A manner of speaking

Dawn Editorial, 16 May 2010,

FIVE presumably well-informed individuals being interviewed on a television channel were asked to speak on the Lal Masjid episode of July 2007 in Islamabad. None of them wanted to tell the viewers what exactly had happened.

The ugliness of the encounter between the managers of the mosque and the agents of the Musharraf regime was attributed to the machinations of imperialist powers, particularly the United States. The rise of fundamentalist militancy in Pakistan was interpreted as a reaction to the western powers’ dominance and impoverishment of the Muslim world. They evaded the subject sought to be discussed on the reasoning that one had to understand its background in order to understand the issue.

Those who wish to avoid the trouble of thinking through and analysing the issues confronting them have a ready explanation for all of them. These issues, they say, have been created by America’s policies and actions in this region. We have been fighting the Taliban in our tribal areas and may go after them in North Waziristan under American pressure.

They allege that we are fighting America’s war and killing our own people in the process. This frame of mind sees America as an arrogant hegemonic power that seeks to dominate the entire world, particularly the Third World and the Muslim countries that form part of it. The perception is that the US regards Islam and its followers as posing a grave threat to western civilisation, its modes of work and social organisation.

That America is a hegemonic power may be true. But a country’s hegemony over another will work if the latter’s government is amenable to it. America has influence with the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Japan, but none of them will accept its hegemony. They will listen to American advice, consider it, and then accept or reject it as they deem fit.

America’s hegemony over Pakistan works because the latter’s government is receptive to it. This is the case of a patron-client relationship in which the patron (the United States) asks Pakistan (the client) to do things which it does and gets compensated for the services rendered. The role of a client is not something that has been imposed on Pakistan. Its governments, one after the other, have welcomed it since the mid-1950s and have missed it when it was not available. The era when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ruled the country was an exception.

The other side of this coin should also be seen. While governments in Pakistan have been willing — even eager — to do America’s bidding, the people of Pakistan have been highly critical of American policies in South Asia, especially because of its insistence on keeping its relations with India separate from and independent of its relations with Pakistan.

Especially irritating to Pakistanis is America’s showing of a greater measure of respect to India than it accords to Pakistan and its endorsement of the Indian claim that it is the dominant power in this region and should be recognised as such. A great many Pakistanis, including well-educated persons, believe that (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) America is an enemy of this country.

The host in a celebrated television talk show recently declared and instigated his guests to agree that America was an enemy. Four of his five guests, one of them a federal minister belonging to a religious party, did agree and condemned Yousuf Raza Gilani’s government as an American vassal.

Hostility to America can take strange forms.

The host on this show wanted to condemn Hillary Clinton’s recent statement that certain lower-level officials in Pakistan knew the whereabouts of Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders but were not conveying this information to their superiors, notably the president and prime minister of Pakistan. This, he said, was a slap in the government’s face for she implied that it was ignorant of what went on under its nose. The host in question was going out of his way to arouse hostility towards the United States. Ms Clinton said something that holds true not only for Pakistan but for everywhere else. She herself probably does not know everything that her subordinates in the State Department or out in the field know. The same is true of heads of government in most other countries.

Critics allege also that working in conjunction with India and Israel, America is trying to disintegrate and destroy Pakistan. It is not clear why America should want to destroy or even destabilise a country which has all along been its faithful and compliant ally.

Not only in public but even in ordinary conversation Pakistanis are given to exaggeration when they are applauding or denouncing a philosophical position or a course of action. There are ideological militants who maintain that Pakistan is not worth having if it does not become an Islamic state. They assert, just as Gen Ziaul Haq indicated, that secularists are like snakes in the grass that deserve to be exterminated.

There are others who maintain that Pakistan is an ideological state, the ideology being Islam, whereas what they actually mean is that it was intended to be or that it should be an ideological state. In actual fact the state and government in Pakistan have always been ideological only in their theoretical professions but pragmatic in their practice.