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EDITORIAL:Army chief’s ‘signalling’ in Swat

The chief of army staff (COAS), General Ashfaq Kayani, visited the troops in Swat yesterday and told them that the “Pakistan Army has the will and the resolve to defeat terrorists, restore peace and establish the writ of the state in violence-hit areas”. He was putting the stamp of his authority on the third phase of Operation Rah-e-Haq against the Taliban led by warlord Fazlullah. The message to the troops was no doubt also intended for the rest of the country and for the world community that has become less and less sure about Pakistan’s “will and resolve” after the first two phases of the Swat operation were seen as failures.

The visit came in the wake of a statement made by the interior adviser, Mr Rehman Malik, promising the ouster of the terrorists from Swat “in fifteen days”. The statement ran the risk of being treated as a meaningless hyperbole since he had earlier promised a similar “solution” to the sectarian mayhem of Parachinar “in fifteen days” and not delivered. But General Kayani’s appearance in Swat is a substantial gesture of “signalling” in all kinds of directions. Of them, the most important is the one aimed at the people of Swat and the people of Pakistan who are despairing of the state’s capacity to face up to brutal terrorism. His meeting with the ANP holdout against the Taliban, Afzal Lala, is also a significant demonstration of the intent to fight back.

The ANP government in the NWFP has been complaining bitterly over the quality of defence offered to it against terrorists within its own jurisdiction in Swat and in the federally administered neighbouring agency of Khyber. The MNAs and MPAs who have been forced to flee Swat have been speaking with great acerbity about how the people of Swat have been delivered on a platter to Fazlullah’s men. The TV channels, at first soft on the Taliban, have finally come around to seeing the terror in Swat for what it is. Swatis themselves have been intimidated into keeping silent about Fazlullah and criticising only the army and its “collateral damage”. But the channels can no longer conceal the fact that the Swatis are now praying for America’s drone attacks in their valley as the last resort.

The day the army chief was reported as visiting Swat, two observations appeared on the editorial page of a national daily: The first was: “People now have their reservations about the operation. They ask pertinent questions about it. They see a lack of willingness on the part of the state to curb the militancy. This perception is now held by the intelligentsia, particularly the Pakhtun intelligentsia. They contend that if the state’s military can stand up to a military as strong and large as India’s, how can it not handle an internal insurgency carried out by a few thousand armed men?” (Five thousand terrorists are fighting twenty thousand troops.) The second serious observation was: “However, even some of the more historically accurate narratives which acknowledge the deep consensual relationship between the religious right and the military establishment do not consider how this relationship has evolved and why the religious right is able to make inroads into society (regardless of whether it is supported by the establishment or not)”.

But one can understand the situation in the light of the media-supported mass sympathy for the terrorists of Lal Masjid in 2007, which redounded to the advantage of the Swat Taliban. Why should the army oppose something that the channels-led people find acceptable? But after more than a year, and despite these channels, public opinion has changed and it is time to grasp the nettle of terrorism-supported parallel government in Swat. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Mumbai attack planned outside Pakistan?

News agencies have picked up a TV channel report that “Pakistani investigators have completed the initial investigation of information regarding the Mumbai attacks and found the attacks were not planned in Pakistan”. Once again someone has put the blame “outside” Pakistan and failed to point out whom the Pakistani investigators suspect of having done it. What is known for sure is that Pakistani investigators have examined the dossier on the attacks sent in by India and have presented their conclusions to the Interior Ministry which will probably make them known to India on January 31.

Whatever the “findings” of the investigators examining the evidence sent by India, the world is going to start from the baseline that the deed was perpetrated by non-state actors from Pakistan. Although there was something murky about the PPP government firing its national security adviser who owned the surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab as a Pakistani, it is now internationally recognised that Pakistan has accepted the role played in Mumbai by a gang of people from inside Pakistan. It is going to be difficult for anyone to shift the earlier accepted blame from Pakistan merely on the basis of the examination of the “dossier” provided by India. The most dangerous conclusion that can be drawn from Pakistan’s finding is that it is a country run by foreign-located elements.

We hope that this is not the conclusion that Pakistan will send to India. We see more problems ahead if this is done unless Pakistan has “additional” proof that links our “non-state actors” to someone outside Pakistan. Even if Pakistan miraculously finds this additional evidence there is no way it can duck the responsibility of taking action against its “non-state actors” to the satisfaction of the international community, if not India. So far the trend has been that the planning of such incidents as the one on 9/11 was done in Pakistan. If we want to reverse this trend, we must come up with something that convinces the world. As far as the people of Pakistan are concerned, they are still waiting for the conclusive evidence that India is involved in the insurgency in Balochistan and the Tribal Areas.

Muslims are usually noted in the world for their faith in conspiracy theories. Not only are the intellectuals thus preoccupied, intelligence agencies too rely heavily on this paranoid mythology. One hopes that when Pakistan speaks next to India on the Mumbai attack, it will do so on the basis of solid proof. *

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