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Pakistan must abandon its ideological course
By Tufail Ahmad
Posted: May 5, 2007
Pakistan is marking its sixtieth birthday in 2007. In the year it was created, an official in the United
States embassy in Moscow examined how ideology and circumstances were interacting to define the
internal policies of the Soviet Union and its conduct in the outside world. Pakistan was created in the
name of religion. For Bolsheviks, communism was the ideal; for new Pakistanis, Islam became the
defining principle. It is relevant to see how the existence of Pakistan remains mired in its ideological
struggle against local circumstances, and how this struggle defines its internal policies and external
relations in the aftermath of September 11th.
In Foreign Affairs in July 1947, Mr X., later identified as George F. Kennan, wrote that the political
personality of Soviet power was ‘the product of ideology and circumstances’ - ideology of the
Bolsheviks having originated from the Russian revolutionary movement and the circumstances of
power which they exercised. As the ideology of Bolsheviks defined the policies to be pursued inside
Russia and in its foreign relations, the new rulers in Islamabad drew their ideals from the movement
for Pakistan; these ideals began shaping Pakistan’s internal policies and external relations. However,
there was conflict.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, having steered the Pakistan movement in the name of Islam, now wanted
democratic pluralism to be its basis. Jinnah became the first logical casualty of this contradiction, as
the ideals of the Pakistan movement proved too autonomous to be overcome by his message of
secularism and democracy. His ‘death’ remains a mystery. Jinnah’s speech advocating pluralism and
secularism went missing for years. The defining principles of the new nation were: Muslims couldn’t
live with Hindus and India; Islam would shape the new nation; Kashmir would be part of Pakistan as it
was Muslim; anything un-Islamic would be rejected. The new rulers of Pakistan, like the Bolsheviks,
began work with a set of concepts. Internally, local languages and nationalities such as Balochis and
Sindhis were suppressed. Externally, the scope of the new rulers’ ideological ambition was illustrated
by the fact that before the 1965 War with India, Pakistan launched an insurgency in Indian Kashmir; it
was not named operation Kashmir freedom; it was called ‘Operation Gibraltar’ - inspired by the 711AD
Islamic landing at the island. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, which always recruited bearded
religious men at its helm, became the ‘ideological guardian’ of what is known as Nazariya-e-Pakistan,
or the ideology of Pakistan.
Sixty years on, General Pervez Musharraf’s half-hearted attempt to shift Pakistan on a new path drives it
into logical conflict with the process in which ideology and realities have tried to override each other
since 1947. Inspired by an inherited ideology, Musharraf was the architect of the 1999 Kargil Conflict in
Kashmir. However, American pressure on Pakistan after September 11th forced him to alter track:
firstly, he allied with the United States in its anti-terror campaign to topple the Taleban from
Afghanistan; secondly, he set off a bargaining process with India over Kashmir; thirdly, he pledged to
initiate reforms in society and the state apparatus. These attempts did not fit into the process on which
Pakistan was launched by its new rulers at its creation. For example, Musharraf, albeit under external
pressure, recruited his men to top posts in the Inter-Services Intelligence; still there were several
assassination bids on him, blamed by a Pakistani lawmaker on ‘ISI inside the ISI’. Military intelligence,
driven by an ideological motive, has always acted independently of the government. A soldier was
among those hanged for bids on Musharraf’s life. The ideological imperative of Pakistan is also
exposed in its demand to unite two parts of Kashmir, while ignoring a similar situation in which Punjab
is happily shared with India. In the latter case, Islam is not an issue.
General Musharraf’s claim that Pakistan has eliminated al-Qaeda contradicts realities. There are three
categories of militants in Pakistan: first, al-Qaeda militants who came from across the world to fight the
Soviet ‘infidels’ in Afghanistan; second, sectarian Shia and Sunni groups like Tehrik-e-Jafria and
Sipah-e-Sahaba funded by Iran and Saudi Arabia after the 1979 Iranian Revolution; third, a post-1989
breed of Jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al-Badr. The first two are
under pressure from Musharraf’s anti-terror policies; the third breed of militants was created by ISI
which thought, after the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, that it could achieve the
same feat in Kashmir. These post-1989 ‘Jihadi groups’, as popularly known in Pakistan, were also
behind the 7th July suicide bombings in London’s underground trains. To achieve its ideological
goals, the ISI established training camps in Pakistani Kashmir in the 1990s. After September 11th,
however, General Musharraf was under pressure; these groups changed their tactics: unlike previously
when they had launched an all-out terror attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, they now adopted a
policy of ‘intermittent attacks’, lying low for some periods but keeping the issue alive. The training
camps were not dismantled. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation reported the existence of
terror camps in 2004, and by 2007 a new breed of training camps came up, this time on Pakistan’s
Afghan border.
It is correct that Pakistan stopped supporting the Taleban after September 11th. However, within the
next few years, India, capitalising on its traditional goodwill, acquired massive support in Afghan
society and government. Pakistan failed to find any group that it could call its own. Millions of Afghan
refugees, who returned from Pakistan after September 11th and could potentially become its allies,
also blamed the Pakistanis for destroying their society by backing the Taleban. Pakistan, isolated in its
own neighourhood, brought back the Taleban in 2006. The reversal in Pakistani policy was evident
also when General Musharraf made it a point to take a five-day visit to China, just before George W.
Bush visited India and Pakistan in 2006. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, there is a new phrase in circulation:
Pakistani Taleban. Consequently, the NATO-led international troops witnessed an upsurge in Taleban-
led attacks in Afghanistan, which were sponsored from across the border. Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan
called for taking the war on terror to its ‘source’. But Islamabad is more likely to continue to prop up the
Taleban, and Pakistan - in its drive to retain its ideological basis - encounters opposing
circumstances. The 9th March suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary, seen as
President Musharraf’s attempt to bring in a compliant judiciary to approve his re-election later this year,
again underlines a recurring reality: the drive of an ideological state to acquire stability amidst
opposing circumstances. However, there is a way forward.
George F. Kennan noted that ideology taught the Bolsheviks the need for ideological consolidation
inside Russia and externally against the West. A new elite, of mainly the influential Punjabi business
class, is forming in Pakistan, though its shape is not yet clear. It senses an economic stake in a rising
India; it is taking hesitant steps in opening the Kashmir border. This new elite, unlike the rulers of 1947
who were inspired by ideology, is beginning to understand the future national interests of the Pakistani
people. Ideology is not junked yet but there is a shift away from it, in search of new ideals. The breed of
ideological militants and thinkers, though retaining their bite, is becoming irrelevant in Pakistan’s
mainstream. The traditional ISI can now be described as ‘the ISI within ISI’. This is a new outcome,
though not yet an autonomous reality of its own. In this new outstanding circumstance, India has
enhanced its stake in the democratisation of Pakistan. Most Pakistanis want democratic stability and
normalisation of relations with India; the two could pave the way for people to travel visa-free from
Kabul to Kolkata, with de facto unification of Kashmir and Punjab. The new elite should abandon
‘ideology’, and adopt ‘people’ at the centre of policymaking. In 2004, Pakistani teenagers, with the
flags of the two countries painted on their cheeks, turned out in Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium to watch a
cricket match with India. It’s their future, not Islam, that should inform policymaking. This can be
achieved only in a framework of democratic pluralism.
The imperative of a democratic framework is that Pakistan and India situate their national interests in
the new circumstance. Pakistan must, to feed its burgeoning population, see its national interest in
India’s economic success. India, for its reason of regional security, must see its national interest in
democratic stability in Islamabad. India can look for security in a democratic regime in Islamabad, a
regime that is accountable to its people and to the international community. This is also the right
moment: the United States is engaged in the region; a NATO mission is stabilising Afghanistan; India
is emerging as a great power. An unstable and undemocratic Pakistan is not in the interest of
Afghanistan, the European Union, the United States or India. Democracies need defending and it is
their responsibility to chart a concerted effort to bring stability to South Asia.
Further, India needs to instill trust in the Pakistani elite. The Bolsheviks sensed an ideological
necessity to create dictatorial power in Russia; the new elite in Islamabad must realise, unlike the
Bolsheviks, that an ideological necessity no longer exists for the continuance of military rule. There is
also no reason why Balochs, Sindhis and Pashtuns should not have greater autonomy. As a test case,
Pakistan must repeal its law declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslims, and give more freedom to Christians
and Hindus. As the Bolsheviks yielded to the emergence of a different type of elite by the 1980s, the
new elite has a different, though unclear, concept of how Pakistan should look like in future. It is taking
occasional first steps in the right direction. Sometimes internal movements adjust their methods and
objectives with help from outside. We learnt from the Cold War that internal movements need external
sponsors. Pakistan, conflicted in its ideological course, cannot alone choose a positive course: the
West has a role to play.
### ### ###
The writer is an Associate of the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. This article was written
for The Henry Jackson Society, Cambridge, UK.
By Tufail Ahmad
Posted: May 5, 2007
Pakistan is marking its sixtieth birthday in 2007. In the year it was created, an official in the United
States embassy in Moscow examined how ideology and circumstances were interacting to define the
internal policies of the Soviet Union and its conduct in the outside world. Pakistan was created in the
name of religion. For Bolsheviks, communism was the ideal; for new Pakistanis, Islam became the
defining principle. It is relevant to see how the existence of Pakistan remains mired in its ideological
struggle against local circumstances, and how this struggle defines its internal policies and external
relations in the aftermath of September 11th.
In Foreign Affairs in July 1947, Mr X., later identified as George F. Kennan, wrote that the political
personality of Soviet power was ‘the product of ideology and circumstances’ - ideology of the
Bolsheviks having originated from the Russian revolutionary movement and the circumstances of
power which they exercised. As the ideology of Bolsheviks defined the policies to be pursued inside
Russia and in its foreign relations, the new rulers in Islamabad drew their ideals from the movement
for Pakistan; these ideals began shaping Pakistan’s internal policies and external relations. However,
there was conflict.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, having steered the Pakistan movement in the name of Islam, now wanted
democratic pluralism to be its basis. Jinnah became the first logical casualty of this contradiction, as
the ideals of the Pakistan movement proved too autonomous to be overcome by his message of
secularism and democracy. His ‘death’ remains a mystery. Jinnah’s speech advocating pluralism and
secularism went missing for years. The defining principles of the new nation were: Muslims couldn’t
live with Hindus and India; Islam would shape the new nation; Kashmir would be part of Pakistan as it
was Muslim; anything un-Islamic would be rejected. The new rulers of Pakistan, like the Bolsheviks,
began work with a set of concepts. Internally, local languages and nationalities such as Balochis and
Sindhis were suppressed. Externally, the scope of the new rulers’ ideological ambition was illustrated
by the fact that before the 1965 War with India, Pakistan launched an insurgency in Indian Kashmir; it
was not named operation Kashmir freedom; it was called ‘Operation Gibraltar’ - inspired by the 711AD
Islamic landing at the island. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, which always recruited bearded
religious men at its helm, became the ‘ideological guardian’ of what is known as Nazariya-e-Pakistan,
or the ideology of Pakistan.
Sixty years on, General Pervez Musharraf’s half-hearted attempt to shift Pakistan on a new path drives it
into logical conflict with the process in which ideology and realities have tried to override each other
since 1947. Inspired by an inherited ideology, Musharraf was the architect of the 1999 Kargil Conflict in
Kashmir. However, American pressure on Pakistan after September 11th forced him to alter track:
firstly, he allied with the United States in its anti-terror campaign to topple the Taleban from
Afghanistan; secondly, he set off a bargaining process with India over Kashmir; thirdly, he pledged to
initiate reforms in society and the state apparatus. These attempts did not fit into the process on which
Pakistan was launched by its new rulers at its creation. For example, Musharraf, albeit under external
pressure, recruited his men to top posts in the Inter-Services Intelligence; still there were several
assassination bids on him, blamed by a Pakistani lawmaker on ‘ISI inside the ISI’. Military intelligence,
driven by an ideological motive, has always acted independently of the government. A soldier was
among those hanged for bids on Musharraf’s life. The ideological imperative of Pakistan is also
exposed in its demand to unite two parts of Kashmir, while ignoring a similar situation in which Punjab
is happily shared with India. In the latter case, Islam is not an issue.
General Musharraf’s claim that Pakistan has eliminated al-Qaeda contradicts realities. There are three
categories of militants in Pakistan: first, al-Qaeda militants who came from across the world to fight the
Soviet ‘infidels’ in Afghanistan; second, sectarian Shia and Sunni groups like Tehrik-e-Jafria and
Sipah-e-Sahaba funded by Iran and Saudi Arabia after the 1979 Iranian Revolution; third, a post-1989
breed of Jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al-Badr. The first two are
under pressure from Musharraf’s anti-terror policies; the third breed of militants was created by ISI
which thought, after the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, that it could achieve the
same feat in Kashmir. These post-1989 ‘Jihadi groups’, as popularly known in Pakistan, were also
behind the 7th July suicide bombings in London’s underground trains. To achieve its ideological
goals, the ISI established training camps in Pakistani Kashmir in the 1990s. After September 11th,
however, General Musharraf was under pressure; these groups changed their tactics: unlike previously
when they had launched an all-out terror attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, they now adopted a
policy of ‘intermittent attacks’, lying low for some periods but keeping the issue alive. The training
camps were not dismantled. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation reported the existence of
terror camps in 2004, and by 2007 a new breed of training camps came up, this time on Pakistan’s
Afghan border.
It is correct that Pakistan stopped supporting the Taleban after September 11th. However, within the
next few years, India, capitalising on its traditional goodwill, acquired massive support in Afghan
society and government. Pakistan failed to find any group that it could call its own. Millions of Afghan
refugees, who returned from Pakistan after September 11th and could potentially become its allies,
also blamed the Pakistanis for destroying their society by backing the Taleban. Pakistan, isolated in its
own neighourhood, brought back the Taleban in 2006. The reversal in Pakistani policy was evident
also when General Musharraf made it a point to take a five-day visit to China, just before George W.
Bush visited India and Pakistan in 2006. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, there is a new phrase in circulation:
Pakistani Taleban. Consequently, the NATO-led international troops witnessed an upsurge in Taleban-
led attacks in Afghanistan, which were sponsored from across the border. Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan
called for taking the war on terror to its ‘source’. But Islamabad is more likely to continue to prop up the
Taleban, and Pakistan - in its drive to retain its ideological basis - encounters opposing
circumstances. The 9th March suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary, seen as
President Musharraf’s attempt to bring in a compliant judiciary to approve his re-election later this year,
again underlines a recurring reality: the drive of an ideological state to acquire stability amidst
opposing circumstances. However, there is a way forward.
George F. Kennan noted that ideology taught the Bolsheviks the need for ideological consolidation
inside Russia and externally against the West. A new elite, of mainly the influential Punjabi business
class, is forming in Pakistan, though its shape is not yet clear. It senses an economic stake in a rising
India; it is taking hesitant steps in opening the Kashmir border. This new elite, unlike the rulers of 1947
who were inspired by ideology, is beginning to understand the future national interests of the Pakistani
people. Ideology is not junked yet but there is a shift away from it, in search of new ideals. The breed of
ideological militants and thinkers, though retaining their bite, is becoming irrelevant in Pakistan’s
mainstream. The traditional ISI can now be described as ‘the ISI within ISI’. This is a new outcome,
though not yet an autonomous reality of its own. In this new outstanding circumstance, India has
enhanced its stake in the democratisation of Pakistan. Most Pakistanis want democratic stability and
normalisation of relations with India; the two could pave the way for people to travel visa-free from
Kabul to Kolkata, with de facto unification of Kashmir and Punjab. The new elite should abandon
‘ideology’, and adopt ‘people’ at the centre of policymaking. In 2004, Pakistani teenagers, with the
flags of the two countries painted on their cheeks, turned out in Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium to watch a
cricket match with India. It’s their future, not Islam, that should inform policymaking. This can be
achieved only in a framework of democratic pluralism.
The imperative of a democratic framework is that Pakistan and India situate their national interests in
the new circumstance. Pakistan must, to feed its burgeoning population, see its national interest in
India’s economic success. India, for its reason of regional security, must see its national interest in
democratic stability in Islamabad. India can look for security in a democratic regime in Islamabad, a
regime that is accountable to its people and to the international community. This is also the right
moment: the United States is engaged in the region; a NATO mission is stabilising Afghanistan; India
is emerging as a great power. An unstable and undemocratic Pakistan is not in the interest of
Afghanistan, the European Union, the United States or India. Democracies need defending and it is
their responsibility to chart a concerted effort to bring stability to South Asia.
Further, India needs to instill trust in the Pakistani elite. The Bolsheviks sensed an ideological
necessity to create dictatorial power in Russia; the new elite in Islamabad must realise, unlike the
Bolsheviks, that an ideological necessity no longer exists for the continuance of military rule. There is
also no reason why Balochs, Sindhis and Pashtuns should not have greater autonomy. As a test case,
Pakistan must repeal its law declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslims, and give more freedom to Christians
and Hindus. As the Bolsheviks yielded to the emergence of a different type of elite by the 1980s, the
new elite has a different, though unclear, concept of how Pakistan should look like in future. It is taking
occasional first steps in the right direction. Sometimes internal movements adjust their methods and
objectives with help from outside. We learnt from the Cold War that internal movements need external
sponsors. Pakistan, conflicted in its ideological course, cannot alone choose a positive course: the
West has a role to play.
### ### ###
The writer is an Associate of the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. This article was written
for The Henry Jackson Society, Cambridge, UK.
| (c) 2005-09 New Criterion Foundation, London |