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Bad Q: ‘Ab Pakistan Ka Kya Karen?’
WSN Network
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The spirit of peace and terror demands that both New Delhi and
Islamabad change their intentions. South Asian polity has seeds
of trouble sown inside it |
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 LAHORE: As
terror rained and memories from the 1972 Munich to Mumbai 26/11 came
alive in a sequence that threatens to engulf not just the
sub-continent but the civilised world into the dark vortex of
meaningless violence and twisted logic of destruction as a political
tool, India and Pakistan rushed to fail their own people more
quickly than the terrorists who appeared on the scene and
disappeared leaving behind the spirit of cricket and peace dead.
Also dead were more than seven policemen and the ability of the
subcontinental polity to rise above
you-are-a-bigger-terrorist-than-me theorem.
The attack on
the Sri Lankan cricket team was clearly a copy cat one; whether same
group was involved or not could be a matter less of investigation
and more of slanging political match between
Delhi and
Islamabad. Indian media, famously and notoriously more nationalistic
than sagely, unleashed interpretations, questions and programming to
underline that Pakistan's isolation was complete.
"Ab kabhi bhee
koyee bhee team, chahe woh koyee bhee khel ho, kam se kam Pakistan
jaane ke baare mein sapne mein bhee nahi sochegi (Now, no team, no
matter what the sport, will never ever even dream of going to
Pakistan)," one after the other TV channel picked up the theme even
as sobre anchors also fell for the bait. So soon after 26/11 Mumbai,
it was surprising how
India
could forget that it too was a frontline state when it comes to
terror.
"Kya karna hoga
ab
Pakistan ka? Is ka kiya kya jaye? (What will now have to be done to
Pakistan? What should we do to it now?)." This was Prasoon Vajpayee
of Aaj Tak, admittedly a foremost Hindi TV channel. Neither was
English language NDTV any different. The rest normally follow the
leaders, and they did.
Pictures
of young men spraying bullets, Sri Lankan cricketers being lifted
off the pitch with an Army helicopter and dead bodies on the road
made it around the globe, and left the world once again in a tizzy
to find where the terror is coming from. From
Pakistan itself,
India was shrieking. Chickens were coming home to roost, it recalled
the proverb. The buzz in Pakistan was about India, about RAW, a buzz
that New Delhi rejected immediately, seeing some kind of a vicarious
victory in such an inhuman tragedy.
 Amid talk that terrorists have no religion, they had managed
to kill the one religion that many Pakistanis follow — cricket. It’s
a deeper blow because cricket is akin to religion in
Pakistan as it is
elsewhere in the subcontinent. It’s also Pakistan’s only claim to
being a credible host.
And that
Sri Lanka considers
Pakistan to be a friend doubled the tragedy. President Mahinda
Rajapakse went against advice to send his players to Pakistan, after
India had refused, in the name of South Asia solidarity.
On Tuesday, the
Karachi stock
exchange plunged and it seemed as if only the US and its drones will
venture now in Pakistan.
It’s the closest the world has seen
Pakistan becoming a
failed state, where terrorists and not the state is calling the
shots. Yet, on March 1, US drones pounded a Baitullah Mehsud
stronghold in Sararogha,
South Waziristan, and it’s still unclear whether he was hit. But
certainly, it brought home the fact that the
Pakistan
government, aided by the US, is following its illadvised policy of
good Taliban, bad Taliban. So Mehsud is bad Taliban and Maulana
Fazlullah is good.
It
makes no sense, and
Pakistan will have
no respite from the Taliban trying to take over its sovereignty,
because if one group does not do it, another will, epecially since
there is no difference in their ruling ideologies.
This is something the
US has not realised,
intent as it is on “stabilizing”
Afghanistan.
In fact, its search for “good” Taliban to arm in
Afghanistan,
a la the Anbar awakening, is destined to come to similar grief.
The fundamental issue that
Pakistan, nay the
US, will have to confront is that Pakistan either walks back from
its strategic ideology or risks an implosion and it’s actually
staring that in the face.
The
US too needs to take a serious look at its aid package to Pakistan,
particularly after allegations that Maulana Fazlullah has been paid
some $6 million by the Pakistani government.
In April,
Japan will be
hosting a donors’ conference for
Pakistan,
which will be held alongside the next Friends of
Pakistan
meeting. It will be time for some serious steps by the world, and
Pakistan..
4
March 2009
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