Imran Khan's momentous gamble: Why Pakistan is wrong to emulate Egypt and not Turkey

Nauman Sadiq

PTI chief Imran Khan and the PAT chief Tahirul Qadri are arguably at the driving seats of Pakistan now; where they'll lead this beleaguered South Asian country is, though, anybody's guess. And the scene of the powerful army being dragged into a confrontation between political powers does not seem pretty from Kathmandu.  

So what is IK, so widely admired and more if not equally loathed, up to, after all? What is the source of his 'unscrupulous pragmatism' that has so badly threatened a democratically elected government? In this insightful piece written before the current 'revolution' started, Sadiq gives a crucial background as to how IK landed the country as well as himself in a difficult situation. 

Imran Khan: A pragmatist par excellence

Rather than the Turkish establishment where Erdogan has clipped the wings of Kemalist generals, it appears that the Pakistani establishment is taking its cue from the Egyptian establishment. Egyptian army has massacred hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, handed down heavy sentences to hundreds more and imprisoned the entire leadership and thousands of MB supporters, yet the international community did nothing except making some symbolic gestures. This precedent has emboldened the establishment in Pakistan to act with impunity.

Before psycho-analyzing Imran Khan’s colorful personality and determining that where does PTI stands in the Pakistani political spectrum: whether it’s a center-left (liberal) or a center-right (conservative) party, let us first draw a distinction between politics and culture: a democratic system of governance falls in the category of politics while liberalism as a value-system falls in the category of culture.

When we say that Islam and democracy are incompatible, we make a category mistake as big as the Islamists’ misperception that democracy is un-Islamic. They too mix up democracy with liberalism. Here let me concede that there is some friction between liberalism as a culture and Islam as a religion. But democracy isn’t about religion or culture. It is simply a multi-party representative political system that confers legitimacy upon a government which comes to power through an election process which is a contest between more than one political parties, to ensure that it is voluntary. Thus, democracy and politics is about matters of governance and economics while culture is about the socio-moral values and the kind of social matrix that we, as individuals and families, want around us. There is some overlapping between politics and culture but as an heuristic principle this distinction holds true.

When I discuss the political pragmatism of PTI, the reader will further appreciate the fact that realpolitik is mostly about power and rarely about cultural matters. Let us admit at the outset that Imran Khan is an educated, well-informed, articulate and charismatic leader. Being an Oxford graduate he is better informed than our local politicians. And he is a liberal at heart. Most readers won’t agree due to his strong anti-imperialism and the West-bashing demagoguery but I’ll try to explain. Like I said earlier that there is a difference between politics and culture; anti-imperialism is a political stance and liberalism is a cultural temperament. There is a theory called Reflective equilibrium. It states that our minds try to create a harmony between our different sets of beliefs and actions. If there is a divergence between our beliefs and actions, it leads to cognitive dissonance. To avoid this dissonance we try to attune our beliefs and ideology to bring them in conformity with our actions and vice versa.

Now if Imran Khan is a conservative-Islamist, his mind must be a psychological singularity. A playboy-cricketer turned politician who spent most of his youth in the West chasing famous celebrities all over the world, how could he be an Islamist or a conservative? How would his mind create a reflective equilibrium between his beliefs and his adulterous actions? It is just not possible for him to be an Islamist or a conservative. The only ideology that suits his temperament and past actions is the freewheeling liberalism. A clarification here is needed. When I say that he is not an Islamist, I mean that he is not a political Islamist and I am not questioning his personal faith as a Muslim. He seems like a secular Muslim.

Naya Pakistan: How I lost my faith in this nation

By Farrukh Khan Pitafi

Pakistan is going through one of its frequent crises in recent history. The protests in Islamabad led by the PTI chief Imran Khan and the cleric Qadri have apparently taken ominous turn today with protesters surrounding the parliament and pushing forward.

For those looking for a closer coverage of the whole fiasco, I recommend the Pakistani media which are doing their job in a more or less wholesome way. Meanwhile, here I carry the initial part of a poignant and provocative column of a TV journalist from Islamabad from The Express Tribune. 

Behold Naya Pakistan

So the cat is out of the bag. Naya Pakistan is before us. And boy is it ugly? Uglier than a mad man’s dream. Our revolutionaries have brought us on our knees. But why complain? Fatalist as I have become, I am convinced that this is our luck. But let us just not go there. Perhaps, people are unaware of the full extent of the disaster being averted. And yet today is not the day to regale you with the details. Nor the year. Perhaps in 2015 you will know the extent of the full circus.

For now, let us not go there. Imran Khan is celebrating. He’ll probably get married soon. Seeds of change he has sown today will bear ugly painful thorns soon. Painful for him, mind you, not just us. But where does he go from here? A return to the good profitable cricket commentating days? But what of his politics? And that in essence is the question.

We have seen some unsavoury scenes. A parliamentarian threatening to storm parliament. A man considered a national hero not just by cricket lovers but patriots, asking us to stop paying taxes, boycott the state-owned banks. A self-proclaimed prime ministerial candidate threatening to attack and take over the prime ministerial mansion. Will you vote for this man? Don’t answer just now. Give it a few months. Then we’ll see.

Read the whole article in The Express Tribune here

Dissecting 'Islamic' extremism: The Saudi role

How Saudi Petrodollar plays determinant role in spreading, sustaining and multiplying religious fanaticism and extremism around the globe

The author

Opinion

By Nauman Sadiq

It has been tempting to attach the word 'Muslim' to terrorism in much of the western world. It is often forgotten, rather deliberately, that the Al Qaeda and Taliban are but a fringe elements in the Muslim world. The narrative which places the entire Muslim population as a potential if not present day threats to the security of the others has given rise to a dangerous form of Islamophobia in many parts of the world.

So what is the so called Islamic extremism and terrorism? How was it borne and how is it sustained in today's world? What were and are the geopolitical realities-- though downplayed by the mainstream media in the world-- that decide the trajectory of forces like Taliban and Al Qaeda? To be frank, the people all over world have been more misinformed than informed on these issues by the mainstream media. In this highly insightful piece, Nauman Sadiq pointedly explains how the state of Saudi Arabia has been at the center of extremism and fanaticism that goes in the name of Islam. This post, also carried by Asia Times Online earlier this week, is his first in this blog and was taken from the author's blog with his permission.

View from Pakistan: Talks with Taliban – A false narrative

Opinion 

By Ali Malik 

The author

Pakistan may be 'a troubled state' to anyone away from the country. But for people in the country, the ramifications of that 'trouble' matter more than anything else. And how are the events unfolding in today's Pakistan? 

In this brief but pointed column, Ali Malik tries to decipher some of the mysteries shrouding the relationship between the state of Pakistan and the entity called Taliban with help of some relevant recent developments. The victory of the Nawaz Sharif-led PML-N in this year's elections was popularly expected to bring respite to the Pakistanis by 'managing those relationships' with the Taliban. This assumption was based on the assessment that the brute force of the erstwhile PPP-led government in coordination with the US was futile in taming the Taliban. But will the things in ground change with the new government's policies vis-a-vis Taliban? This question becomes all the more relevant now in context of the proposed talks between the Pakistan government and the Taliban. Here is the column, reproduced from author's blog with permission.

Oh lord! Save me from my friends

While the militants in Pakistan have apparently attributed the attacks as 'retaliation to drone attacks by US', either an insane or a brain dead will buy their argument: neither were the poor people in Pakistan behind any of the droning done by Nobel War Prize winner Barack Obama, nor will this butchery make any future droning less frequent or less lethal. Any religion in the world will say that butchering unarmed and vulnerable civilians is cowardice, pure and simple. 

Debating partition of India: culpability and consequences

(A sightly edited version of this article was published by Asia Times Online on August 29, 2013 as "India's partition debate best left to artists")

More than six decades later, the debates around partition of India have become no less intense. While a book on partition and a recent column by a historian put India’s architect Jawaharlal Nehru in spotlight for extreme myopia and culpability, a 2010 novel and a recent Hindi movie go on to explore the terrible cost of partition.

 


“Hindustan had become free. Pakistan had become independent soon after its inception but man was still slave in both these countries -- slave of prejudice … slave of religious fanaticism … slave of barbarity and inhumanity.” 

These words of Saadat Hasan Manto, the legendary short story writer who arguably depicted the horrors of partition of India most comprehensively, probably capture the essence of the tragedy that followed the much awaited independence of India, and also Pakistan, from Britain. 

One of the massive human tragedies of the past century, the event of partition continues to invite debate to date in the subcontinent and even elsewhere, particularly among the historians, sociologists and psychologists. Was the horror and nasty bloodletting inevitable? If it was not, then who precisely was responsible for the tragedy? These questions have been variously debated even though no infallible conclusion can be reached as such.

"With the tragic legacy of an uncertain future, a young refugee sits on the walls of Purana Qila, transformed into a vast refugee camp in Delhi." Margaret Bourke-White, 1947 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

As the newly independent states of India and Pakistan pursued their own, albeit diverse, fates after partition, most of the physical wounds of the cataclysmic violence gradually subsided even though a recovery to pre-partition status was an impossibility. This, however, was not the case with the mental trauma forced upon millions of people: those who had not participated in the violence had witnessed it and at the end, there was no answer to the question as to how the people in the subcontinent could live in peace, as evidenced by the lingering tension between the two states that flares frequently enough. 


Who was the culprit?



One line of argument about culpability for partition of India goes like this: the British as the colonial power had so finely sown the seeds of internecine conflict in the subcontinent in their attempt to strengthen their hold of the territories that some kind of mass confrontation between the religious communities was inevitable; that it came in the form of partition-related violence was only a manifestation of an inevitable development. 


While this argument does have merit and partially explains the state of perpetual tension between religious communities in colonized India, it would be well off the mark to conclude that the violence of that scale was inevitable and that it was impossible to avoid it. Also, this argument injudiciously absolves the then leaders of India, to-be-born Pakistan and the then government of Britain of any responsibility towards avoiding the violence. 

For decades after partition, as India under Jawaharlal Nehru fared comparatively better than Pakistan, it was implicitly believed in India that the partition was the result of the intransigence of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League (ML) who were ready to go to any length to realize their dreams, rather vested interests, of a separate Muslim state. By implication, the historic culpability for inciting one of the gravest human tragedies in recent human history thus fell more or less squarely on Jinnah and ML. Leaders of new India, particularly Nehru himself, were thus depicted as having been rather unsuccessful at preventing the bloodletting nevertheless not directly responsible for the same. 

A refugee train on its way to Punjab, Pakistan.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Many scholars and historians, however have had objections to the narrative from the very beginning. Moreover, the issue of culpability, negligence and myopia of the then leadership of India came further into scrutiny after some recent outspoken critiques of Nehru and his brand of politics in India before, through and after partition. In 'Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence' the Indian politician-turned-biographer Jashwant Singh has chronicled how Jinnah was relentlessly pushed to the position by Nehru-led Congress from where it was impossible to demand anything but independent Muslim state. 

In a recent column, historian Zareer Masani has come up with an all out criticism of Nehru, the then British Viceroy for India Mountbatten and the then PM of Britain Attlee for colluding in a terribly myopic arrangement whereby partition was hastily 'forced' into India. While the imaginary scenario of avoiding partition sketched by Masani in the article could be debated for merits, he has substance on arguing that any provisional arrangement for the time being, akin to an unhappy marriage, would have been far better than the hastily executed plan to sever the territory at the terrible price. 

This reference to two statements of Nehru in the article speak a lot about why exactly Nehru cannot be absolved of the responsibility for being instrumental to a situation which led to bloodletting: 

As for Nehru, he first crowed about the mangled Muslim state that emerged from the cutting up of Punjab and Ben­gal, saying, “The truncated Pakistan that remains will hardly be a gift worth having.” But a year later, he said, “Per­haps we acted wrongly.... The conseque­nces of that partition have been so ter­rible that one is inclined to think that anything else would have been preferable.... Ultimately, I have no doubt that India and Pakistan will come close toge­ther...some kind of federal link.... There is no other way to peace. The alte­rnative is...war.” Even as he spoke, the two new states were already at war over Kashmir.

 

Secularism in South Asia: The Chickens Come Home to Roost

(First published by Foreign Policy Journal on June 1, 2013)

Over 2008-2009, the tide of secularism sweeping South Asia appeared unassailable. While the chickens have already come home to roost in Pakistan merely after a tenure of PPP-led government, the ailing UPA-II coalition in India led by the Congress fears a similar fate in upcoming polls after two exhausting tenures. Situation in Bangladesh looks more complicated and less predictable but some lessons are hard to miss.

In 2009 elections, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the incumbent secular alliance led by the Indian National Congress, got a thumping victory in India. To defeat the rival saffron alliance for two elections in a row, that too with an incremental margin, was no mean achievement and the future of the secularists looked cemented for the first time after the post-emergency debacle of Indira Gandhi in 1977.

It was not long after the lingering turmoil in Bangladesh had followed by a landslide victory of the secular-minded Awami Leage (AL) led by Sheikh Hasina in 2008, nearly decimating the right wing religious parties.

And in a dramatic turnaround, the polls in Pakistan held in 2008 to cap the Musharraf rule had also given the alliance led by PPP, known most widely for its secular credentials apart from corruptibility and tendency to misgovernance, an unambiguous victory.

In the tiny neighborhood of Nepal also, the centuries long Hindu monarchy had been formally uprooted in 2008 with a promise to establish a secular republic, even though the fate of the monarchy had been already sealed by the people’s movement in 2005.

To sum up, the tide of secularism seemed unassailable as the first decade of new century was concluding, sweeping across the political boundaries in South Asia. After a protracted affair with the religion as the driving force in politics, it was believed, people had said ‘enough is enough’ and sought an alternative.

The times have changed now, however, and so have the directions of political wind in various capitals of the South Asian countries.

The coalition of the secular parties in India has been battered so badly by the corruption scams and shoddy dealing of those scams by people at all levels in the government that it has become a heresy to praise the achievements of the UPA-II a year before the completion of its tenure.

With the recent revelation that even the politicians in ruling alliance are mulling over the option of early polls to bring the lackadaisical performance of the once-impeccable Manmohan Singh to an end, the future looks pretty grim for the coalition of secularist forces in India. While all of their loss is unlikely to transform into gain for the rival saffron alliance named NDA, a fractured verdict of the people is bad for both the secularists and the nation in general.

In neighboring Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has just enjoyed a historic electoral gain. A witty journalist Mohammed Hanif has sarcastically commented that Sharif has won by promising airports to people who do not own even a bicycle, still both the gain for the religion-friendly parties and the loss for the secularists in Pakistan were highly significant. While duly sharing a record of corruption and misgovernance with the PPP, PML-N stands in contrast with the former in terms of its attitude towards the relationship between the state and the religion.

Looking deeper into the results of the polls in Pakistan, the performance of the ruling coalition over the past five years was far more decisive than any other factors like the Taliban’s selective targeting of secular parties prior to the polls, in determining the outcome. In face of intractable Taliban insurgency and failure of the PPP-led government to tackle the problem head on, the assumption, rather wishful thinking, that the Taliban could be better dealt by political powers ideologically closer to them seemed less absurd then it would appear otherwise.

And the tumult and turbulence in Bangladesh now is a bit complicated and rather unsettling, but the lessons to be learnt could be very significant.