The enemy is us

And this enemy comes most visibly in the form of sloppy thinking---thinking either plain misguided or consciously perverse. Take the latest offering from those great self-appointed champions of secular thinking, our friends in the MQM, who seldom fail to amaze but who on this occasion have outdone themselves by declaring that the displaced people of Swat and Buner had best stick to the Frontier province and on no account make their way to Karachi and Sindh. For sheer insensitivity this stance, trumpeted as if it was the last stance of reason, takes the prize.

They are for the military operation in Swat but they are not for sharing the consequences of that operation.

Amazing, is it not, that the first of our Mohajirs, uprooted from their Indian homes by the holocaust of Partition, should now be singing such a tune, so altogether bereft of sympathy, and even common understanding, for the displaced of a new generation? How times change and how sympathies and prejudices take on a new colouring.

Pakistani secularism comes in strange forms indeed. Its leading advocates are not content to express their opinion through the power of words alone. Some ingrained sense of fear or insecurity impels them to consider an opinion not an opinion unless it is backed up by street violence and unless it brings life in Karachi to a halt. Like the lady in Hamlet who protested too much, our friends in Karachi are always protesting too much.

A siege mentality is an affair of the mind. You can live in the most secure of fortresses and yet feel besieged. You can rule Karachi and Hyderabad and yet feel insecure.

Talibanism has nothing to do with a particular religion. It too is an affair of the mind. In the United States it becomes the Ku Klux Klan, in Europe fascism, in India the ideology of the RSS, in Afghanistan the creed of Mullah Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden, in Swat the self-righteous dogmatism of Haji Muslim Khan and his brand of

Kalashnikov-toting proselytisers..

In Pakistan we have two variants of Talibanism: fundamentalist and secularist. The use of violence to further their aims, to convey a sense of their power and to instil fear into the hearts of their opponents, is central to both variants. Violence can come in many forms, including the slitting of throats or the subtle use of the drill machine. There is no beating this choice: a knife across your throat or a drill machine caressing your knee.

We are in a state of war, no doubt about it, and the enemy is as much the likes of Baitullah Mehsud and Maulana Fazlullah as our penchant for loose thinking. For thirty years the army chased shadows in Afghanistan and the nation is paying the price of that folly now. One can only hope that the army has finally exorcised those shadows and ghosts and given up on such priceless notions as 'strategic depth' and 'strategic assets'. If the Taliban were ever a strategic asset, what would be the definition of a strategic liability?

What did we ever do to deserve that king of darkness, General Ziaul Haq? Weren't we Islamic or Muslim enough at our birth for him to emerge on the scene, for God knows what sins we committed, determined to convert the Pakistani nation to Islam once again? And as if he wasn't enough we now have the Taliban of Waziristan and Swat.

What did we ever do to deserve the Hadood laws? They were not meant for the greater glory of Islam. They were meant to appease Saudi Arabia from which, in 1979, a broke Ziaul Haq wanted to borrow some money. That exigency has passed but those laws which have contributed their bit to distorting Pakistan remain.

Why do we seem to be destiny's favourite child? After Ziaul Haq, that other gift to a hapless nation, Pervez Musharraf, and now Asif Zardari. Yet, come to think of it, Pakistan has carried all these crosses and survived. There is no more telling testimony than this to our resilience. Countries much better placed than ours could not have survived unscathed from encounters with the kind of paladins we've had. Even now, despite the burden of ineptitude we carry, we are not rebelling against Zardari, constantly reminding ourselves that he is our constitutionally-elected president. We are just mentally training ourselves to forget that he is president. This shows a mental toughness that other nations could envy.

But this strength would be multiplied many times over if finally, through the ordeal of fire which is our present war, we could leave some of our confusion behind and forge a new national identity.

All talk of why Pakistan was created should now end. Enough of such metaphysics. The frequent references we are fond of making regarding Jinnah's vision of Pakistan should also be kept to one side because--and here I would beseech all self-appointed patriots and guardians of whatever passes for the national flame not to lunge for their holsters immediately--Jinnah's vision of Pakistan is set out in a montage of snippets and statements which taken together do not lead to a picture either coherent or plain.

Over a life spent in monumental struggle Jinnah said many things. Islamists and even fire-breathing maulanas can pick out things from his various speeches to support their point of view and so-called liberals and secularists can endlessly quote Jinnah's Aug 11, 1947, address to the Constituent Assembly to declare his espousal of a secular state. There are subjects which can be debated until the end of time without arriving at any conclusion and the meaning of Pakistan and the interpretation of religion are two such items.

The purpose of any state is to enable its citizens to live well--to ensure the creation of conditions which enable them to live in security and comfort and with a sense of fulfilment. These should be our national mottoes. After the success of the Bolshevik revolution Lenin was asked what was communism and he famously replied, "Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country." Bear in mind, please, that in 1920 or so the goal of nation-wide electrification was something worth striving for.

So what should be the meaning of Pakistan? Freedom from want and deprivation. An end to the tyranny of officialdom, the most pervasive tyranny across the broad spaces of our country. And every child of school-going age, boy and girl, in school studying the same books and subject to the same curriculum throughout the country. The day this happens and the day we have the sense to invest in a railway system which takes passengers from Karachi to Peshawar in less than 10 hours--with reasonably comely stewardesses (no male stewards please) serving passengers--Jinnah's Pakistan will have arrived..

Lahore has been hit once more by terrorism. The answer to this latest outrage is not to go about with bowed heads and cowed looks but to vow that come what may terrorism--and the votaries of Islam at the point of a gun--will be defeated.

Religion is an aspect of the human condition. It will always be there. There are rabbis in Jerusalem just as there are monks all over in Bangkok. But these just represent one tone of colour in a painting with many other hues. Mosque and seminary, revered shrine and saint, will always be part of the national landscape in Pakistan. But the gun sprouting from mosque and seminary, contorted faces breathing fire and venom from spaces where should reign the spirit of peace and forbearance, is an aberration which through folly, neglect and sloppy thinking we have allowed to grow. The time has come to put an end to this aberration.

So the war we find ourselves in is apart from being a challenge is also an opportunity to leave our past behind. If we had not strength as a nation the people of Mardan and Swabi would not have taken to their hearts, and into their homes, the people of Buner and Swat. A million plus refugees anywhere in Europe or America would have caused mass rioting. We have many faults but narrowness of heart, I think, is not one of them.

So forward and let us make Danton's motto our motto: "Audacity, more audacity and always audacity." Half-measures and weakness of spirit will just not do.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com