HISTORY has not really been kind to the tribesmen of the NWFP: it dubbed them as clever robbers and as deft and brutal assassins. The chroniclers did not discriminate but generalised.

They simply wrote off, say, the Afridis as evil and the Shinwari, Wazir and Mehsud as capable of inflicting doom on those within their reach. On the other end, the present appears even more ominous: it labels the Frontier tribesmen as terrorists of the worst order. Today tribal homes, once the pride of hosts and guests alike, are targets for drones. So what does the future hold for these tribesmen? Are they writing their own elegy by challenging the writ of the rest of the world or are they facing collective blame for the misdeeds of a few?

No doubt, the onus falls squarely on the tribesmen. They are held accountable for the misdemeanor of a few, and not quite by default either. By refusing to question and challenge the collective responsibility clause (in the Frontier Crimes Regulation), the tribesmen have, over a long period of time, allowed themselves to become subservient to it. Despite their overt dislike of the clause, a majority of tribesmen including the highly educated among them refuse to shed their tribal cloak. They would like the clause to be speedily dispensed with, but would nevertheless be willing to cling on to the remnants of tribalism.

Tribalism is an archaic term denoting primitiveness and the absence of civilisation. It has now not only become the nemesis of the people of the Frontier’s tribal areas but of the entire country. Interestingly, in their detailed references to tribalism, the most popular dictionaries refer only partially to the now nearly defunct Indian American tribal structure. Instead, they amplify, in fact demonise, the prevalent tribal system in Pakistan’s northwest. It is equally interesting to note that the strongest advocates of tribalism are to be found among the educated, urbanised bigwigs.

A more anomalous situation than the one prevalent in the tribal enclave comprising seven tribal agencies and five semi tribal agencies in the Frontier would be difficult to find anywhere else on the globe. The tribesmen of these areas are enjoying a double status: they are tribesmen in the tribal belt and non-tribals in the settled districts. They have representation in parliament, its select committees and the cabinet where they hold important portfolios.

Portfolios such as environment, sports, culture, Kashmir and Northern Areas, tourism etc have usually been assigned to ministers from the tribal belt. But the funny part of the bargain is that most of the laws that are passed with the consent of the tribal members of parliament, and the policies formulated by such members of the cabinet, fail to extend into the tribal region.Equally incomprehensible is the composition of the civil and military establishment. The civil-military bureaucratic map is replete with names fresh in public memory. At least two former chief secretaries of the NWFP, an IGP and scores of DIGs, ambassadors, federal and provincial secretaries and generals with tribal domiciles have served in different areas from time to time. The last governor of the NWFP, a retired general, was a tribesman from the Orakzai Agency. The list of names of tribesmen serving as mayors and deputy mayors in various districts including Peshawar is too long for this space. However, one wonders how these gentlemen from caves and hideouts have been trying to govern and put things right in the settled areas when their own backyards are in such dire need of being straightened out.

There was a time when a tribal domicile was considered a golden ticket to admission to professional colleges and induction in the civil services. With the passage of time and the proliferation of educational services, the tribal domicile has ceased to carry weight as there are simply too many candidates with outstanding scores to be accommodated against the quota for the tribal areas. Similarly, more often than not, a candidate or two from the tribal areas could always be spotted among the top 10 scorers in competitive examinations. The question then is: why force an able population into the grip of tribalism and expose it to universal taunts and ridicule?

The time is more than ripe for action. Force is something that tribesmen know how to counter and gimmickry is the other thing they have perfected with the help of political officers and their failed system of administration. But let’s not overlook the silver lining — with South Waziristan (said to be a militant haven) having the highest literacy rate in the area, it is clear that the tribesmen are now educated enough to take part in productive dialogue.

The NWFP governor Mr Owais Ghani recently told a team of US senators how the government was moving ahead with a policy of dialogue, development and deterrence in the tribal belt. (The governor could have been advised to inform his guests that the government was renaming the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as Federally Administered ‘Natural’ Areas!)

A better message could not have been sent to the world at large. No sane person could have any objection to dismantling the yoke of tribalism. This would also provide lexicographers with enough evidence to redefine the term in the updated editions of dictionaries.

THERE is an abundance of dire predictions about the future of Pakistan and a dearth of rosy ones. The latest dystopia comes from the US Joint Forces Command.

Its Joint Operating Environment report was issued just as the Mumbai attacks were unfolding, which means that the negative effects on Pakistan’s security of that event did not get factored in. Even then, in its worst-case scenario, there was “a rapid and sudden collapse” of Pakistan.

That Pakistan may succumb to a “violent and bloody civil and sectarian war” was made more dangerous by concerns over the country’s nuclear arsenal. Picking up on the latter theme, David Sanger notes in the New York Times that the many threats to that arsenal constitute president-elect Barack Obama’s worst nightmare.

Another dire prediction is from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a branch of the CIA which conducts such assessments every four years. In Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, we encounter the following scenario: “The future of Pakistan is a wild card ... the North West Frontier Province and tribal areas will continue to be poorly governed and the source or supporter of cross-border instability. If Pakistan is unable to hold together until 2025, a broader coalescence of Pashtun tribes is likely to emerge and act together to erase the Durand Line, maximising Pashtun space at the expense of Punjabis.”

Eight years ago, just as Pervez Musharraf was arriving on the scene, the NIC had sketched a bleak future. It predicted that by the year 2015: “Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction. Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. Further domestic decline would benefit Islamic political activists, who may significantly increase their role in national politics and alter the makeup and cohesion of the military — once Pakistan’s most capable institution. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi.”

Towards the end of the Musharraf era, rosy scenarios were being mass-produced by his prime minister. Just as political chaos was about to reach a crescendo, 2007 was declared as the Visit Pakistan Year. The bloom on Musharraf’s rose faded as abruptly as it did on Ayub’s Great Decade.

Pakistan’s current situation — not just the dystopian futures painted in the two American reports — is a far cry from the vision of Pakistan ’s founding fathers, Iqbal and Jinnah. They had envisaged a nation that would unite the Muslims, not divide them.

Jinnah laid out a clear prescription for getting there: “If we want to make this great state of Pakistan happy and prosperous, we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses of the poor. If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, you are bound to succeed.”

Alas, the advice to focus on the future was not taken as the nation soon plunged into reliving the battles of the past. The storm over Mumbai will eventually pass but what about the gathering storm in Swat and the full force gale that is blowing through Fata? The tussle between the ISI, the army and the civilian government continues. A new tussle appears to have emerged between the civilian president and prime minister, both of the PPP. There are few signs that the judges will be restored or that the nefarious constitutional amendments dating back to the Zia era will be annulled.

Pakistan, one would think, is destined to limp along from crisis to crisis. That was in fact how Herbert Feldman captioned his history, which surveyed developments in the 1962-69 timeframe. A man who made his mark during that period, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, took power saying he was a man of crises. Unfortunately, the crises got the better of him. The decade of the seventies was the worst in the nation’s history.

Thirty years later, the situation has gone from bad to worse. So it is not surprising to see that some experts do not expect Pakistan to survive by the time 2025 rolls around, at least not in a form that even remotely resembles the nation that exists today.

Those who believe in conspiracy theories will dismiss these scenarios because they originate in the US. However, it is time for Pakistan’s leaders to ponder three fundamental questions. Is a meltdown avoidable? Is it possible to envision a rosy future? What will it take to get there?

To avoid a meltdown, first and foremost, a change in political culture needs to occur. Extremism has to be taken out and replaced with tolerance. The government cannot do this by fiat. The clergy, the academics, the literati and the media — they have to bring this about, from the grassroots up.

Secondly, law and order has to be restored on the streets. It is not possible to envision a rosy future if kidnappings, robberies, murders and beheadings dominate the headlines.

Under such conditions, who will invest in Pakistan? Not even the Pakistanis. Without investment, there will be no growth. Without growth, there will be no reduction in poverty. With poverty comes extremism. To get out of the rut, the nation’s priorities have to shift radically. The number one focus has got to be on human, social and political development and not on religion or the military. This does not mean that people have to become irreligious. They just have to expunge religion from politics. Tolerance of differences should be the motto, since strength comes from diversity.

Nor does it mean that there should be no military. It simply means the military should play no political role. Pakistan is a textbook case where the sole focus on the military has ruined not only the territorial dimension of national security, as it did in 1971 and as it now threatens to do in Fata, but also sown the seeds of discord among the people and the provinces.

Given its talented workforce, Pakistan could one day become a haven for foreign investment. Given its natural beauty, it could even become a tourist destination. But barring a change in its strategic culture, such a rosy scenario cannot be envisioned.

The author has co-edited Pakistan: Unresolved issues of State and Society, Vanguard Books.

faruqui@pacbell.net

ONE of the worst victims of the current avalanche of bad news from around the world — political, economic and military — is the capacity of our outrage against evil forces. There has been acceptance of relativism as a justification of what would otherwise be unacceptable.

The tendency to underscore moral equivalence between incomparable situations is resorted to for defending morally untenable situations.

The debate on the Mumbai massacres, on both sides of the border, for instance, is being carried on not in terms of the horror and destruction inflicted, the dangers posed to the security of ordinary citizens and the measures necessary to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, but on how verifiable the evidence is and how severe punitive action should be. The prime need of the hour in both countries is to realise the intensity of the pain felt by terror victims and how this can be alleviated through a serious effort by the country from where the threat emanated.

Instead, what one finds in Pakistan is an attempt to prevaricate in finding the real culprits. This is made worse by fumbling over the acceptance of the Pakistani identity of the surviving Mumbai gunman Ajmal Kasab after being in denial for weeks — and after the fight over turf among the highest decision-makers.

On the other hand, India has openly threatened, in case of non-compliance of its demands by Pakistan, to undertake a reprisal which many indicate could be disproportionate to the occasion, especially in light of the resort to nuclear threats. Such threats are being cavalierly bandied about by influential sections on both sides. At the very least both countries should proclaim a ban on such threats by individuals as well as political parties.

The sharp and uncompromising Indian reaction to the Mumbai attacks, beyond the natural outrage and anguish warranted by the suffering of the victims, can be rationalised in terms of realpolitik, especially with regard to influencing president-elect Barack Obama before his inauguration. Obama is expected to make significant changes in his Middle East and South Asian policies, the direction and contours of which remain undisclosed. Both India and Pakistan seem to be eager to gain his ear. As usual Pakistan is displaying much less subtlety and much more obsequiousness by decorating visiting US dignitaries passing through its revolving door.

However, instead of using the occasion as a shouting match across the nuclear-wired borders, they could have used it as an opportunity to engage Pakistan in a serious dialogue to root out the informal infrastructure of terrorism that it had nurtured during the darkest days of the militarist supremacy under Musharraf, by double-crossing the US as an ally of the war on terror and through the promotion of his ‘enlightened moderation’ agenda. This would have been in Pakistan’s own best interest and that of its revived democratic structure.

Unfortunately, both sides have preferred to reap short-term gains in domestic politics over the long-term gains to their people — gains that could result from reviving the flagging possibilities of a real and durable detente between them and provide South Asia with an outside chance of catching-up with the rest of dynamic Asia. By engaging in a futile eye-balling game, the ruling regimes have provided the hawks in their respective countries the opportunity to undermine the ongoing peace process.

While the wrath of the Indian people and government against those who plotted and executed the diabolical attacks is understandable, it is regrettable that the spontaneous outrage and sympathy of ordinary Pakistanis with those caught in the tragic drama fell victim to a state- and media-generated frenzy of hate, blame and threats against each other.

The brazen Israeli assault on Gaza, which occurred just a month after the Mumbai attacks and has taken a much larger toll, is reprehensible not only in terms of its barbarity and the plight of innocent victims whom Israel has kept in a virtual prison since its occupation, but also in terms of larger political and moral implications.

This inhuman attack on a defenceless population by a most well-armed military machine and with the connivance of the US and Egypt, is of a different genre than that of the despicable attack on Mumbai by a terrorist organisation, which palpably — though it may never be proved conclusively in strictly legal terms — has collaborated with Pakistani intelligence agencies in the past.

Pakistan has done little to raise its credibility by not following the pledge made in the Islamabad declaration of 2004 during the Saarc summit to not allow its soil to be used for terrorist activities against India and other neighbouring countries.

Any attempt to draw a parallel between the two as two morally-equivalent David and Goliath events is a grave distortion of the biblical parable. Israel has always demonised the Palestinian struggle to end its occupation and territorial expansion and has perpetrated the worst atrocities on the Palestinian people for over half a century.

The current attack on Gaza is part of the serial, genocidal killing of Palestinians timed to impress the Israeli electorate and the incoming Obama administration. Israel and Palestine will remain locked in an unending battle until the world conscience forces a just solution on the problem with Jews and Arabs living as equals in a unified state and not, as presently, in a segregated Palestinian ghetto while an Israeli fortress of affluence, aggression and terror holds the rest of the region hostage.

Israel’s aggressive acts have spelled the demise of the two-state solution and eventually the integration of Israel and Palestine is likely to become the inevitable solution of the problem.

Neither do calls in India for an Israeli-style surgical attack on Pakistan to avenge the Mumbai massacre make any rational or moral sense. Militarily, as has been repeatedly pointed out, India is no Israel and Pakistan is not as defenceless as Gaza.

Not only are both countries nuclear-armed, they also have an articulate and sensitive public opinion which would not allow the kind of military adventurism that hawkish elements in them may be inclined to embark upon in pursuit of their narrow parochial interests. India and Pakistan, whatever else they may be, are not likely to kill each other’s citizens as wantonly as the Israelis do and saner counsel is bound to prevail in the long run.

It would be a pity if India succumbs to the temptation of emulating the example of Israel’s attack on Gaza or of the US drone attacks on Pakistan to satisfy its extremist elements who have often connived to derail the ‘Samjhota Express’, both literally and metaphorically. It would be equally unfortunate if Pakistan does not genuinely try to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure. If these policies are not reversed, both countries will soon find themselves on the path of destruction.

syed.naseem@aya.yale.edu

YESTERDAY it was the mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan that flooded all television screens. Today it is Gaza. However, while these and other reports on atrocities in Swat and Fata are daily fodder for our newspapers, let’s not forget Africa and its child soldiers.

One of the most unforgettable and frightening television images that I saw in 2008 was of an African child soldier filmed by Al Jazeera. His expression, body language and stance as he held a lethal weapon outdid any Hollywood depiction of the most bestial of Chicago gangsters.

Civilians, especially children, are always the primary victims of brutal conflicts. Of late, a deluge of emails with horrendous pictures of Gaza along with public comments of despair and frustration is swamping us. Babies and young children covered in blood or with missing limbs tug at the heart — well over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and a third of them are children.

Meanwhile, there have also been a number of comments about the psychological state of child survivors. As Robert Fisk comments, “Israel cannot win this war and Hamas cannot lose it.”

Israel is slitting its own throat. As Palestinians die, more fighters and suicide bombers proliferate like mushrooms all over the Middle East. A teenager in Indonesia can travel to Gaza to fight alongside his Muslim brothers; scores of Palestinian and Arab children will grow up with a desire to avenge the murders of their loved ones who were gunned down beside them or blown to bits in their homes. Their lives are wounded and disrupted; their homes and schools have been destroyed, the entire infrastructure has been blown to smithereens and their economy stands shattered.

There are children who may have survived the blitzkrieg, but will battle life forever more with amputated limbs — a two-year-old with a bullet in her spine will never walk again; another with a bullet in her brain is unlikely to see the dawn of another day. And if this is not horrific enough, it is now alleged that cluster bombs and phosphorous have been unleashed by the Israelis.

After 9/11, and the American invasion of Afghanistan, there were reports that radium, a highly radioactive chemical found in trace amounts in uranium ore that is more radioactive than uranium itself, had been used. Although I am unaware if this has been proved, since then there has been a definite rise in reported cases of abnormalities and cancer in Kabul.

Up in the Kalash valleys, where I work, I can vouch for the fact that in the last 10 years, I have seen more cases of cancer than in the past 15 years. A small child that I brought to Peshawar with a cancerous tumour in her eye was one of many cases detected in the area in recent years. An eye surgeon told me that he suspected there was radium in the mountains and that a recent study stated that there were more cases of cancerous eye tumours among children in the Hindu Kush region than in the rest of the world put together.

Phosphorus is another chemical agent that can cause serious burns. Supposedly, the Israelis are using it as a smokescreen, but in a heavily populated area as the Gaza Strip, human harm is inevitable. The Israelis have also allegedly said that they had fired hundreds of shells, including cluster bombs, in open areas. Apparently, military analysts have verified this from video footage.

Cluster bombs do not only kill, they maim. Again, the main casualties are children. One bomb, with its 202 bomblets, can contaminate approximately 100,000 square metres. They come in different colours, shapes and sizes. Some resemble cricket balls; others look like long yellow cigars. I saw this variety in Afghanistan and when I went to Bamiyan last spring, de-mining teams were still conducting mine clearance seven years after the invasion of the Americans. Maimed children are a regular sight in Kabul; they go from car to car in traffic jams, begging for alms.

The international community and the UN are failing to stand up for the rights of mankind. And many questions, therefore, remain unaddressed: What will happen to the children of Gaza? Will they be the suicide bombers of tomorrow? What will happen to those who have fallen victim in Swat, Bajaur and Fata? Will they receive education; will they have medical assistance, both physically and financially? Who will be held accountable? Will the leaders of Israel or the United States be tried for war crimes? Is Gaza now going to be one huge battered and shattered ‘refugee’ camp? The list of questions is endless.