Ohnay phat meray jussay te
Jinnay teray vaal ni ma’iy
(O mother, my body is stricken with as many wounds as the hair on your head)
We went to the Pakistan Air Force School and College together and then to the Khyber Medical College in Peshawar. He then moved to the Army Medical College and has served in the armed forces since his graduation. It was three days after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) slaughtered 132 innocent children and nine teachers at the Army Public School (APS), Peshawar, that I came know that my friend’s young son had also been killed in one of the most barbaric acts my city has sustained to date. It was hard to muster the courage to call and offer my condolences. We Peshawarites are out of words but not out of tears. My friend was stoic in his boundless grief but one line of his summed up the feelings in all of us: “They have ripped my heart out!” Jihadist terror has certainly ripped our collective hearts out. Peshawar and its children have as many wounds as the hair on the heads of its wailing mothers.
The only hope in these pitch-dark times was that those at the helm would commence immediate course correction. From Benazir Bhutto’s December 27, 2007 assassination to the brutal murder of the Awami National Party’s leader Mian Iftikhar Hussain’s son to the slaying of the lion of Peshawar, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, to the killings of Generals Ameer Faisal Alvi and Sanaullah Niazi, the terrorists have crossed this threshold many times. Each time one thought that the powers that be would change their disastrous policies at least for the next generation’s sake. The sound and fury coming from Pakistan’s security establishment both before and after the heinous attack on APS would have one believe that there might be a change after all. The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Raheel Sharif, said all the right things during his recent US visit and after the Peshawar attack. But, sadly, even the optics of what has transpired since the barbarity at APS raises more questions than it answers.
The COAS’ visit to Kabul, along with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief General Rizwan Akhtar, the very next day after the attack, seemed prima facie a very efficient exercise. Unfortunately, the move has badly undermined the country’s elected political leadership, which is taking the flak for not coming down hard on terrorism. Was it that hard to take the prime minister’s national security advisor, Mr Sartaj Aziz, along, if not have him lead the delegation? Presumably there were intercepts of the communication from the TTP ringleader, Umar Mansoor aka Naray (the slim one), ostensibly based west of the Durand Line, to the terrorists attacking the APS, which the military delegation shared with its counterparts in Kabul. The presence of a civilian would not have weakened the case the military team was trying to make unless there was some earth-shattering information — apparently not the case here — that was shared. Umar ‘Naray’ was a common jihadist thug from Adezai (Frontier Region Peshawar), who operated from that area and Darra Adam Khel for years and gradually rose through the TTP’s ranks. Is his presence in the Salafi-littered porous Afghan border regions of Kunar, Nuristan or Nangarhar a surprise? Indeed, is the TTP head honcho Mullah Fazlullah’s alleged presence in those areas such a revelation that could not be made in the presence of civilian leaders? While blaming the Afghan National Security Directorate for harboring Fazlullah, Pakistan conveniently ignores his Salafi roots and ties.
The TTP has a Deobandi doctrinal hue but Fazlullah’s own creed remains Salafi due to his education at the Panjpir madrassa (seminary) that was established and run by the security establishment’s darling, Maulana Tahir Shah. Another Panjpir alumnus, Jamilur Rahman, founded the Salafi emirate in Kunar and Nuristan in the 1980s and later served as the Taliban’s shadow governor till he was killed in 2012 by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Large pockets of active Salafi support still remain in Afghanistan’s northwest. Not coincidentally, another set of the ‘good’ jihadists, the Salafist Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD)/Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), trained in Kunar and Nuristan clear up to 2001.
The net outcome of the military delegation’s Kabul visit was that the establishment-friendly Pakistani media ran with the story that Afghanistan was involved in the APS attack. War drums were beaten that Afghanistan should be attacked for it and that on India’s behest it had given sanctuary to Fazlullah. It was not reported for a week that the Afghan army chief, General Sher Muhmmad Karimi, categorically denied after that meeting that Fazlullah was harbored by or in Afghanistan and that a demand was made by his Pakistani interlocutors to “hand him over”. Some news reports say that the ANSF have started an operation nonetheless to purge elements of the TTP if there are any on Afghan soil. However, where serious introspection was in order, in one masterstroke, the civilian leadership was made to look inept and the blame was deflected to Afghanistan and India.
Then came a series of capital punishments to terrorists in what appears to be a knee-jerk retribution rather than a well thought out strategy. The video clips of the death penalty being carried out were leaked then, making them virtually public hangings. Without going into the morality of the death penalty, one must note that the current spree is bound to become a rallying point for jihadist terrorism rather than serve as a deterrent. The reality that must sink in is that the good, the bad and the ugly jihadists are joined at the hip: harboring one is harboring all. As we go to press, the state has delayed challenging the bail granted to the JuD/LeT ringleader Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, who masterminded the 2008 Mumbai attacks while the sectarian outfit Ahle-Sunnat-wal-Jamat — effectively a reincarnation of the terrorist group Sipah-e-Sahaba that has been killing the Peshawar Shia since 1992 — has the audacity to hold a ‘peace’ moot in the hapless city. To add more insult to injury, the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), whose several members have bankrolled the jihadism that has ravaged my city Peshawar for four decades, also plans a ‘peace’ conference there. Is there a tangible policy change on the horizon? I will believe it when I see it. However, Peshawar cannot have its heart ripped out again. In the words of Dr Sajjad Buneri:
“Nan zama da sheikh sara khabara speenawoma
Pekhawar de raa ta prezhdi, jannat warta prezhdama”
(I will go talk plainly to the cleric today
Let me keep my Peshawar and the heaven he may)
PS: ANSF has now said that LeT men are fighting alongside the Taliban against it in the Afghan northeast.
(The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki)
