Understanding Pakistan

In the article published in this space last week, I wrote about the thrust of some recent American writings on Pakistan. My main point in that article was that most analyses of the situation in Pakistan done by American writers lack depth and sophistication. What about some of the recent works by Pakistani scholars, policymakers and journalists?

There are, of course, many Pakistanis working on Pakistan from within Pakistan. Some of their works are insightful but they don't reach western audiences. They are also not as well informed about several important lines of analysis that are of consequence for studying Pakistan.

Some "diaspora" Pakistanis are also doing work on Pakistan. Most of this work is opportunistic in the sense that it deals with some of the fears articulated by western scholars and policymakers about developments in Pakistan.

By picking up some of the themes that are of interest to the policymakers in Washington, these writers gain access to the editorial pages of the western press. It is a kind of passport for admission.

Thus, Hussein Haqqani contributed an article to a recent issue of Foreign Policy, a magazine widely read by policymakers in Washington, on madressah education in Pakistan and the problem it poses not only for the country's political system but also for the world at large.

It is interesting that a recent World Bank report points out some of the exaggerations and misrepresentations that have crept into the literature about the threat posed by religious institutions in Pakistan.

"It is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies ... Madressahs account for less than one per cent of all enrolments in the country," wrote the authors of the report.

Another favourite subject of scholarship by the overseas Pakistanis is the role of the military and the penetration into it of Islamic thinking. To this genre belong works such as the recent book by Hassen Abbas, a former Pakistani police officer who studied at Harvard Law School and Tufts University.

In Pakistan's Drift into Extremism, Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror, Abbas provides a chilling account of the way Islamic extremism has penetrated many facets of Pakistan society.

He has some anecdotal material on the impact of this development on the military and writes at some length about the born again Muslim soldier, Lt. General (retired) Muzaffer Usmani, at one point the number two man in the army.

In a passage that was picked up by some of the reviewers of his book, to underscore the danger the military's drift towards Islamic radicalism poses for Pakistan's future, this is what Abbas has to say about General Usmani:

"A self-confessed 'soldier of God' ... Usmani had started out as a moderate and an open-minded officer, but later in his career he found the intolerant fringe of Islam, where he saw his own piety in discovering the imperfections of others.

By the time he became deputy chief of army staff, he had become reclusive, shutting himself in his house and walking about in a Saudi jubba (gown) topped by a green turban. All this was widely known when Musharraf promoted him."

Much of what is being written on Pakistan by American scholars as well as by overseas Pakistanis amplifies the problems, perceived and real, the country faces today. It is not helpful to discuss Pakistan as a failed experiment in nation-building and state craft as most of the literature is inclined to do.

There was a time when book after book appeared in the United States suggesting that Pakistan was a model economy and a model state from which the rest of the developing world could learn a good deal.

These were serious books including those by Gustav Papanek, Lawrence Zinnig, Stephen Lewis, Craig Baxter, and Wayne Wilcox. All of them were teachers at various American universities, all of them had spent a fair amount of time in Pakistan studying various aspects of Pakistan, and all of them had developed a deep understanding of the country. They were not propagandists, neither were they casual scholars. The Pakistan they wrote about was Ayub Khan's Pakistan of the 1960s.

Since then, a great deal has gone wrong - even what under President Ayub Khan appeared to be a successful experiment in nation building and economic development turned out to have deep flaws.

It is clear, therefore, that there is a great need for improving understanding of Pakistan, how it emerged, the way it developed politically, economically and socially; why it almost became a failed state; and why the struggle between the forces of moderation and Islamic radicalism still continue in this land of 152 million people.

It is also clear that what needs to be learned and understood about Pakistan will not be provided by existing literature available to those interested in the country, including policymakers in the West.

This brief overview of some of the recent writings on Pakistan should also include those that are not entirely devoted to the country but cover matters that are of deep concern for the country, its citizens, and its future.

Two subjects, for obvious reasons, have received considerable academic, policy and journalistic attention. The first is terrorism; the other the rise of Islamic extremism.

In several of these books Pakistan receives a fair amount of mention. One of the more insightful books about terrorism is Jessica Stern's Terror in the Name of God. The book is based on a number of interviews by the author in several countries.

It extensively deals with the rise of Islamic extremism in Pakistan. One of her main conclusions is also one of the more troubling aspects of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and propagation of extremist views by a number of well entrenched people, groups and institutions in Pakistan.

According to Stern, "the coalition of forces that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, sponsored by the Untied States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, turned the Afghan resistance movement into a modern multinational conglomerate... Jihad along with guns and drugs became the most important business in the region." She uses the term "Jihad International Inc." coined by Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani sociologist, to describe the movement.

Another book of some significance for Pakistan studies is After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Democracy by Noah Feldman who is a professor at the New York University School of Law and advised the American dominated Coalition Authority in Iraq on constitutional issues.

"Pakistan was conceived specifically as a state for Muslims, and also as a democracy: the first and only state of its kind," writes Feldman in a chapter devoted to Pakistan. "Jinnah was a secularist by inclination for whom Islam was a political unifier more than a religious one."

Feld man is reasonably optimistic about Pakistan turning towards democracy even though "it seems likely that Islamist politics in Pakistan is on the rise. (However) Islam in Pakistan right now is neither a force for democratization nor a force against it; it is merely one ingredient in a volatile mix."

Feld man puts forward the suggestion that "Pakistan can... become a leader in the movement towards Islamic democracy, if only it can move in the direction of democracy itself." This is one of the main conclusions of this book as well.

For some reason there is greater depth in the analytical work coming out of Europe on Islam and the drift towards extremism on the part of some of the Muslim communities that have formed in Europe.

The reason for this may be the significant presence of Muslim populations in the countries of the Continent. France, with a Muslim population of five million, has the larger number and the largest proportion of people of the Islamic faith in the population of any West European state.

It is also the country of origin of two of the scholars, Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel who have done seminal work in improving the understanding of Islam in the western world. Some of the conclusions they have reached are of special significance for Pakistan.

Kepel in his new book, The War for Muslim Minds, has some useful things to say about the impact a mobile group of Muslim activists are having on the countries not necessarily of their origin but to which they are attracted because of the easy availability of audiences they wish to reach.

He looks at the impact of this phenomenon on Saudi Arabia, as a result of the influx of Islamists flying from persecution in secular Middle Eastern countries during the 1950s and 1960s.

"The impact of their teachings on young Saudis brought up in the strict Wahabi tradition created a potent mixture which required only a population explosion, the collapse of oil prices, unemployment and disappointed expectations to create the conditions from which many of the militants (and most of the 9/11 hijackers) emerged." Take out the reference to the collapse of oil prices and Kepel's description applies very well to the situation found in today's Pakistan.

Both Kepel and Roy - the latter in his recent book, Globalized Islam - discuss what they refer to as the phenomenon of "globalized Islam" or global Islam. This, the two authors believe, is a new phenomenon which developed in the 1990s, largely as a result of globalization which, through the development of the internet, made it possible for the dispersed communities to communicate with one another.

Before the emergence of global Islam, Islamists in the countries of the Muslim world were preoccupied with the attempt to create an Islamic state in which shariah would be applied side by side with the Islamization of education and the economic system. This is precisely what happened in Pakistan during the long rule of President Ziaul Haq. But, both authors argue (that was the thesis of Olivier Roy's 1992 book The Failure of Political Islam) that these attempts failed for two reasons. The Muslim societies were too set in their ways to adopt radicalism; also, the Islamic parties lost some of their radical edge and joined the mainstream.

This is a reasonably accurate description of what happened to General Ziaul Haq's attempts to bring Islam into the Pakistani economy and into its political system. I should round off this quick overview of the recent writings on Pakistan or on the subjects of direct relevance for understanding Pakistan by making two points.

One, much of the recent, book-length work on Pakistan is superficial. It lacks the depth that is required to fully comprehend what is happening to a country that occupies such an important part of the Muslim world.

Two, there is, at the same time, a fairly rich literature on subjects such as the radicalization of some Muslim communities; development of extremism in many parts of the Muslim world; the resort to terrorism by many Muslim "stateless" groups; the eagerness with which thousands of Muslim youth have turned to suicide as a weapon to create an impact; and the reaction to all these developments in the West, particularly in America.

This genre of analytical work, done almost entirely by westerners, has produced a context within which Pakistan's recent history can and should be studied.

Setting a dangerous precedent

The inquiry commission in Britain headed by Lord Butler last year concluded that the Blair government relied on flawed evidence in making a case to invade Iraq to a bitterly divided public.

In the United States, the 9/11 commission concluded its investigation, and rubbished Vice-President Cheney's suggestions of pre-September 11 ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda even before making its findings public.

The reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the findings of these commissions, is that the coalition claims of Iraq possessing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) were incorrect.

Furthermore, the assertion that the Saddam regime had nuclear capability can also be discarded, taking into account the fact that over a year of exhaustive search by weapons inspectors following the attack on Iraq has turned up nothing but dust. However, despite these ominous setbacks, the Bush and Blair governments continue to defend the decision to invade.

Prime Minister Blair posits the argument that "Iraq, the region and the wider world is a safer place" without the menace that was Saddam Hussein. President Bush takes pride in the fact that by attacking Iraq he "removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them." He enforces that argument every now and then by stressing upon the liberation of the Iraqi populace from tyranny, made possible only by virtue of the invasion.

Upon a closer scrutiny of the above-mentioned statements, it is obvious that they endorse the doctrine of pre-emptive strike; that is, the notion that it is fair to launch an attack on any perceived threat to national security, even if based solely upon the possibility of aggression or danger.

It seems the statements of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair since the Iraq invasion provide for a set of premises which, if satisfied, justify pre-emptive strike.

These premises are a perceived risk of aggression from threat, the existence of the possibility that the state in question might attack; evidence that the state in question has the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to it having stockpiles thereof already; and historical evidence of the state having exhibited hostile intent through either words or actions.

These premises provide a licence for aggression. An analysis of the scenario prevalent in the world today brings home the disturbing realization that in light of the set of postulates for pre-emptive strike provided by the proponents of the war on Iraq, a number of states would be vindicated in attacking those with which they have even tenuous relations.

That the aggressor state might have ulterior motives for its belligerent actions, can always be obscured by justifiable pretexts on grounds that serve as our model for pre-emption. Clearly, an adherence to such a set of axioms to defend anticipatory action would open up a Pandora's box of global conflict.

Let us examine only a few repercussions of such a position. With the principles for pre-emption set by the invasion of Iraq serving as guidelines, the Arab nations can make a case for invading Israel without difficulty.

They can conveniently argue that there is a very real possibility of Israel attacking any of them (risk of aggression), and that Israel indeed has the ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Furthermore, they can base such pre-emption on the historical evidence of Israels unprovoked destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, and numerous other wanton incursions into the sovereign territories of Syria and Lebanon.

Let us now move closer to home. Under the same accepted grounds, India can validate an attack on Pakistan and vice-versa, each arguing the possibility of aggression, the other's nuclear capability and historical precedence of hostile intent. However, the proposed set of axioms can also backfire if viewed from a different perspective. There are a number of states - Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria to name a few - that can acceptably launch an attack on the US itself in emulation of the postulates set by its own coalition.

They can easily prove that the US is their sworn enemy (evoking the possibility of threat by branding them the "axis of evil" in 2002), already possesses weapons of mass destruction and can very possibly misuse these weapons against them.

Although there is little realistic probability of a conventional declaration of war by these states, the authenticity of their case for pre-emptive strike binds us to accept even unconventional, 9/11-style attacks as legitimate, and thus justified.

Clearly, the policy of pre-emptive attacks contingent upon the premises defined by the invasion of Iraq, is riddled with flaws. A global implementation of such a policy will inevitably lead to a situation which can euphemistically be described as apocalyptic.

Thus, the obvious conclusion that can be made is that the premises themselves are flawed. As the predicates are faulty, the doctrine of pre-emptive strike, which bases itself on these premises, can no longer hold.

The US and British governments would do well to put an end to the rhetoric regarding the need for invading Iraq, for while it may have given them an illusory cover for an illegal incursion, it provides rationale for the terrorism of the very elements that they are purportedly battling.

Fragments of grace

I feel that I should get in my penny's worth about Meera, the dancer and film actress. She appears to have kicked up a storm by appearing in an Indian film in which she is seen as kissing the film's hero.

All the passionate scenes that we see are make-believe and optical illusions created by camera tricks. Film making is a pretty dreary business. Still the viewer's perception should be taken into consideration but not to the extent that tail wags the dog.

Those who have thundered against Meera have self-righteousness on their side and, I have no doubt, live by the most stringent moral standards, breathing nothing but pure thoughts. I envy them.

Most others seemed far more concerned that the prices of petrol have been raised again. Prior to this brouhaha I had not heard of Meera and with utmost regrets, will not hear of her again unless she climbs down again the slippery slope of correctness and incurs the wrath of our moral custodians.

A friend of mine (my book-pal) has loaned me a copy of Pamela Constable's book Fragments of Grace, a sub-title of which is "My Search for Humanity from Kashmir to Kabul", The blurb on the book says that she is correspondent of The Washington Post and currently based in Kabul.

Normally, I would not have read this kind of book which is part memoir, part travelogue but which deals with both sympathy and condemnation the burning issues of the sub-continent. But apart from being a sharp observer, she sees these burning issues in human terms and one is reading about human souls rather than abstractions or set of beliefs, distant ideologies, the shared memories of past crimes and present hatreds.

It is a book that I am reading with increasing admiration of the author who somehow seems to find herself at the right flash-point at the right point. It is not a confrontational book and many pages are descriptions of the countryside. Of desolation in Afghanistan or "the verdant, alpine region of pines and eucalyptus trees, apple orchards and rice paddies and lily-padded lakes" of Kashmir.

In between her journeys and dashes to places where the guns are booming and men are dying, the author tells us something of herself, an adopted daughter of apparently well-to-do parents who live in Connecticut, a normal family who appear not to intrude in the life of a daughter who has fast feet and the soul of a pilgrim.

She has co-authored a book on Pinochet's Chile and married "many times" and is past the age to bear children, something she seems to regret very much in small outbursts of self-pity. But her personal sorrows are by way of interludes as she relentlessly pursues her career as a foreign correspondent and seems to find herself where the news is breaking. Her beat is South Asia and she is among the Taliban in Afghanistan, among the Kashmir freedom-fighter, the LTTE is Sri Lanka and the Maoists in Nepal.

In her own words she was not "mesmerized by revolutionary leaders, attracted to martyrdom or inspired by utopian visions, I had never thrown down my professional journalist's mantle and picked up a polemical pen, much less a grenade.

I had seen greed and pride delusion sabotage noble theories and expose flawed heroes. I had seen youthful liberators become aging tyrants, moral discipline degenerate into gratuitous cruelty. cults replace institutions, and revolutions tear families apart. I did not believe in a struggle between good and evil, because I had seen them switch places too often."

A reporter or correspondent has to ensure that he or she does not become a part of the story and does not allow emotion or compassion to intrude in reporting events.

I would imagine that there was a difference between what Pamela Constable wrote for The Washington Post and what she writes in her book. Of course, a book allows her more space, more licence and she is not a slave to a deadline nor to the fast and furious dispatch that must land on the sub-editor's desk even as the story is still unfolding.

She is able to say what she would not have in her newspaper that, "there was a part of me that identified with the passionate conviction of those who sought to right all the wrongs, to throttle the status quo, to wake up the world, to change human nature."

What she has done in her book is to put the reporter's cold blooded heart on hold and allowed her own sense of right and wrong to judge events and this she does without seeming to be judgmental.

She does not start with a prejudice and though she sees South Asia with American eyes, she seems to resemble the Americans I used to know whether on the campus of the University of Southern California or at Zelin's coffee-house on Victoria Road in Karachi.

Describing the Sri Lankans negotiations with the Tamil Tigers, she calls the Sri Lankan government "a majority with a minority's mindset." I liked the phrase and it struck a cord.

And it reminded me of Pakistan politics at times. The events that Pamela Constable writes about are ugly events but she writes about them with honest horror but she manages to capture a wonderful sense of place and people and shows that behind the mindless search for breaking news is a human person who can laugh and cry and mourns the death of a colleague.

Safety of nuclear assets

The latest CIA report prepared by the National Intelligence Council which has been declassified by the US Administration in December last year, warns that "with advances in the design of simplified nuclear weapons", terrorists will continue to seek to acquire fissile material in order to construct a nuclear weapon.

It says that concurrently, they can be expected to continue attempting to purchase or steal a weapon particularly in Russia or Pakistan. Given the possibility that terrorists could acquire nuclear weapons, the use of such weapons by extremists before 2020 cannot be ruled out."

Astonishingly, the CIA's report, which alleges that Pakistan is vulnerable to theft of nuclear material by terrorists, completely ignores the fact that the technology and material needed to manufacture a nuclear device are freely available in the black market and can be acquired by rogue nations or terrorist groups through middlemen in western Europe and America. It is unthinkable that the CIA is not aware of the existence of the nuclear black market in Europe.

In any case, the CIA's report is highly controversial and belies the ground realities. Pakistan's strategic assets are under foolproof custodial controls and are completely secured. The storage sites of the nuclear weapons and other material are a well-guarded secret.

Highly trained and trusted military commando units guard the nuclear installations. Therefore, any apprehension that the nuclear assets might fall into the hands of the extremists is baseless.

However, those who are concerned with the safety of the nuclear installations and material in Pakistan are fully conscious that the possibility of elements gaining access to our nuclear assets cannot be ruled out. As such, they are not only enforcing the existing nuclear safety regulations strictly but are also making an all-out effort to further strengthen them.

Nuclear states generally keep their nuclear weapons in an un constituted form for safety reasons. An enormous inter-organizational effort is required to reconstitute them.

Only highly trained manpower can do so. It is, therefore unlikely that the terrorists, even if they were able to get hold of these weapons, would be able to reconstitute them for detonation.

There are also speculations in the western media that political instability in Pakistan could jeopardize the security of its nuclear weapons. However, they should rest assured that there is a collective sense of patriotism where national interests are concerned, and it is highly unlikely that threats to the country's nuclear assets would not be taken seriously by the people as a whole.

On the other hand, the CIA's report is likely to have a negative impact on the Americans who fear that the next move of the extremists would be a nuclear strike on the United States.

The CIA's report perceives the threat of a nuclear attack on the United States to be a real one, which means that the American people would live in perpetual fear of a nuclear attack.

Security of nuclear material is an essential part of the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear energy. For obvious reasons, the prime responsibility for nuclear safety rests with the nuclear states themselves. A safety nuclear culture is high on Pakistan's list of priorities, even at the very early stages when it was pursuing peaceful uses of atomic energy.

While planning for the development of nuclear human resources in Pakistan great emphasis was laid on the training of scientists and engineers in the field of nuclear safety. These highly qualified personnel continue to be an essential part of all nuclear establishments in Pakistan.

In 1998, when Pakistan became an overt nuclear weapons state, the question of the safety of its nuclear assets assumed greater importance. It signed the IAEA's Convention on Nuclear Safety which reaffirmed its commitment to the application of fundamental safety principles for nuclear assets in accordance with the internationally formulated safety guidelines which are updated from time to time to provide guidance on contemporary means for achieving a high level of safety.

In February 2000, Pakistan also devised a well-defined command and control system and established a National Command Authority (NCA) to manage Pakistan's nuclear forces.

The NCA, which is headed by the president and includes the prime minister, ministers of foreign affairs, defence, interior, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the three services chiefs and representatives of strategic organizations, is a highly efficient organization.

There is no evidence to suggest that the safety of nuclear installations or the command control of its strategic assets are in jeopardy. On the contrary, Pakistan has an impeccable record of custodial safety and security, free of any incident of theft or leakage of nuclear material or technology.

It may also be pertinent to mention that a report by the United State prime anti-proliferation organization, the Institute for Science and International Security, published in the spring 2005 edition of Washington Quarterly has endorsed Islamabad's claim that Dr A Q. Khan's network that sold nuclear technology in the black market was a transnational organization and not a Pakistani set up. This should also help in quelling the doubts about the safety of nuclear weapons and the possibility of their falling into unauthorized hands.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Feasibility of federal court

The term 'court' has nowhere been defined in the Constitution, Pakistan Penal Code, 1860, the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898, the Civil Procedure Code, 1908. The term 'judge', court of justice' as well as 'public servant' have duly been defined in the Code of 1860.

However, the term 'court' has only been defined in Article 203B(b) relating to the Constitution of Federal Shariat Court. The term, therefore, has to be understood in its normal dictionary meaning read with the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973.

No court can, function without the assistance of the profession of law, which can only be practised by advocates, and no other person, duly enrolled under section 22 of Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973.

No person other than an advocate, can, therefore be elevated to the Bench of the Court, in keeping with the Anglo-Saxon conventions and traditions, which constitute their very source of jurisprudence.

The provisions of section 5(2)(b) and (c) of the bill proposed to establish Federal Court negate this principle and render its very object redundant. The profession of law and for that matter any recognized 'profession' is not merely the matter of attaining academic qualifications or mere experience or expertise in any branch of Legal knowledge, or Court's functions.

It is a matter of life-long career, having its own dictates and demands besides cultivating a special intellectual approach. No court can, therefore, afford the luxury of being itself-constituted or even assisted by any person other than the advocates, who are duly specialized for dispensing justice and administering law in the courts.

The taxation and mercantile laws, in particular, have become more intricate, complicated and technical compared to what they used to be a century back. While introducing and employing income tax as a regular and permanent levy in 1922, the British rulers had realized that taxes cannot afford the luxury of being subjected to 'judicial process' and procedure.'

They created an autonomous body of the central board of revenue in 1924 to administer all federal taxes, as they realized that 'expediency' and 'equity' can only be attained through 'quasi-judicial' proceedings.

While excluding the jurisdiction of the courts i original administration of federal taxes, they scrupulously maintained it at the highest level purely on issues of law leaving the issues of fact to the domain of quasi-judicial authorities charged to administer and collect the taxes.

In the matter of federal taxes, more particularly, after the introduction of the consciousness-generating direct incometax, to maintain a remarkable balance between tax collector and taxpayer, they created the most efficacious institution of income tax appellate tribunal in 1939, as the second and final appellate authority in the adjudication of tax liability of the taxpayer.

While there is crying need of 'specialized knowledge' and expertise, in the sphere of administration of taxation and mercantile laws, there is no case for changing the nature and character of 'superior courts'.

The division of labour within the courts, however, on the basis of specialized knowledge of different legislative acts, as mentioned in Schedule II and III of the proposed Federal Court Bill must be ensured through administrative legal measures. The factors responsible for the malady and anomaly are:

(i) Legal education has been grossly neglected.

(ii) The board of governors for law colleges in public sector manned by government officials and their nominees are indifferent to their duties and the principals, appointed only on the basis of 'seniority', instead of 'merit'.

(iii) Syllabus is selected thoughtlessly and pragmatic taxation, labour, service and mercantile laws attaining social maturity, and holding economic field, are ignored and instead outdated and outmoded laws of purely academic nature are granted out-of-proportion significance.

(iv) Bar councils remaining engrossed in constitutional matters find no time to devote to legal education. The administration of all law colleges should vest in bar councils, which must prescribe courses of study and also conduct examinations, keeping complementary harmony with the requirements of administration of law and justice in courts.

The remedy does not lie in creating new or multifarious courts, tribunals, authorities of concurrent jurisdiction every now and then. It does, on the other hand, worsen the matters and make the confusion worse confounded. Emphasis should be laid on educating, training and selecting the best manpower available for filling judicial offices on absolute merit and ability.