Is Pakistan Heading Towards a Meltdown ?

A recent book published by the noted Pakistani commentator, analyst and journalist Ahmed Rashid (author of such insightful books as 'Descent into Chaos') seems to express a fear that 'Pakistan is on the verge of a meltdown'.

He has cited various reasons for his well-founded fear, viz., Pakistan's reliance on US aid, its complex politics, the government’s lack of control over both its military and intelligence service and its failure to protect minorities and secure regions controlled by the Pakistani Taliban and other terrorist groups.

Of course, all of the above are true. However, all these are symptoms and the root cause lies elsewhere. It is the single-minded obsession to bring India to its knees wherever and whenever possible. Some of the extreme fanatics in Pakistan even dream of conquering India, often expressed through a desire to see the Pakistani flag (or, for the jihadi Islamists, the flag of Islam) fly over the Red Fort in New Delhi. Such unbridled obsession, paranoia and wishful thinking have led Pakistan to sustain an 'enduring conflict' with India. All of Ahmed Rashid's reasons for the meltdown can be traced to this single fountainhead of obsession with India, an obsession that Pakistan's sometimes-friend-and-at-other-times-foe, the US of A, seems to have recognized but failed to alter. This is what Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict, told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing recently: "They [the Pakistanis] have an addiction to playing around with militia groups to achieve certain interests, particularly vis-à-vis India. That gets them in all kinds of trouble. We've had these conversations with them forever about that. I don't see that changing. I don't see any set of talking points that's going to be delivered by some new diplomat that's going to change their mind."

Why is Pakistan having an over-dependence on the US ? Historically, Pakistan decided to balance a preponderant India through a strategic relationship with the US to offset the advantage India had because of its size and capacity. Besides, Pakistan was the creation of a close US ally, the British, and therefore Pakistan easily jumped onto the US bandwagon as Britain began to lose steam after the Second World War. Pakistan mortgaged its foreign policy to the larger interests of the US and got more and more sucked into a geopolitics that was far above its capacity to handle. The U2 incident and the open threat by an angry Nikita Khruschev to obliterate Peshawar jolted Pakistan out of the cocoon. More things were to follow to threaten Pakistan. So long as the US was generously funding it and more importantly 'not funding' India, Pakistan had a good relationship with the US. The US decision to help India militarily, though only moderately, after the Chinese aggression against it in c. 1962 angered Pakistan no ends. The arms embargo after Pakistan declared war on India in 1965 made the US-Pakistan relationship reach a nadir. Though Pakistan decided not to keep all its eggs in the US basket alone, especially after 1965, its new found friend, China, was not exactly a replacement for the US because it neither possessed deep pockets nor modern weapons. Pakistan's dire economic and military situation demanded that it could not as easily shake-off its US dependence. There were periods of bitter divorces as the US used Pakistan whenever it needed and discarded it as soon as the need was over, only to be followed by an annulment of divorce and passionate love-making as a new need arose for the US. But, a Pakistan blinded by its hatred for India and an unachievable ambition of taking on an India nearly ten times its size, had no other option. It perfectly knows US proclivities but is forced to alternately dissolve the marriage and re-marry. But, Pakistan is no mean partner in this unequal partnership either. It has been able to double-deal the US, and extract its pound-of-flesh. Unfortunately, Pakistan never directed its efforts at outmaneuvering the US to securing economic gains for its people. Almost all of its efforts went towards propping up the military to take on the kafir mortal enemy lurking in the east.

The burning ambition was so overpowering that Pakistan, which prides itself in the fact that it is the only country created for Islam, took positions totally against the ummah in the Suez crisis and the Palestine issue. In the Suez Canal crisis of c. 1956, Pakistan sided with the US, French, Israelis and the British against the interests of Egypt. Pakistan was a member of the Baghdad Pact and was unwilling to let down its allies even as three hundred thousand angry Pakistanis demonstrated on the streets of Lahore against the invasion of Egypt and other angry mobs attacked the British High Commission in Karachi. The Pakistani Prime Minister Suhrawardy said, "I refuse to be isolated. We must have friends". Why did Pakistan need those friends who were waging a war against an ummah cause ? Obviously, Pakistan considered the ummah cause in Africa or West Asia as inconsequential when compared to its obsession with India and the friends were helping her in that obsession. Suhrawardy's reference of the Arabs as ‘zero plus zero is after all zero’ so angered President Nasser that he used to tell Indian leaders that India’s non-occupation of Lahore disappointed him. Earlier, King Farouk of Egypt sarcastically had mentioned that Pakistan wanted the world to believe that Islam was born only on August 14, 1947. The Pakistani membership of the Baghdad Pact so angered the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) that normalcy between the two countries was not restored until 1967. KSA denounced Pakistani action as a “stab in the heart of the Arab and Muslim States”. Again, why was Pakistan willing to establish relationship with the most hated nation by all Islamists, Israel, during Gen. Musharraf's Presidency ? Pakistan considered the emerging economic, strategic, military and intelligence relationship between India and Israel as a threat and wanted to nip it in the bud. Of course, it would have explained away its normalization efforts with Israel in Islamist terms as akin to the Treaty of Hudaybayah that the Prophet himself agreed to. Pakistan was therefore not only willing to forsake even its Islamic identity but also fool everyone, when it came to keeping alive its option of conquering India one day.

Pakistan is pursuing a similar relationship with People's Republic of China (PRC) as well. Following the ascent of the 'secular socialist', Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who must be credited with having made the most significant contribution for the current mess of Pakistan, a policy decision was made to befriend China as well, to teach the unreliable US a lesson, by the Ayub Khan regime. The border dispute was hurriedly settled between the two nations, largely in favour of China in c. 1962. Since then, China has helped Pakistan strategically (with the supply of nuclear weapons and their delivery platforms), and diplomatically on innumerable occasions. After the Mumbai 26/11 massacre of c. 2008, Pakistan announced that it had authorized China to talk to India on its behalf and its decisions would be binding on her, thus re-mortgaging its already mortgaged foreign policy independence. There is every likelihood of Pakistan leasing on a long-term basis Gilgit-Baltistan (GB, or parts of it) to China. {See this for the recent developments in the sensitive GB part of Jammu & Kashmir and see this for a perspective on Chinese presence} Of course, Pakistan cannot simply replace the US with China because of the former's clout worldwide and in multilateral financial and aid agencies, the superior quality of the US military platforms and weapons that the Pakistani armed forces sorely want, and its generous no-questions-asked funding. China is tight-fisted in funding and does so only when it would derive benefits several times its aid. China does not dole out hard cash and its funding is tied to specific projects. Pakistan cannot also afford to lose the indirect leverage it enjoys against India through the US, something that is not possible through China.

Ahmed Rashid also speaks of 'complex politics'. I presume he is referring to local political situation within Pakistan. The 'Sole Spokesman', Mohammed Ali Jinnah, amassed all powers with himself even knowing fully well that he was terminally ill and did not have much time on hand. Even earlier, the Muslim League was his personal fiefdom and the second rung leadership was not well developed. The leaders were also querulous and it soon showed up after the demise of Jinnah. The Muslim League splintered into various factions. The bureaucrats used political instability to make inroads into governance. Political intrigues by opportunistic and under-developed and vision-less second-rung politicians led to frequent replacement of Prime Ministers and Presidents. A semblance of stability was achieved only when Gen. Ayub Khan seized power. The efforts at making the Constitution bore no fruit and the Constitutions themselves were discarded and re-written at least six times and is as yet an imperfect document with work-in-progress. The sixth and the last Constitution, written in about two months' time, was promulgated on Aug. 14, 1973 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Within four hours of presenting the Constitution to the Parliament, the President Fazl Elahi Chaudhry signed it but it was also immediately suspended because Pakistan was under Emergency and Z.A.Bhutto was actually a civilian Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA). Such has been the comical attempts at democratization in Pakistan ! The very first country-wide General Election based on universal adult suffrage resulted immediately in the break-up of the country with more than 50% of the nation violently seceding after a genocide of humongous proportions since Hitler's holocaust atrocities on the Jews. In the sixty-five years of its Independence, Pakistan had military rulers for 25 years and in the remaining period of 40 years it had seen 27 Prime Ministers. The only time a Pakistani civilian leader had a significant measure of the Pakistani armed forces was when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the CMLA. At all other times, the armed forces (actually the Pakistani Army, PA) has been either running the country from the driver's seat or from the back seat. The only other time some semblance of civilian assertiveness has been witnessed in Pakistan is in recent times after the image of the PA and the ISI took some beating due to a series of incidents starting with the dismissal of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry in c. 2007. But, the PA seems to be having the last laugh as its promotion of the Islamist leader, Imran Khan, who has remained popular but unable to convert that to votes in the last two decades, seems to be bearing fruits. If and when Imran Khan assumes power, jihadi terrorist tanzeems and the PA (which already enjoy a close nexus) would gain power as it happened in c. 2002 in the FATA and North Western Frontier Province (or NWFP, a British nomenclature that was recently changed to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa or KP) badlands after the Musharraf-promoted jihadi and Islamist alliance of MMA (Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal) assumed power there. The difference this time around would be that this unholy combination will rule nuclear Pakistan as a whole, not just a remote corner as it was in c. 2002. It was the combination of Gen. Musharraf and the MMA which was instrumental in Al Qaeda and the Taliban securing safe havens in these areas from where they continue to harass, kill and maim US, NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan and mount terrorist attacks against India. Yes, 'complex politics' as Ahmed Rashid puts it, is truly a cause. To be truthful indeed, the Muslim League (in united India) was only interested in a confrontational politics with the secular Congress and never paid attention to how it would govern a country if and when it got one.

Ahmed Rashid has also listed the well-known 'lack of government's control over the armed forces and the intelligence agencies' as a cause for the impending meltdown. Everybody knows this. From day one, the Pakistani Army (PA) went out of control when Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan ordered the PA clandestinely to grab the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir. All that Jinnah wanted was that he did not want to know how they went about that task because his 'conscience must be clear'. The PA never looked back after this in its clandestine activities with or without the knowledge of the State. When the PA failed in its task of capturing J&K, it blamed the political leadership. This is again a trait we have repeatedly seen from the PA. Every outing of the PA against India has been increasingly disastrous for it but the PA was never held accountable for that because the PA was supra-Constitutional (all of the six versions of the Constitution). By the 90s, Pakistan’s military intelligence setup, the ISI (sarcastically referred to as The Angels because the agents wear white shalwar kameez), had become very powerful and was a ‘state within the state’ (riyasat ki andhar riyasat) and outside the ambit of the control of any civilian including even the Prime Minister and the President. In the on-going case known as the ‘Memogate Scandal’, the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), a retired Army General and an appointee of the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) of Pakistan, admitted in a sworn affidavit filed before the Supreme Court that MoD was not in a position to submit a reply to the questions posed by the Supreme Court as the Army and the ISI were not under its operational control. An angry Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani retorted in the Parliament the next day that this ‘state within the state’ was unacceptable and further said “If we will remain subordinate to this system, then there is no need of the parliament”. The US President George W Bush, as admitted by the Pakistani Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, was reported to have asked Pakistan on July 30, 2008 as to who was in charge of the ISI. In an interview to the Friday Times, the PPP senator, senior PPP leader and the Spokesperson for the President of Pakistan, Mr. Farhatullah Babar, admitted that “Efforts in the past to tame the security agencies have failed. This is the dilemma but this also is the reality.” So much so that whenever military dictators won their referenda, the oft-heard remark was ‘farishtay zindabad’ (Long Live the ‘Angels’), a mocking reference to the manipulations by the ISI. The cortroom proceedings in the 'Mehrangate' scandal bring out clearly how the PA and the ISI destabilized elections and elected governments. This is then the 'deep state' as Ahmed Rashid himself has so often and accurately described.

Ahmed Rashid also alludes to Pakistan's inability to protect its religious minorities as a reason for the upcoming meltdown. In this aspect, I have always compared Pakistan to Hitler's Nazi Germany. So, a meltdown on the lines of the Third Reich is very much on the cards. However, unlike the Third Reich, which rose from the shackles of the “Treaty of Versailles” to be a powerful and victorious country once again, though only fleetingly before falling apart, the case of Pakistan is nothing but a series of falls. It has been said that the Nazis were radicals in the garb of the traditionalists. They placed emphasis on such things as honour and dignity as well as Christianity. In their scheme of things based on the Aryan Master Race, moral obligations are owed only to them but not to the inferior races. The Nazi attack on the Jews stemmed from the fact that they were superior and were committing all atrocities (which to them were glorious deeds) for the common good of the superior community. Any keen observer of Pakistan can see the obvious similarities. The genocide by the Pakistani Army in the then East Pakistan compares with the holocaust that killed millions of Jews in Nazi Germany. The genocide drove away 10 million Pakistanis, almost 70% of them Hindus, into India and killed several millions within East Pakistan. In her book, “Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh”, the Bangladeshi Author Yasmin Saikia says, “The Pakistan Army killed Bengali Hindus simply for being Hindus”. The West Pakistanis who always thought the East Pakistanis had lost their purity because of mingling with the Hindus and thus polluted by them, decided to re-establish the purity by exterminating the Hindus. Author Saikia says, “Muslim Pakistani (read: Pure) men assumed that the sacrifice of the Hindu women was necessary to undo the malaise.” Apart from the hatred for the infidel Hindus, the contempt that the meat-eating, tall, fair and handsome West Pakistanis had for the rice-and-fish eating, small, dark and ugly Bengalis drove the policy makers in West Pakistan and the West Pakistani army to launch a massive genocidal programme even against their co-religionists there. Again, much on Nazi lines. Similarly, Pakistanis and their regimes were also religious fundamentalists in the disguise of “traditionalists”. Both placed too much dependence on the military might to achieve their goals. Both of them believed in their racial superiority and eliminated the minorities in their respective countries, Jews in the case of Germany and Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Ahmedis and Shi'a in the case of Pakistan. In fact, some of the hardline Deobandi clerics, like Zafar Usmani who wanted a separate nation felt that a union with the Hindus will erase their cultural identity and only when the Muslims were the rulers they could wipe out the majority Hindu’s culture. The draconian Blasphemy Law, though it did not result in any actual execution of a blasphemer so far due to judicial ruling and international pressure, nevertheless put minorities at an immediate disadvantage. Once somebody was accused of blasphemy, that person’s life was in danger even if finally acquitted by the Court of Law. They either were killed by fellow prisoners within judicial custody or were killed after release or they had to seek asylum in a foreign country. Most of the members of the judiciary were either conservative Islamists or were so afraid of them that they released terrorists and sectarian killers and those accused of blasphemy were almost always found to be guilty (only to be released by the highest court or upon Presidential pardon). In one case, that of the Christian Ms. Aisia Bibi, the Lahore High Court (oten described as jihadi-pasand Lahore High Court) expressly prohibited the President from sanctioning any pardon to her. The Nazi judges were ultraconservative nationalists and there was very little Jewish representation in the judiciary. Even the few remaining Jewish judges were removed from their positions by Law in c. 1933. Similarly, the Pakistani judiciary was bereft of any Judges from the Hindu, Sikh, Christian or Ahmedi communities, save the sole Hindu judge Rana Bhagwandas whose tenure as an acting Chief Justice of Pakistan was hotly contested by Islamist leaders and parties. Pakistan also hounded out a brilliant and the only Nobel-prize winning Pakistani physicist Dr. Abdus Salam because he practised a brand of Islam unacceptable to the Sunni majority. The Sunnis were so obsessed that they removed the reference to 'Muslim' from the epitaph in his tombstone. The headstone now reads “Abdus Salam the first (blank) Nobel Laureate”. It is no wonder therefore that Pakistan does not receive any enrichment from the minorities who are forced to lead a fearful life in the 'Land of the Pure'.

Last but not the least, Ahmed Rashid refers to the terrorist groups and how sovereignty has been ceded to them. The issue of sovereignty is dubious and depends on whether one looks at it from the side of the nationalists (who are limited by geographic boundaries of a nation state) or the Islamists (who have no such geographic boundaries, bounded as they are only by the borderless ummah-hood).In my opinion, that purported loss of sovereignty also flows from a yearning to conquer India either stand-alone or as part of the larger Khilafat-e-Rashida, (The Enlightened Caliphate) the unique system of Islamic governance patterened after the first four Caliphs, as propounded, for example, by the fundamentalist Hizb-ul-Tahrir (The Islamic Liberation Party) or the Lahore-based Tanzeem-e-Islami, or the Sipah-e-Sahaba-Pakistan (SSP) or the Jama’at-ud-Dawah(JuD), the parent organization of the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT). In such a Caliphate, the sovereignty belongs to Allah, not the people, and the ruler is merely an instrument of that sovereignty, to be unquestioningly obeyed. In early July of circa 2009, British media reported that London-based HuT Islamists were plotting a coup in Pakistan to establish a Caliphate. In fact, Chaudhury Rehmat Ali, who is controversially reputed to have coined the word “Pakistan”, wanted the other races and religions in India to be subservient to the master race he called “the Paks”. He ridiculously claimed that ‘no constitution, whether federal or unitary, can succeed which condemns our 80,000,000 Muslims to the status of a minority community’ forgetting that the Muslims just about constituted 22% of the total population of India then. Such a perception is further reinforced by the open talk of a Caliphate by the clergy of Pakistan, invoking Muslim sentiments by contrasting what they call as the glorious past of Islam with its present decline. Such a Caliphate will unify all Muslims in a single state, and enforce an Islamic system in all spheres of life, under rules directly derived from the Quran and the Sunnah (the practices of Prophet Muhammad, PBUH). Its self-advertised status as the first Islamic ideological state (after the dismantling of the six-hundred year old Ottoman Caliphate) and a ‘Fortress of Islam’ seem to imbue its citizens with the zealotry for re-engaging in such an utopian ambition in modern times. The Pakistanis display a tendency and an urge to prove to the rest of the Muslim ummah that they are far more pious than the rest. They are constantly anxious to prove that they have impeccable Islamic credentials, better than any other longer-time Islamic countries. This has even led them to deny their ancestry because it could be inconveniently traced to Hinduism, and has also led them to discard such historic legacies as Moen jo Daro and Harappan civilizations that go well before the birth of Islam, but which are inconveniently fountainheads of Indic civilization. In June 2011, a Pakistani scientist even announced that they have completed a genome sequencing of a Pakistani Muslim and identified genetic markers that were specific to Pakistan ! One of Pakistan’s best known historians, Prof. K.K.Aziz, in his book, “Murder of History” has the following to say of this Pakistani propensity: Almost every Muslim of any importance claimed, and still claims today, in his autobiography reminiscences, memoirs, journal and bio data, that his ancestors had come from Yemen, Hejaz, Central Asia, Iran, Ghazni, or some other foreign territory. In most cases, this is a false claim for its arithmetic reduces the hordes of local converts (to Islam) to an insignificant number. Actually, it is an aftermath and confirmation of Afghan and Mughal exclusiveness. It is also a declaration of disaffiliation from the soil on which the shammers have lived for centuries, and to which in all probability, they have belonged since history began. If all the Siddiquis, Qureshis, Faruqis, ... have foreign origins and their forefathers accompanied the invading armies, or followed them, what happens to the solemn averment that Islam spread peacefully in India? Are we expected to believe that local converts, whose number must have been formidable, were all nincompoops and the wretched of the earth—incapable over long centuries of producing any leaders, thinkers, or scholars?

Therefore, sovereignty is a double-edged sword in Pakistan. The practitioners of purer brands of Islam in Pakistan, namely the Deobandis, Wahhabis, Salafis, and Ahl-e-Hadiths would not use the term, 'loss of sovereignty' while referring to 'regions controlled by the Pakistani Taliban and other terrorist groups'. For them, these areas are liberated from the clutches of the munafiqin (hypocrites who are not truthful to Islam) by the mard-e-momin (pious Muslims) for the express purpose of establishing a true Caliphate. And, they are not terrorists. They are jihadis fighting in the way of Allah (jihad-fi-sabilillah, the motto of the infidel Pakistani Army).

Is Pakistan heading for a meltdown ? That was the question of this thread. Again, it depends on two different points of view, from the perspective of the jihadi Islamists in Pakistan {the likes of Akram Lahori, Prof. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Maulana Mohammed Masood Azhar Alvi, Fazlur Rahman Khaleel, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, Naveed Butt, Maulana Sufi Mohammed, Ilyas Kashmiri (not satisfactorily proven to be killed yet), Maulana Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, Imran Khan, Fazl-ur-Rehman, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Syed Munawar Hasan et al} or nuetral observers from outside. From a nuetral point of view, there can be no doubt that Pakistan is hurtling towards an economic and political disaster. The overall poor economic situation around the world would only make matters much worse for Pakistan in the coming months and years. In c. 2009, the forum of the ‘Friends of Pakistan’ (later to be re-christened as 'Friends of Democratic Pakistan' or FoDP) consisting of aid donors to Pakistan, refused to give any more cash to a severely cash-strapped Pakistan, opting to route their funds only through the IMF anf that too for specific projects. By c. 2008, Pakistan was desperately in need of funds for meeting its balance of payments debts. Its external debts had increased to USD 55 Billion from USD 44 Billion a year ago. It had to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for support and accept their stringent conditions. the Pakistani Senate passed a unanimous resolution in September, 2010 asking international donors and lending agencies to write-off Pakistan’s entire debt burden. Nations and organizations that were once generous supporters of Pakistan, through money and material, began to impose restrictions. The rulers of Pakistan did not themselves invest enough in education, health, and literacy, areas in which other countries of the Indian subcontinent including its youngest and poorest member, Bangladesh, far outstripped Pakistan. According to a World Bank report, Pakistan’s spending on education is only 2.3% of the Gross National Income (GNI) while the average across the other South Asian countries was 3.6%. This has shown up on the literacy rates in Pakistan. Roughly 46% of Pakistanis are illiterate and there has been a steady drop of enrollment in primary schools which now stands at 65%.

Pakistan being termed as one of the ‘failed states’ by the Foreign Policy magazine in its annual compilation in association with the think tank, Fund for Peace. The ranking is based on four characteristics: the ability of a country to physically control its territory, ability of the legitimate state authorities to take collective decision, ability to provide reasonable public services and the ability of the State to interact with other states in the community of nations as an effective member. Pakistan fails on all the four characteristics. In the first edition in circa 2005, Pakistan was in position 34 and it rapidly slid to the 9th position in 2006. While Pakistan improved its position slightly in 2007 from a previous low of 9 to 12, it still was behind North Korea at 13. In 2008, it again slid to 9. The International humanitarian organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) classified Pakistan among the top ten crisis-hit nations in the world successively in c. 2008 and 2009. In order to present an image of “shining Pakistan” to not only its own people but also the rest of the world, the Pakistani government started fudging figures and removing those in Planning Commission who were a hindrance to this process. This ‘window dressing’ assumed huge proportions during the tenure of Prime Minister Abdul Aziz and President Musharraf that when Aziz quit the job, the whole edifice collapsed like a pack of cards. Later, in order to get more funds from the World Bank, the Pakistani government tried to lie its way through by presenting ‘inaccurate data’ to the Chief of World Bank. The World Bank saw through the game and refused to accept the data presented by the official Pakistani delegation. The unedifying episode was thus a repeat of a similar one in circa 2000. Pakistani business newspaper, Business Recorder, in its editorial, has freely accepted the usual proclivity of economic managers to fudge figures to hide inconvenient truths. The situation today is so dire, and will worsen in the coming summer, that Pakistan wishes to import electricity, petroleum products and natural gas from the 'mortal enemy' India. We have not yet heard of opposition to such imports from the frothing-at-the-mouth-corners jihadi Islamists. They might have been caught in a dilemma because opposition to such imports from kafir India might earn them the displeasure of the suffering masses.

To the bigots in Pakistan, all these economic or political facts are immaterial. Jihad-fi-sabilillah will ulimately succeed and Pakistan will come on top because they have iman on their side and that is what counts. But, history shows that Allah has been singularly unmerciful to Pakistan.

Is Punishing Pakistan a Solution ? - Part II

So, is there a case to be made out for the US to force Pakistan shun its wayward ways, renounce its implicit faith in violent jihad, give up on the export of terrorism across the borders into India and Afghanistan and increasingly worldwide {See the Terror Map here} , make it disband the terrorist tanzeems and their training camps, smash the nexus between the armed forces and Islamist and jihadi groups, rein-in the Pakistani Army and intelligence agencies so that Pakistan becomes a more normal nation-state, make it stop indoctrinating and preaching hatred in mainstream and madrasseh schools, and allow a natural and representative regime to take control in Afghanistan ?

Yes, there is, because everything else has failed and Pakistan is about to become even more dangerous than what it already is.

The reason is quite simple and is unfolding right in front of our very eyes. That is the danger of rising jihadi Islamism and its collusion with more traditional-looking political forces which are rising in Pakistan with the blessings and support of the armed forces. Surely, there has been support by these groups for traditional political parties even earlier. Neither the politicians nor the military can function in Pakistan without being seen in the company of these extreme right-wing Islamist groups. History is testimony to that. But, this time the situation is far more dangerous and critical. These groups never before came so close to implementing the extremist agenda and objectives of their ideology, as they are now. The 'Objectives Resolution' was adopted in the Pakistani Parliament in c. 1949, which indelibly stamped Pakistan as an Islamist country. The society and the armed forces were radicalized by Z.A.Bhutto and then Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in the 70s and the 80s. What Pakistan is about to witness is the next step in this evolutionary process, the seizure of power by an extremist sect of Islam dominated by Deobandi and Salafi groups through a proxy, Tehrik-e-Insaf, with the acquiescence of the Pakistani Army (PA). The internal situation of Pakistan has never before been so fraught, fragile and dysfunctional. The hopelessness among the people has never been so palpable, a situation that jihadi Islamists exploit so well. Among all these doom and gloom, there is one sense of achievement that has begun to appear for the Pakistanis, the thought of the impending defeat of the US at the hands of the Believers (just as they did to the Soviets in c. 1989) and the likely installation of the Taliban back in power in Kabul and Kandahar. That exalts the position of the jihadi Islamists within the Pakistani society. It is this sense of victory that will play a significant role in the drama that is about to unfold in the next few months in Pakistan. And, that will also be the victory for the more pious in the ongoing Third and the Fourth Jihads there over the kafir and the less pious respectively. {See this post to understand these jihads}

After the c. 2007 seizure of the Swat valley by the Taliban, when the rampaging Taliban came within 100 Kms of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, the US decided to act in Pakistan. It decided to bring back democracy (or at least a semblance of it), install a more pliant Benazir Bhuto and forced a reluctant and unwilling Musharraf to accept this change. However, Musharraf and his civilian cohorts, who were increasingly under siege due to economic and other mismanagement (especially the judiciary), tried to threaten Ms. Bhutto so that she would opt out of competition. But, when Nawaz Sharif too surprisingly returned to Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf used all the means available to him to re-exile him. Thereafter, the only option left to the ruling clique was to eliminate her in the hope that the resulting political chaos and vacuum would enable them to retain their hold, especially as Nawaz Sharif's threat had been suitably averted. As the domestic situation and the international monitoring of the polls did not allow the usual large-scale manipulation of the results, the ruling clique had to lose power. The Pakistani Army (PA), which always disliked the Bhutto clan, had one more reason to feel intensely peeved at the turn of events, especially when Asif Ali Zardari took over the Presidency. Some of Zardari's pronouncements and actions soon thereafter, such as agreeing to send the ISI Chief to India immediately after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, unilaterally announcing a 'No First Use (NFU)' policy for nuclear weapons, his assessment of India not being an external threat as is usually made out or his attempt to bring the high-flying ISI under civilian control etc. were naturally disliked by the PA. He should have been even looked at suspiciously since the PA had always held a view that his wife, the late Ms. Benazir Bhutto, was an Indian agent. The PA tried everything possible to dislodge Zardari but he has been one-up on the PA and has tenaciously stuck to his post through clever political manouevering. Naturally, the PA is unhappy with the US for this situation. The fall-out between the US and the PA over the years, but ever so sharply in the last two years, has added to the grievances of the latter. The US has been rather openly blunt in matters such as Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill, the Raymond Davis incident, the Syed Saleem Shehzad assassination, the hiding of Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad, the Salala raid on a Pakistani post in the Mohmand Agency of FATA, to name a few. Therefore, in Pakistan today, the 'Establishment' also has become openly anti-US and is propping up a closet Islamist, Imran Khan, against the two traditional rivals PPP and PML-N.

The jihadi-Islamist alliance of 'Diffa-e-Pakistan Council' (DPC) has all the anti-American-Indian-Israel entities as major components. The political party of the Prime-Minister-in-waiting, Imran Khan, supports their strident call by participating in their country-wide meetings. These meetings have been attracting large crowds and speakers trot out fiery denunciations of the US and India. The US efforts to bring in Ms. Benazir Bhutto and later backing the combination of Zardari and Gilani, seem to have led to a consolidation of Islamist jihadi forces. The people at large have been also against the incumbent government because of the economic miseries. The US efforts to make the civilian government rein-in the PA and the ISI have not succeeded either though Zardari and Gilani did make serious efforts at that, something no other government, with the possible exception of Z.A. Bhutto's, has attempted before. The Memogate is a revenge of the PA against the civilian government and the American efforts. The PA is therefore angry with the US Administration and is increasingly turning to China to protect itself.

However, the annual budget of the US for c. 2013 includes a massive USD 2.2 Billion aid for the Pakistani military. In an approximately 4 Trillion USD budget, USD 2.2 Billion may appear utterly insignificant. But, it spells a significant danger for India. The US State Department offers the same old stale and patently false argument that such an aid will "provide a bulwark against extremism and support joint security and counter-terrorism efforts". This 'bulwark' theory was first propounded against Communism and was proved completely wrong as far back as c. 1962.

I quote from a document exchanged by Thomas Hughes, the then Director of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State, with the then Director of Central Intelligence Agency, W.F. Raborn, on 21 July 1965, which has been recently declassified and is available in the National Security Archives of the US. ". . . We have bi- lateral security arrangements with Pakistan, as well as shared membership in SEATO and CENTO. Imperfect as any alliance system may be,there are certain minimum standards of behavior that we expect from any ally. We feel that Pakistan has fallen short of these standards in a number of respects, especially since 1962; even before that time, the Pakistanis attempted to divert the alliances to its regional quarrel with India and have encouraged other members to do likewise. Although In 1960 Pakistan had declared itself willing to send troops into Laos in support of SEATO commitments there, in November 1962 Ayub, speaking before a secret session of the National Assembly, asserted that Pakistan had no military commitment to SEATO. He added, and has repeatedly reaffirmed, that he sees India as a greater threat than international Communism. Such an attitude is clearly not in accord with the purposes of SEATO. . . In March 1963, and again in March 1965, the Pakistanis apparently offered their assistance to Peking In developing diplomatic ties between Communist China and.Turkey, Aside from countering our general objective of keeping Peking isolated diplomatically, the Pakistani action was particularly repugnant in ‘that it used ties established through CENTO'. . . . As Pakistan has loosened its ties with the U.S., SEATO and CENTO, it has increasingly come to look to Communist China for reinsurance against India. This has been a self-reinforcing process. Although Pakistan had never been a strong critic of China, the increase In Sino-Pakistani ties has come at a time when the confrontation between the U.S. and Communist China has been reaching critical proportions. Parallel to the decline in relationships with the U S . , the rapprochement with China can best be dated from the time of the Chinese attack on India, as we have noted, Pakistan refused to give any comfort to India at the time of the Chinese attack. Indeed, it has exploited India’s discomfiture for its own purposes and gone further by actually condoning Chinese behavior."

As far back as c. 1957, there were warning signals and the US Ambassador to Pakistan, James Langley described the US arming of Pakistan as follows: "The present military program is a hoax, the hoax being that it is related to the Soviet threat". In June, 1968, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Arshad Hussain, announced in the National Assembly that Pakistan had decided to pull out of both CENTO and SEATO and was 'no longer taking any active part in the military activities of these pacts'. It only found 'economic and cultural aspects of the pact as of some benefit'. Therefore, the 'bulwark' theory, then as well as now, is a big hoax. Pakistan neither was a bulwark against communism nor against jihadi Islamism. If anything, it has helped immensely with the flourishing of both of them. The arms supplied for fighting the communists were used by Pakistan only against India and Afghanistan. They were also used against Pakistan's own citizens in East Pakistan, Balochistan and FATA. A recent hearing in the US Senate on the Balochistan situation brings out the stark truth of PA's atrocities there. So, why is the US continuing with its fake 'bulwark' theory ? They may have their own reasons for that. However, the miscalculation being made by the US is that they do not recognize the fact that the PA has become insignificant in the emerging Pakistani situation. It will no longer have the power and pelf to influence the course of events for two reasons. One, the jihadi-Islamists will be able to move on their own steam henceforth and two the PA itself will subserve the jihadi-Islamists. The US efforts to 'buy' the PA will, in all likelihood, fail.

It is an irony that history has come a full circle and that too so soon. It was precisley to protect the arc from North Africa to India from being swamped by communism and to protect the 'wells of power' that the fading British Empire designed the Middle East Defence Organization (MEDO or the 'northern tier defence' as it was initially known and later to become 'Baghdad Pact') which the Americans took over, expanded the scope and called it Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). Now, that lies in shambles. Country after country in this arc has fallen for Islamists. Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Yemen have all gone to the Islamists. With the fringes gone, the core such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or the UAE, the last bastion of the US, are nervous and are simmering. The US may not lose out to the Communists to retain influence in these areas, but to the Islamists who equally abhor the Americans. The pinnacle for the Islamists would however be the nuclear-Pakistan.

While the Islamic neighbourhood of Pakistan has become Islamist, the situation within Pakistan itself is teetering towards that. Unlike in c. 1988 when a similar Islamist alliance IJI (Islami-Jamhoori-Ittehad) was formed by the ISI, this time, the alliance wants to usher in its Islamist policies through its proxy, Imran Khan. Last time, it was merely to fight the PPP and the alliance was formed by Lt. Gen.Hamid Gul who has also spearheaded the formation of DPC now. There is a close similarity between what happened in Egypt after the overthrowing of Hosni Mubarak and what is unfolding in Pakistan now. In Egypt, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood and the even more extremist salafi party Al Nour have gained more than two-thirds of the seats in the Parliament. In Pakistan, the jihadi-Islamists may not be elected in such large numbers to the National Assembly for various reasons, but their stranglehold on governance would be similar (to that in Egypt) nevertheless after the upcoming elections. Like in Pakistan, the Egyptian government is run by the military commanders (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or SCAF) and the military has enjoyed governance ever since King Farouk was dislodged by the Free Officers in collusion with the Muslim Brotherhood in July, 1952. Since then, the Egyptian military has also been running an economic empire just like the 'mil-bus' of the Pakistani armed forces and its officers have enjoyed 'entitlements' similar to the officers of the Pakistani military (though may not be on such a large and lavish scale as their counterparts in Pakistan). The difference between Pakistan and Egypt might be that unlike the Egyptian Army, the PA is already overloaded with officers and ranks of Islamic extremism, swears by 'Jihad fi Sabilillah' (which is not the motto of the army of any other Islamic nation) and considers itself as the 'guardians of the ideological frontiers of Islam'. It was the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt that collaborated with Maulana Abu Ala al Mawdudi of JI in the formative years of Pakistan. {See this post, for details} A nuclear-weaponised Pakistan would have finally slipped into the hands of the jihadi Islamists if back-door usurping of power happens in Pakistan after the next elections.

What are the implications of the developing situation in Pakistan ? This development puts not only India but also the region and the world itself in grave danger. The explosive combination of national power coupled with the possession of nuclear weapons and missiles is what the jihadi Islamists have been gunning for at least since Operation Enduring Freedom began in right earnest in the fag end of c. 2001. They will have it achieved within the next couple of years if the unfolding trajectory of events continues unchecked in Pakistan. Then, Afghanistan would be a true strategic depth for the jihadists, not for the PA. In the recent DPC rally at Karachi, the Emir of Jama'at-e-Islami (JI), the organization closest to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, made a startling claim that the jihadi Islamists who constituted the DPC were the defenders of the 'territorial integrity' of Pakistan as well the 'ideological frontiers of Islam', roles hitherto claimed by the PA and upheld as well by these Islamists. It would not be too far fetched, therefore, to imagine the PA turning into an accessory, an accomplice and a tool in the hands of the jihadis. That would be a natural reversal of roles between the PA and the jihadists. The Islamist arc from the west in North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) to its eastern pivot in Pakistan would then consolidate and coalesce and the friends of the US in its middle such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates would be simply blown away. The US will lose access to oil and gas in this region and will have to relocate its military assets elsewhere. Israel would be considerably weakened, and threatened too, in the immediate absence of US military in the Middle East. Iran would be at a considerable risk from the overwhelming Sunni extremist nations that will surround it. The world economic order, already under considerable stress in the last few years, would be irreperably damaged if the Islamists assume power in the Islamist Arc. One can easily imagine the tremendous pressure on India if Pakistan goes the Islamist way and its energy security is considerably threatened due to events in West Asia and Iran. Besides, India could even come under a nuclear attack from Pakistan. The Chinese should be under no illusion of any immunity from these Islamist forces as well. Its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Islamist Jama'at-e-Islami (JI) a couple of years back would be not even worth the paper on which it was written. There is a very real possibility that the province of Xinjiang will become East Turkestan.

The US has to atone for its colossal misconduct of the past by seeing the real danger that is emanating from Pakistan and has to brace itself for taking some tough actions. Its strategic interests will come a cropper if there is no clean break from its past (and even present) and a new policy is pursued with determination and a purpose. That policy must hold Pakistan accountable for its actions and demand course correction for good, including bringing people and organizations to justice for acts of terrorism. The US has several levers available to it. It can choose to give up its policy of appeasing the Pakistani armed forces, delay aid or even cut aid by strictly following provisions of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman act rather than the Secretary of State simply giving a good conduct certificate mechanically every year, pressurize Pakistan through multilateral financial agencies by denying loans or placing stringent conditions for loan disbursal including demanding good behaviour (just not asking Pakistan to control fiscal deficits by asking it to raise tax collection or electricity tariff etc.), denying or delaying delivery of spare parts for the arms Pakistan has obtained from the US, indict Pakistan severely for its gross human-rights violation against minorities, Balochis etc., reveal damning details of the involvement of the PA in terrorist activities against India and Afghanistan etc. These are some of the first steps that the US can take to show its determination to the 'Establishment' in Pakistan that the US meant business. If it results in no changes to Pakistan's behaviour, which is most likely to happen, it must launch into a more aggressive next phase in consultation with important stakeholders in Pakistan namely India, China, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the UK. These have to be discussed separately.

The inescapable conclusion then is that the 'soft' approach towards Pakistan had long back failed miserably and a fresh tougher approach is needed. The US has to lead this tough approach since it has been the main backer and financier of the Pakistani military and the jihadis that has brought Pakistan and the region to the brink. The US must not get diverted by Iran at this stage. It must not once again be like the US taking its eyes off the Af-Pak region and concentrating on a non-existent threat in Iraq that brough doom to itself and also let Af-Pak off the hook. The situation in Af-Pak is moving to extreme danger and the US has to decisively act now. This is a tough and long-drawn out process but there is no longer any easy way out.