The community is fighting back

The last few days witnessed two very sad but significant events in quick succession. In a small village called Ibrahimzai in Hangu, 15-year-old Aitizaz Hasan, triumphed over terrorists by stopping one of them from entering his school, thus saving many lives while losing his own.

Had the bomber succeeded, the consequences would have been horrendous. Hangu is a Shia-dominated region, which as a sect has already suffered immensely in the past at the hands of extremism.

About the same time down south in Karachi, a terrorist triumphed over Pakistan by killing Chaudhry Aslam, an indefatigable symbol of the force battling terrorists. His elimination must have caused much glee in the enemy’s ranks. Aslam was a marked man and it was not a question of if, but only when, they would catch up with him.

Aitizaz’s action, on the contrary, must have caused concern because if his personal example energises the society sufficiently and gets emulated, the terrorists won’t know who from among the public might pounce at their next bomber.

The lesson from the two tragic incidents is therefore obvious – while use of armed force is an essential and inescapable element of the strategy to prevent terrorists from occupying greater national space, it is really communities that have greater potential to defeat terrorism decisively.

The government has done well to honour Aitizaz by awarding him a national medal and naming his school after him. The COAS has also acknowledged his sacrifice. It might have gone down even better if Aitizaz had been awarded a higher recognition – if only to demonstrate that this is everybody’s fight and one doesn’t have to be in uniform to qualify for the highest award for bravery.

His sacrifice should now lead the way towards establishing a strong bond between the community and the government to supplement the efforts being made by our law-enforcement forces. A broader engagement with the community is essential – both upstream where the community is a participant in counterterrorism intelligence gathering, operations and investigations, as well as downstream, where those who suffer in the process are properly acknowledged and rehabilitated in accordance with an established system in the country.

The present system of compensation, based largely on the whims of the rulers, is flawed as it puts a different price tag on the lives of its citizens living in different provinces.

Insurgencies in various countries have succeeded when they have had grassroots support in the people. A silver lining in the ongoing fight against terrorism in the country is that, barring some self-serving politicians, the populace at large is not sympathetic to the cause or ideology propounded by terrorists for their actions. The terrorists are aware of this weakness and, in order to remain relevant, have resorted to instilling a sense of mass fear in the populace, a practice they indulge in indiscriminately and at any place and time of their choosing.

This weakness of the terrorists – lack of popular base – should be transformed into a strength for the state by engaging with the community as only this large reservoir of national human resource has the ability to shrink the breathing space enjoyed by terrorists and make their existence untenable on a daily basis.

The MQM chief Altaf Hussain had it right when he advised citizens of Karachi to organise surveillance of suspicious activities at the mohalla level and report unusual behaviour.

To a significant extent, terrorists’ success is helped by the lack of trust people have in their government’s ability to chalk out decisive policies and take effective actions. The competition between terrorists and the government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the most strife-torn province, for winning community support is obvious – and no prizes for guessing who is winning. The ranks of affluent citizens acquiescing to the demands of terrorists are growing precisely because they lack confidence in the ability of the state to fulfil its constitutional obligations of protecting life and property of citizens.

Neither the provincial nor the federal government has shown any interest in involving ordinary people in this war other than exponentially raising compensation levels to the affectees to retain a certain level of motivation in foot soldiers who are used as gun fodder in the flawed policies of the state. This has to change if the national fight against terrorism is to succeed.

One possible reason why there hasn’t been greater public involvement so far could be the orientation of our counterinsurgency strategy, which has largely been tutored by the US which is heavily ‘force centric’ in its approach with little or no focus on the community at all.

This is strange because most of the terrorism these days originates from the global south, so to say, while the strategies and tactics to counter it are being conceived and shaped by the north. We should, therefore, seriously consider heavily tempering the broader western guidelines on counterinsurgency with indigenous and home-grown approaches to achieve greater success.

Aitizaz has provided a distinct example for community participation. In order to encourage the larger Pakistani community to engage in an organised manner, the rulers, on their part, will also have to show some spine and credibility in times of crisis. The manner in which Asfandyar Wali Khan and his family scrambled to a hovering helicopter in full media glare after an attack on his residence doesn’t help build that trust. Again, Imran Khan’s disappointment with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa CM for not promptly reaching out to the family of Aitizaz has clearly brought out this disconnect.

The ‘community’ is the most critical resource base for terrorist organisations. To deny this to the adversary, the government needs to forge resilient and robust ‘governance and community’ structures, which on the one hand should engage them in the war effort and on the other assist in disengaging and de-radicalising extremists and terrorist. In essence, the state should try to turn the community from being a source of the problem, as it were, to becoming a part of the solution.

As opposed to traditional counterterrorism, the new frontier in fighting it effectively requires a population-centric strategy in which the focus is also on preventing extremism, an antecedent of terrorism, rather than constantly reacting to the problem. To influence this huge reservoir of national human resource towards greater awareness for their common good and turning it into an inhospitable terrain for breeding terrorism requires visionary leadership, sustained commitment and stronger partnership between the community and various pillars of the state.  It is a difficult – but perhaps an unavoidable – route to the success we seek, which has so far remained elusive.

The writer is a retired vice admiral.Email: tajkhattak@ymail.com