Pakistan’s Afghan problem

WHETHER we go deep into the history of the region of which Pakistan is today a part or just ponder over what has occurred in this part of the world over the last quarter century, one thing is abundantly clear. There is an umbilical cord that ties Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several attempts have been made in the past to sever this link but the two countries, for better or worse, remain joined. For about the third time in this more recent twenty-five year period, it appears that Afghanistan is again becoming a problem for Pakistan.

The first time, of course, was in the ‘eighties following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s military leaders at that time saw an opportunity in that for themselves and for their country. Until that time, President Ziaul Haq had been shunned by the West, in particular by the United States. His 1977 coup d’etat against the elected government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had not been well received. His decision to execute Bhutto two years later on charges of conspiracy to murder an opponent turned Zia into an international pariah. It didn’t matter to the West that the military president had followed all the judicial niceties before sending Bhutto to the gallows. What mattered was that an elected prime minister, having been removed from office by force, was executed as a common criminal.

President Leonid Brezhnev’s decision to send his troops into Afghanistan to aid the fledgling communist regime his government had helped to instal in Kabul opened a window for the Pakistani president. General Zia exploited the opportunity astutely. After turning down President Jimmy Carter’s offer of assistance as mere peanuts, Pakistan’s military ruler willingly joined hands with the US once the promised assistance, under President Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor in the White House, climbed to hundreds of millions of dollars.

How the American effort increased in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan has been told engagingly by George Crile, a TV journalist. Crile’s book, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” provides a number of intriguing details about the way the CIA engaged, funded and trained tens of thousands of Afghan mujahideen to battle the Soviets in their country.

The mujahideen won, aided profoundly by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But what did Pakistan gain other than the ready acceptance of its third military president into the western corridors of power? The cost-benefit of Pakistan’s first military engagement in Afghanistan has as yet to be made thoroughly and dispassionately. It is my belief that the costs overwhelmingly exceeded the benefits. Pakistan’s ten-year engagement in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989, left three unhappy legacies which continue to bedevil Islamabad in the first decade of the 21st century.

The most damaging of these was the entry of radical Islam into the country through the systems of madressahs generously funded by Saudi Arabia. The rise of the madressah was the result of a three-way implicit agreement among America, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were to fund the establishment of these religious schools provided the curricula they followed was based on Wahabism, the austere form of Islam practised by the rulers of the Kingdom. Pakistan was to allow the establishment of these institutions on its soil. And, finally, America was to train and equip the graduates of these schools to become irregular soldiers of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation.

When the war was won and the Americans went home, both Afghanistan and Pakistan were left with a large army of well trained religious zealots who believed only in one mission: to export — if need be even by force — their brand of Islam to the Muslim world. In this context it is important to comprehend one element in the ambitions of radical Islamists.

There was — and continues to be — considerable misunderstanding of the main objectives of what the West has begun to call the Jihadi groups. Their aim is not to defeat the West or to get involved in a clash of civilization a la Samuel P. Huntington. Their objective is to spread their interpretation of Islam to the rest of the Muslim ummah. This larger and considerably more ambitious aims of the terrorist groups led by Al Qaeda has begun to be revealed as the resistance to the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq became more intense in the autumn of 2003 and as the terrorists began to attack with greater frequency targets in the Muslim world.

The Washington Post was right when it said in its editorial of November 18, 2003 that Al Qaeda by using “its bombs in places such as Riyadh and Istanbul, the movement has effectively confirmed... that the war on terrorism is also a battle over the political future of the Middle East... People across the region have been offered dramatic evidence of the real stakes in the war: not only whether the United States or Israel is driven out of the Middle East but whether Arabs will be ruled in this century by democrats or Islamic zealots.” I will get back to this point a little later.

For the moment it is important to recall that in the eighties Afghan war left two other unpleasant legacies for Pakistan. This conflict brought weapons and drugs to Pakistan and both of them inflicted a heavy economic cost. Some estimates were made in the nineties that suggested that thanks to the production of opium in Afghanistan and its processing into various forms of narcotics in the border belt, Pakistan had one of the highest rates of drug addiction in the world. This fact is not fully recognized in Pakistan. It is also not recognized that drug addiction on the part of a large segment of the population inflicts a heavy cost on the economy.

The spread of lethal weaponry in Pakistan resulted in what the media began to call the “Kalashnikov culture” since that was the weapon of choice for the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. The small gun shops in Pakistan’s tribal belt proved exceptionally proficient in manufacturing the Kalashnikov rifle and its easy availability fuelled, among other things, sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shia communities that had, for decades, lived in peace in Pakistan.

This violence continues to take a heavy toll even today, fifteen years after the conclusion of the first Afghan war of the 20th century. The Kalashnikov culture has also given Pakistan the reputation of being a violent place and has kept foreign direct investment from coming into the country. This was another economic toll taken on Pakistan by the first Afghan war.

In a way Pakistan’s second involvement in Afghanistan can be treated as another legacy of the first — the war against the Soviet invasion of that country. This began in the mid-nineties with Islamabad’s sponsorship of the Taliban advance from the refugee camps strung along its border with Afghanistan to Kandahar and finally to most of Afghanistan. This story has been well told by another journalist, this time a Pakistani. Ahmed Rashid’s book, “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,” is a highly competent account of the forces that supported the rise of this particular group and helped it to bring under its sway most of Afghanistan.

The only point that needs to be repeated and underscored from this well told tale is that Pakistan’s support for the Taliban regime was not prompted by the pursuit of an ideology. Pakistan had expected — falsely and, as it turned out, optimistically — that the mujahideen’s triumph against the Soviet occupation would bring to power a friendly regime in Kabul. That did not happen. In the process there was much destruction and shedding of a considerable amount of additional Afghan blood. Frustrated by the inability of the mujahideen leaders to coalesce into a single force, Islamabad turned to another group, the highly motivated and well organized Taliban.

If we are to identify the father of Pakistan’s Taliban project it has to be Naseerullah Babar, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s interior minister. Babar was a Pashtun and a retired general who had fought the Indians with great distinction and valour in the 1965 war. He was also passionately devoted to the economic development of the Pashtun areas. One way of accomplishing this, he believed, was to tap Central Asia’s ample gas reserves and bring this important fuel into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Transit tariff to be collected from the transport of gas would be a source of considerable revenue for the impoverished and resource-poor Pashtun belts in both countries. Babar, therefore, wanted to bring peace to Afghanistan so that a gas pipeline could be laid. His motives were economic and not ideological.

When Islamabad launched its Taliban project it could not have imagined that it could go astray in such a spectacular way. That Taliban’s Mullah Omar would become so dependent upon support from Osama bin Laden, the Saudi renegade who once had the support of the US CIA, was not foreseen by Islamabad. It was not anticipated by Washington either. It is also highly improbable that Mullah Omar himself comprehended the mission Osama bin Laden was launching once the Soviets had pulled out of Afghanistan. A little more than two years after the last Soviet soldier — a general — left Afghanistan, the United States moved massively into the Middle East.

Washington sent close to half a million soldiers into the Arabian Peninsula to checkmate President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The US action was provoked by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and Washington took the decision to force him out of that oil-rich country. To accomplish this feat President George H. W. Bush assembled an impressive coalition of forces. The First Gulf War was fought with almost full international support and Iraq was quickly forced out of Kuwait.

Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda viewed the American involvement in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq from a different angle. They believed that the US had gone to the Middle East to save the heart of the Muslim world from falling into the hands of radical Islam. Americans had to be pushed out of Saudi Arabia and the only way that could be done was to inflict heavy damage on their economy and their military. This appears to be the main reason for the Al Qaeda-led terrorist attack on America on September 11, 2001.

With these attacks began Pakistan’s third involvement in Afghanistan in less than a quarter century. Soon after 9/11 Pakistan abandoned its support for the Taliban and provided all manner of assistance to Washington to bring about regime change in Kabul. Against many predictions to the contrary, some of which recalled the ignominious defeat suffered by the British in the 19th century when they tried to conquer Kabul, America’s initial triumph was quick and easy. Within a few weeks of their first bombing campaign against the combined forces of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Kabul fell to the Americans, aided by an Afghan group called the “Northern Alliance.” The US assault on Kabul was helped by the forces commanded by a handful of Tajik and Uzbek warlords the Taliban had failed to bring under their control. Although the interim regime installed after America’s victory in Afghanistan was led by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun leader, the Tajiks remained the dominant influence in the new regime. This remains a point of considerable contention with the Pashtuns who account for more than two-fifths of the Afghan population. While some progress has been made to stabilize Afghanistan over the last two years, it is hard to predict which way the country will go in the near future.

To be concluded

Saddam’s capture not the end

SADDAM Hussein’s capture is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, of the trauma of Iraq. But it is the end of the beginning, and its significance is difficult to exaggerate. First and foremost is its psychological importance to the people of Iraq.

However obvious it might have been to those with a logical frame of mind that Saddam’s regime had been overthrown and was never to return, that was not how it has been seen by millions of Iraqis. He had dominated their lives for so many years, his power seemed so pervasive and his punishments so severe that he was deemed by many to have almost supernatural qualities. They needed irrefutable proof of his death or capture to know that he could no longer pose a threat to their lives. Now that is what they have. Their future may still be uncertain. But now they know that he will not be part of it.

As delighted (and relieved) will be George Bush and Tony Blair. They know that politics is about symbols as well as about substance. Saddam’s continuing freedom, together with that of Osama bin Laden, reflected on American competence, on the support the coalition was receiving from the people they had liberated, and on whether the Iraq war was truly irreversible. Now the job of nation building can proceed without any spectres interfering in the feast.

The immediate question will be: what is to happen to Saddam? It is imperative that he be brought to trial and that this be done by the Iraqis and not by the Americans, nor by any international court. There is little doubt that Washington recognizes that it is to the Iraqi people that Saddam must answer for his crimes. That will not only be justice; it will also have an important cathartic effect on Iraq, helping to cleanse the country of the terrible effects of his long years of power.

Nuremberg was, rightly, different. The Nazis had done even greater crimes to the wider world than they had to their own people. That might have been Saddam’s ambition, and, of course, the Kuwaitis and the Iranians had suffered badly from his aggression. But the real trauma was in Iraq itself, and it is the Iraqis who must punish him.

A more complex question is the effect that his capture will have on the insurgency in Iraq that has been plaguing the Americans since April. More Americans have died in attacks over the past few months than during the campaign itself. And most of those responsible for these attacks have not been fighting in order to return Saddam to power. The fact that Saddam was captured in an isolated village, without a body of protectors, suggests that he might already have lost any meaningful influence over his erstwhile supporters.

Most of these insurgents are Iraqis resentful of the American occupation of their country. Others are Arabs or Islamic extremists from other countries who have moved into Iraq, seeing it as an opportunity to wage jihad against the West. These elements will have no incentive to end their violence. Whether they are forced to will, to a large extent, depend on how the Americans respond to the new situation following Saddam’s capture.

One possibility is that the US will see it as a vindication of the war and of their policy up to now. They may wish to revert to a very gradual return of real power to Iraqis, while a new constitution is drafted, civil society is constructed, the economy rebuilt and political institutions introduced. Until a few weeks ago that was the US intention, but the intensification of violence led to that strategy being abandoned and a promise that power would be transferred to an interim government by the middle of next year.

President Bush must resist any suggestion that with Saddam’s arrest he can now relax, prolong the timetable and expect a new level of Iraqi agreement for an occupation that would last for years rather than months. If anything, the reverse is true. While Saddam was at large, many Iraqis, whatever their public statements, were relieved that the presence of the US military guaranteed that the old regime could not fight its way back to power. Now that threat has finally disappeared, Iraqis will be less persuaded than ever that they need American tutelage in order to educate them how to govern themselves.

The Iraqis are a proud people but, unlike in Afghanistan, they are also well-educated and have massive oil reserves that give them the prospect of economic self-sufficiency. However delighted they might be to be relieved of Saddam’s tyranny, they feel humiliated by foreign occupation, and they should not be expected to be any less anti-American than the rest of the Arab world.

If the Americans ignore these sensitivities then the insurgents, with Saddam out of the way, will seem even more like freedom fighters to ordinary Iraqis. If, however, the Americans respond generously and use these events to justify an even earlier departure of occupying forces, the dissidents will quickly lose any popular support.

It is not just the future of Iraq that is at stake. Bush’s re-election next year depends on Americans feeling that they are not facing a new Vietnam. Saddam’s capture will boost Bush’s prestige, but that will be short-lived if the violence continues and, even more, if it escalates. Bush should use this new opportunity to transfer effective power in Iraq from the Pentagon and Donald Rumsfeld, and hand the political process over to Colin Powell and his colleagues. The imperatives are now political and diplomatic, and whatever the Pentagon’s other strengths, nation building is not one of them.

For Tony Blair these events are also good news. We will hear, again and again, that the nightmare of the Iraqis would not be over if the war had not happened. That is irrefutable, though it will have to be pointed out to him, equally often, that this view would justify war against Zimbabwe, North Korea and Cuba as well.

The end result of the second Gulf war will not be a liberal, capitalist Iraq that is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Such unreservedly happy endings are not, sadly, the lot of man. New, tough, authoritarian Iraqis will emerge to take over the levers of power. If Iraq is lucky, it will end up like Egypt; if unlucky, it will be like Syria. One thing, however, remains clear. It will be the Iraqis, and not the Americans or the British, who will decide.

—Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is a former Conservative defence secretary of Britain (1992-1995) and foreign secretary (1995-1997).

Machines too can lie

“IT’S not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting,” says a character in Tom Stoppard’s play “Jumpers.” The character wasn’t referring to the Florida recount debacle three years ago, or to the 2002 law aimed at preventing future electoral traumas by funding local efforts to replace antiquated voting equipment. The character’s point, however, should be foremost in Congress’ mind as it works to implement the Help America Vote Act.

On Wednesday last, the Senate decided to delay funding for new voting devices because of partisan disagreements over unrelated issues in the budget bill. The delay gives legislators a chance to condition future funding for the act on reforms that would fix its numerous flaws.

Legislators should begin by passing a bill by Rep. Rush D. Holt that would require the new machines to provide a paper receipt to each voter — much like the “voter-verified paper audit trail” that California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will require electronic voting machines to produce by July 2006.

Beyond not requiring receipts, the Help America Vote Act has an even bigger and more troubling shortcoming: It fails to include any meaningful regulation of voting system manufacturers and vendors.

The act does not require the companies to reveal their software coding to outside, independent reviewers.

That’s a potential problem because computer security experts have identified numerous flaws in the systems made by industry leader Diebold Election Systems Inc. that could allow vote tampering. Rebecca Mercuri, a computer scientist at Harvard University, was one of many experts expressing deep concerns about the nation’s lax regulation of the new machines at a symposium on electronic voting systems this week in Gaithersburg, Md.

“There are literally hundreds of ways to embed a rogue series of commands into the coding,” Mercuri said, “and nobody would ever know because the nature of programming is so complex. The numbers would all tally perfectly.”

—Los Angeles Times

Democracy on trial

NINETEEN Italian soldiers, seven Spanish intelligence officials and 2 Japanese diplomats lost their lives in the killing field of Iraq. They went home, their coffins draped in their national flags and were received with solemn dignity.

In the case of Italy and Spain a day of mourning was observed while the Japanese diplomats were given state funerals and posthumously awarded high civil honours. Some meaning was given to their deaths and each country declared its continuing resolve to carry on fighting the good fight.

Not so honoured were the children who died in bombing raids carried out by the Americans in Afghanistan, nine in Ghazni and six near Gardez. All they received were regrets, not even the expression of some sadness. There was an eerie silence from the Pentagon and Colin Powell attended a concert of the Iraqi National Symphony at the Kennedy Centre, which he described as “the music of hope” and “ the sweet, sweet sound of freedom.”

Somehow, I find it difficult to share in the joyful celebration of the Secretary of State. I can’t help thinking of those dead children in Ghazni and Gardez. Perhaps they had disobeyed their parents and insisted on playing in the compound. They may have mistaken the bombs for food parcels. Food parcels had been airdropped in the early part of the war in Afghanistan. The practice may have resumed, they might have thought. Compassion comes in various forms. Who knows? Certainly not the dead children. Who cares?

Lt-Col Bryan Hilferty said that he could not guarantee that there would not be more civilian injuries. “The loss of any innocent life is tragic, “ he said. So true, so true. Human error too takes various forms and who can be faulted if people happen to find themselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time? Thus the weight of one’s conscience is lifted. Dead children as collateral damage. Collateral damage too comes in various forms.

There was no real outrage as there would have been, had a crazed gunman gone to a classroom and shot up some school children. All sorts of experts would have been brought in to offer counselling to the parents, psychiatrists would have testified about the mental state of the killer and discovered some trauma in his life, child abuse, parental brutality and social workers would have blamed it on television and video games.

It would have been a media event. The killing of the Afghan children got merely a passing reference. There was some mention of compensation as if human lives could be quantified in financial terms. Can money lessen the pain? But the ‘story ‘ too got quickly buried. An investigation was promised. What would such an investigation reveal? No one will be held responsible. These mistakes happen and , after all, all’s fair in love and warfare.

But consider, what would have happened had these children been American and killed in some terrorist attack. There would have been anguish and memorial services and most of all there would have been reprisals.

To the immense grief would have been added immense anger. Is it that Afghan children are lesser children or, perhaps, not children at all?

Both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq are fast losing their moral legitimacy, if they ever had any. It is not for us to be concerned about it. It is for those who trumpet their values as being something unique and who polarise the world between good and evil to ask themselves some honest questions and to find some answers. The word ‘civilization’ is constantly being used. It is used loosely to convey some higher behaviour that respects the rights of others and which in a political context is presented as democracy.

Democracy covers a multitude of virtues, it is a sort of a political aspirin and it can be prescribed freely for all kinds of ailments. It has now become a self-evident good. Vladimir Putin’s reaction to the results of the recent elections in Russia was that “they would strengthen democracy.” Congo is the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Like terrorism, democracy too needs to be defined. It needs to go beyond a subjective manifestation of the idea that if there are elections and a parliament, there is democracy. The real test of a democracy is whether it can function unhindered when it comes under stress. While clarion calls are being made for democracy, particularly in the Middle East, there is an assault on civil liberties by countries making these clarion calls. There is no such thing as a selective democracy.

Guantanamo Bay is not just a denial of democracy but a mockery of it. So too is the indiscriminate arrests of British Muslims on the suspicion of having links with terrorist organizations on the flimsiest of evidence. In a democratic society the rights of citizens are automatically protected. There is no concept of midnight knocks and what in effect is the kidnapping of citizens by the state.

That is fascism at a minimum or worse. Forms and rituals are not enough to qualify as a democracy. And one does not have to be like the enemy to fight it. McCarthyism made democracy weak just as the war on terror is doing, if the war on terror means wholesale picking up of people and who are kept out of the legal process. I was too far gone into this column when I learnt of the capture of Saddam Hussain. I did not think it worthwhile to change course. What will happen to him? The immediate response is one of jubilation in Washington and London and many other capitals. There is talk of him being tried as a war criminal. This is slippery ground. If it is a fair trial, many dark secrets may be revealed. And only time will tell whether the insurgency in Iraq will weaken or will intensify. He is, in the popular slang, a hot potato. And it would depend on what is sought, justice or revenge.

Twin scourges of our polity

BEING a statesman, Mohammad Ali Jinnah knew well that in a multiethnic society like Pakistan discrimination on the basis of faith or language could spell disaster. Therefore all citizens regardless of their creed or language should be given equal political, social and economic rights.

Unfortunately, his message has not been heeded to and people have been discriminated against on the basis of faith or culture, giving rise to the twin scourges of ethnicism and sectarianism. Take ethnicism first.

It is ethnicism which formed the basis of the separation of former East Pakistan. There was a marked contrast between the two wings of the country. Whereas West Pakistan was ethnically diverse, East Pakistan was ethnically homogeneous. West Pakistan was essentially a feudal society but there was only a vestige of feudalism in East Pakistan.

Hence, East Pakistanis were politically more conscious than the West Pakistanis. West Pakistan was economically more prosperous than East Pakistan. And finally, population-wise, the eastern wing was larger than the western wing — the former accounted for nearly 54 per cent of the country’s total population.

In the interest of the integrity of the federation of Pakistan, it was imperative that its federating units were given adequate representation in the state apparatus and share in economic development, and that its various ethnic nationalities were welded together. To ensure adequate representation to the units, it was necessary to hold elections and transfer power to the elected representatives of the people and grant sufficient autonomy to the provinces. As for integrating various ethnic groups, the country needed a strong and stable political party with an across-the-nation base, which could represent the various nationalities. However, both these requirements remained unfulfilled.

The West Pakistan leadership was reluctant to share power with the leadership of the eastern wing. The central government mainly controlled by the leaders from the western wing, shied away from elections as such a process would have transferred power from the western to the eastern wing. In their attempt to perpetuate their rule without seeking a popular mandate, the rulers became increasingly dependent on the bureaucracy — both civil and military. Since the bulk of the bureaucracy hailed from the western wing, it was the western wing that had the ultimate say in the exercise of power.

Since political and economic powers go hand in hand, lack of adequate share in political power also hampered the economic development of the eastern wing, which gave birth to an acute sense of deprivation and discontent among its people. This sense of deprivation and discontent gradually built up as successive regimes denied East Pakistanis due share in political and economic power. This eventually crystallized into the famous six-points of the Awami League, the premier political force in East Pakistan.

These points, inter alia, called for separate military and currency for both the wings and a very weak centre in a federal form of government — obviously a reaction to a very strong centre that had existed. It was on the basis of these six points that the Awami League contested Pakistan’s first general elections held in 1970, and won all but two seats in the eastern wing.

The essential message of the elections was ethnic. No party from the western wing could secure a single seat in the eastern wing; no party from the eastern wing won a single seat in the western wing. Ethnicism could have been dampened by transferring power to the majority party, which happened to be the Awami League. But since our democracy had not come of age, monopolizing, rather than sharing, power was emphasized and power was not transferred to the largest party. In other words, pluralism was disregarded. The result was nothing short of a catastrophe — dismemberment of Pakistan.

The ethnic problem did not die with the separation of East Pakistan and has persisted to date in one form or another — Baloch nationalism, Pukhtunistan, Sindhi nationalism and Mohajir nationalism. Underlying these ethnic problems is the perception of political, economic and cultural deprivation and exploitation.

The best way to deal with ethnicism is to ensure equitable share of all ethnic groups in political power, which will also protect their economic and cultural rights. This of course requires smooth functioning of parliamentary democracy as well as full provincial autonomy.

Now turn to sectarianism. Pakistan, no doubt, was created in the name of Islam. However, the purpose was not to create a theocratic, monolithic state but to safeguard the political, cultural and economic rights of Indian Muslims. And once Pakistan was established, the rights of even non-Muslims were to be protected as equal citizens of the state. And within Muslims all sects were to be treated as equal. This necessitated that religion should not be used for political purposes, because it invariably promotes one community at the expense of the rest, with the result that the communities discriminated against feel increasingly alienated from the mainstream. However, the pitfall of religionizing politics has not been avoided. Religion has been used as an instrument of capturing, perpetuating and legitimzing power.

Gen Ziaul Haq, who had assumed power by unconstitutional means, needed some principle to legitimize his illegitimate rule. He found such a principle in religion and an instrument to carry it out in the clergy or ulema. Zia came close to subscribing to the theory of divine rights, in vogue during the Middle Ages, that kings were sent by God to enforce the right path, that they were answerable to God only, not to the people, that the opposition to the regime was opposition to God, and that disobedience of rulers was both a serious offence and a grave sin. However, the general never really faced the question: Is there a place for an un-representative government in Islam?

Zia’s so-called Islamic measures increased the already existing polarization in society. They widened the chasm between Muslims and non-Muslims and between Sunnis and Shias. He replaced joint electorates provided by the 1973 Constitution with separate electorates, which was a discrimination against the minorities.

It was during this period that the most notorious sectarian outfit of the country was born with the blessings of the regime. In exchange for their cooperation, the regime extended them full patronage. The enormous money that these organizations received was spent on the purchase of arms and sectarian propaganda.

However, the factor more dangerous than militancy has been the role of ulema, khatibs and madressahs. Education imparted in most of the madressahs often creates among the students hatred for other creeds. They are taught that only their creed is based on truth and that the rest are an incarnation of evil whose elimination is their most sacred duty.

The reward of performing such duty, it is taught, is an everlasting life of pleasures in paradise. Most of the students owing to their impressionable age actually believe this. Hence, when they graduate from the madressahs, their hearts burn with the “earnest” desire to carry out their “sacred duty”. The madressahs also churn out sectarian propaganda in the form of inflammatory literature, which denounces the followers of other creeds as unbelievers, who must either be coerced into conversion or exterminated. The literature also contains disparaging remarks against sacred personalities of other sects and mocks at some of their practices.

Religious parties or alliances have traditionally made a poor show in elections. However, in the last elections the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, the alliance of almost all religious parties of note, broke the tradition by emerging the third largest force. In provinces as well the performance of the MMA remained quite impressive. The MMA’s electoral performance may be an indicator of growing popularity of religious parties.

Conversely, it may be a reaction to Pakistan government’s support to the United States in its war against the Taliban or the absence of a level playing field for two major parties: the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N).

However, religious parties’ victory has led to apprehensions that they may use their parliamentary strength and street power to convert a multiethnic society into a monolithic one in the name of the Shariah, like what the Taliban did in Afghanistan after they had captured power. The treatment which the Taliban meted out to those who disagreed with them politically or religiously was simply appalling. Predictably, their religious and political extremism alienated them from the rest of the world and added to the miseries of the Afghan people. The political and economic fallout of the Taliban’s extremism should be an example for the MMA.

Moreover, as against the Taliban who had captured power by sheer force, the MMA’s march to power is based on the consent of the people, and there is hardly any reason to believe that it is less committed to democracy than other parties or alliances.

However, the MMA must remember that the basis of democracy is tolerance rather than intolerance, moderation rather than extremism, reason rather than frenzy, pluralism rather than mono-ism and sharing rather than monopolizing. Therefore, it should desist from taking or supporting any measures which tend to transform our multiethnic society into a monolithic one. Doing so will have serious repercussions for both state and society.