Two Months in Pakistan
Part I: The Social, Economic, Political and Religious Milieu
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg , CA
First a story: “One day a friend visited Hodja and said, “Hodja, I want to borrow your donkey”. “ I’m sorry”, replied Hodja, “but I’ve already lent it out to someone else”.
As soon as he said this, the donkey brayed. “But Hodja, I can hear the donkey! It’s in the stable”. Shutting the door in this friend’s face, Hodja told him with dignity, “A man who believes the word of a donkey above my own doesn’t deserve to be lent anything!”
The story precisely speaks for the current Hodjas, (leaders), ruling Pakistan. The braying of the “donkey” is betraying what the government and its leaders keep hiding assiduously, be it the actors behind the Mumbai blasts of November 26, or the rise of the “holy warriors”, Jehadists, religious fanatics and sectarian fanaticism. The logic heard time and again is two-sided: one, that there had been no such extremists or suicidal warriors in Pakistan prior to 9/11 tragedy. So it is the direct result of what America has done in Afghanistan and is doing in FATA through its drones; second, that Pakistan itself is a victim of terrorism. This second logic nullifies the first one because it does in a tacit manner confirm what America has been saying all along, which is the presence of extremists and their clever move to turn the whole issue of American presence in Afghanistan as an election rhetoric and now it as a lucrative industry. The MMA benefited from this in the 2002 elections. It may be hard to exonerate America on this score; but now the cancer of extremism has reached a self-perpetuating stage. Only surgery is the solution.
My friend, Mr. Ifran Siddiqui, a very popular GEO commentator and JUNG Newspaper columnist would enter into endless discussions with me on this topic, starting always with the logic that there never was a suicidal trend in Pakistan, how come now it has become so popular in FATA, North/South Waziristan and Swat!. Well! If a person did not cheat on his wife for fifteen years, and he has started doing it now because he incidentally happened to meet a ‘honey-dear’ now; or if one did not smoke or steal during a good portion of ones life, but now the same person starts over-indulging himself in the practice of both, whatever the reasons, (tension, losing a job or the impending marriage of ones daughter, etc.), should this mean that one is justified in his practice of infidelity, stealing and smoking. Self-correction precedes all considerations and causes. You got to stop it first, whatever the rationale. This logic-line may sell best, but it is self-destructive for the every life-line of the country. Granted that it all was started by the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and of Iraq in 2003. Does that now mean that each Muslim country, and Pakistan in specific should forget its purpose behind its creation and chose a sword-rattling role for itself. Evil is evil whatever the rationale.
Mr. Khurshid Khan in his article, “Plight of Women in Swat”, Dec.31, 2008 writes, “No doubt, the valley has witnessed invasions, turbulence and chaos from the time of Alexander’s invasion in 327 BC to the formation of Swat state in 1917… at least in living memory the present chaos engendered by militancy has no parallel… women have been the worst sufferers. The militants’ obscurant version of Islam begins and ends with womenfolk. According to their belief, women are the source of all sins. A cleric while delivering the Friday sermon in Marghazar village was heard telling his flock, “My fellow Muslims, listen! The prices of daily commodities are rising because women abandon their homes and loiter about in the markets”. Women are evil because they entice men to corrupt ways. Their leader, Fazlullah imposed a complete ban on female education from Jan. 15, 2009. And the PPP led government that came into being because their leader, a woman, Ms. Benazir Bhutto had laid down her life for these cheer-leaders to assume power in her name, this government and the MMA mullahs have remained criminally silent on the issue. Then the militants banned shaving and mandated growing of beards from January 25, 2009. They banned enrolment of girls in schools, threatening to blow up schools that violated this edict. And they did blow up over 200 schools in Swat. And the people of Pakistan have watched it happen silently.
I attended the launching ceremony of a CD, “Allaho : A lullaby for You, My daughter!” prepared by Samar Minallah, a noted anthropologist from NWFP, and sister of my friend and student, Mr. Ather Minallah whose interview I will pen later. I met there a man from Swat who had reached Islamabad traveling secretly for six days. The tales of the militants’ brutalities as narrated by him were heart-rending. Kishore Naheed who presided over the function said that women in Swat now dip dry pieces of stale bread in water and feed their children on them.
I saw the main roads of Rawalpindi, Lahore and Faisalabad, the three towns I visited, full of banners hanging across all the main roads, cursing Israel for the atrocities it was inflicting on the helpless people of Gaza, appealing for total Jehad against the West, but I did not see a single note of protest, a simple banner, highlighting the brutal loss of life and livelihood in Swat. The ANP government which had been quick to name the NWFP as Pukhtunkhwa, or even Afghania and which claims itself to be secular, remained professedly helpless, and criminally silent. The ANP government accuses the Army for remaining inactive; and the army remains piqued for the criticism it receives from the religious clerics and anchors of the media who never get tired of putting the blame on others, and calling the army as a killer of its own people. This buys time for the militants anyway. The arguments travel in circles.
As if this was not enough, in Rawalpindi every other day I would see one street or another blocked from all sides, for the purpose of holding a Shia or Sunni Majlis/function with absolutely little consideration for public inconvenience. In the good old days, permission was sought for holding such functions outside in public places. Now it is free for all. The majority of people remain silent, lest they should earn the wrath of Mullahs, or get marked as a target.
A progressive, forward-looking and moderate country, called Pakistan is fast falling in the lap of extremists and fanatics and is slipping into a mode of intolerance which once never was a part of it. And the sad part is that the public appears to be acquiescing to all this. People in general appear to be living a life, clearly characterized by an eerie presence of fear. For each catastrophe, an instant theory of conspiracy is tailored. Even if caught with hands in the till, people/politicians and religious leaders, all still refuse to accept the blame, claiming that it was the jar that had attempted to engulf the hand. The result is obvious. Evil keeps on prospering, and good stifling.
Militancy in its physical form is present, is prospering, and is rife in FATA, South and North Waziristan and in the three-quarters of the idyllic valley of Swat, but its influence is not limited to these parts of the country alone. It can be traced all over Southern Punjab and Pakistan. The ANP government in Sarhad now openly acknowledges its inability to control it, and so appears the government of President Zardari. The college where I taught for two decades is governed by the Army Education Directorate, and is situated on the Mall in Rawalpindi. Till the time I visited it last, it proudly bore its original name since the time we had started it in 1968, and which it had earned in a hard way by dint of continuous academic performance. Now that name stands replaced with Kalima Taiaba. On inquiry, I was told that it was done so on orders from the higher authorities just as a safeguard, a sort of precaution, from a possible attack by the militants on educational institutions as was happening in Swat. The Kalima is what makes us Muslims and it lives in our blood and soul. But no more so in Pakistan. You need to carry some outward symbols on your forehead to prove that you are a Muslim of the Swati brand of Islam.
Growing a beard is a Sunna of the Prophet, but doing so for considerations other than an inner urge, makes it hard for one to accept it as Mustajab. My estimation is that pretty soon Pakistan would be the most “bearded’ country in the world. Kamila Hyat, a freelance writer in her article “Debacle in Swat” published in the NEWS in her very first sentence says, “The Pakistan military seems to have suffered a decisive defeat in war…the extremist militants who now control nearly three quarters of the valley… till early 2008, only about a quarter of the Swat area, home to 1.8 million people, fell under their grip”. The country saw “a school teacher who worked to support her children, labeled as a prostitute, then forced to wear, ‘ghungroos’ on her feet and then killed with sixty bullets perforating her body, and the people of Pakistan remained silent. Farhat Taj, a research fellow at the University of Oslo, in his article “Hanging a dead Pir” writes, ‘Pir Samiullah of Swat was reportedly encouraged by the army stationed in Swat to raise a lashkar against the Taliban. This enraged the Taliban who besieged him for days in his village. The army never showed up to help and finally he was killed. The Taliban exhumed his body and hung it in a public place for several days”.
And the government, the parliamentarians and people and especially the religious leaders remained criminally silent. Now Muhammad Afzal Khan Lala, a Pukhtun leader, is fighting his lone battle against them, but for how long.
