equiliz3r
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DAWN.COM | Editorial | Awash with terror
Pakistanis have shown immense resolve and courage to sustain the society-state-media-political consensus against militancy in the face of an orgy of violence in the last year. For this the public deserves unmitigated praise.
The people, however, deserve more from their state, which is gallantly fighting the war against militancy but is still lacking in many areas. One of the biggest failures appears to be an inability, or perhaps unwillingness, on the part of the Pakistan Army and the government to clearly define the gamut of threats to state security and the publics safety.
By now every Pakistani knows about the TTP, or at least something about its key leaders, its agenda and its range of operations. The state has done well to take on this pre-eminent threat in Fata and Swat/ Malakand.
But there is a veritable alphabet soup of militant groups about which little is known. Here are just a few names: the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Jaish-i-Mohammad, Fidayeen-i-Islam, Harkatul Jihad al-Islami, Ghazi Force, Abdullah Azam Brigade, the al Almi suffix attached to several groups, Sipah-i-Sahaba. What has the Pakistan Army or the government told the public about these threats? Who are the leaders of these groups? How large are their cadres, in the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands? Where do they operate? What is their agenda? The public knows next to nothing about the answers to each of these questions and that information black hole is a serious worry. Heres why. Pakistanis have not been drawn to the militants ideology generally, and even where they have, arguably such as in Malakand division, they have been repulsed by violent means. But what the public cannot do is turn against what it does not know about. The failure of the state to come clean about the hydra-headed militancy threat means that many groups have been able to live, perhaps even thrive, alongside the population. It is striking that the average Pakistani with access to the news media or the Internet knows, or thinks he knows, more about Blackwater and RAWs activities inside Pakistan than, for example, who leads Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and what its foot soldiers are up to.
Then there are the opaque inter- and intra-sect enmities. The week saw the murder in Karachi of, among others, the leader of Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-i-Nabuwwat a group many Pakistanis know little about, but the murder of its leader was enough to spark panic in several Karachi localities. Sectarian militants have been blamed for the murder but Karachiites are none the wiser. Pakistanis have conclusively demonstrated that they reject terror; it is time the state came clean about the full spectrum of the threat
Pakistanis have shown immense resolve and courage to sustain the society-state-media-political consensus against militancy in the face of an orgy of violence in the last year. For this the public deserves unmitigated praise.
The people, however, deserve more from their state, which is gallantly fighting the war against militancy but is still lacking in many areas. One of the biggest failures appears to be an inability, or perhaps unwillingness, on the part of the Pakistan Army and the government to clearly define the gamut of threats to state security and the publics safety.
By now every Pakistani knows about the TTP, or at least something about its key leaders, its agenda and its range of operations. The state has done well to take on this pre-eminent threat in Fata and Swat/ Malakand.
But there is a veritable alphabet soup of militant groups about which little is known. Here are just a few names: the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Jaish-i-Mohammad, Fidayeen-i-Islam, Harkatul Jihad al-Islami, Ghazi Force, Abdullah Azam Brigade, the al Almi suffix attached to several groups, Sipah-i-Sahaba. What has the Pakistan Army or the government told the public about these threats? Who are the leaders of these groups? How large are their cadres, in the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands? Where do they operate? What is their agenda? The public knows next to nothing about the answers to each of these questions and that information black hole is a serious worry. Heres why. Pakistanis have not been drawn to the militants ideology generally, and even where they have, arguably such as in Malakand division, they have been repulsed by violent means. But what the public cannot do is turn against what it does not know about. The failure of the state to come clean about the hydra-headed militancy threat means that many groups have been able to live, perhaps even thrive, alongside the population. It is striking that the average Pakistani with access to the news media or the Internet knows, or thinks he knows, more about Blackwater and RAWs activities inside Pakistan than, for example, who leads Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and what its foot soldiers are up to.
Then there are the opaque inter- and intra-sect enmities. The week saw the murder in Karachi of, among others, the leader of Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-i-Nabuwwat a group many Pakistanis know little about, but the murder of its leader was enough to spark panic in several Karachi localities. Sectarian militants have been blamed for the murder but Karachiites are none the wiser. Pakistanis have conclusively demonstrated that they reject terror; it is time the state came clean about the full spectrum of the threat
