Drive against
Pakistan
By Dr Shireen M. Mazari
Since the London bombings
of July 2005, the anti-Muslim and especially anti-Pakistan
sentiment prevalent within White British society
and the British leadership have become increasingly
more overt. Last week, we had Mr. Blair threatening
Pakistan with dire consequences if this sovereign
state implemented its laws regarding hanging in
the case of a dual citizenship holder. The sheer
gall of Blair! Did the Brits issue the same threats
to the US on the numerous occasions when British
citizens (not dual citizens either) were executed
by the US?
Of course, some of
us feel capital punishment should be done away with
altogether but that is an entirely different issue
and while the law sanctions this penalty, why should
an exception be made for a British citizen? Are
the lives of Britishers more dear to the state of
Pakistan than the lives of its own citizens? As
for the argument that the law is not perfect here,
well where is it so? Many innocent people have been
executed in the US and there are glaring examples
of a travesty of justice in Britain also. If it
is a humanitarian issue then the Brits should have
had the decency to extradite the owner of Margalla
Towers instead of sheltering him. As for threatening
Pakistan within the context of the Charles-Camilla
visit, that is really stupid because the advantage
of this visit lies with the Royals who will get
a chance to curry favor with their citizens of Pakistani
ancestry. What do we gain except a chance to show
our continuing colonial mindset?
It is within this
context that the postponement of the execution of
the dual citizen is at the heart of Britain's anti-Pakistan
campaign, which is quite disturbing. Are we still
so weak in terms of exercising our sovereignty?
Wouldn't it have been better to suspend capital
punishment per se while the issue was examined afresh?
Meanwhile, it is apparent
that the British have a whole campaign going on
to malign nuclear Pakistan. After all, a few weeks
before the Blair "threat", we learnt of
a study by the Advanced Research and Assessment
Group (ARAG) of the Defence Academy of the United
Kingdom, which works for the Ministry of Defence
and other British government departments. It works
in "research clusters" and the particular
cluster that held forth on Pakistan in a most uninformed
fashion was the cluster on Asymmetric Campaigning
(including Terrorism and Ideology), headed by Cdr
Simon Atkinson, who visited Pakistan in June 2006
and selectively chose his interviewees!
The parts of the report
seen by this scribe are primarily interesting because
of the ignorance they reveal. For instance, according
to this report, "M (Musharraf) is in a fix",
the "West is in a fix", the "UK is
in a fix" and "Afghanistan is in a fix"!
And it seems all this is primarily a result of the
activities of the ISI and IB! If only our institutions
were so powerful as to put the whole world in a
quandary. But the real ignorance comes out when
Atkinson refers to the ISI and IB as being part
of the Army. The least the man could have done was
to have gotten this organisational structure right
but then is any one bothered about the facts in
the West -- especially when the exercise is to target
the Pakistani state? Based on erroneous presumptions,
the Report then talks of making a deal with Pakistan
to reduce the role of the army – as if Britain
will now dictate deals for the Pakistani state --
which is seen as part of making a deal with India
on Kashmir! Seems post-9/11 the colonial instincts
of the Brits are back as far as this region is concerned!
Is that why they hopped in so merrily into the Afghan
quagmire?
The real absurdity
of Cdr Atkinson's Report is in the suggestion that
the ISI be dismantled and "something else put
in its place -- political parties and institutions?"
How an intelligence agency can be replaced by a
political party is mind-boggling -- or are the two
seen as interchangeable? Will the Brits seek to
close their MI 5 or MI 6 because of some errors
on the part of these agencies? Or will the US close
the CIA given the murderous record of this intelligence
agency? Or will these agencies be converted into
political parties? What an intriguing idea! And
so one can go on and on, but the point is that there
is clearly an attempt by the Brits to become more
interventionist in Pakistan and to malign the state
structures.
While they attempt
this, they are harassing Pakistanis in Britain as
well as undermining the socio-cultural identity
of British Muslims when they should be accepting
the reality that this identity is also part of British
identity. Coinciding with the Blair threat, we heard
of the British police harassing a Pakistani architecture
student from Pakistan. His crime? Taking pictures
of buildings, that many tourists were also photographing,
for an art project. To punish him for this innocent
activity -- but then for the Brits nothing we Muslims
do is innocent if we have beards and dress in an
overtly Muslim fashion -- he was bundled into a
police car, taken to a police station and subjected
to a strip search and cross-examination for over
six hours. He was also fingerprinted and required
to provide a DNA sample. Should we now start reporting
Britishers photographing in Pakistan because they
may actually be campaigning against our country?
How long will we allow ourselves to be humiliated
with no responses in kind?
The real problem lies
in Britain refusing to acknowledge its failures
-- be they to "integrate" its Muslim population
in the model of the White Britishers or to deal
effectively with their military problems in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Muslims and Pakistan provide a
convenient scapegoat but at the end of the day the
British will have to look inwards to deal with their
shortcomings -- especially those within their society.
After all, not every British Muslim can become a
Nasser Husain or a DFID employee in Islamabad who
lives in fear of Pakistan discovering his Pakistani
ancestral roots lest the Pakistani state make "claims"
on him! Talk about arrogance as if Pakistan does
not have an excess of Brits of Pakistani ancestry
wanting it to make claims on them!
For us the issue is
the targeting of the Pakistani state and within
the dangerous milieu of ignorance. The aggressive
tone of the British leadership as it becomes increasingly
frustrated by its inadequacies and its failed policies
should not continuously be tolerated by us. At the
end of the day, it is not the visit of Charles and
Camilla or the support of Bush and Blair that will
strengthen Pakistan. Our state will only be strong
if it has the respect of its own nation and credibility
within its own civil society. It is time our skeptical
elites renewed their faith in Pakistan -- a faith
that still pervades the psyche of the ordinary Pakistani,
against all odds.
(The writer is director general of the Institute
of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Courtesy The
News)
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