Author: Husain Haqqani
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 3, 2004
The attacks on Shias in Pakistan
and the attempt on Musharraf's life last year are both results of an intolerance
bred by misrepresentation of history
General Pervez Musharraf has publicly
acknowledged what most informed Pakistanis have known all along. The attempts
on his life late last year involved junior members of Pakistan's armed
forces, some of whom apparently share the ideology of the global Jihadi
movement that General Musharraf says his military government is now committed
to rooting out. According to Pakistan's General-President, there is no
cause for moderate Pakistanis to worry. The individuals involved in the
conspiracy were just a handful of misguided individuals ''brainwashed''
into believing that killing General Musharraf would be an act of faith.
The terrorists seeking to kill General
Musharraf are the same people who kill Shias in mosques and believe that
everyone other than their small band of believers is part of a conspiracy
against Islam and Pakistan. That Islam and Pakistan are under constant
threat and the global system functions under some grand conspiracy of the
yahood-o-hunood (Jews and Hindus) is believed by a large segment of Pakistan's
population. The Pakistani education system and the Pakistani establishment's
conventional wisdom are partly responsible for this collective state of
mind. When so many people are convinced that only ''enemy agents'' block
the renewed glory of Islam, it is easy to persuade some of them that the
country's current ruler may be one such ''agent''. If General Musharraf
is truly concerned about the danger extremism poses for Pakistan, he must
look at the real source of extremist thinking in Pakistan's political culture.
For years Pakistan's establishment
has fed a fictitious account of history to its people. Young Pakistanis
are taught not to question cliches about their nation's greatness. Alternative
world views are discouraged. The result is general ignorance about causes
and effects and a tendency to believe in an ''only if'' approach to life.
From ''Only if the British had not patronised South Asia's Hindus'' to
''Only if the Americans would keep their commitments and help Pakistan
get Kashmir'', simplified formulae obstruct analytical thinking.
The simplifications and self glorification
has been an essential ingredient of the establishment's strategy for controlling
Pakistani society. Unfortunately, it also has unplanned consequences especially
when the establishment is forced to make a U-turn in policy, as has been
the case since September 11, 2001. At least some of those brought up to
think that soldiers of Islam can't be defeated except through the treachery
of their own are applying the notion to the establishment itself.
Although General Musharraf has reacted
to the brainwashing of his would-be assassins, he has given no indication
that he understands how this brainwashing is a product of the lack of free
discourse in Pakistan. Not long ago, General Muhammad Aziz Khan, Chairman
Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee said in a widely reported speech that Muslims
have never been defeated in history except through the treachery of some
within their own ranks.
This historically incorrect account
matches the version of events in Pakistani textbooks, which convince junior
school students that the British defeat of Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula of Bengal
in the battle of Plassey in 1757 was made possible only by the defection
of another Muslim Nawab, Mir Jaffer of Murshidabad. That the British might
have had superior armaments and that Jaffer's decision to support the British
might have been the result of their military superiority rather than the
other way round is not held out as an option.
Ironically, the British Indian army
that defeated Siraj-ud-Daula's forces was the predecessor to the professional
army that Pakistan inherited from British Raj at the time of independence
in 1947. But the military's role as Pakistan's institution of last resort
has necessitated a certain image building of the Pakistan army. Although
military regiments routinely trace their origins to British times, Pakistani
people are told to support the army as soldiers of Islam and not as a professional
force.
From the battle of Plassey to the
surrender of Pakistani troops at the end of the 1971 war, none of the major
events in the history of Muslim India is openly discussed for fear that
it would somehow jeopardise a fragile national identity. Brigadier A R
Siddiqi, a well known columnist and former head of Inter-Services Public
Relations (ISPR) has documented the military's image building exercise
in his book The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality. Among other things,
the book recalls the efforts at intellectual regimentation undertaken by
the Bureau of National Reconstruction (BNR) created by Pakistan's first
military ruler, Field Marshal Ayub Khan. The BNR, writes Brigadier Siddiqi,
was ''a most skillfully designed instrument of brainwashing through a combination
of public relations and intelligence''.
As a result of the establishment's
brainwashing, every defeat in South Asian Muslim history is blamed on external
factors, not on bad strategy. Take the widespread anti-Americanism as an
example. Most Pakistanis believe that the US let Pakistan down by not fulfilling
its commitments under the bilateral defence treaty of 1954. The feeling
can be traced to the 1965 war with India, when the US suspended supplies
of weapons to both belligerents instead of coming to Pakistan's assistance.
But the historic record, now available in the form of declassified papers
(some of them edited by Roedad Khan in the book The American Papers), shows
that the US had objected to the use of American supplied military equipment
during the Rann of Kutch war in April 1965. If the US was unwilling to
let its equipment be used against India in April, it was unrealistic on
the part of Pakistan's generals to expect American support when they embarked
on the adventure in Kashmir in August 1965. But instead of facing the realities
of international relations, the Pakistani establishment continues to fuel
anti-Americanism.
History is not the only sphere in
Pakistan where genuine information has been replaced with tendentious accounts.
Pakistani public opinion is routinely mobilised on false expectations in
relation to Afghanistan and Kashmir. Conspiracy theories demonising Hindus
and Jews are widespread even after General Musharraf has publicly announced
his desire for good relations with India and for the possible recognition
of Israel.
Some of General Musharraf's closest
aides have privately expressed the view that the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001 could not have been the handiwork of Al-Qaeda and may have been
undertaken by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. General Musharraf
still periodically claims that there was nothing wrong with Pakistan's
past support for the Taliban. Pakistan's disenfranchised people are fed
a regular diet of slogans, rhetoric and fantasy. General Musharraf's recent
ultra-nationalist statement that the Commonwealth should be proud to have
Pakistan as its member is one recent example.
Pakistan cannot become a modern,
functional state until its culture of rhetoric and brainwashing is replaced
by genuine pluralism. Pakistan's establishment brainwashes its people in
an effort to foster a top-down religious nationalism, arrogates to itself
the right of defining Pakistani identity and national interest, and describes
its critics as foreign agents. In such an environment, why is it surprised
if some extremists go a step further and consider some of the establishment's
top guns as ideologically impure?
The writer is a visiting scholar
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He
served as adviser to Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and as Pakistan's
Ambassador to Sri Lanka
