Let’s get real

How many Pakistanis does it take to change a light bulb? Change? Pakistan cannot and will not ever change. Not even two months have passed since the Army Public School attack in Peshawar, a supposedly epoch-making tragedy which would forever change our perception of militancy.
Nothing will ever be the same, we were told – and it wasn’t. At least not for a few days when everyone was on the same page and reading the same script. The script being read, with its emphasis on executions and military justice, may have been too macabre for the situation but one could at least take some solace from the unity.
We are now back to our depressingly familiar divisions. Imran Khan is back moaning about rigging. The MQM and PPP are at each other’s throats in Karachi. Electricity, petrol and gas may be available someday but today, tomorrow and the day after are not those days. Ghulam Ahmed Bilour is once again offering money for the murder of cartoonists. Lawyers are out in the street voicing support for Mumtaz Qadri. Oh look, there were six more polio cases last month.
The government of the day has its head in the hand, pretending everyone is happy with its performance, with the prime minister giving speeches detached from reality laying out the accomplishments of his team. The more things change…
Nawaz Sharif was in Karachi recently talking about the things prime ministers talk about when in Karachi: commerce and political violence. At the same time Shia worshippers at an imambargah were killed in a bomb attack. It probably never occurred to Nawaz that he should go to Shikarpur and show solidarity – or whatever term it is we now use for prime ministers expressing sorrow and then doing nothing about it.
Solidarity is not for what we euphemistically call sectarian issues. Rote words of condemnation, safely delivered from parliament, so that militant groups with strong bases of Sunni support especially in Punjab know that it isn’t really meant are the only thing on offer.
Who carried out the Shikarpur attack? Jundallah, a militant group based in Karachi which has vowed to eradicate all attacks took responsibility. Does it matter? Not really. The National Action Plan, that sacred document of our post-Peshawar consensus, has the same view insofar as it claims no distinction will be made between different militant groups. But we have always made such distinctions and will continue to do so. That is why Hafiz Saeed, ASWJ and others can protestc against cartoons openly, why some of them even receive protection from the government.
Let’s get real. We aren’t about to launch operations against every militant group in the country for the simple reason that we can’t. Doing so would require sending the army into every city of Pakistan, to aerially bombard every major urban area. It should go without saying this is something no one wants. We need to be fighting a stealth war by going after their sources of funding, disrupting their activities and making it a crime to be a member of these groups.
Apart from the operation in North Waziristan, the fight against militancy will properly be a law-enforcement task. The problem is we don’t have enough laws to enforce or the will to enforce those that are on the books.
Consider this: in 2012 when attacks carried out by militant organisations had reached their peak there were a total of 45 banned groups in the country. Nearly half of them were Baloch separatist groups. People can argue about the often-violence tactics of the separatists or even the justification for the Baloch nationalist movement but the state, in deed and action, has shown that it considers it to be an equal evil to the militancy problem.
The list still has not been updated to include the new names of previously banned organisations. This is a political, not legal, problem. There is no chance that if Baloch separatists changed their names they would be allowed to operate freely. Militant groups can do so because the state is seen by some as having a vested interest in their doing so, whether because it wants to keep them around to fight future wars in India and Afghanistan or out of fear of the monster it created.
At times like these, when the government has abdicated its basic responsibility to secure our lives, we have two options: despair or distraction. Despair doesn’t have the therapeutic benefits of distraction. So we can cheer Pakistan on at the World Cup this month, watch reruns of Coke Studio and find small peaceful enclaves. Let us just not fall for denial. There is no denying now that militancy will not be overcome in this generation or even the next. One operation cannot do anything when the cancer has spread to the entire body. These groups are now as Pakistani as Pakola and Shan Masala.
The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. Email: nadir.hassan@gmail.com