Islamists taking over Pakistan
Sushant Sareen, The Pioneer
January 8, 2008

Recently in Pakistan, explains the onward march of radical Islam in this first of a series of despatches

If Pakistan is an Islamic country, what is your objection to imposing shari'ah as is being demanded by the mullahs? As a believer, why are you afraid of shari'ah law?" I asked a former editor of an Urdu daily and currently the host of a TV programme. His answer: "As an Indian, you obviously would like to see Pakistan go into the Stone Age". I persisted: "Isn't the ideal concept of state in Islam the city state established by the Prophet in which Islamic law was the basic law?" He replied: "That would mean going back into the stone age". I pushed a little further and asked: "Are you willing to say this outside the confines of your office, and stand up in public for what you believe". He looked horrified and said: "Do you think I am mad? I won't be alive an hour after I say this in public".

Clearly, the Islamists are winning the ideological debate on the role of Islam in Pakistan. The liberal, and moderate, sections of Pakistani society are unable to present any convincing argument against the Islamists. Partly because of this, and partly as a result of the persecution complex that Muslims around the world have developed, Pakistani society is getting more and more Islamised and radicalised.

The signs are everywhere. There are more women in hijab, more bearded men in the streets, more people going to mosques for Friday prayers than ever before. Young people, even those educated in the West, are more religiously inclined than their parents. It is not longer advisable to shoo away a tablighi (someone who comes to your house to preach), because he just might belong to some jihadi outfit and could place a mark outside the house, labelling the residents as non-believers, or worse, apostates.

Many middle-class families, including military and civilian officers, no longer think twice before sending the children for a few years to madarsas. For instance, many of the girls in Jamia Hafsa, the madarsa for women attached to the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, were Army officers' daughters, who were spending a year there for becoming alima (learned one), a prestigious degree that qualifies them to give dars (sermons). Parents feel that giving such education to their children will earn rewards for them in the afterlife.

But a friend, whose two younger brothers were educated in a madarsa in their formative years, said that children come out brutalised, dehumanised and traumatised from these institutions. They are total misfits in a modern society and even if they are subsequently given the best of modern education, it takes years to bring some semblance of normality in their attitude towards women, including their own mothers and sisters. The madarsa network, however, continues to spread it tentacles all over Pakistan. In Islamabad alone there are reported to be over 100,000 students in madarsas that are so strategically located that some journalist friends have expressed the fear that the day these students want, they can simply take control of the city.

Education minister and former ISI chief, Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi (not to be mistaken with his predecessor, Javed Nasir, the jihadi General who brought Pakistan perilously close to being declared a terrorist state in the early-1990s) is on the frontline of the battle to 'rescue the soul of Pakistan' from the extremists. Gen Qazi admits that it is a huge task trying to undo the pernicious trend of mindless Islamisation initiated by Gen Zia. He accepts that the mushrooming growth of madarsas is partly the result of the failure of the state to provide quality education.

Gen Qazi has been trying hard to bring about the much needed reform in the education sector and has brought in an entirely new school curriculum, one that teaches students about Pakistan's pre-Islamic past.

Gen Qazi is quite clear that Pakistan has no choice but to take on the extremists, otherwise he says all will be lost. He dismissed all talk of Gen Musharraf playing a double-game in the war against radical Islamists, but admitted that the President was often misled by the politicians surrounding him, many of whom are reputed to be closet jihadis. He claimed that every time Gen Musharraf would make up his
mind to move against the extremists, for instance in the Lal Masjid case, politicians would ask him to try and solve the problem through negotiation and dialogue.

Title: Let there be shari'ah!
Author: Sushant Sareen
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 9, 2008

Heavens won't fall if this happens a Pakistani lawyer

Education Minister and former ISI chief Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi is convinced that using the Army in a half-hearted manner will be counterproductive, and if the Army has to be deployed against the extremists and jihadis, then it must use all the force under its command to end the menace of extremism once and for all.

This is, however, easier said than done and can actually produce a reaction that could easily unleash a civil-war inside Pakistan. Former ISI chief Lt Gen Asad Durrani, is convinced that there are limits to the use of force and application of force must be part of a larger strategy, which he feels is missing. Gen Durrani believes that rather than trying to use force against the extremists, it might be better to let society throw up alternatives. He places his faith on the innate pragmatism and wisdom of the people, and feels this will eventually manage to moderate the extremists.

There are others who agree with Gen Durrani and say that an unnecessary scare being spread over the issue of Islamisation. "Heavens will not fall if shari'ah is imposed in Pakistan," argues a senior advocate who belongs to a well known and highly respected political family, and is personally an extremely moderate and liberal person. He said most of the laws in Pakistan are already Islamised and there will be hardly any changes in basic law that shari'ah can now bring about. He accepts that those demanding shari'ah are basically aiming their guns at the women and culture. In other words, the big change will be that women will face Taliban-type restrictions and there will be a ban on TV, films and music. But in his view, this is not such a great issue simply because eventually Pakistani society will reject all such antediluvian measures.

The Jamaat Islami's information secretary, Amee-rul Azeem, also scoffs at what moderate Pakistanis call 'Talibanisation'. He said that the Taliban, including those from Lal Masjid, were only exposing and opposing immorality, adultery and obscenity in society, something that many newspapers in Pakistan also do. He wondered why the 'writ of the state' was never invoked against immorality in society. Leader of Opposition Maulana Fazlur Rehman, too, sees no threat from the radical groups. He, in fact, backs the demand for imposition of shari'ah; only he is opposed to bringing in the shari'ah through violence and force of arms.

The wily Maulana accepts that there is a tussle for power and influence between the political mullahs and the militant mullahs, but he believes that ultimately he will be able to bring the militants around. So much so that despite being warned he is on the hit-list of the jihadis, he refuses to believe that the radicals pose any danger to his life. He suspects 'hidden hands' (normally a euphemism for intelligence agencies, both Pakistani and American) to be behind high profile assassinations of influential clerics who at one point or another tried to bring about an accommodation between the jihadis and the state.

Many senior Cabinet Ministers and Opposition politicians are, however, not as blasé about what they see as the rising tide of extremism. Interior Minister and former Chief Minister of NWFP, Aftab Sherpao, is quite candid in accepting that the Pakistani society was undergoing a transformation. He said that it is not only the Pashtun areas that are affected by 'Talibanisation' but also large parts of South Punjab that are becoming radicalised. Sherpao, like many other Pakistani officials, believes that only through a combination of political manoeuvring, reform in education system and creation of economic opportunities, can the society be weaned away from extremism and put on the path of moderation.

The trouble, however, is that everyone in Pakistan talks of the future and gives plans that will yield results in 10 to 15 years, but no one has any solid idea about how to counter the immediate threat that the extremists pose to state and society. In all the time that the state is going to take for its action plan to show results, the moderates are losing the battle of ideas to the Islamists. Worse, President Pervez Musharraf's policy of enlightened moderation is seen as an imposition of Christian values on a predominantly Islamic society and there are not too many buyers for it.

Title: Pakistan's lost frontier
Author: Sushant Sareen
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 10, 2008

Jinnah's moth-eaten dream is shattering along Indus

Nearly half a dozen of my cousins who are officers in the Army have quit in the last year", revealed a Pashtun journalist friend. According to another Pashtun journalist, who has been reporting the Islamist insurgency from ground-zero, there have been many desertions from the paramilitary forces (the Frontier Corp and Tribal Levies). He spoke about a friend of his who quit the tribal levies because he was warned by his father that if he died fighting the Taliban, let alone getting a burial, even his body will not be permitted to enter the village.

Already people in Islamabad and Lahore are talking about an exodus of people from the areas affected by conflict. Tribal maliks and khans, businessmen and local Government officials like district nazim and councilors are moving to Peshawar, and in many cases settling their families in the cities of Punjab.

But uncertainty about the future is also affecting those who are already living in cities of Punjab. A senior Pashtun bureaucrat called a journalist friend and wondered what the future holds for Pashtuns, especially those who are well integrated in Pakistani (read Punjabi) power structure. The journalist, who is himself a Pashtun, later said that people like him who have great associations and friendships in Punjab and have never felt alien in Punjab will be worst affected if the conflict between the Pashtun Islamists and the Pakistani state worsens. He feared that if and when the sentiment in Punjab turns hostile to Pashtuns, people like him will be rejected (if not ejected) by Punjab and will be misfits among fellow Pashtuns.

And it won't take much for the Punjabis to turn hostile towards the Pashtuns. Journalist Imtiaz Alam thinks that a couple of suicide attacks in Lahore will have Punjab baying for blood. For the moment, however, unlike Islamabad, where the fear of terrorist strikes by Pashtun jihadis and suicide bombers is palpable, in Lahore the war being waged in trans-Indus Pakistan is still somewhat distant. This is so partly because until now, the jihadis and Taliban have only targeted the security forces. Civilian casualties in suicide bombings can by and large be classified as 'collateral damage'. But the pattern of attacks could change as the fighting in NWFP and the tribal areas worsens and the military offensive causes heavy collateral damage in both life and property among Pashtuns.

Not surprisingly, many Punjabis are now openly voicing the fear if the deteriorating situation in the Pashtun belt (NWFP and the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan) is not arrested and reversed fast, the frontier would be lost. And if the frontier is lost, then Baluchistan, too, would break away from Pakistan.

Popular Urdu columnist Nazir Naji, who has received death threats from the Islamist groups for writing against them, doesn't mince his words in saying that Pakistan is heading for failure. Like many others in Lahore and Islamabad, he invokes the Col Ralph Peters thesis about Pakistan splitting vertically along the Indus.

The only saving grace about the situation that Pakistan confronts in the Pashtun belt is that both the state and society has got out of the denial mode and is recognising that the problem posed by the forces of jihad is far worse than they ever imagined. The setbacks received by the military have ended the cocky confidence that a crack of the whip or a shot of cannon will be enough to restore order in the turbulent Pashtun belt. The state machinery, so effective against unarmed and peaceful protestors like the lawyers, journalists and political workers, has crumbled in the face of battle-hardened and committed to their cause Taliban.

Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao has admitted that the traditional instruments through which the state established its writ -- tribal jirgas and lashkars, using the influence of powerful maliks, khans and sardars -- no longer work. The social structures have been turned on their head by the militant-mullah compact. He blames two things for this state of affairs: First, the office of the political agent was devalued by the administrative reforms ushered in by Mr Pervez Musharraf's local body system; second, and more damaging was the inaction of the MMA Government in NWFP in taking timely and effective counter measures against the jihadis. For instance, he says, the MMA Government avoided using the Army against the jihadis in Swat even though the troops were on the standby.

Mr Sherpao said that the federal Government could not order Army action without the concurrence of the provincial Government because, not only would it then have been accused of violating the principles of federation, but the MMA would have also exploited the situation politically by inciting the people against the federal Government, as indeed it did after Army action was ordered in Swat.