Winning the argument | Translate into Urdu IDAWN Article 17-08-2024|

ON Independence Day this year, the custodians of power issued formal statements. As expected, the leaders praised the nation’s resilience in the face of economic hardships and pledged a brighter future. Army chief Gen Asim Munir distinguished between the country’s friends and foes. His narrative, likely to shape the national discourse until the next Independence Day, carries significant weight, and its impact will be revealed over time.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the upcoming launch of a five-year programme to provide significant relief to domestic electricity consumers. The civilian leadership of the hybrid regime is grappling with the challenge of preserving its image while taking responsibility for tough economic reforms. All coalition partners, including the PPP, which has benefited mainly without direct accountability, share responsibility for the shrinking space for freedom and activism, both online and offline. The actual test lies in succeeding in their five-year plan and enhancing their public image.

The army chief has blamed foreign powers for a wave of ‘digital terrorism’, which aimed to create a gulf between state institutions and the people of Pakistan. In his annual address at a parade held to mark Independence Day at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, he also spoke about the situation along the western border with Afghanistan, the threat posed by the outlawed TTP, and the developments in Balochistan.

His speech echoed that of COAS Gen Ashfaq Kayani in 2009 on the same occasion in which he had elaborated on who the terrorists, and what their objectives, are, declaring that the extremists were attempting to impose a distorted version of Islam through violence. Despite making a clear distinction, Gen Kayani had been reluctant to launch an operation against the terrorists in North Waziristan. Gen Raheel Sharif completed the task later. However, it took a decade and a half after Gen Kayani’s speech to put the good-and-bad terrorist idea into perspective. This happened when the ‘good’ Taliban captured power in Afghanistan and started supporting the enemies of Pakistan.

State narratives are seen as overly controlled and biased.

The army chief has referred to the TTP as ‘Fitna al-Khawarij’, a term that has historical overtones in relation to an identifiable sect in Islam, which fought against legitimate caliphates. It is now an official term for the TTP. This clarity should eliminate the distinction between good and bad terrorists if it still exists somewhere among the power elites.

The state institutions’ position on terrorist groups, mainly the TTP, is legitimate according to all international norms and the country’s Constitution. However, they need to review their approach towards rights movements like the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) and Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) and see the political polarisation in the country.

Tying together all security and political challenges into one mass, complicates the challenge. There is no doubt that both the BYC and PTM are the outcome of the state’s wrong policies. Spoilers within the power elites and beneficiaries of the hybrid system in the country are deepening the gulf between the state and marginalised citizens. The state has to review its approach of painting such movements as enemies and foreign-funded movements. The institutions mainly point fingers at the West when tagging someone as a foreign agent. The reality is that Europe and the US prioritise their relationship with the country’s powerful institutions to conduct smooth business with the power elites of the state.

Imagine if the state institutions’ perceptions changed about the PTM and BYC, and they were considered citizens of Pakistan who were resisting only a few policies and practices of the institutions — practices that had yet to yield the desired results even after applying them for decades. Imagine if such movements were no longer considered peripheral issues and outsourced to power-hungry sardars and other cronies. The whole context would change. Meaningful interaction between the right movements and the state would start, which would marginalise violent and radical actors. No foreign force could use them if the state was engaging with them.

However, our power elites firmly believe that this is an issue of controlling narratives and the mediums that spread these narratives. They do not look inside, neither do they want to change their perceptions, policies, and practices.

Perception management and narrative control are complicated phenomena, and only authoritarian systems can achieve them through the tools of oppression. The power elites are following the template of authoritarian states, and they believe that state-led propaganda will change the equation in their favour.

The power elites create narratives that blend fact with fiction, often dividing people into ‘us’ versus ‘them’. However, creating this divide weakens social and political cohesion, which religious-based nationalism cannot help strengthen. Paigham-i-Pakistan, a religious decree against extremism, may be a prime example of how the state-led narrative has not succeeded in changing the minds of the religious clergy in Pakistan.

The power elites need to do some soul-searching to find the solution, which lies in changing policies and practices, and not propaganda techniques. Counter-narratives are essential but it cannot cultivate trust between the power elites and the masses. It has been proven in many cases that people do not believe in state-run narratives, and they need to verify what they hear through independent sources — whatever is available, including reliable mainstream media, social media, and foreign media outlets. The reason is that state narratives are seen as overly controlled and biased; people often perceive them as propaganda designed to manipulate public opinion rather than the truth. People have also stopped believing in journalists who have changed their position and tried to come closer to the state narrative.

One of the major achievements of the recently deposed Hasina Wajed government in Bangladesh was digitising the country, but when the erstwhile prime minister tightened the cyber regime and let the police arrest people by just linking or sharing posts that criticised her government on social media, her decline started, even though mainstream media and social media had become the government’s mouthpiece.