Sunday, June 11, 2006

Soft image and Al Zarqawi!



Daily Times, June 11, 2006
EDITORIAL: Our quest for a ‘soft image’ and our love for Al Zarqawi don’t square

President Pervez Musharraf on Friday directed the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and other relevant departments to highlight the “soft image” of Pakistan in the country and abroad. As he spoke, the National Assembly was busy doing just the opposite. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) demanded that the house offer fateha for the soul of Abu Musa’b Al Zarqawi. MMA legislators Maulana Ghafoor Haideri and Dr Farid Paracha wanted to call down blessings on Al Zarqawi. The speaker prevented the embarrassing situation from getting out of hand by quoting the rules, which say the house could offer fateha only on the demise of a present or former member of parliament or his relatives.

In Lahore, however, President Musharraf’s “favourite” jihadi outfit, Jamaat ud Dawa, offered a special namaz-e-janaza in absentia for the Shia-killer from Jordan and condemned the statement by the Foreign Office that the death of Al Zarqawi was an important milestone in the war against terrorism. The prayer was led by the Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed while the congregation cried their heart out for the dead man.

That Al Zarqawi killed Shiites in Iraq did not matter, which in itself is quite revealing. Those who mourned him forgot that he also killed some Pakistanis working in Iraq. This is the kind of internal extremism that hurts Pakistan and demonstrates how most of us are involved in sectarianism despite our assertions to the contrary. The Shia party inside the MMA should have protested the folly of Maulana Haideri and Dr Paracha in asking the National Assembly to bless the memory of the man. But it didn’t. And this is not all.

The High Court in Karachi recently acquitted two doctors of helping Al Zarqawi “because the police failed to make a good case against them”. Dr Akmal Waheed and Dr Arshad Waheed had kept Al Zarqawi in their house in Karachi and looked after him and then sent him to South Waziristan for his journey to Afghanistan. The two Karachi doctors were revealed as Jandullah members by the Jandullah leader, Ataullah. The doctors had admitted that they were members of Jandullah and that they had provided medical aid to Al Qaeda and sent men to be trained as Al Qaeda activists to Nek Muhammad in Wana through his brother. The doctors had also admitted that they had maintained their relationship with the Jamiat Talaba Islam till late.

It is our bad luck that, apart from President Musharraf, no one else in the PMLQ or opposition wants to “soften” Pakistan’s image. The opposition is advocating defiance in the face of “American imperialism” and, since the “soft image” routine is alleged to be linked somehow to the enterprise of sucking up to the United States, everyone wants a “hard image” instead. Of course, very little attention is paid to the national economy which desperately needs a “soft image” internationally to flourish. In many ways the national economy clashes with the objectives of the Pakistani national polity and its textbook nationalism. The emotion behind all nationalisms is isolationist and all nationalisms seek an external enemy to achieve internal cementation through the vision of a just war.

The economy wants peace at all cost; it abhors isolationism, and will not accept the condition of war. Also, where nationalism rejects self-analysis, the economy works only through self-analysis. The truth is that our “hard image” is not projected falsely by “Western media”. Our image is what we are, as proved by the Al Zarqawi incident above. No one is clear about what Pakistan should be — not even President Musharraf, who talks of a “soft image” but doesn’t show the will or ability to roll back the hard image and its manifestations.

No comments: