The Bangladesh approach

Facing threat from militants and extremists, Bangladesh has launched a nationwide programme for monitoring mosques and madrasas to ensure clerics follow guidelines issued by the state-run Islamic Foundation. "We have engaged our 40,000 staff having background in Islamic studies to monitor the mosques and see if the imams or khatibs are conveying our messages against militancy in line with the real Islamic teachings," Islamic Foundation’s director general Shamim Mohammed Afzal told PTI.

He said the foundation staff would join the Muslim’s weekly special ‘juma’

congregations when the clerics were supposed to deliver lectures or sermons against religious extremism and militancy and highlighting the "spirit of love" against "hatred and violence". Islamic Foundation is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Religious Affairs working to disseminate values and ideals of Islam and carry out related activities. Afzal said the foundation earlier distributed several million copies of two books against militancy at the 270,000 mosques and over 100,000 madrasahs.

The foundation officials said they have set up an anti-militancy cell and every week their officials monitor at least 10 mosques in Dhaka to see whether the clerics speak about militancy in their Friday sermons. "The officials were also tasked to motivate or request the independent clerics of the mosques to use their good offices and knowledge so that the youngsters were not lured by Islamist militants".

Bangladesh witnessed massive emergence of militant outfits in 2004-2005 when the country was hit by a series of blasts killing dozens of people as the groups promised to establish Islamic rule of their own brands. The situation sparked fears that the world’s fourth largest Muslim majority nation was becoming a militancy hotspot and prompted the subsequent governments to launch a massive security clampdown that resulted in trial and execution of six militant kingpins while dozens were jailed or were still being tried.

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This can’t work in Pakistan.

USA should send Marines to monitor Pak Military-run Schools, Cadet Colleges, Academies, Cantonments and GHQ also, not only Mosques, MuDaaris, Seminaries etc in an upside down crazy country, where Pak Military Staff itself runs JehaaDi Camps and Groups as dangerous as Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Khalifas from the hills

Feisal’s column

People who oppose the ongoing operation in Swat normally make two types of arguments.

The first argument is practical, that military force should only be utilised as a last resort and that this is not the time.

The second argument is philosophical. As one news anchor put it to me, how can we oppose the imposition of sharia law in Swat when Jinnah founded Pakistan in the name of Islam?

The essence of the first argument is that using the army to crush militants is the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. So while it may be effective, military action also comes with a massive cost. Innocent people get killed, families get displaced and entire towns get destroyed.

The answer to this argument is provided, however, by the military action itself. Operation Rah-e-Rast has been underway for almost four weeks. Sixty soldiers have died in the fighting while, according to ISPR, more than 1,100 militants have been killed. And yet, the operation is far from over. As I write these words, soldiers of the Pakistan Army are going door to door in Mingora, trying to blast out the militants who have been using 20,000 Swatis as human shields. And as for the financial cost, who knows?

The ongoing military operation is therefore self-evidently not excessive. Had that been the case, the operation would already have been over.

Opponents of military action can respond in one of three ways. The first is to argue that the army is incompetent. The second is to argue that the entire operation is a sham, the product of a giant conspiracy between Mossad, the CIA and RAW to break up the country and steal Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. And the third is to say that the army was sent in too soon.

I hold no brief for the Army and I know very little about its competence. But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you fight with the army you have, not with the army you want. Since we have no other army, accusing the army of incompetence is neither here nor there. Logically, the only other alternative would have been to invite American forces over from Afghanistan to invade Swat for us. In the absence of any support for that option, we have no option but to stick with General Kayani and his men.

So far as the grand conspiracies are concerned, I have no doubt that the CIA, Mossad and RAW would all breathe easier at night if we did not have nuclear weapons. But the fact that they do not want us to have nuclear weapons does not mean that they want to break up Pakistan. An exploded Pakistan would be exponentially more problematic for the international community than Pakistan in its current state.

If anything, the heads of CIA, Mossad and RAW are all praying to their respective deities to keep Pakistan solvent and stable because that is the only way our weapons will stay in sane hands as opposed to being in the hands of those who think that a nuclear exchange is a good idea because all the Muslims who die in the resulting holocaust will go straight to Paradise.

The final contention is that we should have waited longer. My question is: why? Is it not serious enough when a group of armed men rejects our Constitution, attacks our army and kills our citizens? And if that is not the issue, what would extra time have bought us? If anything, extra time would have given greater opportunity to the militants to entrench their positions.

I come now to the question of morality: how do I justify making war on those who are supposedly seeking only to fulfil Pakistan’s destiny?

Simply put, Pakistan’s destiny was not — and is not — to serve as the handmaiden for morons. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not just a lawyer but one of the finest lawyers produced in the entire history of British India. His vision for Pakistan was not one in which self-proclaimed khalifas descended from the hills to unilaterally impose a vision of Islam in which the worship of God was reduced to beards of stipulated lengths and blowing up women’s schools.

At the same time, I freely concede that it is the prerogative of a sovereign nation to decide how it wants to govern itself. And if the majority of the people in this country decide through some democratic process that they actually want to be governed by Sufi Muhammad and his ilk, so be it. But they have not done so. Instead, whenever they have been given the option, the people of this country have resoundingly rejected religious parties. Pakistanis have drafted three constitutions for themselves: not one of them has set up a theocratic state.

So, Mr Anchorman, here is my answer: these people deserve to have war waged on them because they reject our Constitution, because they reject the values which Pakistan was founded upon, and because they are trying to stuff a different legal system down the throats of unwilling citizens.