Heart-rending

By S. P. Seth, *VIEW: Will the Pakistani state prevail?* - Daily Times - Lahore, Pakistan
Monday, July 12, 2010

The most insidious result for Pakistan has been the growth of its own Taliban movement that seeks to subvert the Pakistani state and replace it with a Pakistani version of the Taliban government in Afghanistan

Things are happening thick and fast in Pakistan, though not for the good of its people. The recent bombing in Lahore at a religious shrine was heart-rending.

The sufi stream is the most heartening feature of Islam with a consensual subcontinental culture. To see this being attacked with such ferocity leaves one with a sense of utter helplessness. And coming as it does after senseless attacks on the Ahmedi community, it is felt as a terrible tragedy.

What is the agenda of these extremist elements? These are obviously disparate elements united in their common hatred for all those branded as the ‘enemies’ of Islam. These include domestic as well as foreign enemies. These enemies are seen everywhere by the militants. Inside the country, they constitute a majority of the people who have, by and large, stayed away from political parties aligned with religious extremism.

The electoral history of Pakistan will show that these parties have always been in a minority when it comes to voting, though they have lately gained some traction because of the volatility of the situation within Pakistan.

If that is the case, why have they not been isolated and dealt with accordingly? This has to do with the country’s political and economic development since its creation. Although Pakistan has made some economic progress, it has not filtered down in any appreciable way, if at all, to the mass of the people who need it the most. The feudal class still wields political power, with an added layer of industrial barons.

Indeed, a symbiotic nexus developed between them, with the new industrial class, at times, wielding the baton both as feudal lords and industrial barons. And on top are the military brass sharing power and, most often, sidelining the civilian political elite.

What this means is that the clerical establishment of the country has often felt left out of the political equation. That was not a bad thing since their electoral weight was minimal. But, as self-appointed guardians of the country’s Islamic character, they believe that Pakistan has lost its way.

As Pakistan made its way into the 1980s, two things happened. First, having gotten rid of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late 1970s, General Ziaul Haq made his political base among the country’s religious orthodoxy. He promulgated ordinances to legitimise some outdated laws and won favour with the clerical establishment. This changed the character of Pakistan’s polity. It also started to introduce a certain religious fervour in the lower and middle ranks of the military.

These internal developments coincided with Pakistan’s induction as a US ally to beef up the Afghan mujahideen’s armed struggle to expel Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Pakistan became the conduit for funnelling US arms into Afghanistan. Apart from being a national struggle, the Afghan mujaheedin’s military campaign was also a crusade of sorts against the godless Soviet Union. And the US found its religious overtones quite useful as a motivating factor.

Ziaul Haq’s attempts to make Pakistan into a crypto-religious state mingled with the US’s anti-Soviet strategy in Afghanistan. With the US as Pakistan’s major ally and the source of its large military and economic aid, such intermingling of their interests gave Zia great latitude within the country. In other words, Zia’s internal and external policies were greatly influenced by the dictates of US prescriptions for Afghanistan.

The mujahideen’s armed struggle against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan seemed too successful, with the Soviet Union forced to withdraw. It emphasised that it was possible to defeat a powerful enemy by the deployment of irregular and highly motivated (especially with religious overtones) forces.

For Pakistan, the results of the Afghan War, and the subsequent civil war in the country, were mixed. On the positive side, the Pakistani establishment was happy to have a friendly Taliban government in power. This was supposed to give Pakistan an edge against a military threat from India.

Pakistani intelligence had also established close contacts with the Taliban at different levels, as well as (presumably) with foreign (mostly Arab) elements that had thronged to fight with the Afghan mujahideen. Another important segment of these volunteers were some Pakistani nationals fighting on the Afghan side. With the Soviets out of the picture and the Cold War coming to an end, all these elements suddenly found themselves deprived of their moral crusade.

Not long after, the Arab volunteers (with Osama bin Laden at the helm) found refuge with the new Taliban government in Afghanistan. And they started planning a global crusade against the US, encouraged by their successes against the Soviet Union. This led to the spectacular attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. It was a dramatic announcement of a global terror campaign against the US and its allies, with the avowed purpose of eventually creating an Islamic caliphate.

Instead of providing strategic depth in Afghanistan under a friendly Taliban government, Pakistan ended up being a frontline state of the US war against the Afghan Taliban.

However, the most insidious result for Pakistan has been the growth of its own Taliban movement that seeks to subvert the Pakistani state and replace it with a Pakistani version of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Reportedly, there are close links between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban, as a good number of them have been the product of the madrassas in Pakistan.

By encouraging extremist religious elements as a strategic tool in Afghanistan, and against India, Pakistan spawned the Taliban and other extremist elements. When the Pakistani state sought to dissociate itself from these elements and then turned against them under US pressure, the intricate linkages between them and some state and military instrumentalities were already too deeply embedded to make a clean break. There is a sense that these elements might still be useful after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The point though is that these forces have acquired their own momentum. Through terror they seem determined to make the state do their bidding rather than the other way around. In this tug of war, the Pakistani people are increasingly becoming hostage to both sides.

Will the state prevail? The problem is that the Pakistani establishment is not only fractious, but is given to adhocism. And though many people would like some semblance of security and economic opportunities, they are not enamoured of their rulers. Indeed, many people regard them as self-serving and corrupt, engaged in their own power games. There is, therefore, widely prevailing apathy. Against this backdrop, the Taliban alternative, invoking a state based on Islamic precepts and doctrines might not seem all that bad to the common man with deep faith in his religion.

Pakistan thus finds itself in a state of flux. And the state, such as it is, lacks the willpower and the unity of purpose to go after the militants.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia