There may be a price to pay in the form of revenge suicide bombings (as violence comes natural to these barbaric Talibs) in the short-term but military operation was a grim but necessary choice for our country
If anyone thinks that Maulana Fazlullah, Baitullah Mehsud or Mullah Omar are aware of, let alone familiar with, the basics of, say, macroeconomic policy, water distribution or fiscal budgets, that person has probably been living in the same cave as those militants. —Dawn/File photo
HERE’S the scorecard so far: a few thousand militants in Malakand division; one military operation; over a million people displaced in a matter of weeks; a few thousand – militants, soldiers and civilians combined – probably already killed in the fighting; a destroyed economy in the northwest; a third devastating terrorist strike in Lahore in three months; ethnic fault lines re-opened with a vengeance in Sindh, and to a lesser extent in Balochistan and Punjab; and another operation imminent in South Waziristan, which will in all likelihood unleash more mayhem.
It’s hard to avoid the question: is it worth it? When the blunt instrument that is the state is used to crush a nimble, shadowy enemy is the terrible fallout worth the aim? At one level, the calculation is simple enough: if we don’t defeat the militants today, they may defeat us tomorrow. But who is this ‘us’ and what are ‘we’ fighting for? And whatever the objective, is it acceptable for ‘us’ to sacrifice a swathe of the population as necessary ‘collateral damage’ in ‘our’ bid to defend that objective?
In short, who are ‘we’ to sacrifice the lives of so many ‘others’ at the altar of national interest? We better have a good reason, or else the blood, sweat and tears of the millions of victims of this ‘war’ will be our cross to bear, too. The physical burden will of course always be for the direct victims to bear, but by picking sides, by acting as cheerleaders in a defensive war without having thought about what exactly it is we are trying to defend, we may end up no better than the enemy we are trying to defeat.
Frankly, if we are just fighting to save what the Pakistan of today represents, then we’re probably better off not fighting to save it.
Today’s way of life? If endemic poverty, a declining agricultural system, sprawling urban slums, a towering mountain of uneducated under-25s, a mass of unemployed, a repellent gap between the haves and the haves-not is our way of life, then we’re probably better off without it.
Today’s class of politicians? The more I have seen them up close the more I have been revolted. They are venal, they are corrupt, they are unimaginative, they are incompetent. It’s not just difficult to imagine them fixing this country, it’s almost impossible.
Today’s state? Asphyxiated as it is by the army’s security paranoia, its trajectory has been wrong for a long time, let alone today. But for those who have fed at the trough of that paranoia, life hasn’t turned out too shabbily. If you’ve ever had the privilege to roam through the home of a retired general or superior court judge or grade-22 bureaucrat, you may wonder if colonisation had ever ended.
Juxtaposing the suffering of millions of Pakistanis as a result of a military operation against militants that the state nurtured or at least turned a blind eye to for a long time with the wretchedness of the Pakistan of today almost makes you believe that the operation isn’t worth it. Let those millions suffer so that a few can go on enriching themselves while the majority live out their lives, nasty, brutish and short?
But it’s worth it, paradoxically, precisely for the people of this country – if we think about what life can be like tomorrow. There are two foes of the people in this country: the militants and those who rule the people today. If it was simply a case of defeating one enemy – the militants – today so that we can live under the yoke of the other foe – our rulers – tomorrow and forever, it’s definitely not worth the cost in terms of the extreme suffering, even death, of a slice of the population.
But the real question is essentially one of frameworks: can the framework of governance offered by the militants provide a better future for the people as opposed to the present framework that we have?
Here’s what the militants offer: law and order and an ‘Islamic’ society. Hard to quibble with, especially for those oriented towards achieving a better abode in the after-life, which, let’s face it, is the majority of the population. But the militants offer a world with trade-offs that while permanent are not necessary. Why must living in a modern country with modern amenities, a functional economy and a healthy respect for fundamental rights be sacrificed permanently in order to live in an ‘Islamic’ society with law and order?
And if anyone thinks that Maulana Fazlullah, Baitullah Mehsud or Mullah Omar are aware of, let alone familiar with, the basics of, say, macroeconomic policy, water distribution or fiscal budgets, that person has probably been living in the same cave as those militants.
Yet, while dismissing the ‘alternative’ system offered by the militants is easy enough, it’s more difficult to build a case for defending the system we do have. For that, we need to forget for a minute about Zardari and Sharif and Kayani and Iftikhar Chaudhry and the rest of the characters in the pantheon of our leadership today.
At its core, the ‘system’ of governance we have today is a competitive system with the ‘leaders’ competing against each other for the support of the population. Any given civilian leader may be corrupt and incompetent, but he also knows that if he doesn’t give something back, build something, create a few jobs, right a few wrongs committed against a few in the population, he will be chucked out eventually, either by a rival politician or a military dictator. And any given dictator also knows that if he doesn’t do many of the same things, he will in turn be chucked out.
The ‘beauty’ in our ugly system is two-fold: no one group – civilian or uniformed – is all-powerful and there is little appetite in the system for total repression. Even under Zia, the possibility of a Burmese-style military junta emerging was low. And even under the most rapacious of civilian governments, as the excesses worsened the likelihood of a quick and unceremonious end always correspondingly increased.
Right there then is the reason why it is right to take on the militants and defend what we have. Unlike what the militants offer, we already have the kernel of a system that can work for us, the people, and not against us in the long term: competition among disparate groups of potential leaders for public support.
That system clearly doesn’t prevent exploitation, but it does prevent any given government from taking the country over a cliff, and, crucially, it contains the possibility of a leadership that will herald a better tomorrow emerging.
So, yes, grim as the fallout may be, it is right, if not necessary, to take on the militants today if we want to retain the possibility of a better tomorrow.