Start A War

A new piece on Swat/Waziristan/Baluchistan and the current Pakistani military operation is up at The Review.

The true crisis facing Pakistan is not the Taliban: it is the rupture between the federal state and its constituent parts, and Islamabad’s refusal to accede to the legitimate needs and demands of its citizens in places like Swat and Baluchistan. It is a rupture, indeed, that is written into the very fabric of the state, and the reason why Bangladesh seceded from West Pakistan in 1971, after it was denied political legitimacy by the military regime and then brutalised by an oppressive army operation aimed at quashing any opposition.

But the Pakistan Army learnt exactly the wrong lesson from Bangladesh: since 1971 it has been determined to move as rapidly and violently as possible against any sub-nationalist movement elsewhere in Pakistan. The spectre of Taliban conquering Islamabad and the state’s American-backed resolve to press on in a series of wars against its own people have effectively ended any chance for political consideration of the Baluchistan issue. Instead Baluchistan will be, once again, merely an empty badland where Taliban are hiding, waiting, plotting. It awaits yet another military operation. And we await another declaration of success.

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Afghanistan: A Special Issue

The Afghanistan: A Special Issue, Nov 9, 2009, includes a short piece by me. I especially draw your attention to the Priya Satiya and Selig Harrison. And Stephen Walt. And, all. Read more on this article...

State of Decay

My new piece is up at The Review (National), State of Decay. It argues, by taking a longer historical look at the idea of Pakistan, that the relationship between the provinces and the federal govt. determine what the future for Pakistan holds :

Twenty years of military dictatorships, under Ayub Khan and Zia ul Haq, cemented the rule of the few over the many. Their policies led to the emergence of specific grievances by sub-nationalist groups in Baluchistan and Sindh. In the decade of Pervez Musharraf’s rule, these tensions grew dramatically, and pushed the state into a greater alienation from its own citizens.

Musharraf’s dictatorial regime sought to polish over any internal incoherence with a unified foreign front aimed primarily at operating militarily in Afghanistan, NWFP and Baluchistan. The influx of cash, some $6 billion, into the coffers of the military propelled the army to new-found heights as the country’s largest landlord, largest employer and largest business. But maintaining this new oligarchy came at a steep price for Pakistan.

X-posted at CM. Read more on this article...

Pakistan is not a failed state

I.
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez were kind enough to host me this morning on their show, Democracy Now!: Manan Ahmed on the Politics of US “Hysteria” over Pakistan

II.
The excellent UAE National gave me space to develop my argument about the Pakistani "failed state": Legends of the Fail Manan Ahmed examines the decades-old tradition of experts predicting that Pakistan is sure to collapse any day now. Read more on this article...

Will Pakistan Become A Theocracy?

The Pakistani Parliament has now passed the bill authorizing Shari'a laws in Swat - and perhaps in other territories. Punjab, according to the NYT report, United Militants Threaten Pakistan’s Populous Heart is also in grave danger of going Islamic in a meta-way. Baluchistan has broken out into violence and protests since the president of the Baluch National Movement, Mir Ghulam Mohammad, was kidnapped (along with two other senior associates), shot to death and then their bodies ditched from a helicopter. The primary suspicion falls upon the military or military intelligence. That leaves us Sindh. Karachi, the biggest city in Pakistan, is having a battle of the bands. More seriously, it is also been the scene for ethnic riots against the Baluchi recently.

In the meantime, the Obama administration has, to this point, authorized over 60 drone attacks for an al-Qaeda kill rate of 2%. Wonderful.

So, given all this, is there a likelihood of an Islamic Revolution in Pakistan? Is it Game Over?

Before we get there, I want to review a couple more things about Pakistan and its relationship with its constitutive parts. Swat merged with Pakistan, constitutionally speaking, in 1969. However, it has retained the status as a "Special Area" granted under the Yahya Khan One Unit proclamation of 1955. This special status was is recorded into the '73 Constitution, Article 247. According to this status, they are free to make their own laws and govern themselves. The President can, from "time to time", give some directions to the Governor but the Parliament, Supreme Court or any High Court has no jurisdiction. So, the Swat "Shari'a" deal is a capitulation insofar as Pakistan has never amended its Constitution to make the FATA territories squarely under its law. Additionally, the Swat deal seems to be the only way to curb Maulana Fazlullah, at the moment. If Obama is going to talk about "good Taliban" in Afghanistan, Pakistan certainly has the right to make political negotiations to get a cease-fire. The human impact of the last 3 years on Swat valley has been intense - over 300,000 have fled.

Baluchistan, another princely state which was militarily merged with Pakistan after Partition, had no role in the federal state. After the 1955 One Unit Proclamation, the Khan of Kalat tried again to declare sovereignty. General Tikka Khan ("the butcher of Bengal") was sent to Baluchistan in 1958 under Ayub Khan's military rule to enforce federal writ. Things simmered until Bhutto has to send more army troops against another militant uprising in the region from '72-'74. So, there is no love lost between the center and Baluchistan.

Sindh, Karachi, and the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) are another beeswax. Only recently, rumors were afloat that Musharraf was cutting a deal with MQM and give them autonomy under a federated Pakistan.


Now, to return to this "question". I would argue that such a formulation of impending doom is one of the main reason Pakistan is in this mess. There is a rich vein of "Pakistan on the Brink" theorization that has dominated US foreign policy since the 50s. Back then, it was the Communist revolution, and now it is the Islamic one. This particular mind-set has propelled one disastrous policy over another for the last 40 years. We have supported dictator after dictator and stood by, silently, when civilian regimes floundered under internal economic and political crises. Once again, this question dominates the Obama policy and will restrict any real re-thinking of the Pakistan issue or re-evaluation of the regional scene. So, let's just categorically understand that:

1. There is a world of difference between "Taliban" and any given Pakistani citizen, even the most devout believer. The Taliban, strictly understood to be warlords operating with or in support of Mullah Omar, are a very particular political group. They _are_ political. They _have_political goals. They are not, in effect, a religious ideology that has the danger of sweeping Pakistan. They don't have doctrinarians or theologians. Al-Qaeda does. Taliban don't. It may seem like splitting hairs but I think it is very important to differentiate between the historically situated Taliban and the groups that have emerged in Pakistan bearing the name "Taliban". In the later case, the term is actually masking other political goals and differences that we need to be carefully attuned to. Similarly speaking, there is a world of difference between a specific political group, however broadly defined, which can be numbered in the thousands and a state of 160-plus million peoples. The people of Pakistan have demonstrated, through a number of elections over the last 60 years, that they do not want their religious leaders in political power. There is no dismissing that reality.

2. The most powerful entity in Pakistan in its national army. The second most powerful entity is its civil bureaucracy. The third most powerful are the landed and industrial elite. None of these entities are about to give it up (whatever "it" is - from nukes to bank accounts) to some ragtag bunch of jihadis. Certainly Zardari, wants to keep everything, don't you know it.

3. There is a robust, active, critical media. A media which has played a prominent role in some amazing events in civil and political theaters in the last 3 years.

So, I reject the premise in which the Swat Deal becomes a stepping stone to the "Talibanization" of Pakistan.

Second, Pakistan has always been the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan has always self-imagined itself to be a "homeland for Muslims". The question really is: what kind of a homeland? Saudi Arabia is a homeland for Muslims. It has Shari'a and a King. Malaysia is another homeland for Muslims - with a different sort of emphasis. Turkey, with its emphatic secularism, falls on the far end of such a homeland for Muslim spectrum. Where does Pakistan fit in? And where does it intend to go? I think that is the more important question. What is Pakistan to Pakistanis now? Who is a Pakistani, in effect? As I pointed out in an earlier discussion on the idea of Pakistan, there has to be a fundamental re-articulation of Pakistan as an entity, as a nation-state, within its constitutive parts. The urgency of this task is evident - there are other claimants with answers. Claimants who carry guns and who can brutalize a population in the blink of an eye. There is also the United States agenda, which continues to treat Pakistan as nothing more than a client-state. Somewhere in this pincer, somewhere between the taliban and the drone, the Pakistanis have to begin forming a sense of their whole. I am not big on nationalism and I don't think that re-imagining Pakistan as a nation is an easy task, either. (( Sometime ago, I would have loved to see a future South Asia Union - akin to the EU - where Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka found themselves in harmony with our uncle India. What a difference a war on terror makes. )) But, I am not simply talking about some ideological mumbo-jumbo that Islamabad can cook-up.

The most crucial step is that the civilian federal state of Pakistan has to listen - really, actually, listen - to the people of FATA, the people of N.W.F.P, the people of Baluchistan, the people of Sindh and the people of Punjab. It has to provide its citizens with basic security, shelter and welfare. It needs to protect its citizens from terrorism. It needs to strengthen its civic engagement with non-governmental organizations. It needs to ensure that basic human rights and access to a basic educational system is guaranteed to all citizens. These are actions that can be taken and should be taken and they will have a far greater impact than any 1.5 billion dollar aid. The Pakistan military, and the US, must allow for this. It must enable the state, it must pressure the state to fulfill its pledges to the people. Part of that means a military operation against the Taliban (narrowly defined) and al-Qaeda (defined as "foreign fighters" in the press) in Swat and in Baluchistan. This must be under-taken by the Pakistan military.

From such a process, a major process of stabilization, the state can start to re-build. It's a tall order, I know. There are too many de-stabilizing forces. Not to mention, an open question mark over whether there is actual political will to do all this. Yet, I remain hopeful. Pakistanis - however we categorize them - have a lot of heart, a lot of soul and great fortitude. For the last 8 years, they have been paying the price of a proxy-war waged on their soil. A decade before, they suffered through another proxy-war which gave them millions of refugees and a radicalizing ideology. They have persevered. I am still in awe of the hundreds of thousands who galvanized against Musharraf and the millions who cast a vote in the election last year. We must support those many millions in taking the next step.
{x-posted to CM}
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Worldview

You can catch me with Jerome McDonald on Worldview discussing the Obama announcement on "Af-Pak" aka "Western Pakistan". Read more on this article...

The Long March in Pakistan

On March 12, 1930 Gandhi marched to Dandhi - stopping in forty plus villages - and speaking about swaraj and breaking the salt laws to show their inhumanity. Satyagraha is definitely at the heart of the nonviolent demand for the restoration of the Supreme Court deposed on Nov. 3, 2007 by Pervez Musharraf and specifically Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on March 9, 2007.

Much has happened since then. Benazir Bhutto's return in October 2007 and her assassination in December 2007. The elections in February 2008 brought to power a new coalition of Pakistan People's Party to power with the swashbuckling widow Zardari taking over as President. A basic campaign promise was to solve the judicial crisis and reinstate the Supreme Court of '07.

None of the promises have been kept. Instead, the PPP regime has used the Dogar Supreme Court (cronies put in place by Musharraf) to throw out the opponent political party PML-N out of power in Punjab and restrict Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif from electoral politics.

The Long March of March 12, 2009, leading up to a sit-in at the capital on March 16th, is the only way that the people of Pakistan can produce pressure on the civilian and military regime to pay attention to justice, to accountability and to democracy.

What shouldn't escape anyone's attention is that _THIS_ is what democratic, nonviolent, resistance looks like. This is fine. This is normal. This is what we should expect in a society where the government and the people are out of step. This is not a coup, nor the '79 revolution.

The Zardari regime has reacted as all cornered governments do: mass arrests, police violence on crowds, implementation of laws against critical speech etc.

The best place to follow developments is on Twitter. You should also follow the liveblog on Teeth Maestro. You should also look over this excellent background piece by Madiha Tahir at APP. You should read Sahar Shafqat's op-ed.

[x-posted on CM] Read more on this article...

Reading Swat

Increasingly, I am convinced that the discourse on Pakistan within the United States needs some major intervention. My fear, or maybe paranoia, is that Pakistan is en-route to be declared "mentally incapacitated" by United States aka "failed state". The impact of such a declaration (whether stated or not) would be that US will need to put a "care-taker" in charge of the mess. The rising frequency of the drone attacks, the extension of missile strikes, the troop "surge" in Afghanistan read as concrete steps towards a radically intrusive strategy towards Pakistan. I will have more to say on this. But I wanted, for the moment to simply bring to your attention some recent writings on Swat.



1. Jackie Northam, "Pakistan Deal With Taliban Draws Criticis", All Things Considered, Feb 17, 2009.
Perhaps the worst of all recent pieces - NPR could only find 1. CIA Station Chief, 1. State Department Official and 1. NSC Official to declare that the Swat deal basically meant that Afghanistani Taliban have basically invaded and taken over Swat and that this means the Pakistani army is ridiculously weak. Between the lines, you should understand that the nukes are about to fall into the Taliban hands. Also al-Qaeda. Thank you, NPR.

2. The New York Times managed to get their reporters to Pakistan. Their write up, Pakistan Makes a Taliban Truce, Creating a Haven at least took the time to point out:

Many of the poor who have stayed in Swat, which until the late 1960s was ruled by a prince, were calling for the Shariah courts as a way of achieving quick justice and dispensing with the long delays and corruption of the civil courts. The authorities in the North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, argued that the Shariah courts were not the same as strict Islamic law. The new laws, for instance, would not ban education of females or impose other strict tenets espoused by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Leaving aside what "strict Islamic law" even means (and how it compares to the California "Three Strikes" law), I was relieved that Jane Perlez sought to give some sense of the history of the region. Though this whole "prince" bit could have been used to provide a quick word on Swat's constitutional relationship to Pakistan. The nice thing about the piece was that it actually quoted experts in Pakistan (such as Shuja Nawaz) even though the generic spin remained the same ("Theeeeere Here!")
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Swat, Now

Yesterday's announcement that Zardari has made a deal with the TNSM and installed "Islamic government" in Swat is all over the news. I talked, briefly, with Jerome McDonald of Worldview today. My main point was that there exists a history - 1994, 1999, 2007 - of efforts to install a Shari-Nizam-e-Adl (Islamic Order of Justice) in Swat region. You can check my previous post on Swat to get a sense of this history, Akond of Swat.

More importantly, an absolutely must-read is historian Sultan-i-Rome's paper, Swat: A Critical Analysis [pdf], IPCS Research Paper, January 2009. The paper provides a succinct historical and political overview and also introduces some of the key players. Must read.

Sultan-i-Rome is one of the major, if not the, historian of Swat valley. His monograph, Swat State, 1915-1969: From Genesis to Merger: An Analysis of Political, Administrative, Socio-Political, and Economic Development is key to building a historical overview of the crisis facing the state of Pakistan. I had thought of writing a proper review of the latter, but time slipped away. I will try and do it.

[x-posted from CM] Read more on this article...

Strangers in the Night

Yesterday, at her Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Clinton faced a number of questions about Pakistan and Afghanistan. Her most detailed conversation was with Senator Kerry - who will head the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Kerry spoke about his trip to South Asia, in the immediate aftermath of Mumbai attacks.

We do not live there. We don’t live in the community, in a hamlet, in a small town, pocket, whatever you want to call it. And so we’re not there often at night. They are. And the night often rules with the insurgencies.

It is a profoundly illuminating statement. The interplay of light and dark, day and night. The reference to hamlets and pockets. Insurgency - the lexical contribution of the Iraq War which continues to hold sway. They live there. We don’t. That language of globalization which rules the pages of Wall Street Journal and New York Times is distinctly absent. These are not interconnected communities that stretch across national borders, these are inwardly focused, pre-modern histories. To further explain, Senator Kerry mentioned that he has been doing a lot of reading recently - readings that impressed upon him the importance of “tribalism”, "We honored tribalism when we dealt with the Northern Alliance and initially went in to Afghanistan. We really haven’t adequately since." He recommended that Senator Clinton read Rory Stewart’s travelogue of walking across Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Places in Between. And also Janet Wallach’s biography of Gertrude Bell entitled Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Advisor to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia. Let that title wash all over you. Luxuriate in it.

Senator Clinton responded warmly to Kerry’s literary suggestions.

Sitting here today, when I think about my trips to Afghanistan, my flying over that terrain, my awareness of the history going back to Alexander the Great and certainly, the imperial British military and Rudyard Kipling’s memorable poems about Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, which put in more troops than we’re thinking about putting in — I mean, it calls for a large doze of humility about what it is we are trying to accomplish.

The historian in me is fascinated by these teleologies at display: Alexander to the British to the Soviets to US. A timelime of invaders and conquerors who, I assume, only abided the day, and not the night. There is the unapologetic emphasis on the romantic and the Orientalist - a vocabulary of time and space that does not mesh, at all, with our own. I do not know if our Senators realized that this is also, explicitly, a teleology of failed imperial enterprises. Not the precedent, I am sure, they'd want to invoke.

But the tribalism espoused by Senator Kerry is also part of this now-defunct mode. It stands for those "others" every colonial power has ever imagined into being. To fight their wars. The burden of tribalism is the burden of violence on colonial subjects – be they the Hindus and Muslims under British colonial rule in the early decades of the twentieth century, or the Sunnis and Shias in Baghdad under the surge. The colonial histories are written in that particular language of violence. These are the violent colonial solutions to political problems, to be exact.

II.

Reading the US Press, Senator Kerry and Clinton, on Pakistan is to know that Pakistan does not exist as a coherent nation-state. It seems to comprise of undifferentiated security actors (Musharraf/Kayani, Karzai, Northern Alliance, Taliban, Pakistan military, ISI) operating in a volatile soup. It is constantly claimed that the state - whether civil or military - does not control its own western and south-western territories. A claim that enables US to conduct drone attacks, as well as military incursions into the country. In the first seven months of 2008, there were five drone strikes inside Pakistan. Since August, there have been over thirty. Some as deep as 25 miles into Pakistani territory and deadly - killing 50 people in four attacks in September, alone.

But Pakistan does have a history as a nation-state, in fact. And it is not the history of Alexander’s arrival to the Indus. Let me give you a brief recount. From 1999 - 2008, we supported the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf - he was the devil we knew and liked. From 2002-2008, the same devil presided as vast swathes of his country converted into a war-zone. In 2005, to suppress the proto-nationalist uprising in Baluchistan, he used the same tactics that were being practiced across the border in Afghanistan: bombing over civilian enclaves, missile assassinations, heavy military foot-print. As he methodically destroyed the claimants for an engaged and equal partnership for Baluchistan in the federal regime, he created the political space for the emergence of new actors - the Mehsud tribe in Waziristan. As a result Pakistan, by the end of 2008, faces several civil wars - in the north-west, it faces the development of self-declared taliban regime which is hoping to enforce Shari’a. In the south-west, it faces the proliferation of both proto-nationalist and terrorist groups. In the city of Karachi, there is the systematic effort to expel Afghan/Pakhtun immigrants by the ethnic party, MQM.

Previously, we supported two other decade long military dictatorships, General Zia ul-Haq (1977-1988) during whose tenure we fought our hot Cold War in Afghanistan and during whose tenure we excused a rampant policy of Sunnification and militarization. And Field Marshal Ayub Khan (1958-1969) whose tenure saw the effective killing of democratic institutions and the highlighting of Kashmir as the central issue of Pakistan. We supported all three men. They came to our capital, spoke to the Congress, enjoyed days and nights as our esteemed friends. Overall, in the 61 years of existence, we supported 30 plus years of military rule in Pakistan. Let me restate this: The United States has consistently supported the elimination of any democratic development in Pakistan since 1947. During the civilian administrations, we routinely ignored Pakistan or imposed sanctions. If Pakistan lacks coherence as a nation-state to Senator Kerry and Clinton, they can look to these specific histories for explanation. Alexander the Great cannot help them.

III.

In the aftermath of Mumbai attacks, the world has found yet another reason to doubt the sustainability of Pakistan, doubt the intentions of the people and the State, doubt their commitment to being a peaceful global citizens. These doubts, those proclamations, some of the harsh denouncements of the Indian media were heard loudly and clearly across Pakistan. The bellicosity - apparent even in the flyer for this panel - generated its own predictable response. The military, which had finally lost all credence, is slowly coming back in business. It is the protector. It is the sustainer of the national myths.


The Pakistanis are also attuned to the silences. They note that in the teleology of modern terror - NYC, Madrid, London, and now Mumbai - there is no mention of Lahore and Islamabad. The September 20th blast at the Marriott, Islamabad is a clear precursor to the tragedy at Taj, Mumbai. It, too, was a site where the local elite gathered for daily mingling. It, too, catered to the foreign visitors. It, too, was a sign of Pakistan's growing economy. Yet, while NYC and Mumbai are forever linked, the victims of Islamabad and Lahore find themselves on the other side of history.

The Obama administration will need to stop reading Rudyard Kipling and start reading even the wide-circulation daily Urdu and English press from Pakistan. It is quite easy, they are all online. It will have to know Pakistan’s hopes lie with civilian institutions, civic bodies which protect women and minorities, elementary and secondary education for all, strengthening the judiciary, invoking land reform. It will have to know that the military is the largest land-owning entity, one of the biggest business entity and the greatest consumer of US AID. The Obama administration needs to focus on the people of Pakistan, in the PRESENT and not in some distant past surrounded in unknown terrain, if it hopes to combat escalating extremism in the region. Collectively, there are over 200 million inhabitants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are mega-cities like Karachi with populations over 19 million. We are not dealing with hamlets and pockets. And the global context is certainly clear to the terrorists in Mumbai. In the violence they spread, over three days, and their targets and their statements, they drew upon this language of political violence. Nariman house to Gaza, Kashmir to Taj Hotel are not teleologies of tribalism and we make a grave error if we read them wrongly.


Ironically, 2008 began with one of the greatest moments in the history of this nation. After a year-long civic protest, led by the Lawyers Movement, the people of Pakistan democratically voted out this military dictator. The February elections in Pakistan were a resounding dismissal of a decade of military dominance, as well as the religious parties. Yet, we failed to engage with this flowering of democracy. And we need to engage with the civilian government of Zardari – however flawed that particular person is.

There are no military solutions to a decades old political problem. Because military solutions mandate that the language of political violence be the only language left (be it in Kashmir or Islamabad or Mumbai).

x-posted at Chapati Mystery Read more on this article...

Pakistanis Hold Vigil for Mumbai Victims

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: progpak@gmail.com / 917.922.9836


Pakistanis Hold Vigil for Mumbai Victims
Call Upon India and Pakistan to Work Towards Peace

When: Saturday, December 13th, 4:00 pm
Where: Union Square NORTH (16th Street) – across the street from Barnes and Noble

(New York, December 8, 2008) - Action for a Progressive Pakistan (APP) condemns the violence of Nov 26th which claimed the lives of over 180 people in Mumbai, and expresses solidarity with the people of India. The group calls upon the democratically elected governments of India and Pakistan to work together in bringing the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice.

APP will hold a vigil this Saturday, December 13th at 4pm in Union Square to express sorrow at the loss of innocent life and call for peace and stability in the region. It demands that measured and deliberate steps be taken to ensure the safety and security of all the citizens of India and Pakistan, who remain the true targets of these extreme agendas. The group also calls upon the governments of India and Pakistan to work for a peaceful resolution of the current crisis, and asks that the world community support the two countries in this endeavor.

"The people of Pakistan stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in India because we also bear deeply the scars of terrorism," said Assistant Professor of Sociology Saadia Toor who’s also a founding member of APP. In 2007 alone, 1500 people were killed in terror attacks in Pakistan. This year, forty people were killed and as many as 350 injured including school children when bombs destroyed a federal government building in the heart of Lahore on March 11th. Another fifty were killed by a terror attack on the Islamabad Marriott hotel in September. These acts of violence, whether in India or Pakistan, are a backlash to the global War on Terror by non-state forces seeking to destabilize the region and derail long-overdue peace initiatives being pursued by the two countries.

The only defense against terrorism is a prosperous democracy. Pakistan has just elected its first civilian government in over a decade after a protracted struggle against the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. The civilian government has already taken several key steps towards de-militarizing the domestic political sphere, and has made overtures towards trying to solve the issue of Kashmir. The civilian regime has managed to impose some limitations on the military but it must do more. To ensure peace and security in the region, the world community must support Pakistan's democratic institutions. This support must include development assistance geared towards addressing the needs of Pakistan's poor. APP calls for an immediate end to US airstrikes inside Pakistan's borders, as they are contributing greatly to the destabilization of the region and causing hardships for innocent civilians.

Action for a Progressive Pakistan stands with the people of South Asia in their struggle for peace in the region.The group, comprised of concerned Pakistani professionals and academics, is committed to ensuring peace, democracy and development in South Asia.

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A.Q. Khan Speaks

Pakistan's nuclear godfather has suddenly emerged from seclusion (involuntary) and penned a risible column for the Daily Jang. It is notable, this column, for his self-aggrandizing, self-importance, and self-service. Keeping to the tradition, he sprinkles the column with bits of Urdu poetry (though not the tired old morsels), and frames himself as a "just a worker". And then he launches into a tirade against Musharraf, as well as a glorification of the Bhutto family. I thought that the greater English-speaking world would want a peek into the mind of A. Q. Khan, so I translated it. Enjoy:

'Til The Dawn
- Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan

Why ask me the cause of my silence?
There must be some reason why I remain quiet

In 1961, I was about to embark, for higher education, to the most acclaimed technical university in Berlin. I thought that I should inform the Pakistani public, especially the students, about the conditions in Germany. In those days, the office of the Daily Jang was on Karachi Business Road. During college (D. J. Sindh Goverment Science College), I would routinely walk by the office. So I went in to meet Mir Khalil al-Rahman Sahib and seek his advice. At that time, Taki Sahib was the Editor and he immediately arranged for me to meet Mir Sahib. I had heard of him, and now I knew him in person. Mir Sahib was a handsome, tall man with a commanding personality and his intelligence was reflected in his broad forehead. He met me with great affection. He was very keen on my idea and told me to certainly keep the readers of Jang informed from Berlin. And thus, I left for Germany. Berlin, in those days, was the playing field for the political conflict between East and West. Only ten days earlier, East Berlin (i.e. the Eastern Communist Germany) had erected the Wall. Innumerable Germans were running from the Communists towards West Berlin and many were dying from the bullets of VOPOS, ie the East Berlin militia. In the skies, the Russian Mig fighters were daily breaking the sound barriers over the city. My hostel was roughly fifteen minutes away from the Brandenburg Gate, and near the Victory Column.

From there, I began to send reports to Daily Jang under the heading "Letters from Berlin" - which were regularly published. This continued for two years. In the pages of Jang I predicted that the mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, would one day become the Chcancellor of Germany. And indeed, in a few years, he did. In late 1963, I shifted from Berlin to the famous technical university in Holland and stopped writing "Letters from Berlin".

Due to current affairs, I though, why not indulge my disposition, and write once again on the important matters of the country. I have always held a fondness for writing, and if there is anything important, I do write. The habit is ...
I cannot break this pagan habit...

Which is not to say that the public remains unaware of my thoughts and my emotions:
I sit quietly, but it appears
as if the whole world is telling my story

No doubt, whenever someone begins to write for the newspapers, the public tries to decipher the intent or the cause:
You may or may not be suspicious, but we
Just gain comfort from telling our painful story

We all know that Good and Evil will always battle in this world. Almighty Allah has warned us of this repeatedly in the Qur'an and declared, "Allah, protect me from the evil of the evil doers and the oppressors". Some selfish and oppressive people, purely for the sake of their self-interest, trample the rights of the people under their feet. Drunk with power, they even, God forbid, deny the existence of God and his Might. The example of Musharraf is in front of you:
In every age, humans have done evil
In every age, humans have tried to become gods

But, God forbid, the haughtiness of being a god does not make one a god. Even if such people forget entirely about God:
The oppressors now think
As if there is no god left in the world

Our bureaucracy and sycophants play a large role in making these false gods into God. Musharraf is F.A. pass (high-school equivalent), a qualification which we use to employ attendants. By a mistaken promotion, he became our commander-in-chief. It nauseated us to see such a dim-wit lecture the highly educated and the experts on economics, education, foreign policy, commerce and industry. And they would bow in front of him and wag their heads and exclaim at his intelligence. The way of an intelligent ruler (or Dictator) is that he doesn't choose his companions on the basis of their flattery but on the basis of their expertise and their knowledge; he listens to their advice; and gives them all the help for the completion of important projects. There was this rumor going around about Musharraf that he complains to his Army friends, "I am saddened to see that if uneducated people cannot understand my arguments, it is ok, but even educated people cannot follow me." The reason is obvious. The ability to pull the trigger of a gun and the ability to make an intelligent statement are clearly different.

Selfish and opportunist people mix heaven and earth in false praise of such rulers, and make them into Plato. These are the people, who because of such actions, weaken the foundations of the country. These people operate like Hitler and his minister of propoganda, and say so many falsehoods that the ruler begins to believe them to be true and begins to consider himself intelligent. The results appear in the destruction of the country. Such was a lie spoken by Mujib ur-Rahman that the money derived from Jute sales, West Pakistan is paving streets with gold in Karachi. It was such a big lie, it was immediately accepted.

I returned to Pakistan in the fourth week of December. This is in 1975, i.e. nearly 33 years ago. I had returned at the request of Bhutto Sahib. Along with my wife and two daughters (aged 7 and 51/2 years), I had intended to return on January 15th. At the sincere request of Bhutto, and for the benefit of the country, I did not hesitate for even a moment: I left the best career, big income, and excellent facilities and stayed behind. I did not receive first salary, 3,000 ruppees monthly, until six months later. And no other compensation from the state:
Strange is God's grant to the exalted ones
Strange are these people, who bear sorrows but keep their hearts alive

Some of the most prominent expert scientists of the country spread falsehoods in the ears of Bhutto Sahib and Ghulam Ishaq Sahib that this young ruffian is here to make a fool out of you. He will enjoy himself for a few days and them take his leave. They explained the intricacies of the technology and the difficulties and that only three developed countries of the world, ie Holland, Germany and England, have the necessary expertise - an expertise they gained after 20 years of hard work and after the expenditure of nearly 2 billion dollars. Bhutto Sahib and Ghlam Ishaq Khan Sahib possessed the power to see the hidden truths. They had no doubts over my capacity for the truth and knew that I had not said a false word to them. Even though some people told me to declare that we will have an atomic bomb in two or three years.

I refused to tell a lie. They may have used this lie as a basis of their foreign policy and been defeated, as a result. And then some famous scientists decided that they could put some two or three thousand tons of explosive materials in some cave and then explode it and Bhutto Sahib will be satisfied and his obsession will be over. Listen. If politicians tell lies, than it is their profession and they can, without any shame, practice their profession in front of the general simple-minded public. But it is incumbent on us scientists and engineers to always keep our profession and our conscious in mind, and speak only the truth. I have always operated on this principle and never told a lie:
Truthful I am, in my word, O Ghalib God is my witness
I tell the truth when I say, I don't lie

The jist is that with the help of my colleagues, I made the impossible, possible. In only eight short years, and for a minuscule cost, made this depressed nation into a nuclear power. Bhutto Sahib, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and General Zia ul-Haq helped without fear and without regret. Any task undertaken with good intentions and with true hard work, is rewarded by Allah. With the help of Honorable Benazir Bhutto, this country became a missile power. At my request, she granted me permission to seek missile technology from China and North Korea and install it here. In this General Mirza Aslam Beg and General Abdul Wahid Kakar played key roles. It is worth thinking that even as countless selfish, bribery-prone, traitors were busy tearing the country apart like hungry wolves, there remained some honest, pious, and skilled people who sacrificed their lives to keep this country on the slow path of progress. With the help of such people, by God's Will, we will make our country into a developed, welfare-based Islamic state.

I have spend the majority of my life, nearly all of my life. When I look back at my life, it is with peace and contentment, that I did my utmost to serve my dear country. I did not do any favors for my country. Instead, it is this nation that granted me all these favors, which I tried to pay back - piece by piece. I gained higher education and technical excellence in Europe for 15 years and I wanted to use that to serve the country in important matters. In 1999, I proposed that we launch a satellite but this high-school pass dictator did not approve my request. Still, I am proud of my service to my country. In addition to providing it with nuclear, and missile, power, I founded countless educational and welfare organizations. From Khyber to Gawadar, the love that exists in people's hearts is my greatest prize. One despicable, traitorous foreign agent donned the costume of Presidency and tried to harm me, but he failed in his dirty deed. Instead he, himself, was evicted from the Presidential house in disgrace. And now this self-styled Commando cannot even set a foot in the street of this country. The public will tear him into little pieces and feed him to the eagles. My relationship is with the 170 million people, and it will always remain. No one can stop me from serving this country. We have, in our front, the golden examples of the sacrifices of Honorable Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. They gave their lives but did not sell their country and became living legends. This is the reason that in "'Til the Dawn", I will reveal my thoughts, now and then:
The flame burns in every light, 'til the dawn

x-posted at CM Read more on this article...

Agency

Pakistan is in dire straits. It is a nation at a crossroads. Extremism is around the corner. The politicians are corrupt. The nukes could end up in the hands of bin Laden.

Pakistan is in dire straits. Its people demand accountability. Those who claim to protect it and make it prosperous seem busy keeping themselves in power. There is no hope for change since the people have no power. They are stuck under a dictator. If the citizens of Pakistan are to be real agents of change, they need a way forward. They need democracy.

In March of 2007, when lawyers came out on the streets, there were only two available narratives. Those who held a results-based approach argued that Musharraf's dictatorial regime was the best case scenario, the lesser of the two evils. The evil being, of course, justice, accountability and democracy. They raised the specter of rampant jihadism spreading through the populations. They pointed towards the economic development that had occurred on Musharraf's watch. They warned that Pakistan had some amazingly corrupt politicians. And that US needed a stable ally, a dependable ally, in our war against terror(ism).

Then there were those of us who trusted the people of Pakistan. We knew that jihadism is not some air-borne virus that people can contract by simply inhaling. We knew that it wasn't Musharraf who had brought about economic development but the people themselves. We knew that politicians are corrupt everywhere - including the US - so why the exception of dictator for Pakistan? We knew that a partnership can only be among equals. And the will of the people needed to be heard.

Ah. But this so-called Lawyer's Movement was a big sham, we were told. These are just elites. Where are the "people"? Why can't the Lawyers bring out the masses? Why do they insist on democracy and justice when the people are more concerned with food and security.

Well. Pakistan just had a slow-burning, people-powered, secular revolution and they forced a sitting dictator - who had the complete confidence and support of the only superpower in the world - out. Peacefully. Without any bloodshed. Without any crazy mullah grabbing the nukes and blowing up the world. Without inflation hitting 10,000,000%. Without any riots. With suicide bombings in Lahore. With two regions embroiled in near civil-war. With the same corrupt politicians in charge. With the unshakeable faith, the belief, that they deserved justice. That they deserved the right to have the power to act. That they were citizens of their country, not keeps.

This is unprecedented. This is historic. This is a momentous time in the history of this nation. It has successfully forced accountability - through peaceful and legal means - on its leaders. The people of Pakistan - lawyers and all - have exercised their agency.

And like every other such exercise - be it the election of 2000 or the upcoming election of 2008 in the US - the outcome is up in the air. And hence, the hope is not in the fate of this particular dictator, it is in the accountability to the Pakistani publics, of their representative. If we really want a secure ally in Pakistan, we would do our best to strengthen the people of Pakistan.

PS. If you are curious about Musharraf's speech, I live-blogged it. Well, most of it.


PPS. If you have further curiosity, you can hear me on Chicago's excellent Worldview with Jerome McDonnell. Read more on this article...

Coming to a Boil

My apologies for the long silence.

Since we last talked, things in Pakistan have been moving slowly towards that ultimate showdown. The current PM, Gilani, has proven to be a stand-in for the real holder of PPP power - Asif Zardari. Nawaz Sharif will re-join the Parliament soon enough. He has moved significantly towards advocating reinstatement of the Judges, immediate resignation and military trial for Pervez Musharraf. The Lawyer's Movement seems to have faltered - riven with in-fighting and lack of focus. The Long March ended with more frustration and confusion than the emancipation that was planned.

But dwarfing all of that, is the war on Pakistan's borders between the Talibans (why bother with denoting the Afghan and Pakistan varieties?) and the military for the control of north west regions. Baitullah Mehsud had long declared war and the Pak Army has finally moved in. The various agreements are null and voided. The air strikes have started and the radio stations are being shut down.

In the meantime, the country is gripped with the worst Electricity shortage in a long while. Load-Shedding (shutting down grids for relief from usage) is at the highest levels since the 80s. Coupled with the intense heat, this has led to hundreds of deaths from heat across the nation. Foodstuff is still at exorbitant prices.

There is little that I can add that you have not read from recent newspaper coverage. Where does this end? I don't know. Doesn't seem to be heading to anywhere wholesome, in any case.

I have somewhat of a thought-piece on some related issues over at my blog, The Third Migration that some readers might be interested in. Read more on this article...

Pakistan Elections

Just a few quick thoughts.


One: Musharraf got voted out everywhere. PML-Q - the "King's party" was the only party that ran a campaign on their "record" and its major figures, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Sheikh Rashid, Wasi Zafar etc., were main characters in the Musharraf soap-operatic democracy. They are all voted out on the national scene. I think that the recent economic pains - lack of flour in the market, rising costs of water and electricity - had a lot to do with PLM-Q's defeat.

Two: PPP is the only national party in the country. It won seats in every state. No other party won was able to do that. Much of that has to do with the after-shocks of Benazir Bhutto's assassination but it is also a reflection of how restrictive the ethnic or regional based agendas the rest of the parties have.

Three: No great surprise, the Islamist parties lost - and lost heavily. In the northwestern regions, they lost to the secular, center-left Awami National Party (ANP) by huge margins. This should be a clear sign to the US policy makers that their understanding for Pakistan's possible futures is not the reductive and wrong, Musharraf or Mullah.

I appeared on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview this morning for a brief chat. I think our blog audience may also be interested in hearing my initial thoughts.

Juan Cole has already put up a terrific post and I am hoping we can hear from Barney Rubin soon.



Read more on this article...

Tariq Azizuddin

Tariq Azizuddin, the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, has gone missing, presumably kidnapped by the Taliban and held hostage for a prisoner exchange with captured leader Mullah Mansoor Dadullah. However, the Taliban have also issued denials in the Urdu press. The situation is far from clear. Karzai and Musharraf are in contact. For all that that is worth.

Ambassador Azizuddin was in a car traveling towards the Torkham border.

Pakistan Foreign Office has coordinated a jirga (a gathering of local tribal chiefs and luminaries) to help negotiate for Ambasador Azizuddin's return.

We certainly hope he is reunited safely and soon with his family. Read more on this article...

Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007

Benazir Bhutto was killed at a PPP rally in Rawalpindi. The rally, with foolproof security was held at Liaqut Bagh - a site which had already seen the assassination of another Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqut Ali Khan.

There were earlier reports of security threats on her rally - similar reports were issued before the suicide attack on her in October.

In the nation whose history is dotted by military coups, assassinations and hangings of public figures, this is surely the bloodiest stain. She titled her autobiography, the Daughter of Destiny - but surely she deserved a fate other than the destiny of her father and Liaqut Ali Khan. It is truly a tragedy and a revelation of the chaos gripping the nation.

aftermath: Riots are being reported in various cities. Rawalpindi is in chaos. Cable and cell phone services has been suspended in most of the country. Rumors are flying of curfews. No word from Musharraf, yet. Getty Images' collection of photos taken at the rally by Aamir Qureshi. Read more on this article...

Civilian Rule

Pervez Musharraf became a civilian* today. The elections are scheduled and candidates across the country are filing their candidacy papers - in great numbers, especially in the troubled regions. This despite great debate across the two major political parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz on whether to participate or boycott the elections. Their hesitance is understandable. Pervez Musharraf, as a civilian President will rule under the 1973 Constitution which has the oft-used Eighth Amendment to the Article 58, enacted by the last dictator Zia ul Haq in 1985. The Amendment grants the President the power to "dissolve the National Assembly where, in his opinion,…the Government of the Federation cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and appeal to the electorate is necessary". The amendment was used first by Zia ul Haq against the civilian government of Muhammad Khan Junejo, then by Ghulam Ishaq Khan against Benazir Bhutto, then by Ghulam Ishaq Khan against Nawaz Sharif and again by Farooq Leghari against Benazir Bhutto. The last Nawaz Sharif government nullified this power of the President by passing the Thirteenth Amendment Act in 1997. In 2002, under the Legal Framework Order, General Musharraf fixed it right back.

Basically even if these elections take place as scheduled, even if all the political parties participate, even if they are fair, open and untampered elections (to whatever extent possible) ... President Pervez Musharraf can, at his will, dismiss the elected government when he pleases. Historians predicting the future need only point to the past.

Nawaz Sharif's touted return (after his touted unceremonious departure) has caught the attention of those who deem it necessary to find hidden links. It is pretty straightforward: Nawaz Sharif is the protogé of Zia ul Haq and a close intimate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He comes here because they cleared the way with Pervez Musharraf. He does not enjoy a broad support - his party has many other rivals for leadership including his brother, Shahbaz Sharif. Although, he is also not touched by the obvious stain of being a US-engineered candidate. So maybe that helps?

*Those curious about his successor to the military throne, General Kiyani should consult this profile. I venture that he is more in the mold of General Aslam Beg than Zia ul Haq or Pervez Musharraf. It would be interesting to see if he continues his support of Musharraf - the civilian. Read more on this article...

The Akond of Swat

Who or why, or which, or what, is Maulana Fazlullah of Swat? Recent headlines from Pakistan have been grim - pitched battles with many reports of casualties and mass migration of civilians from the conflict region. Yet, the foreign media hasn’t really focused on Maulana Fazlullah - perhaps thinking that the story of “Talibanization” covers this particular mullah just as well as it does any other (Baitullah Mehsud, in Waziristan, is slowly getting some attention, though). At a cursory glance, it all does blend in. The overall deterioration in the NWFP (North Western Frontier Province) and the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) areas in recent years - specifically in Waziristan, the Malakand Agency regions, Dir, Bajaur, Swat and areas around Peshawar - is often called “Talibanization” and is often pegged to the aftermath of the Afghanistan war of 2001. There is, though, a longer history that offers some additional venues of thought. At the very least, it tells us to pay attention to the local even as we highlight transnational movements like the Taliban.

Shah Ismail (1789-1831) and Sayyid Ahmed Barelvi (1786-1831), specifically, are pivotal figures in the memory and history of Swat.¹ In the late 1820s, they waged a religious war against Ranjit Singh’s forces for the control of Peshawar. They succeeded briefly, declared themselves an emirate where the creed of Muhammad held sway, and were swept away in 1831 - killed in battle. Shah Ismail and Sayyid Ahmed, though defeated, emerged as an integral part of the narrative of anti-imperialism. But not simply for their militant struggle for the establishment of an Islamic polity, they came to represent a profound connection to the revivalist thought of nineteenth century Muslims in India. Shah Ismail was the grandson of Shah Waliullah - the progenitor of the deobandis, who have continued to enjoy a wide following in NWFP. I know that it is more fashionable nowadays to connect Shah Waliullah to Abdul Wahhab and build an argument about some unitary “fundamentalist” strain of Islamic thought - but, it is a wrong notion. There are crucial difference, not only in history but in the theological arguments underlining deobandi and wahabbi ideologies of revivalist Islam. The deobandi, in particular, combined the idea of a polity based on Islamic Shar’ia and free from foreign influences with a more quixotic attempts to “migrate” or “settle” a Caliphate in Afghanistan. (The migration of thousands of Muslims to Afghanistan in 1920 needs recent historical attention.)

The mountainous regions between Kabul and Peshawar and across Baluchistan and Gilgit remained an odd absence in the centralizing ideology of Pakistan. Partly it was due to the linguistic and ethnic communities that stretched beyond the nation-state. Partly it was a function of the lack of political legitimacy for any federal government in the region. The Pakistani State, created with unequal halves of East and West Pakistan, proved unequal to the task of imagining itself. In 1971, Bangladesh emerged out of the political chaos and opportunism and military destruction wrought by West Pakistani armies. In 1972, Pakistan embarked on a new path to re-affirm itself. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir Bhutto, was the chief architect of a program of Islamization to glue together the rest of Pakistan. He looked towards the Pan-Islamic movement to position Pakistan as an international entity that wasn’t simply a footnote in the red hot Cold War. Bhutto’s Islamization efforts continued under Zia ul Haq, who overthrew Bhutto in 1977. Except, that under Zia ul Haq, they became the Sunnification efforts to counter his (and Saudi) fears of a Shi’a revolution sweeping out of Iran and across the Muslim world. The frontier, as always, of these efforts was the NWFP. It is around this moment that the Soviet-Afghan war overshadows all local narratives but I would like to put in a call to study the movement of Pashtun men out of NWFP territories and into the urban centers of Karachi and Lahore - and further to Riyadh and Doha - for economic reasons. We are sorely lacking scholarship that can trace these movements back to the origins where petro-dollars (from doing labor in the Gulf States) transformed these small communities. (It is one sad casualty of our current myopia that we are interested only in the monolithic account of Soviet-Afghan war and the “Talibanization” and continue to stress “top-down” factors in our analysis.)

In November 1994, the year old government of Benazir Bhutto faced a crisis in NWFP. Some of the Pashtun tribal chiefs, led by a Maulana Sufi Muhammad proclaimed that Shari’a needed to be enforced in NWFP. His movement, the Tehrik Nifaz-i Shariat Muhammadi (Movement for the Establishment of the Path of Muhammad), enjoyed wide-spread support. He was shutting down airports and businesses and making life hard for the PPP. So, she cut a deal. It may be shocking to remember that this same Benazir Bhutto who is now proclaiming herself as the Sole Secular Leader was none too shy about cutting deals where it suited her. The Musharraf regime also turned to TNSM and Maulana Sufi Muhammad to try and operate in the Swat region. But, the Bajaur strike and the Lal Masjid crisis ended their partnership. Maulana Sufi Muhammad is under arrest but Musharraf is actively trying to broker another deal.

The reason is Maulana Fazlullah and his declaration of open hostility against the Pakistan military. Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Muhammad and has organized his own army called Shaheen Commandos. He is operating in and around Matta and openly calling themselves the Taliban. He is young - 30 or 32 - and comes from Imam Dheri area in Swat. Around a year or so ago, as the Imam of the seminary in Imam Dheri, he established an FM radio channel in the area to deliver sermons and became a local celebrity.² After the Lal Masjid crisis, he declared jihad on the state of Pakistan. His Shaheen Commandos now control Matta. And the fight is slowly reaching the capital.

This is certainly a complex and deeply troubling development for the state of Pakistan. The rise of local militias and the oppressive reaction by the military was certainly a contributing factor in the secession of East Pakistan. And a similar pattern is clear in Baluchistan. Just two days ago, Mir Balach Khan Marri was killed - something that is sure to have wide repercussions for thatseparatist movement.

So to wrap it up: separatist religious movement in Swat, separatist nationalist movement in Baluchistan and a separate Musharraf from his dictatorship movement in the rest of the country. Things can only get better, no?

———

1. See, for example, http://ghazwah-urdu.sitesled.com/Articals/Jihad/Qafla/11.htm [↩]
2. FM radio channels have proliferated in the past 3 years as the key means of transmission of ideas and information. They are very cheap to set up, mobile and can usually transmit up to 80 miles. No militant is without one. [↩]

Read more on this article...

The Not Yet Nation

Several senior administration officials said that with each day that passed, more administration officials were coming around to the belief that General Musharraf’s days in power were numbered and that the United States should begin considering contingency plans, including reaching out to Pakistan’s generals. NYT, U.S. Is Looking Past Musharraf in Case He Falls, Nov 15, 2007.

I have argued, for a while and to earlier criticisms, that the American support for Pervez Musharraf is wrong-headed - not just on ideological terms (our self-proclaimed call for Freedom's March Across the Muslim World) but also in the strategic terms (our efforts to eliminate al-Qaeda and counter extremist ideologies in Western Asia).

The support for Musharraf on ideological terms seems to me to be a rather indefensible position but people still manage to do it, including the White House. The defense hinges on the "Not Yet Thesis" - freedom is good, dictators are bad, but Pakistan is not yet ready for freedom and must depend on dictators to build civic institutions, train the electorate and, in future, bring democracy. (Which is akin to waiting for the fox to install security in the henhouse. Makes perfect sense.)

We maintain that the man we know - a benevolent dictator named Pervez Musharraf - is better than the multitudes we do not know. We fear the multitudes on two fronts. One is that we conceive of them as masses without politics - forever hostage to gross religious and ideological provocations. Masses which do not constitute a body politic or act with an interest in self-preservation or self-growth. Faced with that absence of reason, we are forced to support native royals to do the job (from Egypt to Pakistan). We justify it by stressing that we may not like these dictators but we know that if we did not have them, the masses would instantly betray us to the very forces of extremism that we seek to destroy. This ignores, of course, actual historical and political realities in those countries. Such mis-engagement means that our knowledge remains sketchy, undifferentiated and reliant on gross generalizations of the "masses". It intimately links us to the gross abuses of power that our dictators exert - with means provided by us. Second is that these masses are Muslim. This fear grounded in our history can, at best, be understood as the fear of the "Other" and, at worst, as the Lewis/Huntington model of civilizational clash. Either case, it is borne out of our inherent belief in "difference". They are not like us. They do not possess reason, etc. (Ask Dick Cheney why nuclear deterrence worked with the Soviets but cannot work with Iranians.)

The strategic case is just as nonsensical. The fight against extremism is a fight that ordinary Pakistani citizens have much more at stake in. It is their immediate freedoms that are threatened by the Talibanization of their society. It is their frustrations that are being capitalized upon by the Islamists. The historical, political and social trends have always clearly shown that the Pakistani publics predominantly prefer a moderate and open society. If we really are serious, we need to empower the Pakistani publics and not facilitate their oppression.

The conventional wisdom, however, remains against such a reading. Take Fareed Zakaria's Pakistan’s Pinstripe Revolution in Newsweek - where he feels that benevolent dictators should be cut some slack and that Pakistan needs that helping hand. But Zakaria seems to misread Pakistan's judicial and political history and, at the very least, Musharraf's entire public persona. He argues that the judicial problems of Musharraf begin in 1999 when he asked - for the first time - for the Supreme Court justices to resign and re-take their oaths of allegiance. What he fails to point out is that Musharraf was simply following in the footsteps of every dictatorial regime in Pakistan - all of whom asked the judiciary to re-take their oaths and that the judiciary acquiesced in every single case. The 'new-ness' of Pakistan's recent judicial crisis is that only recently did they decide not to rubber stamp the military regime. The causes for this break are diverse and I have outlined them elsewhere.

Zakaria makes further dubious claims: "He turned the country's strategic orientation away from the Taliban, revived the economy with real reforms, empowered women and spoke out against the pernicious influence of Islamic extremism." He turned the country away from Taliban insofar as he didn't. The Taliban continue to find solace and refuge in the northwestern province and his relationship with Karzai's regime have never gone below the boiling point. He revived the economy insofar as US poured 10 billion dollars into the Pakistani military-industrial complex since 2001. This influx of money has created the biggest land and industry holding entity in Pakistan's history - the Pakistan Army. Please look at Ayesha Siddiqa's Military, Inc. for a solid understanding of that immediate history. Empowered women insofar as he allowed the Hisba Bill to pass in NWFP and it was only the Supreme Court that stepped in to stop it. And finally, on that Islamic extremism front. I do not really think that publishing an editorial in the Washington Post about "Enlightened Moderation" qualifies as doing much if one constantly cuts deals with Islamist militants in NWFP, Swat, Quetta and Islamist parties in Islamabad.

Another recent piece, Lee Smith's Mixed Messages, in Slate is even worse. It argues not only that we should support Musharraf but that that is the only way to combat extremism. Leaving aside the Orientalist reading of history, Smith appears horribly mis-informed about Pakistan. He claims, for example, that, "The Pakistani military, as is the case with most armed forces in the Muslim world, is the citadel of the country's modernity, its most significant secular institution and protector not only of the modern nation state but the idea of the nation state itself." I don't really know what being a citadel of modernity actually means but the Pakistan Army has undergone a rigorous program of Islamization and faith-based militancy since Zia ul Haq in 1979. Whatever lingering secularism is there, belongs to the older cadre of senior staff that came into the military pre-80s. Folks like Musharraf. The main troop strength comes from rural Punjab, Baluchistan and the Northwestern province and no one is reading Karl Marx or Nietzsche, I assure you.

Therein lies the heart of our problems with making a ideological or strategic case for aligning with dictators. We trust and privilege the narratives they provide us. Musharraf, like Zia ul Haq before him, has successfully explained Pakistan and the world to us. The forces of darkness hover at the border and only the rightfully guided leader can shepherd the nation. For Musharraf the bugaboo is extremism, for Zia ul Haq it was Communism. In both cases, we pumped amazing amounts of liquid cash and military hardware and waited for the eventual victory. Some how we still act surprised when victory doesn't materialize.

The good news is that, as I watch the Democratic Presidential debate - Biden, Obama, Edwards and Richardson are all agreeing that we need democracy in Pakistan before we need to prop up Musharraf's dictatorship. Tide is shifting. The people of Pakistan may yet escape the not yet. Read more on this article...