Politics, Not Religion, Fuels Pakistan Conflict

Every school, college and university in Pakistan is closed. The seemingly most impenetrable building in Pakistan, the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army has been breached, and breached emphatically. Mosques, police stations, hospitals, street corners, market places. Every imaginable area of public interaction in Pakistan has been targeted by terrorists. Oh and in case anyone  has forgotten, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto was assassinated less than two years ago, ostensibly by the same terrorists that are now devouring Pakistan like a cancer.

In these desperate times, defining the conflict properly is of vital importance. One recurring theme in the English language press in Pakistan, and across the Western media, is the shaping of the current crisis as a war against religious extremism. This is erroneous at best, and disingenuous at worst. An irrational national discourse is not the same thing as the ascendancy of extremism. When we repeatedly shape the conflict as a contest between extremists and non-extremists (we should avoid the word moderate, given its enormous baggage), we validate and certify our approval of the Pakistani state's utter incompetence and failure in dealing with crises that have been manufactured by its own stunted volition. The focus on extremism allows state machinery to easily escape any scrutiny or accountability for the horrific counter-terrorism, and law and order failures that have produced episode after episode of successful terrorist strikes.

More importantly, when we decry the lack of support for Pakistani military action against terrorists because of innate Pakistani extremism, we do a massive disservice to the truth. Fighting terrorists is not the same thing as fighting extremism. The entire gamut of extremism needs to be addressed in Pakistan -- particularly the misogyny that extreme tribalism, feudalism and religious symbolism enable in this country. If this war on extremism was an honest war, it would have been on-going for many decades, and Pakistani connoisseurs of The New York Times, wouldn't need Nicolas Kristoff to awaken us to the incredibly disgusting manner in which some of Pakistan's most unfortunate women are treated.