Back in 2002, I was returning from Friday prayers when I saw an unusual gathering of singing and quasi-dancing Mullahs. Unusual because I had always assumed Mullahs to be against all types of art. The amused crowd were listening to chants of “Taliban aa gayay, Taliban aa gayay.â€
I smirked. As if!
Pakistan is a nuclear country with the seventh largest army. We’re safe.
The Mullahs’ songs have been answered – the Taliban indeed are coming. And with them the cowards are bringing a lifestyle that destroys everything Pakistan and Islam.
Oh no. Wait! “This guy is on the paycheck of those who are trying to break Pakistan. Taliban are heroes, its America which is wrong.” Yes, this is the typical self defense mechanism coming to full force. Having nothing to lose, and having been already declared a CIA agent earlier in life I suppose I’ll continue. Continuing with a genuine fear, that these words are falling on either deaf or hostile ears. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan is over if all this chaos continues.
Jinnah’s Pakistan is a dream gone wrong. Perhaps if he knew that the dreamland for living in peace, harmony, religious tolerance and freedom was going to become arena for public flogging where laughs of sadist barbarians and the screams of minors will echo, he would not have decided on creating it. Had he known that there would be more suicide bombs in his country than any other place in the world, where fundamentalists would go around the cities threatening women, where school children would have to undergo security protocols as if they were in a war zone, would he have even bothered to work for the green and white?
Still, Pakistan is not what we worry about. All our esteemed talk shows chatter on is whether there should be 17th Amendment or not and on the statements by America and India. Yes, American drones and Indian statements are a threat to our sovereignty. Yes, the balance of power is important. But even when the Taliban have killed more people than India, American Drones or our tyrant rulers, taken over more of our land and have made us feel more unsafe than anyone else in the past thirty years? What other definition of sovereignty is there than protection of lives and property of people, maintaining writ of the state across the territory and having people feel secured? Why can’t we have some programs discussing the atrocities of the Taliban, the acts of terror that they do and how they have destroyed Pakistan?
No, it’s the “Hindu Zionists†(notice the contradiction?) working on a CIA sponsored conspiracy to break Pakistan. There are the good Taliban who fought the Kuffar off and the real issue is the CIA. Apparently, everyone has all the time in the world to devise every action we do, plan it to perfection and then make the evidence of their involvement disappear. Are we really that important for the rest of the world to worry about when they have their own countries and problems to tend to? Even if the Taliban are foreign funded should does that not mean we should double our efforts? Remember when India briefly occupied few territories near Lahore in 1965 how the whole country ran to defend it? My grandfather had stories of people going with sticks to support the army. I am afraid I will not have any such stories of patriotic resistance to tell anyone when another enemy has taken control of a fourth of NWFP and roughly one twentieth of Pakistan. Perhaps we should ban “Yeh watan tumhara hai, tum ho pasban is kay†for it seems no one really care about Pakistan, except the Zionist Hindus of course.
But no, remember the glorious days of the Caliphs? Remember the great Pakistani Fauj, who under the Ameer-ul-Momineen, Zia–ul–Haq, crushed the Russians? This is only a plan to make America taste the same fate! For a nation which already lives in denial, these conspiracy theories are all we need to turn us completely schizophrenic. Army is great and it will deal with any task assigned to it. More of the same comes from everyone turning patriotic everywhere. This automatic knee-jerk mechanism has seeped in our blood and shut off our brains.
For the love of God can anyone explain me why the great Army of Allah, whose laurels we sing from the day we are born, has still not been able to jam radio stations pouring terror in Swat? Have the core commanders not even tried asking the army engineers how radios work and how easy it is jam them without even having to be in the line of fire? Can they not even figure out if they only played “Who let the Dogs out†at the frequencies the Taliban use it would stop this vitriol? Why is it that these Taliban leaders can appear before journalists in broad daylight and roam freely without any trouble even when they claim responsibility of attacking Pakistanis across the country?
Perhaps the real question I should ask is why do I even care?
When I took time off from Harvard to be part of the lawyers’ movement I had seen a ray of hope. There were concerned citizens and lawyers who stood for what was right no matter what the consequences. We fought for a principle and won with the hope that things will slowly improve. Today the very judges we had faith in released the cleric of Lal Mosque whose crimes everyone knows about. If the judiciary was going to release people whose crimes were recorded on TV perhaps it does explain why Taliban are spreading like an incurable cancer. Imagine who would be hanging in “khooni chowk†had Mullana Abdul Aziz kidnapped a few Taliban officials or fought against them and killed their men?
Yet when you think all’s over, somehow someone comes up. Someone whose name keeps your head from drowning. Perhaps this sick torture has to be long and painful where we chase mirages of oasis, never to really reach them. Perhaps for all the atrocities we have committed to our own people require us to be made an example of so no other nation follows our path. Why do ray of hopes like Afzal Khan, who has socked it up to Taliban and refused to be removed from Swat alive, appear every now and then? However he stands to die in the rain. Alone.
Can anyone please name one Pakistani leader who has said the same? Forget that has anyone Pakistani leader said that he will go and get the Taliban to give up their arms? Will the real leader who can get rid of these monsters stand up? Imran Khan? Qazi? Nawaz Sharif? This silence is criminal!
What’s worse that these leaders of ours have unanimously approved a state within a state run, which is not accountable to anyone, absolves all crimes of the Taliban and gives a safe haven to those who are there to kill us? What sort of a Nizam-e-Nonsense is this when no one even tried to debate the issue properly and even consider for a second that giving blanket amnesty to the Taliban might not, even if it be infinitesimal, the right thing to do? No for the politicians this does not matter. All they are interesting in mudslinging at each other and more ministries. Our media and sheeple are busy devouring the latest gossip while Pakistan burns.
But unlike what people think it will not be because of Zardari’s corruption or Gilani’s incompetence or Salman Taseer’s antics.  We have survived them in the past, and so we’ll do again. But any country that falls to the Taliban will never recovered.
The Taliban are here to stay and unless we stand up against them in every possible way Pakistan will be lost – for good! It will be the silence of the lambs which destroys us. You will be responsible if Pakistan fails.
Sammad Khurram is a student at Harvard University and turned down an award from the US ambassador as a mark of protest against killings of Pakistani soldiers by US drone attacks.
As some one rightly said that the real cause of problem is the WAHABI/SALFI brand of ISLAM . WAHABIS only beilve in destruction , killing the innocent , playing with blood and fire , destroying cities and buildings , raping the innocent woman , behading young man , robbery ,kidnapping and every thing which makes the life of a common MUSLIM misreable, amazingly all this is done on the name of ISLAM.
SAY NO TO WAHABISIM
SAY NO TO TALIBAN.
This notion that people of Swat support these thugs is totally wrong. The Taliban have scared people with their killings and their hangings and cutting off peoples noses and ears, so obviously no one dares to say anything. These Taliban are the Nazis of our times.
I urge everyone to read this excellent op-ed by Mosharraf Zaidi in The News, one of the best new op-ed writers in ENglish in Pakistan today. And not just because it mentions Adil Najam and Pakistaniat.
THE TALIBAN WILL BE DEFEATED
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Mosharraf Zaidi
The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.
The young lust that infuriates the fascist Flintstones of Malakand is only the beginning of the love chronicles that will extinguish the little ember that they mistake for a raging fire. The little ember they mistake for populist wildfire is disenchantment with the failing state in this country. Unfortunately for these comedic miscarriages of reality there is only one raging fire in Pakistan. It is the fire in the cities. Sure there are randomly distributed fascist mullahs in the cities too, and many of them have taken the choreography of Sufi Mohammad to heart. But if it was so easy to convert the madrasas of this country into the nodes of a bloody fascist Flintstone revolution, it would have already happened.
The real love affair that the Taliban and their ilk should be scared of is the incandescent passion with which Pakistanis, religious and irreligious, love this big, bulking behemoth of a country. March 15 may be a long and distant memory in the newspapers, but its markings on the DNA of Pakistan are still fresh. The scars that it has left are still raw, and the traditional elite in this country has not forgotten the humiliation of that day. Both the feudal politicians and the wannabe-feudal military leaders in this country grossly mis-underestimated (a Bushism all too appropriate for this Pakistan) the size and heat of the movement to restore the judiciary. The Taliban, the TNSM and the Lal Masjid Brigades repeat the mistakes made by the traditional elite, for good reason. Their DNA is imprinted with the “Made By The Traditional Elite of Pakistan” label. And let’s not be blinded by opportunism, paralysed by our romance for family dynasties or constrained by our personal politics. The defence establishment in this country that has cultivated irrational public discourse under the cloak of religion in Pakistan has not been alone in the endeavour. Their feudal dance partners have been central in enabling and facilitating the rot. Controlling the mosques with their left hands, and the triggers of civilian and military guns with their right–the traditional elite have caved in to the demands for Nifaz-e-Adl because they prefer the faux wrath of a perverted distributive justice agenda to the real and irresistible agenda for reform and renewal in Pakistan’s cities.
The MQM understands this urban agenda for reform and renewal better than any political party in the country, which is why, despite the clear and obvious threats that a free judiciary poses to the operational fidelity of the MQM, the party made a conscious decision not to allow another May 12 to transpire this March. It is also why the MQM has spoken loudly and proudly against the ridiculous handing over of Pakistani sovereignty to the Flintstones of Malakand. Most of all, the MQM’s depth of relationship with urban sentiment is evident in the starkly different rhetoric that defines engagement with the issues between Pakistan’s Gucci and Prada liberals on the one hand, and the MQM’s leadership on the other. Convening an ulema conference was a stroke of urban Pakistan genius by the party. No self-respecting secular, progressive liberal (sic) would be caught dead at such a convention. Hence the difference between the MQM (a serious power-player in this country), and cheese and cracker liberals (a loud but politically sterile minority). As much as the lawyers’ movement was an a-religious movement, it was not amoral. And Pakistan’s people (even the ones in nice cars in the city working for banks and educated in the American Midwest) still draw moral inspiration primarily from Islam.
Since handing over the mosque to the wretched of South Asia at Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s request, Muslims here have slowly but surely abdicated their faith to a newfangled clergy. Their primary instrument in sustaining their ownership of the mosque and madrasa, and all the symbols that go with them, is a supremely confident ignorance.
The language of religious discourse is dripping with Islamic symbolism. There is no reason for Pakistan to be shy of engaging the clergy with the same symbols. Indeed, it is the uncontested monopolisation of those symbols that has enabled the current rot. More often than not, the mullahs will lose the argument. Ignorant rants have a very short lease of life. Simply put, there are more Hakim Saids in Pakistan’s Muslim history than there are Sufi Mohammads. Fought properly, there is only one outcome in the battle for the soul of Pakistan–victory for the peace-loving masses, and defeat for the firestorm-fanning agents of irrationality.
Of course, the MQM represents a deeply compromised flag-bearer for the political fight against the Taliban. Despite a much-reformed party agenda, the ethnic affiliation of its top leadership is an issue that has consistently kept it from growing beyond urban Sindh. Moreover, rather ironically, its political choices since 1999 have put it directly at odds with urban Punjab. Ultimately, the alliance between urban Sindh and urban Punjab is a natural and inevitable one. This inevitability was all too visible to President Asif Ali Zardari, and it is what inspired the unnatural alliance between the PPP and the MQM–two parties that were at opposite ends of the violence and mayhem of May 12. Despite the federalist benefits of the PPP-MQM alliance, and the dangers of a rural Sindh that has no allies in either Punjab or in Karachi, this political expedience has a limited shelf life.
Of course, the challenge in Punjab is the PML-N’s ability to continue to be a vessel for the articulation of urban Pakistan’s political ethos. Taking on the mullah without abdicating its centrist Muslim identity is a critical challenge for the PML-N. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the natural role of taking on the mullah belongs to the PPP. Today’s PPP, lacking the brilliance of a Bhutto as its field marshal, is hurting. It is unable to seamlessly integrate the feudal tendencies of its electoral strength with the urbane (not urban) sensibilities of its somewhat exceptional cadre of highly qualified advisors. The growing wisdom and alacrity of the prime minister notwithstanding, the PPP will take at least a generation to grow into a viable force in Pakistan’s new urban frontier. Until then, to stay alive, compromise with the most unpalatable negotiating-table partners is all the party can do. This is doubly true for the ANP, which has been unfairly burdened with the blame for the deal. In fact, the ANP has done what every party other than the MQM will do in the same situation. Without a military that is willing to take the battlefield heat, political parties have no choice but to find compromise solutions to intractable problems.
None of the Realpolitik of the day, however, alters the bottom-line truth about Pakistan in 2009. There is a big set of unresolved issues around which violent extremists are able to construct a rationale for their murderous campaign for power. The resonance and appeal of these issues is undeniable. The bloodshed at Lal Masjid in 2007, the covert sexual revolution that has taken place on the back of a massive telecom boom, and the collateral damage of drone attacks, all have serious play in mainstream Pakistan.
But these issues are not the sole informants of Pakistaniat–to use Adil Najam’s phraseology. They are among a larger galaxy of issues. Proof of this is in the political performance of the rightwing, even as recently as the Feb 18, 2008, elections. Despite the bread-and-butter nature of these issues in urban and rural Pakistan, the religious right failed to win back the gifts handed to it by the deeply flawed elections of 2002. The key question is not whether the religious right in Pakistan can mobilise meaningful numbers to actualise its vision for a strait-jacketed and irrational Pakistan. They cannot. Even though these issues are shared across a broad spectrum, the religious right is tone-deaf, and politically irrelevant. And if the JUI and JI and their cohorts can’t win the street, the Taliban don’t have a chance.
The key question, therefore, is not about the populism of the Taliban, the TNSM, or any violent extremists in Pakistan. It is whether Pakistani Muslims will remain hostage to their sense of religious inferiority to the mullah. In fear of violating the precepts of a faith to which most Pakistanis are still deeply committed, will the people give mullahs like Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid carte blanche to destroy this country? The MQM’s ulema conference may cause all kinds of squirming, but it answers the question unequivocally. No, they will not.
The love affair of the Pakistani people with their country is a firewall that will hold. Violent extremists can flog the odd alleged straying couple, but they cannot flog 172 million people. They cannot win this war, and that is why they’re so angry all the time.
I suggest you run for office in the next elections in PK. We need people like you to have a say in the parliament.
Maybe you should form a party with other like minded people who abhor the Taliban.
Friends: It