Pakistan's Punjab in the swamp of political parties

Ahlul Bayt News Agency - Hillary Clinton was right when she told Hina Rabbani Khar, “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.”

One terrorist network after another has attacked its benefactors in Pakistan. It is now the turn of Punjab, which has spawned the largest number of these outfits. Attack on Punjab Home Minister Shuja Khanzada is just the beginning.

Since the Zia era, Punjab has been ruled by PML-N for as many as thirteen years. Almost the entire PML-N leadership has been bought up in families where the most popular fiction writer was Naseem Hijazi and the only newspaper read was Nawa-i-Waqt. They were fed on a triple distilled ideology which glorified jihad, required the enforcement of Shariah and emphasised the unity of ummah. That Ahmadis were apostates and the Shi’a a deviant sect were axioms to them. The Hindus, Jews and Christians were considered enemies who were conspiring against the Islamic countries The Sharifs readily embraced the world view introduced under the brand name of “Pakistan ideology” under Zia.

Sharifs developed connections with the jihadi networks when Nawaz was appointed chief minister in 1985. Punjab had become by then a major recruitment ground for the Afghan jihad. Nearly all religious parties, particularly those with sectarian orientation, vied with one another in enlisting volunteers. As the military regime’s blue eyed boys the Sharifs developed close links with the ISI and jihadi groups.

The connections with the ISI and religious and sectarian outfits helped Nawaz Sharif win the 1988 elections in Punjab. While Zia had gone the Afghan jihad continued. When the Russian army withdrew it transformed into a civil war between rival jihadi groups.

After coming to power the PML-N decided to maintain its alliance with the religious parties. Throughout its two tenures in the 1990s sectarian terrorists played havoc targeting the Shi’a community, Ahmadis, and Christians in Punjab. The government simply looked the other way, as happened in the case of 1989 Gojra killings. The contacts established with extremist elements under Zia were to be retained to gain political support during confrontations with the PPP and coming elections. Extremists became an important part of the PML-N constituency.

After 2008 the terrorist networks were allowed as before to freely propagate their views and hold public rallies. Terrorist organisations were particularly allowed to flourish in South Punjab with an aim to weaken the PPP which held a strong position in the region. The relations with LeJ and Sipah-e-Sahaba however soured towards the end of the PML-N’s second tenure (1997-99). The ties with LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed, however, remained as strong as before.

Once again in power in Punjab in 2008, the PML-N redesigned its future strategy. After resigning from the coalition, the PML-N again came into confrontation with the PPP which ruled the federation. The Sharifs decided again to restore ties with Punjab’s sectarian groups who were deadly opposed to Zardari for being a Shi’a. The PML-N government gave the banned outfits permission to freely collect funds, hold rallies, spread hate material and recruit volunteers. The police was discretely told to leave loopholes while preparing cases against the detained sectarian leaders which could later be used by their lawyers to seek their release.

Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Malik Ishaq and several others thus succeeded to gain reprieve from the courts and continued their activities. As quid pro quo, their followers were to help the PML-N with the 2013 elections.

The military operation in Swat and South Waziristan in particular made the TTP furious. Disregarding the olive branch offered by the PML-N, TTP staged some of the most devastating attacks in Lahore. These included the ones on Sri Lankan cricket team, ISI office, Manawan Police Training School, FIA Regional Office, two mosques of Ahmadi community and an army vehicle in RA Bazaar.

The attack in RA Bazaar, conducted in March 2010, led to the killing of 57 people. This made Shehbaz Sharif issue a fervent appeal to the TTP to spare Punjab. Underlining the PML-N’s common cause with the TTP he said “Gen Musharraf planned a bloodbath of innocent Muslims at the behest of others only to prolong his rule, but we in the PML-N opposed his policies and rejected dictation from abroad and if the Taliban are also fighting for the same cause then they should not carry out acts of terror in Punjab.” The implication was that Shehbaz had no objection if the TTP was to conduct the murderous activity in other provinces. His appeal had the right effect. Henceforth terrorists, including those with headquarters in Punjab, were to turn KP, Balochistan and Karachi into killing fields.

The Punjab government remained in a state of denial regarding the existence of terrorist outfits in the province. Rana Sanaullah insisted that there were no safe havens of the TTP in Punjab and that all suicide bombers were sent from North Waziristan. As he once put it, “All those kidnapped for ransom by the Taliban — whether it is Shahbaz Taseer or foreigners — are taken to North Waziristan. They can launch attacks in Punjab but they are on the run here and eventually they retreat to Waziristan, where they have their safe havens.”

Confident that an understanding had been reached with the TTP and LeJ the Punjab government did not care to prepare any strategy to meet the terrorist threat. Sanaullah went to the extent of justifying the neglect to formulate a counter-terrorism strategy. He maintained that since extremism was widely accepted by society any move to eradicate it was to be widely resisted. “Society does not condemn acts of extremist violence; in fact there is a wide acceptance for them”. He cited the case of Mumtaz Qadri “who was showered with petals by the public.”

The only major incident of terrorism during 2008-13 was attack on two Ahmadi mosques killing over 100 innocent people. Shehbaz Sharif, who rarely missed a chance of visiting victims of a major road accidents or those of dengue outbreak, took no note of the tragedy that had happened under his command.

There were meanwhile several cases of kidnapping for ransom and harassment and killings of minorities.

After 2013 elections senior police officials pointed out that the Punjab government had been “sleeping over” regular reports sent to it by intelligence agencies about the increasing presence of sleeper cells of proscribed militant outfits.

More than one intelligence official involved in the preparation of these reports told media that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif were aware of the militant threat emerging in Punjab but they were not taking the required measures to counter it.

Punjab government has so far depended on statistical jugglery to cover up its failures in dealing with the terrorist networks. After the killing of Shuja Khanzada, it would be difficult to lead many up the garden path. Unless it moves seriously to counter the threat of terrorism, which it has never done in the past, Punjab might turn out to be the biggest killing field.



By: Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad; The writer is a political analyst and a former academic.




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