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Copyright and Translation Rights Reserved by Hamza Alavi – 14 Feb 2002 For
publication in:
MIDDLE EAST REPORT -- March 2002 - – WWW.merip.org
Pakistan, Afghanistan and India
byHamza Alavi
Pakistan has been passing through extremely difficult times. It was bullied into supportingAmerica’s Afghan war, which was costly for it. That was followed by a dangerous militaryconfrontation with India, threatening a war that neither side wants. South Asians, who arecommitted to values of secular democracy, are faced with a paradox. A military ruler in Pakistanhas declared a war against Islamic fundamentalism and is, apparently, pursuing secular values.By contrast, the once proudly secular India has been taken over by extreme Hindufundamentalists. It was through the ballot box that they were brought into power. They havethreatened war against Pakistan. Secularism and democracy are at odds with each other.
Pakistan and Afghanistan
Islamic fundamentalism was fostered in the country in the 1980s by Pakistan’s military dictator,General Zia-ul Haq, who was recruited by Reagan to work with the CIA to mobilise Afghanwarlords to fight the Russians in the name of Islamic
jihad.
A
jihadi
culture was actively promoted in Pakistan and Afghanistan with the help of US and Saudi money.Islamic
jihadi
groups, in both counties, were armed with sophisticated weapons (including e.g.Stinger SAM missiles) and trained by the CIA. US and Pakistan backed Afghan warlords, whohad helped to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, now began to tear that country apart. Againstthat background the Afghan
Taliban
were helped into power by their Pakistani and US patrons.
Oil, Afghanistan and the Taliban
The interests of UNOCAL, a US oil company, have been at the heart of America’s Afghan policy.UNOCAL wants to lay oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to thePakistan coast, by-passing Iran. But warlord-dominated Afghanistan was too insecure for it to proceed with its huge investments. Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto government was mobilised to takematters in hand. In 1994 Pakistan helped to organise the
Taliban’s
rise to power. The USgovernment too supported the
Taliban,
who had made much of their dislike of Iran and their determination to cut down poppy and drug production which had flourished under the warlords.Once the
Taliban
were installed in power, the US was happy to leave matters in the hands of Pakistan and UNOCAL, and it adopted a policy of masterly inactivity.By late 1997 world opinion was outraged by news of the extremely oppressive policies of theTaliban, especially with regard to women. US feminist groups mounted pressure against bothUNOCAL and the Clinton administration, demanding a change in policy towards the Taliban.The women’s vote was crucial for Bill Clinton in the 1996 elections and he could not ignorewomen’s groups. The
Taliban
invited reprisals from the US also for providing a base for BinLaden, who had declared war against the US and the Saudis and was held responsible for the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. Ironically, it took the petty
Monica Lewinsky affair, when Clinton needed a dramatic alternative focus for public attention,to precipitate a hurried, ill-planned and ineffective cruise missile attack on Afghan territory inAugust 1998, launched from American warships in the Persian Gulf. At that point UNOCAL feltthat it had to pull out of Afghanistan, at least formally and for the time being.UNOCAL and the US continued ‘backroom contacts’ with the
Taliban
. Three years later theAmericans revisited the scene. Top secret contacts between the Bush administration andthe
Taliban,
in February 2001, were reported by two retired French Intelligence Officers (DailyTelegraph, London, November, 20, 2001) who wrote that ‘The Bush Administration was ‘willingto accept the
Taliban
regime despite charges of sponsoring terrorism’. The US, they reported,considered the
Taliban
as a ‘source of stability in Central Asia’. But, given the notoriousintransigence of the
Taliban,
the talks did not proceed smoothly. Bush warnedthe
Taliban:
‘Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs!’
He kept his promise.The terrible and outrageous attacks of September Eleven, finally provided the Americans with anopportunity to get rid of the
Taliban
and install in their place a new government with whom theyhoped they could do business. It appears, however, that the transitional government that wascobbled together at Bonn, made up of hostile rival warlords who came together temporarilyunder Karzai, himself a weak US nominee, is unlikely to offer a basis for the stable future thatthe US and UNOCAL are looking for in the new Afghanistan. Warlords are already back inaction in the countryside, defiant of the central authority.
Secularism vs. Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan
There was little of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan until the regime of the military dictator General Zia, who, with Saudi and CIA help, set about promoting Islamic fundamentalism withfanatic zeal. A chain of
Deeni Madaris (religious schools)
soon proliferated throughout Pakistan.Given generous funding, the
madaris
recruited sons of pauperised peasants offering them free board and lodging and ‘religious education’. Their ‘education’ was designed to turn them intoreligious zealots. Some
madaris
also gave military training to their pupils, providing foot-soldiers for the Afghan
Taliban
, as well as for militant
jihadi
groups in Pakistan. The brainwashedminds of the pupils (
taliban)
of the
madaris
were filled with utopian dreams about an ‘
Islamic
’society that they would create, in which there will be plenty and no one will be left in want. Theywere highly motivated to fight for their beliefs. Most leaders of the Afghan
Taliban
were productsof Pakistani (Deobandi i.e. Wahhabi)
deeni madaris.
They kept close links with their Pakistanimentors, notably the leaders of the two factions of the Pakistani
Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Islam.
More than 70 percent of the larger
deeni madaris
(with more than 40 pupils) belonged to the puritanical ‘Deobandi’ (Wahhabi) tradition.
The Saudis funded them generously
to foster anti-
Shi’a
and anti-Irani ideology. The Iranians responded in kind. But the number of Shi’a
madaris
numbered less than 4 per cent. The
deeni madaris
provided recruits for extremistsectarian groups of which most were heavily armed. Pakistan soon became an arena in whichMiddle Eastern ‘Muslim’ powers played out their rivalry by proxy. Sectarian violence reached ascale that Pakistan had never known before. The fabric of Pakistan’s civil society was being tornapart.
Religious leaders acquired new ambitions. They began to assert that Pakistan was created toestablish an Islamic state and it was they, therefore, who had the right to run the state of Pakistan.Post-Zia civilian governments (alternatively under the Pakistan Peoples Party and the MuslimLeague) continued to promote fundamentalist Islamic ideology, through schools (textbooks beingrewritten), Universities and the media. Most Pakistanis soon came to believe that it must be truethat Pakistan was created to establish an Islamic state. The fact, however, is that the Pakistanmovement had secular foundations. The All India Muslim League was not a religious movementat all. It was a party of Western educated professionals and the ‘
salariat’
i.e. those who aspired toget government jobs. They successfully resisted attempts by mullahs to gain influence in their Party.Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, spelt out the secular creed of the Pakistan movement, andhis vision of the new state in his inaugural address to Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly. Speakingagainst the background of the long history of Hindu-Muslim conflict in India beforeindependence, he said that in Pakistan ‘Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, for that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense, as citizens of the State’. Pakistan was to be a secular state. It was not until the1980s, under the regime of General Zia-ul Haq, that an extreme form of ‘Islamic’ ideology wasespoused and propagated by the state and ‘secularism’ was equated with apostasy.
Musharraf’s ‘Secularism’ ?
Armed
jihadi
groups who were patronised by the ‘democratic’ regime of Nawaz Shareef,dominated Pakistan’s civil society, when the 1998 army coup that brought General Musharraf into power, took place. Thanks to policies of General Zia, Islamic ideology permeated somesections of the army too. However, the dominant ideology in the army is a legacy from Britishcolonial rule. The colonial rulers promoted an ideology of professionalism among Indian officersof the British Indian army, to insulate them from the appeal of nationalist movements. Thatideology entailed a belief in the moral superiority of the ‘professional’ army officer over ‘self-seeking politicians’ who exploited the illiterate masses. That ideology included a notion of ‘military honour’ and loyalty to one’s regiment. The ideology of professionalism, with itscontempt for politicians, has remained the dominant ideology of the Pakistan military officerscorps. This was only partly changed when Gen. Zia made a big effort to promote Islamicideology instead. The ‘professionals’, however, remained dominant.In 1995 an army coup, to dislodge the professionals, was attempted by Islamic ideologicalfanatics, led by one Major General Abbasi. Their aim was to Islamise the army and Pakistan. Thecoup attempt failed. But it was a major shock to the professionals. That failed coup ‘reinforce[d]the senior commanders’ concern with
professional
development’ (S. Cohen, ‘
The Pakistan Army
’, 1998, p. 171) In the aftermath of that coup attempt many Islamist officers were weededout. But many, especially in senior positions, still remained. Musharraf and the ‘professionals’were faced with difficulty in contending with powerful Generals who are committed to Islamicideology.In opposing religious fundamentalist tendencies in the army and society, Musharraf has invokedthe secular values of Jinnah. But Musharraf himself does not appear to be driven by any
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