COMMENT: Terrorism, extremism and militancy —Shahzad Chaudhry

Source: Daily times

Tensions find root either amongst civilisations, which is bad for world peace, or within civilisations when the two ends of a spectrum compete for domination against each other in a society. Those on the extreme end of a religious spectrum, the extremists, are thus existentially present and are a phenomenon of relativism within the spectrum

Militancy separates extremism from terrorism. I had stated in my last week’s column, ‘A grand failure’ (Daily Times, December 7, 2009), that “we must differentiate between extremist sentiment and militant extremism” and that even after a successful end to the ongoing counter-insurgency effort in Waziristan, “some extremist sentiment will persist, for that is the nature of any religion”. The sense needs to be better explained; as indeed it is likely to become the bane of Pakistani society to resolve the dilemma as it charts its future in the backdrop of an armed insurgency and an unstinted suicide bombing campaign wrought by the terrorist groups in Pakistani cities.

Any action begets a reaction; such definition has been extremely harmful to the need for congenial coexistence, thus reinforcing a divide amongst the Christian world, the Muslim world, the Jews and the rest; hardly the stuff of peace — thanks to no uncertain philosophising by people like Samuel Huntington. Secular societies like the Swiss are reasserting their faith; a reverse implication of denying another faith the freedom of practice and physical symbolism. For the Muslims to become aware of their distinct denomination thus is the obvious fallout.

Is religiosity bad? Not the least. Religion too exists on a spectrum from the extremely religious to the hardly religious; religious they all are if that is the uniform creed of acceptance in a society. After all the higher calling of any religion is to make society better and a human a better human. There cannot be anything wrong with that.

Tensions find root either amongst civilisations, which is bad for world peace, or within civilisations when the two ends of a spectrum compete for domination against each other in a society. Those on the extreme end of a religious spectrum, the extremists, are thus existentially present and are a phenomenon of relativism within the spectrum.

While insurgency seeks a territorial entity and a parallel system of laws, and challenges an existing system of governance, control and administration to wrest it away from the competing authority, terrorism is the means employed by an entity within a spectrum to impose its views and dominate it through cowing the rest into submission. It may be used by insurgents to aid their larger design of forcing a submission of will on the target state and society, or usually a more preferred means of those within a spectrum to give expression to their militant endeavour to dominate and impose their sense of religiosity in a society. Pakistan has its hands full on both counts. The recent spate of bombings is the expression of such intent by the insurgents being pursued in Waziristan. Militant extremism has found presence in no uncertain terms in Pakistani society and will be a prime area of focus for resolution.

In a hierarchy of resolution one hopes that the ongoing insurgency will soon wither in the face of a determined application of force by the state. There are other essentials to a complete elimination of an insurgency, and the earlier the Pakistani state rises to the challenge of addressing the remaining socio-political and socio-economic measures to completely stabilise the situation in FATA, lesser shall be its own dilution to the even bigger challenge of addressing terrorism arising out of militant extremism in our midst. We need to close this front to move to the next.

On the other end of the religious militancy spectrum is of course the sentiment of extremism — an almost essential presence in any religious denomination, though of varying intensity. Condensing the spectrum to a minimal acceptable spread is a long haul and will need a determined input of intellectual effort as indeed necessary resources and attention of both the state and society. Education is perhaps the best antidote to this malaise, and yet there will be the presence of a benign strain of committed religiosity such as the one pursued by politically motivated religious parties or the puritanical strain of the Tableeghi Jamaat. The more cohesive and central the religious strain pursued by the majority, less shall be the tensions in the permitted extremes. Extremism could thus be contained.

The clergy and the ulema have a most important role to mitigate the differences and coalesce together on most uniform areas of applicability. The importance of a composite syllabus for the madrassas and inclusion of religious studies, more so of a comparative nature among global religions in the so-called state and private institutions cannot only enable better understanding of the other, it can also further tolerance.

What takes the meat though is the comprehensive understanding and institution of the necessary set of strategies inhibiting extremism taking the route of terrorism, the consequence of which one witnesses in the recent destructive spate of bombing. Denying extremism from turning militant separates extremism from converting into terrorism.

What will it take to stop extremist sentiment turning militant? First, a few law enforcement measures: cancellation of all licensed prohibited bore weapons across the board in the entire country; inhibiting access of these groups to weapons and means of destruction and interdicting supplies at their source of origin; strict enforcement of the law with exemplary punishment where violated; reinvigorating intelligence agencies and forming new ones where required to the lowest level of an administrative structure to gather information on group activities of known militants and extremist elements. The ISI should only assist but cannot be given the prime responsibility since that is not its prime area of functioning; forming special cyber-crime protection cells for tracking funds movement and other related funding activities that sustain such groups; formation of special forces groups at the district level to provide quick reaction to known militant activities and proactively engage such groups to apprehend those. Such special forces need to be trained to the highest levels in combating terrorism and particularly urban terrorism and provided on priority with the latest mobility and communication resources. The intelligence and special forces outfits must be placed under one command at all levels within an administrative structure for unity of command and the most optimum coordination that will rest at the heart of such a counter-terrorism effort.

Counter-terrorism experts can actually come up with a litany of steps needed to put such an effort in place. What confounds reason though is the absence of any sense in this direction from the government. Is it their belief that the military’s counter-insurgency campaign will deliver the country entirely of the curse of terrorism? If so, they shall be patently wrong. Pakistan’s next frontier is counter-terrorism and that needs a better explanation of how religiosity culminates in turning violent and militant. The awareness of the roots of the problem will need to be followed with a concerted action by parliament in framing necessary laws, provisioning resources and following up on government implementation. Is there a need for forming a Joint Parliamentary Committee on Elimination of Terrorism? There definitely is, since the haul is likely to be long and will need continued focus.

The writer is a retired air vice marshal and a former ambassador