Extremism in Punjab
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
A video in which a young boy recites a poem praising the religious spirit of Taliban has recently (re)emerged in the social media. Although, it may have been shot before the operation Zarb e Azab was launched, it still stays equally relevant today and raises some important concerns. The clip shows a large hall located inside a mosque (probably) filled with few hundred people sitting on the floor. They wave their flags with excitement as they listen to the eleven-year-old disciple who declaims: “Taliban have come, the true representatives of the religion of Ahmed (Muhammad) have arrived, now the Christians and the Jews are screaming (with fear).”
Behind him on the stage we see a cleric perched on a high chair with few armed guards standing on each side, their rifles stretched out, their bandolier slung across their shoulders. Just a few steps down, on the other end of the stage, is a small group of enthusiasts huddled together like the choir in a church carrying their own separate microphone. They stay quiet during most of the recital except in the middle when they interrupt the vocalist for a short time and start chanting slogans in favor of the Taliban too, calling them the savior of Pakistan, announcing their victory to rule the country in near future.
Had this program been held in Khyber PakhtunKhwa (KPK) or FATA, it would not have caught many eyes, since we realize that the infrastructure of these radical organizations runs deep in Pashtun predominant areas. The regulatory authorities and intelligence bureaus on the other hand, although claim tall about their presence, lack penetration within the banned outfits who operate without fear. And because of that (failure), the information we obtain from our sources stay vague and inaccurate, unable to cover the fundamental elements, the three basic Ts, of a good report: Type of the attack, its Target and the Timing of the assault. So, a congregation like this in FATA would not strike us with surprise, and to be honest, that situation will not change for a while. It would require years of focused and coordinated effort to break their infrastructure and replace it with a somewhat functional government framework. Keeping that in mind, the military operation - if we believe, it is started to take down every violent organization - has just begun and stands in no position to yield conclusive results.
The problem with this short clip however, is that the people in the video are not Pashtuns. They are Punjabis. Everyone, including the chief cleric wearing the black robe with golden lining, his bodyguards, the chanting choir, the young lad and the people sitting in the mosque can be recognized as someone from Lahore, Faisalabad or Sahiwal. I base my assessment on their non-Pashtun accents, their facial features and their clothes including their unique shalwar kameez, their caps, shawls and turbans. No, not Southern Punjab, where the presence of Taliban has been reported for a while; they look like people from Central Punjab, the heart of Pakistan, a place where the activity of these organizations is supposed to be minimal or absent.
If this video is professionally identified and confirmed to have originated from Punjab, it would confirm the fears of many experts who have either been ignored or defied by the current Muslim League’s Punjab-based administration. These analysts, worried about worsening law and order, have pointed out on numerous occasions that the Taliban phenomenon is not limited to KPK or FATA, and that Punjab may need as strong an operation cleanup as Karachi or NWFP. And since the nation has waged a war against terrorism, it's about time that every part of the nation is dealt with the same authority and force irrespective of its ethnicity or location. No, not anymore, we cannot afford to play favorites: acting against one group and turning a blind eye on others. We did that exercise in the past and suffered from its backlash, a lesson which we must not forget and the price we must not be ready to pay again. Whether we like it or not, we need to work on every seminary, every school and every mosque in Punjab that has connections with the extremist groups. Along with that, we need to investigate every preacher, every cleric, every student, and every donor. Without taking these measures, our efforts to eliminate religion-based violence would be rendered useless, the sacrifices of our soldiers wasted, and the loss of civilian lives and capital thrown away. Is this the path we are choosing for ourselves and for our generations? Or we would stand firm and support abortive action?
Remember, we have seen a trend of worsening extremism in central Punjab for years now. And for years, we have done our best to deny it, defuse it, justify it, or sometimes even twist it by giving it a non-
religious color. For instance, a Christian community was burnt down in the small city of Gojra, a Tahsil of District Toba Tek Singh located in Central Punjab just a few years ago in which eight people were killed including four women and a child. Then, Asia Bibi belonged to Sheikhupura, another district of Central Punjab. Rimsha Masih’s incident too, took place in Islamabad. Shahzad Masih and Shaima Bibi were also burnt alive in Kasur, twenty miles south of Lahore, the capital of the province. And in the end, Governor Taseer’s assassination resulted from the same phenomenon.
I agree they are isolated incidents to some extent but we have to understand that all these events had religious undertones. What we are asking the administration, both civilian and military, to consider all of them as a continuum of the same process and get to the bottom and do what has been long due: eliminate extremism, a problem that almost always eludes our attention.
