BY BEENA SARWAR
Of the many challenges Pakistan’s elected government faces,
perhaps the most menacing and deep-rooted is Talibanisation – a phenomenon
identified earlier on by the then exiled Afghan government’s acting foreign
minister, Abdullah Abdullah, on September 21, 2000, in his address to the United
Nations General Assembly.
Pleading for urgent measures to combat this threat, Abdullah
wondered "how far the evil threat of Talibanism shall expand… before the
conscience of the international community would be awakened, not to just
consider but to adopt immediate and drastic preventive measures."
His warnings fell on deaf ears. Today Pakistan bears the brunt
of the Taliban fallout thanks to short-sighted Pakistanis fixated on creating an
illusionary ‘strategic depth’ and Americans who thought routing the Taliban
militarily in Afghanistan, thanks to superior technology, would ‘root out the
evil’. All it did was push their support base underground for a while even as
the political vacuum created by mainstream Pakistani party leaders being in
exile allowed the Taliban-sympathetic Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (also
referred to by Benazir Bhutto as the Mullah Military Alliance) to win elections
and strengthen these forces.
They have been gaining ground since Pakistan’s creation, with
formulations like the Objectives Resolution. The process accelerated with
successive governments pandering to right-wing ideologues who practically took
over the country during the Afghan war. Then it suited Washington and its
allies, including the Zia regime, to arm and train the mujahideen and initiate
what the political scientist, Dr Eqbal Ahmad, called ‘jihad international’.
Writers and artists also courageously took on these elements.
The dozens of works exhibited (in January 2009) by the Peshawar-based
cartoonist, Zahoor, at The Second Floor in Karachi included one dated December
23, 2007 in which he personifies a cloud as an armed, bearded man (‘Taliban’
inscribed on his turban) hovering ominously overhead, moving from Darra towards
Peshawar. Another cartoon, titled ‘Scenic Swat Valley’, shows a mean-faced,
hirsute volcano overseeing a pile of burning television sets.
Perhaps most prescient was the short story writer, Ghulam Abbas,
who, during another time of ‘enlightened moderation’ (Ayub Khan’s), predicted
the logical conclusion of organised bigotry and fanaticism in ‘Hotel Mohenjodaro’,
a futuristic story in which guests at the fictional Hotel Mohenjodaro celebrate
Pakistan becoming the first country to send a man to the moon (Abbas wrote it in
1967 or so, before Neil Armstrong’s feat).
Mullahs around the country condemn the astronaut’s act as
heretical. They whip up a frenzy that topples the government, grab power,
destroy universities, schools and libraries and impose strict gender
segregation. They ban music, art, English and modern inventions – but don’t mind
using these inventions (loudspeakers then, the Internet, television and FM radio
stations now) for their own purposes. Their infighting leads to anarchy.
Pakistan is invaded and destroyed. Years later a tour guide points to the spot
in a desert "where, before the enemy struck, stood the Hotel Mohenjodaro".
The Taliban have already reduced many hotels and educational
institutions to rubble in Swat and other previously idyllic areas. Recovery from
the nightmare they have unleashed will take much time once it is over. And over
it must be, later if not sooner. In the long term, as academic and writer,
Pervez Hoodbhoy, predicts, "the forces of irrationality will cancel themselves
out because they act at random whereas reason pulls only in one direction."
Those who justify the Taliban uprising in Pakistan as an
anti-imperialist movement forget that since the Taliban first swept into
Afghanistan in 1996 (with the blessings of the Pakistani establishment), they
have been a threat to women, pluralism and democracy in the region. Their
oppressive order in Afghanistan predates the American invasion of Iraq, bombing
of Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan.
Although many Afghans initially welcomed the Taliban for their
‘speedy justice’, oppressive measures like closing girls’ schools and pushing
women out of the public sphere added to the people’s miseries. Forced to give up
their jobs, thousands of women, the sole bread-earners for their families, had
three choices: beggary, starvation or prostitution.
Pushed out of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban and their
ideological extensions began attempting to enforce this order in Pakistan. Over
the past months they have closed or demolished scores of girls’ schools in Swat
and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), forcing thousands of girls
to discontinue their education.
The diary of a seventh-grade Swat schoolgirl writing under the
pen name, ‘Gul Makai’, (BBC Urdu Online) bears poignant testimony to these
horrors. On January 3, she wrote, "I had a terrible dream yesterday with
military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of
the military operation in Swat… I was afraid going to school because the Taliban
had banned all girls from attending schools." That day only 11 out of 27
students attended class because of the Taliban’s edict. Three of her friends had
already moved to Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families. In the
latest instalment, her own family has moved to Islamabad.
Here in Karachi, even my seventh-grade-old daughter argues that
all this has nothing to do with Islam.
What it has to do with is territorial control and power. As the
historian, Rajesh Kadian, notes, most of Asia’s major countries are "frayed at
the edges with central authority barely maintaining the functions, power and
dignity of the state". Pakistan’s "frayed fringe", the FATA, was strategically
important to the West during the Afghan war and after 9/11. The exception was
"the extraordinary valley of Swat", the cradle of Tibetan Buddhism, the home of
Shah Mir whose piety converted the Kashmiris to Islam, boasting the highest
literacy rates in the area, especially among women. By targeting this peaceful,
settled area with its diverse cultural and religious traditions, the Taliban
have made life hell for its residents. They have also challenged the writ of the
state by establishing their own parallel system.
This would have been impossible if the heavily armed and trained
Pakistan army meant business. Instead, they said they were unable to even
neutralise the FM radio station from which daily announcements were made of the
Taliban’s next targets. The army’s recently stated resolve to work in tandem
with the civilian government counters public perceptions about its reluctance to
do just that. Somewhere, the will seems to be lacking. It will continue to
remain lacking unless those who control Pakistan realise that the target of
these ‘jihadi’ forces is not just to control some areas but to overrun the
entire country, just as Ghulam Abbas predicted.
(Beena Sarwar is a freelance journalist and documentary
filmmaker based in Karachi. This article was published on the Dawn’s
Internet edition on February 7, 2009.)
Courtesy: Dawn – the Internet Edition;
www.dawn.com