Dr Vali Reza Nasr, former senior adviser to the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the author of several books, was recently in town to speak at the Yohsin Distinguished Lecture on ‘The growing role of sectarianism in Muslim politics globally and in Pakistan’, organised by Habib University. Maleeha Hamid Siddiqui met him the next day to know his views on the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Islamic State (IS), Afghanistan, Iran and China.

You have studied the Jamaat-i-Islami and written a book, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, which came out in the mid-1990s. Since then how has the Jamaat’s world view changed in response to the current political realities?

I think they have veered away to some extent from where Maududi was. They were successful in the 1990s to create a constituency in Pakistan for Islamic state but they didn’t become a beneficiary of it. It is the PML-N and the various branches of the JUI that benefited from Jamaat’s work. Jamaat the ideology proved more successful than Jamaat the party.

After 9/11, the Jamaat took the wrong direction. They thought that rather than be mainstream it is better to be jihadi. The ameer of the Jamaat at the time misread the popularity of jihadi activism. This hampered them greatly. As a result they lost a lot of young people to jihadi organisations because if one really wanted to be a jihadi one would go [to such organisations].

They weren’t mainstream so they couldn’t compete with the PML-N or with the PTI recently. As a result the Jamaat has been dwarfed and has lost its footing. We shall see what Sirajul Haq will do. At the moment he is doing nothing revolutionary. Nothing short of a revolution will change the fortunes of the Jamaat.

Have they revised their ideology as espoused by the party’s founder?

Maududi was not keen on violence or revolution. He believed that the function of an Islamic state was of dawah. I think he would have abhorred the violence that is now being perpetuated. Maududi was interested in Jamaat winning elections. During the 1960s and 1970s he checked Jamaat’s tendency to go underground and [be not like] the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Jamaat has in recent years become much more influenced by Salafism and jihadist ideology than by ideals that Maududi was trying to espouse.

What do you think the outcome for Afghanistan will be?

The elections were not good news for Afghanistan. I think that everybody thought that the last elections in 2009 were the worst thing because Abdullah Abdullah was persuaded to withdraw and Karzai ended up with the presidency. But now we have the second election that does not [even] produce a result. There is a negotiated settlement with a co-presidency of sorts which does not have electoral mandate. That is not good for a fragile country.

The United States is leaving Afghanistan. This means the main security force that was containing the Taliban is not going to be there. A huge question is can Afghan security forces do what the US military was doing.

Then US departure has tremendous economic implications for Afghanistan. US involvement accounted for most of Afghanistan’s GDP. That share is going to go away.

Also the Taliban have not been defeated. They are still there. Their agenda has not changed. They are still committed to building an emirate in Afghanistan.

The best news for Afghanistan is that in this US-brokered deal between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, both have agreed to share power. There could have been an open conflict. Then, US-Pakistan relations have somewhat stabilised and this helps Afghanistan-Pakistan relations as well.

In your book The Dispensable Nation you have mentioned that the Middle East is in the heart of China’s interests.

How so?

China has multiple interests in the Middle East. It has a geo-strategic interest because it borders on the Middle East. China has vulnerability because of its Muslim population to its west. It is sensitive to political events and trends in the Middle East and particularly that have implications in militancy and jihadism. China has particular interest in mineral riches, especially oil and gas from Central Asia and the Middle East. For China, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the stability of Central Asia, are all important strategic factors. China sees the Middle East as a neighbour full of commercial interests but with risks and concerns.

The negotiations on the nuclear deal between Iran and P5 +1 have been quite slow. Do you think a deal will ever be reached?

A deal could be reached but whether it will happen this year or next year is an open question. The past year saw intense negotiations between the US and Iran. It is true that the other countries sit but it is mainly between the US and Iran. There has been a lot of progress. The fact that the US and Iran signed a piece of paper in November 2013 providing a framework to the talks. Also the US secretary of state and the Iranian foreign minister have spent many hours talking to each other. Iran has agreed to a number of compromises. A deal could be arrived at technically but will it stand politically at home. Increasingly the politics of both the countries is looming very large on their negotiations.

Do you think the emergence of the Islamic State is a reminder of the United State’s failure to help create a democratic state in Iraq?

Aspiring for a democratic state in Iraq was a far-fetched goal. But I do think that after the initial failure in Iraq the US did bring about peace and brokered a power-sharing agreement between the sects. But then the US did decide to leave Iraq completely. The new system was too fragile and probably did not have the right kind of leaders and hence it came under too many pressures. With the US gone, a fragile system and the Syrian civil war that started in 2011, the Sunnis and the Shias of Iraq were too close to the outcome in Syria. The Sunnis were thinking that if Sunnis took over Syria then there would be a Sunni state and the Shias began to panic that Sunnis might take over and with no United States to provide stability, things would begin to fall apart completely. There were mistakes in the Middle East due to over-involvement of the US but we also saw the huge consequences of the too little American involvement. Together it exploded into a much larger phenomenon [IS] and it forced the US to get back and be involved in the region.

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014