The GB difficulty

EDITORIAL: It’s a shame that religious/sectarian tensions erupt cyclically, ad nauseum, especially in and around Muharram, yet the state is always behind the curve, always putting out fires instead of preventing them.

In Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) this time, the same old story of radical extremists provoking tension, possibly violence, across the Shi’a-Sunni divide is playing out, again, and the state is playing catch up, as always.

It’s appreciated that the discontent has so far been contained, of course, but there’s a lot to say about how these things are handled; or, at least, how they ought to be handled. How difficult can it be, after all, to round everybody up, ahead of time, and warn them of very serious consequences if certain lines are crossed? It is against the law to incite sectarian hatred, almost always with bloody consequences, so why can’t we follow the example of other countries that have fared better against this menace because they pre-empted it?

Countries that have recently suffered civil wars with distinctly religious/ethnic/sectarian connotations, like Syria, made the effort to immediately erect a comprehensive national narrative, one that involved senior representatives of all religious and demographic denominations to categorically denounce all efforts to create rifts, ad infinitum, till it worked.

There’s also the reality to consider, especially at such times, that such needless controversies are extremely market negative. Big money would never park in a country that is not only flirting with default and faces bitter political tensions, but also lights up every time a radical extremist (deliberately) touches society’s raw nerves with no other aim, quite literally, than to force bloodshed.

All this can be avoided, at least better handled, by laying down the law before the traditional season for this kind of extremism begins. The state, regardless of the party in power, also needs to be a lot more transparent. By insisting all is well with a straight face while a sensitive region is a hair trigger away from combustion, the information ministry does no great service to the nation.

Ordinary people are the biggest stakeholders in the normal functioning of the country, so it’s always a bad idea to keep them in the dark about troubles that might be headed their way. Everybody understands now that such tactics are always employed when the government has been caught unawares, yet again, and will do anything to avoid bad press.

The GB chief minister has promised calm “within days”, which is welcome. Hopefully, the emergency situation, with internet and telephone lines shut down, will also normalise. Now the next big test will be making sure that this was the last such close shave with the kind of sectarian tensions that are better left in the past.

Pakistanis are not strangers to all sorts of terrorism, the sectarian kind being no exception, and they would blindly support the government in any meaningful attempt to address it permanently.

Now it is for the state, especially its security machinery, to pull its socks up and finally devise a strategy that will defuse such time bombs before anybody is able to lob them into the public.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023