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
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