Three days after terming the banned Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) an Indian-backed ‘militant organisation’ and vowing to act against it, the government signed an undisclosed agreement with the group following a series of negotiations with it at the state level. This latest instance of capitulation lays bare, once again, the state’s cluelessness in dealing with the menace of religious extremism and its lack of spine — a lethal combination.
Following the agreement, more than 800 arrested workers of the group have been set free. While the details of the accord have not been made public, statements of the government officials as well as TLP representatives who were part of the negotiations indicate that the TLP got its way — yet again.
The episode also exposes the state’s glaring double standards and how violent radical groups and grieving victims of terror are treated differently. Prime Minister Imran Khan had in February this year chosen not to heed the demands of heirs of the Hazara-Shia coal miners killed in a terror attack in Balochistan. The government that refused to be ‘blackmailed’ by the families of terror victims now signed an agreement with a group of religious fanatics who killed and tortured several policemen on more than one occasion.
Barelvi cleric Mufti Muneebur Rehman who was part of the talks between government and the TLP stated in a press conference that the TLP will likely be made a legally and constitutionally legitimate political party after the ban placed on it is lifted in the next few days. This step is being packaged by the powers-that-be as an effort to ‘mainstream’ the group as a means to turn it away from violence. The meetings of provincial authorities later held to address the implementation of the agreement were also attended by TLP representatives.
Moreover, reports indicate that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is considering doing a seat adjustment with the group in Punjab. PTI Senator Ejaz Chaudhry expressed his desire to greet the outfit’s chief Saad Rizvi with flowers after his release. This sudden friendliness towards the TLP makes it clear that attempts are underway to give the group political legitimacy which it had lost due to its violent activities. But the fact of the matter is that bringing militants and/or religious extremists in the political arena has never resulted in peace.
TLP already part of ‘mainstream’
The belief that TLP can be turned into a law-abiding and peaceful group by forming political alliances with it is ill-informed for the following reasons.
First, the TLP is already a political group as it has two seats in the Sindh Assembly. Its candidate contested the recently-held NA-249 by-elections. In fact, the TLP has been a political group since 2017 when it emerged in the electoral arena during NA-120 by-election in Lahore and shocked political pundits by coming third in the polls — behind PML-N and PTI. The subsequent events including the group’s Faizabad dharna and Supreme Court judge Justice Qazi Faez Isa’s scathing verdict on the role of the establishment in empowering the TLP made it clear that it was launched to weaken the PML-N government and ultimately make a dent in the party’s vote bank.
The group ran its by-election campaign on the extremist agenda of punishing those who oversaw the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri, the convicted murderer of former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer and later on the basis of its anti-Ahmadi hatred — yet the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) took no action.
The then military spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor had at the time responded to a reporter’s question about participation of extremist outfits in the elections, saying that every Pakistani has the right to form a political party. His statement had strengthened the idea that it was the establishment that was working towards bringing extremist groups into the political fold.
Following the 2018 general elections, the TLP once again surprised observers by bagging three provincial assembly seats in Sindh. The group bagged more votes than Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the latter’s stronghold of Lyari. This kind of electoral success would not have been possible if the TLP had not received at least some kind of patronage from powerful quarters.
Political involvement of TLP made no difference to its hateful ideology
The TLP won three seats in the Sindh Assembly but failed to give up violence, which proves that the latest attempts to mainstream it will be just as ineffective. It will instead enable the violent outfit to use the newfound legitimacy to further its hateful agenda and continue to cause unrest in the country.
Moreover, the argument that bringing religious extremists into the mainstream puts a halt to their violent actions is flawed because such experiments have evidently failed in Pakistan.
In 2009 when the then government signed a peace deal with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) promising to impose ‘Nizam-e-Adl’ (Shariah) in Swat, it was expected that the move would restore peace in the region. However, the deal did not ensure an end to violence in Swat as Taliban atrocities continued unabated and the agreement was revoked a mere two months later.
A more recent example of ‘mainstreaming’ militants gone wrong is the clemency awarded to former TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan who was kept in a safe house and faced no cases for several terror attacks that he masterminded. By bringing him on TV as a reformed person, the state appeared to think that this treatment of Ehsanullah Ehsan would encourage other militants to surrender. This was not the case.
After his mysterious ‘escape’ from Pakistan Army’s custody last year, Ehsanullah Ehsan expressed no remorse and justified his crimes.
Appeasement of extremists never works. You give them an inch, they take a mile. One would expect those at the helm of affairs to have understood this by now, but they have a track record of refusing to learn from mistakes and flawed policies of the past.
Finally, the absence of a clear framework defining such attempts at mainstreaming outlawed groups makes the process even more contentious. Shouldn’t families of those killed by these groups be made a party to the talks before the state decides to let the killers go scot-free?
