Peshawar schoolchildren's massacre has galvanised an intense countrywide reaction, putting the Taliban sympathisers on an ignominious retreat. Both the civil and military leaderships have been engaged in action-oriented consultations with the stakeholders, with the Afghan government whose territory the terrorists used to commit the atrocity, and between themselves. The people have responded with an unprecedented outpouring of anger and anguish demanding action against the terrorists and their local supporters. Candle vigils are being held all across the country. Civil society members have been gathering outside the Lal Masjid to protest against Maulana Abdul Aziz for his refusal to condemn the massacre while many others have demanded that the Maulana along with the former Jamaat-i-Islami chief Syed Munawwar Hassan be arrested and punished for justifying the terrorists' inhuman deeds. In his Friday's speech the MQM chief Altaf Hussain also urged immediate arrest of Maulana Aziz for justifying the killing of innocent schoolchildren. Even Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of his own faction of JUI, who at one point headed the TTP-nominated negotiating team, has distanced himself from them, blaming the Western media for trying to portray him as a friend of the TTP.
The situation was never so favourable for an all-out action against terrorists, their supporters and sympathisers as well as for changing some of the conditions that create the extremist mindset. The military is already fighting the enemy in the tribal areas and pursuing intelligence-based operations in different parts of the country to take out militants and their facilitators. Security operations alone will not be enough, however, to clean up the mess accumulated through years of wrong policies. Physical elimination of the enemies of this state and society is only one part of fight; the ingress of a violent, regressive ideology also has to be beaten back. That requires strategic thinking and a lot of time and patience. All stakeholders - the government, the security forces, the media, and civil society - have a role to play in confronting the challenge. The government has to lead the way to deny physical as well as ideological space to the enemy who, as the CoAS said on an earlier occasion "lives within us and looks like us."
Some of the obvious steps include setting up of a joint intelligence directorate to facilitate information-sharing among various civilian and military agencies, and activation of the National Counter-Terrorism Authority with a quick reaction force. The laws need to be strengthened to ensure terrorists do not get easy acquittal. Another vital step would be streamlining the affairs of seminaries - so far vehemently resisted by them. Equally important is the need for strict implementation of the law that prohibits distribution of religious hatred spreading literature and use of mosque loudspeakers for the same purpose. And as various analysts have been pointing out, the school syllabi are making a negative contribution to the shaping of young minds. Curriculums need to be revised to take out texts that promote religious intolerance and militancy. Some feeble attempts in that direction, such as the one tried by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif a couple of years ago, failed in the face of religious parties opposition. Now is the time for all provincial governments to act and purge the textbooks of materials that advance bigotry and inhibit quest of knowledge in the name of a religion that urges tolerance and compassion, encouraging Muslims to acquire knowledge even if that means travelling to the farthest corners of the world.
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