Cannibal country

Is it possible for countries to be cannibals? The more one takes in the sights and sounds of Pakistan circa 2014, the more it feels like it may be.
Abdul Aziz is not yet six years removed from the humiliation of fleeing the Red Mosque in a burqa, thereby offering bitter and besieged Pakistani liberals a valuable and hilarious propaganda tool. Except that the joke, as it always is, is on them, and on the memory of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and the assortment of other founding fathers, including The Aga Khan.
Yet there he is, Abdul Aziz, serving the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan better than any suicide bomber ever has. With every passing second that he is on television, embittered and angry Pakistanis of every ethnicity and every class background find more and more right with him, and wrong with the state infrastructure and politics that claim to be Jinnah’s true legacy. That is why ratings-starved channels pile on the coverage.
Some brave anchors try to face the music in the public domain, but the music is not very loud. It is the world’s smallest violin. ‘Why, oh why do you give terrorists space on your shows?’, goes the desperate, pathetic question. Many a reason are cited, but the truth barely shows itself. The Pakistani media is under direct threat by the armed wing of Abdul Aziz’s people – that is, all of them.
Concurrently, the state has neither the appetite nor the courage to protect the media. It is perfectly happy protecting the VIPs that are supposed to use that protection in the service of the nation. How adorable that we would think in straight lines in an Islamic Republic that deliberately and knowingly validates and cleanses the sins of men like Abdul Aziz.
The debate between those that urge fierce action against terrorists and those that adjure us to talk to them misses many points, but the one that is scariest is that the ‘state’ has very little sympathy among the target audience of the TTP. Pakistan has spent its entire

history abandoning the weak and vulnerable, and now wants to take on a fighting force of mercenaries, terrorists, drug smugglers, kidnappers, petty thieves, vigilantes and holy warriors because its job is to protect us?
That proposition in itself is pretty Kafkaesque. But the icing on the cake is that these mercenaries, terrorists, drug smugglers, kidnappers, petty thieves, vigilantes and holy warriors were birthed from the very womb of the state that now seeks to ‘talk’ them down, and ‘eliminate’ them – depending on what side of this silly talks vs operations debate you are on.
Meanwhile, the weak and vulnerable, no less than at least half the population of the country but more like three quarters of it, are being serenaded with a tune that they have been programmed to fall asleep to. This lullaby of the enforcement of a true Islamic system, being sung by everyone in the TTP and then hordes of others within the mainstream media and across the political spectrum also comes with icing. The icing on this cake is that the programming of the nation to this Islamic ‘oasis’ was also birthed from the very womb of the state that now has no idea how to handle the dope rhymes of the Fresh Prince of Swat, Mullah Fazlullah and DJ Abdul Aziz.
Ironically, the biggest vacuum in the current discourse is not between those that have successfully Trojan Horsed Islam (ie the TTP and violent extremists), and those that have dropped the baton (Jinnahist Islamic republicans – ie the Pakistani establishment). The biggest vacuum is between those that have power, and those that suffer that power. The TTP is painting its Trojan Horse in the colours of green jihad, but it is powered by an engine that picks away at the disparity between Pakistan’s have-a-lots, and have-nots. This isn’t the class warfare that leftists get teary-eyed and goose-bumpy about. It is about who this state has been working for all these years.
The state works for Pakistan’s generals and brigadiers, it works for its ministers, MPAs, MNAs, it works for secretaries, additional secretaries, joint secretaries, IGs, AIGs and DIGs, it works for chief justices, and judges, it works for big businesses, and bigger farmers. Over the last 30 years, it has begun to work for pilots unions, and lower level employees of the state. Sometimes it works for union councillors, sometimes not. Thanks to Ziaul Haq, it works for the pesh imam at the local mosque and his buddies.
That is a long list. Yet not exhaustive. There are many the state does not work for. It does not work for 25 million out-of-school children. It does not work for those children’s parents. It does not work for the mothers that get sick trying to make baby boys, instead of baby girls. It does not work for disabled Pakistanis. It does not work for landless peasants, and the un-landed poor. It does not work for factory workers or brick kiln workers. It does not work for domestic servants and household help. It does not work the beggars that ply their trade on Shahrae Faisal, or Main Boulevard, or the Margalla Road traffic signals. It does not work for anyone with a land dispute.
Over the years, many of those for whom the state steadfastly refuses to work have innovated and found ways to make do. A gun is a compelling negotiating partner when one is stuck in a bad contract, or a land dispute. It is an even better partner when one is stuck in urban poverty. Phone snatching, a Karachi epidemic, is now treated like a normal fact of life. Our collective conscience has been numbed by the bombardment of the abnormal.
Children, women, old people, minorities and other weak and vulnerable groups in this country are guaranteed protection by the constitution. Yet they remain weak and vulnerable. So when people like me sing the praises of the constitution, I wonder how they feel.
The TTP is not wondering. And neither is Abdul Aziz or his many fans. They know that the constitution, an English language document that codifies the conceptual framework of a society designed to protect and enable a minority, has a fundamental weakness. It has never been used in aid of the people that need the aid most. It has been used as a piñata for lawyers who have made billions because of the sins of military generals, elected politicians, corrupt judges, crooked bureaucrats and hordes of criminals, mostly big, that always get away with it.
There is undoubtedly an information war that Pakistan is losing to the TTP. There is also a ground war that, judging from the carnage at Shama Cinema in Peshawar and at Shah Latif Colony in Karachi, Pakistan is losing to the TTP. But the most critical battle that Pakistan keeps losing is not to the TTP, but to itself.
The TTP will never provide justice, or schools or maternal and neonatal health, or clean drinking water. It will never be able to build a Pakistan worth living in. But it basically is saying that neither can Pakistan as it is currently configured. The reason no national leader wants to lead is because they don’t have a compelling response to that challenge. That’s what happens in cannibal countries.
The writer is an analyst and commentator.