VIEW POINT: Why we are where we are today

Our civil and military leaderships seem to have finally come to the realisation that the mess we are in today is the result of harebrained policies of the past three-and-a-half decades that now need to be reversed through a decisive action. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been in consultation with the Army chief General Raheel Sharif, conferred with senior cabinet colleagues on Monday to review a draft national counter-terrorism plan. What he said there should have been said and translated into action a long time ago.
He told the meeting "while one Zarb-e-Azb is going on in the tribal areas another will be launched against the enemy hiding in our cities and villages. ... Terrorism and sectarianism are like a cancer for Pakistan and it is high time we got rid of this menace." The government, he said, will not make any distinction between terrorists and those who supported them. This decision, of course, is not to be applied retroactively considering that some around him, such as his special assistant, who writes a newspaper column, has been expressing a lot of sympathy for the Taliban. And the other day, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan while holding forth on the security situation tried to play down a Taliban supporter - actually their close ally - Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz's blatant justification of Peshawar school children's massacre. The stated resolve to make no distinction between terrorists and their supporters will look convincing only if it is seen to reflect a no-nonsense zero tolerance policy to take on anyone and everyone showing sympathy for the terrorists.
As regards the military offensive, there is much to be satisfied about. The soldiers have wrested back almost all of Fata's 18 administrative units from the Taliban. CoAS's visit to Kabul, soon after the Peshawar school carnage, to seek Afghan government's co-operation in the war against the TTP terrorists is proving productive. In an important follow-up development on Tuesday, Afghan Army chief General Sher Mohammad Karimi, ISAF commander General Johan F Campbell and CoAS General Raheel Sharif met at the GHQ, and decided to share intelligence between their respective forces and co-ordinate operations against militants along the Pak-Afghan border.
We also need to take a pause and figure out why we are where we are today. Pakistan was quite a peaceful and open society until General Ziaul Haq overthrew a civilian government to grab power, and went on to provide mercenary services to the US as it sought to give the erstwhile Soviet Union a bloody nose in Afghanistan. Our territory was used to train, arm, and indoctrinate Afghans and volunteers from everywhere with jihadist ideology to go and oust the Kabul government and the Soviets army it had invited for help. General Zia also undertook another mercenary task at the behest of certain Gulf kingdoms. Sectarian seminaries sprang up all over the country producing sectarian militants to fight that region's proxy war. Those same sectarian terrorists have been massacring innocent Pakistanis, and also lending a helping hand to the TTP.
Their objective achieved, the Americans got up and left. But the idea of using non-state ideologically-inspired fighters stayed behind. Those who helped fight the US' first proxy war in Afghanistan now elected to employ the same idea for the furtherance of their own interests, such as gaining 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan to the west and settling a 'core issue' across the eastern border through wholesale production of jihadists. America was to face the consequences of its first Afghan adventure in the form of 9/11 and return to the region for a second war. This time the old policy had to be reversed, again with Pakistan's help which was eagerly provided, according to former US secretary of state Colin Powell, by our latest military ruler General Pervez Musharraf. What we now have on our hands is a massive radicalisation and 'terror central' labelling from the same countries' media whose wars we fought.
There is nothing new about foreign governments helping armed struggles. What is dangerous is to allow other people's wars to be brought home. Take the example of India when it provided sanctuaries, arms and training to Mukti Bahini militants to fight Pakistan in its eastern wing. The Bengali militants had no local ties or interests; they went back after achieving their objective. But the case of Tamil militants in Sri Lanka was different since the country's own Tamil population had an affinity with the Tamil rebels. India instigated Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka and then withdrew support. A Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) suicide bomber, facilitated by local sympathisers, assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in Tamil Nadu during an election campaign for defending India's signing of an accord with Sri Lanka, and saying if he returned to power he would send in an Indian security force to disarm the insurgents. Earlier this month, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhaqam (MDMK) quit the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), accusing the ruling coalition of "being insensitive" and "betraying the interests of the people of Tamil Nadu and the Sri Lankan Tamils".
Equally pertinent, though dissimilar, is the example of Sikh insurgency. Indira Gandhi is believed to have encouraged the rise of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, leader of a Sikh religious group, Damandi Taksal, to counter the influence of a mainstream Sikh party, the Akali Dal. In time, Bhindranwale was to use Sikhism's holiest centre, Akal Takhat in the Golden Temple, to make a religion-based demand backed by acts of violence for an autonomous Sikh state, leading to military operation Blue Star, in which Bhindanwale and many of his companions were killed. A lethal mix of religion with politics subsequently caused prime minister Indira Gandhi's own assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards, triggering a massive anti-Sikh riots and later a protracted, bloody Sikh separatist insurgency. What this example tells us is that it is a fatal mistake to use religious groups for political purposes.
The powers-that-be in this country made not one but three cardinal mistakes. The first one, as noted earlier, was to fight mercenary wars. A related second blunder was deliberate promotion of sectarian and jihadist groups and whipping up jihadist fervour in aid of outside powers interests as well as misguided agendas of our own. And the third wrong underpinning the preceding two was for the security establishment to think it knew better how to deal with foreign and security policies challenges. Civilian governments, answerable to public representatives for their acts of omission and commission, were forced to accept "leave these policy areas to us" demand. What we face today amply demonstrates that warfare and security/foreign policies belong to two entirely different domains. In fact, if the World War-I time French prime minister George Clemenceau's opinion is to be trusted then even "war is too important to be left to the generals."
(The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the newspaper) [email protected])