Pakistan: The Monster of Militancy and the Perils of Self-Inflicted Wounds

 **10 July 2007**

Make it your sole motivation to dig pits in others' paths, and then one day see yourself falling into your own hole.

Since its formation, that is exactly what Pakistan did.

Made its neighbourhood stumble over the holes of militancy, terrorism, sabotage and wars.

But at a great cost to its own society.

Sustaining the passion for covert games meant radicalising entire generations to draw a sufficient pool for radical seminaries, terrorist camps, spy networks, etc.

A radical person is as dangerous to his surroundings as he is to others in the neighbouring country.

President Pervez Musharraf now devotes most of his own and his army's time to fighting this catastrophic regression in society.

Lal Masjid has been in the news since last week.

Brainwashed jihadis, students, both male and female, buzzing with excitement, forming the defenders of puritanical Islam, are holed up inside with deadly weapons.

The army, equipped with equally deadly weapons, surrounds the mosque.

It is a paradox.

It symbolises their effort to undo what they had been doing for more than half a century.

It is a task more easily said than done.

Though dismantling needs less time than construction, this is no physical dismantling like that of outdated, old structures.

It is the dismantling of the monster nurtured, reared and fattened in hearts and minds.

It has been fuelled by religious zeal and passion.

It draws its sanctity and validity from law, scholars and sacred books.

Bullets can never be its antidote.

Rather, they perpetuate and aid the virus.

It will require an equally big, constructive, humanist and logical movement as that of the forces on the other side.

It is very farcical, very piteous, to have to tend to and bandage self-inflicted wounds.

But wounds are wounds.

Self-inflicted or inflicted by others, it doesn't matter.

They need tending, unless you have suicide in mind.

So helping Pakistan alight from the core of fundamentalism to become a modern, democratic, progressive state is in the interest of all of us.

All believers to the contrary need to look at the consequences befalling the distant corners of the Earth.

For that, we need to forget the bad chapters of history for our own sake, if not for the sake of our adversary.

A person hell-bent upon dying is more dangerous for others believing in life than for himself.

We might try to make him believe in life, peace and prosperity.