani. They were given 15 days to expel foreign militants from N Waziristan to avoid a military operation in the area. On their part the tribal elders assured co-operation to the government. All this sounds like good progress.
The stage is set for military action against the ideologically-driven TTP factions led by Mullah Fazlullah, which include the notorious Mohmand Agency Taliban commander Omar Khalid Khorasani - Both men operate from the neighbouring Afghan province, Kunar - and others from Bajaur, Orakzai and FR Peshawar, and of course foreign fighters who choose to stay back. If the government has been hesitant to order the much anticipated military action for fear of a backlash, after what happened in Karachi, it may have stopped dithering. In any case, this is not a conventional conflict, hence a formal declaration of war is not expected. Neither is it likely to look like a full-fledged operation along the lines of earlier ones in Swat and S Waziristan. The government may already have given the go-ahead to the military who, of course, has to decide the time and shape of action.
The government needs to take courage in both hands to eliminate sectarian terrorists also. The recent anti-terror legislation alone won't help. Local and foreign financing of sectarian organisations must be cut off completely. Equally important, the practice of allowing leaders of proscribed sectarian outfits to reinvent their identities and function under new names must come to an end. A zero tolerance policy must be adopted instead. Necessary administrative and legal measures need to be adopted to facilitate intelligence sharing and formation of a rapid action force to take out these ruthless terrorists. There is no dearth of expert opinion on the issue; what is required is a strong will to do all that it takes to rid this state and society of the evil of violent sectarianism.
Without a doubt what we are facing today is a logical progression of our rulers' past follies; we must never go down that road again. Hopefully, our civilian and military leaderships have learnt a sobering lesson from the policy that has brought unspeakable death and destruction and an existential threat to the state itself. Only time will tell if they have drawn the right conclusions from the harrowing experience of fighting other people's wars.
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