Let’s not write Pakistan’s obituary yet

NEW DELHI – Many seem to think that the recent assassination of Punjab’s Governor is a sign of Pakistan’s imminent doom. But this perception overlooks good developments underway in this country - and furthers the goal of Islamist extremists.

There is certainly reason for worry. Salman Taseer was killed for criticising Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the bodyguard who shot him, is from the more pietist Barelvi Muslim denomination, and not from the extremist Deobandi-Wahhabi-Salafi sects.

Qadri is also a member of the crack anti-terror police. Thus far only the Armed Forces were believed to be infiltrated by extremists. Moreover, Qadri is being seen by some Pakistani Muslims as a hero.

However, the worry need not lead to complete pessimism.

Dawat-e-Islami, the Barelvi group Qadri was a member of, has no known terror links. We should wait therefore for investigating agencies to establish the role, if any, of a terrorist group behind it, before ascertaining the wider implications of the assassination.

That the killing of a liberal Muslim was condoned by some is deplorable, but not shocking for there has been a struggle between modernisers and fundamentalists in the Muslim world for many years. Muslims with a fundamentalist worldview are in a minority as compared to the modernisers. This was evident in the victory of the Pakistan People’s Party represented by President Asif Ali Zardari who is not only Shia in a Sunni-majority country, but had promised to repeal the blasphemy law during his campaign for the 2008 election.

There is no doubt that terrorism has increased in the recent past, but that in no way indicates the victory of the al-Qaeda network in Pakistan. On the contrary, it can be seen as a reaction to the state’s growing commitment to cooperate with the United States in the global war on terror.

Islamist terrorists in Pakistan – as also elsewhere – seem to believe that the United States will leave Pakistan and Afghanistan without finishing its task. This is why they have dared to launch attacks in the West – the recent attempts on Barcelona’s subway and Times Square in New York being a case in point.

In Pakistan, their plan is no longer to return to the era of Islamisation as witnessed during the rule of General Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s. They now want nothing less than the complete destruction of the state, which they see as anti-Islam. This was suggested in The Morning and the Lamp, a recent book by al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Al-Qaeda’s attacks on Pakistan’s institutions increased mainly after the Army’s rigorous crackdown on the Taliban in Swat in mid-2009, which showed Islamabad’s growing loyalty to the United States.

Terror groups operating from Pakistan have launched attacks in India to keep tensions between the two countries alive, and thereby compel Islamabad to spend all its resources on dealing with New Delhi rather than domestic affairs.

So terrorism in itself is not the goal, but a mere tactic. It is aimed at infusing a sense of terror in the Pakistani society to immobilise both the people and the government. Most importantly, Jihadists want to portray the government as weak and incapable of ruling the country so that Pakistanis will lose their confidence in it.

And this is precisely what many media and foreign policy analysts seem to be doing.