Nothing official about it?
According to a UN Report, endorsed by no less an authority than the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, the Israeli shelling of the UN Peace Keeper’s post at Qana, sheltering more than a 100 Lebanese civilians from the Israeli “Grapes of Wrath” offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas in South Lebanon, was a deliberate act of pre-meditated violence. In all fairness there is evidence that the guerrillas fired Katyusha rockets from positions close by but given Israeli high-tech capabilities and the remote pilot-less drone overhead, the dozens of shells that slammed into the post seemed a cynical reaction, an extension of the general policy of State terror that the Israelis use vis-a-vis Lebanon’s population. The half million refugees that fled northwards were pawns propelled by repeated Israeli exhortations to “flee from the war zone”, the Israelis hoping that war-gaming a twin combination of anger and insecurity would force the Lebanon (and their Syrian mentors) to rein in the Hezbollah guerrillas and sue for peace. The game plan backfired because of the carnage at Qana, bringing such adverse world media attention that the Israelis had to beseech US Secretary of State Warren Christopher to help broker a peace and get them out of the public relations quagmire.
Terror has been employed for both tactical and strategic purposes as a part of State policy through the ages. In today’s world, a combination of high-tech and mass media force-multiplies terror’s effectiveness as a weapon of both peace and war. Terrorists rely on massive publicity to spread fear, the mayhem and violence is noisily staged to underscore the human being’s instinct for survival, a devastating assault on the psyche of the individual that overwhelms his/her capacity for logic and reason in the face of the threat to one’s existence. The common perception is that terror as a weapon of war is used only by those intent on overturning the established way of society, of warring against authority, but in fact it has historically been misused by the State as a weapon for maintaining its own authority. By the end of the Crusades, the ruthless cruelty of the German Teutonic Knights had carved out for themselves a special loathing in history’s pages. Their own German people wary of their terrible reputation, the Teutonic Knights were invited by the Polish King to settle in Poland near the borders of Germany and Poland. These ungrateful guests first turned on their Polish hosts, putting the people to the sword and fire with such vicious cruelty that their encampments were avoided by friend and foe alike. No tears were shed for the fact that the people who were being subjected to rape, arson and torture were all Christians who had made them welcome in the first place, this deliberate policy of terror was meant to ensure their unviable and unquestioned authority in the region.
Terror is often the weapon used by armed militants attempting to dislodge the authority of the State. Those functionaries in direct confrontation like the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) are themselves the major targets, as also are sensitive and vital installations like telephones exchanges, transmission lines, electric grid stations, government buildings, etc. To put pressure on the State, detonating devices are left at public places by such as buses, bus depots, hotels and restaurants, shopping areas, etc. The idea is to kill and maim innocents, the resultant public fear and outcry forcing the regime in power to compromise with the militants demands. Outside the pale of society, terrorists have tended to become more vicious and sadistic as time goes by. While the MQM (A) and MQM (H) both deny it, they ran torture cells (mostly for their own constituents) in their majority areas in Karachi. On their part, the LEAs have not been any less vicious in their excess, bodies with torture marks, cigarette burns, etc continue to turn up after various “encounters”. A vicious example of this is the ongoing Indian counter-guerilla operations in Kashmir where civilians are targeted regularly by the LEAs as a matter of policy. The LEAs practice of disposing of “with extreme prejudice” has never even sought to be hidden except under fig-leaf of denials, a very deliberate policy of instituting the fear of God in hearts and minds, extremely successful tactics in fighting terror with more terror. Too often terrorism is a problem that turns on itself. Sri Lanka was a Paradise till the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) trained and instigated Tamil secessionists to turn to violence. Tamil cadres were trained in Madras and vicinity thereof, Prabhakaran became a tiger here, forming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE). A vicious assault against Sri Lanka government escalated the fighting and invited retaliation from the Sri Lanka Armed Forces, ultimately resulting in the induction of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) into Sri Lanka, ostensibly for peace monitoring, but mainly to save LTTE’s bacon. If the LTTE were grateful to their Indian mentors they did not show it, mounting a vicious campaign against their own masters, the very troops who came to help them in the first place. The bloody campaign that ensued led to IPKF withdrawal but the LTTE did not let go. An LTTE team carried out the assassination of late Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi while on an election campaign. Since it was RAW who armed and trained the LTTE in the first place, they might as well have pulled the trigger. This turning against the master is the norm rather than the exception in the nether world of terrorism. Whatever may be the means, Gen Babar has brought Karachi back to sanity by eliminating dozens of terrorists. The problem is that since no socio-economic initiatives have been undertaken to redeem grievances, it may well result in fresh cadres turning to the gun as the final arbiter of their destiny, an endless Catch-22 that can result in the complete destruction of society as we know it, turning society into something like Somalia and Liberia today, with no rule of law, except that of the gun. No society can remain safe when the State exercises terror as a deliberate policy, its minions always tend to go out of control till they become a State within a State.
The danger in Pakistan as in any third world country is in the absence of strong democratic institutions, the State’s LEA and intelligence apparatus tend to run amok in reaction to terrorism. They keep on requesting for proportionate increase in their powers in direct relation to incidents, there is always the lurking fear that some of these incidents may well be self-created. In the absence of an effective watchdog mechanism, the State’s functionaries tend to go out of control after having “performed” for the State in “sanctioned” operations. This is specially true lower down the line, without the benefit of maturity and commitment, there is always a danger of individuals or sub-units turning rogue i.e. operating on their own without official authority, mostly for their own benefit or more dangerously out of a mistaken sense of loyalty to their superiors. The attack on Ahmad Raza Kasuri which resulted in the death of his father was one such incident ultimately leading to late PM Z.A.Bhutto’s conviction and hanging for murder. Murder and mayhem is ostensibly committed on behalf of the State but actually there is nothing official about it. The point everyone misses here is that anything illegal, sanctioned or not, remains illegal and any command to do something illegal, remains unlawful. However there is no culture in countries of the third world like Pakistan that can support “disobedience of unlawful command” and as such there is a marked tendency to go beyond the pale of law whenever they are stymied by the rule of law. To add to this is the “man-eater” syndrome where a tiger having tasted blood, likes it and become a man-eater. Having repeatedly broken the rule of law without retribution e.g assassinating opponents of the regime, setting off bombs, intimidating and harassing people, torturing them, etc, the minions begin to like what they do and knowing that the safety of their own superiors is tagged to them out of a mutual silence, they begin to have contempt for the law and even their own bosses. History is witness that this is a most dangerous development for the State and for civilized society, unfortunately it is a recurring syndrome even in the first world e.g. former National Security Council staffer Col Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair.
It is true that when the rules of society are violated by the gun, then those who are pledged to uphold the norms of society tend to resort to the gun to bring culprits to justice. Justice fails on a fine fail-safe line when the terrorists have committed so many murders and atrocities that no witness may dare come to court against them, this leaves no option but for the LEAs to fight in the urban jungle by the rules of the jungle defined by the terrorists themselves, asking for and giving no quarter. The ultimate danger is that the LEAs may themselves become party to this vicious cycle of hatred and violence. A good example is the Sindh Police, having lived and suffered in an environment where they had to eat humble pie at the hands of the MQM for years, they now tend to over-react against all Mohajirs. This vengeance is no better than that of vigilantes. Gen Babar may have brought peace to Karachi by the liberal use of the gun, he has to now put away the gun to sustain the peace or let this city and country slide into by anarchy. Signs of that anarchy are now blossoming out in even Punjab. For the sake of this country we have to take a hard look at the violent mayhem around us and make sure that there is nothing official about it !
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