How would you deal with a country that holds a gun to its head as it negotiates with the world? How would you engage with a neighbour whose elite are bent upon creating chaos in their own country out of spite? This is one ring-side view you never wished for. More on it later. How things to came to such a pass? It is a long story.
When Pakistani intellectuals discuss their descent, you are reminded of Atticus's children in the Harper Lee's famous 'To Kill a Mocking Bird'. Some say it all started with Musharraf joining the Bush's war on terror, some say it is the fallout of Zia-Ul-Haq's 11 year rule , his deadly embrace of US and his wholesale import of Saudi Wahhabism, still others say it was inevitable when even the most charismatic and powerful civilian ruler aka Z.A Bhutto had to play to the Islamic gallery to stay in power, some even go as far back as the days of Objective Resolution when Liaquat Ali Khan proposed that sovereignty belonged to Allah and Allah alone. Some play the arid game of my-secularist-is-better-than-yours comparing their Quaid, MA Jinnah with Nehru as if it would in some way redeem them. It is as if Jinnah merely wanted self-rule in Muslim areas and only the devious congress leaders pushed Pakistan down their throat!.
As in the Buddhist parable, the poisoned arrow has struck its target. How does it help to debate who
put the arrow to the bow , the civilian ruler or the military dictator.
The present day Pakistan is riven with frightful chasms running from side to side..
In a country that is 98 percent Muslim, the Chief of the Armed Forces ( COAS) feels it necessary that his first duty is to protect the ideological frontiers of the country !
The killing fields of Karachi
In the financial and industrial capital of Karachi gangs shoot people at random. Some 250+ have been killed in the month of July 2011, the highest monthly figure since 1995. A daily figure of 5-8 is par for the course. There has been an influx of Paktuns from the Taliban-ridden Kyber-Paktunwa, the erstwhile North-West Frontier Province, as a result of American bombing thru drones and last year floods. MQM, the party of Indian refugees mainly from UP and Bihar, feels threatened as they have been ruling the roost all along in Karachi. Paktuns are represented in ANP, one of the partners of the ruling coalition in the centre along with PPP and MQM. Incidentally, PPP is a party of Sindh with the rural Sind as its stronghold. The Sindhi's are upset that the Mohajirs from India have usurped their capital city. The city has been ghettoised with the Mohajirs, Paktuns and the Sindhis fiercely protecting their turf. The Paktuns and the Mohajirs are at each other’s throat.
Islam, in the name of which Pakistan was created ( Pakisan ka matlab kiya, la illa illallah!) has failed as a binding force. Nowhere is the lie of Pakistan starker than in the streets-turned-killing fields of Karachi.
Mayhem in Baluchistan
Baluchistan is a horror story. It is a sparsely populated tribal belt where the call to separate from Pakistan is the most strident. Though it has an elected government, Frontier Corps, a paramilitary outfit, is the de facto ruler of this province. Not a day passes without the security agencies pick up young men, torture, kill and dump them where people can find them. So brazen are their methods it reminds of the mass scale atrocities committed by Pak army in Bangladesh with a view to terrorise the Bengalis into submission. Baluchis on their part mow down any settler from Punjab and frequently bomb government installation, specially the pipelines carrying 'their' gas to other parts of Pakistan. Punjabis traders/settlers are made to disembark from buses and then simply shot dead. Baluchistan is going the Bangladesh way.
Talibanisation of NWFP
The North West Frontier Province ( now renamed Khyber Paktunwa) , has been the laboratory where the Pakistan army played Frankenstein. Pakistani government’s writ has never prevailed in most of the province. Tribal chieftains hold sway over their clans. The Pakistani army with a diabolic intent aided and abetted the spread of religious medievalism and weaponised entire tribal clans with a view to let them in as dogs of war against the then the socialist pro-soviet government of Najibullah in Afghanistan. It was the height of cold war days and US was using Afghan Mujahideen as proxy to fight the Soviet backed regime. Pakistan and US were brothers in arms then. Money and weapons from US and religious indoctrination with the help of Saudi funded Madrassas was used to pervert tribal life. The soviets were defeated and the Najibullah regime overthrown by the Afghan Mujahideen with help of Taliban and the fighters from NWFP. The Afghan Mujahedeen, the Pakistani Taliban ( Tehreek-e-Pakistan) , the Afghan Taliban have all coalesced. They have virtually overrun NWFP. US is having an uphill task fighting them in the hills along the Afghan-Pakistan border. When Musharraf joined forces with the NATOs war-on-terror, its end of the bargain was to crush the Mujahedeen/Taliban operating from inside its borders. All these years the Pakistani army has led US in a dance. They never whole heartedly launched themselves into fighting these terrorists. This is in spite of Taliban killing some 30000 Pakistanis in suicide bombings and other associated terrorist activities right across Pakistan over the last 7-8 years, including attacks on the army GHQ and Naval base in Karachi!!
Pakistan army is seen sheltering the Afghan Taliban ( Haqqiqi group) with a view to gain vantage in Afghanistan once Americans leave. America is disgusted but does not want to break up with Pakistan and its army as it would then loose whatever leverage it has with the Pakistani army now.
Hatred as Public Policy
Besides the pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan, there was another sinister plan. Spreading doctrinaire Salafi Islam of Saudi Arabia was seen as a tool to engineer historical revisionism. Pakistanis, for all generations to come, could be made to repudiate their sub-continental origins and the gentler strains of Islam of Sufi saints. The venom of hatred against things Hindu and hence Indian were injected thru curricula in their public and government run schools. Tahwur Rana and Dawood Gilani ( Dav id Headly ) arrested by USA for the Mumbai carnage are products of this hate filled school syllabi. You can trace its effect in the outbursts of their cricket captain Afridi when he said Hindu's and Indians do not have large hearts like them, Pakistanis and Muslims!! They are not products of the Madrassa. For hatred to take deep root, a continued state of rage and the angst of victimhood was necessary.. Schisms were to be created where none existed. For example, the VII standard history books talk of the everlasting quest of European nations to subjugate Muslim countries !
Sectarianism as a by-product of hate
The elite of Pakistan started visions of grandeur with Pakistan leading and protecting the Islamic world. They started calling their Atomic Bomb as Islamic bomb. Pakistan sought to ingratiate itself with the Arab Sunnis, the Saudi in particular. So much is their identification with the 'Arab' that they planted date palms on the roads leading to their major airports!!. It is as if Pakistan belonged to some imaginary piece of land somewhere between Syria and Egypt!!
.The state proceeded to define who could be called the 'Muslim'. Ahmedis were declared heretics and fit to be killed ( Wajibul-Qatl). It was decreed by law that the Ahmedi places of worship could not called as 'Mosques' ! At the time of independence, Barelvi Islam of the Sufis' was predominant in Pakistan. The Deobandi School that sought to spread a puritanical strain originated in Uttar Pradesh did not enjoy mass following. Sooner the virulent Wahabi-Salafi-Al Hadees interpretations started holding sway thru Madrassas funded by Saudi money and it was co-opted by the Deobandis. Sunni groups like Lashkar-e-Jhanvi, Sipah-e-Sahiba and Jundulla sprouted to defend the faith. Shias who form about 20% of Pakistan’s population started coming under the sword.
The neighbouring Shiite Iran is often the target of their attacks. Iran's overtures to the Shias of Pakistan often results in their slaughter inside Paksitan.
It is well known that anti-Indian groups like LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed get state patronage.
But so dysfunctional is governance that the the Government of Punjab admitted to have paid a stipend to the family of the jailed leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a heinous Sunni group that considers slaying Shias their religious obligation. The protector of Prophet's honour in question is the one who organized the attack on the Srilankan team when they last toured Pakistan!
In fact, PML-N is considered as closet Taliban in the political circles of Pakistan as their leaders openly hobnob with all such groups.
This luminary has recently been released from jail for want of evidence, notwithstanding the fact that he himself had claimed to have murdered a multitude and a few who wanted to testify against him have been done to death during the last few years of court proceedings.
Mother of all Agencies
But no politician or a sectarian leader, however devious and venal, can match the doings of Pakistan's infamous spy agency, the ISI. If there is a single entity to be blamed most for the molestation of Pakistan's polity, it is the ISI. Its interventions on behalf of the real power centre of Pakistan, the army, have left the country thoroughly brutalized. More than anybody else, the people of Pakistan has been it main victims. All sectarian, terrorist and organizations flourished under their benign watch. The politicians are always wary of them. They engineer political defections, weaponise terrorists, muzzle press and murders journalists not toeing their line.
So this is Pakistan, our nuclear-armed neighbour. The options before India are limited. . The day is not far off before Pakistan disintegrates into warring groups much like Afghanistan and India will have to deal with the deadly spill over.
Comments
Post a Comment