Sri Lanka knew it was fighting the Tamil Tigers. We don’t seem to have a clue who the enemy is
I feel that I must make it clear that I am not a FATA expert. Nor am I in any way an informed commentator who can wax poetic about the evils of tacit military support for homegrown extremists. Neither can I trace with expert deftness the etymology of the various terror groups that abound in our fair backwater today and tell you with pin-point precision who-is-in-bed-with-who and who-finances-whose-gun running-operation.
In fact, this article will teach you nothing new. To those of you who were expecting this to become an army-apologist or a Taliban-apologist piece, I extend my sincerest apologies. Today, I must pose a vexing and pertinent-question; one which you are unlikely to be able to answer. If you do have an answer, please tell me before you have me summarily executed for treason; I’d hate to die without knowing.
Over the past half decade, our bastion of Islam has been plagued by insurgency, terrorist activity, sectarian strife, political subterfuge and ethnic genocide. While this is just the top 5, and the charts include hits such as necrophiliacs, “husband-curry” specialists and rapists of an order lower than the molten core of the earth, it is the more political forms of violence that interest me today.
GHQ, Kamra, PNS Mehran, Peshawar airbase, FIA headquarters; these were the attacks orchestrated against some of the country’s most well-protected security and defence installations. Alamdar Road, Hazara Town, Abbas Town; these were three of the deadliest attacks ever carried out against the Shia minority in our country. The attacks on polio workers, explosions at girls’ schools in KPK and FATA, the near-fatal attempt on Malala Yousafzai, the execution of Shia passengers in Mustung and Babusar Top, the assassination of Bashir Bilour; these were all some of the most high profile acts of violence committed in the past year, give or take. While this is not a representative sample by any stretch of the imagination, nor does it meet the rigorous requirements of comparative quantitative analysis, it will serve to illustrate my point.
The question that I pose to you today, dear readers, is this: Who was responsible for these attacks? It’s alright, take your time. There are no right answers to this question. This, in my humble and irrelevant opinion, is the single biggest threat facing our country today. Under Rajapakse, the government of Sri Lanka knew that it was fighting the Tamil Tigers. In Yugoslavia, NATO knew it was fighting Milosevic’s forces. On Omaha Beach, the Allies knew they were fighting the Germans and on the high seas, the Spanish Armada knew they were fighting everyone else. We, however, don’t seem to have a clue.
This is because ours is not a traditional war. It is not even a traditional guerrilla war. When ‘our’ Taliban were paradropped into Afghanistan in the 90s to capture Kabul, the Afghans had a fair idea of who was behind this rising tide of extremism and violence. But today, as the forces of evil overrun our towns and cities, we are no closer to understanding the complexity of the threat facing us. Tehreek-e-Taliban, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Islami; these are all simply names. We are yet to establish what their motives are and are reduced to playing amateur Cluedo with each incident, as it happens, in order to piece together whatever rudimentary understanding we have of these groups and their methods.
The media has a bigger part to play in this game that you would think. Day after day, blind murders and senseless killings are slotted into the attic of “terrorist attacks” and “target killings”, simply because it is too risky to dig any deeper. I have spoken to many journalists who, when they cover these incidents, can piece together pretty well the “who, why, what and wherewithal” of the typical hit. However, because the information they have is mostly hearsay or because they cannot afford to take that sort of pressure from unsavoury types, they are forced to report within the given template that characterises reportage of such attacks.
This is crucial, mostly because media coverage of attacks and bombings is admissible in court. It also serves as a historical record for people who want to retrospectively study the violence that plagues our country. When their sample is unnecessarily skewed by the countless “unknowns” and “unidentifieds”, it is difficult to imagine how anyone, let alone those that make and break policy in our state, can have a clear idea of who or what they are up against. Even intelligence briefings handed to senior security personnel consist of newspaper articles and TV reports.
This is not all there is to it. But information, or the lack thereof, is a major failing of our state and society as a whole. That those who have the knowledge are not talking to those who can actually do something with that knowledge is criminal. While I know that I sound like I’m making the case for security agencies picking up more journalists, I am actually calling for the opposite. Rather than taking an adversarial approach, the law enforcement apparatus needs to understand that a symbiotic relationship with the media will benefit it far more than an adversarial one. I know of many journalists who still have faith in the state and are willing to go that extra mile to make sure justice is served. After all, one can only see so much senseless killing in a lifetime before one decides enough is enough. It’s time the state and its various arms did the same.
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