Pakistan will have to stop sleepwalking and shun its India-centric foreign and security policy to survive as a nation, for the alternative is much worse — surrender to terrorism it has helped nurture over the years, writes ASHOK BEHURIA
Khaled Ahmed is always a pleasant read. For a student of Pakistani society and politics, his unbiased accounts are invaluable. He has an excellent grasp of the subject he chooses to analyse and often provides an all-round view served through delectable prose. Unlike hyper-nationalists of our times, he has chosen to stay human and plough his distinct furrow as an impartial commentator on issues of critical importance for Pakistan.
As an admirer of his work, I read it cover to cover. I could do that with amazing speed because I was well-versed with his line of thinking and had read many of his pieces in news magazines he wrote for. As I was switching from chapter to chapter (32 in all), I noticed how craftily he had pieced them together, and for somebody who is not introduced to his writings, the flow is good enough to sustain her/his attention.
The book provides an excellent opportunity for an outsider to know Pakistan as it is negotiating with challenges it has invented for itself, through the eyes of a seasoned Pakistani analyst. Incisive in his criticism and unforgiving in his analysis — taking good care not to make it entirely witless, and at the same time without compromising the seriousness with which he wants you to understand Pakistan — Khaled brings into focus the pathological contradictions his country is suffering from, a country “overfed on an ideological diet” (p.32) and fuelling extremism with a sense of bewildering certitude.
The radicalism that Pakistan foments today is born out of a typical Muslim desire, he argues, to be “iconoclasts” of modernity (p.4). Even the word modernity in Arabic, jaded, he would educate us, is derived from ‘Jadd’ which means grandfather. He comes out with another interesting observation that Muslims produce their best men when they are not ruling the state they live in, and when they acquire a state they “go into a kind of recidivist trance: Give us utopia or nothing” (p.2).
Coming to Pakistan, he says that leaders of the country have propagated a nationalism which is reflexively anti-India and injected a hostile image of it into the minds of Pakistanis for generations. A sense of paranoia about India eternally conspiring to destroy/absorb it has strengthened the hands of the army leading to “militarisation of the civilian mind”, which posits blind confidence in the army and pulls Pakistan towards “the collective dream of a winnable ‘just war’ with India” (p119). But in the bargain, the army — as a well-organised entity trying to fit into an underdeveloped political system — in its efforts to respond to the “unequal challenge of India, has ended up cannibalising the state it is supposed to defend” (quotes Shuja Nawaz, p.119).
He touches upon the rise of the army as an “Islamic army completely blindsided by the Islamist persuasion” (p.185) using terror as an instrument vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan and (unconsciouslyIJ) progressively handing over “conduct of [Pakistan’s] foreign policy to jihadi elements” (p.126). Khaled cites the example of the jihadi groups trying to weigh in on Nawaz Sharif not to accept Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to attend his swearing-in to prove the point. The vernacular media, close to the Islamist elements, termed his proposed visit as “surrender to Indian hegemony”, he would say.
He holds that Pakistan army’s “obsession with India forces them to turn to these forces again and again” (p.206). It has unwittingly empowered them beyond expectation. There are some culpable religious leaders today “that Pakistan will not or cannot punish under law”. They have been allowed by the state “to become too powerful through proxy jihad and now partake of the ‘monopoly of violence’ of the state” (p.142).
Another evil consequence of this is the growing culture of lawlessness because of the fact that such legitimised ‘terror’ becomes ‘structurally dependent’ on illicit modes of money-making, starting from extortion, bank robbery, bhatta etc. He concludes that “every time Pakistan notches up proxy victories against India or the United States, the people of Pakistan have to pay a heavy price” (p.206). This situation is going to perpetuate itself because the army is still not prepared “to dissolve the India-centric clot in its brain”.
He tells strategists in Pakistan, who have continued to use terror against India, that “the period of jihad in Kashmir [in the 1990s] was a period of remarkable economic recovery in India and sharp economic decline in Pakistan” (p.120). He quotes former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, Riaz Muhammad Khan, to argue that “Pakistan’s ambition to become an economic hub would be difficult to realise without opening up transit routes to India” (p.22), and agrees with Ijaz Nabi, the economist, that the potential gain of bilateral trade with India... is too large to be disrupted for short-term non-economic gains” (p.38). Calling Indian Prime Minister a “scandalously visionless free-trade man” (p.179), he indirectly advises Pakistani leaders to be prepared to do business with him, rather than continue with the strategy of jihad to weaken India.
In the bargain for weakening India through home-grown jihadis, Pakistan has gloomily descended into a hell of its own making. It has nurtured elements that are not likely to stay under its control. In its zeal to evolve as an ideological Islamic state, it has raised elements who now consider themselves champions of the correct version of Islam and seek to overrun the state. The reference here is to Pakistan Taliban. He regards it as dangerous because Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has “the same ideology like Pakistan, and its claims are corrective of a misguided state” (p.7). In contrast, he would say the challenge posed by secular outfits like Baloch liberation Army is of a lower order.
The book provides interesting nuggets about the situation in Karachi (p.85), and dwells at length on the maverick politics of Imran Khan, dramatic conduct of Tahir-ul-Qadri in politics (p.241), Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s moderation, the woeful tale of Hazaras being killed by sectarian terrorists (p.263-274), Baloch unrest, negative impact of judiciary activism on society, and brilliant discussions on brave women journalists and their travails in Pakistan — Emma Duncan, Carlotta Gall (who has gall), Kim Barker (who covered one of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhury’s visits with her backside shamelessly pinched by Pakistani lawyers), Carey Schofield, Kathy Gannon, and Christina lamb (p.181-192).
The book also acquaints the reader, unfamiliar with Pakistani jihadi/militant terrain, with many infamous extremists ranging from Hafiz Saeed to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Masood Azhar to Adnan Rashid, Amjad Faruqi and Umar Qasimi.
Khaled has interesting tales to tell about the 2007 attack on Red Mosque, its patrons, the Chinese pressure on Pervez Musharraf, and finally how the current head of the mosque, Abdul Aziz, got away with his justification of terror unleashed by Al Qaeda and TTP. The charismatic spell of Osama on his brother Rashid, killed during the operation, is narrated thrice in the book — when his father took him to meet Osama, he drank from his glass to be like him and defend Islam! He has stories to tell about Musharraf’s relative Shahid Aziz (and in my view wastes too many pages on him and one of the passages has been quoted at least four times!) and his very badly written autobiography which Khaled, perhaps believes, is representative of the psyche of the soldiers in Pakistan today.
Among the main weaknesses of the book is the less critical study of the military’s approach towards India under Raheel Sharif’s leadership and under-assessment of the domestic and external situation that led Raheel to take all the decisions that he took to combat anti-state terrorism in the tribal areas. Was it the case that the TTP had decided to provoke the army to the limits of its patience and hesitations to launch an attack on them in the tribal areasIJ Midway through the operations, the TTP struck at APS, Peshawar, and has been striking less frequently but as tantalisingly as it used to earlier. Its publications show it in a defiant mood. Having unearthed the links between pro- and anti-state terror outfits in Pakistan quite diligently in the book, one would have expected Khaled to dwell on the overall lack of shift in the army’s world view despite Raheel taking the right decision vis-à-vis TTP.
As a collection of separate articles written over time and fused together with masterly skill, the book is informative and analytical enough to merit attention of Pakistan watchers in India. Its central message is clear that Pakistan will have to stop sleepwalking and shun its India-centric foreign and security policy to survive as a nation, for the alternative is much worse — surrender to terrorism it has helped nurture over the years.
The writer is a Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. The views expressed are his own