To my children Huda, Hammad, Maha and Mira And all the children of Pakistan For whom the country needs to be reimagined Contents Introduction 1. A Resilient ‘International Migraine’? 2. Faith, Grievance and Special Purpose 3. Ideological Dysfunction 4. Islamist Rage 5. Insecurity and Jihad 6. ‘The Institution’ 7. Warriors, Not Traders 8. Avoiding the March of Folly Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Book About the Author Copyright Introduction FEW FOREIGNERS VISIT PAKISTAN, but those who do often acknowledge the kindness and generosity of most of its 210 million people. Millions of Pakistanis living and working overseas—as unskilled labour in the Middle East, cab drivers and factory workers in Europe and doctors, engineers, bankers or other professionals in North America—have a reputation for hard work and efficiency. But that does not suffice to alter 1 2 Pakistan’s description around the world as ‘dangerous’, ‘unstable’, 3 4 5 ‘terrorist incubator’, ‘fragile’, and ‘the land of the intolerant’. It is not difficult to understand the frustration of Pakistanis, both at home and in the diaspora, over the negative portrayal of their country. They are hurt by adverse comments about anything to do with Pakistan because it reflects poorly on them even though they and their friends and family lead decent, productive lives. ‘Pakistanis are a pious, warm and hospitable people,’ wrote Richard Leiby, a Washington Post reporter who spent a year and a half there, lamenting that the news from Pakistan did not reflect that. He noted, however, that the bad news about Pakistan was not untrue. In his view, ‘Just like average Americans’, the simple Pakistani people ‘pay the price of 6 their leaders’ magnificent mistakes’. The harsh fact remains, however, that scholarly and media discussion of any country focuses on its politics and policies more than on the virtues of its people. Objective analyses cannot ignore the disconcerting highlights of Pakistan’s seventy-year history: four full-fledged wars, one alleged genocide, loss of half the country’s land area in conflict, secession of the majority population, several proxy or civil wars, four direct military coups, multiple constitutions, long periods without constitutional rule, frequent religious and sectarian discord, repeated economic failures, numerous political assassinations, unremitting terrorism, continued external dependence and chronic social underdevelopment. Some political scientists and historians described Pakistan, then comprising two wings separated by one thousand miles of enemy territory, as an oddity even in its early years. It was a nation unlike most others. Instead of shared language or even history, Pakistan was founded on the basis of a common religion, under institutions created during British colonial rule. This raised questions about the viability of ignoring ethnic and linguistic diversity; the potential for conflict between sects as well as between modernist and obscurantist definitions of Islam; and the cost of maintaining conflict with India in terms of economic development. Still, soon after Independence, most journalists and scholars highlighted the hopeful aspirations of Pakistan’s leaders and scholars alongside those critical questions. The earliest books on Pakistan were written by Pakistanis, introducing their country to the world, who explained the creation of Pakistan in terms of Hindu–Muslim strife, described Pakistan’s potential as a Western ally and defined its strategic salience as well as its capacity to produce large numbers of soldiers. There were also volumes by British authors, including former civil servants, who advanced the Pakistani account. They explained what they saw as the inevitability of Partition, given the withdrawal of Britain’s ‘steadying hand’ and ‘inexorable Hindu–Muslim differences’. The martial virtues of West Pakistan’s Muslims as likely anti-communist warriors were extolled in an effort to persuade Western readers, particularly Americans, of the value of Pakistan as an ally in the years to come. This genre of introductory books included Liaquat Ali Khan’s Pakistan: The Heart of Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950); Lord Birdwood’s India and Pakistan: A Continent Decides (New York: Praeger, 1954); Ian Stephens’s Horned Moon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), and Pakistan (New York: Praeger, 1963); Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi’s The Pakistani Way of Life (New York: Heinemann, 1956) and The Struggle for Pakistan (Karachi: University of Karachi, 1965); and Aslam Siddiqui’s Pakistan Seeks Security (Karachi: Longman Greens, 1960). North American academics started studying Pakistan as a political phenomenon in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. Their studies were published under neutral-sounding titles such as Keith Callard’s Pakistan, a Political Study (London: George, Allen and Unwin, 1957), Leonard Binder’s Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961) or Khalid Bin Sayeed’s Pakistan: The Formative Phase (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). Scholarship on Pakistan took a decidedly unfavourable turn after the 1965 India–Pakistan war. Pakistan’s army was found insufficiently effective in that war and it attempted to save its reputation through media image-building. Its doctrine that ‘the defence of East Pakistan lies in West Pakistan’ was exposed as hollow. Moreover, violent protests in both wings of the country resulted in the resignation of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, who had ruled for a decade with a semblance of stability, and his replacement in 1969 by General Yahya Khan as the new military dictator. Civil war and genocide in erstwhile East Pakistan, which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, added to uncertainty about both the idea and the prospects of Pakistan. The titles of books on Pakistan from that era reflect the outsider’s scepticism. Herbert Feldman published From Crisis to Crisis (London: Oxford University Press, 1972) and The End and the Beginning (London: Oxford University Press, 1978); and L.F. Rushbrook Williams wrote Pakistan under Challenge (London: Stacey International, 1975). Lawrence Ziring’s Pakistan: The Enigma of Political Development (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980) also painted the picture of a state in disarray. One needs to look only at the cover of books about Pakistan published since the 1990s to realize that scepticism has since given way to apprehension and foreboding. Journalists and academics alike have extensively documented Pakistan’s embrace of extremist ideologies and its sponsorship of terrorist groups in the works published over the last twenty years. The newer studies reflect the concern of analytical minds about most aspects of Pakistan’s political orientation, from military intervention in politics to endemic corruption, from questions about nuclear security to its perennial difficulties in relations with its neighbours and the world’s major powers. Books published over the last two decades feature titles like Allen McGrath’s The Destruction of Pakistan’s Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), Christophe Jaffrelot’s Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation? (London: Zed Books, 2002), Owen Bennett Jones’s Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), Mary Ann Weaver’s Pakistan: Deep inside the World’s Most Frightening State (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), Pamela Constable’s Playing with Fire: Pakistan at War with Itself (New York: Random House, 2011), Bruce Riedel’s Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of Global Jihad (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), James Farwell and Joseph Duffy’s The Pakistan Cauldron: Conspiracy, Assassination and Instability (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011), Christine Fair’s Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), and Tilak Devasher’s Pakistan: Courting the Abyss (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2016). It is not just foreigners who write about Pakistan with dread and dismay; Pakistani authors seem to increasingly share the pessimism. Just browsing through the list of books by Pakistani authors brings us to Roedad Khan’s Pakistan: A Dream Gone Sour (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997), Sherbaz Khan Mazari’s A Journey to Disillusionment (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999), Hassan Abbas’s Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (New York: Routledge, 2004), Ahmed Rashid’s, Descent into Chaos (New York: Viking, 2008) and Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (New York: Viking, 2012), Imtiaz Gul’s The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier (London: Viking, 2010), and Khaled Ahmed’s Sectarian War: Pakistan’s Sunni Shia Violence and Its Links to the Middle East (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012). Even those who try hard not to be seen as too negative about Pakistan cannot avoid acknowledging that there is something wrong that needs setting right. Farzana Shaikh’s Making Sense of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) insinuates that Pakistan confuses the average person; Christophe Jaffrelot’s The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2015) speaks of Pakistan being hardy even as it is unstable; and Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard Country (London: Allan Lane, 2011) makes a similar point. Most Pakistanis would rather gloss over inconvenient truths or be content with blaming different villains for their country’s plight when confronted with unpleasant facts. Millions of Pakistanis share the patriotic sentiment ‘My country, right or wrong’ without knowing the full quote by American statesman Carl Schurz, which goes: ‘My country, right or wrong; 7 if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.’ Thus, in Pakistan, fingers are pointed at venal politicians, religious leaders and the country’s dominant military without too much inquiry into deeper reasons for the country’s malaise. Conspiracy theories about external forces and their domestic henchmen harming Pakistan are also part of the staple diet. No wonder that alongside his praise for the piety, warmth and hospitality of Pakistanis, Leiby had also noted their penchant for victimhood. ‘A narrative of persecution also runs through the psyche of Pakistan as a whole,’ he wrote. ‘The public, whipped up by the military and mullahs, is led to believe that the nation’s problems are the work of “hidden hands”. I noticed how often leaders blamed conspiracies by India, Israel and America—that is to say, Hindus, Jews and Christians—for undermining the country, rather than owning up to social and economic ills of 8 Pakistan’s own creation.’ It is also not uncommon to claim that the country would have been different if only the actors on its stage had been different. ‘If only Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had not died within a year of its creation’ is one of the most popular of such ‘if only’ contentions. Others include ‘If only Pakistan had not become embroiled in the Cold War as America’s partner since the 1950s’; ‘If only Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s populist politics had not unsettled the established post-colonial order in the 1970s’; and ‘If only General Zia-ul-Haq had not adopted Islamisation as the justification for his dictatorship during the 1980s’. But such assertions are more excuses than explanations for Pakistan’s turbulent past and uneasy present. Seventy years after its birth, Pakistan is a volatile semi-authoritarian, national security state, which has failed to run itself consistently under constitutional order or rule of law. Examining the causes of Pakistan’s persistent dysfunction, including an inquiry into its foundational idea, is more important than building a ‘positive image’ through half-truths. Martha Brill-Olcott and Marina Ottaway defined a semi-authoritarian regime as one where effective power continues to be wielded by individuals or institutions who determine the state’s interest and block effective transfer of power. ‘Semi-authoritarian countries may have a reasonably free press, for example,’ they write, adding, ‘…the regime may leave space for autonomous organizations of civil society to operate, for private 9 business to grow, and thus for new economic elites to rise.’ That Pakistan fulfils that definition almost to a T is evident. Pakistan also manifests the defining characteristics of a ‘national security state’ as identified by David R. Mares: ‘…the military institution itself is intimately involved in leading the political system and its goals are to 10 transform the country’s political and economic institutions.’ The real question, however, is why Pakistan became a semi-authoritarian, national security state and how it might evolve differently. The answer might lie in understanding Pakistani nationalism and the sentiment it has generated and sustained. Pakistan was born out of the demand in 1940 for a separate state or group of states comprising the Muslim majority provinces of British India. It was presented to the subcontinent’s Muslims variously as an idea for their protection as a community after the departure of the British or the springboard for Islam’s revival in the modern world. Either way, it was more an emotion—a response to fears stoked about the future of Islam and Muslims in a Hindu-majority democratic state—than an idea that had been fleshed out in detail. Pakistan has meant different things to different people since its birth. Much of the country’s dysfunction is the result of its inability to answer questions bred by conflicting expectations. How Islamic is Pakistan meant