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Editorial: Hating terrorism, hating America!

A recent poll conducted in Pakistan reveals that people have turned sharply against the Taliban since 2007: from 34 percent to 81 percent. The perception of Al Qaeda as a critical threat also arose in the same degree. However, a majority showed lack of trust in the United States as an ally in the war against terrorism in general and in the US-led war in Afghanistan in particular.
This graph might seem normal but it should give pause to policy-makers in Pakistan. The turnaround in respect of the Taliban and Al Qaeda can be attributed to the war strategy — or lack of it — on the part of the Taliban themselves. When in 2007, less than half the respondents thought of them as a threat to Pakistan, the political schizophrenia in the war against terrorism was not there. In fact, since most people didn’t hate the Taliban and hated the US instead, Pakistan could be said to be embarked on a policy free of contradictions.
Much of this sentiment against the war on terrorism under a UN Security Council resolution was owed to the widespread antipathy towards former General-President Pervez Musharraf whose incumbency was beginning to recoil on him that year. But it took only two years from then on for the Taliban to get themselves hated universally in Pakistan. The strategy followed by them in Swat lost them so much sympathy that the pro-Taliban opinion-makers on TV channels and the press had to beat a retreat in the face of popular reaction.
While the Taliban shot themselves in the foot after 2007, what did the US do to earn the opprobrium it has attracted? The two cases are different. The pro-Taliban feeling emanated after 2001 because the people did not like the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 which they thought was not carried out by the Afghan government of the Taliban. The hatred of the US was therefore of longer standing. What is significant is that it has not gone down despite the fact that the Taliban are now the enemy and America is helping to keep Pakistan economically viable.
The pattern of hatred is more complex and is in no small measure created by Pakistan’s official interpretation of what is going on in Afghanistan. Let us not forget that Pakistan’s “official” enemy in this war against terrorism is India. Islamabad accuses India of “interfering” in Balochistan. As the Taliban became dangerous and had to be seen as an enemy, they were linked to India. The next bit of the narrative of the war in Afghanistan is even more interesting.
Official think tanks have been discussing the “American policy” of allowing India to become a big player in Afghanistan by letting it open scores of “consulates” there which orchestrate the Indian “intervention” in Balochistan and the Tribal Areas. Beyond that, America is also thought to be determined to build India up as the hegemon in South Asia with the specific agenda of taming Pakistan and making it subservient to India. After that comes the bombshell that spreads anti-Americanism around more intensely: the ultimate American plan to deprive Pakistan of its nuclear weapons.
The latest Pakistani official “request” to America is to find out who is funding the Taliban from inside Afghanistan. (The whispered answer is America and India.) But at the same time Pakistan also accepts that the Taliban are making their money from the narcotics grown in Afghanistan, from direct donations from the UAE and other Arabs, from the smuggling of cigarettes, from kidnappings and general looting — including looting of the NATO trucks that pass through Pakistan.
There are so many disconnects here that any complete narrative is impossible to construct. A combination of external circumstances and poor internal economic policies and planning has put Pakistan in difficult straits. It needs external help and much of it is coming from the US. Pakistan is also keen for a dialogue with India but the latter is hampered by its own structural constraints to resolve issues with any of the states in the periphery. This is a vicious cycle and Pakistan would need to tread very carefully in formulating its policies vis-à-vis the US and India. *

Second Editorial: Save victims of blasphemy law!

National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), a
human rights body of the Catholic Church in Pakistan, has condemned the attack by local Muslims on houses of Christians in the village Bahmani Wala, district Kasur, Punjab. The incident was provoked by an announcement from the Mosque by a cleric at a nearby village that the Christian inhabitants of Bahmani Wala had shown disrespect to Prophet Muhammad PBUH. The cleric incited Muslims to kill Christians and destroy their properties, which led massive violation of a 100 houses after looting of valuables.
Last month an additional judge of Layyah refused bail to five Ahmedis including five teenagers accused of having blasphemed by writing an offensive word in a latrine of a Sunni mosque in a “chak” of Layyah. The five have been languishing for the past four and a half months in a jail in Dera Ghazi Khan without the government coming to their help. The police registered a case against them without the required prior investigation because of pressure from the local MNA and a banned terrorist organisation itself under trial these days. This was affirmed in investigative reports from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).
The police investigation, when finally submitted, said there was no direct evidence against the five accused. The FIR says that the plaintiffs were moved only by “suspicion” because the accused were “non-Muslim” Ahmedis. The four children are in a bad shape in the Dera Ghazi Khan jail with one in sharply declining health. They face death under Blasphemy Law which has brought nothing but infamy to the state of Pakistan and to its intimidated judiciary.
In the past, it has normally taken eight to nine years for an accused under this law to get relief from the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It should be noted that no blasphemy accused has so far been legally done to death, making it clear that the accused are victims rather than criminals. The Supreme Court must come to the rescue of these entrapped children. *

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