Daily Times

Even as the US and Pakistan are trying to sort out serious problems in their relationship, the latter continues to have a terrible image internationally. Among other things, the ghost of Osama bin Laden continues to haunt Pakistan at two levels. First is the fact that bin Laden was living in Pakistan for quite some years in different locations but principally in Abbottabad since 2005. The authorities in Pakistan have denied any knowledge of it, but without much effect. Second, the American commando operation to kill Osama bin Laden, without the knowledge and consent of Pakistan, was disastrous for the army as they failed to detect or react to the US’s daredevil operation. Since that time, Pakistan’s military brass has been on the defensive in terms of their public image.

Pakistan’s problems though, are much deeper. At a basic level, it has not been able to articulate, since its inception in 1947, what the new country is about. True, it would be a country where the Muslims of the subcontinent could pursue their destiny without the danger of domination and discrimination in a Hindu-majority India. That might have been an effective and successful strategy for the creation of the new country but certainly was not a blueprint or vision of how and where to go after Pakistan’s creation. Without it, the only familiar path was the continuation of the old internal politics of the subcontinent of communal baiting and hating, but with more dangerous external ramifications now by virtue of there being two countries instead of one.

In any case, religion was supposed to be the unifying link for the new country, and Urdu its national language. On both counts, it did not work. This was evident in the case of East Pakistan. The first popular protests there were against the imposition of Urdu as a national language. The common factor of shared religion failed to subsume other particularities of language, culture, ethnicity and sectarian identity. While linguistic and regional factors trumped a common religion resulting in the birth of a new nation of Bangladesh, Balochistan to this day is fighting for its regional and ethnic identity. In other words, the over-emphasis on religion as a unifying factor has been counter-productive.

At another level, the national leadership of the newly created Pakistan was drawn largely from the regions that remained with India. With leaders like Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, with their national stature and national constituency, it was not a problem. But after they passed away, the refugee population that migrated from India started to feel, at times, a bit rudderless in a Pakistan where they were not part of the local scene. At times they felt like strangers in a new country with very little access to local and regional leadership. In Karachi, for instance, with a fairly large presence of refugees, this sense of political alienation led to the rise of the MQM, premised largely on creating and asserting a distinct identity and demand for their own political space, which has, in turn, led to frequent violent clashes. Karachi indeed has become a city of opposing forces of all sorts with drugs and guns interspersed with religious extremism and militancy.

Even as Pakistan was seeking to come to terms with the loss of East Pakistan and the creation of the new state of Bangladesh, the military coup led by General Ziaul Haq formalised Pakistan’s Islamic character with new laws enshrining the supremacy of the religious over the secular. Among other things, the penal provisions of the blasphemy law made minorities a hostage to allegations of blasphemy with no way of defending themselves. When Salmaan Taseer sought to highlight the need for amending the law, he paid the ultimate price by being gunned down for taking a stand. Another prominent casualty was Shahbaz Bhatti, the minorities’ minister. And in each case the political establishment retreated, thus making extremist killers the arbiters of Pakistan’s governance, at least when their version of religion was challenged.

In seeking to create a political constituency for his military rule, Zia gave respectability to Islamic parties and politics. It is noteworthy that in electoral politics, whenever elections were held, Islamic parties never fared well. People seemed to make a distinction of sorts between secular politics and religious practice. Not only did Zia give respectability to political Islam by his espousal of Islamic politics and practice, as army chief he also, wittingly or unwittingly, injected ideological Islam into the armed forces. Its consequences in undermining military discipline and the chain of command might not appear disastrous for the time being, but what happened at the Karachi naval base recently is a pointer to what could go wrong.

Another disastrous Zia legacy is Pakistan’s co-option into Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion of the country. Funded by US aid and weapons, Pakistan became the launching pad for the insurgency against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Even though the Soviet Union was forced to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, it had disastrous long-term effects on Pakistan. First, with the struggle against the Soviet forces taking the character of a religious crusade against godless communists (pushed by the US and its Gulf allies), both Afghanistan and Pakistan were right into the middle of religious extremism. And when the Taliban prevailed in the post-Soviet civil war in Afghanistan with Pakistan’s support, they became the tail that wagged the dog, in turn spawning Pakistan’s own Taliban version. Second, the Kalashnikov culture of Afghan society, an outgrowth of long-term conflict and civil war in the country, had serious ripple effects in Pakistan that are still being played out. The virtual Soviet defeat in Afghanistan emboldened the Taliban to create a nexus with al Qaeda, which led to the 9/11 disaster and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan. The rest of the story is still developing.

The point is that from the time of Ziaul Haq, Pakistan has found itself increasingly over-extended in religious extremism. And it does not look like it has a happy end. Already, we have Imran Khan, the presumptive prime minister and self-proclaimed saviour of the country, talking of an Islamic welfare state (whatever that means), and ridding the country of terrorism through discussion and dialogue with the Taliban. He believes that once the American troops withdraw from Afghanistan and Pakistan recovers its full sovereignty, the Taliban and their Pakistani cousins will have no cause for violence.

One of the worst things for any country is the prospect or reality of a born-again (in religious terms) leader because that is a prescription for reinventing an imagined past and ignoring the present. Pakistan needs to face its present seriously and impart its policy a certain secular dimension.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.com