Comparing Malala with drone attacks!

Right-wing political parties and some of the religious groups appear to be trying hard to somehow confuse the issue by interlinking the TTP attack over teenage Malala Yousufzai with drones attacking North Wazirstan.

Drones may be blind and deadly yet there is a profound difference between the two. But the feverish attempts by religious right and increasing resonance of their argument makes you wonder if their propaganda skills were succeeding again!

People in Pakistan may or may not have any great love for US or its hegemonic designs but there is recognition of that nation’s advances in fields of humanities, art and science. Drones spewing fire over may be their latest development in military technology.

While people of Pakistan vastly sympathise with pain and agony prevalent in Afghanistan, yet we never contracted Al-Qaeda to attack foreign missions, people or cities. After wreaking destruction over Afghanistan Osama, Al-Zahwari, Mullah Omer and their band of Jihadis trickled through Tora Bora into FATA. At their heels they brought Americans and their war machine shooting at people in our tribal agencies. Pakistanis do not support drone attacks nor do we support militants for cross-border attacks from our side of the Durand-line!

While one could abhor Musharraf for being a military dictator. But could anyone of us had done otherwise facing frenzied threats by US establishment bearing down with its full might over Afghanistan? Could Imran Khan have sided with Mullah Omer while B-2 bombers, cruise missiles and swarms of NATO paratroopers were raining over Kabul?

For that matter why did the valiant amongst Al-Qaeda and Taliban decide to blend-in, in an unarmed Afghan population making them a fair game for NATO bombardment? Incidentally some ten out of fifty nations that contributed their troops towards International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan (ISAF) were Muslim including Malaysia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Jordan, Albania, Bosnia and United Arab Emirates! And in such circumstances this country, tormented by severe socio-economic pressures, should have gone to war against most sophisticated military machines just to satisfy adventurism of a handful of rich Arabs?

Pakistan could not have rescued Al-Qaeda from Western powers hell-bent on avenging attacks over their people and assets as well as committed to cripple its capacity for future! When Moulvi Fazalullah announced his intentions over his infamous FM radio to ransack beautiful Swat valley did he bother to ask locals if it was ok for him to stop eleven-year old Malala and her friends from going to school and if he could also destroy another 500 girls’ schools? Did it never occur to him or his advocates living in our metropolitan cities that there may be nothing wrong with Malala’s desire to go to her school?

Atrocious, yet there is nothing in common between drone attacks and attack over Malala or for that matter between Malala and Salala so derogatorily put by Fazal-ur-Rehman. If Taliban leadership had gone to a decent school, not like the ones run through incomes generated by smuggling diesel rather one run by someone respectable like Shah Waliullah, they would have known that writing daily-diary could be an important aspect for grooming school-going children.

But if atrocities forced young minds to speak-out for their right to education, does that give Fazalulah’s band of militants a right to start condemning innocent children to their deaths?

If there wasn’t such a nationwide public-outcry they might have sent some young suicide-bomber to attack her and her physicians. Still Malala had to be airlifted from behind the closed doors and dugout machine guns to far away lands in an attempt to save her life!

But people understand - this is no Jihad, this is no just struggle for liberation rather a bunch of arrogant men happy to live with their guns. When Vietcong took on imperialist forces they were a people defending their country, not a bunch of terrorist hiding behind defenceless population unable to resist heavily armed bands of Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

God created this world and gave human race an opportunity to prove that we were better then angels. If someone wants to avenge aggression or wrongs against Muslims– they must first demonstrate their sincerity by fighting illiteracy, disease and hunger amongst our people. They must also refrain from pushing unarmed people to their death and destruction by worlds most advanced military forces.

The use of drones against one of the most impoverished regions of Pakistan cannot be justified under any section of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) or UN Charter.

Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter prohibits the threat or use of force by one state against another. However Americans invoke two legal exceptions to this ‘Article’ for showering Hellfire missiles by these drones over tribal areas:

(1) When the use of force is carried out with the consent of the host state; and

(2) When the use of force is in self-defence in response to an armed attack or an imminent threat, and where the host state is unwilling or unable to take appropriate action.

40 years ago Americans used Agent Orange in Vietnam that killed over 400,000 and resulted in half a million Vietnamese born with horrible defects. Till date they have yet to be compensated!

There may be guerrilla war taking place in Afghanistan – we don’t know. In Pakistan all that the militant organisations are doing is to terrorise an already troubled nation - unable to feed its people but continuing to face the American wrath for activities of such extremist organisations.

If Taliban and Al-Qaeda care about death and destruction raining over defenceless men, woman and children, they will have to bring to an end their operations from FATA. They need to allow local and international media and NGOs to interview and experience these traumatised populations.

This nation remains weary of its establishment’s sincerity towards eliminating militancy. A half-hearted military operation may be looming over Waziristan. Yet without genuine investment in our people they will continue to be easy targets for recruitment by forces like Al Qaeda, Quetta Shura, Haqqani Network, Tehrik-i-Taliban, Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi, Jundullah, Jamaat-ud-Dawa etc. We have seen such mindset target innocent victims like Malala across our country - a violence that doesn’t stop, spills-over into Afghanistan, Iran, India even China and beyond. Its time, people at the helm of affairs realise that living in a glass house we must fear when everyone begin throwing stones at us!