How to Fight Terrorism in Pakistan?

At present, our country and security forces are facing suicide attacks, bomb blasts, sectarian violence and targeted-killings coupled with intermittent battles with the militants.

Besides civilian casualties, more than three thousand military soldiers and police men have become martyrs in war against terrorism, while maintaining the integrity of the federation.

According to the Finance Division’s statement, Pakistan’s economy suffered a loss of more than Rs 2.1 trillion due to the ongoing war on terror. The economy suffered direct and indirect losses in terms of exports, foreign investment, privatization, industrial production and tax collection. Besides, Pakistan’s economy has so far suffered irreparable loss of $68 billion due to turmoil in Afghanistan, and Afghan refugees.

It is on record that Pakistan is the only country which has sacrificed more than NATO and USA including other countries in war against terrorism. At this critical juncture, when our country has continuously been facing political instability, economic crisis and social strife, the question, how to fight terrorism in Pakistan needs special attention.

Terrorism in Pakistan took origin owing to various inter-related problems such as poverty, political and economic injustices which created regional disparities. In wake of these problems, after 9/11 tragedy, Islamabad joined American war on terror as the country had no other option as Pakistan was also facing hostile factor of India.

As regards Pakistan, terrorism can be fought on two fronts? by eliminating poverty and by using force where necessity arises.

Regarding poverty, political experts agree that poverty is the root cause of terrorism. And it is said that “a hunger man is an angry man.” Notably, majority of people in Pakistan are living below poverty line, and have no clean drinking water. While especially for the youngsters, unemployment has made the matter worse. In these adverse circumstances, some people go to the level of extremism and even commit suicide. These are the people whose services are hired by the terrorist groups and foreign secret agencies such as Indian RAW, American CIA and Israeli Mossad as they become vulnerable to terrorism.

It is notable that Pakistan is an agricultural country; therefore, our government should make efforts to develop this sector including cottage industry. Our agriculture also provides raw material to the industrial sector. Without any doubt, these efforts will play a crucial role not only in providing employment to the millions of people but will also eliminate poverty in the country.

In the modern era of technology and internet, technical education has become necessity of every under-developed and developing country. So Pakistan’s government should particularly emphasize the need of technical education by promoting it. In this respect, more institutes should be opened in order to promote technical education.

It is mentionable that there are two types of terrorists?extremists and moderates. In order to cope with terrorism, our government should neutralize the moderate terrorists through reconciliation by offering them general pardon and asking them to renounce terrorism. Even extremist insurgents can be offered mediation. Nevertheless, those militants who reject the offer could be fought through military operations.

Military paradigm is another element to fight terrorism. In this respect, Pakistan’s armed forces have already broken the backbone of the Taliban militants through successful military operations which have been conducted in Buner, Dir, Swat and South Waziristan. These operations still keep ongoing in some tribal areas.

Another notable point is that most of the Taliban militants have been destabilizing Pakistan with the help of external elements. In this connection, secret agencies like CIA, RAW and Mossad are well-established in Afghanistan from where; their secret agents have been regularly supplying arms and money to the militants including their other Pakistani agents with a view to weakening Pakistan which is the only nuclear country in the Islamic World. They have been using various covert tactics in conducting suicide attacks, targeted killings and inciting sectarian violence in Pakistan in general and Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa in particular. They also support separatism in Balochistan where similar sort of violence continues unabated. In this connection, first of all US must itself abandon the double game which it has been playing with Islamabad. Then Washington must pressurize India including Israel to wind up their anti-Pakistan terror-network from Afghanistan.

As Pakistan has been successfully coping with the menace of terrorism, US-led some western countries including India should also give up their propaganda campaign against Islamabad and blame game against its intelligence agency ISI.

In order to fight terrorism, Pakistan’s media should play a key role. It must point out the criminal activities of the militants like hostage-taking, killing of the innocent people? torching the government buildings including girl schools and car-snatching. It should also indicate that Islam is a religion of peace and does not allow suicide attacks.

As Pakistan is already facing various crises of grave nature in wake of terrorism, so our politicians must stop manipulating the same for their own self-interests. By setting aside their differences and by showing power of tolerance, both our rulers and opposition parties need to act upon a policy of national reconciliation to cope with the problem of terrorism and to stand before external pressure. In this respect, all the opposition parties must participate in the round table conference, called by the president of Pakistan.

Proper system of accountability should be introduced in supreme court so that Terrorists do not get bail from the jail. If proper system of investigations would be in our country nobody would be having that much guts to participate in these terrorism activities.

Finally, our politicians, general masses and security forces must show a strong sense of unity to fight terrorism. Our Government should take right steps to minimize it by taking this issue seriously and by passing the bill which General Kayani introduced in Parliament.

BY : SYED HAROON FAZAL

ID: 11u0464