Kamila Hyat
With the misguided attempts at talks with the Taliban over, as jets, ‘copters and troops take over from the negotiators, the present moment is one dominated by the military. We cannot know how long this will last, what the outcome will be and if we really have any hope of doing away with a band of frenzied fanatics who openly dismiss the constitution and seek to replace it with their own, particularly obscanturist version of Shariah law.
This idea is of course terrifying – perhaps most of all for women, members of minority groups and indeed all others who would like to see their country move forward, and not backwards.
The sight of military aircraft bombing settlements in its own country is not a pleasant one. As the ISPR press releases come in, they do not say what civilian casualties may have been suffered. Some, of course, are inevitable. But we should also be thinking more about these people: why have they been ignored for so long and why does no one – the government, the media, the commentators – say much about them?
The people of the tribal areas, estimated to number about 3.40 million, have largely been left out of the equation. Had they been considered early on, pulled into the mainstream of the country, and given the same rights as its other citizens, perhaps we could even have avoided the emergence of the Taliban who have fed off the desperation and deprivation of people to build their own strength.
But when we do hear the voices of people from the tribal areas, they ask why they have been neglected. They ask why they have been thrown to the Taliban and no heed paid to the conditions under which they live. We have occasionally heard from those forced to flee the Taliban and stay away from their homes for years because they have opposed them in some way. But we do not hear often enough from these people. As a result we see them as abstracts, or persons who simply do not exist at all.
Whatever the outcome of the current conflict, the fate of these people – and others in the conflict zone – needs to be considered. No matter how well they are carried out, and how effectively we remove from our midst a band of criminals who use violence to blackmail and have contributed enormously to the expansion of crime and insecurity in our country, the fact is that the guns will never be enough. We need other weapons, other tools, to turn to and the most powerful of these would be development.
The Fata areas, and also other zones of conflict within Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have some of the worst statistics when it comes to education, health and other statistics. In parts of Fata the literacy rate stands at barely 15 percent; a mere one percent or less for women. Many people living there have never encountered a doctor. In this situation moving forward is near impossible.
What we need, alongside the military operation that had at any rate seemed inevitable, is a huge developmental initiative. This should have come a long time ago. Yes, some efforts were made in Swat but they were faltering and have not really changed very much in terms of the lives people lead. In Fata, we need to see roads made, schools built, clinics and hospitals put in place – and perhaps most important of all livelihood and opportunity offered to people. These people also need security and the basic rights enshrined in our constitution – which are denied to them.
This is something we need to start thinking about right now. The building works and other efforts should be started as soon as possible. People need to be convinced that the state, society and government see them as real beings and not as nonexistent entities who simply exist somewhere alongside the Taliban. We have heard politicians say that these people support the militants: but there is much evidence to show that just the opposite is true. Many seek peace and that is their priority.
Alongside efforts such as these, we also need to alter mindsets. Currently, some very dangerous ones have developed. There are people who actually believe that the Taliban are not a force that needs to be removed from the scene. Of course this does not need to happen by physically annihilating them. There must be a process of trial and fair play. If security forces are indeed guilty of taking away militants and killing them as they have been accused of doing, they too need to answer for their crimes. When an authority of the state engages in violations such as these, it lowers itself to the level of the criminals itself. There is then nothing left to differentiate between them.
The business of persuading people to change their minds about how they see militancy, religion and other issues linked in to it is complex. This could prove to be the biggest challenge we face. It is true that the Taliban have considerable support, much of it in the Punjab which has of course never lived under their rule. But there are also a large number of people who simply want to go about their lives in a normal fashion, and who distance themselves from the whole ideology put forward by the Taliban. Their views need to be strengthened.
The role of the media in this has been unfortunate, with the retrogressive line of thought emerging far too often and the most hard-line clerics given space to say what they believe even when this violates the law of the land.
We need to think about our future. What kind of country do we want? What kind of land do we want our children to grow up in? It would certainly not be the one that exists today. This is most true for those living in conflict zones. To alter this reality, a multi-pronged attack is needed. We need discussion, debate, consensus building but we also need to convince people to take pride in all that their culture and heritage offer. In no way does this link back to the greed of the Taliban.
Textbooks, efforts at state level and other innovative approaches need to be adopted to alter the change we have been seeing seep into society. We must remember that it is as yet only a leak. There are many people, among them rural villagers and the poor, who share nothing in common with the militants. The fact that they have no voice in their own country is unfortunate.
They need to be given this voice. Their views need to be projected more forcefully so that we can all hear them. Everywhere in the country, more and more girls are going to school; Pakistani music has made its mark on the world as has its art. These are realities we too often forget.
We need to project them as one way of stating who we really are and breaking free of the chains that have pulled us into a civil war and threaten to create even greater damage in many different ways as they continue to drift through society, taking hold of those who are in some way uncertain of where they stand or what they want.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor
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