And why hasn’t a ten-day mourning period been declared for Hakeemullah Mehsud? To hear the tearful reaction from some of our politicos and television pundits it would seem it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine killed in a drone attack and not the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, an outfit at war with the state of Pakistan. When Osama bin Laden was killed the army went into mourning, citing breach of national sovereignty. Hakeemullah Mehsud’s killing has plunged much of the political class into mourning, Imran Khan and Nisar Ali Khan, the interior minister, the two mourners-in-chief. The Jamaat-e-Islami chief, Munawar Hasan, has dubbed him a shaheed (martyr). When Hazara Shiites were massacred in Quetta Nisar spoke in a roundabout manner, taking good care not to say anything about the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which had claimed responsibility. When the Peshawar church was attacked and Qissa Khawani bazaar bombed there was not a word about the Taliban, and no blame on them for sabotaging peace prospects. Three PTI MPAs have been killed in Taliban attacks. There has not been a word of anger about the Taliban from Imran Khan. But Hakeemullah’s death has unhinged both our champions, Imran promising to block the Nato supply route through the Khyber Pass. Imran and Nisar were contemporaries at Aitchison College, both in the college cricket team. If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton and Harrow – a typical bit of British exaggeration, for without Marshal Blucher’s Prussians the battle would have been lost – can some of the confusion being spread in Pakistani minds on the drone issue be traced to the playing fields of Aitchison? These are not double standards. This is just the way Imran and people like Nisar really are. They can see only one side of the picture and for them the spread of terrorism is only because of one source: drone attacks. There may be every variety of jihadist fighters in North Waziristan: Chechen, Uzbek, and Arab. The Taliban aim may be to impose their version of Islam on the whole of Pakistan. These factors are lost on our super-nationalists. Nawaz Sharif, to give him his due, is not of this uni-dimensional tribe. His take on the terrorism issue is more pragmatic than that of the single-issue Nisar (although Nisar too is pragmatic in a way, his family holding American citizenship). But Nawaz Sharif thinks he has to play to the gallery. So he says one thing in public, going into contortions before the media, and another when he sits across President Obama in the Oval Office. To repeat, we are capable of great folly. But mostly it has been self-inflicted folly. No one held a pistol to our heads to force us down those paths. Take our American alliances, from the 1950s to Musharraf’s time: none of them was forced on us. We accepted them willingly, often ecstatically. The army is not confused, the politicians are. The Taliban have been waging a war against the state of Pakistan. Their havens, their rear bases, are located amongst some of the toughest terrain on earth. Google the geography and you’ll get an idea. Now the one thing able to beat this terrain is drone technology. The Taliban are not afraid of our tanks and helicopters. Only drones cause them sleepless nights. It was said of Hakeemullah that he never spent two nights in one location. On that eventful day he spent too long at his newly-constructed house near Miramshah and the drones got him. After claiming involvement in the deaths of several CIA agents in the Khost suicide bombing (the perpetrator a Jordanian) in Dec 2009, Hakeemullah was high on the list of the CIA’s wanted men. Only a fool would think that if the CIA had him in its sights it would let him go. To reduce terrorism and extremism to drone strikes is the greatest lie of all. Terrorism has other causes, going right down to the beginnings of our Afghan involvement. Yes, drones are a convenient alibi, freeing us of the responsibility of taking tough decisions. But let’s be careful what we wish for. Soon the Americans will be gone and with them will go, in all probability, their drone technology. Then we’ll be there and the mountains, and of course the Taliban, and we may just come to miss what we are denouncing so furiously today. thenews.pk/Todays-News-9-212297-Why-isnt-the-national-flag-flying-at-half-mast
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 17:13:17 +0000
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