Table Of ContentTo my children
Huda, Hammad, Maha and Mira
And all the children of Pakistan
For whom the country needs to be reimagined
Contents
Introduction
1. A Resilient ‘International Migraine’?
2. Faith, Grievance and Special Purpose
3. Ideological Dysfunction
4. Islamist Rage
5. Insecurity and Jihad
6. ‘The Institution’
7. Warriors, Not Traders
8. Avoiding the March of Folly
Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction
FEW FOREIGNERS VISIT PAKISTAN, but those who do often
acknowledge the kindness and generosity of most of its 210 million people.
Millions of Pakistanis living and working overseas—as unskilled labour in
the Middle East, cab drivers and factory workers in Europe and doctors,
engineers, bankers or other professionals in North America—have a
reputation for hard work and efficiency. But that does not suffice to alter
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Pakistan’s description around the world as ‘dangerous’, ‘unstable’,
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‘terrorist incubator’, ‘fragile’, and ‘the land of the intolerant’.
It is not difficult to understand the frustration of Pakistanis, both at
home and in the diaspora, over the negative portrayal of their country.
They are hurt by adverse comments about anything to do with Pakistan
because it reflects poorly on them even though they and their friends and
family lead decent, productive lives.
‘Pakistanis are a pious, warm and hospitable people,’ wrote Richard
Leiby, a Washington Post reporter who spent a year and a half there,
lamenting that the news from Pakistan did not reflect that. He noted,
however, that the bad news about Pakistan was not untrue. In his view,
‘Just like average Americans’, the simple Pakistani people ‘pay the price of
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their leaders’ magnificent mistakes’.
The harsh fact remains, however, that scholarly and media discussion of
any country focuses on its politics and policies more than on the virtues of
its people. Objective analyses cannot ignore the disconcerting highlights of
Pakistan’s seventy-year history: four full-fledged wars, one alleged
genocide, loss of half the country’s land area in conflict, secession of the
majority population, several proxy or civil wars, four direct military coups,
multiple constitutions, long periods without constitutional rule, frequent
religious and sectarian discord, repeated economic failures, numerous
political assassinations, unremitting terrorism, continued external
dependence and chronic social underdevelopment.
Some political scientists and historians described Pakistan, then
comprising two wings separated by one thousand miles of enemy territory,
as an oddity even in its early years. It was a nation unlike most others.
Instead of shared language or even history, Pakistan was founded on the
basis of a common religion, under institutions created during British
colonial rule. This raised questions about the viability of ignoring ethnic
and linguistic diversity; the potential for conflict between sects as well as
between modernist and obscurantist definitions of Islam; and the cost of
maintaining conflict with India in terms of economic development.
Still, soon after Independence, most journalists and scholars highlighted
the hopeful aspirations of Pakistan’s leaders and scholars alongside those
critical questions. The earliest books on Pakistan were written by
Pakistanis, introducing their country to the world, who explained the
creation of Pakistan in terms of Hindu–Muslim strife, described Pakistan’s
potential as a Western ally and defined its strategic salience as well as its
capacity to produce large numbers of soldiers.
There were also volumes by British authors, including former civil
servants, who advanced the Pakistani account. They explained what they
saw as the inevitability of Partition, given the withdrawal of Britain’s
‘steadying hand’ and ‘inexorable Hindu–Muslim differences’. The martial
virtues of West Pakistan’s Muslims as likely anti-communist warriors were
extolled in an effort to persuade Western readers, particularly Americans,
of the value of Pakistan as an ally in the years to come.
This genre of introductory books included Liaquat Ali Khan’s Pakistan:
The Heart of Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950);
Lord Birdwood’s India and Pakistan: A Continent Decides (New York:
Praeger, 1954); Ian Stephens’s Horned Moon (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1955), and Pakistan (New York: Praeger, 1963); Ishtiaq
Hussain Qureshi’s The Pakistani Way of Life (New York: Heinemann,
1956) and The Struggle for Pakistan (Karachi: University of Karachi,
1965); and Aslam Siddiqui’s Pakistan Seeks Security (Karachi: Longman
Greens, 1960).
North American academics started studying Pakistan as a political
phenomenon in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. Their studies
were published under neutral-sounding titles such as Keith Callard’s
Pakistan, a Political Study (London: George, Allen and Unwin, 1957),
Leonard Binder’s Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1961) or Khalid Bin Sayeed’s Pakistan: The Formative
Phase (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).
Scholarship on Pakistan took a decidedly unfavourable turn after the
1965 India–Pakistan war. Pakistan’s army was found insufficiently
effective in that war and it attempted to save its reputation through media
image-building. Its doctrine that ‘the defence of East Pakistan lies in West
Pakistan’ was exposed as hollow. Moreover, violent protests in both wings
of the country resulted in the resignation of Field Marshal Ayub Khan,
who had ruled for a decade with a semblance of stability, and his
replacement in 1969 by General Yahya Khan as the new military dictator.
Civil war and genocide in erstwhile East Pakistan, which resulted in the
creation of Bangladesh in 1971, added to uncertainty about both the idea
and the prospects of Pakistan. The titles of books on Pakistan from that
era reflect the outsider’s scepticism. Herbert Feldman published From
Crisis to Crisis (London: Oxford University Press, 1972) and The End and
the Beginning (London: Oxford University Press, 1978); and L.F.
Rushbrook Williams wrote Pakistan under Challenge (London: Stacey
International, 1975). Lawrence Ziring’s Pakistan: The Enigma of Political
Development (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980) also painted the
picture of a state in disarray.
One needs to look only at the cover of books about Pakistan published
since the 1990s to realize that scepticism has since given way to
apprehension and foreboding. Journalists and academics alike have
extensively documented Pakistan’s embrace of extremist ideologies and its
sponsorship of terrorist groups in the works published over the last twenty
years. The newer studies reflect the concern of analytical minds about most
aspects of Pakistan’s political orientation, from military intervention in
politics to endemic corruption, from questions about nuclear security to its
perennial difficulties in relations with its neighbours and the world’s major
powers.
Books published over the last two decades feature titles like Allen
McGrath’s The Destruction of Pakistan’s Democracy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), Christophe Jaffrelot’s Pakistan: Nationalism
without a Nation? (London: Zed Books, 2002), Owen Bennett Jones’s
Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003),
Mary Ann Weaver’s Pakistan: Deep inside the World’s Most Frightening
State (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), Pamela Constable’s
Playing with Fire: Pakistan at War with Itself (New York: Random House,
2011), Bruce Riedel’s Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future
of Global Jihad (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011),
James Farwell and Joseph Duffy’s The Pakistan Cauldron: Conspiracy,
Assassination and Instability (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011),
Christine Fair’s Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), and Tilak Devasher’s
Pakistan: Courting the Abyss (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2016).
It is not just foreigners who write about Pakistan with dread and
dismay; Pakistani authors seem to increasingly share the pessimism. Just
browsing through the list of books by Pakistani authors brings us to
Roedad Khan’s Pakistan: A Dream Gone Sour (Karachi: Oxford
University Press, 1997), Sherbaz Khan Mazari’s A Journey to
Disillusionment (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999), Hassan Abbas’s
Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on
Terror (New York: Routledge, 2004), Ahmed Rashid’s, Descent into
Chaos (New York: Viking, 2008) and Pakistan on the Brink: The Future
of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (New York: Viking, 2012), Imtiaz
Gul’s The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier (London:
Viking, 2010), and Khaled Ahmed’s Sectarian War: Pakistan’s Sunni Shia
Violence and Its Links to the Middle East (Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 2012).
Even those who try hard not to be seen as too negative about Pakistan
cannot avoid acknowledging that there is something wrong that needs
setting right. Farzana Shaikh’s Making Sense of Pakistan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009) insinuates that Pakistan confuses the
average person; Christophe Jaffrelot’s The Pakistan Paradox: Instability
and Resilience (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2015) speaks of Pakistan
being hardy even as it is unstable; and Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard
Country (London: Allan Lane, 2011) makes a similar point.
Most Pakistanis would rather gloss over inconvenient truths or be
content with blaming different villains for their country’s plight when
confronted with unpleasant facts. Millions of Pakistanis share the patriotic
sentiment ‘My country, right or wrong’ without knowing the full quote by
American statesman Carl Schurz, which goes: ‘My country, right or wrong;
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if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.’
Thus, in Pakistan, fingers are pointed at venal politicians, religious
leaders and the country’s dominant military without too much inquiry into
deeper reasons for the country’s malaise. Conspiracy theories about
external forces and their domestic henchmen harming Pakistan are also
part of the staple diet. No wonder that alongside his praise for the piety,
warmth and hospitality of Pakistanis, Leiby had also noted their penchant
for victimhood.
‘A narrative of persecution also runs through the psyche of Pakistan as a
whole,’ he wrote. ‘The public, whipped up by the military and mullahs, is
led to believe that the nation’s problems are the work of “hidden hands”. I
noticed how often leaders blamed conspiracies by India, Israel and
America—that is to say, Hindus, Jews and Christians—for undermining
the country, rather than owning up to social and economic ills of
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Pakistan’s own creation.’
It is also not uncommon to claim that the country would have been
different if only the actors on its stage had been different. ‘If only
Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had not died within a year of
its creation’ is one of the most popular of such ‘if only’ contentions. Others
include ‘If only Pakistan had not become embroiled in the Cold War as
America’s partner since the 1950s’; ‘If only Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s populist
politics had not unsettled the established post-colonial order in the 1970s’;
and ‘If only General Zia-ul-Haq had not adopted Islamisation as the
justification for his dictatorship during the 1980s’.
But such assertions are more excuses than explanations for Pakistan’s
turbulent past and uneasy present. Seventy years after its birth, Pakistan is
a volatile semi-authoritarian, national security state, which has failed to
run itself consistently under constitutional order or rule of law. Examining
the causes of Pakistan’s persistent dysfunction, including an inquiry into its
foundational idea, is more important than building a ‘positive image’
through half-truths.
Martha Brill-Olcott and Marina Ottaway defined a semi-authoritarian
regime as one where effective power continues to be wielded by individuals
or institutions who determine the state’s interest and block effective
transfer of power. ‘Semi-authoritarian countries may have a reasonably
free press, for example,’ they write, adding, ‘…the regime may leave space
for autonomous organizations of civil society to operate, for private
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business to grow, and thus for new economic elites to rise.’ That Pakistan
fulfils that definition almost to a T is evident.
Pakistan also manifests the defining characteristics of a ‘national security
state’ as identified by David R. Mares: ‘…the military institution itself is
intimately involved in leading the political system and its goals are to
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transform the country’s political and economic institutions.’ The real
question, however, is why Pakistan became a semi-authoritarian, national
security state and how it might evolve differently. The answer might lie in
understanding Pakistani nationalism and the sentiment it has generated
and sustained.
Pakistan was born out of the demand in 1940 for a separate state or
group of states comprising the Muslim majority provinces of British India.
It was presented to the subcontinent’s Muslims variously as an idea for
their protection as a community after the departure of the British or the
springboard for Islam’s revival in the modern world. Either way, it was
more an emotion—a response to fears stoked about the future of Islam and
Muslims in a Hindu-majority democratic state—than an idea that had been
fleshed out in detail.
Pakistan has meant different things to different people since its birth.
Much of the country’s dysfunction is the result of its inability to answer
questions bred by conflicting expectations. How Islamic is Pakistan meant
