Daily Times editorial Feb 23, 2013

Army on board Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa briefed journalists on Thursday regarding the army’s posture on the coming elections, terrorism, with special emphasis on the Quetta carnage, and the Balochistan situation. General Bajwa unequivocally committed the army to timely elections, arguing that the army had been supporting the democratic setup for the last five years and had nothing to gain from any delay in the polls. Further, he said the army was not in touch with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (which has openly accepted responsibility for the Quetta bombings targeting the Hazaras) or any other banned organisation. He emphasized that Pakistan was engaged in a war against terror, which required all institutions to mount a united and comprehensive response. On the Balochistan situation in the wake of the Quetta bombings, General Bajwa was at pains to underline that the decision to impose Governor’s rule was a consensus political one (implying a purely civilian move that the army had nothing to do with). The army had been and is ready to come to the aid of the civilian administration if called upon to do so under Article 245 of the constitution, General Bajwa revealed, and went on to explain that the decision not to invite the army in was also a political decision taken by the civilian government. If the decision to restore the government in Balochistan were to be taken, that too would be a political move (again implying the army would have nothing to do with it). Turning to the law and order situation in Balochistan, the General said after the Hazara Town incident, 19 additional posts had been set up in Kalat and Quetta divisions and a targeted operation by the Frontier Corps (FC), with support from the police and intelligence agencies, was in progress. In answer to a question, General Bajwa said the recent incidents on the Line of Control in Kashmir had been handled maturely by the government and the military. On the repatriation of Pakistani Taliban leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad from Afghanistan after his recent arrest by the Afghan authorities, the General gave an indication of the improved level of cooperation against terrorism by revealing that the Foreign Office was in touch with Kabul regarding the issue. This kind of briefing by the ISPR to the media, although not unique, has come at a particularly sensitive time. Some may be inclined to see it as purely a charm offensive by the military, but some very important statements, issues and clarifications have been in evidence that go to the heart of the crises Pakistan faces currently. Perhaps the most strategic statement is the one in which the army appears to be on board as far as holding the elections in time is concerned. This unequivocal reiteration of the army’s position may well be meant to lay to rest all the speculations and conspiracy theories regarding moves and attempts to delay the elections and impose a medium to long term caretaker setup composed of technocrats (the Bangladesh model as it has come to be known). The ground realities certainly point in the direction of the military’s own difficulties in the war against terrorism that it is waging and in which around 5,000 personnel of the security forces have been martyred. With its hands full with a difficult counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism campaign, the military really does not have the time or the appetite for intervention in politics. That appetite has been further reduced by what appears to be a summing up by GHQ of the experience of military interventions of the past, which inevitably left behind more problems than they ostensibly set out to solve. This conjuncture of past lessons and present tasks presents the best hope for the continuity and consolidation of democracy, something lacking for 65 years, and for which we have had to pay a very heavy price. So this is really good news to hear in such explicit and clear terms. On terrorism, while there may be no reason to doubt General Bajwa’s reassuring words, a history of the involvement of the military with terrorist groups causes suspicions to linger that not all ties (surreptitious) have been cut. This may sound unfair to the men in uniform, but they do have the task of demonstrating that they mean what they say by helping the civilian authorities through intelligence sharing, cooperation and whatever else it takes to take out any and all terrorists on our soil. The LeJ may be the immediate focus of our attention because of the horrendous carnage in Quetta, but the whole panoply of terrorist groups raised in the (by now clearly) mistaken notion that they could be used as jihadi proxies in the region without costs, needs to be dealt with without doubt or hesitation. Unfortunately these groups have been able to take advantage of the lack of consensus that bedevils our polity on the correct approach to the extremists. To take an example that cuts across the grain of the army’s desire for a united response to terror, reports in the media assert that the Punjab government would be reluctant to act against LeJ despite their main bases being in Punjab because they are in seat adjustment negotiations with the LeJ’s erstwhile mother party, the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (previously the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan). This disunity needs to be overcome if the hydra of terrorism is to be slain. On Balochistan, it must be said with due respect that the briefing failed to distinguish between the nationalist insurgency and terrorism. If the response to the Quetta carnage were to be simply to increase the military’s presence in and around the city (through the army-commanded FC of course), that would make sense. But what has Kalat to do with the LeJ’s anti-Hazara, anti-Shia genocide? The call for unity in the face of the terrorist threat is indeed welcome and needed. But without reconciliation with the alienated Baloch, such ‘unity’, even if it could be achieved, would be hollow. While there is talk in the air about restoration of the Balochistan government, this too would prove a temporary and inadequate palliative as far as the nationalists are concerned. A political initiative to negotiate an honourable political settlement with the Baloch people is as critical as the forging of a national consensus against terrorism, and they are indeed the two sides of the same coin.