AS was widely predicted, the menace of ‘terrorism’ has reared its ugly head yet again in the run-up to the general election.

The ‘secular’ political forces being targeted are crying conspiracy, while those who have cultivated links with the religious right — whether ideological or otherwise — are trying to maintain a low profile, neither overtly condemning the attacks nor defending them.

Outraged liberal commentators have been quick to expose the hypocrisy of the parliamentary right-wing, and rightfully so. They would do well not to forget the reactionaries plying their trade in the media, educational institutions, and a host of other spaces within wider society. It is thus that the much-talked-about ‘consensus’ vis-à-vis ‘terrorism’ that many have craved over the past many years remains as elusive as ever.

My sense is that there is very little chance that such a consensus will be forged soon. And while the unwillingness of some of our political bigwigs to antagonise the militant right and the military establishment is part of the problem, it is by no means the only sticking point. The fact is that we need a very different kind of consensus regarding the phenomenon of terrorism than that which the liberal lobby is peddling.

Since the events of Sept 11, 2001, virtually all governments, alongside the corporate media, have tried to project a particular understanding of ‘terrorism’ in which emphasis is laid on the threat posed by terrorists to the purportedly universal ideals of democracy, freedom and human rights.

This global narrative exempts the state from any possible censure for either propagating terror or sustaining the political, economic and social structures within which terrorism may thrive.

The state posits itself as the ultimate defender of both the ‘people’ and ‘peace’ and is hence empowered to use all its power — coercive, ideological and otherwise — to pre-empt the ‘terrorists’.

It is in this context that almost all states — including our state — over the past few years have armed themselves with new and unprecedented legal powers under the guise of fighting terrorism.

The mainstream discourse revolving around the existential threat posed to human civilisation by terrorism and enhancing the capacity of states to ward off this existential threat is propagated not only in the popular media but also through the field of Terrorism Studies which has emerged as a bona fide scholarly discipline in a matter of a few years.

Dozens of academic journals have come into existence with experts travelling the globe performing designated functions as analysts, consultants and counterterrorism manual writers.

And all this while — completely neglected by the terrorism industry — has taken place an incredible expansion of the biggest terrorism network of all: the coercive and surveillance apparatus of the modern state.

The right-wing has successfully monopolised indignation vis-à-vis imperialism’s drone technology and its implications for state sovereignty, but steers clear of questioning the parallel acquisition by the Pakistani state of innumerable state-of-the-art weapons and technologies that have increased its capacity to inflict terror manifold over the past few years.

Unfortunately, liberals tend to eulogise such weapons and technologies under the pretext that they are necessary for the ‘counter-terror’ crusade. In fact, these weapons and technologies have been deployed by the state, alongside anti-terror legislation, to visit violence on whomever necessary, and wherever necessary.

Baloch insurgents have suffered the most onslaughts, but large innocent populations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have also been subjected to repeated exhibitions of the state’s coercive and surveillance power. All in the name of fighting terrorism.

In the meantime, ‘terrorism’ just doesn’t seem to go away. In fact, most liberal commentators contend that the situation gets worse by the day. A hue and cry erupts from time to time regarding the lack of commitment of political parties and the absence of consensus over how to deal with ‘terrorism’ but comparatively little is said (or done) about the unaccountable and increasingly lethal terror machine that is the state (let alone imperialism).

To take just one example, there is a complete dearth of objective analysis about the virtual futility of expanding the state’s coercive apparatus vis-à-vis the modern suicide bomber and so-called improvised explosive devices which have changed the nature of warfare entirely.

In the final analysis, it defeats the purpose to express extreme moral indignation about terrorism and its victims selectively. In doing so, the liberal lobby loses more ground to the millenarian right, which takes refuge in populist rhetoric of course, but only because it can.

What is required is a holistic critique — and political movement — against the terrorism industry, with a particular emphasis on the role and character of the modern state as well as the military-industrial complex here and abroad, that profits greatly from the persistence of war in this region and many other parts of the world.

Experience suggests that many liberals who want us to denounce terrorism would not be willing to accept the definition of the phenomenon I have presented. Indeed adopting such an understanding of terrorism would alienate the very governments and lobbies that are at the forefront of the terrorism industry, and that have made global experts out of more than one Pakistani journalist and writer who tows the appropriate ‘terrorism’ line.

The social reality is much more complicated than the ‘with us or against us’ logic that has carried over from the Cold War into the ‘age of terror’. In deliberately simplifying this reality, liberals do themselves and their cause no favour.

They simply end up mimicking the logic of reactionaries, ensuring that ordinary people at the receiving end of the many different kinds of terrorism that do exist continue to be blighted by the nexus of imperialism, state and the religious right.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.