Stamping out militancy/extremism

Since the February 21 meeting of the National Security Committee announced its decision to accelerate actions against militancy and extremism, action has been in full swing against two externally-oriented militant outfits, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) alongside its charity wing, Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FiF). Their accounts have been frozen and assets seized whilst scores of their activists, including a brother and son of the JeM chief Masood Azhar, have been taken into custody by the law enforcement agencies. Reports also suggest Islamabad no longer wants China to maintain its technical hold that prevents the UN from declaring the JeM leader as a global terrorist.

The government needed to do that as part of its obligations towards the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) before the fast approaching May deadline. A delegation of FATF’s regional associate, Asia Pacific Joint Group, is to arrive in Islamabad on March 24 for assessment purposes and submit its report to FATF headquarters in Paris. Failure to meet the requirements could move the country from the financial watchdog’s grey list, where it sits at present, to its black list with serious ramifications for this country’s economy and its international standing.

Meanwhile, India has kept pointing the finger at JeM for the Pulwama bombing that left 42 Indian soldiers dead, using the same to accuse Pakistan of fomenting terrorism. Soon after the incident Prime Minister Imran Khan had urged India to provide actionable intelligence promising to take action if any Pakistani was found involved in the Pulwama attack. New Delhi has since handed a dossier to Islamabad which includes names of several individuals detained in the crackdown on JeM. Interior secretary recently told journalists that India had not provided the evidence needed to conduct investigations, hence, detention could be suspended if the government did not find proof against them. Little is expected to come out of this exercise. Many in India as well have challenged involvement of Pakistan-based non-state actors in the Pulwama incident, identifying several holes in the Modi government’s story.

It is no secret that in the past Pakistan did patronize these elements, but that policy hurt rather than helped the achievement of the intended objective. Resorting to that policy would be a huge folly at a time Pakistan faces an image problem and also several prominent Indians, like veteran BJP leader and former finance and foreign minister Yashwant Sinha, are saying India has lost Kashmir due its military repression. It is in this country’s own interest, therefore, to keep non-state actors from jumping into the fray, and deprive India of any excuse to deflect international attention from its own gross human rights violations in occupied Kashmir.

It needs to be said, though, that Pakistan did not invent the idea of employing militants as an instrument of foreign policy. In the early 1980s, the US used Pakistan’s soil to train, arm and finance Afghan rebels alongside religious zealots shipped in from various Arab countries, calling them mujahedeen, to give a bloody nose to its then rival power, the erstwhile Soviet Union, in Afghanistan. Before that, in ’71 India hosted Mukti Bahini militants from the then East Pakistan, helping them fight the Pakistan Army, and later marched in its own troops leading to the country’s breakup. That is not to say it is a legitimate activity, only that states do things that are wrong and yet are pursued for the furtherance of goals they deem both worthwhile and doable. Our case is different, however, in that unlike the US and India before, we created our own religion-inspired militants, who once decommissioned could turn their attention inwards. It is important therefore that the crackdown is followed up with a well thought-out de-radicalization and rehabilitation programme.

The government has also announced its resolve to fully implement the political consensus-based National Action Plan (NAP), adopted in the wake of the December 2014 Peshawar Army Public School massacre. Among other things, the NAP calls for disallowing militant outfits and armed groups to operate in the country; ensuring against re-emergence of proscribed organizations; dealing firmly with sectarian terrorists; and registration and regulation of religious seminaries. There are several proscribed sectarian organisations that remain active by reinventing their identities. The previous government had shown not only a lack of will to sort them out but the then interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, had actually argued before the Senate that they be treated softly and not “equated with purely terrorist organisations” although they were banned for the same reason as the “purely terrorist organisations” were: acts of terrorism.

A recent example offers an instructive lesson in what happens when even non-militant but extremist religious elements are allowed to function freely. Khadim Hussain Rizvi, founder of the Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan, who belongs to Bralevi sect, a moderate branch of the Sunni school of thought, at first held the previous government hostage in the federal capital using a religious issue, and succeeded in bringing the state to its knees. Riding high on that success last November, he staged prolonged, violent protest demonstrations against the acquittal by a three-member Supreme Court bench of a blasphemy accused. Thinking himself to be bigger than the state he issued fatwas for the assassination of the three judges as well as the prime minister also instigating mutiny in the army. That is when the state realized the cost of turning a blind eye to religious extremism, and cut the man and his organization to size.

The challenge that remains to be addressed is that of streamlining the affairs of religious seminaries, many of which are in the business of spreading sectarian hatreds, and serve as breeding grounds of suicide bombers. Leaders of religious parties, in particular the JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, have been threatening to launch a countrywide agitation against any move towards madrassah reforms. The present atmosphere may have dampened their extremism in all its shapes and forms.

E-Mail: saida_fazal@yahoo.com 

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019