Pakistan’s establishment understands only too well why fatwas (religious edicts) against terrorism never work with terrorists. Its ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) partnered with America’s CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to create the model blueprint of the mujahideen, the celebrated heroes of the so-called anti-Soviet jihad that later mutated into al Qaeda, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Boko Haram, al Nusra Front, etc., and turned Islamic terrorism into a truly multinational enterprise.
It’s because the madrassas that produced and nurtured that first breed of soldier-clerics, remanticised as freedom fighters because of the optics of the Cold War, drilled a sense of religious duty into them by explaining their dollar-funded rebellion as jihad. It also fiercely rejected any notion to the contrary as an attack on that jihad, and therefore on religion.
The Saudis also know it doesn’t work because they matched US funding “dollar for dollar” as the experiment started working and got their own ringside seat to the intricacies of the world’s most famous religious war. Soon enough more madrassas sprang up all along the Durand Line, and even deep into Punjab, like factories producing fighters that will stop at nothing as they spread their religion with bombs and bullets.
Journalists that covered the war against terror know of at least three more intelligence agencies that have tried fatwas to turn Islamist militants away from violence, and failed. Jordan’s GDS (General Directorate of Security) became one of the frontline agencies in the war as the kingdom became one of the prime recruiting grounds for AQ. It tried the clergy, quite unsuccessfully, before deciding to pick apart captured militants in torture cells that have now become the stuff of Arab literary folklore.
Then Iraq’s helpless former president Nouri al Maliki tried to get mullahs to talk AQ and ISIS out of their war, yet they went on with their rampage and wrecked the country. Then, when Syria broke into civil war, President Bashar al Assad ordered his notorious al-Mukhabarat service to line up priests, muftis, ayatollahs and rabbis to spell out how the scripture would have none of the suicide attacks and beheadings of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a crude amalgamation of just about all Muslim terror outfits in the world. Incidentally, these were also bankrolled by Uncle Sam’s greenback and also built on the exact same model of the old mujahideen. Yet he, too, failed.
Each time they snapped out the same line that was grilled into them in the madrassas, that any religious edict against their actions was in fact itself against the religion, and begged for the strongest retaliation. Thus they justified kidnapping students, killing children in schools, suicide attacks on civilians, cutting heads off religious minorities, and even publicly eating hearts of their enemies in many parts of the Muslim world over the last two decades.
Pakistan’s military has been at the forefront of this war for a very long time. So it must have, or at least should have, known that TTP (Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan) will just laugh away the latest fatwa issued against terrorism.
It was, in fact, announcing its shadow cabinet through the Khurasan Daily twitter handle, dividing the outfit into various “ministries”, just as the fatwa was going to press. It will only grow stronger and spread wider while we wait for a response. Just like it tricked us when we were sending jirga after jirga of mullahs to talk peace with them.
Public protests in KP, especially the former tribal area that witnessed the worst of the fighting the last time TTP tried to take over Pakistan, are calling for immediate military action that will finally end the existence of this enemy of the state once and for all. Media reports suggest that close to a thousand people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2022. Sooner or later the military will have to put its foot down and take the fight to the enemy. Last time it waited till 80,000 innocent lives had been lost. This time it will have to do better.
But it should know that stomping out the bad guys alone will not get the job done. The establishment will also have to attack and dismantle the jihad-for-hire model that it helped construct a long time ago, and then protected it even as it started eating the state itself. That will take a lot more than squeezing new fatwas out of old molvis.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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