Pakistan - Caught in its own contradictions
Dated 9/8/2005
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PAKISTAN is under siege with every military reversal in Afghanistan or Indian Kashmir being blamed on Islamabad’s perceived failure to stop its domestic extremists from exporting violence across the borders. Bombing incidents taking place even in far off lands are also invariably being linked to Pakistan.
And internally it appears as if the country is in a state of total turmoil. Nobody, not even the all-knowing military government seems to know where the nation is heading. And everybody including the ruling elite appears to be working at cross-purposes and coming into each other’s way, presenting a picture of a nation at war with itself both physically and intellectually.
But this is not a new phenomenon. Pakistan as a nation state has been living a life of contradictions all through these 58 years. There is no national consensus even on what is called the Pakistani ideology. For different Pakistanis it means different things. The rich have their own concept of the ideology while the poor see in this ideology a different meaning.
The educated and the uneducated have different ideas about it while the young and old differ widely in their understanding of the ideology. The concept differs even on the basis of gender and the province. In fact each one of the 150 million or so Pakistanis who live in this country has his or her own definition of this ideology depending upon his or her personality profile.
The two-nation theory propounded by Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah to mobilise the Muslims of the subcontinent in support of Pakistan movement was based on the fundamental principle that the Muslims of India were an independent nationality. But when Pakistan came into being and with it emerged the Pakistani nation which according to the Quaid’s August 11, 1947 speech was religiously, ethnically and in terms of colour, caste and creed a seamless unit, his successors instead of heeding his advise continued to adhere to the outdated two-nation theory thus giving rise to all kinds of contradictions within the nation.
These contradictions became even sharper when in the 1960s President General Ayub Khan’s government in order to please Washington, at that time at war against the Chinese and Soviet communism, allowed the religious right a larger political space than its real strength merited. This policy turned into a national agenda during the 1980s when President General Zia’s government was aiding and abetting the US in its proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
As a result these religious elements along with the Pakistan Army had attained by the 1990s an unassailable political pre-eminence in the country. And the two have jointly been setting the national agenda for Pakistan ever since.
This agenda has two objectives: One, reordering of life inside the country strictly in accordance with the teaching of Islam; Two, snatching the Indian Kashmir away from the clutches of the Indian Army. But with the passage of time both these objectives have seemingly become impossible to achieve. The Indian armed forces have become too formidable for our defence forces to challenge them in the battlefield. Attempts to win the war in Kashmir by using the instrument of Jihad had to be given up on the pressure of world powers.
On the other hand the majority of the population in the country, mostly Muslims, finds the teachings of various Islamic schools of thought too confusing and too self-contradictory for them to be able to glean from them without losing their mental balance. This situation has further deepened the existing contradictions causing extreme frustration among these two politically most prominent forces in the country-the Army and the religious right. And in their frustration the two seem to have lost their way and are seemingly groping in the dark for a way out. But this is like a blind man trying to find a black cat in a dark room. The two, therefore, are running in circles, dashing into each other or crashing into the concrete four walls of the room.
This is perhaps why it has become a kind of a norm with this government to take contradictory positions on important issues concerning religious extremism in the country. Very early in his tenure, President Pervez Musharraf had all but announced repeal of the laws concerning blasphemy. But it did not take long for him to be persuaded by his minders that he would be losing his only political support on the ground if he kept his promise in this regard. The same fate greeted his early determination to scrap the Hudood laws or to reform the school curriculum.
In 2002 the President had claimed that his government had broken the back of the Al Qaeda and that it was on the run and its activities were no more being controlled and commanded by a central command. But soon after the snows melted in March this year, there has been a sudden resurgence of violence in the immediate vicinity across the Durand Line in Afghanistan. And again since this March infiltration across the LoC has suddenly shot up despite frequent claims and promises to the contrary.
The President and his government, made up of mostly the agents of obscurantism, seem to be suffering from the paralysis of contradictory pulls. They seemingly do wish to carry out all their promises made to the world and to their own people on the matter of extremism but then perhaps the fear that such steps would go against their original two-pronged agenda has made it impossible for them to act on their promises.
These contradictions, it appears, have made it impossible for the President to formulate a workable strategy to curb and control domestic extremism and its export. His detractors, however, believe that he is not doing what he should be doing because that would wipe out his political support at the grass root and he would be left at the mercy of the mainstream political parties.
The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad