Crush Your Enemy Totally
ByMohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“A viper crushed beneath your foot but left alive, will rear up and bite you with a double dose of venom. An enemy that is left around is like a half-dead viper that you nurse back to health. Time makes the venom grow strong.”
The problem: Pakistan waited for the Peshawar Army school butchery to take place on December 16, 2014, before its army, and its reluctant political leadership, got convinced that it was time to act now boldly, bluntly and blatantly. The civilian leadership, however, still remained persistent in the belief that even the most poisonous weeds sometimes contain cure for diseases.
The civilian leadership specially never saw any virtue in either identifying the enemy clearly, or going after it decisively. Therefore, any plan to act boldly, bluntly and creatively ended up in the wisdom of avoiding it, at least for the time being. A whole two-decade history of Pakistan thrived on half-baked conspiracy theories, which in simple words remained a familiar ploy for the country’s visionless leadership of how to avoid self-correction, a painful process, and of how to escape the blame. Whatever small victories were achieved against terrorism through military actions in the past got destroyed on the negotiation table. In the modern warfare as codified by Carl von Clausewitz, the premier philosopher of war, analyzing the campaigns of Napoleon, he says, “We do claim that direct annihilation of the enemy’s forces must always be the dominant consideration”. Even after victory, he believes there should be no talk of rest, of breathing space… but only of the pursuit… allow your enemy no options”.
Paradoxes prevail everywhere. The military and its Rangers are fighting against terrorism; and some of the civilian leaders, and the head of the political parties are heard bad mouthing against the military action. What suits them is the eradication of their opponents through the military action, and this has happened in the past. Not now. General Raheel Sharif is not a tunnel-visioned soldier. His approach is quite holistic. He sees evil as evil wherever it may be. He is succeeding and is exceedingly popular, and he will continue to be so, if he stays fair, objective and relentless in using the military might. He should crush whosoever comes in the way; be it the ex-president or the ex-PMs or the ex-generals. Mr Robert Greene is right when he says, “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual - the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, other will succumb to their influence… strike the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.”
Half-hearted attempts, and measures taken with a blurred vision, have already put Pakistan where it stands today. Failures buffeted Pakistan in succession, but nothing got corrected because nothing was admitted as wrong.
From Moses to Mao, the wisdom that has worked in all ages had been that the most feared enemy must be crushed most completely. Pakistani people’s misfortunate had been that they never got convinced as to who their real enemy was. Even the most hideous and brutal acts of terrorism committed in the country, involving attacks on almost all sensitive installations and institutions of the country, failed to clear the confusion. The blame each time kept shifting like a ping-pong ball, till two things happened. A new army chief, a savior, a clear-headed man of action and vision, a no-nonsense soldier, General Raheel Sharif got in the saddle; and second, the brutal massacre of the Peshawar Army School children. Like America was reborn after the Civil War of 1861-1865 Pakistan also got a new birth after the School children’s massacre in Peshawar and after the start of the Army Action.
Life offers simple and clear examples of what happens when individuals or nations begin to develop a Hamlet-like mentality of avoiding action when it becomes so inevitable. One simple amber, one tiny spark, left alight, no matter how dimply it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. Robert Greene is right when he says, “More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: the enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.”. Pakistani leadership, inclusive of all, never got convinced that religious fanaticism, and its abuse, could ever be so nonproductive and so toxic for the country as it has become. An action that should have been taken in the 1990’s was finally taken by General Raheel Sharif in 2015.
Terrorism like cholesterol, obesity, blood pressure and addiction to drugs, does not take place overnight. One hearty meal does not cause obesity, nor does it pack cholesterol in our veins; one lie does not make us liars, and one sin does not classify a person as a sinner. It happens due to the repetition of action and practice carried out over years. The country let the s leaders and its indiscreet press propagate whatever brought them more approval, and more revenue. In the process, a whole mindset of a visionary, God- wary nation got poisoned.
Pakistan abandoned the path of growth- intellectual, political and spiritual, and chose the way that was regressive. We became a nation that looked more towards the past than in the future. As Maulana Shibli once put it way back, “The secret of the well-being and progress of other nations has been that they moved forward, looked forward, and they discovered new worlds; and the secret of the Muslim regress/progress had been that they kept moving backward, kept going back in history till they reached the age of the Companions of the Prophet (pbuh)”. Moral, spiritual and ethical progress (by sidelining the technological, economic, scientific and social progress that took place after the 7 th century with Muslims as major contributors), is just not possible, and Islam is not hostile to worldly advancement; nor is it exclusive. After all, Allah creates millions of new worlds every moment of the time. Only the people of vision and Baseerat, intuition and perception are able to discover those new worlds. The rest are relegated to the status of animals, or even worse than animals by the Holy Qur'an. Never was it meant by Allah that His followers would put the gift of Free-will to such a restricted use.
Two deaths: Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul died a natural death at the ripe age of 79, and Col (r) Shuja Khanzada (Shaheed) died a death that was inflicted on him by the terrorists a few days ago. Was Khanzada’s premature death the consequence of an ideology and policy propagated and espoused by General Hamid Gul? Is there a link in it? The scribe thinks that there is a causal link.
According to Mr Hasan Abbas, General Hamid Gul, “ … was better educated than most of his colleagues and a keen student of history,… but his religious ideals robbed him of objectivity in historical analysis. … Gul had a versatile mind whose agility was severely constrained by a predisposition to viewing everything through an ideological prism…” and his ideology was based on a narrow perception of Islam. He regarded democracy and elections as un-Islamic.
He favored Presidential form of government, centering power in one man; he thought elections were against the dictates of the Qur'an; he favored the concept that the military should take over the country for the time being and set things right; he claimed himself to be a great lover of Mulla Umer, and he still thought (till the time of his death) that Mulla Umer had died in 2005, and that the American Abbottabad action of killing Osama bin Laden was a hoax.
Such was the level of his self-righteousness that he did not consider the current Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, as a legitimate leader; he disapproved General Raheel Sharif’s and Mian Nawaz Sharif’s dealings with the current Afghan leadership as wise or legitimate; he favored military action in North Waziristan, and disapproved it in South Waziristan; he prided himself by being called as a Jihadist etc… these are his words spoken by him in his last interview with anchor Saafi relayed on June 27, 2015. The general remained unrepentant and he felt no remorse that the seeds he had sown in connivance with the American help in the Afghan war against the Soviet-1979 to 1989-, with borrowed money and weapons, could one day grow into the most poisonous oak trees in Pakistan, and play havoc. He saw all this with his own eyes, but he saw no wrong in it, a chronic problem with the ideologues.
The last victim of this kind of ideology has been Col (r) Shuja Khanzada. A man of valor and candid expression. Though he too had worked in the Intelligence, and in the Army, but his vision was different. He never acted like the foxy politicians by parsing with words. As the interior minister of the Punjab, he clearly defined the terrorists, and without mincing words, he told them that their days were numbered. He died a hero’s death. The country salutes him, and is proud of him as it is of General Raheel Sharif, a hero’s hero.
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
