Adil Najam
Mohammed Hanif, the brilliant author of the engrossing book “The Case of Exploding Mangoes†(I have been planning to write about it ever since I first read it many months ago; and I will) – known to many for his stint at Herald before he joined BBC’s Urdu Service – has just written a most cogent and readable op-ed in The Times of India which is wroth reading; whether you agree with it or not. It is a good argument as well as a good read. And I say that even thought there are more than one points here that I might quibble with. But before we quibble, lets give Mohammed Hanif the floor – and a full and proper hearing. Here is the op-ed he wrote in The Times of India, in full:
Ten Myths About Pakistan
Living in Pakistan and reading about it in the Indian press can sometimes be quite a disorienting experience: one wonders what place on earth they’re talking about? I wouldn’t be surprised if an Indian reader going through Pakistani papers has asked the same question in recent days. Here are some common assumptions about Pakistan and its citizens that I have come across in the Indian media.
1. Pakistan controls the jihadis: Or Pakistan’s government controls the jihadis. Or Pakistan Army controls the jihadis. Or ISI controls the jihadis. Or some rogue elements from the ISI control the Jihadis. Nobody knows the whole truth but increasingly it’s the tail that wags the dog. We must remember that the ISI-Jihadi alliance was a marriage of convenience, which has broken down irrevocably. Pakistan army has lost more soldiers at the hands of these jihadis than it ever did fighting India.
2. Musharraf was in control, Zardari is not: Let’s not forget that General Musharraf seized power after he was fired from his job as the army chief by an elected prime minister. Musharraf first appeased jihadis, then bombed them, and then appeased them again. The country he left behind has become a very dangerous place, above all for its own citizens. There is a latent hankering in sections of the Indian middle class for a strongman. Give Manmohan Singh a military uniform, put all the armed forces under his direct command, make his word the law of the land, and he too will go around thumping his chest saying that it’s his destiny to save India from Indians. Zardari will never have the kind of control that Musharraf had. But Pakistanis do not want another Musharraf.
3. Pakistan, which Pakistan? For a small country, Pakistan is very diverse, not only ethnically but politically as well. General Musharraf’s government bombed Pashtuns in the north for being Islamists and close to the Taliban and at the same time it bombed Balochs in the South for NOT being Islamists and for subscribing to some kind of retro-socialist, anti Taliban ethos. You have probably heard the joke about other countries having armies but Pakistan’s army having a country. Nobody in Pakistan finds it funny.
4. Pakistan and its loose nukes: Pakistan’s nuclear programme is under a sophisticated command and control system, no more under threat than India or Israel’s nuclear assets are threatened by Hindu or Jewish extremists. For a long time Pakistan’s security establishment’s other strategic asset was jihadi organisations, which in the last couple of years have become its biggest liability.
5. Pakistan is a failed state: If it is, then Pakistanis have not noticed. Or they have lived in it for such a long time that they have become used to its dysfunctional aspects. Trains are late but they turn up, there are more VJs, DJs, theatre festivals, melas, and fashion models than a failed state can accommodate. To borrow a phrase from President Zardari, there are lots of non-state actors like Abdul Sattar Edhi who provide emergency health services, orphanages and shelters for sick animals.
6. It is a deeply religious country: Every half-decent election in this country has proved otherwise. Religious parties have never won more than a fraction of popular vote. Last year Pakistan witnessed the largest civil rights movements in the history of this region. It was spontaneous, secular and entirely peaceful. But since people weren’t raising anti-India or anti-America slogans, nobody outside Pakistan took much notice.
7. All Pakistanis hate India: Three out of four provinces in Pakistan – Sindh, Baluchistan, NWFP – have never had any popular anti-India sentiment ever. Punjabis who did impose India as enemy-in-chief on Pakistan are now more interested in selling potatoes to India than destroying it. There is a new breed of al-Qaida inspired jihadis who hate a woman walking on the streets of Karachi as much as they hate a woman driving a car on the streets of Delhi. In fact there is not much that they do not hate: they hate America, Denmark, China CDs, barbers, DVDs , television, even football. Imran Khan recently said that these jihadis will never attack a cricket match but nobody takes him seriously.
8. Training camps: There are militant sanctuaries in the tribal areas of Pakistan but definitely not in Muzaffarabad or Muridke, two favourite targets for Indian journalists, probably because those are the cities they have ever been allowed to visit. After all how much training do you need if you are going to shoot at random civilians or blow yourself up in a crowded bazaar? So if anyone thinks a few missiles targeted at Muzaffarabad will teach anyone a lesson, they should switch off their TV and try to locate it on the map.
9. RAW would never do what ISI does: Both the agencies have had a brilliant record of creating mayhem in the neighbouring countries. Both have a dismal record when it comes to protecting their own people. There is a simple reason that ISI is a bigger, more notorious brand name: It was CIA’s franchise during the jihad against the Soviets. And now it’s busy doing jihad against those very jihadis.
10. Pakistan is poor, India is rich: Pakistanis visiting India till the mid-eighties came back very smug. They told us about India’s slums, and that there was nothing to buy except handicrafts and saris. Then Pakistanis could say with justifiable pride that nobody slept hungry in their country. But now, not only do people sleep hungry in both the countries, they also commit suicide because they see nothing but a lifetime of hunger ahead. A debt-ridden farmer contemplating suicide in Maharashtra and a mother who abandons her children in Karachi because she can’t feed them: this is what we have achieved in our mutual desire to teach each other a lesson.
So, quibble if you will. But do tell us what you think about the argument that Hanif is making.
@ aamir ali
simple question: democracy like any creative effort is an evolution, not always progressing in a straight line. we’ll have thugs, then thieves, then petty people and then ordinary people, again in a non-linear fashion, and may be a good leader, now and then, too. i’ll not accept an extra-constitutional lord even if the whole world thinks him saintlier than the prophets! who told you that because i will not allow musharraf to trample the constitution and destroy the rule of law, i’ll allow zardari to get away with defying the law or breaking it? you obviously don’t know the difference between the rule of law as a pre-requisite to being civilised, and the kind of law that thieves and thugs break. nothing makes us feel better than people who support those who consider themselves above the law and them to have the right to do with the constitution as they wish and to judge and rule all and sundry in the land, ‘bad mouthing’ us.
@ arjun
Your claim what Indians will do in case of a military takeover is, with all due respect, just that. it will never be tested. Not because Indians are braver than Pakistanis in standing in front of a tank on the street (and I am not saying that they are not), but because geography, demography (especially within the Indian military, and contrast that with pak military and how that compared to the nation’s, pre-’71 and post ’71) and history (the longer democracy stays, stronger it becomes, though the progress is never in a straight line, e.g. Mrs Gandhi’s emergency). i’m afraid there isn’t space to elaborate on any of the above here.
east pakistanis resisted pak army and paid a very high price. hats off to them and best wishes to bangladesh (esp now since the last of the pakistan military academy graduates in their army have retired). baluchistan had military crackdowns by ayub khan, bhutto and musharraf. sindh resisted zia through the MRD and suffered military action from ’82 to ’84. and you know the story of the movement for restoration of judiciary in 2007 (whcih was spearheaded by punjab and supported by half of nwfp not engaged in war on terror and much of sindh. baluchistan was suffering the military operation.) read ayesha siddiqua’s ‘military inc.’. note that even as late as jan 2008, negroponte had the gall to say, defying the great people’s resistance and our laws and constitution, that “the US considered Gen Musharraf to be indispensable”. and even then, this is just the tip of the iceberg. i can’t post more here for lack of space.
@ bonobashi
lets hope about gen kayani. zardari is, ultimately, a civilian. provided we can push back the military in to the barracks, neither role in kingship nor kingmaking, then we can deal with zardari and even worse. they’re only bloody civilians like me!
do read the head of ISI gen pasha’s interview with der spiegel. it isn’t exactly reassuring – even making generous allowance for incompetence, stupidity and poor communication skills.
as for national soveriegnty, see the arrangement in belgium. the minority only feels insecure when the majority is reluctant to address its own insecurities (they just manifest in a different way). insisting on the nobility and fairness of a one man one vote, free for all, when you have the clear numerical majority, without mentioning self-serving, sounds just a tiny bit disingenuous. remember, muslims were a much bigger minority in united india than they are now. national sovereignty is political, state sovereignty is legal. sharing is a give and take, an absence or lack of which resulted in partition. that was then, this is now. and at that we can leave it, since we have bigger fish to fry. which brings me to…
@ Gorki
i probably would not have written this post and ended it with the last one instead, save for your post moving me to write. the military dictatorial machine, and it’s nexus with the mullah, suggested and supported by the US in support of its cause against the soviets in afghanistan (an extereme precis, due to lack of space here) has meant that they have had the state machinery at their disposal for four decades at least. no pakistani textbook, public building or monument mentions the 11th aug 1947 speech which embodies jinnah’s vision for pakistan. instead, every school child knows the Objectives’ Resolution of by heart, a mischief purported after jinnah was gone, only a resolution with no legal effect until zia made it a ‘substantive part of the constitution’.
some plainly obvious facts:
pak is further behind india on the democratic road. but not a angstrom behind in potential, resolve and hope to make pakistan a democratic and propsperous state where we are all free and equal at peace with ourselves and the rest of the world, esp our neighbours. aamir ali, thanks for spurring us on.
If one cuts to the meat of the long-winded posts by Indians on this forum, one can see that they admit no mistake by India and no flaw in Indians and squarely put the blame on Pakistanis, whether they be “Pakistani commentators” or “Pakistani generals” or somebody else. This is the typical Indian mentality where Kashmir is not a problem, the plight of Indian Muslims is ignored, India’s internal problems either don’t exist or are very minor, and all “Muslims” or “Pakistan” are the cause of all problems.
Its a pity that in recent years in Pakistan such India-centric views have also found root in segments of the Pakistani public. These segments think that by harping on “improved relations” and bad-mouthing the army, they are joining the modern world and being very civilized, which is wrong.
@ Amir Hussain
You are right, it was an unfortunate reaction. It is a pity that negative forces in Pakistan, otherwise defeated and discredited, have been revived by our display of anger.
I could plead extenuating circumstances, but I think we all know what caused this anger among otherwise somewhat phlegmatic Indians.
However, it would have been dishonest not to have acknowledged what I felt at that time, and for some time later. While my views have changed, those of many others who felt like that have not. I believe that if they were to read views such as have been expressed on this forum, there would be a lot of wonderment, and a great deal of calmer and more rational thinking.
Having said that, it is clear that people in Pakistan don’t realise that adverse sentiment has been building up for some time, and the explosion after Mumbai was the explosion of a lot that has been pent up for months now.
So where do we go from here? Accepting for a moment that the President, the Chief of Army Staff and the Chief of military intelligence are sincere and clear in their view of what is good for Pakistan and for the future of Pakistan, we hope that some concrete action will be taken which can be linked, in some fashion, to the events in Mumbai. If it is done within a reasonable period of time, if it is done with some acknowledgement that the culprits, and none beyond the culprits, deserve the treatment that is proposed to be given them by Pakistani authorities and processes, you may find a great deal of the uproar dying down.
The individual ‘official’ that I found most irritating in his stonewalling was Prime Minister Gilani. He may have had his reasons, he may be a good man in other ways, but what is coming across is not very convincing. I would like to write at greater length about Pakistani experts and commentators on Indian TV, but don’t feel comfortable posting so frequently and so close together. Maybe some other time.
@ Watan Aziz
Yes, of course, but seldom encountered such a like-minded set. Outside my home mailing list, Silk List, I’ve seldom felt so comfortable and so welcome as here.
Which was, it is embarrassing to admit, a huge surprise; Mohammed Hanif is uncomfortably close to the bone. Ah, well, one lives and learns. If you like, I could point you towards some good blogs, but somebody (Arjun, I think) has beaten me to it.
BTW, I came here by typing in ‘Pakistan + blogs’ into Google, and thereafter wading through Pakistan Defence Review (both versions) – quelle horreur! – and lurking on Pitafi.com, which I rather like. It is very pleasing to find that other Indians who write in are so simpatico, even the robust right-wing among them.
@Watan Aziz (again)
Speaking for myself, I think in India we are a work in progress. I wouldn’t try to tell anybody else that we are ‘better’ than them, just work on our own weaknesses – isn’t that a large enough job?
@ exploding mangoes
Aren’t you being a tad too harsh on yourselves? Think how we felt during the Emergency.
I remember my father, a very senior policeman, seating the family in solemn conclave and discussing how to leave the country (he was in favour of leaving by way of Bhutan to Nepal, since he knew Jigme Dorji the Bhutanese PM), since life in an undemocratic India would be intolerable.
Coming to think of it, if Indira hadn’t lost – and gracefully accepted the verdict – and if later Sanjay hadn’t died in his plane, what would we have done? It just doesn’t bear thinking about.
I have to go back to earning a living again, so au revoir to all you good people.
India has one family dominating the
@ Exploding Mangoes….
you opined as follows: ‘After all the Christians created Pakistan with a purpose…’
Thankyou for dragging an interesting discussion down to the level of the asinine….
PS: and of course you have facts to back up your claim….but ofcourse!