http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\11\10\story_10-11-2010_pg3_6
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 COMMENT: Tolerating religious violence -Shahid Saeed How can we forget the victims of merciless sectarian clashes in our country? How can we begin to form a narrative that ignores that militancy, extremism and targeting civilians has had a long history in our country? It has become a cliché to associate militancy solely with Ziaul Haq and his policies. It is the people who tolerated the existence of militants Another day, another bombing and dozens of innocent civilians become the victims of monsters claiming to uphold the flag of religion. There is the usual condemnation of attacks from all sectors of society, debate on approaches to controlling and eliminating terrorism and, while nobody says it, the inevitable wait until the demons strike again. Out of this perpetual state of being terror-stricken, the theory about extremism that has emerged - both naturally and crafted by media pundits and opinion makers - is that this is a post-9/11 response, something of a by-product to the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan and a temporary phase that owes its existence solely to the US invasion of Afghanistan. Its death therefore is inevitable with a pullout of foreign troops from the region. Reality cannot be further from this. Any rational person cannot associate the presence of US troops in a neighbouring country with a suicide bombing that targets civilians (mercilessly, women and children) in a market, at a university or any place in the territorial boundaries of our country. There exists a relationship between the presence of foreign troops and the existence of militant movements in the region, but a callous and immoral association that ignores the history of terrorism, militancy and widespread violence in Pakistan is outrightly wrong. Throughout the 1990s, not only did we fight a proxy war in Kashmir, where we sent armed men to 'liberate' the country through force, we saw one of the biggest battles between the sects of one faith in the country. The entire decade was one of bloodbaths where sectarian organisations killed thousands across the country. If the people have forgotten the massacre of thousands, let me remind them. A dozen people were killed in a bomb blast in Kamoke Bazaar, Gujranwala on June 11, 1996. Around 11 people were killed outside the New Town mosque in Karachi on August 14, 1996. Twenty-five people died when the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) attacked the Iranian Cultural Centre in Multan on January 19, 1997. A bomb explosion in a bus killed 20 people near Sialkot on June 30, 1997. A bomb targeting SSP leader Zia-ur-Rehman Lakhvi killed 25 dutiful policemen outside the Sessions Court in Lahore on January 18, 1997. Twenty-two people were killed on January 11, 1998 in the Mominpura cemetery attack. Seventeen people were killed in an attack on a church in Bahawalpur on October 28, 1997. Sixteen people praying inside an Imambargah were massacred on January 4, 1999. Twelve people were killed in an attack on March 4, 2001 in Sheikhupura. Have we forgotten the bombings of buses across the country? Have we forgotten the brazen attack that killed SSP Ashraf Marath, the Iranian Counsel General Sadiq Ganji and the Iranian air force cadets? What about the Taxila and Murree church attacks? Have we forgotten the bounty Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) had placed on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif? Terrorists did not even spare the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital and killed six when a bomb blast targeted the hospital on April 14, 1996. How can we forget the victims of merciless sectarian clashes in our country? How can we begin to form a narrative that ignores that militancy, extremism and targeting civilians has had a long history in our country? It has become a cliché to associate militancy solely with Ziaul Haq and his policies. It is the people who tolerated the existence of militants, who gave money to the jihadi organisations fighting in Kashmir for a supposedly holy cause, and those who failed to condemn the militants that gave support and strengthened the extremists by their silence. A dangerous narrative that callously and shamelessly ignores the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis at the hands of sectarian militants deserves condemnation. Even if the terrorism of the 90s was seen as restricted, avoidable, and not spread across the heartland of the country, it is fallacious to ignore the history of that era and the fact that those very sectarian organisations have provided the manpower for the terrorist organisations of today. With the prime time fire-breathing demagogues of television hell bent on crafting a narrative that associates terrorism in all its forms with the post-9/11 world, it is not surprising that the public discourse on terrorism has become associated solely with 9/11 and the US presence in Afghanistan. Tactics have changed because of desperation and better security measures, but terrorism has lived on. To forget what happened in that decade is insensitive to the memory of those who died. Terrorism has spread but the underlying issues, ideologies and motivations remain essentially the same. From Parachinar to attacks on Sufi shrines, sectarian militancy is still alive and it contributes personnel to other terrorist organisations. Make no mistake; this is a war of ideologies. Militant organisations are by their very nature prone to factionalism and splintering. These sectarian organisations have been the fodder for many terrorist organisations that blow up civilians day in and day out. Southern Punjab was then the breeding ground of sectarian militant organisations like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and proxy-war jihadis of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, etc. Splinter groups formed from these organisations turned their guns on us a long time ago but the Punjabi Taliban, as they are called, pose a newer challenge. If someone has forgotten the days when jihadi organisations used to collect chanda (charity) outside mosques every Friday, then he is merely deceiving himself, perhaps because he also put a Rs 10 note in their donation box. A society that conveniently forgets its very tolerance of such dangerous elements - perhaps a convenient way of absolving collective guilt - has some serious questions it needs to answer about the use of violence for seeking political and religious goals. Our previous martial saviour was amongst the large number of people who thought organisations with institutional presence in Pakistan who fought proxy wars in Kashmir and in a sense jihadi militants fighting outside Pakistan were not a concern for us. Are we tolerant of violence only until it targets us? Latent tolerance for extremism does come out in one way or another, whether in the form of being ambivalent to attacks on people of another sect or support for attacks on people of another faith, another country or just anybody but yourself. Unless people are convinced that the use of violence in the name of religion for fighting proxy wars and for seeking universalist political goals is unacceptable, we will be vulnerable to attacks. This open tolerance of extremism, especially when there is discrimination based on who the target is, makes the cannon fodder that these militant organisations thrive on. Martin Niemöller's 'First they came...' should be a message for all those who consider violence targeted at people of an identity other than their own as justifiable. The writer is interested in history and public policy. He can be reached at [email protected] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! 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