Crackdown: A Counter-Productive Approach

States across the globe often design policies or make decisions that don't resonate well with most of their citizens. People criticize those policies or decisions and display their discontent or disagreement vis-à-vis certain policies by protesting or taking to the streets. In many civilized states, authorities pay heed to people's demands and address their concerns. Disagreements are often considered the true beauty of democracy; listening to disagreements and holding negotiations to find a common ground is what a true democratic state is expected to do. But it doesn't always happen.

In Pakistan, protests are often met with heavy-handedness and dissenters are labeled "traitors". Instead of addressing the underlying reasons behind the unrest, authorities dub everything as a "foreign conspiracy" to launch brutal attacks on demonstrators --strategies from a decades-old playbook. And it's nothing new. From 1971 to 2024, nothing seems to have changed.

Pakistani authorities are a perfect illustration of Georg Hegel's famous quote," We learn from history that we don't learn from history". Be it the protests by Bengalis in 1971, by Pashtoons after 9/11, Baluchis after Zulfiqar Al Butto's heavy-handedness and General Mushrraf's brutal crackdown, or now millions of Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf's supporters, it has become evident that authorities are so drunk with the power that they don't even bother to listen what other party has to say.

The level of brutality unleashed by the state authorities over unarmed Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf’s supporters reminds of “Machiavellian” and “Hobsian State”. Students of politics and philosophy would often hear about “Machiavellian”or “Hobsian State”and used to think of it a thing from past, dark ages. But now in 21^st  century, in 2024, it's hard to come to terms with the fact that Pakistan is descending into Machiavellian state where the words like “crush, kill, massacre” are no longer alien to anyone. Opening gun-fires straight on innocent unarmed civilians, and then denying and hiding their dead bodies is horrible.

Pakistani authorities have always used violence as a tool to quell protests. They have always been so mistaken in understanding this very simple philosophy that violence against their own citizens breeds resentment and even hatred against state authorities. The world has witnessed this time and again that violence bred resentment to the point of armed resistance from the people. People who are anti-certain policies turn into anti-state elements and take-up arms against their own state. The emergence of Mukhti Bahni, TTP and BLA are the  examples of how the state's flawed policies push people into being anti-state. And it's horrible when anti-policy  people turn into anti-state elements.

It's mandatory to understand that people who take to the streets already feel that they are being marginalized, deprived and discriminated against. They already feel vulnerable, and launching a crackdown or using violent means against them further strengthens those beliefs. Violence, in any case, leads to resentment; resentment often leads to hatred and hatred leads to violence. So, violence breeds violence. It's clear that peace can never be achieved through violence, and it has been proved a hundred times.

If a state thinks that by killing one dozen people, it can eliminate the problem, it's mistaken. For every single person that is killed, the state gives birth to ten  extremists, who, overwhelmed with the feelings of revenge, join militant outfits and become suicide bombers. Pakistan has witnessed this in the Tribal areas and Baluchistan where relatives of the people killed by the state became suicide bombers and blew themselves up.

Pakistan often puts the whole blame on India and other external hostile forces for fomenting unrest within Pakistan but often fails to understand that it's been Islamabad's flawed policies that provided India with an opportunity to exploit the vulnerable populace. When a state creates a perfect storm, of course, external forces cash in on that opportunity. There is nothing surprising in it.

"Violence breeds Violence". This principle is universally applicable from governments  cracking down on their own citizens to superpower dropping bombs on foreign territories.If an ideology could be erased by teargassing, baton-charging,  firing straight on people's chest or dropping bombs, there wouldn't have been a single Jew on this earth–given the brutality unleashed by the Hitler against Jews. In fact it's the antisemitism that bred Zionism that today is engulfing the whole Middle -East.

The case-studies of Iraq and Afghanistan are glaring examples to understand how such policies prove a multiplier of extremism. It was the year 2001 when the US invaded Afghanistan to destroy Bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda, apparently.  They thought by bombing Afghanistan they would annihilate Al-Qaeda. They bombed Afghanistan, and for every bomb they dropped, they created dozens more Bin-Ladens and many more Al-Qaedas. The same goes for Iraq, where groups like ISIS flourished in the havoc wrecked by the Americans.

Although each example cited here is entirely different from the other, but one factor that's common here is the approach that was adopted. In all of the above mentioned examples, instead of addressing the underlying causes behind the unrest, violence was unleashed. It's time to correct the course before many more anti-policy folks turn into anti-state elements, before another TTP or BLA is born and before the country descends into further chaos. Given the historical account, one thing that's clear as day is clampdown is never the way forward, negotiations are.

The Writer is a political science graduate of the International Islamic University Islamabad.