A wake-up call

Post-September 11 President Musharraf recounted Sheikh Zayed al-Nahyan's advice to him. When there is a storm, he said, follow the ostrich way - bury your head in the sand and let the storm blew over.
Sheikh Zayed's advice was close to nature, loaded with folklore wisdom. Perhaps Musharraf could have asked him in a follow up: "What if the storm was after the ostrich neck." But he did not. It suited his psychology of surrender, which he proudly described as his pragmatism.
Seductive as such stories are they lend themselves to easy acceptability, forgetting that their parameters are time bound and thus specific to a limited situation.
Musharraf failed to foresee the prolonged US stay in the region that will create craters of hatred and resentment morphing into violent responses in Afghanistan and around; that it would stretch Pakistan armed forces' stay in FATA pitting it against its own people; and that India would love to oblige US in aggravating the situation in FATA and Balochistan.
Musharraf also failed to see the impact his secularisation agenda would create on his people's psyche throwing them into a state of shock, grief, and eventually desperation to preempt his secularism.
But Musharraf's ostrich-in-the sand policy aside, the whole attitude to the brewing crisis seems problematic. The PPP's secular government in the centre and ANP's government in the Frontier province should press for the use of force against the militants so that the land opens up to their secular and ethnic policies. Statements and slogans are being crafted to convey a particular impression from the cottage industry of doomsday scenarios to bleakness and denial of redemption. From all counts, the national psyche is under siege. The motives are as different as are the spin masters. Some do it willingly, calculated to undermine national will - a preparation for surrender, and others do it because they have cultivated the pathology of despondence, they see bleak and desolate, circumstances notwithstanding.
Nevertheless, closing one's eyes to a crisis or lacking courage to see it inside out is to allow it to blow up on one's face. For example, there are five aspects to the crisis in FATA: first, Afghanistan under occupation and the news of its decimation, pollution of its water resources, large-scale maiming of people's bodies that continually instigates the FATA residents and the rest of Pakistan from annoyance to frustration. Second, the alleged presence of the so-called remnants of Al-Qaeda in the region that bothers the NATO forces, though the FATA residents deny it. Third, the criminal fringe, which while making use of the descending chaos have stepped up their acts of abductions for ransom. Fourth, the presence of foreign agents' provocateurs that have the scripted role of large scale sabotage, highhanded killings, and destruction of economic infrastructure. These are mostly from the Northern Alliance and said to be trained by our "friendly" neighbouring India. Fifth, the indigenous Taliban movement that has started replacing the colonial decadent judicial system by the shariah courts. All the five ingredients in the brew are different and identifiable, calling for tailor-made policy responses.
Leaving aside the NATO's presence in Afghanistan, which needs a separate treatment, we should ask the alleged remnants of Al-Qaeda, if any, to negotiate their peace stay in Pakistan or leave our soil. This can be done through the jirga. The third, and fourth - once separated from each other - should be dealt with ruthlessly as the Chinese did at the Tiananmen Square (1989).
The pro-shariah local Taliban are sons of the soil. They are not separatists and are the upholders of the integrity of Pakistan. They may be ultra conservatives but when they call for the shariah implementation, they are in line with the nation's constitution, which visualises an Islamic Pakistan.
Some people like Rehman Malik and others who share the former's perception are raising hell that they would not let the shariah call prevail, for in their perception it will be against the government writ. A state, as they frantically argue, cannot afford to have two kinds of law and administration.