Writing in Wall Street Journal, Sadanand Dhume asks the obvious question.
Why do Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora churn out such a high proportion of the world’s terrorists? Indonesia has more Muslims than Pakistan. Turkey is geographically closer to the troubles of the Middle East. The governments of Iran and Syria are immeasurably more hostile to America and the West. Yet it is Pakistan, or its diaspora, that produced the CIA shooter Mir Aimal Kasi; the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef (born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents); 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s kidnapper, Omar Saeed Sheikh; and three of the four men behind the July 2005 train and bus bombings in London. The list of jihadists not from Pakistan themselves—but whose passage to jihadism passes through that country—is even longer. Among them are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohamed Atta, shoe bomber Richard Reid, and John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban. Over the past decade, Pakistani fingerprints have shown up on terrorist plots in, among other places, Germany, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands. And this partial catalogue doesn’t include India, which tends to bear the brunt of its western neighbor’s love affair with violence. In attempting to explain why so many attacks—abortive and successful—can be traced back to a single country, analysts tend to dwell on the 1980s, when Pakistan acted as a staging ground for the successful American and Saudi-funded jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
But, sadly, if there is one group of people not interested in exploring this question is the population of Pakistan. There are voices of reason in Pakistan, don’t get me wrong, but they are shouted down by aggressive bigots who are always creating doubts about the guilt of thugs and terrorists and coming up the same answer about everything that goes wrong in this world – America is behind it to attack Muslims. And, this mind set is the root cause of Pakistan’s troubles and these troubles result in dangers that civilized people in Pakistan and around the world face these days.
Something has to be done to stop it permanently.
Thank God Faisal Shahzad failed in his hideous attempt to harm civilians in America, but his cowardly act has brought attention back to the future of Pakistan and everyone else who is interested in living in peace.
Ordinarily, you’d think that people in Pakistan are upset and ashamed about the attempted bombing of New York City because it is linked to Pakistan, again, but I was taken back by the antagonistic attitude that was visible in the coverage, at least in one leading Urdu daily and on a leading TV channel that is also owned by the same people who run one of the largest publications of Urdu and English dailies in Pakistan. And, once again, the verdict in Pakistan is the same: “This is a plot to keep Pakistan under pressure, or this entire attack this is a smoke screen to keep Pakistan bombing and so forth.” Anchors on TV (who are all staunchly anti American and pro Taliban with very very few exceptions) gathered up all the usual hard core pro militants ‘experts’ and ‘analysts’ (these experts and analysts pretend to be journalists) and the circus begins on TV. Especially maddening was the attitude of a despicable anchor who does his show from Karachi and he came pretty close to directly accusing Obama of staging this attack. I don’t know whether negative approach towards America is some kind of mental sickness or it is just plain stupidity, but whatever it is, it is driving rest of the world mad.
Pakistan has to come out of this denial and the country must deal with this increasing problem of militancy.
Believe me, America has other problems: debt, inflation, unemployment, etc and Americans don’t have time or the resources to stage elaborate schemes so that they could continue to engage in foreign wars. If America wants to attack a country, they don’t need the approval, nor do they have to come with a plan to justify their attack – Iraq is a clear example. I take no stand on Iraq, and only history will tell whether it was the right decision or not, but I am trying to make a point here that Americans don’t do dramas – if they are convinced about something, they will act.
I am not sure how to convince the conspiracy theorists in Pakistan that it is in their interest to defeat the terrorists. It is Pakistan that is at risk more than any other country and for their own future, people in Pakistan must come together to realize that they have a problem, a very serious problem and they must not waste any more time.
Finally, people like Faisal Shahzad should leave the country if they don’t like it. He has gone to prison for rest of his life, but it is the community, yes, and Shahzad’s community that has come under tremendous scrutiny just because Shahzad lost sanity.
Today, every Muslim, and more importantly, every Pakistani is a suspect.
