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Holbrooke's Dangerous Game in Pakistan
The simplistic explanation, that the battlefield is a borderless region, is disingenuous. Street opposition to the US-Pakistan alliance extends far beyond the tribal-Pashtun areas. America recognizes who is its enemy in the region, but is less sure about what it is at war with: theocracy.
Two impulses led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The first was a demand for a homeland in which Muslims would not feel threatened by a Hindu majority. This movement was led by an Indian Muslim (and largely secular) elite. But a parallel ideology sought Pakistan not to protect Muslims but to save Islam—and Muslim politicians, otherwise secular in temperament, were happy to join the cry that “Islam was in danger” as an emotive shortcut to votes.
After 1947, the two viewpoints competed for space within Pakistan’s troubled constitution. While the secular elite sought a “Muslim” equivalent of India, with equality for all faiths, the Islamists demanded a nation that could become a faith-based Islamic fortress.
But by the end of the 1970s, Pakistan did not look like the sanctuary for Muslims its advertising had suggested. In 1971, Bangladesh was born when more than half of Pakistan’s Muslims, the Bengalis, demanded their own homeland. The '70s saw a revolt in Baluchistan which was ruthlessly suppressed by President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and after his judicial assassination, Bhutto’s ethnic group, the Sindhis, felt increasingly like second-class citizens.
The new military dictator, General Zia ul Haq—initially derided in the West for usurping power and hanging Bhutto—was a fundamentalist by conviction. He used his 11 years in power to sell the concept that Nizam-e-Mustafa (Rule of the Prophet) was the only ideology that could define and protect Pakistan. Reagan-era Americans were untroubled by such exotica; in any case they were great champions of jihad, and Reagan tended to measure patriotism by the length of the beard.
So Zia was free to mould the state toward a theocracy, and extended the scope of “jihad” to proxy war against declared and undeclared enemies, including India. But it would not be too long before the West got scorched. Bill Clinton was president when the first bomb attack against the Twin Towers of New York came in 1993. The suspects took a PIA flight from New York to Pakistan that evening.
Now it serves Islamabad’s interests to deflect legitimate suspicions about the sharp rise in terrorist organizations like the Lashkar e Tayyaba, linking them to a “root” cause such as India and the Kashmir dispute. But the first war over Kashmir was fought in 1947; theocratic terrorists entered the battlefield less than 20 years ago. Many Pakistanis are finally beginning to admit, albeit privately, that these theocratic armies are as much a threat to civil society and democratic values in their own country as they are to India or the West.
The chief threat to Pakistan now is the siege within. A heady mix of Islamic ideology, increasing public sanctions and instability generated by corrupt and amoral conventional politics is feeding the rise of shadow armies who are certain that it is their moral duty to liberate their land from America and its allies. Theocracy is becoming synonymous with nationalism.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
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citivas
I can't believe no one had commented yet... Very interesting read.
It's too bad the previous Administration wasted 8 years, massive money, many American lives and a majority of America's international goodwill distracting us in Iraq when the more important work was always here. Of course Bush could only ever handle black & white so perhaps some of the very complexities you raise convinced them it was easier to just make up a threat of nukes from Saddam and blaze in like cowboys to make the word safe for democracy.
I've also always been fascinated that the same nations and Muslin leaders and organizations that regularly disown the legitimacy of Israel's right to exist never challenge that of Pakistan's despite both being "created" by the U.N. at similar times. To be clear, I don't question either's rights, only the hypocrisy of some people's selective interpretation on this.
citivas
Sorry, I mistyped -- didn't mean to suggest common u.n. creation -- only the common "creation" at a similar time and eventual recognition in both cases by the u.n.
troutcor
The development that will make nearly all peace initiatives more difficult, and that is not being commented on much, is the effect of the unfolding economic depression. Many of these struggles between modernity and tradition revolve around the central problem of modernity; global capitalism is incapable of nurturing middle classes large enough to sustain democracy and moderation in most of the world. (Of course it will come into question if capital can do the same now in the U.S.) Countries like Pakistan are economic basket cases. This does not bode well for holding the center together.
barryotoole
Excellent article, managing to explain a knotty, extensive issue in a few words.
I am very concerned that, in the very near future - it seems, Pakistan will be once under military rule, with apparent nod from Washington.
That may not seem so bad, but in the next couple of years, the officers that entered the Army during General Zia's rule will be Lt. Generals and the supposedly apolitical General Kayani, the current Chief of Staff, will retire before the end of 2010. These officers are avowedly fundamentalists, who see the theocrats, including the Taliban, as patriotic.
The ensuing mayhem will certainly spill over to neighboring countries, and then the world. China is very nervous about these developments, and is already taking steps to contain the turmoil that is likely to spread in its western provinces once Taliban takes over Pakistan. It has started to form alliances will theocratic forces whose focus is more limited (read India only) than the Taliban and will insulate it from resurrection of discord in places like the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
I have no doubt that during the tenure of the Obama Administration, the world focus and the center of gravity of instability will shift from the Middle East to West Asia. This will border the former Central Asian states under Russian influence. Russia is starting to prepare for that eventuality when the provinces like Chechnya will resume their struggle. The 'Great Game' will become greater.
All this is happening as we speak, yet the West - including America, seem not to pay the attention it deserves. The 'International Migraine' (Albright's description of Pakistan) will soon become an 'International Brain Tumor', ready to explode.
Thank you.
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