The Pakistani Boomerang
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THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG 12008 contents no. 1/2008 THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG EDITORIAL EDITORIAL Allah’s Moths 1. “MOTH-EATEN TRUNCATED PAKISTAN”. THIS WAS HOW, IN 1947, Pakistan’s founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah, baptised his new-born country, a Caesarean birth resulting from the British fleeing colonial responsibilities. It is rare for a parent to speak of his own creature with such despair. And perhaps it is no coincidence that a distinguished anglophile barrister, both in his soul and his choice of suits, Jinnah was to die only a year after this ill-fated delivery. Pakistan is still in search of an heir comparable to Quaid-i-Azam, the “great leader”. On the other hand the country intermittently co-exists with a grand godfather: the United States of America. In the Eighties, Ronald Reagan chose Pakistan as the lethal weapon to be used against a Soviet Union bogged down in Afghanistan. As instructed by the CIA, in agreement with the Saudis, the Pakistani secret services launched a multi-coloured international collection of Islamist warriors against the Red Army. It worked brilliantly. In the autumn of 2001, this time rather more reluctantly, George W. Bush resorted once again to Pakistan as the logistic platform for entering Afghanistan, for liquidating the Taleban and tracking down Osama bin Laden and his associates – among them numerous veterans of this strange anti-Soviet alliance – from the caves of Hindu Kush from where they were supposed to have unleashed the attacks of 9/11. Initially this seemed to work. Seen from the White House today, this well-tested instrument has assumed the characteristics of a boomerang, threatening to complete its trajectory hitting the thrower on the forehead. In Washington they believe that after spreading chaos throughout Afghanistan, jihadists are aiming for the “big prize”: the destabilisation of Pakistan. This would be a great coup that might lead to the most evil of scenarios: terrorists attacking the heart of America using the scraps of the Pakistani nuclear complex taken from a deliquescent regime. The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, has spoken of the Pakistani tribal areas as a sanctuary for terrorists ready to carry out suicide missions in the United States. The American Ambassador to Islamabad, Ann W. Patterson, felt the need to evoke the “catastrophic” effects of a possible “attack against the USA launched from Pakistani territory”. While Hillary Clinton warns that if she is elected to the White House, she will place Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal under direct American control. How on earth did Bush get himself into this dead end road? And how will his successor manage to get out of this situation? 2. If they had more closely observed the weapon they were handling, perhaps the Americans would have used it more prudently. And they would also have agreed with Jinnah, because that vast territory, two and half times the size of Italy, inhabited by 165 million souls (of which three quarters survive on less than two dollars a day), set between the Central Asian mountains and the Arabian Sea, between the Persian Empire and Indian civilisation, really does seem “moth-eaten” and “truncated”. Truncated because four of its main ethnic groups – Pashtuns, Balochis, Punjabis 2 THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG EDITORIAL and Kashmiris – live on contested borders with Afghanistan, Iran and India (coloured map 1). 3 THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG EDITORIAL And because although self-legitimated as a homeland for Muslims from the Indian sub-continent, Pakistan only hosts a third of them, and is however also disturbed by furious sectarian conflicts with the Sunni majority opposing the Shiite minority (about 20%). And finally, because already in 1971 it suffered the traumatic amputation of its eastern wing, now Bangladesh. Moth-eaten because within its territory there exists a cross-section of geopolitical and social demands of different populations, of which a significant part ignores or rejects Urdu, the official language, that together with the Islamic culture was meant to provide an identity for that quickly – and rather bloodily – invented remnant of India resulting from partition in 1947 (coloured map 2). Also resulting in the devolution of any real power over the Pashtun tribal areas, where even the British had no illusions with regards to direct rule. The four provinces (Baluchistan, Sindh, the Punjab and the North West Frontier) and the district of the capital city Islamabad, together with the part of Kashmir ruled by Pakistan, draw a map of a pseudo-federal country, marked by separatisms and various kinds of banditry. Central power attempts to control these by ruling harshly, playing acrobatic games and using manipulation with the various local lobbies, gangs and mafias – at times known as political parties. Pakistan has remained a colony. It is just that the British have been replaced by internal colonialists; by the military elite of Punjabi stamp – the “martial race” reared ever since the Victorian era. A State within the State controlling most of the economy and supervising civilian institutions when not directly running them. All this while co-existing with the local feudal lords, who share the immense landed estates in the plains of the Indus, such as the famous Bhutto family. And also, especially during the first decades of the republic, in agreement with the mohajir, Muslim refugees from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other Indian States in which they felt endangered. Among them Jinnah himself, who came from Bombay (Mumbai), and his extreme epigone Musharraf, who was born in Delhi. The uncertain national identity is even reflected in the country’s name. “Pakistan” means “country of the pure”. Muslims of course. But it is above all a geopolitical acronym in which “P” stands for Punjab, “A” for the Afghans (meaning the Pashtuns from the North West Frontier and beyond), “K” for Kashmir, still divided but always craved for, and “S” for Sindh. The State itself, however, has a clear characteristic: a praetorian one. This is well-known by society’s most modern elements, trapped between the jihadist fanaticism created in the Deobandi madrasas and the Police State, in search of an improbable passage towards western-styled democracy, and an alternative to “opposing extremisms” – the religious and the military-dictatorial – which, fighting each other, or pretending to do so, permeate and justify one another. If not already sufficiently visible, the Islamist threat should be emphasised as happens when Musharraf and his associates need to ask their elder brother in stars and stripes for money. Because Pakistan has always exploited the income linked to its position, deriving, according to the Americans, from its being an anti-Soviet front line country yesterday and an anti-jihadist one today. 3. It is improbable that Pakistan will fall into jihadist hands. The short circuit resulting from the manipulation of religious extremism for reasons linked to neo-colonial divide et impera, is instead already perceivable. The apprentice witch doctors now dressed-up as defenders of law and order, are losing control of the jihadist instrument. More than the State being conquered by guerrillas and terrorists, the risk is a geopolitical chasm, threatening to engulf nearby Afghanistan and disrupting the extremely fragile order in Central and Southern Asia. Committed to avoiding such a catastrophe, Islamabad’s elite does not consider itself only the guarantor of national unity. It is known that so as not to curdle, the 4 THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG EDITORIAL 5 THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG EDITORIAL Pakistani ethnic-geopolitical-religious mayonnaise needs grand dreams. In addition to defending itself from internal terrorist and separatist groups, the praetorian State has always addressed matters taking into account two external factors: one regional and one pan-Islamic, attempting to integrate them in a unitary project. Let us analyse this. A) Pakistan perceives the Indian/Hindu colossus as an existential threat. Delhi has never digested partition, or Jinnah’s theory about “two nations” within the British Raj, one Islamic and one Hindu. The myth of Akhand Barat, the Great India going from the Afghan Hindu Kush to the Burmese Mouth of the Irrawaddy, remains undigested by the giant – and not only in its hyper-nationalist and Islamophobic aspects. On the other hand Islamabad treats Afghanistan with “strategic profoundness”, compared to Indian pressure, to be managed in cooperation with jihadist friends, such as Talebans of controlled origin, hence Pakistanis. The same applies to Kashmir, disputed by two post-colonial heirs, a region that Indian intelligence sees as the spear point for profoundly destabilising the enemy, while Pakistani intelligence supplies Kashmiri jihadists, encouraging them to infiltrate Indian Islamic communities so as to revive “sleeping” brothers (map 1). What matters is to prevent India from using Afghanistan and Kashmir as the arms of pliers delegated to squash Pakistan. The historical agreement with Beijing contributes to containing Indian pressure, although pervasive Chinese penetration – not only in the business sector – has resulted in increased Pakistani intolerance, to the extent that hunting down the “yellow” infidels is becoming a national sport. B) Anti-Indian geostrategies are linked to Islamic-trade ones, deeply rooted in routes traced over the centuries. Religious guidelines and commercial and financial networks, both visible and informal, tend to overlap creating a bridge between Central Asia and the Indian Ocean, between the Middle East and Southern Asia. The best defence against India is in the bond with the Near East, and especially with Saudi Arabia, with which Pakistan has established almost confederal relations, ranging from shared religious sentiments to intelligence, from trade to the atomic bazaar (the Pakistani Bomb is also to a certain extent Islamic). Former premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, liked to repeat that Pakistan’s identity owes less to the Indian sub-continent’s jungles than to the sands of the Arabian peninsula, Islam’s Holy Land.