04-17-2009, 05:08 PM
<b>Terror and Punjab : Dawn Editorial</b>
The New York Times is not the first one to underline the growing militant threat inside Punjab. This has been a constant refrain. For instance, last year Frontier Governor Owais Ghani said in Lahore that terror in Fata and parts of the NWFP had links with groups in southern Punjab.
NYT sums up previous reports when it charts the advance of militancy to Dera Ghazi Khan and even Multan and writes of a tactical alliance between the so-called Punjabi militants and the extremist outfits that had thus far operated mainly in the Frontier. The paper has attributed the attack on the Lankan team in Lahore in March and the one on The Marriott, Islamabad, some months ago to this ânewâ terrorist nexus where Punjabi elements are said to be providing logistical support to resourceful Pakhtun Taliban and Arab militants in the Al Qaeda fold.
There is evidence to support the assertion â television channels flashing the news of two Punjabi bomb-makers in Islamabad just as these lines are being written. We are also told that all the 10 men who besieged Mumbai last November could have come from various Punjab districts. But despite all this, there is reluctance in Punjab to concede that its own people could be involved in the violent anti-state campaign run in the name of Islam and anti-Americanism.
There is this urge, and perhaps psychological need, to ideologically de-link the militants in Punjab from those in the Frontier. It is often said that militants in Punjabâs south and elsewhere in the province are exclusively committed to jihad in Kashmir, that, under no circumstances, are they to leave their brief and switch to other wars being raged in the name of religion. The question is: what do they do when they are not or cannot be in Kashmir?
There are obviously no guarantees that these trained hands wonât be pressed into service in pursuance of another holy cause. One other reason that quite often stops governments from taking cognisance of extremist threats in their own backyard is as global a concern as should have been the war on terror. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are as afflicted with the syndrome of denial as those who administer Punjab today.
<b>They are wont to blame terrorism on outside forces, absolving people in their own jurisdiction of any involvement and wishing other regions to snuff out a problem that is as much their own as the rest of the worldâs. This policy is not going to work as terror closes in. It is hard to contain and cannot be dealt with in isolation. We tried doing it in Swat only to be hit by a suicide bomber in Charsadda a few days later.</b>
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