Malala Shooting: They Fear the Girl at School

Sudarshan Pattnaik's sculpture at Puri

Law and order has never been a matter of pride for the establishment in Pakistan. So a bomb explosion or a shootout or an acid attack will not get the world sitting up and taking notice. However, on October 9 the world did pause to take note. A gunman in a Mingora, in the Swat Valley, attacked 14-year-old Malala Yousfzai at her school. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan took responsibility for the attack and said that it was Malala’s work in promoting education among women and other social activities — which according to their skewed interpretation of the Quran is ‘un-Islamic’ — that prompted them to attack an innocent teenager at school.
General Ashfaq Kayani, on October 10, visited Malala in a Peshawar hospital she was undergoing surgery. He condemned the attacks and vowed to fight the militants. Hollow statements like this prove that Kayani is more politician than soldier. If the Pakistan Army in true grit wanted to address the militant problem, by now the once-famous Swat Valley would have regained its sobriquet ‘Switzerland of Pakistan’.
Is Islamabad Ready?
The attack on Malala is a pointer to both negative and positive aspects. The most obvious negative is that an innocent teenager who only wanted to study and spread education is fighting for her life after a few cowards thought of it better to silence her. As is now being said world over, the Taliban are not afraid of US missiles or stealth raids by Navy SEALs; what they really fear is a girl with a book. That is true. It was not anger that led the Taliban to attack the National Youth Peace Prize winner, but fear that the message of resistance, awakening and education she was spreading was hitting them harder than Obama’s drones.

Oh No! That's worse than a bomb!

The other negative aspect is that the extremists — whatever label they come under — are in no mood to retreat. While Swat was once a stronghold of the Taliban, it no longer is and the attack can be seen as an attempt to regain that bastion and spread fear among the people. This should be stopped by all means—while it seems that the people are ready, is the Pakistan government ready?
Educate Her
Mainly there are two positives to take from this attack. First, the Taliban is desperate and are being pushed to a corner. The juggernaut of protests against the shooting is a sign that the people have had enough of the Taliban and value the progress and freedom they are enjoying. This is a positive sign.
The second is a lesson that changes on the ground, by empowering the people through education, better facilities and freedom, will achieve greater results than drone strikes and armed blitzkriegs. The ‘war on terror’ has been going on for more than a decade and relentless attacks and chases have not produced the desired results. The United States would love to think otherwise but even the killing of Osama bin Laden has not given the desired results. Al-Qaeda has not ceased to exist and it has spread to such an extent that the loss of one leader is too little a blow.
Petty Politics
The Pakistan government can rout out the Taliban if it acts in right earnest. The wave of anti-Taliban protests that is being seen throughout Pakistan is proof the Taliban’s wide support base in the country is but a shadow monster, a myth that conveniently suits political parties in Pakistan and adds fuel to a fear psychosis in the West. The civilian government in Pakistan and the West has got a real, tangible opportunity to channel this mass revolt against these forces of evil. The question, however, is whether Islamabad will rise up to the occasion. Past experiences have shown that it prefers to feed the monster in the hope that is can be used to its advantage in neighbouring Afghanistan and India. Islamabad fails to see that this Frankenstein is turning against its creator/nurturer.

Imran Khan

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on October 16 said that "the work that she (Malala) led was higher before god than what terrorists do in the name of religion. We will continue her shining cause.” These words are definitely reassuring but it loses its glow when one realises that it comes from a person who has little popular support and is yet to show resolute action against the terror networks operating in the country. Moreover political leaders have taken up the issue to further their cause. Imran Khan, leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, after visiting Malala in the hospital, spoke in favour of the ‘jihad’ happening in Afghanistan. It is disappointing to see Khan, who is riding on a popular wave of support, fish in muddy waters. In the politics of opportunism what is lost is the freedom the people of Pakistan deserve. If this opportunity is not used to weed out the Taliban menace, posterity will not forgive these leaders and their name will be found in the gutters of Pakistan’s history. While most Pakistan leaders have a tainted past, the biggest loser now will be Imran Khan.
Until a few days back not many people around the world would have heard about Malala Yousufzai. After October 9 there should be not many who have not heard about her and the cause she represents.
The Taliban and apologists for the attack fail to realise that a very important person has been quoted in the Quran saying: “If a daughter is born to a person and he brings her up, gives her a good education and trains her in the arts of life, I shall myself stand between him and hell-fire.”
(The appeared in The New Indian Express on October 19)

The Afghanistan Question

In a June 2011 prime-time broadcast United States President Barack Obama announced the much anticipated troop withdrawal plan from Afghanistan. But Obama was not being completely honest when he said, “We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength…” because by then it was largely acknowledged the US Afghan policy was myopic and off target.

Afghanistan became the cynosure of popular hatred after it was said that the 9/11 terror attacks on the US were masterminded by a person sitting deep inside the Tora Bora caves. Overnight Osama bin Laden’s name became synonymous with Satan and it was the ‘duty’ of the US to hunt him down. Under President George W Bush America entered Afghanistan a little over a decade after leaving the nation in shambles after defeating the Russians. The aim was to get “justice” and to get Osama “dead or alive”, to recall Bush’s September 17, 2001 statement. This was padded up with the altruistic motive of ‘liberating’ the Afghans from the evil Taliban. On May 2 the US achieved its first objective when Osama was gunned down in his Abbottabad hideout in Pakistan. The ‘liberation’ of Afghans is still a distant dream.

Groping in the Dark

Afghanistan today is a quagmire, thanks to the ‘interests’ and ‘invasions’ by the Russians in the Eighties and by Americans after 9/11. However, the coming months and years are very crucial for Afghanistan, the region and the whole world. While Obama promised to bring back US troops from Afghanistan, what he did not promise was that in withdrawing from Afghanistan America would leave it a better place than when it went into the country a decade ago. The US has not got its act together and is literally groping in the dark desperately trying to find the way out. Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain’s Afghan envoy from 2007 to 2010, in his recent book Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign says that while the coalition’s intentions were good and there was progress in the initial years, success was prematurely declared, while in reality the bad guys had just moved back into the safe havens in the Af-Pak border and into Pakistan. 

Inglorious Exit

By the time it was realised that the war was anything but over, in order to give an honourable façade to what seems to be an inglorious exit the CIA advisors in Langley came up with the ‘good’ Taliban-‘bad’ Taliban theory. The lack of sincerity with which Washington was selling this story was enough for the world to call America’s bluff. What the US forgot was that all cats are grey in the dark.

No sooner had Obama announced the pullout than the attacks on US and NATO troops began to rise. The United Nations, in its quarterly report on Afghanistan, has stated that as of August  2011 the monthly average of attacks is around 2,100, close to 40 per cent more than what it was last year during this period. September has been one of the bloodiest months for the coalition forces. The ground situation is beginning to resemble the 2001 mayhem when coalition forces entered the country. The quality of the lives of Afghans has not dramatically improved in accordance to the money the US has poured into the country. But believe it or not, the worst part is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Islamabad Games

Washington, while going into Afghanistan, joined hands with an old ‘friend’ from the region which had helped the US oust the Russians from Afghanistan. This friend of the US, which it has often in the past pitted against India for geo-strategic reasons, is India’s neighbour to the west — Pakistan. On the outside it looked like the usual American plan — the US has mastered the art of befriending nations in the vicinity of its enemy nation, to provide aid and set up military bases. What they chose to overlook was the ties the Taliban has maintained with Pakistan’s notorious spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Lakhdar Brahimi, former special representative of the United Nations to Afghanistan and Iraq, while characterising the influence of its neighbours on Afghanistan said, “A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere; therefore weapons, fuel, food, money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbours of Afghanistan are working, are cooperating, either being themselves the origin or the transit.”

Through supporting the Taliban the ISI is creating a conducive environment for it in Afghanistan once the coalition leaves the country. Islamabad has always used Kabul as its backyard for perpetrating terror. And now it will not want to lose this advantage to a ‘liberated’, ‘developing’ Afghanistan, especially one in which India is playing a crucial role.

Last Chance

“As for the United States’ future in Afghanistan, it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors — the Soviets and, before them, the British.”

— Mohammed Omar, Taliban leader in Afghanistan

The regional powers are meeting in Istanbul in November and there is a meeting in Germany in December coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. If international forces make some serious decisions, rather than nodding to the ‘reports of progress’ and ‘plan of action’ set forth by the United States; if the nations wake up to the reality that the time for rapping Pakistan on its knuckles for the double game it is playing is over and concrete action (in the form of sanctions, listing of its terror networks, etc) needs to be taken, then there is hope for a nation which has been at the receiving end of world powers who from the time of The Great Game have been trying to ‘help’ it.

History has an uncanny way of repeating itself and it is up to the international community, especially the United States of America, to see to it that the axiom often associated with Afghanistan — the graveyard of empires — is removed.

(This was published in The New Indian Express on October 13, 2011)