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Pakistan: the Rise of Religious Extremism

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Pakistan: the Rise of Religious Extremism SADF COMMENT Pakistan: the rise of religious 11 December 2017 Issue n° 110 extremism ISSN 2406-5617 Claude Rakisits Dr. Claude Rakisits is a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is also Director at PoliTact, a The recent and successful ‘sit-in’ by religious extremists in Washington-based advisory firm which focuses on South Asian and Islamabad and the release of the founder of the LeT will strengthen Middle Eastern issues. both the hand of Islamists as well as the advantaged position of the military vis-à-vis civilians. This is not good news for the future stability of Pakistan. It will also complicate its bilateral relationships with both the US and India. Two critical events in late November — the end of a long ‘sit-in’ in Islamabad by some 2500 followers of an Islamist political party and the release of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), from house arrest — may well turn out to be the inflection point when Pakistan’s political trajectory takes a radical turn and religious extremism deepens. This would not be good for Pakistan’s future stability. Let us briefly examine these two events as well as their potential long-term significance for Pakistan’s domestic scene. The Islamabad ‘sit-in’ On 27 November 2017 a three-week-long ‘sit-in’ by the Tehreek Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY), a relatively new Islamist political party led by Maulana Khadim Hussain Rizvi, at a major Avenue des Arts 19 intersection in the capital eventually ended peacefully. Still, six 1210 Brussels protesters and a policeman were killed and 200 injured during a [email protected] www.sadf.eu clash a few days earlier as the police tried to disperse the protesters. But the final agreement came at a great political cost to the newly-installed Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. The ‘sit-in’ was a protest for what appeared to be a softening of the government’s stance on the country’s blasphemy laws meant to appease religious minorities such as the Ahmadis. The protestors demanded the resignation of the law minister, Zahid Hamid. Under intense pressure to resolve this protest, which had spread to other cities, notably Lahore and Karachi, the government not only fired the law minister but also freed and dropped all charges against the protesters. This capitulation became inevitable when the army refused to use force to remove the protesters. As a matter of fact the final agreement was brokered by the army’s intelligence service (ISI) during talks which did not include civilian government officials. Needless to say, Rizvi and his thousands of followers were pleased and only had praise for the army and its head, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. Hafiz Saeed’s release Turning to the second event under discussion, a court in Lahore released Hafiz Muhammad Saeed on 24 November from a three-month house arrest on the grounds that the government had not provided sufficient evidence for extending his detention. The government had argued that Saeed remained a threat to public safety and that his release would attract financial sanctions against the country and lead to a halt in foreign funding due to Pakistan’s failure to move against terrorism financing. Saeed is the leader of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a proscribed charity organisation generally considered to constitute but a front for the LeT, a US- and UN-designated terrorist organisation. India has accused Saeed of being the mastermind behind the Mumbai terror attack that killed 166 people in November 2008. Not surprisingly, the Indian government was “outraged” by the court’s decision. The Indian foreign ministry stated that Saeed’s release was an attempt by ‘the Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists’. Notwithstanding these Indian outcries, privately Delhi probably was not too surprised. Saeed had been arrested several times on criminal and terrorism charges since the 2008 Mumbai attack, but each time his house arrest had been lifted. The Indian government has repeatedly made clear that any improvement in the bilateral relationship would require Pakistan to hand Saeed over for trial in India. _______________________ SADF Comment N.110 !2 The Trump Administration was also not pleased at all with Saeed’s release. The US State Department posted a $10 million bounty on his head in 2012. The White House “strongly condemned” his release and urged Saeed’s “immediate re-arrest and prosecution”. Significantly, it stated that if Pakistan did not detain and charge Saeed, this would have “repercussions for bilateral relations”. Political consequences The government’s complete surrender to Rizvi’s political blackmail and concession on all his demands will most likely tempt other religious groups to stage ‘sit-ins’ in order to advance their extremist agenda. In other words, the successful tactics of the TYL have boosted the power of extremist groups in Pakistan. Yet even more worrisome for Prime Minister Abbasi and his governing party, the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N), is that the existence of the TYL is evidence of rising Barelvi militancy. And this is bad news for the prime minister and his party whose base of support are Barelvi voters. For a stark proof of the rapid rise of militant Islamic parties one only needs to look at the September by-election results for NA-120, the Lahore-based federal seat which former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had to vacate after he was disqualified by the Supreme Court of sitting in Parliament. Kalsoom Nawaz Sharif, the wife of Nawaz Sharif who ran for her husband’s seat, managed to keep the seat. However, and not surprisingly, the party’s 2013 overwhelming majority of over 40,000 votes was reduced to 14,000 thanks to a credible showing by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI). Much more troubling still were the results of the two new Islamic parties. The TLY candidate came third, with almost six percent of the votes; the Milli Muslim League (MML), the political front for the JUD, came fourth with almost five percent.1 While these figures are low, they do indicate a significant rise in the popularity of these parties. One needs to bear in mind that neither the TLY nor the MML competed in the 2013 election. Moreover, the MML was only created a month before the election. Compare these results to those of the traditional, long-established Islamic parties, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, which could never muster any electoral support. Significantly, now that Saeed has been released he will be legally allowed to 1 Significantly, the MML won four times more votes than the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)—the party which so dominated Pakistan politics in the past is now a shadow of its former self. _______________________ SADF Comment N.110 !3 run as a MML candidate, undoubtedly strengthening the party’s political hand. So while the PML-N is not likely to lose the next federal election, which has to be held in the second half of 2018, the competition will be fierce and could throw up some real surprises. More power to the military In addition to the TLY and potentially other Islamic groups, the army is the other big winner of these two events. The army’s crucial role in brokering a peaceful end to the ‘sit-in’ and its refusal to use force against the protestors as requested by the government reaffirmed the army’s pivotal role in Pakistani politics. This civilian government is now beholden to the army for having resolved this issue peacefully. As to the release of Saeed, given that the army has long been considered the midwife in the establishment of the LeT, the end of his house arrest would have been very well received among the military establishment. Former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf even stated that he was the “biggest supporter” of the LeT, confirming that the Pakistani army still values the LeT’s contribution to the country’s on-going confrontation with India. Of course the army’s position was already very strong before these events, having had, among other things, parliament pass bills in 2015 and 2017 amending the constitution in order to establish military courts allowing the army to try civilians charged of terrorist acts. Yet the army’s hand vis-à-vis the civilians is now even stronger. It is important to remember that all these developments need to be seen in the present political context, which includes some 50,000 civilians killed since about 2007 as a result of terrorist acts and on-going counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency military operations, principally in the tribal areas. So what does it mean for the future of Pakistan? The likely fallout of these two events — the ‘sit-in’ and the release of Hafiz Saeed — is bad news for Pakistan’s long-term stability for two reasons: it strengthens the position of both religious extremists in general and the military establishment vis-à-vis civilians. But this should come as no surprise to anyone given the military’s tacit, if not direct, support first for some Islamic parties soon after Partition and later for Jihadist groups, whether India- or Afghanistan-focussed. It was in the 1980s under Gen Zia-ul-haq that this collaboration really took off. Inevitably, it would only be a matter of time before the effects of this support would spill over into the wider society and _______________________ SADF Comment N.110 !4 radicalize large swaths of the population, especially amongst the youth. This steady process of radicalization has been reinforced with the rapid growth of madrassas (religious schools), the bulk of them financed by Saudi Arabia.
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