The hardline religious party, the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) is once again in news. The party, which has been smarting from less-than-expected poor performance in the last national elections, recently took to streets in Pakistan, protesting against the Supreme Court’s acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman accused of committing blasphemy. The protests – similar to what happened in Islamabad in November 2017- paralysed major urban centres and disrupted normal affairs. Yet, just like the last time, it was able to have its way and secure an agreement from the civilian government.

 

On October 30, 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan in a landmark decision, set aside the conviction of Asia Bibi after finding inconsistencies and contradictions in her conviction. The decade long case had turned attention to the misuse of Pakistan’s most notorious anti-blasphemy laws to settle personal vendettas at the level of villages and small towns. But it also claimed lives of two important officials – a federal minister Shahbaz Bhatti and the former Punjab governor Salman Taseer (heinously by his own body guard) – for defending Asia Bibi. While, her acquittal renewed the debate on the state of religious freedom in Pakistan, the TLP sought to turn it into an emotive issue.

 

The TLP cadres led by its leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi were able to mobilise themselves in major Pakistani cities including Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, controlling the traffic and movement of people and goods into and out of the cities. Video footage showed TLP protestors engaging in arson, looting and violence, damaging public and private property. Moreover, top TLP leaders not only called for murder of Asia but also demanded deaths for the Justices of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, who pronounced her acquittal. Even the Army Chief, Gen Bajwa was not spared. He was labelled an Ahmadi and a non-Muslim by the TLP leader, Pir Afzal Qadri, who asked the “Muslim generals” in the Army to lead a mutiny against their own Chief. Qadri also asked for the ouster of the Prime Minister Imran Khan and his government. The TLP was able to operate with complete freedom and without any fear of consequences.

 

And yet, the only response that came from the state - civilian institutions and security establishment - was that of capitulation and an abject surrender. Instead of firmly dealing with the TLP protestors and vandals, the government sought a way out by negotiations and agreement. In exchange for end of protests and a blanket amnesty, the government agreed to all of TLP’s demands including that the government will not oppose a review petition to be filed by the religious parties against Asia Bibi verdict. Another demand agreed to that she would be put on the Exit Control List (ECL) – effectively signing her death warrant, in an a country where extremists have been baying for her blood and where police have been unable to protect the individual, in similar cases earlier. Ironically, the agreement came days after Prime Minister Imran Khan had warned the protesters not to clash with the state.

 

While the government has sought to project the agreement with the TLP as the only peaceful option available, many others questioned the legitimacy of such an agreement with a group, which has refused to honour a Supreme Court verdict. Critics also point out that polarising Pakistanis on sectarian and religious lines, has always been a preferred tactic of the TLP to expand its political capital.

 

But such surrender is not new, particularly regarding TLP and its vitriolic leader Khadim Rizvi. Exactly a year ago, the party (if we really call it as a party) paralysed Islamabad in a similar fashion demanding revocation of an allegedly blasphemous amendment in the Election Act 2017. And that time too the state had dealt leniently with it. This shows the lack of political will and confidence of the TLP that it can walk out of any protest with its demands fulfilled and no retaliatory action by the state. Interestingly that time Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was the only political party that had justified the TLP’s protests. This kid-glove approach to religious extremists pales in comparison to the harsher treatment meted out by the Pakistani state and security establishment to the other dissenting groups, human rights activists, journalists, and opposition parties who have questioned the government and the military and even the innate opaqueness in the ‘game-changer’, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

 

TLP’s brazen and organised violence and the authority that it wielded on the streets of Pakistan is a seething indictment of the ability of the civilian government to govern Pakistan. Moreover, by ceding to the demands of the TLP, the message sent by the Pakistani state to the religious extremists is loud and clear: they can get away with anything including giving speeches which amount to sedition. This politics of appeasement has driven one more nail in the coffin of the Pakistani state’s authority. No wonder this craven surrender to the extremists by the Pakistani government led one of the leading commentators to remark that “(Imran) Khan may have won the election, but it is Rizvi who seems to be ruling Pakistan today.”

 

By not taking on the TLP and other religious extremists for challenging the authority of the courts, government and the military, Pakistani state has once again demonstrated that it does not give two hoots to the legitimacy of the state institutions and that it is happy to nurture and appease these groups for its so-called ‘strategic interests’. This has empowered the religious far-right and obscurantist forces in Pakistan which will now not even think twice to engage in a destructive behaviour to wreak anarchy in Pakistan.