Bloody learning

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.

Universities are seats of learning. The Bacha Khan University in Charsadda has become particularly so after last week’s soul-sapping carnage. It offers a bloody but significant tutorial on the new shape of terrorism that stalks our land and what we need to do to save our future.

The incident tells us several things. First, it shows that new terrorism relies on mobility and agility, and benefits from the oddity of the targets its selects. The profile of the killers and their ages show they were new recruits who were not heavily armed in the sense of being loaded for a long-drawn out fight.

Their clothes and ages put them somewhere in the lower tier of the terrorists’ selection of fodder for such operations. One news report suggests that one of them may have even been killed by students who reportedly had a gun or two handy in the hostel.

They were restricted by the resistance they got from the guards and, later on, by the police. This means they had not anticipated the response. This is unlike how terrorists plan large missions. Also once on campus they gave the impression of a group on the run rather than on a hunt.

One can only imagine the possible havoc four experienced gun-toting terrorists on a deadly mission could have wreaked on campus with any number of random targets in sight. Thankfully, they failed to make use of the near total vulnerability of the campus and the chaos that ensued after their invasion. If they were hardened killing hands they could have given us an even bigger heart attack. We already know what it could have been like. The Army Public School massacre is brunt deep on our minds.

It is fair to assume, therefore, that the attackers represented a new terror tactic of using young blood to spill blood in spectacular but hurriedly-planned attacks. This is quite unlike the standard tactic (which obviously has not been abandoned) of studying the target for a long period of time and packing the terrorism punch with elaborate planning.

Crudely put, this new form is fast-food terrorism. It does not rely on output but on pure action. It is easier to organise and can be cooked at a short notice involving, possibly, rookies and the uninitiated. Such a product can be introduced at the local level anytime without much or any input from the Central Command.

For countries like Pakistan that are on the edge of their nerves as far as the escalating cost of terrorism is concerned, this swift form of terror is as impactful as the one in which casualties are very high and destruction is large. Charsadda was not APS in terms of numbers, but both are equal in consequence for the state, the government and the people. That Charsadda did not become APS is something to thank our stars for but this does not distract attention from the core fact that it did happen. That was the main aim of the terrorists. That’s the new definition of ‘success’ in this era of swift terrorism.

This implies that we will have to change the way we think and plan to counter terrorism in our midst. Reclaiming territory – a hugely important element in the war against terrorists – now has to be supplemented by a fresh approach that is capable of dealing with low-input but high-intensity incidents of terrorism. Notions like ‘breaking the back of terrorists’ and ‘dismantling their infrastructure’ too need to be revisited. Now we have to imagine terrorists who don’t need permanent havens and an elaborate network to do their dirty work. They can just get up and go with a few guns and some grenades at some distant command that is conveyed through a local facilitator.

This means that the debate over ‘soft and hard targets’ needs to be revised too. The reality is that the distinction between the two – hard and soft – exists only in our heads, and not in the heads of terrorism planners. The mocking of the terrorist by calling him a ‘coward’ for hitting ‘non-military’ targets may be cathartic but in effect is no less meaningless than songs denouncing him for killing schoolchildren and promising to teach his next generation.

It is futile to believe that despite his total ruthlessness, somehow the enemy would make a distinction between soft and hard targets. The enemy doesn’t make this distinction. In fact it never did. World-over soft targets are, have always been, prime targets for terrorists. (The same goes for organised militaries in total and nuclear war situation: civilian centres are fair and preferred game in military planning.)

There have been any number of recent reminders about the redundancy of the assumption that somehow terrorists would leave out ‘soft targets’ from their hits. In Paris it was a concert hall, cafes, markets. In Jakarta, Indonesia, a shopping mall. In Somalia, Tunisia, Turkey, Burkino Faso, beaches tourist resorts, social hang-out spaces. In Afghanistan, practically every place. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has hit colleges, schools, hostels. It has kidnapped and enslaved girls in hundreds. In Iraq and Syria, the Islamic States’ annihilation and collective killing of families of opponents is now well documented.

But we don’t need reminders from abroad about such matters. The list of ‘soft targets’ hit in the last two decades in our own country is exhaustive. We should know that terrorists aim to maximise pain and damage, if not material, then surely psychological. This makes soft targets far more attractive than hard targets.

Our strategy has to focus on protecting soft targets, regardless of how difficult it may seem, as well as hard targets – in fact more so soft targets than hard targets. Planes can be rebought. Buildings can be rebuilt. A student lost or a child orphaned is irreplaceable – a forever loss. The Charsadda bloodbath has restated this lesson.

It has also reminded us – yet again – how counter-productive the so-called positive propaganda is. The grandiose claims of having eliminated terrorism, the pointless game of stating percentages of success, the media-hype to build morale. All this sounds absolutely heavenly till an attack takes place and sends all such talk into an embarrassing retreat. We need to put an end to this vicious cycle of the official narrative’s boom and bust.

It may serve a few to keep on harping the tired refrain of boosting national morale through unverified and at times totally unsubstantiated boasts, but we can certainly do without these. A more realistic mapping of terrorism’s terrain and how inhospitable it can be in the days ahead is sorely needed. Realism is bitter but it is far better than claiming progress that has not been made; it also cushions, in case of a new crisis, the national concussion caused by a straight fall from dizzying fiction to stony facts.

But the most important lesson from the newest count of the dead is that our national register of mourning is nearly full. If we were to mark each event in which we have lost precious lives, there would be hardly any calendar day left vacant. A nation can mourn so much – and not more. It can lose so many – and not more. There is no glory in seeing young lives being cut off in their prime. This is no sacrifice. This is no honour. This is suffering. This is shame.

The argument that the war on terror is ‘ongoing’ wins no hearts. It convinces no minds. It is pure deceit. The national interest is in the decisive closure of military campaigns. (Do we need the Americans to tell us that the ‘Geedar’ Group is in Pastawana and Tor Chappar of Dara Adam Khel?). This lies in federal and provincial governments shutting down the industry of terror groups that flourishes right under their nose. It resides in getting down to the real work of reforming and performing in a way that ensures that students sent to schools and universities to build careers don’t come back dead to be buried in graves. 

If this mighty nuclear state and its most-heavily mandated governments can’t do this much then all planning is a waste of time. If you don’t believe this, visit the homes of those killed at the Bacha Khan University. Listen to what they have to say in private about those who were supposed to protect their sons. It would be an eye-opener even though it is not allowed to be reported anywhere.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12