Peshawar
Army School Song: Where Have All The Flowers Gone?
Saeed Naqvi
Ever since US Deputy Secretary of State,
Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan to the stone age unless it joined
the post 9/11 global war on terror, Pakistan has faced an existential tragedy
of choice. It was being called upon to kill the very mujahideen it had trained
to become hardened Islamic fighters, also at America’s behest, to help expel
the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.
Some in the Pakistan army got into the
drill, led by the Americans, to eliminate the Mujahideen; some did not. The
world’s mightiest power and the world’s only nuclear Islamic state have been
fighting the Al Qaeda, Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, one mutating into
the other, for the past thirteen years without any conclusion.
Every year, specifically since 2010, the
US threatens to leave Afghanistan but finds itself unable to. Islamabad and
Kabul are both obliged to fight a continuous war against their own people. To
get even in an asymmetrical war, a faction of the TTP has heaped such brutality
on the families of school children in Peshawar as to leave human beings
everywhere numb and speechless.
Immediately after the carnage in Peshawar,
army chief General Raheel Sharif and ISI chief Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar flew to
Kabul for an emergency meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. They also
met NATO commander Gen. John Campbell. There is no Afghan counterpart to Raheel
yet in harness. What would they have discussed? Hot pursuit of Maulana
Fazlullah, the faction of the TTP allegedly responsible for the massacre? Can
Ghani, who held onto the Presidentship only by the skin of his teeth, oblige?
His political rival and the CEO, Abdullah Abdullah has already raised the bar
for both sides. There is no such thing as a good Taliban as opposed to a bad
Taliban, he says. The implication is to have no talks with Taliban which knocks
out the Pakistani expectation to have a structure in Kabul which is leavened by
Talibani presence.
Remember the spells of Hamid Karzai and his
Pakistani opposite numbers. When they coordinated action against the Taliban,
Pushtoon nationalism grew in geometrical progression. When the two became
suspicious of each other and relaxed a bit, Taliban mopped up all the sympathy.
That dynamic has not changed.
Among the numerous flip flops of the
Americans in Afghanistan has been their inability to have a consistent policy
on Taliban. Initially, the Taliban had to be destroyed. Then they had to be
only weakened. This latter line suited Kabul’s calculations. A weakened Taliban
was useful so long as it expanded horizontally. The Pushtoons in control in
Kabul believed Taliban expansion was Pushtoon expansion which, in the long run,
was in their interest.
NATO never had a strategy in the region
because it had no policy towards Pakistan. They knew they could never defeat
the Taliban without hitting hard at their bases in Pakistan. And that, NATO
could not do. And now, NATO are packing up their bags.
One reason (in addition to scores of
conspiracy theories) Benazir Bhutto paid with her life was that she was seen to
be an American nominee in an atmosphere of rampaging anti Americanism. Nawaz
Sharif, it was believed, would be relatively more acceptable to the Taliban
because he had been a Saudi ward.
With the emergence of the Islamic
Caliphate of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in Iraq and Syria, a new dimension has been
added to the TTP narrative. Names of Maulana Abdul Aziz and his brother Abdul
Rashid Ghazi were media headlines when the Pak army Rangers attacked the Lal
Masjid in July 2007, which gave phenomenal boost to mutual bitterness. The
school massacre in Peshawar is a continuation in that zigzag.
President Zia ul Haq, at whose door lies
all the blame for wrenching Pakistani Islam away from Islam’s mellow sub continental
culture towards the faith’s more Arabised variant, was the earliest patron of Lal
Masjid. Located near the mosque was the world’s biggest Madrasa for women with
6,000 students.
Musharraf’s support for the global war
on terror brought him into direct conflict with Lal Masjid. Most of the
students were Pushtoon. Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of religious parties
claimed that 400 to 1,000 students were killed – European news channels gave
the death figure as 300. That boosted militancy sky high. But the murder of 132
school children in uniforms is an unspeakable tragedy of a different order. It brings
to mind Habib Tanvir’s translation of “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” Phool woh saarey gaye to aakhir kahaan gaye?
We now have a leadership in Kabul which is
so much a creature of America, that it can never stand on its own feet. Then
there is a besieged Nawaz Sharif, half hearted American Forces in the region,
and a Pakistan army exceedingly unpopular in the Frontier. The irony is that
Pakistan is secure precisely because of its weaknesses. Because, as extremism expands,
the shrill chant worldwide will be: Pakistan is too nuclear to fail. A nuclear
Pakistan will invite American oversight from the Afghan Machaan or watchtowers
which will be required for a long time. On the other front, meanwhile, the bail
to Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi has brought out the Hawks in India on their shrillest
howl. Pakistan, shortsightedly, has decided to accord a “low priority” in
management of cross border terrorism in Kashmir. In other words it will attend
to the Afghan front first. The outcome is clear as daylight: it will fall
between stools.
There was the hope that after picking up
the trophy in Cuba, Barack Obama may be eyeing the bigger prize in Tehran. But
that may give heart to the Northern Alliance elements in Afghanistan. Would
that not bring the Pushtoons on both sides of the nonexistent Durand line
closer together? Why would the Americans worry on that count?
As former US ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay
Khalilzad, used to say: there can be no coherent US game in Afghanistan and
Iraq without Iran being on board. Khalilzad was US ambassador to Iraq too.
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