Mainstream Weekly

Mainstream, VOL LIV No 22 New Delhi May 21, 2016

Lucid Account of Pakistan’s Existence and

Future
Monday 23 May 2016

BOOK REVIEW

CALL FOR ISLAMABAD’S TRANSFORMATION TO MAKE IT GOVERNABLE AND

FOCUSSED ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Aejaz Ahmad and Zaboor Ahmad

Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military by Hussain Haqqani; Penguin Viking Books; 2016;
pages 464.

Hussain Haqqani’s book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military is a straightforward

insider’s account of Pakistan that traces how the military and religious groups are acting in
tandem to rub each other’s shoulders and explores the nation’s quest for identity and
security. From the outset Pakistan has used religion as an instrument for strengthening the
Pakistani identity. In what follows are some of the crucial excerpted events discussed in the
book.

During its demand for Pakistan as well after its formation, religion has been anticipated to act
as a unifying force between diverse people which it failed to pacify. No doubt the bigwigs of
the Pakistan movement acted with missionary zeal but the leaders never gave an iota of
thought to the blueprint of the future state. Given the dilly-dallying of the leadership up to
the last moment of its creation, the state of Pakistan was going to land in trouble. As
Nazimuddin, who became the second Governor General of Pakistan, remarked few months
before partition, neither he nor anyone in the Muslim League knew what Pakistan means.
The fallout has been that armed and unarmed religious groups have gradually become
assertive and are able to challenge the writ of the state and have created their own
catchment areas. Muslim masses followed as they thought they would be better-off in
Pakistan. Interprovincial rivalry, ethnic and language differences, diverse political interests of
the elite class, who were silenced during the movement for the sake of its creation, acted as
stumbling blocks in the Constitution-making process. Partition accompanied by religious
frenzy, economic dislocation, capital flight, refusal of India to hand over the cash balance due
to it engendered economic strangulation for the newly-born state that required immediate
attention. Before the buck for the dominance of Pakistan is passed to the military, the blame
must be put on the shoulders of the civilian leadership which worked at cross-purposes,
finally making the way for a smooth military supremacy.

Haqqani doubts that had the civilian leadership crafted a Constitution at the outset, the
dominance of the military would still have followed. Pakistan was conditioned to believe that
its nationhood has been under siege; thus protecting it by military means took priority. When
the political cauldron of issues reached the tipping-point, Islam was used to subsume all
identities. India was painted as the enemy of Islam to bolster Pakistan’s self-image as a
bastion of Islam. Maulana Maudoodi spoke in the same language of hatred, as Golwalkar;
while speaking on Pakistan radio, he characterised socialists, ethnic nationalists, Leftists as
anti-Islam and unbelievers. Intelligence agencies fabricated evidence of the communist
threat to get into the orbit of the USA ensuring economic and military wherewithal. Refusal of
the USA to support Pakistan in any of the wars which it fought with India generated anti-
Americanism which is as old in Pakistan as the state itself. It increased exponentially only
with the drone attacks.

Continued confrontation with India was hurting East Pakistan, but being secular, demanding
autonomy within Pakistan and better relationship with India they were characterised as anti-
Pakistani elements. Fazlul Haq, the mover of the Lahore Resolution, was charged of collusion
with India. India did provide succour to the Bengalis but sliding into civil war was the result of
Pakistan’s internal folly. The publication of the book, The Turkish Art of Love, by an Indian
Jewish author alleged to desecrate Islam brought Islamic parties to the centre-stage when
political haggling was going on between and among Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Yahya Khan, Awami
League and the military regime. The White Paper, published on the crisis in East Pakistan,
acknowledged that Bengali atrocities followed rather than instigated the violence by the
Pakistani military. Yahya Khan received Mujibur Rahman in Pakistan with a whisky in hand
and remarked that you should work for the glory of Islam. People in West Pakistan were
made to believe through propaganda that they were fighting the enemies of Islam. Jamaat-e-
Islami cadres functioned as intelligence networks.
While Bhutto maintained hand-in-glove relationship with the military so that his chances of
returning to power remained intact, the USA declared the East Pakistan crisis as its internal
affair, and unrealistic hopes in the USA and China led the Pakistan rulers into rejecting
political options and persist with the military adventure. The matter of the fact is that Islam
as a religious doctrine has been made a political device to keep the state glued which it has
utterly failed; otherwise all the Islamic states should have been together. Bhutto, after
assuming power in a consolidated Pakistan, reciprocated to the Army by pursuing a hard-ball
game with India which enabled the continuation of defence spending while simultaneously
failing to publish the Hamooodur Rehman Commission Report in 1972 to make public what
went wrong, how and where, in which he himself would surely have been implicated. The
Jamaat-e-Islami started the ‘Bangladesh Namanzoor’ (Bangladesh not acceptable) campaign
which squarely put the blame on Bhutto but absolved the military.

Later, the dismissal of the National Awami Party in Baluchistan on the false pretext of finding
weapons in the Iraqi embassy meant for the Baloch rebels and resignation of the NWFP
Government in protest, engendered the protracted uprising which provided a pretext for use
of the military against them, as if they were its ‘saviours’. Haqqani remarks that Bhutto had
always been a poor learner and he wasted the considerable capital of the Ahmadi sect, who
fought for Pak independence, by declaring them as non-Muslims at the instigation of Islamic
forces which boosted his confidence. Religious construction was connected with the boom of
oil prices; he could gain from it only by playing up the Islamic identity. Bhutto began to doubt
all and sundry and created the Federal Security Service as a force to intervene in the domain
of state in case of emergency situations and placed Zia-ul-Haq as the Chief of Army Staff
(CoAS) as he was from a non-martial race but both turned their guns towards him. FSS chief
provided evidence in court against Bhutto, while Zia gave the order to execute him. The
White Paper on Bhutto was prepared by Zia even before his conviction by the court.

Haqqani notes that Zia liberalised the visa regime which made Pakistan the den of religious
leaders, as it falsely played the card of pan-Islamism. This dented the already sectarian
environment of Pakistan. The Islamisation project ended up accentuating sectarian
differences, plunged Pakistani society into theological debates over various issues. Shias and
Sunnis looked up for economic and ideological support to Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively
which made Pakistan a battleground of ideas and rival armed groups. Islam has never been in
danger but this politically motivated half-backed truth has been used to pursue such ends.
Zia packed the educational institutions, courts with his own henchmen.

Haqqani subsequently takes up the Pakistan-Afghanistan equation. He writes that Pakistan

underscored its Islamic ideology in the hope of blunting the challenge of ethnic nationalism
supported by Afghanistan. Pakistan has pursued strategic depth in Afghanistan since the
inception, Ayesha Siddiqa argues that all invasions have been through Afghanistan, therefore,
for its own protection, it is essential that Pakistan has a degree of control in Afghanistan.
Pakistan acted as a conduit for Islamic parties to counter the influence of communist groups
supporting the Pushtuns and Balochs in Pakistan. Pakistan created the Afghan Cell in the ISI
to coordinate resistance to communist rule and secure international support for Pakistan.
Jimmy Carter authorised help to the Mujahedeen covertly on July 3, 1979, six months before
the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. When Jamaat-e-Islami students wing burnt down the
American embassy in Islamabad for seizure of the grand mosque in Mecca, Zia told the USA
to channelise the religious fervour of Pakistan against the Soviets instead of allowing it to run
against the USA. People from different parts of world poured in to fight against the Soviets
and were bankrolled by the Saudi-based Rabita Alam-i-Islami. Pakistani Islamic parties were
getting their cadre trained along with Afghans leading to their flexing of muscles in political
clashes on college campuses, with law and order becoming the causality. The question of who
should rule Afghanistan after the USSR’s withdrawal continued in the fighting among
different groups. It was good that Zia died; otherwise he would have done the same to
Pakistan as happened to his plane in which he died.

Hussain Haqqani then attempts to map the changes in Pakistan after the September 2001
attack. The September 11 attacks on the USA changed much in Pakistan but the dominance
of the military and mosque in Pakistan is far from over. Pakistan sacrificed the Afghan front
to keep alive the Kashmir front to prevent it from being bombed. Pakistani religious parties
felt not alienated, and were banned only to resurrect in new avatars. The arms supplied by
the USA to Pakistan, instead of fighting the militants, were used against the Baloch
nationalists. The USA expended considerable capital to fight the ‘terrorists’ in Afghanistan,
but the roots were always in Pakistan. George Bush found that most of the weapons supplied
by America to Pakistan were used to prepare a war against India. Pakistan cooperated only
in arresting the foreign terrorists while the locals were let free. Groups like Haqqani, Afghan
Taliban were forced back to Afghanistan while the foreigners were eliminated.

For Haqqani, Pakistan has become a major centre of radical Islamic ideas and groups largely
because of its past policies of support to militants fighting Indian rule in the disputed state of
Jammu and Kashmir as well as the Taliban in its quest of putting in place a client regime in
Afghanistan. The historic alliance between religious groups and the military has the potential
to frustrate anti-terror operations, radicalise the key segments of the population. This
dominance has weakened the social and economic parameters of Pakistan. Over forty per
cent can’t read and write while two-thirds live on less than $ 2 dollars a day and fiftyfive per
cent women are simply illiterate. Low investment in education has hampered the Pakistani
technology base. A majority of Pakistan’s ethnically disparate population has traditionally
identified themselves with secular politicians; but such a huge majority has failed to
determine the direction of Pakistan’s policies. A highly centralised and unrepresentative
government has caused unpre-cedented grievances among its ethnic groups. Violent
vigilantism of some Islamic groups has undermined the civil society and promoted sectarian
terrorism. Pakistan’s small economy has grown occasionally and is undermined by terrorism.
India spends a small part of its GDP on defence but still outspends Pakistan, which has to cut
development spending to pay for its armed forces.

On February 4, 2004, General Musharraf told newspaper editors in Islamabad that Pakistan
has two vital interests—nuclear state and Kashmir cause. It was to placate the military and
religious conservatives that the alliance with the US was not a U-turn as it appeared to be.
The semblance of good relationship with India has become a pre-requisite for Pakistan’s
security relationship with the USA. In Pakistan, the military is told that India is hostage to
centrifugal traditions and has a historic inability to exist as a single state. It is justified on the
basis of history of which Pakistan is a part. Hence India can break up like Pakistan in
Kashmir; Khalistan within India. The Pakistani plan for liberation has two parts: first make
Kashmir ungovernable for India, and raise the cost of continued Indian occupation to
unbearable levels, the other being internationaliseation of the Kashmir issue. Participation by
different religious groups from around the world would ensure support from Islamic
countries. The status of freedom fighters given by the USA to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan
could also be given to those fighting in Kashmir without knowing that the USA applies double-
standards everywhere. Haqqani concludes that Pakistan has to change its national objectives
of being focused on economic development and popular participation in government. Pakistan
was created in a hurry. Everyone has a stake to transform Pakistan into functional rather
than ideological state so as to ensure the development of its people.

In its new edition, the book has two new chapters but fall short of acute analysis in that the
book does not shower light on important internal and external dynamics of Pakistan like the
Kargil episode, mobilisation of troops along borders in 2002, and failure of the Agra Summit
and so on. It seems as if the new chapters in the book have been written aimlessly. No
Westphalian state has failed so far, but it is worth noticing that the constituency of Pakistani
writers who are against the system is growing. The book is engaging and is written in simple
and lucid language.

Aejaz Ahmad studied Political Science at the Department of Political Science, University of
Delhi. He is the contributing author of the book, Political Process in India. His forthcoming
book, Modern South Asian Thinkers, is being published by Sage. He has contributed earlier
to Economic and Political Weekly and Mainstream.
Zaboor Ahmad is a Lecturer of Political Science in Kashmir; his papers have been published
in South Asian Review, and he regularly contributes opinion pieces to various newspapers
in Kashmir.