Opaque and unaccountable counter-terror

By Mosharraf Zaidi

The murder of Pakistan’s international man of mystery, Khalid Khawaja, should awaken Pakistanis on all points in the political, religious and social spectrum to the depth and complexity of the terrorists’ challenge to Pakistan. Khawaja was, what many investment bankers would call, a relationship manager. Along with a small group of others, he helped manage Pakistan’s various and increasingly complex relationships with terrorist groups. That he had spent an increasing share of his time in recent months trying to cool down and temper the responses of terrorists to the Pakistani state’s full-scale war on terror is ironic. Khawaja was the quintessential 21st century holy warrior — the anti-thesis of a counter-radicalisation strategy. That he was an asset in Pakistan’s strategy speaks volumes about how poorly prepared Pakistan is for this challenge.

As far back as 1987, Khalid Khawaja was seen to be too blunt, too extreme and too much of a risk for the piety-stricken Gen Ziaul Haq. It is ironic indeed that Daniel Pearl once harangued Khawaja for greater access to some of the Al Qaeda and Taliban figures he was on personal terms with. In the end, the extremist disease that beheaded Daniel Pearl was unable to distinguish between what Pearl represented, and what Khawaja stood for. When Pakistan’s violent extremists cannot tell the difference between Islamist activists like Khalid Khawaja and reporters for the Wall Street Journal like Daniel Pearl, we should all be very scared about what the hell it is, that is actually going on, in Pakistan. (That is of course if you haven’t yet been scared by the more than 25,000 lives that terrorism and counter-terror operations have claimed).

We know through the intrepid reporting of Zafar Abbas and Hamid Mir of course that Khawaja’s killers were not garden variety ‘Taliban’. We know that none of the so-called ‘good’ Pakistani Taliban — Gul Bahadur, Sirajuddin Haqqani, and their ilk — have any control over any of the ‘bad’ Pakistani Taliban — Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Ilyas Kashmiri, and their latest ilk, the Asian Tigers. We know that the Asian Tigers, the group that took Khawaja’s life, was inspired by the tragedy at Lal Masjid. We know that the Afghan Taliban, no matter how hard clash-of-civilisations-analysts try, are not the same thing at all, as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ Pakistani Taliban, or their splinter groups, like the Asian Tigers.

Yet somehow, the word Taliban continues to be used in the broader Pakistani discourse wantonly, without any context. This enables a sanitised and simplified civilisational version of the world in which black and white caricatures are pitted against one another. On one side are the supposed frappuccino-sipping, sun-block dripping, dogma-ripping globalised liberals, on-side with the west and all things modern. On the other are the ‘Taliban’. If you don’t fit squarely into one group, you are automatically the other. This is why it is so easy to equate criticism of the PPP as a right-wing conspiracy, why it is so easy to label as anti-Pakistan anyone that questions the conduct of the military on and off the field of battle, and why it is so easy to brand those that condemn and oppose the tyranny of terrorists as American and Indian agents.

This “us versus them” formulation of a very complex set of incentives, stimuli and events had produced a dangerous culture of simplified good and evil in Pakistan. As we know from global experience, simpleton good v. evil is bush league — George W Bush League to be precise. If the American people have smartened up to the nuance and delicacy of dealing with different parts of the world, and different Muslim populations, differently, it seems ridiculous that Pakistanis should need any prodding at all to be convinced that nuance and delicacy might be in order in Pakistan’s own struggle against terrorists.

It stands to reason that among terrorist threats, there are both the reconcilables and irreconcilables. The reconcilable may include the so-called ‘good’ Taliban, like Haqqani and Co. Or they may not. We don’t actually know if there are any terrorists that are reconcilable. The possibility of openly exploring the space for armistices has been captured by the military, and shrunk due to the secrecy and failure surrounding previous attempts. The disastrous Nizam-e-Adl fiasco and the ensuing Rah-e-Rast operation in Swat buried the little political space that existed to consider engaging reconcilables. Many that had long advocated a zero-tolerance for terror groups’ demands were buoyed by the shrinkage of space for negotiations and talks with terrorists — at least partly, myself included. But Pakistanis have paid a high institutional price for the shrinking of the space for dialogue.

That price is the relevance of mysterious figures like Khawaja and Hamid Gul in Pakistani public life. In an environment that condemns talking to terrorists as a sign of weakness, and an existential threat, the only way the Pakistani state can communicate with terrorists is through these kinds of interlocutors. These interlocutors do the dirty work of the Pakistani state. The fact that Pakistanis don’t trust these interlocutors, any more than they trust their enemies, is not surprising. Operators like Hamid Gul can never enjoy the legitimacy to act on behalf of the Pakistani people. The only actors in the public space that do enjoy the luxury of legitimate agency are politicians.

Of course, the political space has not demonstrated its capacity for the courage to sit with, stare down, and negotiate with terrorists. Unless the mainstream parties, led by the PPP and the PML-N, produce politicians capable of travelling to the tribal agencies and sitting down with the Sirajuddin Haqqanis and Mullah Nazeers of the world, we can be certain of two things. One, public policy ‘trouble-shooters’ like Khawaja and Hamid Gul will continue to exercise power on behalf of the people of Pakistan, without the burden of accountability. Two, the Pakistani military will continue to conduct military operations — and charge taxpayers in Pakistan (and outside) a sizeable amount of money to do so, without any oversight at all.

If Pakistan’s military will ever be the impregnable wall of defence for Pakistan that it aspires to be, it needs to be subservient to civilian oversight. Only visible and demonstrable civilian oversight can help internalise the human cost of Pakistan’s war on terrorism. That cost begins and ends with innocent civilian casualties, or collateral damage. If there is one single issue that drives and motivates the rank and file of the irreconcilable terrorist threat in Pakistan, it is innocent civilian deaths.

We often speak of innocent civilian deaths in the abstract. The reason is simple. There is very little verifiable information about civilian deaths available to the public. All access to victims is controlled by the state — which is not too keen to allow a balanced national conversation. Still, two events stick out strikingly, in the chronology of the terrorism and counter-terrorism story of Pakistan since 2002. The first is the October 30, 2006, military attack on the Chenagai madressah in Bajaur, which killed more than 80 (mostly children). The second is the July 10, 2007, storming of Lal Masjid.

Innocent civilian deaths are often seen as a Trojan Horse, or a proxy for ideological opposition to war. And perhaps there needs to be an ideological debate about the merits and demerits of a Pakistani war on terrorism. But the implications of innocent civilian deaths on the actual war effort as it exists are here and now. They are real life, not ideological. The Asian Tigers’ are a direct correlate of the killing fields of Lal Masjid. Their murder of Khalid Khawaja is a manifestation of just how irreconcilable these groups have become.

The take-no-prisoners, kill-’em-all approach to the Pakistan’s terrorism problem has been arguably successful in some respects. But if the fallout from Lal Masjid is anything to go by, its failures and their extent is unknowable. That is a dangerous and scary prospect.

Killing innocent civilians is what terrorists do. That’s how terrorists should be branded. Those Pakistani soldiers that are bravely fighting terrorists should never be seen as aggressors of innocent people. The manner in which Pakistan is countering terrorism undermines the sacrifices of its soldiers, and perpetuates the presence of Khalid Khawajas and Hamid Guls in our national conversation. Pakistan and democracy can do better than this.

The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.