Pakistan's Ideology and Identity crisis

[ppgj]

DAWN.COM | Columnists | An incoming barrage from India

An incoming barrage from India
Irfan Husain
Wednesday, 02 Dec, 2009

A Pakistani border security guard, in black uniform, shakes hand with an Indian border security guard, during the 'Beating the Retreat' ceremony at the joint India-Pakistan border check post of Wagah, in Amritsar, India on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009. – Photo by AP.

A part of my daily routine is to check my inbox for emails from readers, and answer them, even if briefly. Occasionally, I upset some of them by the brevity of my reply, but I do try and acknowledge them all, unless they are downright abusive.

However, these last few days have seen such a flood of hate mail that I click open incoming emails with a sinking heart. Some are unprintable; other readers have gloated over Pakistan’s current problems with unseemly glee. One Indian reader (a doctor, no less!) wrote from Australia to say that every time he heard of yet another terrorist attack in Pakistan, he raised a celebratory glass of wine.

All this outpouring of anger has come my way from Indian readers because of a column I wrote in this newspaper last Saturday (‘Mumbai’s winners and losers’; November 28). I had argued that by halting peace talks, the Indian government had handed the terrorists a major victory.

I had also made the point that attacks like the one in Mumbai a year ago were precisely the reason for negotiations to continue with a greater sense of purpose. Finally, I had suggested that India, being the bigger and far more powerful country, could afford to make a unilateral gesture to reassure our generals without compromising its own security. I concluded by saying that India needed peace as much as Pakistan did. One would hardly have thought that these proposals would warrant such a torrent of venom. Luckily, a handful of Indians did agree with me. But over 90 per cent rejected my arguments, saying basically that ‘Pakistan should stew in its own juice’, and that as long as terrorist groups existed on its soil, there could be no peace talks.

Clearly, this seems to be the prevailing attitude in India, and given such hard-line views, it is difficult to see how there can be peace between the two neighbours. I have long argued that the only way to lift millions of people in South Asia out of their abject poverty is to unleash the potential of trade and travel between the two enemies, and to reduce defence spending. Clearly, this is not going to happen in my lifetime.

Sadly, younger Indians and Pakistanis seem to be increasingly indifferent to the whole notion of normalisation. They have been so badly let down by two generations of politicians and opinion-makers that the very idea of peaceful relations seems positively bizarre.

I was made aware of this generational shift in attitudes a couple of days ago when our Indian friend Renu got into a somewhat heated discussion with my son Shakir here in our beach house in Sri Lanka. She had made a comment on how culturally close Indians and Pakistanis were, and I agreed with her. Shakir disagreed, saying that both of us were out of touch with the vast majority of Indians and Pakistanis, as we spent a part of the year abroad.

Predictably, the discussion swung to Partition, Kashmir and the history of tension and mistrust that has marked Indo-Pakistan relations. While Shakir finally conceded the original point about cultural commonalities, he did not budge on the need for both sides to shed old animosities and get on with life.

Nearly ten years ago, I was in New Delhi to attend a conference, and was invited to speak to the editorial staff at the Times of India. I made the point that despite all of Pakistan’s problems with censorship over the years, several journalists regularly questioned and criticised core government policies in the mainstream press. This could not be said of India where the major newspapers formed a consensus around important issues like Kashmir and the nuclear programme. None of the Indian journalists present challenged my assertion.

The incoming hate mail I am getting these days reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a visiting Western journalist in Lahore. He covered Pakistan for his news weekly from New Delhi, and was a frequent visitor. I said something inane about how he must miss the social scene in Delhi. His reply surprised me: ‘I love visiting Pakistan because when I write a critical piece about India, all my Indian acquaintances are furious with me. In Pakistan, when I write something negative, everybody agrees with me.’

There is a great deal of truth in this flippant remark. Indians take themselves and their country a lot more seriously than Pakistanis do. The smallest slight from a foreigner, whether real or perceived, unleashes a barrage of defensive comment across the spectrum. This hyper-sensitivity to criticism is in sharp contrast with the cynicism Pakistanis bring to bear on national issues.

Perhaps these opposing attitudes are a legacy of the historical baggage we all carry. Indians are now in charge of their own destiny after long centuries under first Muslim, and then British, rule. They are proud and prickly, brooking no criticism from outsiders. Even when one of their own casts too jaundiced a view on India – as Nirad Chaudhri did over fifty years ago – these views are rejected and their author virtually hounded out.

No doubt there is a lot to admire in this strong sense of patriotism. But for my part, I am much too jaded and cynical to wish there was more of it around in Pakistan.

Decades of animosity and travel restrictions have deprived two generations of Indians and Pakistanis of the opportunity of getting to know each other’s country, and separate fact from propaganda. Despite satellite television and the Internet (or perhaps because of them), the gulf between the two countries is growing wider. So while I agree with Renu about our common cultural roots, I am forced to agree with Shakir about peace being low on the agendas of both countries. [Incidentally, I would like to request my Indian readers to resist the temptation to lash out at me again; and if they must, I may be unable to reply].

Footnote:

I was horrified to learn of the recent attack on columnist Kamran Shafi’s Wah residence. This brutal attempt bears the fingerprints of one of our agencies, as mentioned in the FIR. President Zardari must have the incident investigated promptly, even though we all know the fate of such inquiries.

 

[truthfull]

DAWN.COM | Columnists | An incoming barrage from India

An incoming barrage from India
Irfan Husain
Wednesday, 02 Dec, 2009

A Pakistani border security guard, in black uniform, shakes hand with an Indian border security guard, during the 'Beating the Retreat' ceremony at the joint India-Pakistan border check post of Wagah, in Amritsar, India on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009. – Photo by AP.

A part of my daily routine is to check my inbox for emails from readers, and answer them, even if briefly. Occasionally, I upset some of them by the brevity of my reply, but I do try and acknowledge them all, unless they are downright abusive.

However, these last few days have seen such a flood of hate mail that I click open incoming emails with a sinking heart. Some are unprintable; other readers have gloated over Pakistan’s current problems with unseemly glee. One Indian reader (a doctor, no less!) wrote from Australia to say that every time he heard of yet another terrorist attack in Pakistan, he raised a celebratory glass of wine.

All this outpouring of anger has come my way from Indian readers because of a column I wrote in this newspaper last Saturday (‘Mumbai’s winners and losers’; November 28). I had argued that by halting peace talks, the Indian government had handed the terrorists a major victory.

I had also made the point that attacks like the one in Mumbai a year ago were precisely the reason for negotiations to continue with a greater sense of purpose. Finally, I had suggested that India, being the bigger and far more powerful country, could afford to make a unilateral gesture to reassure our generals without compromising its own security. I concluded by saying that India needed peace as much as Pakistan did. One would hardly have thought that these proposals would warrant such a torrent of venom. Luckily, a handful of Indians did agree with me. But over 90 per cent rejected my arguments, saying basically that ‘Pakistan should stew in its own juice’, and that as long as terrorist groups existed on its soil, there could be no peace talks.

Clearly, this seems to be the prevailing attitude in India, and given such hard-line views, it is difficult to see how there can be peace between the two neighbours. I have long argued that the only way to lift millions of people in South Asia out of their abject poverty is to unleash the potential of trade and travel between the two enemies, and to reduce defence spending. Clearly, this is not going to happen in my lifetime.

Sadly, younger Indians and Pakistanis seem to be increasingly indifferent to the whole notion of normalisation. They have been so badly let down by two generations of politicians and opinion-makers that the very idea of peaceful relations seems positively bizarre.

I was made aware of this generational shift in attitudes a couple of days ago when our Indian friend Renu got into a somewhat heated discussion with my son Shakir here in our beach house in Sri Lanka. She had made a comment on how culturally close Indians and Pakistanis were, and I agreed with her. Shakir disagreed, saying that both of us were out of touch with the vast majority of Indians and Pakistanis, as we spent a part of the year abroad.

Predictably, the discussion swung to Partition, Kashmir and the history of tension and mistrust that has marked Indo-Pakistan relations. While Shakir finally conceded the original point about cultural commonalities, he did not budge on the need for both sides to shed old animosities and get on with life.

Nearly ten years ago, I was in New Delhi to attend a conference, and was invited to speak to the editorial staff at the Times of India. I made the point that despite all of Pakistan’s problems with censorship over the years, several journalists regularly questioned and criticised core government policies in the mainstream press. This could not be said of India where the major newspapers formed a consensus around important issues like Kashmir and the nuclear programme. None of the Indian journalists present challenged my assertion.

The incoming hate mail I am getting these days reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a visiting Western journalist in Lahore. He covered Pakistan for his news weekly from New Delhi, and was a frequent visitor. I said something inane about how he must miss the social scene in Delhi. His reply surprised me: ‘I love visiting Pakistan because when I write a critical piece about India, all my Indian acquaintances are furious with me. In Pakistan, when I write something negative, everybody agrees with me.’

There is a great deal of truth in this flippant remark. Indians take themselves and their country a lot more seriously than Pakistanis do. The smallest slight from a foreigner, whether real or perceived, unleashes a barrage of defensive comment across the spectrum. This hyper-sensitivity to criticism is in sharp contrast with the cynicism Pakistanis bring to bear on national issues.

Perhaps these opposing attitudes are a legacy of the historical baggage we all carry. Indians are now in charge of their own destiny after long centuries under first Muslim, and then British, rule. They are proud and prickly, brooking no criticism from outsiders. Even when one of their own casts too jaundiced a view on India – as Nirad Chaudhri did over fifty years ago – these views are rejected and their author virtually hounded out.

No doubt there is a lot to admire in this strong sense of patriotism. But for my part, I am much too jaded and cynical to wish there was more of it around in Pakistan.

Decades of animosity and travel restrictions have deprived two generations of Indians and Pakistanis of the opportunity of getting to know each other’s country, and separate fact from propaganda. Despite satellite television and the Internet (or perhaps because of them), the gulf between the two countries is growing wider. So while I agree with Renu about our common cultural roots, I am forced to agree with Shakir about peace being low on the agendas of both countries. [Incidentally, I would like to request my Indian readers to resist the temptation to lash out at me again; and if they must, I may be unable to reply].

Footnote:

I was horrified to learn of the recent attack on columnist Kamran Shafi’s Wah residence. This brutal attempt bears the fingerprints of one of our agencies, as mentioned in the FIR. President Zardari must have the incident investigated promptly, even though we all know the fate of such inquiries.

yes we hate you.becoz you have created the pakistan on our land with differnt ideology and your heros are those who destroyed our everything like temples . pakistan is a hanging pendulam who is not not coming to equilibrium position.

 

[Daredevil]

I don't understand Mr. Irfan Hussain, what is the effing problem of Pakistan to dismantle terrorist infrastructure and support to such terrorist organizations. If they don't want to dismantle means they don't want peace with India. Then why should India go begging Pakistan for peace talks when Pakistan itself doesn't want peace. As some one wrote to you - "let pakistan stew in its own juice".

 

[Flint]

I don't understand Mr. Irfan Hussain, what is the effing problem of Pakistan to dismantle terrorist infrastructure and support to such terrorist organizations. If they don't want to dismantle means they don't want peace with India. Then why should India go begging Pakistan for peace talks when Pakistan itself doesn't want peace. As some one wrote to you - "let pakistan stew in its own juice".

I think we often get stuck with cliche like "dismantle terror infrastructure" and don't realize to what extent the Kashmir issue has been abused by the Pakistani political class. They are finding it difficult to denounce even the TTP without first identifying them with India/Hindus. It is unthinkable that their political class will speak out openly against the Kashmir-centric insurgent groups. They nearly censored the news about the 26/11 trials for this very reason. Unless there is a paradigm shift in the mentality of the average Pakistani, they will continue to support, directly or indirectly or "morally", Kashmiri insurgents.

 

[ppgj]

VIEW: President Zardari’s loss of control —Ahmed Rashid
Thursday, December 03, 2009

As Obama announces an aggressive counterterror campaign in Afghanistan, the region’s most dangerous nation — Pakistan — gets more grim by the day

Under unrelenting pressure from the army and political opposition parties, President Asif Zardari has ceded authority over Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons command infrastructure to the prime minister. But that may be just the beginning. The move comes as Zardari prepares to hand over further powers to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in order to avoid impeachment on possible corruption charges, as well as to satisfy the army — which appears determined to weaken him, if not oust him from power altogether.

There has been an unrelenting campaign by the military and political parties who are allied to the army to weaken Zardari so irreversibly that he is forced from office and a new, more pliant president could be appointed who would do the bidding of the army — viewed by many as the largest and most effective political party in the country. Zardari is seen by the army as too pro-American and unwilling to support the military’s hard line against US policy in Afghanistan, the Afghan government, and India.

The turmoil comes at a critical moment.

The US, Britain and other NATO countries are now strongly demanding that the Pakistan army do more to hunt down Osama bin Laden and confront the Afghan Taliban leadership — all of whom are based in Pakistan, according to US intelligence.

Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a virtual ultimatum to the army and the intelligence services in Islamabad on November 29 to “take out” Osama bin Laden, after castigating Pakistan for doing little on the issue. “Three-quarters of terrorist plots that threaten Britain arise from that area of Pakistan,” Brown said.

The same tough words are expected to be repeated by President Barack Obama in his speech Tuesday when he outlines further US policy in Afghanistan. Two weeks ago, Obama had sent a private letter to President Zardari urging him to do more to root out the extremists on Pakistan’s side of the border. Gordon Brown will be meeting Prime Minister Gilani in London this week. “If we are putting our strategy into place, Pakistan has to show that it can take on al Qaeda,” said Gordon Brown.

The army’s relationship with the US administration is becoming increasingly strained as the military accuses the Americans of failing to put pressure on India to reopen stalled talks between the two countries and also to address Islamabad’s accusations that India is undermining Pakistan through its large presence in Afghanistan.

The tensions may be coming to a head, but they have been building for some time toward the crescendo on Saturday, November 28, the day of Eid, the most important religious festival on the Muslim calendar. That day, an amnesty expired that had protected Zardari — along with more than 8,000 other politicians, bureaucrats and officials — from thousands of charges of corruption, murder, and the like.

That immunity deal, known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), was introduced in December 2007 to facilitate a deal between the then president, General Pervez Musharraf, and Benazir Bhutto, so that she could return home from exile and contest the elections freely. After her assassination in December 2007, Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP, went on to win the elections, and Zardari, her husband, was elected president in August 2008.

The government was unable to renew the NRO, either through parliament or the courts, because of a ruling against it by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. Hundreds of leading PPP politicians could now be prosecuted for corruption. Although Zardari has immunity from prosecution because he is president, he could still be impeached by parliament. He has previously spent a total of 11 years facing corruption and murder charges that were never proven by earlier regimes.

By giving up control of the official body — the National Command Authority — that controls the deployment and use of Pakistan’s estimated 60 to 100 nuclear weapons, Zardari further conceded another key demand of the army. Key cabinet ministers and the heads of the army, navy, and air force are members of the nuclear authority. But the army manages and controls the nuclear weapons and its budget and personnel are a deeply held secret.

Civilians have never controlled Pakistan’s nuclear program — and neither Zardari nor Prime Minister Gilani, who is also from the PPP, have ever been taken into confidence by the army on the subject. Zardari’s move is symbolic, but it does show his continuing weakness and his inability to take on the powerful army.

At the same time, there is a more genuine democratic need for Zardari to hand over his powers to the prime minister and parliament. Ostensibly, Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy, but Musharraf — who was both army chief and president — had accumulated extraordinary powers for the office.

The political parties are insisting that these powers, now written into Pakistan’s constitution as its 17th Amendment, are given back to the prime minister and parliament.

In the weeks ahead, Zardari is likely to comply with this demand and surrender his powers, which will leave him as a figurehead. There is enormous political speculation as to whether that will satisfy the army or only embolden it to press further for Zardari’s resignation.

The president has support from the Obama administration, which has tried to strengthen Pakistan’s civilian government. A bill passed by Congress commits $1.5 billion a year for five years to help rebuild civilian institutions, as well as up to $2 billion a year in military aid and military support funds.

The Bush administration provided more than $12 billion to Pakistan between 2001 and 2007. But over 70 percent of that money went directly to the army. That helped fuel rising anti-Americanism in Pakistan. The dilemma for the US is that even as it tries to prop up the civilian government with aid, the army continues to increase its dominance of the political sphere.

The army is now virtually controlling all aspects of foreign policy toward India and Afghanistan. Balancing the relationship between the army and the civilians has become the most difficult task not only for Pakistani politicians but also for the US and NATO.

Ahmed Rashid is the author of Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, and a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[ppgj]

Pakistan: What Obama left unsaid
David E. Sanger
Eric Schmitt
December 3, 2009

Active voices: The expanded operations in Pakistan could include drone strikes in the southern province of Balochistan where senior Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding. Photo: AFP

Barack Obama has authorised an expansion of the war in Pakistan — if only he can get a weak, divided, suspicious Pakistani government to agree to the terms.

U.S. President Barack Obama focused his speech on Afghanistan. He left much unsaid about Pakistan, where the main terrorists he is targeting are located, but where he can send no troops.

Mr. Obama could not be very specific about his Pakistan strategy, his advisers conceded on Monday evening. U.S. operations there are classified, most run by the CIA. Any overt U.S. presence would only fuel anti-Americanism in a country that reacts sha rply to every missile strike against extremists that kills civilians as well, and that fears that America is plotting to run its government and seize its nuclear weapons.

Yet quietly, Mr. Obama has authorised an expansion of the war in Pakistan as well — if only he can get a weak, divided, suspicious Pakistani government to agree to the terms.

In recent months, in addition to providing White House officials with classified assessments about Afghanistan, the CIA delivered a plan for widening the campaign of strikes against militants by drone aircraft in Pakistan, sending additional spies there and securing a White House commitment to bulk up the CIA’s budget for operations inside the country.

The expanded operations could include drone strikes in the southern province of Balochistan, where senior Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding, officials said. It is from there that they direct many of the attacks on U.S. troops, attacks that are likely to increase as more Americans pour into Afghanistan.

“The President endorsed an intensification of the campaign against al-Qaeda and its violent allies, including even more operations targeting terrorism safe havens,” said one U.S. official. “More people, more places, more operations.”

That was the message delivered in recent weeks to Pakistani officials by General James L. Jones, the National Security Adviser. But the Pakistanis, suspicious of Mr. Obama’s intentions and his staying power, have not yet agreed.

General Jones was one of a series of U.S. officials who arrived in Pakistan in recent weeks with the same message: No matter how many troops the President commits to Afghanistan, the strategy will founder unless the safe haven inside Pakistan is dealt with.

However, the U.S. does not have much leverage and is counting on a new attitude and a huge acceleration of efforts from a weak government. Making matters worse, President Asif Ali Zardari is often at odds with the nation’s powerful military and intelligence establishment.

The question about Mr. Obama’s Pakistan strategy is whether the new commitment of troops and resources can ultimately make America safer at a time of an evolving terrorist threat. Mr. Obama insisted that was his central focus.

“This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda,” he said to the cadets at West Point, speaking of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the murky border area between the two that offers refuge to extremists of many stripes. The region was the birthplace of the September 11, 2001, attacks, he said, and “it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak”. Many times in the speech he returned to that threat, saying it was what made this war different from Vietnam.

Of nuclear weapons

And he referenced another threat, one that focuses the attention of Mr. Obama’s national security team daily, but which it speaks about rarely.

“The stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al-Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them,” he said.

Mr. Obama’s decision to raise the nuclear spectre was notable because a succession of U.S. officials have publicly stated recently that the Pakistani arsenal is secure. In private, however, they have commissioned new intelligence studies on how vulnerable Pakistani warheads and laboratories would be if insurgents made greater inroads, with one official saying recently, “It is the scenario we spend the most time thinking about.”

Even if Mr. Obama is successful in lessening the terrorist threat in the region, many analysts say that al-Qaeda has changed into a transnational movement beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“There is no direct impact on stopping terrorists around the world because we are or are not in Afghanistan,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the former CIA officer who was sent into Pakistan after 9/11 to determine if Osama bin Laden had access to the country’s nuclear technology. The nature of modern terrorism, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, now at Harvard, argued, is that a safe haven can be moved to many different states, and the bigger threat exists in cells, including in Europe and the U.S.

Even Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acknowledged in an interview this evening that the steps announced by the President would not address al-Qaeda cells in Africa or West Asia, or even homegrown extremists. But she argued that he had to begin somewhere.

“Can you totally eliminate the threat from al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-types in Yemen or Somalia? No,” she said. “But what you have done is taken a major action to limit their ability out of this major theatre, from which their leaders and major actions emanate.”

Reconciling contradictions

Making the Pakistan plan even more complex was Mr. Obama’s effort to reconcile two seemingly contradictory messages on Tuesday evening. He had to convince the Pakistanis that he was not planning to leave the region — as the U.S. did 20 years ago, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan — while reassuring the American public that after an 18-month build-up, he would begin to head for the exits.

The U.S., he said, simply could not afford an open-ended war. Unlike President George W. Bush, he suggested, he would not set “goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests.” — © 2009 The New York Times News Service

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Pakistan: What Obama left unsaid

 

[ppgj]

Karachi the Taliban revenue engine: Mustafa Kamal
Wednesday, 02 Dec, 2009

Karachi’s mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal. — Photo by Stephan Andrew/White Star

KARACHI: Pakistan's biggest city and commercial hub of Karachi is the revenue engine of the Taliban who pose a threat to the US military operation in Afghanistan from city no-go areas, Karachi's mayor said on Wednesday.

The city of 18 million people generates 68 per cent of the government revenue and 25 per cent of Pakistan's gross domestic product but it is vulnerable to both militant attacks and political violence, said mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal.

‘As Karachi is the revenue engine for Pakistan, it's the same revenue engine for the Taliban,’ Kamal told Reuters in an interview in his office.

While investors in Pakistan's stock market are getting used to almost daily violence in northwestern parts of the country, violence in Karachi would have an immediate impact on financial markets, dealers say.

Karachi has been largely free of militant attacks over the past two years which Kamal put down to his party's strong and popular stand against militancy combined with effective security operations.

Eight militant gangs had been rounded up in the city over recent months, including one planning to attack an oil storage depot next to the country's main port in the city, he said.

‘Half of Karachi would have burned,’ said Kamal, referring to the foiled depot attack.

A dynamic 37-year-old, Kamal has won support with his efforts to ease traffic gridlock and improve woeful services.

Kamal said a large proportion of supplies bound for US-led forces in landlocked Afghanistan arrive at Karachi's port, which he said was still vulnerable to an attack that could cripple the US war effort.

‘If they don't get their water supply through this route the next day they'll be drinking Afghan water and the next day half the army will have stomach problems,’ he said.

‘That’s abnormal’

The city, which has long suffered a reputation for political violence and crime, still had no-go areas where the authorities including the police dared not venture, he said.

‘These no-go areas give room for any terrorist, no matter how small or big, to come and stay,’ said Kamal, though he said he did not believe press reports that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was hiding in the city.

But he said militants were financing their war in the northwest of the country and in Afghanistan through kidnapping and drug trafficking through Karachi.

‘People are being kidnapped here in Karachi and the ransom is taken in Waziristan,’ he said.

Four hundred million rupees had recently been sent from one Karachi bank branch to various parts of the northwest in one month, he said.

‘That's abnormal,’ he said. ‘For sure, the biggest chunk of Taliban war...resources are going from Karachi.’

Kamal is a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which represents mohajirs, the descendents of Urdu-speaking people who migrated from India after the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

They are the biggest community in Karachi and dominate its administration.

The MQM, now an uneasy member of the federal coalition government, was heavily involved in bloody factional battles in Karachi in the 1990s.

Kamal said Karachi remains volatile and vulnerable to factional violence: ‘It would just take a single statement to burn the whole city.’ But he said the MQM had a new mentality and maturity.

‘We understand very well that Karachi is the backbone of Pakistan's economy,’ he said. ‘If something, God forbid, happens the MQM would be the biggest loser.’

‘I don't have a house in Peshawar or Lahore, nor can I go to New Delhi again ... My graveyard is here.’

DAWN.COM | Metropolitan | Karachi the Taliban revenue engine: Mustafa Kamal

 

[ppgj]

must read.

Little monsters
Posted by Nadeem F. Paracha in Pakistan, Politics on 12 3rd, 2009 | 111 responses

There is nothing new anymore about the suggestion that over a span of about 30 odd years, the Pakistani military and its establishmentarian allies in the intelligence agencies, the politicised clergy, conservative political parties and the media have, in the name of Islam and patriotism, given birth to a number of unrestrained demons which have now become full-fledged monsters threatening the very core of the state and society in Pakistan.

A widespread consensus across various academic and intellectual circles (both within and outside Pakistan), now states that violent entities such as the Taliban and assorted Islamist organisations involved in scores of anti-state, sectarian and related violence in the country are the pitfalls of policies and propaganda undertaken by the Pakistani state and its various intelligence agencies to supposedly safeguard Pakistan’s ‘strategic interests’ in the region and more superficially, Pakistan’s own ideological interest.

This supposed ideology was convolutedly constructed by the state and the ‘establishment’ of Pakistan many years after the painful birth of the new country. It is, however, still being used by intelligence agencies, certain politico-religious politicians, and media men to actually justify the folly of the Pakistani state and military in the past for not only patronising, but actually forming brutal Islamist organisations.

But whose ideology is it, really? Even though the answer to the question of what Jinnah envisioned is not easily proffered, Pakistan seemed to have a simple answer till about 1956. But this answer it seems did not suit the political and economic interests of the early Pakistani ruling elite consisting of the bureaucracy, the feudal-dominated political circles and eventually the military, and of course, the religious parties.

Till about the late 1960s it was normal to suggest that Pakistan as an idea and then a reality was carved as a country for the Muslims of the subcontinent who were largely seen (by Jinnah and his comrades in the Muslim League), as a distinct ethnic and cultural set of Indians whose political, economic and cultural distinctiveness might have been compromised in a post-colonial ‘Hindu-dominated’ set-up.

As Jinnah went about explaining his unfolding vision of what Pakistan as a political and ideological entity was supposed to mean, there is no doubt whatsoever in the historical validity of the notion that he imagined the new country as a cultural haven for the Muslims of the subcontinent where the state and politics would remain firmly secular, driven by a form of modern western democracy that also incorporated the egalitarian concepts of Islam such as charity, equality, unity and a healthy appreciation of intellectual pursuits.

Apart from the much quoted speeches of Jinnah in which he clearly outlines his desire to see Pakistan as a secular and progressive Muslim state, scholars have provided a number of other set of evidences as well capturing Jinnah’s mindset in this context.

For example, the Khilafat Movement that swung into being between 1919 and 1924 among the traditionalist Muslim activists of the subcontinent – as Mustapha Kamal went about dismantling the Ottoman Empire in Turkey labeling it as backwards and decadent – Jinnah is on record of being highly critical of the Khilafat Movement as well, describing it as a ‘false religious frenzy.’

According to Professor Aysha Jalal, Jinnah’s view of Islamic activism in the subcontinent was akin to him understanding it as a phenomenon that ‘derided the false and dangerous religious frenzy which had confused Indian politics, and the zealots who were harming the national cause.’

Jinnah’s death in 1949 and the internal infighting that his party, the Muslim League, suffered, reduced it from being a dynamic organisation of visionary action, into a rag-tag group of self-serving politicians who were in cahoots with a powerful bureaucracy and feudal interests. It became a pale and unimaginative reflection of its pre-independence past.

Gone too was the party’s ability to further define and, more so, bring into policy Jinnah’s secular-Muslim vision as the idea got increasingly muddled and out-voiced by the rising noise of the once anti-Pakistan Islamic forces who took the opportunity to start flexing their muscles in the face of a disintegrating Muslim League and the erosion of what its leader stood for.

The Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and the (now defunct) Islami Nizam Party went on a rampage in 1953 in Lahore, hungrily overseeing the country’s first major anti-Ahmadi riots.

Of course, by now the famous speech by Jinnah in which he underlined the idea of religious freedom in the new country was conveniently forgotten as the ruling elite grappled confusingly with the crises, first jailing and dishing out the death penalty to the main architect of the riots, JI’s founder, Abul Ala Maududdi, but then releasing him, and ultimately tamely capitulating to the demands of the handful of vocal Islamic leaders by officially declaring the country as an Islamic Republic in the 1956 Constitution.

It was classic ostrich behavior; the sort a number of Pakistani leaders continued to demonstrate whenever faced with the question of Pakistan and its relationship to Political Islam.

Misunderstanding Islamist activism as mere emotionalism that wont be able to sustain itself on a political level, and underestimating the Machiavellian traits of Islamic political organisations, the ruling elite gave the Islamists a hollow bone to play with, without bothering to explain to the rest of the people exactly what did an Islamic state or an Islamic Republic really meant in the Pakistani context.

Just when the military dictatorship of Field Martial Ayub Khan had begun its accent towards a peak, the Jamat-i-Islami brought back the question about Pakistan’s ideology in 1962.

By then the ruling establishment had been confident of burying the Islamist irritant with the 1956 proclamation, which, obviously meant nothing more than a change of name, as the matters of the state and the government continued to be handled in an overwhelmingly secular manner, especially by the pro-West Ayub Khan dictatorship.

But by now the military had also become overtly conscious about the supposed problems the diversified polity and milieu of Pakistan could create for the federation and homogenous institutions such as the Army.

Pakistan, quite like India, was not an ethnically and religiously homogenous entity, and it consisted of various distinct ethnicities, Islamic sects and sub-sects, apart from having its share of ‘minorities.’

The economic, cultural and political cleavages that began developing between various ethnicities – especially due to a lack of democratic representation of these varied peoples in the corridors of power – were attempted to be fixed and filled by the military and the state through the imposition of the ‘one unit’ system – an idea in which Pakistan was treated as a single unit of homogenous Muslims and a place where there was no room for provinces based on ethnic credentials.

The state seems to have naively undermined and underestimated the power and the hold the concept of ethnic identity had in the region – a hold, which in India, comparatively speaking, was more successfully addressed through democracy and democratic institutions that helped varied ethnicities have a stake in the affairs of the government and the state.

As the state cringed at the pro-democracy movement of the late 1960s that was searching for a Pakistan run on democratic lines and which, in turn, would give a vote and a voice to various ethnicities, the state suddenly turned towards its former nemesis, the Islamists.

The Yahya Khan dictatorship that replaced the fallen Ayub Khan regime, was the first in the country to start patronising leading Islamic parties in an attempt to thwart the largely left-leaning pro-democracy movement spearheaded by overtly secular leaders such as the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, National Awami Party’s Moullana Bhashani and Wali Khan, Awami League’s Mujibur Rheman, politicians like Asghar Khan, and leftist student parties such as the National Students Federation (NSF).

As far as the military was concerned democracy meant the disintegration of Pakistan; and more so, they saw democracy as a danger that would neutralise American and capitalist support that the military enjoyed, marginalising the military in the matters of the government.

For the Islamists, democracy meant the emergence of ethnic and religious plurality that would encourage secular politics and policies and further undermine the notion of Islamcentric Pakistani nationhood.

On the eve of the 1970 elections, as the state (under the military) went about explaining to its American allies its sudden bend towards patronising forces peddling Political Islam as a way to frustrate ‘Soviet influence’ and the ‘spread of communism’ in Pakistan, the Islamic parties began their bit by decrying that (in the wake of the pro-democracy movement) ‘Islam was in danger.’

But the nation seemed to be in no mood to respond to the conservative alarmist messages coming from the military dictatorship and its new-found Islamic allies as the people voted with their feet for left-leaning secular parties such as the Awami League (in former East Pakistan), and the PPP and NAP in West Pakistan.

However, as the results of the elections stood out to prove the inherent distrust a diverse Pakistan had for what the military establishment and the Islamic parties were defining as ‘Pakistan’s ideology’ and the ‘one unit,’ the consequence of the damage the two convolutions had already caused emerged in the shape of Civil War and cries of independence in former East Pakistan. In December 1971, East Pakistan violently broke away from the rest of the country to become Bangladesh.

Conveniently, the humiliated military and Islamic parties and pro-establishment politicians who had all been squarely defeated in the 1970 elections, put the blame on the purveyors of democracy who had risen in revolt against military dictatorship and the one unit system in the late 1960s.

Ironically, though the incoming PPP government led by the popular Z. A. Bhutto remained populist and secular, Bhutto couldn’t escape the question about Pakistan’s ideology that now seemed to have gained a lot more urgency in the face of the breakup of the country.

Staring the new government in the face was a disenchanted population and a disgraced Army. But Bhutto was clever to use a vital scapegoat to turn things around. His populist and socialist rhetoric was now punctuated with verbal attacks on India which had supported the Bengali nationalist movement. The Bhutto regime then gathered a number of (otherwise anti-Bhutto) conservative scholars and historians to turn his anti-India rhetoric into a common historical narrative in which India became the enemy behind most, if not all, political and economic ills befalling Pakistan. This episode has in it the seeds of what would grow into the rampant culture of denial and conspiracy theories in Pakistan.

The flammable narrative then eschewed provincialism as well, as Bhutto went after Pushtun and Baloch nationalists, blaming India and the Soviet Union for what was simply the result of Bhutto’s own rising autocracy.

The narrative was adopted even by Bhutto’s staunchest opponents, especially the religious parties, who eventually galvanised a largely secular body of people into believing that the ills Pakistan was facing were due to ‘secularism,’ and the ‘betrayal of Pakistan’s ideology’ (Islam).

As General Ziaul Haq stumped the politicians by imposing Martial Law (1977) and bagged the Jamat-i-Islami to flaunt his rule as being ‘Islamic,’ the narrative spun out of the confines of text books and spontaneous speeches and took a whole new meaning with the emergence of Pakistan as a frontline state in America’s proxy war against the Soviet Union on the scorched grounds of Afghanistan. This was also the time that the state and its media literally turned the image of Jinnah on its head by making him spout unsubstantiated Islamist pearls!

The 1980s and the so-called anti-Soviet Afghan jihad is colored with deep nostalgic strokes by the Islamists and the military in Pakistan. Forgetting that the Afghans would have remained being nothing more than a defeated group of rag-tag militants without the millions of dollars worth of aid and weapons that the Americans provided, and Zia could not have survived even the first MRD movement in 1981 had it not been due to the unflinching support that he received from America and Saudi Arabia, Pakistani intelligence agencies and its Afghan and Arab militant allies were convinced that it was them alone who toppled the Soviet Union.

The above belief began looking more and more like a grave delusion by the time the Afghan mujahideen factions went to war against one another in the early 1990s and Pakistan was engulfed with serious sectarian and ethnic strife. But the post-1971 narrative that had now started to seep into the press and in many people’s minds, desperately attempted to drown out conflicting points of views about the Afghan war by once again blaming the usual suspects: democracy, secularism and India.

Many years and follies later, and in the midst of unprecedented violence being perpetrated in the name of Islam, Pakistanis today stand more confused and flabbergasted than ever before.

The seeds of the ideological schizophrenia that the 1956 proclamation of Pakistan being an ‘Islamic Republic’ sowed, have now grown into a chaotic and bloody tree that only bares delusions and denials as fruit.

As conservative parties, Islamic groups and reactionary journalists continue to use the flimsy and synthetic post-1971 historical narrative to consciously bury the harrowing truth behind the destruction and the chaos the so-called ‘ideology of Pakistan’ has managed to create within and outside Pakistan, a whole generation is growing up absorbing the narrative wholesale.

Whereas state-sanctioned history text books did the trick in this respect in the 1970s, and the state-owned media and the conservative press galvanised Pakistanis towards this narrative in the 1980s, today, just as the military and the state of Pakistan is searching for a suitable ground to tackle the ideological and physical monsters their own follies have unleashed, a whole new generation of post-90s young men and women and electronic media pundits have taken upon themselves to look for the answers. Unfortunately, the answers are being looked for in the old convoluted narrative of the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ which, ironically, is the source of the problem.

This schizophrenia is apparent in the military itself. On the one hand, as an institution, the Army seems to have come to terms with the importance of plurality and democracy as ways to harmoniously deal with the ethnic and sectarian diversity that is Pakistan; it has also realised the folly of turning a blind eye to Islamist organisations, believing they will be ‘helpful in Kashmir and Afghanistan.’

But since the Pakistan Army’s entire motivation revolves around a conflict with India (Islam vs. Hinduism), it has been tough for senior officers to justify to their men a war being fought with remorseless men who incidentally also call themselves Muslims.

Even though, General Pervez Kiyani has done well to finally make his men find a good reason to fight the monsters, but if one listens to the many characters who these days appear on private TV channels and conservative newspapers, one can at least partially understand what is the new narrative that is emerging to motivate the Pakistani state’s war with the Islamists.

If these always combusting characters on the mini-screen are to be believed, then even though Pakistan is facing the scrooge of extremism and related terrorism, the extremists and terrorists are ‘being sponsored and funded by enemies of Pakistan (i.e. India and Israel).’

So is it true that the same old India (and ‘Zionists’) bogy is being built into the emerging narrative as well to infuse the right amount of motivation into the troops and the nation in the fight against extremism which in reality is very much an internal demon? Perhaps. But more alarming however is, that if state follies in this respect ended up creating big monsters in the shape of extremist organisations, then the new added-on narrative being peddled so enthusiastically by colourful chameleons on popular TV is bound to generate a generation of young Pakistanis which – ironically in the ‘age of information’ – may be the most conditioned and reactionary culmination of young people to grace the social landscape of the country, passionately divorced from any reality that may compromise this generation’s new-found mirage and misconceptions about the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ and Islam.

Little monsters are what we have in hand – a lucrative market for TV channels, and a weapon for the Islamists in their ongoing social and cultural war against ‘liberals.’

nadeem_80x80 Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

Little monsters — The Dawn Blog Blog Archive

 

[Ray]

What is happening in Pakistan is real unfortunate.

They are paying for the foolishness of Zia who procreated this monster called Mujhahidins and then their successor the Taliban emerged.

Zia is the evil person who is the cause of the ruination of Pakistan!

I am sure Jinnah did not create Pakistan for this unfortunate state of affairs.

 

[johnee]

What is happening in Pakistan is real unfortunate.

They are paying for the foolishness of Zia who procreated this monster called Mujhahidins and then their successor the Taliban emerged.

Zia is the evil person who is the cause of the ruination of Pakistan!

I am sure Jinnah did not create Pakistan for this unfortunate state of affairs.

RaySir, you serious?!! Zia's actions were the next logical step in the evolution of Pakistan. The very idea of Pakistan would eventually descend into this and it was quite clear to everyone at the time of its inception itself.

Here is Maulana Azad's interview:

Maulana A K Azad's interview in April 1946 to shorish Kashmiri

Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, the man who knew the future of Pakistan before its creation

Q: Maulana, what is wrong if Pakistan becomes a reality? After all, “Islam” is being used to pursue and protect the unity of the community

I feel that right from its inception, Pakistan will face some very serious problems:

1. The incompetent political leadership will pave the way for military dictatorship as it has happened in many Muslim countries.

2. The heavy burden of foreign debt.

3. Absence of friendly relationship with neighbours and the possibility of armed conflict.

4. Internal unrest and regional conflicts.

5. The loot of national wealth by the neo-rich and industrialists of Pakistan.

6. The apprehension of class war as a result of exploitation by the neo-rich.

7. The dissatisfaction and alienation of the youth from religion and the collapse of the theory of Pakistan.

8. The conspiracies of the international powers to control Pakistan.

In this situation, the stability of Pakistan will be under strain and the Muslim countries will be in no position to provide any worthwhile help. The assistance from other sources will not come without strings and it will force both ideological and territorial compromises.

Jinnah criticised Gandhi's support of the Khilafat Movement, which he saw as an endorsement of religious zealotry. Then did he not know that Pakistan would eventually be a hub of fundamentalism and religious zealotry? IMHO, he knew, but in his lust for power, he ignored it and carried on with his mission. Of course, he did try to do course correction in his inaugural speech of constitution but that was too little, too late. Pakistan will always be attracted to more religious fundamentalism in politics and society because its founding edifice is that.

 

[ppgj]

interesting read.

The axis of trouble
By Yousuf Nazar
Saturday, 05 Dec, 2009

The Americans blame the extremists and terrorists for Pakistan’s current woes. So do Pakistan’s liberals.—File photo

Pakistan’s so-called Islamic parties and groups never get tired of blaming America for all the country’s problems. The military has traditionally blamed the politicians.

The Americans blame the extremists and terrorists for Pakistan’s current woes. So do Pakistan’s liberals.

In the context of the recent past and Pakistan’s history, Pakistan’s biggest tragedy and the principal reason for its break-up was and has been the axis of trouble between America, Pakistan’s army, and the religious parties.

Until and unless the axis is broken, neither the reconstruction of the Pakistani state nor the so-called democratisation of Pakistan will bring peace or prosperity to the latter’s 170 million people, nearly eighty per cent whom live below the poverty line of $2 a day.

Pakistan’s elites have little interest in the reconstruction of the state because they have the most to lose if power is truly exercised by the people.

The army has no incentive to break the axis of trouble (a legacy of the great game) because it thrives on the perpetuation of conflicts in the region and the largess it receives from the United States.

The Americans cannot afford to antagonise the army for the simple reason it is the only power that matters. And the mullahs? They have thrived due to a combination of factors. Most important among the factors is the failure of the so-called mainstream parties to provide honest and credible leadership.

It is customary to blame Zia and his successors, including Musharraf, for the growth of the Frankenstein forces of extremism and terrorism, but the buck does not stop there.

In many other countries, for example, in Latin America, the unholy alliance between the local military, rightwing forces and Americans undermined democracy but the nationalist and democratic forces eventually triumphed because they had capable and credible leadership.

Pakistan has been cursed by civilian and military leaders who are too eager to follow the US agenda. From Ayub to Kayani, there is not a single army chief who can claim to have pursued Pakistan’s strategic interests independent of US goals in the region.

Since US interests have largely been military and revolved around the containment of Russia and China in the region, its most natural ally has been the military at the cost of democracy and democratic governance.

Politics has been demonised to a degree that save for incompetent and allegedly corrupt individuals like Mr Zardari or Mr Nawaz Sharif, or creations of the establishment like Altaf Hussain or Maulana Fazlur Rehman, few wish to navigate the treacherous and murderous waters of stormy Pakistani politics.

It is easy to say that we need democratisation and decentralisation of power and the provinces should be given full autonomy. But how? We have had many elections since 1985 after Ziaul Haq imposed martial law in 1977 but virtually nothing has changed.

It is even more ironic when otherwise well-meaning intellectuals and civil society leaders lecture about democratic governance and the fight against extremism as if these were the only important issues.

Some believe the judiciary offers some hope. An independent judiciary is an oxymoron in Pakistan’s current objective conditions. The so-called revolt by some in the judiciary against Musharraf was a manifestation of a power struggle inside the establishment.

The judiciary is as much part of the collapsing Pakistani state structure as some of the big media personalities, some whom also openly admit to have been offering advice to the powers that be.

The ugly reality is that the business of the state and politics has become a mafia enterprise with the usual mix of big money (read business, drugs, land) interests and crime.

This criminal enterprise has the active support of the Americans who find it convenient to use a corrupt instrument that a puppet state is, be it military or quasi-military. Either in its pure form or in a diluted form; that is, in a coalition with some corrupt politicians.

Many developing countries have passed through this phase. But the will of the people ultimately triumphs. So Pakistanis must not despair.

However they need to be clear that the forces of oppression and corruption have thrived not only due to the support from the US but also due to the fact that the people themselves have allowed autocratic and corrupt forces to divide, coerce, silence and deceive them.

The people must unite. But for a movement to succeed in Pakistan’s current conditions, it must and has to involve, mobilise and relate to the masses and not just the educated few.

It is therefore the need of the hour that all citizens think seriously about what is the crux of the issue. The country needs freedom from corrupt leadership (civil or military) and America and the axis of trouble.

It is not the sole privilege of any political party or a civil rights group to fight for this. This should be the common goal of every Pakistani who wants to see the rule of the people.

The two main obstacles to the creation of a free, just and democratic Pakistan are the establishment (including its civilian collaborators) and America. It is logical that Pakistanis raise their voice against both as well against the religious extremists.

From Ayub Khan to Yahya to Ziaul Haq to Musharraf, it is the United States that has sided with the generals as it historically did in all developing countries. To expect that a democratic movement can succeed without confronting the dictatorship’s biggest and most powerful supporter is hoping against all hope.

If civil society and journalists forget this and continue to focus on issues like the repeal of the 17th Amendment, it is unlikely that such an agenda would capture the imagination of the masses who are quite aware of who really pulls the strings in Pakistan.

Until and unless a movement emerges that appeals to popular sentiment and represents the people’s real aspirations to create a genuinely democratic state, Pakistan’s chances of survival in its current state are slim.

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | The axis of trouble

 

[Ray]

So true but in Pakistan and India there have been some very sucessful movement like the Al Huda, Dawah and Dr. Zakir Naik and believe me in Pakistan it is some what sucessful. Most of the people I know do not go to Dargha and ask the dead person. We do not have these kindda weddings anymore, atleast not in my family friends.

Presidents of Pakistan on their visit to India went to Ajmer Sharif! Zia is supposed to be a devout Muslim!

A few hundred thousand devotees, including some Hindus who believe in the divine powers of the Khwaja, flock to Ajmer throughout the year to offer prayers and gifts and fulfill vows.

* The faithful walk barefeet, their heads covered, and jostle in long lines as they carry baskets of colourful flowers and cloth to drape on the tomb.

* The devout also gather around groups of qawwals (religious musicians) who regularly sit with harmoniums and tabla drums on the gleaming floor outside the shrine and sing praises of the Khwaja while shops nearby hawk trinkets, necklaces, flowers and sweets.

* Pakistani leaders Pervez Musharraf, Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq and Benazir Bhutto have all visited the shrine during state visits to India.

Source: Reuters
http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-29956220071011

The festival of Shab e Barat or marking the names on graves is technically not Islamic.

That is done in Pakistan, apart from other Islamic nations.

 

[Flint]

Frighteningly this similar to what Zaid Hamid says; and its clearly intended to mislead people into believing that all the blame for troubles rests with those(Hindu-Jew-America) trying to "De-Islamise" Pakistan.

Zaid Hamid, Ahmed Qureshi et al are well-supported by the military-intelligence establishment.

 

[johnee]

but people in Pakistan actually follow Zakir Naik alot especially the Deobandis and the Wahabis

Yes, Pakistanis are progressing lot. They have advanced from Zakir Naik to Zaid Hamid....

Regarding other issues if we follows Islam

It forbid us to kill people for nothing

Yes, those people need to branded first as kafirs, munafiqs,...etc.

Drugs and alcohols are not allowed

Yes, but one can always harvest them to fund 'Jihad' against the kufr.

Woman get status in Islam

Yes, they have been given the exalted status of being the 'sex-toys' for bored men.


PS: The sarcasm is not directed at Islam/muslims in general but only at the Islam that Pakistan/Taliban practice/preach.

 

[ppgj]

good read.

Smokers’ Corner: One-unit-faith
By Nadeem F. Paracha
Sunday, 06 Dec, 2009

Recently, while giving a speech to the Peshawar police, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said that no one could separate Islam from Pakistan. One wonders what prompted the army chief to digress, and start assuring his audience about Pakistan’s Islamic credentials.

I guess he chose the occasion to comment on the military’s take on a (albeit unsubstantiated) news report stating that the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) wanted to change the country’s name from Islamic Republic of Pakistan to People’s Republic of Pakistan. Even though both the ANP and MQM were quick to refute the news, General Kayani’s reassurance in this respect yet again underlines the dilemma the military and the state of Pakistan have been facing for years.

The dilemma constitutes political and ideological factors in which the military has had the biggest stakes; but unfortunately it is also a dilemma which the military has been rather reluctant to resolve. According to respected historians, like the late K. K. Aziz and Dr Mubarak Ali, the whole idea that ‘Pakistan was made in the name of Islam’ and/or as an ‘Islamic state’, was nowhere to be found in the ideological discourse of the state before 1962, when it was first raised by the Jamat-i-Islami — a party that was opposed to the creation of Pakistan.

Though the civil-bureaucracy conglomerate that presided over the affairs of the state and the government in the 1950s decided to officially start calling the country an ‘Islamic Republic’ (in 1956), there was really no mention of such a republic in the early years of the new country. Scholars like Aysha Jalal and Pervez Hoodbhoy suggest that right from the beginning the concept of Islam being a part of Pakistan’s nationhood and the state carried contradictory messages.

The country’s founder was a secular Muslim, married to a non-Muslim and a strong defender of the notion that the state should confine its authority to the secular sphere. Throughout the Pakistan Movement, Mr Jinnah’s party, the Muslim League, overwhelmingly had secular-minded leaders who treated the Muslims of the subcontinent as a separate cultural (as opposed to a strictly politico-religious) entity. Their demand was for a separate Muslim state and not an Islamic state.

There is no way that Pakistan was conceived as an Islamic state by its founding fathers. This becomes apparent by the way orthodox Islamic parties like the Jamat-i-Islami reacted to the creation of Pakistan. Had Jinnah pictured the new country as an Islamic state, there was no reason why parties like the Jamat would oppose its creation. It’s as simple as that.

However, unable to convincingly define its ideology, the state started to capitulate in the face of the mounting pressure exerted by the religious parties. Thus, from 1962 onwards, the largely synthetic ideological construct of Pakistan being an Islamic Republic requiring an Islamic state began taking shape.

The lack of democracy and its many institutions — initially discarded by the secular military dictatorship of Ayub Khan — is also a prominent reason why the military and the establishment were left stumped by the religious parties’ mantra in this respect. What was being repressed in the discourse by the military and the civil establishment was the glaring fact that Pakistan, even as a Muslim country, was a land of great ethnic and sectarian diversity.

Its people constituted Urdu-speakers (Mohajirs), Sindhis, Pathans, Siriakis, Baloch, Bengalis, and many others; and also people belonging to various Islamic sects and sub-sects. By imposing the ruse that Pakistan was ‘one unit’ (a collective body of homogenous Muslims) was a naïve evaluation that only ended up alienating the many ethnically distinct strains of Muslims and the minorities that made Pakistan their home.

In other words, Pakistan’s identity and ideology should have been squarely based on a democratic acceptance of its ethnic, religious and sectarian diversity, instead of the establishment’s rather convoluted ‘one ideology for all’ brand of Islam. We are not an ethnically and culturally homogenous nation following a singular version of Islam, or of the state for that matter as far as religious minorities are concerned.

We are a nation of various groups of diversified people who can remain united as a country with the help of democracy alone. Only democracy can achieve such a state of unity. But such a state usually has not gone down well with Islamists and the military — even after years of ethnic, political and religious turmoil and cleavages that the one-unit-Islam has caused across the long dictatorships Pakistan has had to suffer.

It is time our military and religious parties let go of the fear of a democratically accepted, diverse Pakistan; especially the military, which is now fighting a vital battle in the northwest — ironically with the monstrous pitfalls of the synthetic state-sanctioned Islam imposed through years of undemocratic rule and a crass undermining of what Pakistani nation and society are really about: i.e. ethnic and religious diversity requiring an uninterrupted stretch of democracy.

So what if some Pakistanis want to change the name of the country? It is only the synthetic nature and fragility of the one-unit-Islam that causes hearts to flutter, because state-sponsored Islam is not an organic construct. Thus, it is an insecure ideology that continues to blame outside forces, secularism and democracy for its own, very obvious, failures.

DAWN.COM | Columnists | Smokers? Corner: One-unit-faith

 

[Flint]

‘Parade Lane mosque akin to Masjid-e-Zarrar’

LAHORE: Claiming responsibility for Friday’s attack, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said the Parade Lane mosque was similar to Masjid-e-Zarrar built in Madina by the munafiqeen, and was “demolished on the orders of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)”. Talking to BBC, TTP chief Waliur Rehman Mehsud said his men attacked senior army officers. “Our militants attacked the military officers (our primary target) and we will continue to attack the army,” he said, adding that the civilians killed in the attack were relatives of army personnel and their deaths “did not matter”. daily times monitor

 

[Rage]

US-born Aasim Sajjad - Professor History at the prestigious Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) - discusses the anti-India state ideology of Pakistan.


He explains how: (a) the country does not have an ideology that can stand on its own and its ideology is only a negation of India; (b) "threat from India" has been deliberately exaggerated by Pak Establishment to protect its interests; (c) anti-India ideology and associated massive defense spending was approved by a Constituent Assembly whose members were not representative of the territory that became Pakistan; (d) there is a contradiction in national narrative in that after Partition, Pakistan remains just as obsessed with "Hindu India"; (e) wars over border disputes do not mean that one country wants to obliterate or annex the other; (f) contrary to official propaganda, India had a minor role in the Bengali nationalist movement that led to breakup of East Pakistan; (g) India never disrupted water flow into Pakistan and later executed the Indus Water Treaty; (h) nuclear weapons have increased the overall threat level between the two countries as opposed to diminishing it; (i) Kashmir dispute has national importance for both India and Pak as it involves their national ideologies; (j) growing number of Pakistanis are beginning to realize that the enmity with India has been more harmful than beneficial; and (k) peace with India would not be possible as long as Pakistan continues to harbor proxy warriors. This interview was recorded in 2009 by Dawn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaRbRvCgy3E

 

[johnee]

Frankly, peace is not possible as long as Pakistan exists in its present state.

 

[ppgj]

good read.

The Demons That Haunt the Pakistanis
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: December 5, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — These are emotional times in Pakistan, particularly since President Obama told its leaders last week to fight harder against Islamist extremists, and expanded a deeply unpopular covert air strike program in Pakistani territory.

Margaret Bourke-White/Time & Life Pictures -- Getty Images

Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos
FLEEING A Muslim refugee train in India during the turmoil of 1947.

After Mr. Obama’s speech at West Point, newspapers and talk shows here were full of heated commentary that those demands would push Pakistan further toward disaster. “Approval of increasing drone strikes in Pakistan,” blared one headline. “A very difficult time is approaching for Pakistan,” a former foreign secretary intoned on television.

Some of the feeling is not hard to understand. Who would want another country using missiles against targets in one’s own? But there was something else, an anti-Americanism whose depth and intensity I could not fully grasp. So to find out where Pakistan’s head was, I sought help from one of the country’s top psychiatrists.

What I got was not so much an explanation as an illustration, in all its anger, of the embittered language in which a great many Pakistanis discuss their relationship with America — living proof of just how different America’s understanding of Pakistan is from its own view of itself.

“The real terrorists are not the men in turbans we see on Al Jazeera,” said the psychiatrist, Dr. Malik H. Mubbashar, vice chancellor of the University of Health Sciences in Lahore. “They are wearing Gucci suits and Brit hats. It’s your great country, Madam.”

I asked him to spell it out. “It’s coming from Americans, Jews and Indians,” he said. “It’s an axis of evil that’s being supervised by you people.”

This is not such an unusual view in Pakistan, even if the tone was particularly harsh. At 62 years old, Pakistan is something of a teenager among nations, even in its frame of mind — self-conscious, emotional, quick to blame others for its troubles.

It was born in 1947, in a bloody, wrenching partition from India in which hundreds of thousands were killed. That traumatic event left deep scars on the psyches of both nations, and locked the countries into a perilous rivalry in ways that foreign observers often fail to understand.

But while India closed itself off, eliminated its feudal system and developed its economy, Pakistan kept a corrosive system of feudal privilege and went through decades of political upheaval. And India still looms large in Pakistan’s collective imagination.

“We didn’t heal very well after the partition because we didn’t deal with it,” said Ishma Alvi, a psychologist in Karachi.

So it is natural that Pakistan’s security concerns focus much more on its eastern border with India, where the rivalry over who controls Kashmir festers, and less on its western border with Afghanistan — a smaller, weaker country that Pakistan has traditionally been able to influence.

It is that focus that Americans now insist that Pakistan change, and it is not irrational that Pakistanis are resisting. Pakistan and India have fought three wars (or four, depending on who’s counting) and India maintains a large force along its border. India has also poured money into Afghanistan, raising hackles on this side of the border.

These are facts that Pakistanis like Dr. Mubbashar believe the United States willfully ignores as it single-mindedly pursues its own interests, as it did in the 1980s when it was confronting the Soviets. Washington now sees the Taliban and Al Qaeda as the biggest threat in the region, and is exasperated that Pakistan sees things differently.

“There is a clash of narratives,” said Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States.

Being a diplomat, Ms. Lodhi speaks in a low key. But not Dr. Mubbashar, whose brand of patriotism may sound paranoid to an American, but is shared by many Pakistanis. He asserted that the American security company formerly known as Blackwater, a favorite target of criticism for ultranationalists, rented a house next to his, and that its employees had been trying to lure his servants with sweets, alcohol and “McDonald’s food every Sunday.”

Conspiracy theories are pervasive in Pakistan, and Ms. Alvi offered an explanation. They are a projection, she said — a defense mechanism that protects one’s psyche from something too difficult to accept. “It’s not me, it’s you,” she said. “It’s a denial of personal responsibility, which goes a long way to cripple our growth.”

In recent months, Pakistan has begun challenging the Islamist extremists on its border and the extremists have directed bombings against Pakistani citizens and institutions. Even so, Pakistan’s powerful news media aggressively trumpet the conspiracy theories, which are consumed by anyone who picks up a paper or turns on a TV.

But there are exceptions, and I stumbled upon one in the most unlikely of people, the elderly father of a young jihadi. A retired telephone operator living in a working class area of Islamabad, the man blamed his son’s ways not on India or America, but squarely on the Pakistani groups that lured him.

He spoke in the broken, bitter manner of a father who had lost his son, but went out of his way to tell me that foreigners, whatever their faith, would always be welcome in his home. “Islam treats foreigners according to their wishes,” he said, sitting cross legged on the floor of a bare room. “It’s not what these people say — killing them or asking others to terrorize them,” he said contemptuously of the militants. “We must treat everybody equally. Christians, Jews, Muslims.”

Pakistan recently has begun asking hard questions about who it is. The freeing of the news media seven years ago, as unruly as it is, opened the floodgates. Musicians and artists are wrestling with Pakistani identity in new ways, and self-awareness is growing.

“Our healing is recent,” Ms. Alvi said. “Before, we were very confused about who and what we were.”

But she said there is still a long way to go.

“A giant step forward would be to take responsibility,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/weekinreview/06tavernise.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

 

[nitesh]

This is good read, sorry if posted already

Pakistan in Crisis

Pakistan: Origins of a Failed State

Pakistan: It Could Not Succeed Unless India Failed

Pakistan: A Mecca for Radical Islam

Pakistan’s Army: Building a Nation for Jihad