The crumbs that fall from high table

How much more can we bleed? Or has the jugular vein been already severed? We were assured by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan that Islamabad had been made impregnable because foolproof security was in place. Yet a few weeks back a splinter group of the TTP carried out a dramatic terrorist attack on the city’s district courts in which eleven people died.

Tragedy struck again on Wednesday when a bomb was detonated at a vegetable market in the outskirts of the federal capital. Twenty-four civilians lost their lives and more than 120 were seriously injured. Barely twenty-four hours earlier, the Jaffar Express was bombed at the Sibi railway station killing 17 passengers, including eight of a family.

Though the United Baloch Army claimed responsibility for the both incidents, the interior ministry was convinced that the carnage in Islamabad had been perpetrated by some other group which it was unable to identify. The TTP spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, emailed a statement to news outlets saying, “It is tragic that innocents have been killed in attacks on public places. Such attacks are ‘haram’ (unlawful).”

This was crass hypocrisy. The outlawed group and its murderous affiliates have killed almost 50,000 people – mostly civilians – and these outrages have been justified as jihad for the enforcement of Islam. Admittedly this was the first time ever that the TTP has condemned a terrorist attack and Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid, for one, was jubilant.

To him the TTP spokesman’s words almost sounded like the absorbing melody of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, Pastoral. In that masterpiece the magic of music blends with the forces of nature – the gentle breeze passing through corn fields foretelling the advent of the storm, and, then, when it subsides, there comes the joys of a fulsome harvest blessed with enduring peace and tranquillity.

Like an excited adolescent he described the statement as a triumph for the government. Its decision to initiate talks with the Taliban had been vindicated – terrorist violence would recede and peace would reign from her ivory throne. Before the minister utters any more inanities he should take a deep breath, return to the seclusion of his office and spend a few minutes to watch just four out of the many short videos recorded by the TTP.

The first of these, which was televised by a private Pakistani channel (and also by Dubai’s Al Aan television) on September 28, 2010, shows a woman tethered to the ground while TTP fighters mercilessly break her bones and then crush her skull with a huge boulder. Her crime was that she had been walking unescorted in the rugged tribal terrain and was, therefore, presumed to have committed adultery.

The second is a two-and-a-half minute video circulated by the TTP in early January 2012. The footage shows 15 blindfolded men with their hands tied on a hillside near Shawa in North Waziristan. One of the prisoners who identified himself as Babar Khan said that they were personnel of the Frontier Constabulary and had been captured in December. Immediately afterwards a burly Taliban commander starts firing at them with his Kalashnikov yelling “God is great!” Other TTP fighters rush to join him in the bloodbath and in less than a minute the captives lie dead. Their bodies are contemptuously dragged away.

On October 31, 2012 the TTP released a clip displaying the severed heads of Pakistani soldiers. A Taliban commander gleefully declares, “Praise be to God that the mujahideen in Bajaur Agency have managed to kill the infidel soldiers of Pakistan. Many of them were killed by bullets, twelve of them as you see have been beheaded, you see twelve heads here, and more heads are on the way.”

On February 16, the leader of the TTP’s Mohmand chapter, Omar Khalid Khorasani, announced that 23 men from the Frontier Corps had been killed by his group. The bloodcurdling video which accompanied the announcement showed that the soldiers had been ruthlessly decapitated and their heads were being kicked around like footballs.

It is less than eight weeks since this ghastly incident. The information minister and his cabinet colleagues must ask themselves whether it is at all possible for the Taliban to transform itself in so short a time into a group that abhors terrorism. It is not difficult to pierce the hidden heart of the mystery surrounding the TTP’s statement. The group realises that without popular support its quest for power will come to naught.

On Monday two of the country’s leading newspapers sounded alarm bells in their editorials about the website that had been created and put online by the TTP the previous day. Both dailies described this development as a new phase in the outfit’s ideological war for the capture of hearts and minds. Though the website was later taken down, the TTP will undoubtedly find a way to re-establish its propaganda hub because it assigns the highest priority to the projection of its murderous ideology which is camouflaged in absurd interpretations of Islamic tenets. The one constant element in this self-serving narrative is the enforcement of Shariah or the laws of Islam.

An officer of the Pakistan Army serving in what he described as “the tribal ‘bad lands’ of this country” sent me an email a few weeks back saying that all will be lost unless the fraudulent ideology of the TTP is exposed. He wrote with passion and his views were included in my article ‘Thoughts of a soldier’ (February 9, 2014). He was convinced that “Without a solid and far-reaching narrative, built around the correct and contextualised interpretation of the Quran, the war against extremist ideology cannot be taken to its logical and desired end. Our enemy has outsmarted us by pushing its own narrative based on the seemingly righteous agenda of imposing Shariah.”

The soldier then expressed his innermost thoughts saying, “Let me assure you that within the army there is not one iota of doubt regarding the righteousness of our cause…What I fear the most is that the gains we have made by sacrificing so much will be lost…It is only after being armed with a simple far-reaching narrative, we, as a state, can out-manoeuvre and destroy the enemy’s centre of gravity. Up till now the so-called representatives (of the people) have failed miserably in properly executing the most critical manoeuvre of this war.”

The officer’s fears were not unfounded. Far from “properly executing the most critical manoeuvre of this war” by building a counter-narrative to expose the TTP’s distortions of Islamic precepts, the government has all but abandoned the war. By entering into direct talks with the terrorist group, it has violated Article 256 of the constitution which unambiguously affirms that all outfits “capable of functioning as a military organisation” are illegal. Negotiations with the TTP are therefore not permissible unless it disarms, renounces violence and pledges fealty to the constitution.

Furthermore the government has, till now, released more than 30 TTP prisoners even though under our criminal laws anyone under trail or imprisoned cannot be set free without the permission of the courts. The question of a presidential pardon arises only after the accused has been found guilty and sentenced. The TTP has yet to reciprocate the interior ministry’s misplaced generosity by releasing even a single hostage in its custody.

Legal opinion is unanimous that crime “is an offence against society, and in prosecuting and punishing the criminal the state acts on society’s behalf.” In effect what the government has done is that it has illegally unleashed possible hardened terrorists on the people who it is obliged under the constitution to protect.

Like a beggar hungrily picking up the crumbs that fall from a rich man’s table, the government has spent the last two weeks in imploring the ragtag agglomeration of thugs to permanently end its terrorist activities.

The TTP condescendingly agreed to extend its month-long moratorium on mass slaughter by ten more days which expired on Thursday. Now that the factional infighting within the TTP is reported to have been put on hold for a month, talks with the outlawed group are set to resume. One wonders what other concessions the government will make to appease “our estranged brothers.”

The writer is the publisher of Criterion Quarterly.

Email: iftimurshed@gmail.com