Swat: a sordid case of appeasement

By Omar R. Quraishi

Neville Chamberlain would have been happy at the antics of the ANP and the PPP were he alive today. The British prime minister is perhaps best known -- a euphemism really for infamous -- for his government's policy of not standing up to Nazi Germany, particularly from 1937 to 1939, in the run-up to the Second World War, and that's how the term 'appeasement' came to be used in the sense that it is now -- more or less equated with cowardly behaviour against an adversary.

Much has been written about the so-called Swat peace deal, and most readers will know that, according to news reports, the National Assembly debated the Nizam-e-Adl regulation in the backdrop of a de facto death threat issued by the Swat militants a day prior to the issue being discussed in parliament. They warned that anyone who expressed disapproval of the regulation would be seen as a non-Muslim. The threat was obvious -- this would mean that anyone who expressed disapproval of the proposal would be deemed an apostate by the Taliban and hence would be 'wajibul qatal'. Hence, it can hardly be said that the debate was held in an atmosphere where members of parliament were free to air their opinions on the proposal. As had already been pointed out by several people critical of this caving in by the government, the 1973 Constitution already contains the Objectives Resolution which says that no laws repugnant to Islam will be passed and instituted in the country.

Religion is already worn on its sleeve -- so to speak -- by the state, and citizens are never allowed to forget that the country that they live in is an Islamic Republic. Of course, these citizens do not have a complete picture of the Quaid's views on the need for a separate state for Muslims or that his views were decidedly secular and that he wanted a homeland for Muslims but where minorities had equal rights and where democracy and not theocracy would prevail.

Of course, now that the Nizam-e-Adl or Sharia has been enforced in Swat, the question arises that if people living in other districts of the country want to enforce Sharia -- say for instance Okara on the outskirts of Lahore, or Gulshan Town in Karachi -- will the government permit them to set up their own system of governance and justice? The issue of course is not whether Sharia should be imposed at all but that the manner it is being imposed clearly suggests that the people of Swat, the ANP government of NWFP, the PPP government in the centre and the National Assembly have all been cowered into submission by the militants and their backers into accepting Sharia (as dictated by Mullah Fazlullah and Sufi Mohammad) as a fait accompli.

I had always thought of Ayaz Amir as one of the finest writers in English in a generation -- but now after his very courageous stand in the National Assembly on this issue, one has to say that not only is he one of our best writers he is also a most valiant individual, not afraid to speak his mind, even on the pain of apparent death, or at the very least a severe admonition by the Sharif Older.

The passage of the Nizam-e-Adl regulation has already opened the floodgates -- in the print media at least -- of elements sympathetic to the Taliban, all now saying that this system of Taliban-enforced Sharia should be extended to the rest of the country. Not only most women will be severely frightened at the possibility of such a thing happening, most people who want to live a life of their own choosing, without being forced to not shave, or not buy CDs or DVDs or live a life more suited for Europe's Dark Ages, will be -- or should be -- feeling very very vulnerable and can only hope and pray that the government and the state busy in appeasing the militants wake up to the reality, and stop playing their games with the future of this country and its inhabitants. One shudders to think what kind of consequences this may have for those who live in places like Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad. Only one political party so far has displayed the courage to stand up and speak against the Nizam-e-Adl regulation and not surprisingly it is the MQM.

As for Chamberlain, it may be instructive to see what he did -- or rather, didn't do -- with Nazi Germany. The end of the First World War saw the creation of the League of Nations, set up on the basis of collective security by member states in the hope that it would help prevent another such war. However, the member states did nothing when Adolf Hitler occupied the Rhineland or when Mussolini's forces invaded Abyssinia or for that matter when Japan invaded and occupied the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931.

The League set up a commission of inquiry that condemned Japan, but all this resulted in was that Japan left the League and carried on with its invasion and eventual occupation. Japan's act was followed in Europe by Germany's 'remilitarization' of the Rhineland in 1936 -- a part of the French Empire till its disintegration in the early 19th century and later part of Prussia (it includes lands on both sides of the Rhine river and is situated in present-day Germany). The action was called 'remilitarization' because the region was demilitarized, as a kind of a buffer between France and Germany at the end of the First World War following the Treaty of Versailles.

The reaction from the French was that France could not afford to attack the Germans because that would require a general mobilisation of the French Army and this was termed too costly for French taxpayers. As far as Britain was concerned, it did not show too much concern over this, surprising that its main opponent in the First World War was in fact Germany. The feeling among some politicians was that it was as if Germany had reoccupied what was in fact its own territory. The sentiment was similar to that expressed by the seemingly pro-Taliban elements today -- that peace be given a chance, ignoring that Hitler, like the Taliban, had gone back on his words in the past as well and clearly had sinister expansionist designs for the rest of Europe. Not only did Britain not do anything on its own, the government of that time also actively discouraged the French from doing anything against the Germans. Emboldened by this and by the very fact of human nature that no person or group gives up power on his/their own, the rest was history, and the horrors of a second world war followed.

Just on a side note -- and perhaps readers should know -- the Rhineland was eventually retaken and the Germans ousted, at the fag end of the Second World War -- by a joint British-American-Canadian action. America alone lost around 24,000 soldiers in this campaign. Historians are mostly united in the belief that had the French -- perhaps supported by the British -- responded promptly to the German advance in 1936 all this could have been avoided and perhaps the Second World War would have had an entirely different shape – or perhaps none at all. Of course Chamberlain did much more than this, including his infamous trip to Munich to meet Hitler, before which he was cheered on by the House of Commons, but the appeasement of the Germans began well before.

One can only wonder what the fruits of the appeasement to the Swat Taliban will be -- nine years from now.

The writer is Editorial Pages Editor of The News. Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk
Courtesy: The News International