by Babar Sattar, DAWN

GETTING mad at Munawar Hasan for attempting to subvert the resolve of our soldiers to fight the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan by challenging the moral legitimacy of their mission is one thing. Learning lessons from the Jamaat-i-Islami’s hostile response to Hakeemullah’s death and taking corrective action is quite another.

If the text of the ISPR statement criticising Hasan and the JI’s reaction to it is anything to go by, what we are witnessing is not a break-up but an estrangement between lovers with a shared desire to woo the other back.

As a matter of principle, the ISPR had no business seeking an apology from a political party, even one as vile as the JI. Issuing a release putting on record the angst felt by families of martyrs and soldiers putting their lives at stake to defend us from the barbarians in our midst, and a restatement of continuing resolve to defend the country from national security threats within the framework of the Constitution would have been enough.

The JI deserved to be condemned and asked to apologise. But that demand should have come from political parties and civil society.

Condemnation of the JI has been significant. Our people have the good sense not to undermine the valiant sacrifices of our soldiers merely because our generals have continued to bungle. It was not our soldiers or a majority of our officers who decided that Pakistan would join the ‘good’ Afghan jihad alongside the Americans in the 1980s. It was not these soldiers and officers who decided that Pakistan would run with the hare and hunt with the hounds faced with the ‘bad’ jihad post 9/11.

It was not these soldiers and officers who decided that the army would employ non-state actors deliberately indoctrinated with violent religious ideology to pursue ill-conceived national security objectives.

It was not these soldiers and officers who forged the military-mullah alliance and decided to get into bed with the JI and other religious parties to manufacture bigoted and irresponsible notions of national interest and use morality derived from religious diktat as an alternative to legitimacy flowing from the law and the Constitution.

But highlighting the sacrifices of soldiers to distract attention from the toxic choices made by politically ambitious self-serving generals who sowed and cultivated the seeds of confusion that we now find in full blossom is not a sustainable strategy. The correction that we yearn for today cannot come about without unambiguous admission by the khaki leadership of the wrong choices made in the past and the resolve to undo them.

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