Opinion

Which Road Did We Take?
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA

In a page that could easily have come out of a Franz Kafka novel, TIME magazine’s Simon Robinson says that a young man from the Ministry of Tourism recently accosted him at the departure lounge in a Pakistani airport. He insisted that Robinson provide his candid impressions of the stay in Pakistan by filling out a three-page survey so lessons could be derived from the Ministry’s campaign, “Destination Pakistan 2007.”

So Robinson wrote the following: “Rioting, looting, burning of shops and tires along roads, shooting, general chaos, mayhem and insecurity.” Embarrassed, the young man responded by saying that the problems were caused by “only 10% or 20% of the people. The rest of us are very welcoming.”

But it is unlikely that the young man would have disagreed that 2007 was a disaster for Pakistan, probably the worst year since 1971. The disagreements begin when we talk about what caused the year to be so disastrous.

For a year that just ended, there should be no dispute about the facts. It is quite different than pondering over far more distant events, such as what brought the Indus Valley Civilization to an end. But even though there is no disagreement about last year’s facts, there is plenty of disagreement about cause and effect. Two different theories of history compete for our attention. One supports military rule, or Stratocracy, and the other one supports people’s rule, or Democracy. For simplicity, let’s dub them Theories S and D.

Theory S argues that it was necessary to fire the Chief Justice because he was corrupt and out to derail the democratic process. It blames the attorneys for creating a mess which made the emergency inevitable. It argues that Musharraf acted in the national interest, not in his personal interest. Theory D argues that it was Musharraf’s political ambition to continue as president for another five years that set in motion the disastrous chain of events which began with the decision to suspend the Chief Justice.

This duel between competing theories of history is not unique to Pakistan. History, as the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl put it, is “an argument without end.”

As one stretches the conversation to the last eight years of Pakistani history, the disagreements multiply. While Musharraf would like to be remembered as a man who brought about remarkable economic progress, his opponents will remember him as someone who talked a lot about enlightened moderation and did precious little to contain the militancy.

Both theories agree on a few things. For example, both trace the militancy to the general’s famous U-Turn on the Taliban in the wake of 9/11. When he turned the gun on the jihadis, they turned their guns on him. But then the two histories diverge.

Theory S argues that any other Pakistani leader, military or civilian, would have been compelled to make the U-Turn, since they would all have been at the receiving end of Washington ’s threat to comply or be bombed back to the Stone Age. Theory D argues that Musharraf caved in too easily and compromised Pakistan ’s sovereignty.

The debate stretches on to the pre-Musharraf period. Theory S argues that the democratically-elected regimes that preceded Musharraf were strong proponents of the Taliban and of an aggressive “forward” policy on Kashmir. The goal was to bleed India and to tie down half of the Indian army in Kashmir. Some go as far as to blame Benazir Bhutto for being the “mother” of the Taliban even though it is well known that when she came to power, the army told her that defense and foreign policy would be its exclusive preserve.

Both theories agree that that the current generation of militants is the direct descendent of the mujahideen who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan under General Zia. The four million Afghan refugees who spilled over into Pakistan brought with them not only a narco-Kalashnikov culture, one that was laced with the fire of radical religion.

But Theory S rejects the suggestion that either Zia or the military was responsible for this disastrous import. It argues that once the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, any Pakistani leader worth his or her salt would have complied with the US directive to launch a “holy war” against the infidels.

The central thread in Theory S is that fate dealt Pakistan a weak hand right at its inception. In its rendition of history, the military was forced to seize power to prevent the country from becoming a pawn in the Great Game. Theory D of course sees the military as the villain, not the hero, in this epic struggle for survival.

A common thread of historical determinism runs through both theories, bringing to mind a verse from Shakespeare’s King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.” But apart from this haunting similitude, the theories diverge from each other.

The situation is akin to that faced by a traveler, worn out by his travels, who looks back at two paths in a forest and cannot recall which one got him to the clearing where he has now halted for the night. Historical amnesia is not unique to Pakistan. Several examples are provided in E. H. Carr’s book, “What is History?” One of the 20th century’s most influential works, it is written in a lively conversational style, not the turgid prose of academe.

Carr, a Trinity College fellow at Cambridge, saw history as a continuous “process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.” He opined that there was no such thing as standalone facts but only facts that had been filtered by the mind of the historian. He said facts arose through “an a priori decision of the historian” to include them in his narrative. Facts were like a sack, which won’t stand up until “something” is put in it. Carr reasoned that “something” was the historian’s knowledge of the context and interpretation of events. He insisted, “The facts speak only when the historian calls on them.”

So, while historical events may be taken as given, Carr wrote that historical facts are derived within the process of narrative construction. In one of his most famous lines, he said that the “facts of history cannot be purely objective, since they become facts of history only in virtue of the significance attached to them by the historian.”

And so it is in Pakistan. Supporters of Theory S co-exist with supporters of Theory D, each relying on the same facts to make a case respectively for benevolent dictatorship-in-uniform and representative rule through the ballot box.

Are the different strands likely to converge as time goes by? If the past is any guide, they will not. One is reminded of Zhou En-lai’s reply when he was asked about the impact of the French Revolution. The soft-spoken Mandarin simply noted that it was too early to know.

(Ahmad Faruqui, an economist specializing in defense and energy issues, has authored, “Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan.” Faruqui@pacbell.net.)

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