Sesame Street is a children’s educational programme and has served generations. One of the most famous Muppets on this long running show is the Cookie Monster who is best known for its voracious appetite and for eating almost anything, including inedible objects! After finishing off everything, it still wants more. Thus, if you give a monster a cookie, it will want a glass of milk!
Albeit a crude extrapolation, this phrase reflects quite effectively the Western world’s and more specifically the US’ policy of dealing with terrorists! Although this is maybe more Hollywood than history but does have some credence to it considering recent events in the Middle East. The argument of not giving in to terrorists is relatively straightforward i.e. because negotiations translates into legitimacy, incentives and money necessary to continue further criminal activity. The US and UK refused to make concessions for the release of journalists and aid workers captured by the Islamic State in Syria arguably leading to a number of high-profile hostage killings. However, realistically some governments do tend to engage non-state actors, for example, faced with the same scenario, Spain and France have said to have paid millions of euros in ransom. In the past, the US has also forcibly had to engage with terrorists. Peter Moore, a British civilian was held hostage by Iraqi militants but was released in 2010 after American authorities agreed to set free Qais al-Khazali, a former spokesman for the influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. Probably an even better-known example is the Iran-Contra affair. In that case the Reagan government sold missiles to Tehran to secure the partial release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Granted that another aspect of this notion is the ever changing Western definition of who is a terrorist and who isn’t, which requires a separate debate! But even then, when administrations deal with terrorists, it starts from the default position of non-negotiation, is done as a last resort and mostly from a position of strength. This is because, governments realise give a monster a cookie and it will want a glass of milk!
Does this backdrop provide any guidance for the recent tensions in Islamabad in the form of Maulana Abdul Aziz vs The Pakistani state? It does! Consider.
During 2006 and the first half of 2007, Maulana Abdul Aziz and the curators of the Lal Masjid and its sister seminary Jamia Hafsa continued to challenge the writ of the Pakistani government by calling for Islamic law and to end co-operation with the United States. As part of this approach, they launched an anti vice campaign, kidnapping alleged prostitutes, burning films posters, de-facing advertisement boards, occupying a nearby children’s library and embarking on vigilante justice throughout the national capital. Initially the authorities didn’t pay much heed to this issue which allowed Maulana Abdul Aziz and his cadres to be emboldened to such a degree that sermons in Lal Masjid routinely started challenging the government! It is a classic example of wanting more milk after polishing-off your cookie! Had the state drawn the line in the sand before, none of the fore coming tragedy would have come to pass. Ultimately, after all sorts of dialogues amounted to nothing why wouldn’t they once the opposite party had its way? The last resort of the use of force resulted in much death and mayhem. All because the policy making elite was asleep at the wheel which allowed non-state actors to push the envelope further and further and emboldened them to an extent where negotiations even as a last resort didn’t work!
In February 2020, Maulana Abdul Aziz again checked the temperature of the Pakistani authorities by slipping back into Lal Masjid with some female students and by starting to give some incendiary sermons. This, after the tumultuous events of 2007 where his younger brother willingly went to his death and the Maulana himself took the less dignified approach of trying to escape the scene clad in a burqa! One would expect that a man who was fundamental to so much upheaval would be reprimanded for the rest of his life but not in Pakistan! The question: how would the state react this time? It should have been a simple answer. Disappointingly, in classic ‘the horses have bolted’ fashion and without learning anything from recent history, the authorities again first, weren’t vigilant to Maulana Abdul Aziz’s presence and second, chose to appease him rather than face him down. Especially considering that the state would have had even a stronger hand this time around because when Maulana Abdul Aziz asked other Deobandi madrassah’s in Islamabad to send students to support him, not many answered the call. This was a golden opportunity for the state to send a message of not negotiating with elements that challenge its writ! But in total capitulation and in line with Maulana’s compensation demands for the debacle in 2007 the authorities offered him some land in the national capital or perhaps a larger piece in Fateh Jhang near the new Islamabad airport! The Maulana rejected these advances and sensing that the state is weak, made more demands to see how much he can bend the state to his will! That this land may never materialise, is not the issue. That this establishes a precedence, is definitely the issue!
The message to would be rogue elements is this: the bigger the nuisance value, the bigger the compensation! What next? Ten people shut down a mall and take shoppers hostage and demand 20 acres of land somewhere in Punjab? Mangla dam is held at ransom until the perpetrators are given amnesty and villas to boot? A bus is hijacked with the kidnappers demanding safe passage and settlement areas? Where will it end?! The state needs to do what it should have done all along establish the overarching policy of equality for all citizens as discussed in previous op-eds and push for exemplary jail sentences for miscreants so that any would be agitator would think a hundred times before locking horns with the state. If not, then we will only be waiting for the next nuisance maker!
