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PAKISTAN: THE SIEGE WITHIN
Any crisis breeds Cassandras, and there are enough
floating around on the wide world of the web, predicting
the disintegration, or worse, of Pakistan. They,
however, underestimate the determination of those
Pakistanis who want to save their nation from
Maududi-Zia Islamists. Urban Pakistan – what might be
called Jinnah's Pakistan – proves a powerful
counterweight to the fundamentalists, its will bolstered
by domestic military muscle and America's dollar power.
The best-case scenario for Pakistan is that the
'Islamic-subaltern'
revolt in impoverished areas is brought under control by
the military, and elected governments appreciate that a
real solution demands social and economic reform: land
redistribution; high economic growth; Keynesian
investments in low-skill jobs; secular, gender-equal
education; health care and infrastructure, with
democracy as a non-negotiable necessity, which in turn
means that the 'doctrine of
necessity', the judicial cover for coups, has
to be eliminated.
There might be little hope for peace with India, given
the fundamental divergence on Kashmir, but a settlement
will help excise the jihad culture ravaging Pakistan.
Altaf Hussain, the self-exiled, London-based leader of
Muslims who had migrated from India at the time of
partition, made headlines when he said, in 2009, that
partition was a mistake because it had split and
weakened the Muslims of the subcontinent. This was a
rebellious, if not revolutionary, departure from the
conventional Pakistani narrative that the two-nation
theory was essential to save Indian Muslims and Islam
from Hindus.
It is easier for India to come to terms with Pakistan.
Economic growth and dreams of becoming a part of the
first world have begun to dominate the Indian mind. Its
middle class has begun to appreciate a simple reality:
social violence and economic
growth cannot co-exist. Remarkably, even
terrorism, often exported from Pakistan, did not feed a
backlash in the form of riots, even after the venomous
terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008.
India is content being a status quo-ist power,
determined to preserve its current geography, without
serious claims on territory it believes it has lost to
China along the Himalayas and to Pakistan in Kashmir.
Peace is a logical extension of this position. There is
a large and growing constituency in Pakistan that
understands this. But unless Pakistan achieves clarity
on terrorism, with all its snake-oil justifications, the
subcontinent will remain hostage to malevolent mania...
Fears of Pakistan's disintegration, however, are highly
exaggerated. Even pessimists like Pervez Hoodbhoy are
more worried by the 'slow-burning fuse' of religious
extremism rather than collapse. He recounts the
surreptitious rehabilitation of the Taliban by Musharraf
after it was devastated in 2001 because 'this force
would remain important for maintaining Pakistani
influence in Afghanistan – and keep the low-intensity
war in Kashmir going.' Hoodbhoy bemoans that 'a sterile
Saudi-style Wahabism is beginning to impact upon
Pakistan's once-vibrant culture and society' and
indulges a horror-scenario: a
'coup by radical Islamist officers who seize control of
its nuclear weapons, making intervention by outside
forces impossible. Jihad for liberating Kashmir
is subsequently declared as Pakistan's highest priority
and earlier policies for crossing the LoC are revived;
Shias are expelled into Iran, and Hindus are forced into
India; minorities in the Northern Areas flee Pashtun
invaders; anti-Taliban forces such as the ethnic
Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Baluch nationalists are
crushed by Islamists; and Sharia is declared across the
country. Fortunately, this seems improbable – as long as
the army stays together.'
When George Bush launched his second war in 2003, he
surely missed the greatest paradox of his decision. He
invaded Iraq to eliminate nuclear weapons, dictatorship
and terrorists. In 2003, he would have found all three
in Pakistan, including a champion proliferator in Dr A Q
Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear
programme. America has opted for the blind eye. When
Richard Barlow, a CIA agent working in the directorate
of intelligence on proliferation during Bush Senior's
administration, protested that the Pentagon was
manipulating intelligence to protect Pakistan's bomb
project, he was sacked. Pakistan became a nuclear power
with America's tacit consent and China's assistance,
because both accepted its argument of self-defence
against nuclear India.
For six decades, power in Pakistan has seesawed between
military dictatorship and civilian rule. What happens
when both the army and political parties lose their
credibility? Will it be the turn, then, of Zia's 'lower
rungs'?
Juan Cole makes an interesting observation in
"Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East". There have
been only four instances in the Middle East, if you
include Afghanistan in the term, when Muslim clerics
came to power: '...under the republican French in Egypt,
under Khomeini and his successors in Iran, under the
Taliban in Afghanistan and, with the victory of the
United Iraqi Alliance in the Iraq elections of 30
January 2005 (led by the Shia cleric Adbul Aziz
al-Hakim).' In other words, it is Western intervention
that created the conditions for a clerical upsurge. We
do not know what the American intervention in
Afghanistan and Pakistan will leave behind.
Driven by the compulsions of an ideological strand in
its DNA, damaged by the inadequacies of those who could
have kept the nation loyal to Jinnah's dream of a
secular Muslim-majority nation, Pakistan is in danger of
turning into a toxic 'jelly state', a quivering country
that will neither collapse nor stabilize.
Zia and the Jihadi Nexus
After 1971, Pakistan lost
the will for another conventional war against India, but
it did not lose the will for Kashmir. In a sense it
could not, because to accept Kashmir as part of India
was to deny the rationale for the creation of Pakistan.
General Zia changed the dynamics of the Kashmir
confrontation when he outsourced the jihad to
Jamaat-e-Islami and similar ideologically motivated
groups. It was not merely a shift from quasi-state
actors to non-state actors, it also introduced a new
element in the struggle, for the purpose was no longer
limited to 'liberation' of Kashmir from 'Hindu India'
but included the conversion of Kashmir into 'Islamic
space'. Jamaat, and Jamaat-influenced, fighters wanted a
Kashmir cleansed of Hindu 'perfidy' and presence. In
1992, they were instrumental in driving Kashmiri Hindus
out of the Valley.
In Indian Kashmir, the Jamaat was set up by Said ud
Tarabali, the first amir, Qari Saifuddin and Ghulam
Ahmad Ahrar. The Jamaat chief in PoK, Maulana Abdul Bari,
met Zia in early 1980. 'According to Bari,' writes Arif
Jamal, 'the general stated his intentions plainly: he
had decided to contribute to the American-sponsored war
in Afghanistan in order to prepare the ground for a
larger conflict in Kashmir, and he wanted to involve the
Jamaat-e-Islami of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. To the
general, the war in Afghanistan would be a smokescreen
behind which Pakistan could carefully prepare a more
significant battle in Kashmir. The general said he had
carefully calculated his support for the American
operation, predicting that the Americans would be
distracted by the fighting in Afghanistan and, as a
result, turn a blind eye to Pakistani moves in the
region.' Bari claims he was sceptical. But Zia was
persuasive: how could Americans, he pointed out, stop
'us from waging jihad in Kashmir when they themselves
are waging jihad in Afghanistan?'
Bari spoke to his counterpart, Maulana Saidudin Taribali,
in secret, in a village called Ajis. His message was
uncomplicated: the Pakistani army would not start a war
to liberate Kashmir, but ISI would pay the bills for an
armed uprising.
In September 1982, Jamaat leaders from Indian Kashmir
were taken for a secret visit to Pakistan via Saudi
Arabia, which was their official destination. It took a
personal conversation in 1983 between Zia and Maulana
Saidudin to convince the latter. When the first group of
Jamaat volunteers crossed the Ceasefire Line to get
'military training', the maulana's son was among them.
Jamal reports that Kashmiri 'boys' were trained at the
Khalid bin Walid, Al Farooq and Abu Jindal camps (in
1998, Osama bin Laden held a press conference at Abu
Jindal). A nexus was established, which has survived
dramatic shifts in the political mood of Kabul,
Islamabad, Delhi and Srinagar.
How Bhutto wrecked a Kashmir Solution
There was only one period
of four months, between December 1962 and March 1963,
when there could have been a peaceful, negotiated
settlement of the Kashmir dispute. India had just been
humiliated in the autumn 1962 war against China,
changing equations in the region. Pakistan used the
Indo-China breach to its advantage, ceding China's
border claims in Kashmiri territory under its control to
initiate an alliance that has held for more than four
decades. Britain and America persuaded Pakistan not to
open a second front while Indian troops were retreating
along the Himalayas in 1962, and Pakistan wanted
compensation for good behaviour.
Bhutto, then Ayub Khan's young foreign minister, led the
Pakistan delegation; the elderly Swaran Singh headed the
Indian side. Talks were held in Rawalpindi, Delhi,
Karachi and Calcutta. Both sides agreed that Kashmir
should be divided, and India offered 1,500 square miles
to seal the deal. Bhutto was contemptuous of this
gesture from a 'defeated nation'. He demanded the whole
of the Valley, graciously leaving only the small
district of Kathua for India.
WAS SOMANATH ACTUALLY SU-MANAT
Mahmud laid waste rich pilgrimage cities like Mathura
and important provincial centres like Kannauj.Iconoclasm
served a dual need: Mahmud could fill his treasury even
as he posed as champion of Islam in an age when Muslims
seemed invincible.
The most tempting target was Somanath,surrounded by the
Indian Ocean on three sides,rich with the offerings of
seafaring merchants and inland pilgrims.According to one
account,the loot from Somanath was valued at 20 million
dirhams worth of gold,silver and precious gems.
The historian Romila Thapar offers an interesting
Islamic explanation for the destruction of the
temple.She suggests that it may have been linked to
Mahmuds ambitions in the Arab Persian world,where
Abbasid power was in ebb,and claimants to the caliphate
were hovering over Baghdad.Thapar suggests a link
between Somanath and the famous controversy over the
three principal goddesses of pre-Islamic Arabia,Lat,Uzza
and Manat,daughters of the supreme deity.Lats idol had a
human shape,Uzzas origin was in a sacred tree,and
Manat,goddess of destiny (also known as Ishtar) was
manifest in a white stone.Her shrine was in Qudayd,near
the sea.The pre-Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca was
considered incomplete without a visit to Qudayd.
The Prophet of Islam,Muhammad,challenged this heresy
with the message of taw hid,or the One God,and was
forced to emigrate by his own tribe,the Quraysh,who had
turned the mosque at Kaaba into a place of idol-worship.In
630,the Prophet returned to Mecca and destroyed idols
inside Kaaba,including those of Lat and Uzza.It is said
that a devoted idol-worshipper reached Qudayd before the
Muslims and escaped with Manats image on a trading ship
heading to Gujarat,where it was placed in a temple.This
temple to Manat came to be known as Su-Manat,and thence
Somanath.Mahmud intended,in other words,to complete the
objective of the Prophet and thereby raise his stature
in the Muslim world,as part of his campaign to become
caliph of the Muslim world.
Also appeared in : Times of
India
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