Pakistan: is there another way?

S P SETH

Pakistan is tearing itself apart. The killing of Hazaras (and Shias in general) is one example of it. Its fall out is even reverberated in far away Australia, with Hazaras here protesting against the “genocide” in Pakistan. Even though the Pakistan government has promised action to nab the culprits of the recent attack in Quetta killing nearly 90 Hazaras, going by the past experience of apathy, incompetence, involvement, encouragement and unwillingness of the state institutions to deal with it effectively, it will be no surprise that not much will come out of it. The country has been in a downward spiral for a long time and the slide is only accelerating.

The Shias are said to constitute about 20 per cent of the country’s population, making them a significant minority. To ostracize and target them will seriously rupture the fabric of Pakistan’s nationhood. Whoever is doing these killings, and Lakshar-e-Janghvi has claimed responsibility, they must have some kind of philosophy and game plan behind it. And it shouldn’t be beyond the ability and resources of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to penetrate and frustrate their designs.  

In a Sunni dominated Pakistan, the Shias are regarded by many as heretics. They are, more or less, regarded no better than Ahmadis, who were declared non-Muslims in the seventies. However, the Shias are a much bigger number. At 20 per cent of the country’s estimated population of 180 million, they might number upward of 30 million. And if they continue to be targeted and killed, there is bound to be an organized backlash from within their community at some point of time. There is no knowing where such backlash might end, nationally and regionally.

With Balochistan already a tinder box with all sorts of unresolved issues, one would have thought that Pakistan’s political and military establishment would be working overtime to deal with the forces that are terrorizing the Hazaras and the country’s Shia community but, apparently, that sense of urgency is sorely lacking. The sheer banality of such violence is mind-numbing as recounted by Mohsin Hamid in a recent article in the New York Times. He wrote, “On Monday, my mother’s and sister’s eye doctor was assassinated. [in Lahore] He was a Shiite. He was shot six times while driving to drop his son off at school. His son, age 12, was executed with a single shot to the head.”

And it is all happening in the name of Islam. There are all kinds of militant outfits, acting with impunity and utmost brazenness. It is the politics of the country, including its military with interchangeable roles that has brought things to such a mess. Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish between the state’s protectors (its institutions) and those undermining it--- at times being one and the same.

The entire political establishment of the country is rotten to the core and steeped in corruption. As Tariq Ali has written in the London Review of Books, “Zardari is the most unpopular leader in the country’s history, largely because of his involvement in corruption. The main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, is no better.” He goes on, “Both come near the top of the list of Pakistan’s billionaires (Zardari at number two, Sharif at number four). The list gives ‘politics’ as the source of their wealth.”

Equally, if not more disconcerting, is the role of the country’s establishment, in creating all sorts of hydra-headed monsters like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and its likes, for pursuing their nefarious internal and external ends. And then there are the Taliban and their Pakistani version. The leadership of the Afghan Taliban is not only sheltering in Pakistan, but reportedly has fraternal relations with ISI. The assumption is that if and when the Taliban come to power in Afghanistan after the Americans have left, that country will become an arm of Pakistan’s regional strategy.

This was also the assumption when, with considerable help from Pakistan, Taliban was able to prevail and took power in Afghanistan in mid-nineties. With or without Pakistan’s knowledge, they started hobnobbing with Osama bin Laden who was given shelter with his al Qaeda brand. And the rest is history, with the 9/11 bombing in the US and the resultant US invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan, supposed to be a patron of Taliban, got sucked into the US-led war on terror for which it is still paying a heavy price, with no easy exit.

In other words, it is the Afghan Taliban that got Pakistan into this mess of international terrorism, and the country is still sheltering this lot in the hope that they will prove a strategic asset at some point in time? Not only that. They have also directly or indirectly helped spawn the Pakistani Taliban that has brought, at times, the functioning of the state to a standstill, making Pakistan look like a failed state

People of Pakistan, like people of any other country, want physical and economic security. For the first, any ideology that targets people because they are different, for whatever reasons, (be it religion, sectarian, appearance and so on) will always breed violence. For instance, extremists will always find their targets even among the mainstream Sunni community because some group or the other might not fit their interpretation of Islam. Once violence becomes the arbiter of power, whether expressed in religious or political terms, there are no limits to its application. The first step, therefore, is to delegitimize violence in Pakistan as the arbiter of power. The problem here is that the militants and Islamists have sanctified violence as the means to create an ideal Islamic state and this  tends to find favour with many believers.

One way to deal with it is to legitimize diversity and inclusion. In other words, through education and state patronage, to make a case that while Islam remains the favored faith of most Pakistanis, people practicing other faiths need not be coerced into becoming ‘real’ Muslims or else. Diversity creates tolerance by recognizing and accepting difference as not antagonistic but part of a cosmic pattern of life and matter.

Pakistan has seen and experienced, since its inception, that religion is not necessarily a cementing factor. If anything, judging from the way Muslims are killing other Muslims because one group is lesser Muslim than the others, religion is proving more divisive and deadly. There are no martyrs in killing other human beings for their difference.

If a new way of thinking based on inclusiveness and tolerance is promoted with passion and compassion, this will also release and divert Pakistan’s considerable energies for economic growth, presently wasted in the destructive pursuit of an ‘ideal’ Muslim society as envisioned by promoters of hate and violence that is destroying Pakistan. And this will provide economic security for its people.

I am not an Islamic scholar but I believe that Islam is essentially a religion of peace and amity.

The idea of an inclusive community for Pakistan might seem utopian, but nothing else is working. This at least has the merit of exploring a new path as there is nothing much to lose and indeed it might gather traction as it unfolds.

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au