Mosharraf Zaidi

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=137732

Marriott Blast was no 9/11

Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Mosharraf Zaidi

The atrocious attack at the Marriott Hotel should have been Pakistan’s moment to cohere diverse political and regional tensions into a singular, solid and unshakeable national commitment to destroy terrorism. What’s happened since the attack has been a series of comedic missteps and misspeaks that represent the long road ahead for Pakistan, and the even longer road to understanding Pakistan that Barack Obama and John McCain better invest in, fast.

The Prime Minister, beholden to a Presidency that is legally still in dictator-mode, insists the target was parliament and the Prime Minister’s House. The irrepressible Rehman Malik first insisted the target was the Marriott and the perpetrators were the Taliban. Farhatullah Babar apparently thought only lowly paid employees were victims. Sherry Rehman promised “resolve”. A little later, Rehman Malik struck again, insisting that the perpetrators were Al-Qaeda. A little after that, once again, this time insisting that people needed to be patient, how he could know so soon. The latest gem is that the President (and Prime Minister), were set to dine at the Marriott. The obvious implication is that the PPP government succeeded in averting disaster.

Really? Disaster was averted? Someone tell the Czech Ambassador’s grieving family, who probably never wanted him to take up the Islamabad post, but did anyway, rationalizing that Pakistan was too important to be left to second-choice diplomats. Someone tell the martyred security guards’ families, who thought they were joining a premium brand to protect the Ashraf-ul-Pakistaniat, not to serve as cannon fodder for the incompetence with which the global war on terror is being pursued. Someone tell the children that live in G-6 and F-6, who cannot sleep at night, because they have had their childhoods and innocence stained by the horror of flying glass and sonic booms.

Perhaps the light-headedness induced by being Pakistan’s first legitimately elected government in over a decade is too much to take for the PPP. That is why the party’s leadership is everywhere on TV, but nowhere on substance. Surely the poor people of Southern Punjab, and rural Sindh deserve a better articulation of the three most important sentiments that the Pakistani state should be feeling now. What are those sentiments?

Remorse, vengeance, and commitment. The greatest remorse should be for the senseless loss of human life, for the physical and psychological injuries sustained, and for the dramatic economic impact that the Marriott attack will have. There should be another kind of remorse also, remorse for having dropped the ball. If the state “successfully averted disaster” at the PM House and the Presidency, then citizens might be concerned about where lie the priorities of their protectors (that’s what rural politics is about in Pakistan: protection). The most important element of remorse needs to be the deliberate and careful thought that such remorse should feed into a response.

Pakistan’s response needs to be informed by the second sentiment: vengeance. The vengeance needs to be guided by a controlled but resolute and unflinching letting loose of destruction, demolition and termination of terrorists, their financiers, and their facilitators. Vengeance must not be angry, but it must speak clearly and loudly: there is no escaping Pakistan’s ability to defend itself. Currently, Pakistan has no vengeance agenda, leading to more brazen attacks with each new wave of violence.

This brings us to the third guiding sentiment that must drive Pakistan’s response to the Marriott attack: commitment. Pakistan needs to commit itself to the physical and operational rehabilitation of the state, and to the emotional and psychological rehabilitation of the victims of statelessness in FATA and state failure in instances of terror attacks in the settled areas. Pakistan needs to commit itself to purging itself of foreign policy dependence, and to the purging of its mosques and parliaments of war-mongering fanatics and radicals. That’s a lot of commitment.

While the PPP leadership jostles for airtime only to stumble over each other in betraying its incompetence, it is not a hopeless government. The government needs to demonstrate the kind of strong footed confidence (that is the domain of elected governments) in prosecuting the war against those that seek to destroy the Pakistani way of life. Nobody said democracy works perfectly, but it needs to be protected so that it regains its rightful position as the definitive feature of the Pakistani way of life. In the rush for relevance within the PPP perhaps the competence gap was most ably demonstrated by the affable and sometimes brilliant Senator Enver Baig. He was first to declare the Marriott incident as Pakistan’s 9/11.

The Senator is forgiven for speaking in the heat of the moment. This was no 9/11. Forget that 9/11 killed over 2,500 innocent civilians. Forget that it destroyed one of the world’s great monuments to innovation, and to freedom. Forget that it was an attack on NYC, the most economically relevant city in the world. 9/11 mobilized America’s sense of remorse, vengeance and commitment like it had not in over 50 years. That’s the real benchmark of whether an event can be qualified as 9/11 or not. Have the Americans made a mess of the response to 9/11? Absolutely, the war on terror is a total mess. But it is America’s war. Several major political forces in the US were forged in the ashes of 9/11, not least of which was NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Giuliani spoke for all of America on 9/11.

Unfortunately, not a single member of the legitimacy-stocked but competence-deficient PPP government has that kind of clarity. Since it is democratic, the saving grace here is that the clouded speech and confused finger-pointing is a reflection of a nationally ubiquitous clouded judgment and ambiguous response. This was not Pakistan’s 9/11 because Pakistan cannot respond with remorse, vengeance and commitment. Presidential, elite, urban and expat outrage notwithstanding, this is, simply put, still not Pakistan’s war. If Friday’s Presidential debate at Ole Miss is going to be about Pakistan, Joe Biden better bring rosary beads for McCain and Obama. This war is far from over, and Pakistan is far from ready.