Transforming Pakistan

Ways Out of Instability

Hilary Synnott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138405813
• eBook ISBN: 9781135872953
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book argues that any strategy for dealing with Pakistan requires an understanding of the country's complex and turbulent history and of the weaknesses of its political and other institutions. It describes how, in the absence of an inherent national identity, successive military and civilian governments have made use of Islam and Kashmir, 'the unfinished business of Partition', for political purposes. It also examines the role of the army and of its intelligence service, the ISI, in relation to India, Afghanistan and internal political manipulation.

The nature and history of the tribal regions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which are little understood in the West and which explain much of the animosity towards the US, are also described in detail.

After 9/11, Pakistan's support for counter-terrorism and military operations in Afghanistan increased the population's animosity towards the West and hence the government's difficulties in delivering. Meanwhile, the military leadership hedged its bets by maintaining links with militant organisations and with a re-emerged Taliban. With the arrival of an elected leadership, the emergence of simultaneous political, economic and security crises, tactical errors by the West, and the Mumbai terrorist attacks in late 2008, the situation was complicated further.

The book concludes with recommendations, aimed particularly at the new US administration, for a durable long-term relationship with Pakistan, entailing increased attention and resources devoted to institution-building and, over time, the reduction of the role and influence of the army.

CHAPTER ONE

The Nature of Pakistan

The difficulties of nation-building

At the end of the British-dominated colonial era in the subcontinent, India achieved its long-sought objective of independence in 1947. But the break with Britain was a secondary objective for Pakistan, whose primary goal was to provide a Muslim homeland, separate from the new India dominated by Hindus, for those Muslims on the subcontinent who wished to live there. The new country's Qaid-e-Azam, or Great Leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, aimed to establish a liberal Muslim democracy. But the ensuing arrangement proved to be both bloody and inherently unstable. Vivid memories remain, in both India and Pakistan, of the mass movement of people, family separations and violence that caused at least half a million, and possibly twice as many, deaths. The Kashmir dispute, over which there was a war immediately following the birth of the two new countries and several more conflicts subsequently, is still described by Pakistan as ‘the unfinished business of Partition’ more than 60 years after that event.

From the outset, the Pakistani people have had difficulty subsuming their particular ethnic customs and identities into a single national narrative. Unfavourable comparisons are often made with India in this regard. But the differences between the beginnings of the two nations are often overlooked. At Partition, India inherited the state governance structure created by the British, including the civil service, the executive branch and the parliamentary system. India also possessed a highly developed historical sense of national identity, linked to ancient civilisations. But Pakistan had to create, or at least adapt, all these crucial elements of nationhood for itself. It was only in 1940 that the goal of independent statehood for the Muslim-majority areas was formally adopted by the Muslim League, the main Muslim political movement in India, just seven years before this goal was achieved. By contrast, the Indian National Congress had committed itself to national unity and independence in 1921, and this aim was thus familiar to an entire generation of Indians before it was realised.¹ In contrast with nearly 17 years of the prime ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru in India, Pakistan lacked durable leadership: Jinnah died in September 1948; the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in October 1951. Pakistan's army, which emerged out of the army that existed under the British, was the country's most firmly established institution, and its most self-confident. Witnessing the weaknesses of the civilian political establishment, it intervened frequently and vigorously in national politics to become, in effect, Pakistan's oldest and most powerful political party. The Indian armed forces, on the other hand, have always been subject to elected politicians.

It is perhaps unsurprising that religion, the stated basis for Pakistan's separation from India, was on its own not enough to create a durable national identity. This is particularly so when one considers the diversity of the peoples and religious and customary practices in what is now the second-largest Muslim nation in the world.² While Pakistan is the only country to have been created on the basis of a common Muslim identity, Pakistani Muslims have in practice been deeply divided about the nature and practice of their faith. Some 75% of Pakistanis describe themselves as Sunni Muslims, of whom the great majority are of the Hanafi sect, while about 20% of the population is Shia. The country has a history of violence between Sunni and Shia. Many Pakistanis also remain strongly influenced by the Sufi tradition, which is unrelated to the Sunni/Shia split.

Among Hanafi Sunni there are deep differences over observance and doctrine, of which the most significant are those between the Barelvis and the Deobandis. The Barelvis, whose movement originated in the town of Bareilly in northern India in the late nineteenth century, form the majority of Pakistani Sunnis, and have a comparatively moderate and tolerant interpretation of Islam. Although the movement's founder opposed the devotional practices of Sufism, including the use of poetry, literature, mysticism, music and dance, many Barelvis follow them.

Deobandis, in contrast, have always been more radical and militant. Also founded in India, shortly before the Barelvi movement, unlike that group, the Deobandi movement rejected Jinnah's vision of a liberal democracy, favouring an Islamic state purged of ‘un-Islamic practices’. Its literal and austere interpretation of the faith puts a particular emphasis on education. Students from Deobandi madrasas, which account for around 65% of Pakistan's religious schools, swelled the Taliban movement in Afghanistan when it emerged in 1994–96.

Unable to furnish a basis for a common national identity, religion proved insufficient to hold the state together in its original form. At an early stage in Pakistan's history, when the country was made up of modern-day Pakistan (West Pakistan) and the territory that is now Bangladesh (East Pakistan), the Awami League party emerged in East Pakistan seeking greater autonomy for the Bengali population that formed the overwhelming majority in the East. Later, in December 1970, under the leadership of Mujibur Rahman, the party swept the polls in East Pakistan and, despite gaining no seats in West Pakistan, secured enough seats for an absolute majority in the National Assembly. Pakistan's military ruler, General Yahya Khan, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the leader of West Pakistan's largest party (which had gained no seats in the East), refused to accept the outcome of the election. An ensuing civil war between the East and West wings of the country, 1,000 miles apart from each other, escalated into a war with India as well, and finished with the spectacular defeat of Pakistan's army, the secession of East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. The Pakistan founded by Jinnah had lost a sixth of its land mass and more than half its population. It had lasted only 24 years.

Despite this humiliation, which followed defeats in wars with India over Kashmir in 1947–48 and 1965, Pakistan persisted in its attempts to use Islam as a means of nation-building and a way of differentiating itself from India. Frequently, too, religion was used by both the army and elected politicians to promote particular political interests. The army's use of the Kashmir dispute, which has a strong religious element, was an example of this: so long as Kashmir was a cause to fight for and there was an enemy, India, to deal with, the army remained indispensable. National honour and the righteousness of the cause, so the argument went, required that the army be large and well equipped and its personnel well provided for, both in service and retirement. The army's position and Pakistan's Kashmir-related grievances were greatly reinforced by all-too-frequent Indian military heavy-handedness and the use of violence and unjust measures in the region, which included political oppression and the blatant rigging of successive elections in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir over a period of decades.

The various efforts that have been made to cement in place a national consciousness and identity have been quite insufficient for dealing with Pakistan's intra-state tensions. In addition to the diversity of religious practice, the range of long-established cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences within the country, which long predate the state of Pakistan, would have posed formidable challenges for any government. Their associated frictions have proved far too great to be resolved by the flawed politico-military systems that have governed the country over the past six decades.

Attempts at ‘Pakistanisation’ were reinforced by the nomination of Urdu as a national lingua franca. This was a somewhat artificial device, since Urdu, the spoken form of which has many similarities with Hindi, was not one of Pakistan's indigenous languages, but was imported from India. The plan to bring the disparate cultures of the country closer together through the use of the language has not been entirely successful. Many indigenous languages, such as Sindhi, Pashto, Siraiki and Baluchi, have been used to emphasise ethnic identities – often in order to differentiate speakers from the dominant Punjabi culture – at the expense of national solidarity. It is highly relevant to Pakistan's present-day challenges that Pashto, the dominant language in the northwest of the country and one of the two main languages of Afghanistan, is markedly different from most of the other main languages of the country, coming from the Iranian rather than the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, and is the language least likely to be understood by other Pakistani ethnic groups.

The provinces

The differences between the four provinces that make up most of Pakistan – Punjab, Sindh, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan – go beyond language and ethnicity, important though these are. Many of the differences derive from traditions unique to each region.³ Punjab, described by Jinnah as ‘the cornerstone of Pakistan’, is home to more than 60% of the country's population, and dominates both the army and the economy. The bulk of Pakistan's industrial infrastructure can be found in Punjab, and the province's fertile land draws off much of the country's scarce water through irrigation. For such reasons it is unloved by many in the other provinces. But even within prosperous Punjab there are great contrasts between rich and poor and between city and country dwellers, as well as linguistic variety.

In rural Sindh, semi-feudal agricultural labourers are almost as dependent on large landowners as their forebears were for centuries. The Indus River, having entered Pakistan as a torrent from Kashmir in the north, flows through Sindh to emerge into the Arabian Sea as a trickle, depleted by irrigation and leakage from poorly maintained canals. The poverty and harsh environment of the Thar Desert in the east of the province contrast with the ostentatiously affluent lifestyle of the many rich traders, entrepreneurs, smugglers and drug barons who have made a home in the provincial capital of Karachi on the coast. After Partition, the city attracted many thousands of mohajirs, Muslims who had fled from India, among them the parents of Pervez Musharraf. More recently it has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, and has become the largest Pashtun city in the world.

The North West Frontier Province has a mainly Pashtun population including, again, many Afghan refugees. Its principal city, bustling, colourful Peshawar, is a hub on the trade and smuggling route to Afghanistan. Even more than the other provinces, NWFP has maintained a certain political separateness from the federal capital. Some of its districts use tribal and sharia law rather than federal law. Many, if not most, of the men of the tribes carry arms as a matter of personal honour.

The desert province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, accounts for 42% of Pakistan's land mass but is home to not much more than 5% of the country's population. Literacy is exceptionally low, especially among women. The water-table in the province has dropped rapidly as a result of the widespread use of tube wells and could even threaten the viability of the provincial capital, Quetta. The increased quantities of livestock sustained by water extracted in this way have decimated the region's sparse vegetation, accelerating desertification. Life has also been made harder by increased pressure on land and resources as a result of large influxes of Pashto-speaking Afghan refugees who fled to the north of the province following war and upheavals in Afghanistan, first during the 1979–89 war, then during the Taliban regime in the 1990s, and again after 2001. Though Baluchistan has substantial mineral, coal and gas deposits, the region's poor population derives little benefit from them, causing great resentment.

Distinct from the four provinces, the other main regions within Pakistan are the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the Federally Administered Northern Areas and what in Pakistan is known as Azad (Free) Kashmir, both of which formed part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in British India and which are the subject of the dispute with India. Each of these has different arrangements for its administration.

Beyond a resentment of the wealth and political and economic dominance of Punjab, Pakistan's various provinces and regions have little in common. Among the deep-rooted differences and tensions between them are bitter disputes over supply of and access to natural resources such as water and gas, and resentments over the distribution of central funds. Given this, it is perhaps unsurprising that separatist tendencies have emerged frequently over the decades.

The most dramatic separatist moment in Pakistan's history was the secession of the mainly Bengali-speaking East Pakistan in 1971. In Karachi and rural Sindh, violence, variously expressing opposition to Punjabi settlers, friction between indigenous Sindhis and mohajirs and Sindhi nationalism, has been endemic since the 1950s. Pashtun separatism and the quest for an independent Pashtun homeland, Pashtunwa, was a powerful force in NWFP from 1947 to 1958; violence erupted again in the province from 1973 to 1977, as it has again since 2001. Protest against central authority in Baluchistan met with particularly bloody responses from the government in 1948, 1958, 1962, 1973–77, and from 2005 to the present day. Some of these movements have had external support, including from the Soviet Union, Afghanistan and, according to the Pakistan authorities, India.⁴

Successive Pakistani leaders have opposed separatism, among them Ayub Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (who described it as provincialism and small-mindedness) and Musharraf (who vowed to ‘crush’ dissident Baluchis). But separatist feeling is not easily dismissed, and it remains a threat to Pakistan today, although each case is different in character and significance, and each enjoys a different degree of support.

The army and politics

These existential challenges are reflected in the weaknesses of the country's politics and institutions. Almost every decade of Pakistan's 62-year life has seen a replacement of civilian with military rule. The first military coup, led by General Ayub Khan in 1958, was followed by 11 years with Ayub at the helm, which ended when Yahya Khan, another general, took over in 1969. Yahya Khan led Pakistan for two years, until the disastrous war in 1971. The next military takeover came in 1977, when General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq deposed and subsequently executed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Military rule then lasted until Zia's death in mysterious circumstances in 1988. In 1999, Pervez Musharraf deposed Nawaz Sharif in a third coup, standing down in 2008. In all, Pakistan has been run by generals for more than half of its lifetime.

On taking over, each of the four generals pledged to swiftly restore democracy,⁵ while lamenting that the civilian leaders on offer lacked the qualities that would enable them to bring about good governance and democracy themselves. In reality, none of the generals left office voluntarily, although Musharraf decided to resign rather than face almost certain impeachment.

Even when not directly in charge, the army has been politically active behind the scenes. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir each came to office after normal elections following periods of military rule. But Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was deposed by General Zia, and all of Benazir Bhutto's and Nawaz Sharif's terms of office between 1988 and 1999 were brought to premature ends. At least three of Pakistan's prime ministers – Mohammad Khan Junejo in Zia's time, and Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and Shaukat Aziz in Musharraf's – were products of elections in which the army had intervened.

Interaction between the military and civilian politicians, therefore, has been, and remains, both active and complex. It merits examination.

The political use of religious parties and militants

In their struggle to exercise, maintain and enhance their power, secular politicians and military leaders alike have made use of the power and influence of religion for their own purposes. One important manifestation of this has been the creation, cooption or support of militant religious groups and their use as proxy or supplementary fighters against real or supposed external threats. In some instances the government has acted overtly, as during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In others, support for militant groups has been covert and officially denied, as in the case of the assisted infiltration of ‘freedom fighters’ into Indian-administered Kashmir. In electoral politics, religious parties or movements have frequently been wooed in order to secure their support in parliament or to induce them not to oppose some course of action. The plans by Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of General Zia, to introduce sharia law throughout the country in 1999 were an example of this kind of courting. Though electoral support for religious parties has invariably been low – usually of the order of 4–8% – their role in coalition-building tends to give these parties disproportionate influence. On certain occasions, political processes have been manipulated to the advantage of religious parties in order to reduce the influence of one or more of the main traditional political parties. This phenomenon was particularly in evidence during the 2002 general election, when it seemed that the mainstream political parties might defeat the party that had been created to support Musharraf, and the Inter-Services Intellige...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Regional maps
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Nature of Pakistan
• Chapter Two: Pakistan After 9/11
• Chapter Three: Internal Conflicts
• Chapter Four: Regional Relationships: India, China, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
• Conclusion: Prospects and Policies
• Glossary
• Notes