What factors are stopping the
Pakistan government from taking stern action against the terrorists? Why not
just launch an all out attack on the Taliban and try to end it once and for
all?
In our society, apart from the liberal few, we have always been
told about the importance of religion and its hardline interpretations. As you
know the entire Khyber Pukhtunkhwa along with majority of rural and urban
areas are in the direct control of Mullahs and the people living, especially in
the FATA, consider the religion and its hardline interpretations as the
basic element that every human soul must follow. When they see the modernizing
trends being adopted by people all over Pakistan, they tend to label the rest
of Pakistanis as un-religious.
As far as my research into the matter prevails, these guys
now acting as Pakistani Taliban, were trained by our military, in camps of
Kohat. Once being the part of the LASHKAR, that was created to maintain law and
order situations in the remote areas. The Lashkar received special trainings
from special forces in order to make them strong and able to defend themselves
in the Guerrilla Warfare in a very difficult terrain. The primary task of this
Lashkar was the policing of the Tribal Areas, after every roadblock of FC, the
Taliban had their own check post, which was considered very difficult to pass
by the people who were into the smuggling of arms and drugs.
The important thing is the transition of these guys from the
ones who were able to protect large areas from crimes to becoming the ones
responsible for conducting attacks on major areas of Pakistan. The secondary
significance of keeping these guys as a force was to manipulate things in Afghanistan,
which of course Pakistan considered as its own province. It was very important
for Pakistan to maintain its presence in Afghanistan, mainly in order to keep
the Indians at an arm’s length of influence on the west side of Pakistan.
Another aim was to develop a force that could work on destabilizing agendas of
Pakistan, primarily in Indian Occupied Kashmir. 9/11 was when things went
wrong, Pakistan choose to part ways with these guys and the entire ideology of
keeping an armed movement in order to destabilize India got a heavy punch on
its face. Please don’t forget that we always relied on these Jihadi groups in
all wars with India and the liberation of Kashmir in 1948.
The Musharraf regime was hardcore on eliminating this
Talibanization, however, he was and still is opposed mainly due to conducting
an operation on Lal Masjid of Islamabad, which I think held extreme importance,
and without an operation, the entire state was in jeopardy. Musharraf had to
visit courts, because he was facing cases in which he was charged with murder
and treason, he was asked about the legitimacy of his operation in Lal Masjid.
What more legitimate ground can one possibly need, when people are creating a separate
country in a state?
This is where things get tense, we all want to get rid of
terrorism, but at the same point we don’t want to end extremism from our
society. We are the people who kill Governors for supporting a woman who was
charged with a death sentence. We are the people who fill up the necks of the
murderers with roses, just because he killed a person who was not an
appropriate Muslim in the eyes of Mullahs. And we are the people who kill non-Muslim
by burning them alive. We do all that in the name of religion.
Our society is embedded deep with extremist elements, the
Mullahs today still support the terrorists, and don’t even condemn their acts
of terror. So, we are not just facing a group of people, and eliminating them
would end this menace. We need someone to guide our masses, to modernize
ourselves and let go of the extremism in our society. Not very far away, in our
capital Islamabad, there are still mosques that hold Kashmir Jihad Hiring very
openly. These fighters are still being created in the name of religion, and we
will continue to die unless this radicalism is changed. I hope that is done
before the entire fabric of our society is ripped apart.
