The involvement of banned religious organizations in Pakistan’s earthquake relief work has been viewed critically by Washington.
Recently in Islamabad US Ambassador Ryan Crocker again expressed concern about “the involvement of banned groups in the earthquake relief operation.” He said his country’s position on such outfits, which have been put on the watch-list, was very clear.”
The Pakistani government’s position has been not to exclude these groups but closely monitor their activities. Crocker however observed that, “I don’t find them doing something that can’t be done by the government and internationally-recognized NGOs. Our concern is very well known.” According to one report he added the caveat that “it would be a different issue if these groups renounced any act of violence and devoted themselves to the people.”
Crocker’s concern raises two issues. One, what should Pakistan do with its homegrown “extremist” political forces that may be banned by Washington and have also been resorting to violence. Clearly the government’s objective must be to earnestly force these groups back into the net of normalcy, disarmament and rule of law. The state must exhibit zero tolerance for any violation of law by these groups.
Two, Washington’s approach toward political forces within the Muslim world that have taken positions which are viewed as extremist by Washington and also by certain sections of their own societies. As for Washington dealing with the “banned” extremist groups, the outcome of local elections in Egypt and Palestine should prove instructive for Washington. The incumbents have lost to Hamas in Palestine and to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Washington needs to redefine the issue of extremism. It must facilitate the creation of a context in which these groups that enjoy democratic legitimacy within their societies can choose to eschew violence. An ill-advised simplistic approach to extremism is one that advocates shunning of groups that are deemed religious, oppose US policies in their own region and resort to political violence. This needs to be altered. Only a policy that rejects extremism and at the same time deals with the issue can prove fruitful.
Extremism, a disease of our times, has spread its tentacles all around. Of its many defining determinants at least three are noteworthy. One, the extremism that those in power exhibit. They go in with tanks and bombs where patient diplomacy can work, seek to destroy what requires careful reconstruction, preach hate where tutoring understanding is needed, promote rejection where curtailment and reform are important, craft a militaristic approach to fight their adversaries; and abandon the path of justice and fair play for pure partisanship. All this naturally promotes debilitating extremism.
Two, often in the absence of a credible and participatory system of politics and a reliable justice system, political groups frame their concerns and solutions in an exaggerated extremist manner. When a non-credible political system often leads to the unconstitutional imposition of a specific elite, party, ethnicity, and institution’s rule over the ‘rest,’ the response is often cast in extreme ethnic, religious, and anti-establishment mode. There are groups that turn their religious, racial or ethnic identity into a crusading cry painting a victim-hood scenario. Wherever credible political and legal systems do not exist, many will turn to alternative and extremist solutions. Their mental and emotional state will encourage exclusion and alienation vis-a-vis the dominant group in their context. Groups like the Bengalis in 1971, the LTTE, the Kashmiris, the Basque party, and Naxalites would fall in this group. Three, perpetual discontent breeds frustration, irrationality and desperation and a mind that will almost effortlessly take to extremism, like fish to water. They often derive justification to destroy the ‘other’ by themselves resorting to immoral means too.
And when such routes are available they opt for the anarchistic, nihilistic or messianic route to worldly and heavenly salvation. Many religious groups would fall in this group.
The birth of extremism hence has different causes; some more complex than the others. Multiple causes have required multiple approaches to neutralize extremism. In India the extremism of the Khalistan movement, for which both Indian and Pakistani policies were responsible, was largely tackled through policy changes in Delhi and in Islamabad.
Within the US the extremism of the Klu Klux Klan, of the born-again Christians like Reverend Pat Robertson who called for Hugo Chavez’s killing, and of Gen. Boykin, has been tackled through a web of democratic checks that the US has in place.
Recently Republican Sen. John McCain called for an explanation, while Sen. Arlen Specter, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, said he would investigate the charges against the National Security Agency of spying on hundreds of people without warrants. The NSA is constitutionally barred from eavesdropping. The Senate also rejected efforts to renew the Patriot Act, dealing a major blow to President Bush and the Republican leadership. Senators on both sides of the aisle argued that some of the Act’s provisions undermined civil rights.
Reconciliation has been another tool used by governments to undermine political extremism. The Sudanese government had opted for the grand return of the SPLA leader John Garang to Khartoum and that brought peace to Sudan, despite the tragic death of Garang. Similarly, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced to hold the Sept. 29 referendum on an amnesty offer to the Islamic Salvation Front. Indians faced the difficult task of tackling the religious extremists who traveled the constitutional path into Parliament.
Their communalism virtually rendered ineffective India’s administrative machinery and the legal system. India’s genuine democracy helped deal with this extremism; the very route that brought them to power.
In Pakistan, the state promoted ethnic extremism and religious extremism for its own reasons and set aside any semblance of rule of law and trashed the Constitution at repeated intervals. Unfortunately in Pakistan, the causes of political extremism remain un-addressed. Political extremism in a federation will always flourish in the absence of a credible center. In the 21st century, extremism could further grow in the powerful mix of hate, alienation, immoral and unaccountable exercise of power, human and material mobility, information explosion, committed ‘crusaders’ of multiple ilks, single unassailable military power, proliferation of deadly weapons and technologies. US and Pakistani government would do well to see the ‘extremist’ phenomenon more realistically. In any event Pakistan’s principal problem is not extremism; it has been the absence of rule of law and a state apparatus that has consciously promoted extremism.
