Anwer Sher: From Kalashnikovs to detonators

Thursday, 23 June 2011

The 9-year-old Sohana Jawed was kidnapped on her way to school and forced to wear a suicide vest. (File photo)

By ANWER SHER
Al Arabiya

The news of a 9-year-old girl being kidnapped and used as a human bomb in Pakistan is perhaps the most disgusting news that one could have read. The taking of any life, for whatever reason, is a deplorable, but to inflict such a fate upon a child is beyond imagination. It begs the question that does the end justify the means?

Back in the 1980’s Pakistan’s cities were plagued by what I called the Kalashnikov culture; where the brandishing of guns and using them was engrained in to the society to such an extent that its blatant defiance of decency and law order was an everyday occurrence.

With the advent of the war of terror, and the emergence of an intransigent radical Pakistani Taliban, or its equivalents, the Kalashnikov as given way to the potency of the detonator. The ability to kill scores or people in one blast has become more potent to the perpetuators of these crimes than ever before.

What is deeply saddening has been in the way that marginalizing decency and tolerance has been occurring since the 1970’s. When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, under pressure from street protests over the rigging of the elections, reacted by appeasing the radical right political platform with the banning of a religious sect from calling themselves Muslims, and then went on to bring Sharia law into the country, he did not for once realize that a Pandora’s Box had been opened. Given the deep differences between the religious sects there was never going to be a consensus on the issue of Sharia law, and the result was a polarization of the country.

Suddenly the political cauldron was brewing a soup where interests of the feudal, the military, the majority Sunni, the large minority Shia, the political parties and many other strong interest groups had to learn to coexist and, hopefully, prepare a soup that was politically and socially edible. Bhutto’s rampant and ill planned nationalization of private industries and the consequent mismanagement of it added to the stress that the social fabric of Pakistan was already facing after the loss of what is now Bangladesh.

General Zia Ul Haq, who overthrew and subsequently hanged Bhutto, created even a bigger mess for the country. The advent of the Afghanistan war with Russia suddenly created a deep polarization of the military, who had, so far, been immune to the religious and political pressures on the outside.

The encouragement of the Taliban in Afghan politics by Zia and his henchmen, while served the immediate purpose of influence in Afghan politics, which was really limited after the Taliban were installed, but in the long term exposed Pakistani society to the same conservatism that was and is the creed of the Taliban.

Today Pakistan is not at the crossroads of a choice between radical Talibanization or modernism and tolerance. It is as a country way past that crossroad, and is perhaps hurtling down a pathway of change that cannot be good for the country. Sadly the recent news of the US government negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan toward a peace and perhaps power sharing arrangements will only give the Pakistani Taliban the encouragement that they need most. The mullah with a Kalashnikov will no doubt celebrate that he has brought the American with a cruise missile to the negotiating table.

However, we have seen moments in time where one small event has changed the course of history. Be it Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in a bus in America’s segregated South, or a diminutive Chinese man standing before a tank, these were events that shaped how we see history. Rosa Parks brought to the forefront the cruelty of the segregation laws, while the Chinese man standing up to a tank may not have brought a government down, it did alter the thinking of the Chinese leadership.

Perhaps, one can only hope that acts such as those of a 9-year-old girl being kidnapped to be used as a human bomb while wake up the people of Pakistan to realize just how wrong the whole social fabric has become. Can one see this to be Pakistan’s Tahrir Square? Can one see a million people march to end bloodshed? Can someone just say “enough” loudly enough to cause the change this country needs? The politicians live their comatose existence knowing that survival is what matters for them, not change; someone has else has to find their voice, and this is the hundreds of millions of Pakistanis who are revolted by this incident but are silent.

(Anwer Sher is a well-known author and columnist. He can be reached at: aqsher@gmail.com)