The so-called ‘peace negotiations’ offer led by the ANP was the most
disappointing act of opportunism. The ANP has, for a long time, bravely
confronted terrorists and earned the respect of the nation. This sudden
U-turn could only be opportunism before elections. And who is the one
receiving this offer? Who is the authorised leader of the terrorists?
What authority does he have from so many independent operators? What is
their relationship with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ)?
______________________________________________
After the assassination of its brave leader Bashir Bilour, the Awami
National Party (ANP) consultative committee had released a bold
statement as a roadmap to confront the Taliban terrorism. We had shared
parts of that statement here. Subsequently, the ANP seems to have gotten
cold feet and wavered from “the Party’s stated position that extremism
and terrorist violence is a threat to the very existence of the
country...If the experience of the recent past is anything to go by, the
terrorists will not forgive any political or religious parties, even
those who have literally acted as supporters and/or apologists of the
terrorists. It will be an exercise in futility to appease the
terrorists.” Apparently, the ANP got a cold shoulder/snub from the
powers that be, backtracked from a firm stance and ended up producing a
nebulous, and quite frankly, useless declaration listing a few generic
recommendations at its All Parties Conference (ACP) last month.
Nonetheless, the pronouncement still included the word terrorism in it,
even if only to call for compensation for the families of the terror
victims.
Another APC was called last week by Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s
Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), ostensibly to develop a consensus
against terrorism. But the very word terrorism was carefully removed
from its joint declaration! The ‘holy’ fathers in the gathering were of
the opinion that not only should they negotiate with terrorists without
any preconditions, through a so-called’
‘grand tribal jirga’, but also did not want their Tehreek-e-Taliban
Pakistan (TTP) ‘darlings’ called terrorist lest they are offended. Only
if such sensitivity were shown for the thousands blown to smithereens by
the assorted jihadist outfits sired by the JUI-F and other
Deobandi/Wahhabi/Salafi parties. The whole effort, by political parties
who are actually on their way out of the government, has an eerie
undertone to it: developing a consensus in support of, not against
jihadist outfits that would be used in post-2014 Afghanistan.
Robert Gellately wrote in his 2001 book Hitler: Consent and Coercion in
Nazi Germany: “Hitler was largely successful in getting the backing, one
way or another, of the great majority of citizens...the Germans
generally turned out to be proud and pleased that that Hitler and his
henchmen were putting away certain kinds of people who did not fit in,
or who were regarded as ‘outsiders’, ‘asocials’, ‘useless eaters’, or
‘criminals’.” Something along the lines of Nazi Germany seems underway
in Pakistan where the consensus — the APC after all included all major
political parties — is to treat the Takfiri barbarians with kid gloves
as they massacre what are becoming the Jews and gypsies of Pakistan,
i.e. the Barelvis, Shiites, Ahmedis, Christians and Hindus. It does not
appear that the JUI-F’s APC was some slick manoeuvre to gain wiggle room
around the election time and fight another day. With the major
political parties capitulating to the TTP and entering into election
alliances with their Ahle-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat (ASWJ) accomplices, the
‘Wahhabification’ of Pakistan might be reaching its culmination.
These alliances and seat adjustments with the ASWJ/Sipah-e-Sahaba
Pakistan (SSP), which for all practical purposes remains the political
front for the Takfiri terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), are not
covert any more. Politicians like the federal minister Qamar Zaman Kaira
of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Senator Mushahidullah
Khan of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) have said on record
that they would court the ASWJ vote because they are ‘Pakistani voters’.
Victor Klemperer writes in I Will Bear Witness that even after the rise
of Hitler’s Nazism in Germany every Jew had an ‘Aryan (guardian) angel’
willing to help and socialise and even at the height of World War II he
was not able to see overt, rabid anti-Semitism. But by 1941 he was
forced to wear the Yellow Star of David. Shia and Barelvis — like
Klemperer — might have failed to notice that the persecution is so overt
that it is covert!
Aurangzeb Faruqui, the Karachi-based leader of the terrorist outfit ASWJ
that the PPP and PML-N seek the votes from, recently said, “I shall
make Sunnis (read Deobandi/Wahhabi/Salafi) so strong against the Shia
that no Sunni will even wish to shake hands with a Shia. They (Shia)
will die their own death. We won’t even have to kill them now. We would
make it hard for the Shia to even breathe and he will have to think how
to survive in this city.”
Professor Gregory Stanton had described eight stages of genocide in his
1996 briefing to the US Department of State: classification,
symbolisation, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation,
extermination and, eventually, denial. Hate speech like Faruqui’s, who
clearly emulates the late Haq Nawaz Jhangvi in conduct and virulence,
and actions by his LeJ cohorts, fall under several of these categories.
In fact, Shia genocide in Pakistan had a ‘rolling start’ with several
stages of killings happening simultaneously with the extermination and
denial carried out at the same time as classification and
dehumanisation. Faruqui was recently visited by an MQM delegation,
ostensibly to talk peace. A massive bombing destroyed the Shia
residential neighbourhood of Abbas Town, Karachi, killing at least 48,
two days after this ‘peace process’.
Two of the most sinister aspects of genocide are ‘urbicide’ where the
members of a social group, usually belonging to the middle or upper
classes, living in urban areas, are target killed or even whole cities
decimated; ghettoisation, i.e. confining the persecuted group into
(squalid) geographical zones. Both urbicide and ghettoisation of the
Shia, especially that of the Shia Hazara in Quetta, remain underway in
Pakistan as the politicians smoke the peace pipe with the
Taliban/LeJ/ASWJ.
Given the apathy not just of the Pakistani leaders but also large
swathes of the population and the inaction and/or complicity of both the
security establishment and politicians with the culprits, the Pakistani
Shia — and also the Barelvi Sunnis — are left with very practical
options. They must organise their vote bank and defeat the candidates
linked to the banned outfits wherever possible. They ought to move the
courts and the election commission against the parties and candidates
with terrorist connections. But most importantly, they must now
internationalise their case. Lest they forget there was no organised
protest by the common Germans against the ‘Nazification’ of Germany by
Hitler. Consent and coercion did work in Nazi Germany and seem to be
working in what increasingly appears to be ‘Takfiristan’.
______________________________________________
By Dr Mohammad Taqi
The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki
( Daily Times )
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