Maryam Sakeenah

 In its immediate response to the 9/11 terrorist attack, the USA took up an offensive posture full of the bravado and the rhetoric of 'war.' America announced its 'war' on terrorism, which was going to be relentless. Calling the US response strategy a 'war on terror' meant the use of decisive military force against a dissipated, indefinable and unconventional enemy. According to Philip Heymann: "Faced with uncertainties, the Bush administration defined the dangers we faced as 'war', demanding and justifying a radical shifting of our domestic and international priorities. The danger is that for several reasons, the use of the term 'war' leads us in the wrong direction. The very term suggests a primacy for military force; that is what war has been always about. We are captives of the dictum, 'to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'" Resultantly, the military has put in all its pride and strength into an asymmetrical, ill-advised struggle against a threat which needs to be tackled more insightfully and wisely, not merely by muscle-power. The phrase "War on Terror" is a false metaphor. Linguist George Lakoff has argued that there cannot literally be a war on terror, since terror is an abstract noun. "Terror cannot be destroyed by weapons or signing a peace treaty. A 'war on terror', therefore, has no end." Jason Burke opines: "There are multiple ways of defining terrorism, and all are subjective. Terrorism is after all, a tactic. The term 'war on terrorism' is thus effectively nonsensical."

The mania has now become even more dangerous as the US has demonstrated its heedless disregard of the sovereignty of other nations in pursuit of its obsession. "In America's post 9/11 politics, a neoconservative idea of unilateral, sovereignty-breaking and pre-emptive attacks against Al Qaeda is little debated. The United Nations did not give its approval for the ongoing US attacks inside Pakistan." (Christian Science Monitor)

The U.S's major 'non NATO ally', Pakistan, has effectively picked up the rhetoric of war. It has gone overboard in its servile acceptance of the American war rhetoric and adopted it as its own. The administration has shown a stupidly unflinching commitment to doing the US's dirty jobs in its own territory and keeping effectively mum when the US decides to step in and 'go it alone.' During the recent visit of Prime Minister Gillani to the US, the President rhetoricized America's support to Pakistan's 'sovereignty and democracy', while the Prime Minister sheepishly looked on. This came almost simultaneously with the news of yet another US airstrike within Pakistani territory which killed weapons expert Al Masri. The Prime Minister and his entourage kept sheepishly looking on as the American administration trumpeted its 'do more' refrain and expressed 'displeasure' at the Pakistani Intelligence's unsatisfactory performance.

For Pakistan, the genie of America's arrogant unilateralism was unleashed with General Pervez Musharraf's all-out commitment to the US anti-terror strategic alliance. It is impossible, with the current crop of 'more of the same' rulers, to get the genie back in its place. In fact, Pakistan is too used to playing the doormat. Despite the euphoria over  'revival of democracy', the public opinion is growing increasingly weary of the government's stance vis a vis the War on Terror. The public resents the government's chosen blindness to the irreparable harm that fighting the war at home has brought. The northern tribesmen have historically been intensely loyal and patriotic as a homegrown civilian border 'army' on the country's dangerous Western frontiers. Overnight, they have been classified as enemies through definitions engineered abroad in the context of America's 'War on Terror.' Thousands of nameless Pakistanis languish in US prisons at clandestine locations while the government chooses to let it be, as it busies itself fighting somebody else's war in the hope of having a few crumbs of US 'aid' thrown its way at the end of the day. Fighting the 'War on Terror' has become an overblown priority leading to the state's complete neglect of other more glaring issues of rocketing inflation, abject poverty, acute energy crises, to name a few. The death toll in the north continues to soar as an ironic backdrop to the government's defensive insistence that the war is 'ours.' We forget that the victimized do not forget the body-count even when we choose to justify it with all our brilliance; they do not forget the hurt and the pain; they can not forgive the insane war imposed on them because their nation chose to sell away its conscience for a few dollars of aid.

Wearing its zombie-glasses, the Pakistan government forgets that America's promised support to Pakistan is not America's 'permanent interest', like it has already demonstrated several times in the past. However, the damage to the country's sovereignty, to public confidence, to the people's sacred trust, to the ideological base of the state, its sacred values, and the loss of innocent life in the process, will leave permanent scars_ long after the momentary glory of handshakes and smiles at the camera over a White House dinner are over.

The methods adopted by the US in its ill conceived counter-terror strategy are now clearly imitated by Pakistan, where the war on Terror has now shifted its focus after messing it all up in Afghanistan and Iraq. At pains to neutralize angry and disappointed public opinion, Pakistan uses the same terminology to help keep the nation supportive of the state's methods and means for keeping up the fight_ after all, like America, we are at 'war' with a great evil murderous gang out there. That is why state television repeats over and over again news of barbaric Taliban threatening to blow up girls' schools and barber shops, when this allegation has several times been rejected by Taliban leaders who explain these to be isolated incidents in which anti-Taliban miscreants and individual defectors from the mainstream movement are involved. However, the rhetoric of war continues, for it helps whip up jingoism and patriotic fervour as a support base for the government's rallying behind the US in its War on Terror.

Facts on the ground, however, disagree. The demands of the Taliban whom we are committed to smoke out of existence are: to establish Islamic Law, to withdraw troops from the tribal areas and to release the prisoners of war. One wonders what makes the demands so horrifyingly criminal that negotiating over them is an impossibility. After all, establishment of Islamic Law was the very raison de etre of the creation of the country, as attested to by the history of the Pakistan Movement, and the Constitution gives supremacy to it in principle. Aspiring to the establishment of Islamic Law cannot therefore be simplistically described as 'challenging the writ of the state.' Considering as criminal the pursuit of this goal in a country that has suffered long enough in the absence of Islamic legislation only reflects an inability to understand and appreciate the ethos of Islamic Law. In a country where corruption, nepotism, red tape, economic injustice, crime, lawlessness in general run rife while state authorities stay comfortably numb, desiring a return to the Law of Islam as panacea and deliverance can be understood. As for which 'version' of this law is to be applied, there actually exists a great deal of unanimity and singleness of mind among the country's leading jurists, and differences in perception can be resolved on the talking table. It is the rejection of the very principle of establishing Islamic Law in a Muslim state and society that is truly treasonous and offensive to the sentiments of the majority conservative Muslim citizenry. After all, in commemoration of Bhutto, last moth over 40,000 criminals convicted of multiple terrorist acts like murder, rape and robbery were ordered to be given amnesty. Several high ups in the country's political hierarchy have been acquitted of all charges of corruption, pilferage and misconduct and let off under the National Reconciliation Ordinance. Yet the 'crime most vile' of aspiring to live under the Law of Islam rules out all possibilities of leniency. The Taliban have several times expressed willingness to and created conditions for negotiating the terms of peace. The government, however, has been lukewarm, uncommitted and faltering in response, owing to the disapproving glance from the US.

To respond to the 9/11 attacks, the US adopted the pre-emptive strategy. President George W. Bush articulated the goals of the "War on Terrorism" in a speech, in which he said "The war will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." He also called the war "a task that does not end." The idea of a 'perpetual war' floated by the US gets justification as the enemy against which the state is at war is a phenomenon, an ideology, a tactic_ an abstract entity no firepower can defeat. For rooting it out, a crusade without end is necessary. This explains why the US so strongly disapproves of any peace deal or prospect of negotiating with Pakistan's militants. After the elections in Pakistan, the public hoped that the new civilian government would reject militarism for a wiser strategy in dealing with the restive north. The hopes very soon dissipated into thin air with a rush of US diplomats' visits to the country to give the message clear: the West wants nothing short of a full-scale war to achieve its purposes, and servile allies like Pakistan better stay the course. Or else. The same has been reiterated in the recent US visit, and a commitment by Pakistan to reject the peace deal and the dialogue option has been assured in return. "We are in a state of war," says Interior Ministry big-gun Rehman Malik. If this is a 'war' to be fought in the language of weapons and fire, then by this principle, reprisal by the 'enemy' in the language of war also stands justified. By this principle, then, suicide hits and attacks on army checkposts cannot be classified as terrorism, but as retaliatory militarism and acts of reprisal in an all-out war the state has declared. The tragic civilian deaths are not the fallout of terrorism, but the casualties of the state's maniacal war.

Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had said years ago: "I say that victory is persuading the American people and the rest of the world that this is not a quick matter that's going to be over in a month or a year or even five years. It is something that we need to do so that we can continue to live in a world with powerful weapons and with people who are willing to use those powerful weapons. And we can do that as a country. And that would be a victory, in my view." Pakistan, with its ace nuclear scientists suffering US ire and languishing under arrest, has indeed been an obedient, uncomplaining follower. It has, however, received merely scraps in return, and a consistent rise in imperious demands from the White House. With US elections around the corner, things are likely to get worse. In its editorial, the Christian Science Monitor describes both Obama and Mc Cain as 'neocons' competing over who can better attack Al Qaeda in Pakistan unilaterally. Both candidates are high on the rhetoric of war, reflecting the American malaise of lack of understanding of the terrorism phenomenon as a reactive symptom of deep injustices, deprivation and oppressive policies. Both lack an understanding of the sensitivities, the dimensions of history and culture involved, and hence are, like their predecessors, utterly incapable of addressing the real issues; of looking at them realistically and objectively, clearing up the clutter of prejudices and lies and working towards an enduring solution. Neither understands that the war and the rhetoric that pumps it up remains a 'wrong' because the justifications given for US interventionism in the War on Terror do not fulfill any of the criteria of a just war. The pre-emptive war-mongering has undermined international law and the fundamental values of justice and human rights. Being clearly in defiance of the UN Charter which, in Article 2, clearly forbids 'the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state', this can be termed as a war of aggression. What makes it more heinous is that the strategies employed in the war have been underhand and dirty, justified by the logic of 'collateral damage.' These are unequivocally categorized by international law as war crimes. There exist several treaties, primarily the Geneva Conventions providing for the protection of prisoners and victims of war or any armed conflict. For this reason, according to international law, officials and members of any US administration that chooses to extend and perpetuate the 'war' are potentially criminally culpable under the doctrine of command responsibility.