A Graveyard for Lunatics

DISCLAIMER: This piece was written yesterday, and then languished overnight due to a PTCL outage. It contains emotion and other profanity.


I am rarely at a loss for words. I certainly wasn’t this morning, when I started out on a smarmy skewering of George Fulton’s ‘I’m leaving Pakistan because she’s being mean to me dammit!' piece in the Express Tribune yesterday. I was going to run with his personification of the blessed motherland as a flighty female prone to self-destructive megalomania, I was. I was particularly taken with the bit featuring the Bryan Adams song where Pakistan, the impenetrable, fecund, feminine other, sings to him the lyrics To really love a woman/ To understand her - you gotta know her deep inside/ Hear every thought - see every dream/ N' give her wings - if she wants to fly/ Then when you find yourself lyin' helpless in her arms/ You know you really love a woman...

Then I ran it by another Pyala who, with what is in hindsight admirable self-restraint, politely asked me if I’d bothered turning on the TV or reading the news today. I did both and found out that our Federal Minister for Minorities had been assassinated in Islamabad. And then there I was, open mouthed, shell shocked, silent, on the dreaded Island of Lost Words. In such a situation, what is the value of mere words?

Ironically enough, it is Infinite, according to those behind the latest assassination in Islamabad this morning. I will be happy to issue a retraction should the motives behind this senseless tragedy be conclusively proved to be something mundane, like extortion, or something exculpating to the national conscience, like ‘a hidden hand’, but until then I shall continue to assume that, like the late Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti was killed because of the words he uttered.

These words, for which he had been receiving death threats for the past month, had specifically to do with the late minister’s position on our blasphemy law. Mr. Bhatti, representing as he did some of the most disenfranchised citizens of this blighted nation, bravely and ceaselessly kept pointing out the way the law has been misused to harass and oppress his constituents. His essential argument, that a law that leads to injustice more often than it does justice merits reform if not repeal, was in direct opposition to the simplistic, ignorant stance taken by most of the participants in what passes for public discourse on the subject. For this principled stance Mr. Bhatti, like others before him, paid with his life.

Words then, I have to continue to assume, are powerful enough for other people to feel threatened by. Words that carry truth, particularly when they touch upon the misinterpretation of religion, intimidate those whose words don’t. In our history, or rather our collective amnesia, we have often responded to words of truth and beauty with the vituperation, forcing into exile or silencing of those who utter them. But now I have to ask myself a different question, i.e. what is the value of mere words when the other side is using guns?

There was a time when some of us would have leapt at the chance to throw words into this maelstrom, to comment on a senseless tragedy like the one today. As journalists, as commentators, as columnists, it would have been like going to the Promised Land. High profile murder? Check. Law and order issue? Check. Spectre of extremism? Check. Possibility of point scoring against toothless government? Check. Energizing, empowering, emboldening feeling of being part of a struggle that is bigger than one’s self? Check, Check, Check and Check!

That time is long past.

Now, when we sit down at our keyboards, our desks, or take our notebooks in our hands to begin the process of writing another Pakistani’s obituary, another summation of the life of a brother or sister felled by the demon of militant extremism we have allowed to feed on our children, it is not the purposeful elation of a collective struggle we feel but despair. Despair, in someone else’s words, “of the possibility of ever changing the prevailing state of affairs, of ever being redeemed from it..”

Faced with this insidious, creeping bleakness, even the strongest of us might be tempted, fleetingly, to embrace the self-anesthetization, the comfortable numbness, of those who survive by not speaking at all, by not writing at all, by not thinking at all. But we must. We must because there is soft ground beneath us and if we stop, even for a second, to rest or lick our wounds we might sink and be lost.

So today I write this not as a journalist or a commentator or a columnist or a wiseass but as a Pakistani. I write this for those moderate Muslims who no longer wish to think, write or speak into an apparent vacuum so that you know you are not alone. I write this for my Christian, Hindu, Scheduled Caste, Atheist, Agnostic countrymen and women, so that they know that they are not alone. I write this for me, so that I know I am not alone.

I write that I condemn, in the kind of language I would like to hear from our gutless, myopic leaders, the brutal, unjust slaying of a brave, principled man advocating a return to the pluralistic principles on which this country was founded. I write that I condemn those within the political and military establishment who protect the nest of vipers in our midst. I write that I condemn the spineless, self-preserving hedging about of the spineless, self-preserving fuckwits swarming TV and newsprint. I write that I condemn the willful, witless intolerance seemingly decent people practice through their silence during bloodthirsty sermons delivered in mosques and drawing rooms. I write that I condemn those whose reaction to events like this is a diminishing of their personal and political engagement with the world around them rather than an expansion. I write that I condemn every parent, grandparent or caregiver who lets strangers dictate their child’s moral code.

And I write that I take personal issue with every man, woman or adolescent who says ‘but’ when debating whether dissension merits death.

:::UPDATE:::

I picked up the papers with trepidation this morning, precisely because I was afraid to read passages like the one below, taken from Dawn’s story about PM Gilani’s ‘new strategy to fight extremism’.

"THREE REMAIN SEATED: But many in the house and the galleries were surprised to see three bearded members of the opposition Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rehman remaining seated in their chairs when the rest of lawmakers stood up to observe two minutes’ silence for Mr Bhatti.

There was no immediate explanation what motivated the JUI back-benchers, in the absence of their party leader, to violate a parliamentary etiquette, and a directive given by the chair, in agreement with some voices raised in the house, that members stand up to pay a silent tribute to their assassinated colleague."

Here’s a new strategy for you to fight extremism with PM Gilani: name and shame those who will not rise against it.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day comes from PMLN MNA from Chakwal and columnist Ayaz Amir in the op-ed pages of The News:

"Punjab is the strategic depth of bigotry and extremism masquerading in the colours of Islam."

Actually, you should probably read the whole piece. Much of it re-encapsulates well-tread ground about the origins of our extremism problem. But the following concluding bit should also perhaps be translated and read out to his party members and leaders who probably find reading anything a bit bothersome (the clarifications in [square brackets] are of course my additions)...

"All the extremist outfits with whose names we are now familiar emerged at that time [under Zia whose protege Amir's leader Nawaz Sharif was]: the jaish this and that, the lashkar so and so. Most of them were Punjab-based and members from all these organisations acquired battle experience in Afghanistan. My friend Colonel Imam of Afghan 'jihad' fame -- and who, like most good people, is from Chakwal -- takes enormous pride in saying that the most fearless fighters of all were from Punjab. And he should know for he was in the thick of it.

When with the departure of the Soviet army and the victory of the Saudi and Charlie Wilson-funded 'mujahideen', the Afghan war wound down, the fighters who had gained battle experience in Afghanistan were shifted to an entirely different front: Kashmir, where in a protracted struggle they managed to tie down half a million Indian troops.

Their godfathers in the security establishment felt elated. Forgetting the role of hard-drinking Charlie Wilson and the Saudis, they wrote a self-glorifying narrative in which it was claimed that not only had the power of faith defeated the Soviets. It had also hastened the end and break-up of the Soviet empire. If a superpower could be thus defeated, zeal and the spirit of 'jihad' could work similar miracles in Kashmir.

This was the mood then pervading the top ranks of the army and the intelligence agencies. So it is scarcely to be wondered at that when after the fall of Kabul to the 'mujahideen', a Pakistani delegation was on its way to the Afghan capital, no sooner had the aircraft carrying it entered Afghan airspace when those on board, including some Americans, were startled by a loud cry: "Allah-o-Akbar". This from the then ISI chief [and a close confidante of then PM Nawaz Sharif who appointed him], the heavily-bearded Lt-Gen Javed Nasir.

Our rendezvous with our present extremist-flowing troubles did not come about from out of the blue. We had ploughed the land and watered it for a long time.

When the Americans attacked Afghanistan post-Sept 11, the theatre of 'jihad' shifted again: back to Afghanistan. The Bush administration of course screwed things up for itself by going on to attack Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan, a piece of folly sure to haunt the US for a long time to come. But Afghanistan was bad enough by itself. It reignited the fires of holy war and, given the iron dictates of geography, it was inevitable that Pakistan sooner or later would have its hands burned by another conflict raging in Afghanistan.

Once a change of course in our strategic course was forced upon us by the US -- Musharraf succumbing to American pressure without extracting the kind of bargain that would have better served Pakistan's interests -- logic and necessity demanded a clean break with the playing-with-fire policies of the past. In other words, a clean and definitive break with Zia-minded 'jihad'. But Musharraf played a double game. Even while dancing wildly to America's tune he was never serious, or he lacked the will and capacity, to seriously rethink the past.

But now that under a new sun and a new sky we are finally embarked upon a new course -- which marks a true break with the past -- we have to realise the extent and magnitude of the problem. The terrorism we are now fighting is not a provincial subject. It is not confined to any one province. It is a composite whole, organically tied together, growing not from any isolated virus but from a sickness of the mind and soul which had the whole of Pakistan, or at least its strategic quartermasters, in its grip.

If Pakistan is to become something, realising its dreams and potential, if it has to enter the real world and leave the world of dreams and fantasies behind, then there is no course open to it except to tackle this sickness, no matter what it takes and what sacrifices it entails, without ifs and buts, and without any misconceived appeals to the Taliban."

Amir's reference to General Musharraf reminded me of the time in the year 2000, when soon after taking power and vowing to restore Jinnah's vision, he had been asked a pointed question by a young journalist about the threat of Talibanization of Pakistan at a public gathering. If I recall correctly (I was witness to it), the question had raised the issue of blowback, long before it became fashionable to talk in such terms. I still recall the general's response: he claimed that people often tended to forget that the Taliban were evolving too and cited as an example the fact that when they met for dinner with Pakistani army delegations they would now use (or at least have on the table/ dastarkhwan) cutlery and crockery... whereas earlier they would simply eat with their hands out of a single thaal (dish). I'm not making this up. A few months later, the cutlery and crockery were publicly forgotten.

As for Ayaz Amir, if ever there was a misfit in a political party...

Imran Khan Makes A Mess Yet Again

OK, this was crying out to be deconstructed, and if anyone Khan, I must.

So, even as Mr. Imran "Find Your Roots and Eat Them" Khan sat in a shirt and trousers in the heat of Dubai watching Pakistan play Australia (funny how his roots assert themselves only in Pakistan), a long and muddled piece by him was on its way to be printed in The News. Grandly titled How To Clear The Mess, it purported to provide the prescription to Pakistan's myriad troubles with regards to terrorism and militancy, which astute readers may remember Immi bhai until recently saw as no problem at all. In any case, let's see what our warrior from Zaman Park has to say...

How to clear the mess
Thursday, April 23, 2009
By Imran Khan

The reason why there is so much despondency in Pakistan is because there is no road map to get out of the so-called War on Terror - a nomenclature that even the Obama Administration has discarded as being a negative misnomer.

First off, as far as I can see, the despondency has more to do with the unrelenting march of the Taliban and the government's and army's abject capitulation in Swat before them. But what do I know? I just live here, not in some fantasy-land of my own making.

To cure the patient the diagnosis has to be accurate, otherwise the wrong medicine can sometimes kill the patient.

Yeah, and to say nothing of attending to the right patient in the ward.

In order to find the cure, first six myths that have been spun around the US-led “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) have to be debunked.

OK, so Immi bhai's contribution to the debate is the coining of the term GWOT. Which is kind of like Otto's characterization of the chip as the British contribution to world cuisine in A Fish Called Wanda, but I digress...

Myth No. 1: This is Pakistan’s war

Since no Pakistani was involved in 9/11 and the CIA-trained Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, how does it concern us?

Yeah, how does it? I mean those 1395 people killed in 1842 attacks were not Pakistanis now were they? And Swat was always a provincially administered territory.

It is only when General Musharraf buckled under US pressure and sent our troops into Waziristan in late 2003-early 2004 that Pakistan became a war zone.

I kind of remember two or three suicide bombings in Karachi in 2002 and 2003. Plus I remember the sectarian radicalization of Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s beginning with General Zia (at the same time that Immi bhai was being lured out of retirement by the military dictator) and numerous attacks on mosques as well as the targeted killing of hundreds of Shia doctors and intellectuals. Some of these same sectarian outfits and Kashmiri jihadists such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad are now known to have strong Al Qaeda links. I even remember the fears expressed by civil society of the creeping Talibanization of the country from the mid-1990s (Shariah Bill anyone? Malakand insurgency in 1994?), long before 9/11... Aaah, but what do I know? Don't let facts stand in the way of your argument Immi bhai, please proceed...

It took another three years of the Pakistan army following the same senseless tactics as used by the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan (aerial bombardment) plus the slaughter at Lal Masjid, for the creation of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). If our security forces are being targeted today by the Taliban and their suicide bombers, it is because they are perceived to be proxies of the US army.

Yeah, dude, and so was the children's library in Islamabad that the Hafsa girls took over. As for the suicide bombing of imambargahs in Chakwal et al, everyone knows the Shia are proxies of the infidels.

Iran is ideologically opposed to both Al Qaeda and the Taliban yet why are its security forces not attacked by terrorists? The answer is because their President does not pretend to be a bulwark against Islamic extremism in return for US dollars and support.

Or, how about, that it locks up idiotic apologists like you and Qazi Hussain?

Michael Scheuer (ex-CIA officer and author of the book Imperial Hubris), writing in The Washington Post in April 2007, cited Musharraf’s loyalty to the US even when it went against Pakistan’s national interests by giving two examples: the first was Musharraf helping the US in removing a pro-Pakistan Afghan government and replacing it with a pro-Indian one; and, the second, for sending Pakistani troops into the tribal areas and turning the tribesmen against the Pakistan army. To fully understand Musharraf’s treachery against Pakistan, it is important to know that almost a 100,000 troops were sent into the tribal areas to target around 1000 suspected Al-Qaeda members - thus earning the enmity of at least 1.5 million armed local tribals in the 7 tribal agencies of Pakistan.

So, we come to the point. Taliban = pro-Pakistan = good. Of course, forget that the entire intelligentsia of the country had been crying hoarse about Pakistan establishement's misguided support to the brutal Taliban regime while the Americans were happily dealing with it and while "patriots" such as Hameed Gul and his ilk were propounding their stupid ideas of 'strategic depth.' Musharraf's treachery as the rest of the Pakistani establishment's treachery was actually that they waited to turn against the Taliban when the Americans told them to.

The most shameful aspect of the lie that this is our war is that the government keeps begging the US for more dollars stating that the war is costing the country more than the money it is receiving from the US. If it is our war, then fighting it should not be dependent on funds and material flowing from the US. If it is our war, why do we have no control over it? If it is our war, then why is the US government asking us to do more?

Ok, this I will concede: Our war should not be dependent on US dollars and the sooner we realize this the better for us. But the reason the US keeps asking us to do more (besides the byzantine political theatre they play) is because craven, cowardly Pakistani governments give in to the Taliban apologists of the army, media and politics (you being a good example) and the ruckus they raise.

Myth No. 2: This is a war against Islamic extremists - an
ideological war against radical Islam

Was the meteoric rise of Taliban due to their religious ideology? Clearly
not, because the Mujahideen were equally religious - Gulbadin Hekmatyar (supported by the ISI) was considered an Islamic fundamentalist. In fact, the reason the Taliban succeeded where the Mujahideen warlords failed, was because they established the rule of law - the Afghans had had enough of the power struggle between the warlord factions that had destroyed what remained of the country’s infrastructure and killed over 100,000 people.

True. But forgetting that it was the ISI that switched its support from Hekmatyar to the Taliban, many of whom were former mujahideen themselves.

If the Pushtuns of the tribal area wanted to adopt the Taliban religious ideology then surely they would have when the latter was in power in Afghanistan, between 1996 and 2001. Yet there was no Talibanisation in the tribal areas.

Considering that the Taliban brand of Islam was almost exactly what was practised in the tribal areas and many parts of the settled Pashtun areas, I'm not quite sure I follow. In Hangu (a settled area of the NWFP), I was told by a local in 1992 that the reason his particular area remained peaceful during sectarian mayhem, was because 'his people' didn't allow Shias and cinemas in their areas...

Interestingly, the only part of Pakistan where the Taliban had an impact was in Swat where Sufi Mohammad started the Shariat Movement. The reason was that while there was rule of law (based on the traditional jirga system) in the tribal areas, the people of Swat had been deprived of easy access to justice ever since the traditional legal system premised on Qazi courts was replaced by Pakistani laws and judicial system, first introduced in 1974.

Aaah, the plug for the jirga system. I wondered when it would bubble up.

The murder rate shot up from 10 per year in 1974 to almost 700 per year by 1977, when there was an uprising against the Pakistani justice system. The Taliban cashed in on this void of justice to rally the poorer sections of Swat society just as they had attracted the Afghans in a situation of political anarchy and lawlessness in Afghanistan.

Once again Immi bhai's dismissal of historical facts and dates takes my breath away. I suppose he considers such manipulation as innocuous as lifting the seam of a cricket ball. Sufi Mohammad's first insurgency in Malakand happened in 1994, when the Afghani force known as the Taliban had only just been formed. And it was actually as a result of the Frontier Crimes Regulations (in force in the Malakand area since 1979) being declared null and void by Pakistan's Supreme Court, creating the legal vacuum into which Sufi stepped with his lashkar, asking for the imposition of Shariah law. There is no doubt that the FCR (which contained elements such as collective punishment for individual crimes etc) were archaic and in some cases inhumane. But Pakistani law was not in force in Swat at that time and had the legal vacuum not been created by the Supreme Court's ruling, the results might have been different. Moreover, what is often harked back to as 'Shariah law' that existed in Swat before 1969, was in fact, the feudal law of the princely state of Swat as practised by the Wali of Swat. When the princely state was dissolved, Swat was brought under Pakistani law for a short time, until the inefficiencies of the state structure in providing swift and cheap justice (ala feudalism) led to a rebellion against the system. The same collapse has happened in other places in Pakistan where the feudal system has collapsed but that does not mean that the feudal structure should or can be re-introduced in a changed environment. But that is getting into understanding sociology and the dynamics of change which are probably beyond Immi bhai's limited capabilities.

It is important to make this distinction because the strategy to bring peace must depend on knowing your enemy.

I know who the enemy is. It's people who mangle facts and history to suit their point of view.

Michael Bearden, CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that the US is facing the same Pushtun insurgency that was faced by the Soviets in Afghanistan. According to him, as long as NATO is in Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a constant supply of men from the 15 million Pushtun population of Afghanistan and the 25 million Pushtuns of Pakistan. In other words, this Talibanisation is not so much religion-driven as politically-motivated. So the solution to the problem in the tribal belt today does not lie in religion and “moderate” Islam but in a political settlement.

Interesting how Immi bhai keeps quoting those devil CIA-types to bolster his argument.

Myth No. 3: If we keep fighting the US war, the super power will bail us out financially through aid packages.

Recently, the Government’s Adviser on Finance stated that the war on terror has cost Pakistan $35 billion while the country has received only $11 billion assistance from the US. I would go a step further and say that this aid is the biggest curse for the country. Not only is it “blood money” for our army killing our own people (there is no precedent for this) but also nothing has destroyed the self-esteem of this country as this one factor.

Agree about the curse bit. But there is a precedent bhai. East Pakistan in 1971, the Baloch insurgency of the 1970s, the MRD movement of the 1980s, the MQM insurgency of the 1990s... oh forget it. You were still partying in Annabelle's at the time.

Moreover, there is no end in sight as our cowardly and compromised leadership is ordered to “do more” for the payments made for their services. Above all, this aid and loans are like treating cancer with disprin. It enables the government to delay the much needed surgery of reforms (cutting expenditures and raising revenues); and meanwhile the cancer is spreading and might become terminal.

Immi bhai the economist is almost cute. "Cutting expenditures and raising revenues"... now why hadn't anyone thought of that!

Myth No. 4: That the next terrorist attack on the US will come from the tribal areas.

First, there is an assumption, based purely on conjecture, that the Al Qaeda leadership is in the tribal areas.

What you really want to say is: there is an assumption, based purely on conjecture, that the Taliban in control of Pakistan would be a bad thing... Oh come out and say it.

In fact, this leadership could well be in the 70 % of Afghan territory that the Taliban control. More importantly, given the growing radicalisation of the educated Muslim youth - in major part because of the continuing US partiality towards Israeli occupation of Palestinian land - why can it not follow that the next terrorist attack on the US could come either from the Middle East or from the marginalised and radicalised Muslims of Europe, motivated by perceived injustices to Islam and the Muslim World.

It well could. You should ask your friends in the CIA why they don't write about this so you can quote them.

Myth No. 5: That the ISI is playing a double game and if Pakistan did more the war could be won.

If Talibanisation is growing in Pakistan because of the covert support of ISI in the tribal areas, then surely the growing Taliban control over Afghanistan (70 % of the territory) must be with NATO’s complicity?

Couldn't agree more. Or at least with the complicity of the Northern Alliance warlords. In fact, the Beeb just did a report about where the Taliban are getting their weapons from, which confirms this. But you didn't want me to agree, did you?

Surely a more rational understanding would be to see that the strategy being employed is creating hatred against the US and its collaborators. Aerial bombardment and its devastating collateral damage is the biggest gift the US has given to the Taliban. According to official reports, out of the 60 drone attacks conducted between 14 January 2006-April 8 2009, only 10 were on target, killing 14 alleged Al Qaeda. In the process almost 800 Pakistani civilians have been killed, while many lost their homes and limbs.

I wish you would tell us which official reports these are. The on-ground reports I have received in fact show that after the US stopped sharing intel about impending drone attacks with the Pakistan army, the efficacy of the attacks increased manifold. Since the Taliban / Al Qaeda immediately cordon off areas where the drones hit and remove any bodies related to them before anyone is allowed to go near them, I'm not quite sure where these figures have come from. But then again, you didn't really need proof to claim, like Qazi Hussain and Hameed Gul, that thousands of girls and children were killed in Lal Masjid, so I don't know why I should bother.

Despite its military surge effort, the US will eventually pack up and leave like the Soviets, but the “do more” mantra could end up destroying the Pakistan army - especially the ISI which is being targeted specifically for the mess created by the Bush Administration in Afghanistan.

Wow, Immi bhai, you as a champion of the ISI... I never would've guessed. That, by the way, is the exact thinking within the Pakistan army, which is why the Americans keep getting pissed off with them.

Myth No. 6: That Pakistan could be Talibanised with their version of Islam.

Both Musharraf and Zardari have contributed to this myth in order to get US backing and dollars. Firstly there is no such precedent in the 15-hundred years of Islamic history of a theocracy like that of the Taliban, outside of the recent Taliban period of rule in Afghanistan.

Sigh. Now even Islam predates Islam. Hey, dodo, we're still in Hijra 1430.

However, as mentioned earlier, the Taliban’s ascendancy in Afghanistan was not a result of their religious ideology but their ability to establish order and security in a war-devastated and anarchic Afghanistan.

We've covered this ground before. So, your point being? I feel it has something to do with accepting the ascendancy of the Taliban in Malakand because they have brought "peace." Right?

In Swat, the present mess has arisen because of poor governance issues. Also, it was the manner in which the government handled the situation - simply sending in the army rather than providing better governance - that created space for the Taliban. Just as in Balochistan (under Musharraf) when the army was sent in rather than the Baloch being given their economic and provincial rights, similarly the army in Swat aggravated the situation and the present mess was created.

Right. So we should all just shut up and hail the Taliban.

What Pakistan has to worry about is the chaos and anarchy that are going to stem from the radicalisation of our people because of the failure of successive governments to govern effectively and justly. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Battle for God, gives details of fundamentalist movements that turned militant when they were repressed. Ideas should be fought with counter ideas and dialogue, not guns.

I think you are about three decades too late with the argument about radicalisation of our people, a radicalisation one must add that was promoted by the people you count as your friends. But you could not get richer than saying "Ideas should be fought with counter ideas and dialogue, not guns." Hey, let me ask you a question, who of the numerous idiots around you writes your articles? Because, you see, Mullah Fazlullah, Baitullah Mehsud, Mangal Bagh, et al, I just don't recall them appearing on a televised debate or even putting forward their "ideas" in the press. As far as I recall, the gun (and the knife used to chop off people's heads) was their idea. I have another question, if you actually wrote this yourself: are you retarded?

Allama Iqbal was able to deal with fundamentalism through his knowledge and intellect. The slaughter of the fundamentalists of Lal Masjid did more to fan extremism and fanaticism than any other single event.

And I suppose, the stockpiling of heavy weapons in Lal Masjid was just in preparation of a debate about the vigilante raids on massage parlours and CD shops... Allama Iqbal could deal with fundamentalism because he rejected it outright. Of course, he had no Kalashnikov-toting, rocket-slinging Taliban to deal with who would have seen to raise his khudi from a lamppost had they been around. But I think he had the Lal Masjid terrorists in mind when he wrote:

Main jaanta hoon anjam uss ka
Jiss maarkay mein mullah hon ghazi

Pakistan is staring down an abyss today and needs to come up with a sovereign nationalist policy to deal with the situation. If we keep on following dictation from Washington, we are doomed. There are many groups operating in the country under the label of “Taliban”. Apart from the small core of religious extremists, the bulk of the fighting men are Pushtun nationalists.

You mean the ANP is part of the Taliban?! I knew it!

Then there are the fighters from the old Jihadi groups. Moreover, the Taliban are also successfully exploiting the class tensions by appealing to the have-nots.

Aah, so you read that New York Times piece too, I see...

But the most damaging for Pakistan are those groups who are being funded primarily from two external sources: first, by those who want to see Pakistan become a “failed state”; and, second, by those who wish to see the US bogged down in the Afghan quagmire.

How about those who don't see the danger of the Talibanisation of Pakistan?

What needs to be done: A two-pronged strategy is required - focusing on a revised relationship with the US and a cohesive national policy based on domestic compulsions and ground realities.

President Obama, unlike President Bush, is intelligent and has integrity. A select delegation of local experts on the tribal area and Afghanistan should make him understand that the current strategy is a disaster for both Pakistan and the US; that Pakistan can no longer commit suicide by carrying on this endless war against its own people; that we will hold dialogue and win over the Pushtuns of the tribal area and make them deal with the real terrorists while the Pakistan army is gradually pulled out.

I have news for you buddy. The Pakistan army has already pulled out and handed parts of the country to the terrorists. Or didn't you hear?

At the same time, Pakistan has to move itself to ending drone attacks if the US is not prepared to do so. Closure of the drone base within Pakistan is a necessary beginning as is the need to create space between ourselves and the US, which will alter the ground environment in favour of the Pakistani state. It will immediately get rid of the fanaticism that creates suicide bombers as no longer will they be seen to be on the path to martyrdom by bombing US collaborators.

Such as Shia imambargahs and funeral processions?

Within this environment a consensual national policy to combat extremism and militancy needs to be evolved centring on dialogue, negotiation and assertion of the writ of the state. Where force is required the state must rely on the paramilitary forces, not the army.

And, of course, negotiators such as the Commisioner Malakand Mohammad Javed, appointed at the insistence of Sufi Mohammad. But what about the paramilitary wanting to be trained by the US before it goes into a fight against the Taliban?

Concomitantly, Pakistan needs serious reforms. First and foremost we have to give our people access to justice at the grassroots level - that is, revive the village jury/Panchayat system. Only then will we rid ourselves of the oppressive “thana-kutchery” culture which compels the poor to seek adjudication by the feudals, tribal leaders, tumandars and now by the Taliban also - thereby perpetuating oppression of the dispossessed, especially women.

Yeah, the panchayat / jirga system is SO respectful of women, isn't it?

Second, unless we end the system of parallel education in the country where the rich access private schools and a different examination system while the poor at best only have access to a deprived public school system with its outmoded syllabus and no access to employment. That is why the marginalised future generations are condemned to go to madrassahs which provide them with food for survival and exploit their pent up social anger. We need to bring all our educational institutions into the mainstream with one form of education syllabus and examination system for all - with madrassahs also coming under the same system even while they retain their religious education specialisation.

Ok, finally, Immi bhai, some modicum of sense from you.

Third, the level of governance needs to be raised through making appointments on merit in contrast to the worst type of cronyism that is currently on show. Alongside this, a cutting of expenditures is required with the leadership and the elite leading by example through adoption of an austere lifestyle. Also, instead of seeking aid and loans to finance the luxurious lifestyle of the elite, the leadership should pay taxes, declare its assets and bring into the country all money kept in foreign banks abroad. All “benami” transactions, assets and bank accounts should be declared illegal. I believe we will suddenly discover that we are actually quite a self-sufficient country.

Once again, I agree. Let's start by you bringing your money to Pakistan.

Fourth, the state has to widen its direct taxation net and cut down on indirect taxation where the poor subsidise the rich. If corruption and ineptitude are removed, it will be possible for the state to collect income tax more effectively.

Ok, you're going econo-crazy again Immi bhai. "If corruption and ineptitude are removed"? Again, why didn't anyone think of that before?! You do realize, you'd have to step down from politics and stop writing thought pieces too, right?

A crucial requirement for moving towards stability would be the disarming of all militant groups - which will a real challenge for the leadership but here again, the political elite can lead by example and dismantle their show of guards and private forces.

Let's do this: ask all the political elite to dismantle their show of guards (I fully support this by the way) and then let's wait to see if the Taliban follow suit. They would follow good examples, right?

Finally, fundamentalism should be fought intellectually with sensitivity shown to the religious and heterogeneous roots of culture amongst the Pakistani masses. Solutions have to be evolved from within the nation through tolerance and understanding. Here, we must learn from the Shah of Iran’s attempts to enforce a pseudo-Western identity onto his people and its extreme backlash from Iranian society.

Ok. Let's sensitively send you wearing the clothes you were wearing in Dubai to talk to the Taliban in Swat and Buner. Up until now I thought the phrase "heterogeneous roots of culture" referred to precisely those things that the Taliban were against. But what do I know. I've never been to the Dubai cricket stadium.

The threat of extremism is directly related to the performance of the state and its ability to deliver justice and welfare to its people.

One small mathematical aside here: "direct relation" would imply that the better the state does to deliver justice and welfare, the more the threat of extremism would grow. I think you may have wanted to say "inversely related" but then, you're the pro-Taliban fundo. You should know.