Taking the bull by the horns
Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad
President Musharraf has finally called the bluff of the extremist religious parties. The important decisions he announced on Saturday have elicited no significant opposition. The quiet of the general public, coming as it does in the wake of the Taliban debacle, is bound to further demoralize extremist elements. Not long ago, some religious leaders had issued ultimatums that if the Islamic system as interpreted by them was not enforced by a certain date, they would march on Islamabad, remove the government by force and do the needful themselves. Later, some issued fatwas declaring anyone lending support to the US-led alliance against the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as an apostate against whom it was the duty of every Muslim to rebel. They are all on the run now.
Of late a number of religious parties had concluded that their goal was to turn Pakistan into another Afghanistan. The country was to be led by clerics who would enforce strict laws and export militancy to the farthest corners of the globe. Jinnah's concept of a modern, democratic and liberal Pakistan was out. The theocratic version of the Islamic Emirate patterned on Taliban's Afghanistan was in. One religious leader after another began to visualize himself as Amir-ul-Momineen Mujahid Mullah Omar. If required to choose between Pakistan and Afghanistan, declared JUl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, he would opt for the latter. According to General Babar, Interior Minister in Ms Bhutto's second tenure, the Taliban had introduced an ideal system. A host of right wing columnists began to idealize the student militia for enforcing the Shariah in defiance of the rest of the world. Military strategists like Hamid Gul, meanwhile, confirmed the soundness of the policy of exporting Islamic militancy to other countries. It was taken for granted that if the US dared to attack Afghanistan, it would suffer a crushing defeat. All this bolstered the conceit of the religious parties.
What is happening now is the anti climax. Five high-profile extremist organizations have been banned. The government has declared religious seminaries will not admit foreign students without an NOC from the administration, the sources of their funding will be probed and their curricula monitored. No new seminary or mosque is to be set up without prior government permission. The use of loudspeakers in the mosques will henceforth be restricted to the call for prayers and the Juma sermon, which according to the new instructions, must avoid political issues. Negating expectations entertained by the religious parties these restrictions have caused no public unrest. The army also stands firmly behind President Musharraf.
What must further dishearten the activists of religious parties is the volte face by some of their leading lights. Quite a few rightwing hacks whose paeans for the jihad had encouraged thousands of youth to take up arms and die in foreign lands or languish in jails have abruptly taken a U-turn. A couple were recently found leading a peace march in the company of Indian journalists in Kathmandu. Hamid Gul, a prominent rightwing ideologue, has characterized President Musharraf's address, which struck at the basis of the retired spy master's jihadi doctrines, as "on the whole balanced and in line with national thinking." Dr Israr Ahmad, another jihad enthusiast, has opined that the steps taken and the expectations entertained by him need to be responded to positively. JUP chief Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani has chosen to stress what he regards as the positive points in the speech.
What has brought about the change in their thinking? Among the sobering factors is the totally unexpected Taliban debacle and the subsequent suffering of the foreign volunteers. The Taliban leadership which had vowed to defend the major cities till death surrendered after two months of fight. While retreating in haste, the Taliban abandoned their Pakistani comrades with the result that hundreds of them were captured, tortured, or killed by the advancing Northern Alliance. The Taliban sought better terms of surrender for themselves, caring little for the fate of the foreign volunteers. Many Pakistani jihadis were looted on their way back by those whom they had gone to help, or were captured by warlords to be released for hefty ransoms. Those who had incited them to wage the holy war, like TNSM leader Sufi Muhammad, returned home safe and sound.
The fall of Afghanistan is going to leave a deep scar on the psyche of the jihadi groups all over the Muslim world. The defeat of the Taliban and the fall of the Islamic Emirate, considered by militants as the only Islamic administration in the world, had a devastating impact on religious parties comparable to the effect of the fall of the USSR on the communist world. Afghanistan provided training and shelter to Arabs, Chechens, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Muslims from scores of other countries. It became the home for thousands of highly motivated and trained soldiers of Allah ready to fight for Muslim minorities anywhere in the world. In two months all this has been destroyed. The great expectations of the religious parties have come to naught.
This is not the first such experience in South Asia. Muslim masses misguided by the clergy have chased mirages before. In the 1920s, the Khilafat and subsequent Hijrat movement, wisely eschewed by the Quaid-e-Azam, had ended in similar disillusion. During the Khilafat movement many Muslims suffered economic loss or went to jail for an ideal which was no more than the proverbial friar's lantern. In the Hijrat movement clerics persuaded thousands of Muslims to sell their properties at throw away prices and migrate to Afghanistan. Scores of promising students abandoned their studies to join the mohajirs. As they soon found out Afghanistan just could not support them. Some died on the way, others crossed over to the USSR or Turkey. Many returned to India where the government had already instituted conspiracy cases against them.
President Musharraf is lucky. The objective conditions favour him. What is more, being COAS he is in a better position to rein in the ISI which had over the last two decades supported and encouraged the jihadi outfits. He can implement the measures he has announced only if he can keep this state-within-the-state under control. |
