Stephen Kinzer
August 15, 2007 12:00 PM
This week marks the 60th anniversary of an experiment that failed: Pakistan.
Conceived as a secular Muslim state, it has become a cauldron of violent extremism. Forget Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan; the most dangerous country in the word today is Pakistan.
Its regime is weak and under intensifying pressure. Many of its most powerful political and military leaders sympathize with Islamic radicalism. Most significant, it is a nuclear power. Imagine a Taliban-like movement with state power and armed with atomic weapons. The world may be facing that prospect in Pakistan.
How did things go so wrong in Pakistan? Part of the blame lies with the British colonialists who "granted" it independence 60 years ago. They devised what turned out to be a tragically misbegotten partition of India that set off a massive wave of ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands were murdered.
Partition condemned the new Muslim state, Pakistan, to civil war and ultimately to the loss of its eastern region, now Bangladesh. Yet Pakistan could still have become a stable democracy. That was the dream of its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. His legacy, though, has been all but wiped away. Photos of him that hang in every government office are a cruel mockery. Today's Pakistan is the incarnation of everything Jinnah detested.
Jinnah's ambition was akin to that of another hugely ambitious nation-builder, Kemal Ataturk. He wanted to create in Pakistan what Ataturk had begun to build in Turkey: a modern, open, post-Enlightenment state in which Islam would guide private behavior but not public policy.
Jinnah's death in 1948 - and the assassination of his closest comrade, prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan, three years later - killed that dream. Perhaps the same would have happened in Turkey if Ataturk had died soon after taking over leadership of his new state, instead of ruling it for a decade and a half.
Over the decades that followed, Pakistan fell under the rule of military officers. The longest-running of them, Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977, proclaimed two goals: building a nuclear bomb and creating a "genuine Islamic order" in Pakistan. He introduced an Islamic Shari a legal code, filled the ranks of the army and intelligence service with officers sympathetic to Islamic radicalism, and encouraged the growth of religious schools where children were inculcated with fanaticism.
Zia had a strong ally as he worked to turn Pakistan into a nuclear-armed fundamentalist power: the United States. American leaders had decided to wage war against the Soviet-backed regime in neighboring Afghanistan, and wanted his help. Zia agreed, but only on condition that all funds for insurgent Afghan commanders be funneled through his government.
That allowed him to support commanders committed to radical Islam - many later turned up as leaders of the Taliban - and starve those who were more moderate or democratically oriented.
American policies thus laid the groundwork not only for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, but for a possible future takeover of Pakistan by similarly inclined militants.
Britain and the US do not bear all the responsibility for Pakistan's descent toward catastrophe. Unlike India, Pakistan never managed to build a strong middle class, always a pre-requisite for successful democracy. Its elected leaders, most recently Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, proved so spectacularly corrupt that many Pakistanis came to favor the idea of military rule.
During the waning days of Sharif's government, I attended a dinner in Islamabad at which there was much complaining about his misrule. People around the table agreed that he had to go.
When I asked how he could be made to do so, one of the other guests replied, "Pindi." The rest nodded. "Pindi" is short for Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani army has its headquarters. Soon afterward, just as those dinner guests predicted, General Musharraf staged his coup and seized power.
In recent months, Musharraf has learned that when troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. Powerful forces in Pakistan are determined to protect Osama bin Laden and other terrorists who are evidently living freely in tribal regions. The United States, which has backed Musharraf so strongly that some Pakistanis call him "Busharraf," is pressuring him to crack down on lawless regions and groups. Most threatening of all, the army is slowly concluding that his continued tenure in office damages its institutional power and prestige. That is the kind of conclusion that produces action from "Pindi."
Whether Musharraf survives his current crises politically - or physically - will not determine Pakistan's future. It is bleak. This is the world's next great crisis.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stephen_kinzer/2007/08/the_experiment_that_failed.html
August 15, 2007 12:00 PM
This week marks the 60th anniversary of an experiment that failed: Pakistan.
Conceived as a secular Muslim state, it has become a cauldron of violent extremism. Forget Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan; the most dangerous country in the word today is Pakistan.
Its regime is weak and under intensifying pressure. Many of its most powerful political and military leaders sympathize with Islamic radicalism. Most significant, it is a nuclear power. Imagine a Taliban-like movement with state power and armed with atomic weapons. The world may be facing that prospect in Pakistan.
How did things go so wrong in Pakistan? Part of the blame lies with the British colonialists who "granted" it independence 60 years ago. They devised what turned out to be a tragically misbegotten partition of India that set off a massive wave of ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands were murdered.
Partition condemned the new Muslim state, Pakistan, to civil war and ultimately to the loss of its eastern region, now Bangladesh. Yet Pakistan could still have become a stable democracy. That was the dream of its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. His legacy, though, has been all but wiped away. Photos of him that hang in every government office are a cruel mockery. Today's Pakistan is the incarnation of everything Jinnah detested.
Jinnah's ambition was akin to that of another hugely ambitious nation-builder, Kemal Ataturk. He wanted to create in Pakistan what Ataturk had begun to build in Turkey: a modern, open, post-Enlightenment state in which Islam would guide private behavior but not public policy.
Jinnah's death in 1948 - and the assassination of his closest comrade, prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan, three years later - killed that dream. Perhaps the same would have happened in Turkey if Ataturk had died soon after taking over leadership of his new state, instead of ruling it for a decade and a half.
Over the decades that followed, Pakistan fell under the rule of military officers. The longest-running of them, Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977, proclaimed two goals: building a nuclear bomb and creating a "genuine Islamic order" in Pakistan. He introduced an Islamic Shari a legal code, filled the ranks of the army and intelligence service with officers sympathetic to Islamic radicalism, and encouraged the growth of religious schools where children were inculcated with fanaticism.
Zia had a strong ally as he worked to turn Pakistan into a nuclear-armed fundamentalist power: the United States. American leaders had decided to wage war against the Soviet-backed regime in neighboring Afghanistan, and wanted his help. Zia agreed, but only on condition that all funds for insurgent Afghan commanders be funneled through his government.
That allowed him to support commanders committed to radical Islam - many later turned up as leaders of the Taliban - and starve those who were more moderate or democratically oriented.
American policies thus laid the groundwork not only for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, but for a possible future takeover of Pakistan by similarly inclined militants.
Britain and the US do not bear all the responsibility for Pakistan's descent toward catastrophe. Unlike India, Pakistan never managed to build a strong middle class, always a pre-requisite for successful democracy. Its elected leaders, most recently Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, proved so spectacularly corrupt that many Pakistanis came to favor the idea of military rule.
During the waning days of Sharif's government, I attended a dinner in Islamabad at which there was much complaining about his misrule. People around the table agreed that he had to go.
When I asked how he could be made to do so, one of the other guests replied, "Pindi." The rest nodded. "Pindi" is short for Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani army has its headquarters. Soon afterward, just as those dinner guests predicted, General Musharraf staged his coup and seized power.
In recent months, Musharraf has learned that when troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. Powerful forces in Pakistan are determined to protect Osama bin Laden and other terrorists who are evidently living freely in tribal regions. The United States, which has backed Musharraf so strongly that some Pakistanis call him "Busharraf," is pressuring him to crack down on lawless regions and groups. Most threatening of all, the army is slowly concluding that his continued tenure in office damages its institutional power and prestige. That is the kind of conclusion that produces action from "Pindi."
Whether Musharraf survives his current crises politically - or physically - will not determine Pakistan's future. It is bleak. This is the world's next great crisis.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stephen_kinzer/2007/08/the_experiment_that_failed.html
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