What do Pakistanis perceive about their National Security ? Part II

In the previous installment, we saw about international isolation.

I am not going to discuss other issues like poor governance and shaky economy that were also expressed by the group of 50-odd civil society members as contributing to the concerns regarding national security. That may be true but that follows from several factors, most notable of which is the particular path of confrontation that Pakistan has chosen to employ with India, the country from which it was yanked away. We will come back to this theme later.

Lack of control over non-State actors

What is disturbing is that the eminent group thought it fit to accept the use of 'non-state actors', but what they lamented was the lack of 'control' over them. {For the sake of understanding how Pakistan has used the 'non-state actors', please see earlier posts in this blog, 'The Fraudulent Theory of Non-State Actors' Part I, Part II and Part III} Instead of condemning outright the Pakistani policy of using terror as the main plank of the state policy and advising the powers-that-be that this integration of jihad into the role of a professional army has brought only doom and gloom to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, they chose instead to highlight the 'loss of control' over the jihadi groups. That shows the bankruptcy of thinking in Pakistan and the overall acknowledgement of jihadism as an accepted and sanctioned way of life. The theory of non-state actors, as propounded by the Pakistanis and the Pakistani State itself, is as fraudulent as their other pet theory of 'good' and 'bad' Taliban. One should, however, marvel at the Pakistanis for regularly developing and propagating such theories to which gullible and other realpolitik-practising nations either fall a prey or which they have exploited for their own narrow interests. These [fairly successful] theories are not recent attempts at fraud. Pakistan has been at it for a very long time, deceiving not only the rest of the world but its own people all along. The precursor to such fantastic theories is the most audacious 'Two Nation Theory' which got completely unravelled in 1971. Anyway, that is beyond the scope of this post.

Before one looks at the lament of the Group-of-50 over the 'lack of control over non-state actors', one must briefly recall their genesis in present-day Pakistan. My contention is that there is no separate entity called 'non-state actors' within Pakistan. The non-state actors are nothing but an extension of the State, most especially the Pakistani Army (PA) because the PA is substantially the 'State'. It is not a 'State within the State' as some refer to it because it is the State. The evolution of the Pakistani Army, a legacy of the secular and professional British India Army, into its current pathetic state is a pointer to why I claim that the non-state actors are a part and parcel of the PA. It will be appropriate to divide the history of the PA into four distinctive segments: early professional years up to 1971, the middle years of creeping Islamization within the PA, the next decade of consolidation of Islamism, and the current transformation into Wahhabi jihadism. Except for the initial segment, the Pakistani society at large had also gone through the same metamorphosis.

While the State and the PA employed non-state actors (the Pakhtun tribes to invade, loot, burn and pillage the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir in c. 1947) right from day one of their independent existence and invoked extensive Islamic symbolism to justify to the masses their amoral ambitions, it had to turn to an Islamist narrative later to justify the PA's successive string of defeats (1947/1948 failures were conveniently blamed on the perfidy of the British officers who were holding all the high positions in the three Services. The 1965 result when Pakistan came close to a debacle was partially explained away as due to American sanctions.). The East Pakistanis were described as not 'good Muslims' having been irretrievably corrupted by Hindu influence and hence the 1971 defeat was a 'good riddance' for the pious Islamic West Pakistan. The 1971 loss was also explained away as further proof of the machinations of the cunning and evil Hindu India. At the same time, a campaign was unleashed to ascribe the failure to the deviation of Pakistan from truly Islamic values and systems of governance.

It was the 1971 crackdown on the hapless East Pakistanis that first saw the Islamist jihadi volunteers from Pakistan fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the PA. The slide of Pakistan into such religious extremism was anticipated but not in the wildest imagination so quickly and so extensively. Though Pakistan was formed on the basis of Islam, Jinnah’s Aug. 11, 1947 speech about a secular Pakistan was expected to be the guideline for the actions of the State. However, the hopes were soon dashed. Pakistan organized a World Muslim Conference (Motamar Al- Alam Al-Islami) in Karachi in Feb. 1949. Later it organized an even bigger event in 1951, again in Karachi, when Karachi was made the world headquarters of the Motamar. On both occasions, the Congress was chaired by the then Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan. In c. 1948, the expelled Muslim Brotherhood leader from Egypt, Said Ramadan (d. 1995), came to Pakistan where he was received warmly. Said Ramadan, who was the son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Mohammed al Banna, stayed in Pakistan for a year. It was Said Ramadan who helped Maulana Abu ala al Mawdudi to set up the radical IJT (Islami-Jamia'at-e-Tulaba) student wing of his Jama’at-e-Islami (JI). He also helped the convening of the Motamar conference in Karachi in c. 1951. In c. 1962, Said Ramadan set up the Muslim World League to spread wahhabism. In those areas that became of Pakistan, the masses practised Low Islam or Folk Islam which centred on practices anathema to High Islam. While High Islam was puritanical and scriptural, the practitioners of Low Islam relied on the ‘saint cult’. The Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith sects strove to lift the masses from Low Islam to High Islam gradually, an effort in which the political and the military classes participated either out of compulsion in certain cases or out of conviction in other cases. For example, Mohammed Ali Jinnah or F.M. Ayub Khan or Z.A. Bhutto were not strictly adherents of Islam and yet pandered to the dictates of the Islamists out of necessity. On the other hand, Gen Zia-ul-Haq and Nawaz Sharif were fundamentalists who supported Islamists out of conviction. So also is the Prime-Minister-in-waiting, Imran Khan.

It was this IJT that was let loose on the East Pakistanis in March, 1971 when the talks between Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and Yahya Khan broke down permanently. As he came closer to JI, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq banned all student organizations except the IJT. The ban was lifted only in c. 2008 by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. The IJT played a significant role in the ouster of Z.A.Bhutto. It was this IJT that was also involved in the initial stages of the militancy and terrorism in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir in early 1990. The IJT has been virtually running the famous Punjab University (PU), a university which has a hoary tradition, terrorizing the student community and the faculty, imposing its strict Islamic code even today. The IJT was dominant in the campus even when the powerful military dictator Gen. Musharraf was ruling and the Punjab University’s Chancellor and Vice Chancellor were Army Generals. The IJT terrorizes campuses in the same way the Hitler Youth Brigade of Nazi Germany ran rampant across the German academic institutions. It is no wonder that the IJT has such a stranglehold on the PU because the previous Amir of JI, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, was a faculty in the PU. The PU also had another illustrious faculty in the form of Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the Emir of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Gen. Zia-ul-Haq also utilized the IJT to target the communist movement that opposed his rule in the 1980s. The communists found a favourable environment in the PU and the IJT was employed to cleanse the University and they have remained entrenched ever thereafter. The IJT was also used to recruit jihadis for the Afghan and later the Kashmiri campaigns of the PA. Thus, very close proximity developed between the PA and the IJT. This proximity was encouraged by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq who was a great admirer of JI, the parent organization of IJT. Gen. Zia gave unprecedented access to the JI within the PA.

The other Islamist organization that was allowed to develop an affinity with the three services of the Pakistani armed forces was the Tablighi-Jama'at (TJ). The organization, TJ, was formed in India in the 1920s as a revivalist Islamic movement to counter the increasingly popular Arya Samaj which was involved in the twin objectives of ridding the Hindu society of what it considered as superstitions and in winning back, through its shuddhi movement, those Hindus converted to Islam and Christianity en masse. After Partition, the TJ posed themselves in Pakistan as an apolitical Islamic organization involved in proselytization, spreading of the good Muslim virtues and prevention of vices among the population, though their not-so-secret agenda is to seize political power. Such an ambition is not surprising since in Islam political and religious powers are inseparable. Gen. Zia-ul-Haq encouraged the TJ to preach to the various Army units. It is their belief in Jihad-fi-Sabilillah (Jihad in the service of Allah) which found itself as the new motto of the Pakistani Army as imposed by a true adherent of TJ, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq as he took over the Army and soon thereafter, the Presidency. The Deobandi-leaning fundamentalist TJ has followers at the highest levels in political, bureaucratic, academic and armed forces establishments. For example, apart from Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, the then President of Pakistan Rafiq Tarar used to attend regularly Tablighi Jamaat congretations(ijtima) at Raiwind near Lahore, as also Lt. Gen. Javid Nasir, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and Lt. Gen. Naseem Rana, all DGs, ISI and Nawaz Sharif, the two-time ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan and a closet Islamist. On the eve of the November, 2009 annual convention of the Tablighi Jamaat, 50 former high-ranking officers of the armed forces met under the chairmanship of Lt. Gen. Javid Nasir for a day to deliberate how to take the movement forward, possibly within the armed forces. It included many retired Generals, Brigadiers and Admirals including former Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) Admiral Karamat Rehman Niazi, Lt Gen (r) Agha Masood Hasan, Lt Gen (r) Aftab Ahmed et al. The brutal daylight attack on the mosques (officially known as Ibadatgah because of the law declaring Ahmedis as non-Muslims) of the Ahmedis on May 28, 2010, that killed 95 of them was carried out by a suicide squad which had been assembled in the Raiwind office of the Tablighi-e-Jama’at. Later, a hospital where injured Ahmedis were being treated was also attacked killing even more of them followed by a warning to doctors not to treat them. Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, attended the mosques run by Tablighi. Several men connected with the aborted UK plane bombing of Aug,2006 were members of the Tablighi. Tablighi Jamaat members were also involved earlier in a failed coup against Ms. Benazir Bhutto in September, 1995. This coup was staged by Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam Abbassi, who had earlier been relieved of his command in 1990 in Kargil. As an aside, he was the Force Commander Northern Area (FCNA) when he made an amateurish and unauthorized attempt to re-take the Bilafond La Pass on the Saltoro Range from the Indian Army, leading to the death of dozens of Pakistani soldiers. TJ also acts as a cover organization for LeT, HuM, HuJI and JEM. The TJ has cleverly used its 'apolitical' tag to infiltrate heavily into the three services of the Pakistani military. When the Supreme Commander of the armed forces, the COAS, the Prime Minister and leading politicians attend the congregations openly, it is no wonder that the rank and file of the armed forces also participate in them. The TJ's faith in the concept of ummah is also responsible for frequently referring to the PA as guardians of the 'ideological frontiers' too and not merely the 'geographical boundaries of Pakistan'.

Thus, TJ is singularly responsible for the twin maladies afflicting the society, and by extension the Pakistani armed forces, namely jihadism and participation in international terror (or jihad as the Islamists call) through its popularization of Jihad-fi-Sabilillah and ummahdom. It is claimed that Gen. Zia-ul-Haq encouraged TJ within the PA as an alternative to the JI in order to cut down its preponderant influence. This has been the practice of the Pakistani 'Establishment' in managing various Islamist, sectarian and jihadi outfits. Whenever one of them becomes too large, it is either split or a competing group is created to checkmate its growth, thereby spawning a mind-boggling number of these organizations leading to many of them going out of control eventually, as we are now seeing in the form of the Teheek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP).

In recent times, another virulent Islamist organization of a similar nature, Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT), has also been making its violent presence felt among the officers of the armed forces. In July 2009, HuT announced that four Pakistani Army officers sent to Sandhurst for military training had been ‘converted’. A serving Brigadier Ali Khan, who was posted at the Army Headquarters was arrested on May 6. 2011 for his association with the HuT, a few days after the dramatic assassination of Osama bin Laden by the US Navy SEALs on the night between May 1 and 2. Like TJ, the HuT also claims to be an 'apolitical' organization but its sole aim is to bring a caliphate to Pakistan and from there expand the struggle to establish the caliphate in the rest of the world’s Islamic countries and even in non-Muslim states. It is usually stated that Hizb ut-Tahrir believes in jihad against hostile states only after establishing a caliphate in an Islamic country, preferably Pakistan, as opposed to the current wave of jihad. However, HuT does not expressly condemn terrorist strikes against civilian and military targets either, which makes one believe that the underlying ideology of HuT is actually not based on non-violence. Like the TJ, HuT also has its tentacles deep inside the tri-services of the Pakistani military. Captain Farooq, who was President Musharraf's security officer was quietly removed from service after it was found that he had helped HuT smuggle in NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) into Pakistan. In 2009, the then commanding officer of Shamsi Air Force Base Colonel Shahid Bashir, and a retired PAF Squadron Leader were arrested for leaking sensitive information to the HuT. A military court in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir identified two military officers in January 2010 as members of HuT and charged them with planning to attack the Shamsi airbase in Balochistan. The modus operandi of HuT is to bring the personnel of military forces under its umbrella. Unlike usual revolutionary movements, HuT aims to bring change through the military because it is well aware that the military is the strongest institution in Pakistan.

A consequence of creating and involving with these fundamentalist and extremist outfits was that many rank and file of the armed forces got infected with the jihadi terrorism virus and quit their service jobs to dedicate their services full time with these jihadi outfits. A prime example was the dreaded Ilyas Kashmiri who set up the 313 Brigade and briefly held the command of operations within Al Qaeda before he was killed in a CIA drone attack. Thus, serving, retired, dismissed and voluntarily retired military personnel constitute a significant percentage of these jihadi terror outfits. The confessions of the lone survivor of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist strike and then the revelations by Daoud Gilani alias David Coleman Headley who mapped out the likely targets in Mumbai (and Delhi and Pune as well) for the attack reveal an elaborate collaboration between the armed forces and the jihadi groups. These have been also accurately substantiated by extensive communication intercepts by the Indian and American intelligence agencies. Several terrorists caught in India and elsewhere have confirmed the same conclusions. The NATO/ISAF field commanders in Af-Pak have time and again brought out this evil nexus between the PA and the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives. Many journalists who ventured into the Af-Pak badlands have corroborated the same. Even Pakistani media editors, analysts, politicians and retired PA officers have accepted this fact. So much so, the PA is no longer interested in the theory of 'plausible deniability' that it practised during the First Afghan Jihad and then in the 90s when it turned its full jihadi force towards India. It tauntingly leaves enough evidence in every operation these days almost inviting the rest of the world to take it on. Today, there is therefore voluminous and irrefutable evidence linking the close cooperation between the Pakistani armed forces (especially the PA) and the dozens of jihadi terrorist tanzeems and sectarian groups in Pakistan.

The radicalization of the society for which the foundations were laid by Jinnah, then taken to the next higher level by the 'secular socialist' Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, followed by the dizzying heights it reached during the reign of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq; the changing patterns of recruitment to the armed forces resulting in a large number of officers from the middle classes and lower middle classes that have become vulnerable over the years to extremist thinking, and the rapid spreading of intolerance-preaching-madrassah in the Potohar region of Northern Punjab which has been the traditional recruitment grounds for the Pakistani Army, are major causes for concern in the upsurge of jihadi Islamism within the officer corps of the Pakistani armed forces. By his own admission, the then DG, ISI, Lt. Gen Mahmoud Ahmed admitted as far back as circa 2000, that 15 to 16% of the army officer corps were religious extremists. In February 2011, when the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was assassinated by his own police bodyguard for his stand on the Blasphemy Law, the COAS Gen. Kiyani refused to condemn it or even issue any condolence to the Taseer family. He confided to Western diplomats that there were simply too many religious fundamentalists in the Pakistani Army that such an overt sympathy might lead to disunity within the Army ranks. This implicit reliance on jihad to achieve political goals was amply demonstrated in the National Assembly of Pakistan by no other than the Secretary of Defence Maj. Tanveer Syed on Aug. 7, 2007 when he demanded the Pakistani government to wage jihad against India to get Kashmir. He assured the nation that if full-fledged jihad was waged, Pakistan would get Kashmir within six months. There are numerous such instances to show that the fervour of extremism and Islamist jihadism are deeply entrenched even among the officer corps of the armed forces.

Now, to my reasoning as to why there is no distinction between the PA and the Islamist jihadis operating in and from that country. The AfPak region has seen four phases of jihad since that fateful day on the eve of Christmas in 1979 when the USSR crossed Amu Darya into Afghanistan. The PA has been involved in all of these along with the jihadis, sectarian groups, warlords and terror outfits which were all its own creation. The events since then have led to two types of jihad. I know that it is even blasphemous to characterize jihad like that because jihad is jihad. But, I take strength from Islamic scholars who themselves talk of jihad-al-saif (jihad by sword) and jihad-al-nafs (jihad against human weaknessess). They say that jihad-al-nafs is Jihad-al-Akbar (Greater Struggle) and jihad-al-saif as Jihad-al-Saghir (Minor Struggle). However, the two types that are on-going in Af-Pak are finer variations within jihad-al-saif. For ease of understanding, the jihad in AfPak can be classified as either 'pure' or 'impure'.

The First Jihad was of the pure jihad variety by the mujahideen supported by the US, KSA, Pakistan et al. Though the infidel US was involved on the side of the Believers, it was still acceptable. This jihad was 'pure' because the Godless Communists were taken on by the Believers. However, this pure jihad came to an end through an agreement, not by military defeat, and the Believers had to rely on the Crusaders for success.

After the Geneva Accord, came the internecine war after unity (which was never strong to start with) unravelled among the mujahideen. This internecine war was brought to an end by the impure jihad of the Taliban supported by Pakistan. That was the Second Jihad and it was impure in the sense that the more pious Believers had to take on the less pious Believers. It came to an end after bloody battles and the military defeat of the less pious Believers. Afghanistan saw more damage in the three years of this impure jihad than the preceding ten years of pure jihad. Somehow, this type of green-on-green is always more damaging to the ummah than otherwise as we saw in that Operation Black September in Jordan against helpless Palestenians refugees in the refugee camps. That was again unleashed by a Pakistani Brigadier by name Zia-ul-Haq in 1970-71 in camps at Irbid, Salt, Sweileh,Baq'aa, Wehdat and Zarqa. More Palestenians were reported to have died in that operation than at Israeli hands in the previous twenty years. As the Jordanian King decorated Brig. Zia-ul-Haq with his country's highest medal of ‘Order of Valiance’, the Palestenians equated him with the Israeli General Ariel Sharon.

After that Second Jihad was the pure jihad once again, this time against the 'Ahl-e-Kitab' (People of the Book) after 9/11 when the Believers had to take on the combined might of the infidel Americans and their Allies. That was the Third Jihad. This is still on-going. This looks likely to come to an end just like the first pure jihad, through an agreement, not by military defeat. Again, like the first jihad, the PA and their allied jihadis would celebrate their victory over the only remaining Superpower.

The Fourth Jihad, an impure one, had to be fought against the state of Pakistan, after its CEO, Gen. Musharraf imposed bans on the jihadi groups on Jan. 12, 2002. This jihad is also on-going. If the previous jihads are any indicators, the impure jihad will also be bloody (has already been so) and will also end in a military victory for the more pious over the less pious or in other words for the more savage over the relatively less savage. The events, so far since the 2002 announcement, confirm the ferocity of the impure jihad.

Before the Fourth Jihad, the interests of the jihadists and the PA coincided. They continue to coincide though the Pakistani Taliban and most of the Punjabi Taliban were not able to appreciate the nuances and adjust their war-fighting strategy accordingly. For the simple-minded Punjabi Taliban, it was "either with us or against us". The frothing-at-the-mouth-corner jihadists wanted Pakistan to withdraw support to the US and help the jihadists as they have always done before. But, that was no longer possible as things had changed dramatically. Musharraf, Mehmood Ahmed, Kayani and Nadeem Taj tried their best but the support could never be like before because the Eagle, sitting in the same room, was watching everything very closely. So, the more pious determined that it was time to defeat the less pious and therefore launched the impure jihad. There can be no room for sentiments in jihad, as the assassinations of Khalid Khwaja and more importantly that of the architect of Afghan Jihad Col. Imam (Sultan Amin Tarar) issues showed clearly. Both were accused of being a CIA/ISI agent as the notes attached to their bullet-riddled bodies indicated. The bloody attack on PNS Mehran, the earlier attack on the GHQ itself, the assassination attempts on Musharraf and other top Army officers, the suicide bombing at the SSG HQ at Tarbela, the numerous attacks on military-industrial complexes that hold nuclear weapons etc. have taken place due to insider information and assistance. PA might have been the hand that fed the viper the milk before, but that hand has to be bitten now and that too from within. the Fourth Jihad is as much internal to the PA as it is external by the Punjabi Taliban or the TTP. It is Pakistan's perfidy to turn around and claim victimhood. However, that show of injured innocence in this internecine and impure jihad should not detract us from the fact that all this while (and continuing still) the various jihadi terror groups have functioned as the 'veritable arm' of the PA, to quote from Adm. Mike Mullen.

The group-of-50's lament of this unravelling of the unity of the jihadi forces of Pakistan is therefore understandable but untenable.

What do Pakistanis perceive about their National Security ?

I am prompted to write this by the article titled, "Seeing Beyond Perceptions" in The Nation, a Pakistani English language newspaper, by a retired Air Commodore and former assistant chief of air staff of the Pakistan Air Force(PAF), who is now a member of the visiting faculty at the PAF Air War College, Naval War College and Quaid-i-Azam University. I thought that the article portrays prominent thinking among the elites of the Pakistani society and hence worth having a look at.

He writes that "Over 50 parliamentarians, bureaucrats, advocates, technocrats, media men, prominent members of the civil society and politicians assembled at the National Defence University to conceptualise the contours of Comprehensive National Security". Apparently, it was all 'Brownian Movement' initially but soon the group settled down to serious thinking and came to some conclusions after five weeks of intense and wide-ranging deliberations. Who funded this effort, to whom the conclusions were presented and what effect that would have in moulding future policy decisions are unknown as they were not revealed. But, we can make some guesses. However, the scope of this activity seems serious enough to look into the conclusions.

The 50-odd members from diverse sections of the civil society have concluded that the present difficulties of the Pakistani state are transient and Pakistan has nothing but a bright future. All it needs to do is to be resolute and follow 'a comprehensive national security'. Now, this is a give away to me, at least, as to which of the three branches of the State, viz. Executive or Judiciary or the Armed Forces, would have funded this workshop. As an Indian, I can nothing but wish Pakistan a very bright future because Pakistanis were, after all, Indians until sixty four years back. That aside, I would like to look critically at the outcome of the five week deliberations.

In essence, what was advocated by this group of intellectuals was more of the same. That is quite disappointing. No revision in policies in light of mounting crises facing Pakistan squarely in its face ? No quest to dig deep and understand the truest cause for the troubles of Pakistan ? The superficiality of the exercise makes one believe that the attempt was motivated by an agenda. Let us look at the causes identified by the group and the solutions proffered thereupon.

The author says, "The major concerns to our national security radiate from international isolation, poor governance, shaky economy, lack of control over non-State actors, an aura of insecurity among the general public, no-go areas in the context of imposition of State’s writ, penetration of foreign influence in our domestic media, lack of our outreach to international media, and the ability of foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate into our socio-political fabric. Ambiguities as to whose war are we fighting have resulted in a huge perceptional gap between the national policy (both political and military) and public opinion. This dichotomy has the potential of tearing apart the fabric of the State. This gap is being filled by the hostile States, both regional and extra regional, to create fissures and promote separatist trends."

Let us look at each one of these concerns.

International isolation.

Now, this is seriously true. Even traditionally friendly non-Muslim states like the US, UK, Japan, China or the ummah brothers such as the KSA have been unwilling to lend a helping hand to an embattled Pakistan. In better times, each one of these nations had its own reasons for the ‘rescue act’ and Pakistan exploited their compulsions to the hilt. But, times have changed, even drastically. The US has at last discovered that all this while Pakistan has been following a perfidious agenda with it vis-a-vis Global War on Terror (GWoT). Normally, whenever a major operation involving cooperation between the US and Pakistan reaches a denouement, the US discovers some startling piece of perfidy by Pakistan, as though by magic. It suddenly discovered in c. 1990 that Pakistan had enriched Uranium beyond the promised levels and also possessed nuclear weapons, within barely a few months after it had pulled out of Afghanistan and Pakistan following the Geneva accord. Until then, the US had helped Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons, their delivery platforms and Uranium enrichment facilities, in the decade of the 80s. Until then, it stubbornly refused to listen to voices from other nations and its own intelligence agency about Pakistan's furious march towards nuclear weapons. All that changed within a few months. Again, after eliminating Osama bin Laden and severely degrading Al Qaeda's leadership and capabilities, the US is on the verge of withdrawing the bulk of its military from Afghanistan (but for a small contingent perhaps) and as the general usefulness of Pakistan diminishes rapidly, the US is becoming aware of Pakistan's mendacity. The parties to the marriage contract, the US and Pakistan, willingly consummate knowing perfectly well that it is a marriage of convenience, would not last more than a decade and each would befool the other to achieve their tactical goals. They are 'made for each other'. But, each such marriage followed by a messy divorce has left Pakistan enormously weakened internaly due to the unleashing of extreme religious right wing forces. It also leaves India with a more bellicose and more dangerous neighbour. Nowadays, the region and the world have also become fair targets for this dangerous nation. Hence the international isolation.

For its part, the UK has been reeling under the effects of jihadi Islamism practised by British nationals of Pakistani origin, whose parents and grandparents were generously allowed to migrate to the UK in the 50s and the 60s by Her Majesty's Government for loyal services rendered so far and expected to be rendered in the future. The British have been so worried by the envelope of jihadi terrorism that during a visit to Islamabad, the British Prime Minister Mr. Gordon Brown addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Dec. 15, 2008, along with the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, was blunt in stating “Three quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The time has come for action, not words.” Addressing the British troops in Afghanistan in April 2009, he reiterated as follows: "There is a line of terror, a chain of terror that goes from Pakistan and the border areas of Afghanistan right back to the streets of all our countries" Three months after Mr. Brown's pronouncement, Lord Malloch-Brown, Foreign Office Minister for Africa and Asia said damningly, "The main terrorist threat comes from Pakistan and Somalia – not Afghanistan", equating Pakistan, a nuclear power, with the failed state of Somalia. Gordon Brown's successor, David Cameron administered a sort of coup de grace in July 2010 when, addressing the employees of Infosys at Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, of all places, he said that " . . . we should be very clear with Pakistan that we want to see a strong and a stable and a democratic Pakistan, but we cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able in any way to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan, or anywhere else in the world." Responding later to the outrage this statement created in Pakistan, he further rubbed salt in the wounded Pakistani honour & dignity when he told BBC, "[I gave]pretty clear and frank answer to a straight question. I don’t regret that at all". So, things have been quite difficult with Pakistan's colonial creator and consistent supporter as well.

The Pakistanis never tire of referring to their relationship with China in glowing terms, even to the point of sounding ridiculous. Even China has been tough with the Pakistani government over Islamist jihadi terrorism emanating from the Pakistani soil affecting Uyghur or even the safety of Chinese citizens in Pakistan itself. China has also been quite wary of its funding procedures. It funds only specific projects and does not give any cash whatsoever unlike Pakistan's Western friends who were doing so until recently. A meaningful comment by Zhao Gancheng, Director of South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, summed it up nicely: "The ‘all-weather friendship’ doesn’t mean that all of Pakistan’s bills should be paid by us".

What about the ummah brothers, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ? These are no ordinary brothers if one recalls history. Both KSA and the UAE have directly helped the Pakistanis during its 1965 and 1971 wars with India either by lending fighter planes to the PAF from their respective air forces or allowing Pakistan to safekeep some of their fighter planes in their lands, out of reach of the Indian Air Force(IAF). They had thrown their lot with Pakistan, discarding their centuries old traditional warm ties with India, just because Pakistan happened to be a Muslim country. KSA ensured that Pakistan would survive after the imposition of sanctions against that country following the 1998 nuclear tests, by supplying oil free and later on much deferred easy payments for three years, which it finally even wrote-off. The magnitude of this ‘help’ by Saudi Arabia can be gauged when one realizes that the annual oil bill of USD 6B which Saudi Arabia deferred and eventually wrote-off was the same as the foreign remittances Pakistan receives annually. Saudi Arabia has bankrolled the nuclear weapons project of Pakistan. Pakistan’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is rumoured to consist of Saudi Arabia’s share too which that country has decided to safekeep in Pakistan. KSA also funded the acquisition by a bankrupt Pakistan of the French Agosta submarines and also F-16s from the US. The Pakistanis have also been quite helpful to KSA. . Since the 1970s, the Saudi Royalty, fearing disloyal members of the armed forces staging coups, always retained strong contingents of the Pakistani Army to protect the royal palaces. The lack of skills and abilities of the Saudis pushed Saudi Arabia to seek the assistance of Pakistan in building up and even manning the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF). A big contingent of PAF pilots was stationed at various air bases in Saudi Arabia and they even took part in operations such as repulsing the Yemeni incursion into Saudi Arabia in c. 1969 and attacking the rebel Houthi strongholds in c. 2010. After the Khomeini revolution in Iran, KSA has used Pakistani soil to keep tabs on Iran. The UAE hid away Pakistani-supported Indian terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim and his associates and failed to arrest and extradite them to India even when there has been several Interpol alerts and Dawood Ibrahim was freely roaming around the Emirates. Both nations, especially the KSA, had taken virulent stand against India in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) deliberations at the prompting of Pakistan. Pakistan has even ceded away sovereignty of vast tracts of its lands in the Sind and Balochistan to the dozens of princes of these two ummah brothers to hunt down the endangered species of the houbara bustards. So much so that a top Saudi Adviser to the King of Saudi Arabia was reported as boasting to the Americn diplomat, “We in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants”, as WikiLeaks exposed in November 2010.

So, what happened to this joined-at-the-hip brotherliness ? When Pakistan's economy began to plummet and it encountered serious economic woes after the twin jeopardy of worldwide recession of c. 2007 and the high crude oil prices (not that the economy was great before), neither of these ummah brothers came to its rescue. The cartel of Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) that was setup to help Pakistan included these brothers but they were utterly unenthusiastic about helping. The said they would route their funds only through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and that too only for specific projects. And, when Pakistan went to IMF, it did get a loan of USD 7.6 Billion but was forced to control its soaring fiscal deficit, reduce its inflation, eliminate borrowing by the Government, free the stock and foreign exchange markets from Government interference, widen tax net, give autonomy to State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), reduce borrowings from SBP, reduce huge subsidies in power sector etc. With terrorism engulfing the entire Pakistan, KSA even imposed conditions on its nationals from travelling to that country. It wanted all its nationals to first get clearance from the Kingdom's Foreign Affairs Ministry before applying for a Pakistani visa. Repeated pleas from Gen. Musharraf received only a cold shoulder from KSA. Even such a friendly country as Saudi Arabia expressed worries when Prince Saud al-Faisal declared that “Pakistan is a friendly country, and therefore, any time we see dangerous things in a friendly country, we are not only sorry but also worried” to, of all the people, Indian journalists at Riyadh who were accompaniying Indian Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh during his February, 2010 visit to the Kingdom. That must have come as an unkindest cut of all to Pakistan's honour and dignity.

The European Union said that it could provide financial assistance only if it was allowed to directly access the beneficiaries and not through the Government or its agencies. In a 2008 report on "Terrorism Situation and Trends", the European Police Office (Europol) said, "Afghan Taliban and pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan have links to the increasingly active core-structure of Al Qaeda that is currently based in the Pashtun tribal areas in western Pakistan". The report further listed how Pakistan has become the most dangerous training ground for jihadi terrorists and how expatriate Pakistanis have become terrorists throughout Europe. According to the report, majority of the arrested suspects in the foiled attacks in the UK, Germany and Denmark had received some form of training in Pakistan. The top Judge of the Spanish terrorism court has voiced concern about expanding terror threat from Pakistan. Thus, nations and organizations that were once generous supporters of Pakistan through money and material, winking at or even helping in its transgressions, began to impose restrictions. Unable to take the burden, the Pakistani Parliament even passed a unanimous resolution in September, 2010 asking international donors and lending agencies to write-off Pakistan’s entire debt burden. Simply, nobody responded.

Among its neighbours, both Afghanistan and Iran have been extremely critical of its use of terror as an instrument of state policy. The neighbouring countries of Pakistan have suffered immensely from the state-sponsored and state-neglected terrorism emanating from Pakistan and have voiced their anger, bitterness and concern many times. Pakistani sources have admitted to such “mischief” at least in neighbouring countries. Iran has openly accused the Pakistani intelligence agencies as helping the anti-Iranian Jundullah group operating in the Sistan-Balochistan area. In December, 2009, Teheran presented evidence to Islamabad, showing a link between Pakistani intelligence agencies and Sistan-based Jundullah militant group. Even the President of the tiny Maldives, Mohammed Nashed, said in an interview in October, 2009 that Maldivians were being trained in Pakistan for jihad.

I am sure that with this sampling compiled above, it is easy to see how far the sense of 'international isolation' has come to.

Let us see the rest of the 'perception' in subsequent installments.

See Part II here

Why does Pakistan behave like this ? Part - II

So, there were two streams of thought within the demoralized Muslim community of the Indian subcontinent in the late nineteenth century {See the earlier part here}. One was to wage a jihad against the infidel colonial ruler to retrieve the lost power and pelf of the Mughal Empire, and hence that of Islam by implication. This stream was represented by the likes of Ahmed Berelvi and Jamaluddin Afghani though the latter was not an Indian. The other stream was more realistic. This group realized that the reforms in governance being introduced by the British in India in early twentieth century had to be shaped in such a way that the majority Hindu community did not end up with all the powers in their hand. This group was represented by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan of Aligarh. The latter therefore decided to adopt a cooperative approach with the British to achieve their goal. In the final analysis, it was the latter group that succeeded in creating Pakistan but the former sowed the seed for all the present day problems of terrorism, extremism and fundamentalism in Pakistan. The success of the latter group meant that they were indebted to the British and later the Americans as the British handed over their hegemony to the Americans. The approval by these two western powers to Pakistan to use jihadi extremism against India (in c. 1947) and Afghanistan (in c. 1979) has resulted in the terrible situation that India, Afghanistan and other countries face today from Pakistan.

The Indian muslims were greatly perturbed by the turn of events in the nineteenth century when the regional Mughal empire finally ceased to exist and by the early twentieth century when the global Ottoman Caliphate itself was also dissolved formally. The ruthless manner in which the War of Independence in c. 1857 was put down by the British, the shabby manner in which the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was treated leading to his deportation to Burma (now Myanmar) where he died four years later (c. 1862), and the cruel manner in which his sons and grandson were killed had created revulsion in the minds of Indian Muslims. The dissolution of the Caliphate rendered them further insecure and helpless while raging with impotence. The decline of the Muslim power appeared absolute to them. These two seminal events were the results of centuries of decline for several reasons.

In India, it was Emperor Aurangzeb's (d. 1706) fundamentalist rule of extreme cruelty inflicted on the minorities, especially the Hindus and the Sikhs, that laid the foundation for the decline of the Mughal Empire. Distant Chennai was not under Muslim rule but the equally distant Bengal was, and the incursion of the Christian British East India Company (BEIC) there resulting in the defeat of Nawab Siraj-ud-Dowla in Plassey in c. 1757 started to fray the Empire at the edges. In Europe, the inability of the Ottoman janisarries (the armed forces) to breach the Habsburgs and the Tsars set the ball rolling for their eclipse in the late seventeenth century itself. In the next century, the Habsburgs and the Tsars expanded their empires threatening the Ottoman. Added to this was the foray into Egypt by the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in the late eighteenth century followed later by the occupation of Algeria. The Caliphate too was fraying at the edges. The janissaries and the ulema combined to depose the Caliph and his bureaucrats in early nineteenth century. These are the same class of players who have usurped and re-usurped power in Pakistan in the last six decades. It is the combination of the military, ulema and the bureaucrats (the evil alliance, euphemistically referred to as the 'Establishment' in Pakistan) who ruled the Ottoman as they have succeeded to do so in Pakistan.

For a Pakistan, which has been fascinated by Turkish history and which yearns to emulate that country and become the leader of the ummah, the coups and palace intrigues might be all déjà vu and even considered as steps to achieving the Caliphate. Since ijtihad {creative interpretation of the Koran and the Sunnah in light of modern thoughts and events} has been closed by the tenth century after the codification of the Koran into the four schools of thought, no modern interpretation is possible and current events have to be somehow fitted into the unalterable framework. Again, the Islamist scholars of the Ottoman Caliphate decided that their decline was not because of any superiority of the Europeans but rather due to Muslims deviating from the strict Islamic code prescribed by the Koran, the Hadith and the Sunnah. This is the same argument that we have heard in Pakistan too every time a tragedy strikes that country or that country blunders itself into yet another disaster. The call from Turkey for the ummah to unite resonated strongly among the Indian muslims too. After the loss of the Mughal empire, the Indian Muslims appealed to the Caliph to be their protector, an impossible task by the Caliph who was himself rapidly sinking.

The Indian Islamic scene during these turbulent and trying moments was dominated by a few personalities such as Ahmed Berelvi, Jamaluddin Afghani (d. 1897), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and curiously a Hindu kafir Mahatma Gandhi. Surprisingly, Jinnah, the founder of Islamic Pakistan was not in the picture. He was to gain prominence only in the 1930s.

Ahmed Berelvi (d. 1831) was a disciple of the son of Shah Waliullah Dehelvi (1702 - 1762) who helped the Afghan king Ahmed Shah (also known as Ahmed Shah Durrani or Ahmed Shah Abdali) to overcome the Mahrattas in the Panipat war in 1761. Berelvi introduced militancy into Indian Islam for fighting the Hindus, Sikhs and the British. He created Tariq-e-Muhammadiyah (or, The Way of Muhammad) that combined sufism and orthodox Islam. Sayyid declared jihad against the Sikh rulers and wanted to establish an Islamic state in the Indo-Afghan border where he emigrated to with his followers in circa 1826, a la hijra of Prophet Muhammad. The local Yusufzai tribes rebelled against him for his attempts to enforce rules contradictory to their traditional Pashtunwali code. Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Maharajah of the Punjab who had annexed Afghan territories and also Jammu & Kashmir, exploited the situation and his army ambushed the forces of Berelvi near Balakot and killed his followers along with the grandson of Shah Waliullah, Sayyed Ismail. Berelvi was defeated and then executed by the Sikhs in circa 1831. There is evidence that the British, in order to protect their geopolitical interests, actually helped Berelvi to fight the Sikhs, especially because the Sikh rulers had turned to the French. Balakot is today a hallowed spiritual ground for Berelvis of Pakistan. Most Pakistanis are Berelvis and it therefore would not be surprising for them to entertain similar thoughts against infidel India.

Jamaluddin Afghani influenced people in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan and India with his clarion call for resisting the colonial western Christian powers. He stood for ijtihad, militant Islam and pan-Islamic nationalism while being a die-hard opponent of the Western powers. His anti-British ideas were formulated when he first visited India in the aftermath of the failed 1857 uprising. His call for a revolt against the British in Egypt saw him being expelled to Hyderabad, India and then Calcutta while being constantly surveilled by the British. He was a complete anti-thesis of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan of Aligarh and opposed his policy of British sycophancy vehemently. His prime disciple was Muhammad Abdu whose disciple was Rashid Al Rida. Rashid al Rida's salafi ideas were germane for the creation of Ikhwan al Muslimeen (or, Muslim Brotherhood) movement who have wrought havoc in many countries, especially Egypt. After a long line of autocratic military leaders, the first whiff of democracy has brought the Muslim Brotherhood back into power in Egypt now. Two of the leading lights of Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna and Syed Qutb have influenced Islamist ideologues all over the world, including in Pakistan. The works of Syed Qutb and Mawdudi,as the two most important modern Islamist theologians, have influenced militant Islamists that we find in Pakistan today.

While these Islamists had set forth on one particular stream of thought to restore the glory of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, the other group, the elites of the Ganga-Jamuna belt had other ideas for achieving the same. It was in Delhi and its surroundings as well as the fertile Gangetic plains to its south-east extending upto the borders of Bengal that the Mughal Empire had established authoritatively its rule. The remnants of the defunct Mughal empire, the nawabs and other aristocratic elites, decided to face the emerging problem politically. Before looking at their approach, we need to look at the political scenario in India at the turn of the century. After the 1857 War, the British Empire had taken over the governance of India from the hands of the British East India Company (BEIC). The Raj, as it was known, was running this huge country through a three-tier mechanism of the Viceroy, the Governors at the Provinces and the Collectors at the districts. The Raj introduced electoral reforms in 1880 when municipal councillors were allowed to be elected. The Minto-Morley reforms of 1909 extended it to the Provincial level. Later, the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms (Montford Reforms as they were to be known) extended the electoral process even further up, though the Raj was ruling the country still with an iron grip centrally. These reforms were aimed at more securely ruling the country and securing Indian support for the war efforts rather than introducing natives to modern models of governance as a precursor to the Raj eventually leaving the shores. For example, Morley-Minto Reforms were initiated to address the great tumult following the partitioning of Bengal by Lord Curzon.

Traditionally, the land owners were the pivots through which the Mughal Empire reached out to the common folk in the country side. The land owners, by virtue of possession of land, enjoyed power and also acted as collectors of land revenue for the Empire. This was a practice the British Raj also continued with. As in the Mughal courts, so too in the British bureaucracy, land-owners contributed much to manpower and held important positions. Among the four British-controlled provinces, it was in the Ganga-Jamuna belt that the land ownership by the Muslims was significant and unsurprisingly so due to historical reasons. It was therefore no wonder that insecurity was fanned among the Muslim landowners as the wind of reforms in the electoral process began to blow.

It was in this milieu that, at the turn of the twentieth century, that a group of Muslim elites from this core region of the erstwhile Mughal Empire decided to stake their claims politically even as they foresaw the shape of things to come. Lord Minto, the successor Viceroy to Curzon, declared to the elite group of Mussalman who called upon him on October 1, 1906 at Simla that the Muslims of India “were descendants of a conquering and ruling race” forgetting conveniently that but for a minuscule descendants of Turks, Persians, Pathans or Mughals, the vast majority of the Indian Muslims were converts from the Hindu religion. This description by Lord Minto has resulted, among other things, for an everlasting desire among Pakistanis today to hoist their flag on the Red Fort at New Delhi, the symbol of the Mughal Empire. The 'All India Muhammedan Deputation' that met Lord Minto asked for separate electorates for Muslims and asked for a 'due share' in government jobs. In an analysis published by New York Times on October 26, 1906, the newspaper presciently called this as “an incident in the history of India which may prove of great and lasting importance”. It further said that the Mohammedans consider the majority community “with jealousy, suspicion often with contempt, and with an ineradicable animosity that is held in control only by the British Rule”. Among the delegation that called on Lord Minto in c. 1906 was the founder of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who said “No Mohammedan can say that the English are not ‘people of the Book’ (ahl-e-kitab). No Mohammedan can deny this: that God has said that no people of other religions can be friends of Mohammedans except the Christians. . . . Now God has made them rulers over us. Therefore we should cultivate friendship with them, and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India, and may not pass into the hands of the Bengalis. This is our true friendship with our Christian rulers . . . for we do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the people of the Book." No wonder then that the AMU at Aligarh has played a significant role in creating Pakistan through subservience to British interests and causing permanent divide between the Hindus and the Muslims.

After the 1857 War of Independence, the British relied on the Punjabis more than ever before as it was the Punjab component of the Army that was used to crush the uprising. As a result, the British Raj adopted different policies for security reasons (and it was for the same reason that Maharaja Ranjit Singh's youngest son, Maharaja Dalip Singh, was forcibly taken away to England) in the Punjab, and land owners began to appear there as the Raj developed extensive irrigation facilities and began to parcel off pieces of land for those who served the Imperial power loyally as well as the retiring service personnel. We continue to see the disproportionate amount of clout enjoyed by landowners in Pakistan even today, a country where land reforms have not been successfully implemented, even struck down by the ulema as un-islamic. Most of the top Pakistani leaders, even when they spoke of socialism, were unabashed feudalists and continue to remain so. Their feudal mindset is apparent in domestic as well as foreign policies. Similarly, the province of Punjab dominates the political, military, economic and terrorist scenes over the other three provinces of today's Pakistan. By the mid nineteenth century, the British began to treat the province of Punjab differently from the rest of the Indian Union for two different security reasons. One was that the Punjab contributed significantly to the British India Army and the other was that the sensitive Punjab province was abutting the restive North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) and Afghanistan. This practice has continued in the current state of Pakistan as well. Another practice that the British introduced in the Punjab was the 'sense of entitlement' among the service personnel for benefits, especially the allocation of land. The well known Pakistani analyst Ms. Ayesha Siddiqa writes in her book, "Military Inc. - Inside Pakistan's Military Economy", the following, "Land entitlement varies from 240 acres for generals to 100 acres from lieutenants to majors to 32 acres for non-commissioned officers (NCOs)." Punjab was also the region where the British introduced separate Muslim electorates for municipalities much before they were introduced three decades later all over India as part of Montford Reforms.

So, where did the kafir Hindu Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi fit in this Islamic fervour ? Gandhi was the rising star within the Indian National Congress (INC) at that time and he seized the opportunity the Khilafat movement presented to catapult himself into the national scene. Whether it was done with a design or out of genuine concern for the perceived plight of Muslims of India at that time or as a convenient tool to pressurize the beleagured British with, is debatable. By the turn of the first decade of the twentieth century, there emerged from the Aligarh Mahommedan Anglo Oriental College, an institution founded by the Muslim elites especially Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, two brothers, Mohammed and Shaukat Ali who militantly advanced the cause of the rapidly dismantling Ottoman Caliphate. They were imprisoned in c. 1915 by the British government and their cause was taken up by Mohandas Gandhi in a big way. Thus, a pan-Islamist frenzy was whipped up across the country by a kafir ! The August 1918 Congress Session at Bombay found the Montford Constitutional reforms shallow and asked the British to adopt the Lucknow Pact as the basis for reforms. This was the time that there was widespread terrorism against British interests and symbols of power all over India. The British introduced the Rowlatt Act (also known as Black Act) in 1919 and Gandhi emerged on the scene with his new weapon of hartal against these acts. There was also the Jallianwallabagh Massacre at this time. The Khilafat Day was observed on March 19, 1920. The terms under which peace was offered to the Ottomans on May 14, 1920 angered the Muslims and Gandhiji decided that his movement of non-cooperation, that he was planning for sometime then, should be launched immediately. He returned the Kaiser-e-Hind Gold medal, the Zulu war Medal and the Boer War Medal bestowed upon him by the British for the ‘unscrupulous, immoral and unjust manner’ in which the Imperial Government had acted in the Khilafat matter. When Gandhi's non-violence did not result in the release of the Ali brothers, the Khilaftists lost faith in his approach and the ulema hijacked the movement.

Ironically, Jinnah, who was opposed to Khilafat, said that the Hindu leaders did not realize that the pan-Islamic Khilafat movement would dilute the nationalism of the Indian Muslims. Jinnah’s fears came true when in August 1921, the Moplah rebellion took place in Malabar, Kerala when innocent Hindus were massacred, raped and forcibly converted to Islam. It was widely believed that the speeches of Mohammed Ali (the younger of the Ali Brothers who were dramatically released by the British after being charged with sedition) in the South, and the prevailing atmosphere of non-cooperation movement helped their fanatical cause. Earlier the new Viceroy Reading had accused the Ali brothers of extra-territorial loyalty and encouragement to violence through their speeches at the All India Khilafat Conference at Karachi in August 1921. Reading asked Gandhiji to make the Ali brothers apologize, which he did. The Ali brothers soon fell foul of Gandhiji (and Shaukat Ali, the elder brother, called Gandhiji’s attempt at Swaraj as Hinduraj. He urged the Muslims to boycott the Dandi Salt March in circa 1929). Thus, Gandhi's association with the Khilafat movement resulted in unifying Muslims for a pan-Islamist cause and also sowed suspicions that an emerging India would be to the disadvantage of the Muslims.

The two approaches, that I noted at the beginning of this post, while differing significantly in the means adopted to achieve their common goal, had some significant overlaps too. While the goal was one of re-establishing the pre-eminence of Islam in the Indian subcontinent and restore the Muslims as rulers, it was these overlaps that led to an identity crisis that has befuddled generation after generation of Pakistanis. The overlap and hence the confusion came in several forms.

Abu Ala al Mawdudi acted as the bridge between the two streams, one of boundaryless Caliphate and the other of bounded nationalist movement of Pakistan. The pure Islamists only looked at Islam and the nationalists looked only at politics (though they used Isalm and its symbols for this end) while it was Mawdudi who married Islam and politics in the context of the Muslim narrative in the Indian subcontinent, through his Jama'at-e-Islami (JI). Mawdudi was educated in Deobandi madrasseh and hailed from a family which served, with pride, the Mughal court and after its decline, the Nizam of Hyderabad. The decline of Islamic power and more importantly, the imminent rise of the Hindu power perturbed him a great deal, just as it did the Aligarh group. The most common approach of all Islamists, whenever they perceive any threat to Muslim power, has been to call for the Believers to protect Islam which was imminently in danger. They thus equate Muslim power with Islam or in other words meaning that unless Muslims were in power Islam would be in danger in that nation-state. The solution adopted by the Islamists therefore was to always dig deeper into Islam and make the Muslim populace more fundamentalist by dinning into their ears that it was their waywardness and deviation that led them to the sorry state in the first place and they should therefore return to a purer version of Islam. Thus, the more the troubles or perceived troubles, the narrower the interpretation of Islam that was prescribed as the solution. This was magically supposed to cure all the ills and restore the slipping glory. Mawdudi was no exception either. However, he differed from the two streams in that he did not want to abdicate India and create a new nation, but, he rather wanted to stay put in India and face the Hindu majoritarianism and convert the whole of India to Islam. He derived inspiration from the way Prophet Mohammed was able to not only protect his small group of followers from the much larger Pagan, but also eventually convert the latter successfully. Thus, he was initially opposed to the Muslim League which by c. 1940 had almost proposed a separate nation. Later, when he was won over to Pakistan, Mawdudi added to the prevalent confusion in Pakistan by suggesting a 'theocratically democratic Caliphate'. It was this form of governance that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to implement in his second term (and crown himself as Amir-ul-Momineen or Leader of the Faithful) before his rule was cut short by a more ambitious army General.

Mawdudi had to face challenges in defining the particular strain of Islam he wanted Pakistan to be engulfed with. One of them was Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan. Many Pakistani leaders had this propensity to see themselves as Ataturk of Pakistan. Jinnah himself was a great admirer of Ataturk and so was Ayub Khan. Jinnah, a non-practitioner of Islamic rites and rituals, nevertheless used Islamic and Islamist symbolism extensively both just prior to and after the creation of Pakistan. Except for that one speech of August 11, 1947 where he vaguely referred to secularism, he was not known to have done anything at all in that direction. Gen. Ayub Khan disliked the mullahs and even removed the term 'Islamic' from the name of the nation state simply referring to it as 'Republic of Pakistan'. Of course, all this lasted only a while and soon he turned to Mawdudi for support. Thus a Mawdudi, who had been condemned to death once in Pakistan, was restored to full glory to propagate his poisonous ideas. Similar to Gen. Ayub's was the approach of Gen. Musharraf, another great admirer of Ataturk. He cobbled up the most virulent Sunni Deobandi Islamist political group, the MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal) that was allowed a free run in the volatile NWFP (North Western Frontier Province, now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) during the crucial period of 2002-2008 that enabled the Taliban to entrench themselves there escaping from Afghanistan and demand shariah and almost marching into Islamabad by c. 2008. Thus, this fatal and alternate attraction to nationalism (as exemplified by Ataturk) and jihadi Islamism has been a source of another confusion to Pakistan. This led to great churning within Pakistan and even a determination of 'Who was indeed a Muslim', a question that two Supreme Court judges of Pakistan set forth to answer in c. 1953 after the first anti-Ahmedi riots, but which remains unanswered to this day.

This confusion has not escaped the armed forces also. As the Pakistani Army is the most visible of the three branches of the armed forces, we will see how this confusion affected the PA. Until c. 1971, the PA deceived the nation by claiming manufactured victories in wars and skirmishes with India. But, the 1971 defeat was too massive to be brushed under the carpet. The PA needed a reason that could be believed and swallowed by the masses so that it could escape the ignominy. The masses, who had hitherto had been fed on a diet of cowardly Hindu India which needed 10 soldiers to match even one Pakistani soldier, or how Islam would defeat Hinduism etc. found it hard to digest the massive defeat inflicted on an Islamic nation by a kafir army and that too within a fortnight. They were also looking forward to a credible excuse to salvage the pride. While several reasons were trotted out such as Hindu bania conspiracy, traitorous behaviour of cowardly, short, dark and rice-eating Bengalis, or even the refusal of the US to come to Pakistan's help under various treaties, the nation was convinced by the ulema that Pakistan had been punished for deviating from Islam. The reprieved PA's motto was thus changed from “Unity, Faith and Discipline(Ittehad, Yaqeen aur Tanzeem as coined by Jinnah)” to Iman-Taqwa-Jihad fi sabilillah (Faith, Fear of Allah, Jihad in the way of Allah as coined by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq). The PA was tasked additionally with 'defending the ideological border' and every Prime Minister and President since then has taken pains to reiterate this aspect to both the PA and the Nation. The PA took on board the jihadi terrorists as their 'first line of defence' and also as a tool to 'inflict a thousand cuts to bleed India to death', though the PA had used Islamists in earlier wars as well as in the genocide in East Pakistan. The idea of 'strategic depth' through a pliant Afghanistan government was also conceived and later implemented. The use of jihadi terrorism and strategic depth are now institutionalized and are deeply ingrained and immutable within the PA. Since in Pakistan, the PA 'possesses' the nation rather than the other way around, the narrative set by the PA largely becomes the narrative of the nation and therefore, the national identity became enmeshed with jihadi extremism, and hatred for the Hindu India. The nation was already frothing at the mouth corners against the Jews. After 1965, Pakistani political leaders, starting with Z.A.Bhutto, began to ascribe a villainous role to the Americans even while accepting billions of dollars of aid and a third component was added to the hatred list, the Christians.

The Army believes that they are the defenders of the “Ideological Frontiers of Islam” and they are the “Army of Islam” and so anybody fighting the Pakistani Army was indeed fighting Islam itself. An example would help. At the peak of the Taliban insurgency in May 2008, the Commandant of the Mehsud Scouts appealed to the tribal people thus: "This (Pakistan Army) is the army of Islam. This is the army of Pakistan. But there are forces, which want to divide the army and the tribal people. My soldiers recite the Quran everyday and say prayers five times a day. How can they fight for foreign forces? This Islamic army will guard Islam. How can this army go against Islam or join hands with anti-Islamic forces?"

So, today it is the triad of hatred for the Yahud, Hunud and the Nazara that propels Pakistan. Thus, the efforts of Berelvi and Afghani have finally come to fruition. That is why one says that the efforts of jihadi Islamists from before Pakistan's Independence have succeeded though Pakistan itself was created by the remnant elites of the Mughal empire.

One of the most significant confusions has been, if Pakistan was demanded as a separate nation on the basis of a borderless and seamless Islamic religious identity, then the concept of a nation-state militated against that very basis or vice-versa. The founders of Pakistan were unwilling to allow unlimited migratiion of Muslims from dar-ul-harb of India to the newly-established dar-ul-aman of Islamic Pakistan and finally actually stopped migration in c. 1951. In this, they differ significantly from the Jewish state of Israel even as the Pakistanis proudly claim that they were the only other state founded on solely religious identity. Such confusion manifested itself in every sphere of the State's activity, from Constitution-making, to economic planning to day-to-day governance to political activities etc. While Jinnah and his Muslim League were transfixed on bisecting India to get a Muslim majority nation without taking on the Imperial colonial British power, they paid scant attention to details over how such a nation would be managed. Even when they got an opportunity to govern undivided India along with the Congress in c. 1946, they were more interested in thwarting the government's proposals rather than in gaining experience in governing the nation. After the creation of Pakistan, various competing sets of Islam were thrust upon the people by political and military leaders to perpetuate their own hold on them. For example, Jinnah himself yielded space to fundamentalist Deobandi ulema which ultimately led to the passing of the Objectives Resolution under the weaker leader of Liaquat Ali Khan. Thus it was that Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah prepared the ground for fundamentalism by promising all sorts of things to Deobandi clerics, pirs and the ulema in order to create Pakistan; his successor Liaquat Ali Khan caved in meekly to Deobandi extremism; Gen. Ayub Khan tried to introduce a 'modernist Islam' along the lines of Ataturk which was defeated by Mawdudi's Jama'at-e-Islami (JI) party; Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a feudal to the core, tried to introduce 'Islamic socialism' but without any success; Gen. Zia-ul-Haq enforced a 'literalist Islam' of wahhabi variety quite successfully; Nawaz Sharif was partial to a similar approach and wanted himself to be the 'Amir-ul-Momineen' but was thrown out before he could succeed; and Gen. Musharraf feebly attempted to re-introduce Ataturk's 'modernist Islam' but quickly gave up and allowed the Deobandi and wahhabi clerics to take over the country. It is thus a complete confusion in Pakistan among traditional sufi edition, a modernist enlightened edition, an abbreviated edition of Islamic socialism and a salafi medieval edition of Islam. The fog may be clearing there now with wahhabi, deobandi and salafi versions gaining ascendancy over the Berelvi sufi version.

Why does Pakistan behave like this ?

What behaviour, one may ask. That may best be explained by some of the ways Pakistan has been described in recent times, 'international migraine'(Madeline Albright), 'epicentre of terrorism' (Man Mohan Singh), 'a mortal threat'(Hillary Clinton), 'a fire inside its own house'(Pierre Lellouche, French Special Envoy for Af-Pak), "the headquarters of Al Qaeda’s senior leadership"(Gen. David Petraeus), 'main terrorist threat'(Lord Malloch-Brown, Foreign Office Minister for Africa and Asia, UK), 'the biggest source of instability'(Annual Review, IISS), 'a rat hole'(Howard L Berman, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman), 'epicentre of extremism'(Senator John F Kerry, Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee), 'epicenter of global terror'(Country Report on terrorism, 2009, US State Department), '[hosting] more terrorists per square mile than any place else on earth'(Bruce Riedel), 'Wal-mart of proliferation' (El Baradei) etc.

And, yet, Pakistanis are not perturbed in the least by such epithets, adjectives and descriptions. They dismiss all these with a wave of their hand, as simply motivated attempts by infidels to run down the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons. Pakistanis are more concerned by the 'image' of honour and dignity rather than by real honour and dignity which unfortunately lies in tatters. Something is etched, imprinted deep in their minds and they are resolutely unwilling to shake it off or erase that and move on with times, redefining their goals and strategies. Why should they go to such extraordinary lengths of even placing the future of their nation in great peril ? At every crisis, they end up creating a bigger crisis for themselves, for their neighbours and the world at large because they resolutely cling to their false and manufactures pre-Independence theories and myths. They simply refuse to see the writing on the wall. Why should a nation be so irresponsible to itself and the rest of humanity ?

With great perspicacity, a former Spanish ambassador to Pakistan is said to have made this statement, in the 1960s, “. . . this country [Pakistan] will drift from crisis to calamity, from calamity to catastrophe, and from catastrophe to disaster.” While I derive no schadenfraude from what is happening in Pakistan today, one cannot but admire Perico, Duke of Amalfi, for his ability to look far ahead and so early too.

Pakistan has gone through a tortuous course since its Independence and almost all of that is its own making. Military coups, economic meltdowns, superpower playground, terrorism, fundamentalism, Islamic sectarianism, wars, secession, genocide, duplicity, fraud . . . you name it and Pakistan has done it all or is continuing to do them all with no signs of any abatement, in the span of six-and-a-half decades. What ails this country and why is it unable to unshackle itself from these vicious things that immobilize Pakistan from behaving like a normal nation state ?

In the context of the 'enduring hostility' between India-Pakistan (which should be more appropriately called, 'enduring-one-way-rivalry-with-India-by-Pakistan'), Pakistan went to war with India in 1947, 1948, 1965, 1971 (Western front) and 1999. In 1947, they could not achieve their goal of walking into Kashmir on October 26 to celebrate the Eid. In 1965, India went almost up to the outskirts of Lahore. In 1971, they lost more than half their nation within a fortnight and India took 93,000 PoWs (Prisoners of War). In 1999, they had to seek American intervention to extricate themselves after suffering massive casualty that even led to revolts in some places within Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). So, what did they learn from these various wars and defeats ? Nothing, would be the only answer. A revisionist Pakistan, instead of re-aligning its goals vis-a-vis the status-quo power India, decided to simply do more of the ruinous same after every calamitous outing. More money was therefore spent for the military at the direct cost of the welfare of the people of the impoverished country.

The policymakers of Pakistan realized quite early that Pakistan could not defeat India militarily and hence went in for military pacts with other powers to achieve their irredentist dreams against India. This brought Cold War to the Indian subcontinent in the 50s. The devastating 1971 defeat taught the Pakistanis to go in for nuclear weapons even if the people were 'to eat grass', and employ jihadi terrorism as an instrument of state policy. The 'secret jihad' that Pakistan has been waging against the Indian state since c. 1947, got further impetus after the US set up the Bear Trap for the Soviets in Afghanistan with Pakistani assistance in c. 1979. The mujahideen tanzeems and their tactics were transferred to the eastern front of Pakistan after c. 1989. The euphoria that followed this event made even a moderate leader like Ms. Benazir Bhutto thunder “Azadi, Azadi, Goli chalao” (Freedom, Freedom, Shoot) in a public meeting in Muzzafarabad (POK). The 1999 defeat taught Pakistan to give a lot more support to terrorism against India using non-state actors, to subvert a growing Indian economy through fake Indian curreny notes (FICN) etc. The new CEO of Pakistan Gen. Musharraf, who came via a military coup, said in Muzzafarabad on February 5, 2000 that jihad had decisively shifted from Afghanistan to Kashmir. What he meant was probably the whole of India, not Kashmir alone, because it was in his regime that too many audacious terrorist attacks were mounted on various cities of India by the ISI. After the events surrounding 9/11, the Pakistani Army and its notorious intelligence agency, the ISI, have even given up all pretensions to their earlier policy of 'plausible deniability' and have been openly involved in supporting the terror activities against India by the various jihadi tanzeems. Thus, the French proverb Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (The more it changes, the more it remains the same) fits the Pakistani situation exceedingly well.

While it will be too difficult to find a single silver bullet or even possibly several of them for such incredulous behaviour by Pakistan, one must look deep into the background to the creation of Pakistan itself to partially understand today's events.

By the turn of the Twentieth Century, the Muslims were acutely aware of the fact that they had seen better days and their glory was on the wane irrecoverably. The previous two centuries had seen the European powers like Great Britain, Russia, and France vanquish Muslim rulers in India, Central Asia and parts of North Africa respectively. By early Twentieth Century, the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating. Muslims all over the world, and especially in India, were introspecting and came to the conclusion that their misfortune was because of moving away from Islam. In India, Emperor Akbar’s accommodation of Hindu philosophy had already raised the ire of the fundamentalists. The backlash came swiftly in the form of his successor Emperor Aurangazeb who implemented a strict form of Islam and treated the Hindus as dhimmi. Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi, who was a religious teacher of Aurangazeb, ensured fundamentalist ideas were firmly entrenched in governance. This later led to the emergence of such hardcore fundamentalists as Sheikh Waliullah and Ahmed Berelvi who took his volunteers to Afghanistan border to fight the British and the Sikh kings, in an act reminiscent of Prophet Muhammad’s hijra from Makkah to Medinah. The Afghan borders have never been the same after this emigration by Ahmed Berelvi. While some Muslims raged at their impotence to fight the British, others plotted to regain power through an association with the British. The Indian muslims were thus divided into two groups. The First War of Independence in c. 1857 by Indian soldiers (in fact, many would say that the First War of Independence was in c. 1807 when sepoys mutineed in the Vellore Fort) under the flag of the Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar and the ruthless manner it was put down followed by his deportation to Burma where he died eventually unsung, created revulsion in the minds of Indian Muslims. Later in c. 1915, a Deobandi cleric Ubaidullah Sindhi was sent to Afghanistan to contact the Turkish and German missions there and organize an uprising against the British in India. However, the Afghan King, Habibullah Khan, the son of the founder of modern Afghanistan Abd-ur-Rehman, refused to allow any anti-British plots from the Afghan soil. In c. 1920, when the Khilafat Movement in India was at its peak, several thousand Indian Muslims wanted to emigrate from the British-ruled Dar-ul-Harb to Muslim-ruled Afghanistan of Dar-ul-Aman but this time too, the Afghan Government, led by Amir Amanuallah Khan, son of Habibullah Khan, turned them back.

The Berelvi (also known as Ahl-e-Sunnat) influence in Pakistan was widespread in 1947. Slowly, that influence was overtaken by Deobandi and later Wahhabi interests. The Deobandi influence began to wax when the Deobandi clerics overwhelmed Liaquat Ali Khan and succeeded in passing the Objectives Resolution (‘Qarardad-e-Maqasid’) in the Pakistani Constituent Assembly in c. 1949. The Wahhabi influence began to wax when the Saudi oil money began to play an important role in Pakistan consequent to the Afghan jihad.

(To be Continued . . .)

What do the recent statements by US, Afghanistan & Pakistan mean ?

Slowly, the contours of the game are becoming clearer though seemingly contradictory statements are being made by all and sundry involved in this deceptive game. In fact, it is these contradictory statements that are paradoxically helping to clear the fog.

First the recent seemingly inexplicable statement emanating from the Afghan President Hamid Karzai aired on the popular Pakistani channel, Geo TV. "God forbid, if a war breaks between Pakistan and America, we will side (with) Pakistan", he said and added "If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you." This has given rise to serious analysis among the stakeholders in Afghanistan. This statement is akin to his reference to Pakistan as a 'twin' after signing the strategic agreement with India.

In my opinion, this announcement of support must be taken with a bucketful of salt, for several reasons. Just three weeks earlier, Karzai had signed a strategic friendship agreement with Pakistan's arch-enemy India, quite annoying the Pakistani military leadership. Immediately upon returning from India, in time for the 10^th Anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan and the removal of Taliban, President Karzai accused Pakistan once again saying that without Pakistan’s sanctuary and help, the Taliban terrorists would not be ‘able to move a finger’. We must remember that President Karzai had himself escaped at least four attempts of assassination by the Taliban and by their association, the PA/ISI. He has just recently lost his step brother to assassination by the Taliban. He has also lost several key supporters of his to Taliban attacks, including Prof. Rabbani. Karzai knows perfectly well that it is the Pakistani Army (PA) that sustains the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the remnants of Al Qaeda against the Afghan civilian government. He knows very well too that it is the support, guidance and instigation from the PA that makes the Taliban intransigent towards negotiations for a peaceful post-2014 Afghanistan. He knows equally well that the PA/ISI would never favour a Durrani like him to come to power in Kabul and would always support the Ghilzais like Mullah Omar, Haqqani or Hekmatyar. Ever since he assumed office as Interim President on November 27, 2001, he has been complaining bitterly to the Americans about the Pakistani perfidy. However, the Americans, in their eagerness to go after Iraq's Saddam Hussein, took their eyes off Afghanistan and even listened to their long-standing friend, Pakistan, who took advantage of the situation to play its own double game. For such a person as Hamid Karzai, therefore, to suddenly announce his support for the PA is laughable. In fact, Pakistan itself has not commented about this unexpected support from Karzai, thus proving that they are themselves not taking it seriously.

Besides, Pakistan knows that the common folk Afghans never had great love for Pakistan because of Pakistan's continuous poking in the internal affairs of that country, its attempts not to settle the border dispute (Afghanistan does not officially recognize the Durand Line which was drawn as a result of a treaty between British India and the Afghan King Abd-ur-Rehman, founder of modern Afghanistan, in c. 1893) and generally its arrogance towards an impoverished neighbour since Independence. Afgahanistan was the only country to object to the entry of Pakistan into the United Nations in September, 1947, based on the issue of Pashtunistan. In c. 1949, the Loya Jirga of Afghanistan de-recognized the British-Afghan Treaty of 1893, thereby de-recognizing the Durand Line as well. The self-anointed Field Marshal Ayub Khan arrogantly dismissed Afghanistan as inconsequential claiming that just a brigade of PA would be enough to quell that country and enter Kabul in one day, when tension mounted between these two countries after Pakistan took aggressive posture following induction of large-scale American arms, against an unfriendly Afghanistan. That the same Pakistan today praises Afghans as slayers of two superpowers, namely the former Soviet Union and the USA, is quite another matter ! Pakistan has frequently resorted to shutting its borders and trade routes with a landlocked Afghanistan, thus putting the populace to misery. One such episode led to the dismissal of Prime Minister Daoud Khan by his cousin, King Zahir Shah in the 1960s when the blockade remained for two years. As early as the 50s, there were economic blockades by Pakistan (1950, 1951 & 1955). In c. 1973, Daoud Khan once again assumed power in a coup and deposed King Zahir Shah and continued with his earlier reforms process which included such things as keeping the ulema under check, building up the army, spreading education, ensuring more rights for women, implementing land redistribution through land-ceiling act, making Afghanistan a more robust Republic etc. Disliking his reformist agenda but fearing his tough actions, Islamists like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the recently assassinated Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani (a Mawdudi follower) fled to Pakistan where they received support from Z.A. Bhutto and the ISI. Since then, it has been Pakistan's endeavour to checkmate reforms in Afghanistan, arrest their modernization and keep them backward. In the latter half of the 90s, the creation of the Taliban and the complete backing that Pakistan gave to their most repressive measures in the name of Islam just so that Pakistan could have its Strategic Depth, once again proved Pakistan's long-standing malevolent intentions vis-a-vis Afghanistan. This Pakistani approach of hegemonic overlording of Afghanistan has always been resented by the Afghans at large. Pakistan and Afghanistan came close to war several times between 1947 and 1979. However, even the Pakistan-created Taliban refused to abandon their claim for greater Pashtunistan and refused to acknowledge the Durand line as the permanent international border between the two countries. Though Pakistan has been hosting the largest Afghan refugee concentration for decades now, there is not much love lost between the Afghans and the Pakistanis. Reciprocally, there is not much love lost for the Pakhtuns within many pockets of Pakistan itself, including for their own in the recently christened Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region (formerly, NWFP).

The reasonable question to ask therefore is then why did Karzai make the surprising statement that he did indeed make ? The spokesman for Karzai has explained that away by saying that the support that Karzai referred to was humanitarian and not military support. The implication was that a grateful Afghanistan owed it to the Pakistanis in return for the decades that the Pakistanis across the border have hosted (and continue to host) Afghan refugees since the Afghan jihad, followed by the civil war and the brutal Taliban regime. It would be reasonable to expect that in case a war broke out between the US/Afghan troops and the PA following further worsening of their relationship, it would be around the Af-Pak FATA badlands and therefore the refugee population into Afghanistan would be predominantly Pashtuns whom Afghanistan anyway claim as their very own. The US would not attack Balochistan and even if it did so in order to secure an alternate land route into Southern Afghanistan, the scarce population of Balochistan and the vast lands there would not lead to an exodus. In fact, Balochis may be expected to even collude with the Americans in their common cause against the PA. Any attack on the Sind or the Punjab (both almost improbable to be attacked), would only cause refugees to stream into neighbouring India. In effect, therefore, Karzai's support to Pakistan stops at welcoming the Pashtuns and Pashtuns alone in the event of a war, something that does not surprise anyone.

For their part, the Pakistanis who have both publicly and privately received a spanking from Ms. Hillary Clinton during her visit last week to Islamabad, are clutching at straws and claiming some sort of victory that they forced Ms. Clinton to acknowledge American contacts with the Haqqanis. This may surprise the lay public but anyone who has been closely following the situation would know that contacts have been going on with the Taliban for a long time. The sticking point is that they have made little progress while the Taliban have stepped up their attacks on the NATO/ISA forces. The major supplier of foot-soldiers to the attacks is the Haqqani network and sometimes the LeT, while the planning and coordination is done by the PA through the ISI. Expecting increased pressure from the Americans after the US Presidential election in c. 2008, the ISI planned ahead. While continuing to hold off the American pressure to act against the Haqqani shura, the PA/ISI urged Haqqani to enter into a peace treaty with the Shi'a of Kurram who had been besieged for the most part of the previous three years. By December, 2010, this allowed the Haqqani warlords and soldiers to cross easily between Afghanistan and Pakistan. So much so, that today Sirajuddin Haqqani claims that they are now back in Afghanistan and no longer are present in Pakistan, a claim that Pakistan also approves of in order to escape American action within Pakistani soil or American accusations of hosting these terrorists. It also puts the onus back on the ISAF, NATO and the ANA to take action on their side of the border. However, the continued killing of Haqqani commanders in North Waziristan by the CIA drones disproves the claim.

Just after the elimination of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011, UK’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mark Sedwill, informed the media that the Taliban leadership was engaged in talks with various stakeholders with the full backing of the US with the sole aim of finding a solution to the Afghan problem from within. On June 18, 2011, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted that the US had been in direct talk with the Taliban and the talks were going well. In order to facilitate these talks, the UN Security Council decided to split the Taliban from Al Qaeda within the sanctions regime. Ms. Clinton called on Pakistan to support nascent reconciliation talks with the Afghan Taliban launched several months ago by the United States and Afghanistan. The goal, she said, is “to split the Taliban from al-Qaeda,” a possibility the administration believes has become more likely with bin Laden’s demise, and Pakistan “has a responsibility to help us.” It is the continued refusal by Pakistan to help the US in bringing the Haqqanis around that is causing a breakdown in the relationship between the US and Pakistan.

On June 24, 2010, the New York Times reported that the Pakistanis were offering to mediate a power-sharing agreement with Sirajuddin Haqqani. A few days later, the Middle-Eastern Al Jazeera, which had broken many authentic news about Al Qaeda earlier, dramatically announced that Sirajuddin Haqqani, accompanied by the Pakistani COAS Gen. Kayani and the ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha, had already met the Afghan President Karzai in his Kabul Palace. A few days later, the US President Barack Obama, at the G-20 meeting in Toronto in June 2010, praised the efforts of Pakistan to find a political settlement for the Afghan crisis. Refusing to directly comment on the meeting between Haqqani and Karzai, he said, “I think it’s too early to tell. I think we have to view these efforts with skepticism but also with openness”. However, in two years since then, the Americans are frustrated by the lack of any meaningful progress. Thus, Pakistan demonstrated its clout with the Haqqanis and demanded the US to leave it to the Pakistanis to forge a peace deal, something the Americans are no longer willing to countenance unlike in the 1980s. In fact, the Pakistanis have been caught red-handed, on the other hand, of helping and using the Haqqanis, a classic case of double-game that the Pakistanis are so notoriously known for. The game is quite similar to Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, DG of ISI, who egged on the Taliban when he was ostensibly sent by the Americans to ask them to surrender peacefully. Thus, the US contacts with the Haqqanis have been going on for a long time now.

And, when they help, the Pakistanis still play a game. On Oct. 10, 2010 Hamid Karzai also confirmed on a US Television channel that discussions were going on with the Taliban, an announcement that caused Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani to warn on October 12 that any direct talks with the Taliban without Pakistan would fail. A few days later, on October 14, 2010, the US Special Envoy for Af-Pak, Late Richard Holbrooke, confirmed the talks with the Taliban while Gen. Petraeus, Commander of ISAF in Afghanistan, said his troops facilitated a high-level Taliban leader to travel to Kabul to have talks with the Government. Later, it turned out that they were referring to Anwarul Haq Mujahed, a terrorist leader who is in custody in Peshawar along with the former Taliban governor of eastern Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, and his deputy governor Sedre Azam. These leaders were taken in a helicopter from Peshawar, obviously with Pakistani consent and knowledge. It is being seen as a ploy by Pakistan to create divisions among the Taliban.

But, the US continued to be frustrated by the Pakistani stubbornness in not going after the North Waziristan-based Haqqani network and its allies. In September, 2010, the US dramatically increased the frequency of its drone attacks, from a monthly average of ten strikes to twenty and killing many militants. Though it was later touted to be a pre-emptive strike to prevent a Mumbai-style urban terror attack in the UK, Germany and France, there is no denying that a frustrated US wanted to demonstrate to the Pakistanis its determination to go after the Haqqani group which Pakistan has been successfully defending. The helicopter attack on a Pakistani Army post in early October, 2010 within Pakistan by the American forces resulting in the killing of two Pakistani soldiers must also be seen in the light of frustration among the Americans on the reluctance of Pakistan to stem the flow of Taliban and their armaments especially as the ISAF was involved in securing Kandahar before their departure. The infuriated Pakistanis closed the border crossings at Torkham (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) and Chaman (Balochistan) for eleven days until the Americans issued an apology for the attack. On October 15, 2010, the Pakistani Foreign Office defiantly re-stated its long standing policy, “While we understand the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) concerns, any question relating to when, how and what is to be done in North Waziristan is based on judgment, keeping in mind our capacities, priorities and overall national interest. This in no way should be interpreted as lack of Pakistani resolve”. It is over one year now and Pakistan has not yet decided that the time was ripe for any action in North Waziristan ! When the US Special Envoy to Af-Pak, Richard Holbrooke, passed away most unexpectedly on December 13, 2010, the general consensus was that even he could not “get Pakistan on board to deal with Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.” That simply explains the confusion in the American approach to Pakistan. They are neither able to treat Pakistan as snake and jump over it or as garbage and step on it.

In any case, Pakistan's mischievous attempt to twist Ms. Hillary Clinton's statement of admission regarding American 'contacts' with Haqqani as something sinister or hipocritical, is exactly the way Pakistan fabricates news and spreads falsehood. The 'contacts' between the PA/ISI and the Haqqanis are not exactly the same as those between the Americans and the Haqqanis. Pakistan's references to the American support for the Haqqanis during the 1979-1989 Afghan jihad is also a clever word-play and an attempt to fool the gullible.

Pakistan has played similar games with Taliban leaders. On Feb. 11, 2010, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a brother-in-law of Mullah Omar, the head of the Quetta Shura and the second in command after Mullah Omar, was arrested by the ISI in Karachi. {Out of the eight arreasted along with him, five of the Quetta Shura members were caught in Karachi alone thus confirming earlier reports that the ISI had relocated them to Karachi a long time back. In mid-January, 2011, news also emerged that the ISI had arranged for a heart operation for Mullah Omar in a Karachi hospital} The UN Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Kai Eide also echoed the same thoughts when he said that Pakistan was well aware of the on-going contacts with Baradar and yet decided to arrest him and keep him in Pakistan to abruptly thwart the dialogue. It later emerged that Baradar was planning to attend the May 2-3, 2010 Jirga of about 1200 to 1400 people that Karzai had called of the tribal leaders to give a shape to the reconciliation process. The jirga was also expected to set the terms and conditions for reintegrating the insurgents. Karzai’s attempts revolve around the US plan of weaning away those Taliban who are not ideologically committed to the Taliban cause but are in it for money, relocating hardcore and uncompromising Taliban leaders in another country and revoke the names of some of the amenable Taliban leaders from the UN blacklist so that the Government can freely negotiate with them. Pakistan’s calculation is to ensure the failure of the jirga and stake its claim to be the ‘sole conduit’ for peace in Afghanistan. (The jirga was postponed twice and later was fixed for June 2, 2010 but finally held in July. As an outcome of this, Karzai set up the High Council for Peace and Reconciliation.) On August 22, 2010, the New York Times reported that the ISI officials admitted that Baradar and his aides were by-passing the ISI and hence were arrested. ISI was quoted as having admitted, “We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians.” The arrest and its location also proved the existence of the Quetta Shura, strenuously denied by the Pakistanis for years, and the fact that the Shura had relocated to Karachi, another fact also strenuously denied by the Pakistanis for quite some time.

One can easily deduce that the Pakistanis are protecting their twin primary assets, the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Shura, and are manipulating them carefully as to how they are exposed to the emerging developments, while at the same time frustrating the Americans in developing their individual contacts with the Taliban and the Haqqanis. At the same time, the PA/ISI are ensuring that attacks on the NATO/ISA Forces are continued by the Haqqanis, LeT and the Taliban so that they are kept under constant and probably escalating pressure. The Pakistani calculation is that either they frustrate the Americans into accepting Pakistani hegemony over Afghanistan or make them withdraw from the area in their larger interests after mounting losses of men and material force the Americans to sue for peace.

For their part, the Americans seem confused. They are unable or unwilling to use force against the PA because, as Gen. Kayani rightly said, Pakistan was not Iraq. Nobody today talks of the strategy of 'great awakening' that Gen. Petraeus was supposed to re-employ in Afghanistan as he successfully did in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus’ strategy was to control the 10% land area of Afghanistan from where he estimated 80% of attacks and terrorism originated. Similarly, there was a time in c. 2009 when Pres. Obama said that the Pakistani nuclear weapons were in safe hands thereby implying that the Americans knew their whereabouts. But, since then, the Pakistanis have been furiously expanding their Pu-based bombs over which the Americans may not have enough intelligence. It is another reason for the US hesitation to use any force against Pakistan. The PA may not use tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) against an advancing column of American forces into Waziristan or even nuke the Bagram base as retaliation for they know that Pakistan would be decimated in double quick time if that happens. But, they could pose other serious dirty-nuke challenge to mainland America. Besides, the Americans still depend upon Pakistan for nearly 30 ~ 40% of their supplies. Even after pilferage and disappearance of containers from the Karachi port, almost 25% of the supplies depend upon Pakistani routes. Unless the US finds an alternate route for these supplies, the US cannot squeeze Pakistan beyond a certain point.

In her latest testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ms. Hillary Clinton termed the US strategy towards Pakistan as "fight, talk and build". This strategy is similar to the way Imperial Britain handled the Afghan tribes. The Vidura Neethi of Indian Epic, The Mahabharat, advises rulers to conquer friends and foes alike using sama, dana, bheda and danda. The PA has abundantly made it clear to the Americans about their redlines and they revolve around India, Haqqani, Quetta Shura and the LeT. Almost all aspects of these redlines are huge concern for the US. For his part, President Obama made it clear on several occasions that the Pakistanis were barking a wrong tree by considering the Indians as the most major threat and that there was no need to station so many troops on the eastern borders with India. However, the Pakistanis have not moved an inch from their position of India being the mortal enemy whose capabilities, if not intentions, threaten their very existence for which Pakistan needs to take counter measures in the form of strategic depth, terrorist non-state actors, nukes and an enduring hostility with that country. General Kayani has said that Pakistan had handed over its position on Afghanistan to the Obama administration in writing in c. 2010 and claimed “We have long-term interests in Afghanistan, others might have short … For short-term gains, we cannot lose [sight of] our long-term interests,”. The US is increasingly being left with only one answer, danda. It has two forms of danda, soft and hard. The soft danda would be such measures as military and economic aid squeeze, making loans difficult for Pakistan from international financial agencies etc. while the hard danda would be a military option. At this point, while one can virtually rule out any hard danda option, soft danda is very much on cards. For all of Gen. Kayani's bravado that Pakistan does not need the US aid, stoppage or even suspension of spare parts to American supplied F-16s, P-3Cs, helicopters, frigates, various radars, howitzers, communication sets etc would bring them to their knees immediately. The US can also force its western allies to do the same for the Agosta submarines and other hardware. Even at a diplomatic level, the US can apply enormous pressure on Pakistan.

We have to wait to see whether the US abdicates or acts decisively.