BOOK REVIEWS

[Elmo]

and if you cant "deep read", there's always the abridged version of the book! or one can always watch the movie version.

Why bother with that much work... come out with your own version of events on the laptop. Publish it on some blog. Pakistan at least has no shortage of analysts and columnists

 

[TOPGUN]

I want to get the new PAF book !!

 

[fatman17]

The Source Of A Troubled Subcontinent

By James G. Wiles, For The Bulletin

Friday, May 01, 2009

Here is a clearly written work of “popular history” by a professional historian that throws a clear light on a subject about which Americans know little: India and Pakistan. Short-listed recently for the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, Arthur Herman’s Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (Bantam Books, 722 pages, $30) is well worth a close read.

For most Americans, any knowledge of this subject probably derives from the movies “Gandhi,” “Bhowalo Junction” or “The Road to Bountiful” (based on the E.M. Forster novel), the PBS series “The Jewel in the Crown” or Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’ book, Freedom at Midnight. All are painted with only the broadest brush. None offers much guidance on current difficulties.

Arthur Herman sets out to remedy this deficiency with a will, starting with the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and closing with post-scripts on his protagonists after independence in 1948. Mr. Herman, a Ph.D historian from Johns Hopkins, taught at Georgetown, Catholic and George Mason Universities and the Smithsonian before taking up the pen. The results have been gratifying.

This is his third book, following on the successes of How the Scots Invented the Modern World and To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World.

Mr. Herman adopts the narrative technique first used by Plutarch: parallel lives. The result is a fascinating picture of the contrasts, prejudices and conflicts between “British India” and the real India — a nation which had never previously existed — that came to be under British rule. Particularly riveting is the portrait of M.K. Gandhi, who began his political career as a pro-British imperialist and ended it as an independence absolutist.

At the same time, the author points out that it was as a young cavalry officer in India that Winston Churchill first found himself and sensed his possible destiny. In his cantonment in Bangalore, the former bad student began reading literature and studying history. By 1897, fresh from a successful campaign on the Northwest Frontier Province, Second Lieutenant Churchill had published his first of many books.

Three years later, after witnessing wars in Cuba and South Africa, and being captured by the Boers (an imprisonment from which he escaped), young Winston entered Parliament. And, until the eve of the Second World War, it would be India which was central to Mr. Churchill’s career.

What never changed, Mr. Herman shows, is the view Winston Churchill formed of India and the Indians during his time there. Throughout his political evolution from conservative to liberal Imperialist back to conservative, Churchill always doubted India’s capacity for self-government, denigrated the Hindus and their caste system, vilified Gandhi and the Congress Party and esteemed the “martial races” of the North, i.e., the Sikhs, Gurkhas and Muslims.

Reading the account of the first half of Gandhi’s public career — when he strove greatly to win dominion status for India equal in standing to that of the “white republics” of Canada, Australia and South Africa within the Empire, it’s impossible not to reflect that, for the second time, the British may have missed a bet. In the America of the 1760s, instead of giving George Washington a regular commission in the British Army, granting America, like Ireland, representation in Parliament and making Benjamin Franklin a member of the House of Lords, British arrogance cost them the first British Empire. In 1948, British racism cost them the Crown Jewel of the second British Empire.

In the end, as Mr. Herman shows, Indian and Pakistani independence proved an equally bitter pill for both men.

For Churchill, the violence which followed Independence validated every fear which he had urged in opposing British withdrawal. For Gandhi, Independence marked the complete failure of his philosophy of nonviolence, as well as his dream of a united, agrarian, self-sufficient India.

Neither would recognize the India of today, although I’ll chance the guess that Winston Churchill would grudgingly approve of it. Of Pakistan, both men would see all their worst fears confirmed.

Today, for the first time since Independence in 1948, the interests of the United States, India and Pakistan are all aligned against a common foe and, with more American troops heading for Afghanistan and, I suspect, Pakistan, professor Herman’s new book is timely in the extreme.

James G. Wiles can be reached at jimmythewiles@aim.com

 

[Elmo]

Anyone has a review on Sea Monsters and the Sun God by Salman Rashid. It was published in 2006 — worth the read.

 

[Xeric]

China, the United States, and Southeast Asia

Edited by: Evelyn Goh and Sheldon W. Simon

Publisher: Routledge

pp. 224

China, the United States, and Southeast Asia, edited by Evelyn Goh and Sheldon W. Simon, is the result of a joint project by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NRB) and Singapore’s Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS), with support from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) and the US Army War College. The project brought together leading experts from US and Southeast Asian countries, with a view to making an assessment of the implications for Southeast Asia and the US arising from the rise in China’s status as a great power. As, in the past, the focus of China’s rise led to emergence of literature mainly on the security aspects of Northeast Asia and implications for Southeast Asia which did not form a major issue for discussion. The aim of the project was to ascertain Southeast Asian and US perspectives on the phenomenal rise of China and identify the points of convergence and divergence in their respective understandings on China’s rise.

This book is divided into three parts, containing eleven chapters, including a comprehensive and detailed introduction that carries at the end, a summary of major conclusions of the study. All the articles in this book are very well researched with citations of the quotes at the end of each chapter. The text is substantiated with figures, tables and diagrams where necessary.

The introduction clearly spells out the need for the study — that ‘China’s emergence as a major regional power is transforming the economic, political and security environment in Southeast Asia’ and this process entails challenges and opportunities not only for the ASEAN region but also the US interests in the region.

The sub-themes, in each chapter are summarized, while giving the main findings and conclusions. The key point that this book raises is that China’s emergence as a great Asian power is an established and undeniable fact; so far as its rise China is peaceful and China presents itself as a benign power striving to secure its national interests. The book also talks about ‘what happens after China rises?’ This key question generates the favorite US theory of ‘China Threat’ to sustain and further deepen its influence in the region, which Beijing sees as containment or hedging of China. In this geopolitical environment, ASEAN strives to create a fine balance in the interests of these two big powers while at the same time using both for the development and integration of Southeast Asia. The most viable option for ASEAN — to reduce dependence on any one power for regional security — is to engage both in multilateral frameworks such as ASEAN + 1, ARF, APEC etc.

Part I, containing four chapters, deals with the economic aspects of triangular relationship. This section highlights the ASEAN-China economic relations and how China earned trust and respect of the Southeast Asian countries during the 1997-8 financial crisis in the region by not devaluing its currency. As a result, China became the first country to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with ASEAN in 2002, which has helped the Southeast Asian economies to enhance bilateral trade and which is in favour of ASEAN. However, the contributors in this section point out the fact that the Chinese investment in Southeast Asia is negligible as compared to ASEAN investment in China, which is around US$ 40 billion. China is giving a stiff competition to ASEAN in terms of attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).

To balance China’s influence in ASEAN region, ASEAN opened up negotiations with Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. ASEAN wants to attain a stable regional security environment through the creation of economic interdependence and making all major players stakeholders in the stability of the region. Thus far, the US is the largest investor in ASEAN and this policy has been quite successful.

Energy security is assuming centre-stage in China’s foreign policy, as the country has become second largest consumer of energy and oil in the world. Till 1993, China was selfsufficient in energy. It is estimated that China’s oil import would increase more than 500 per cent by 2030 to over 11 billion barrels a day. This situation makes the security of Sea Lines of Communications (SLOC) a vital national interest of China. Currently, China has no mechanism to provide security of SLOC, and it has to rely on the US security umbrella. Any conflict with US over Taiwan could disrupt supply of oil to China. China is addressing these issues by building its naval forces and diversifying sources for its energy requirement such as Central Asia, Russia and Africa.

The Part II of the book deals with politics and consists of three chapters. This section focuses on the question of ASEAN’s dilemma to seek balance in its relations with two great powers, the US and China. There exist apprehensions in the ASEAN region that any serious friction between China and the US would gravely impact on the region. The authors in this section point out that the Chinese contemporary grand strategy is based on four important factors: the US strength, China’s own weakness, nervous neighbours of China, and finally the tensions over Taiwan. In all these factors, the US involvement figures prominently. They are also of the view that in recent years, the stature of China has considerably risen as compared to the US, due to its intrusive unilateralist policies post-9/11.

 

[muse]

Madrassa versus enlightenment
by Khaled Ahmed

Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan’s Madrassas;

By Saleem H Ali: OUP 2009;

Pp214; Price Rs 495

Saleem H Ali has emerged as an informed and credible commentator on Pakistan, writing his column in Daily Times especially on things relating to Pakistan’s radicalising religious institutions. This book has come out of his fieldwork in Pakistan and is a valuable addition to our knowledge of the madrassa systems here.

At the time of independence in 1947, there were only 137 madrassas in Pakistan. According to a 1956 survey, there were 244 madrassas in all of Pakistan (excluding East Pakistan). While there is no comprehensive census of madrassas in Pakistan at present, a reasonable estimate based on Ali’s review of multiple empirical and journalistic sources would suggest that there between 12,000 and 15,000 madrassas in Pakistan, with an enrolment of around 1.5 and 2 million.

In contrast, there are approximately 15,000 government schools with an enrolment of around 16 million, and 35,000 secular private schools with an enrolment of 6 million, and 25,000 auqaf or mosque schools (not madrassas) with an enrolment of around 1.5 million (p.25). There are other sources inside Pakistan who insist that the madrassa is too large and too variegated to be counted accurately; they say total number of madrassas could go up to 22,000!

Do we hate madrassas? Some of us do because we can’t seem to convince anyone that they are dangerous. Those who sympathise with them despite clear research-proved evidence of extremism in them consciously support the expanding ability of the madrassas to reject the state of Pakistan. The xenophobic mindset is in the ascendant. Those who hate foreign-linked institutions far outnumber those who are leery of the madrassas.

The Aga Khan Board controversy started when President Musharraf signed an executive order (the Presidential Ordinance of November 8, 2002; CXIV/2002) inducting the Aga Khan University Examination Board (AKUEB) into the national education system. The AKUEB was selected due to its excellent record in higher learning and would join the existing 24 examination boards nationwide. It was given the task of upgrading and modernising the declining standards of education and of holding examinations for private educational institutions.

The religious parties objected because the Aga Khan’s followers are Ismailis who are not accepted as Muslims in the conservative circles. They added to the suspicion of examinership the involvement of the US in funding. USAID, in funding some of the educational programmes of the Aga Khan Foundation, including a $4 million grant for the establishment of the examination board, raised the hackles of opponents of the Ismailis.

Sectarian politics was once again sparked by rhetoric from the leading madrassa Dawat wal Irshad in Muridke. In the internet edition of its weekly publication Ghazwa (November 4, 2004), the madrassa warned against the converting the Northern Areas into an Ismaili state. Hafiz Saeed wrote: “Musharraf is working on making the Northern Areas an Ismaili state. He has been pressured by Christina Rocca (former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia) to hand over Kashmir to Prince Karim Aga Khan so that he could annex it with the Northern Areas and make it his fiefdom”. Author Ali thinks that this kind of conspiracy-mongering by the madrassa was “disturbingly similar to the campaign against the Ahmedis”. (p.113)

The book finds the jihadists also providing self-selected surveys against Ismailis. Thus the Daily Jasarat reported (December 19, 2004): According to a survey by the Islami Jamiat-e Tulaba (IJT), 854,000 people have rejected the Aga Khan Board examination system called AKB. There was only a certain amount of popularity of AKB in Sindh while elsewhere 93.02 per cent rejected the AKB. Director of the Khair-ul-Madaris in Multan, Maulana Hanif Jalandhari, accused the government of inconsistency — trying to give independence to the Aga Khan Boa while restricting madrassa procedures.

However, the major difference between the Aga Khan Board and the madrassa system is that the exam criteria for the Aga Khan programme, and indeed all private schools, are still subject to government approval, whereas the madrassa programmes at present have no government oversight (p.113). But madrassas have other leverage too because of the support they get from the religious parties. In March 2004, the MMA, the alliance of five religious parties, disrupted National Assembly proceedings and staged a walkout protesting the exclusion of certain Quranic verses from the new edition of a state-prescribed biology textbook.

The clerics threatened the government upon which the federal education minister Zubaida Jalal immediately clarified that no chapter or verses relating to jihad or Holy War or shahadat (martyrdom) had been deleted from textbook and that the particular verse referring to jihad had only been shifted from the biology textbook for intermediate students (Classes XI and XII) to the matriculation level course (Class X). Why should jihad or shahadat be mentioned in a biological textbook? (p.115)

The book sees that ‘highly negative material is presented regarding minority religious groups’, particularly Hindus and Jews. This is what the government needs to correct, ‘but hate mongering should not be conflated with an immediate reduction in Islamic curricular content as it is likely to lead to neither policy being implemented’. Both hate speech and Islamic content have collectively been the focus of extensive criticism in Pakistan by secular NGOs such as the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), whose report titled Subtle Subversion (2004) had created quite a storm in Pakistan (p.115).

Saleem H Ali says: “When I interviewed Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi [of Red Mosque or Lal Masjid] in the winter of 2004, he came across as someone who regarded most foreign researchers with suspicion and felt that Islamabad was being indoctrinated by foreign elements. There was little doubt that this was a madrassa with a mission of sanctimonious reform of the urban corridors of power. The governing board of madrassas was well aware of this radicalisation but kept a low profile on the matter until early 2007 when they finally expelled the Red Mosque family of madrassas from their board.” (p.173)

Maulana Ghazi’s students had taken out their anger several years earlier on the local market in Islamabad containing Melody Cinema after the killing of a notable religious cleric to send a message to the government which was never really interested in reading them. After the 2007 confrontation, the author was handed a flier by a youth lamenting the Red Mosque siege and calling for a national uprising against the government.

The pamphlet contained the other exhortation of a caliphate and termed readership in Urdu as ‘Ahl-e-Quwwat’, meaning ‘People of Power’, and exhorted them to join together to establish the authority of Islam, indicating that ‘no other form of governance was acceptable to them’. The note was signed Hizb-al-Tahrir — a well-known militant organisation that has its roots in the United Kingdom.

Author Ali recommends that all madrassas may be shown the Quranic verse Sura 2 Verse 52 which states quite clearly that ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (p.177), but the fact is that during the Lal Masjid showdown a TV reporter did ask the danda-bearing girls of the seminary about this very verse. The answer was rehearsed: it applies only to the non-Muslims. In other words, the concessionary verse is for the non-Muslims. Once you become a Muslim, you will be coerced against munkiraat and coerced in favour of marufaat. And this goes into far more detail than just pornography. You can be whipped for shaving.

One agrees with the author when says: “Like the famous Stockholm prisoner, many in the Frontier became so entranced with these intellectual incarcerators that they actually began to like them. The educated class began to believe that somehow the fanatics must be correct — for they had a contorted courage of conviction that made them appear like mythical super-heroes.”


A lesson for some here as well --

 

[fatman17]

Tribal Fighting in NWFP by General Sir Andrew Skeen. KCB;KCLE;CMG.
Foreword by Field Marshal Sir Philip W. Chetwode,GCB;GCSI;KCMG;DSO

During the first half of the twentieth century, the mountainous North West Frontier represented one of the British Empire's most strategically important borders. For thousands of inexperienced British and Indian troops facing local resistence the methods and lessons of their predecssors were vital for their survival.

General Sir Andrew Skeen's unofficial but authoritative textbook was written with these junior officers in mind. His work provided them with pragmatic and practical information on hill warfare in an accessible fashion. Skeen's understanding of frontier fighting remains as valuable to modern troops fighting local insurgents today as it was to successive generation of imperial soldiers who faced tribal uprisings.

In May 1919, the new Emir of Afghanistan Amanullah Khan-convinced that the British Empire was on the brink of collapse-proclaimed a jihad against Britian in the hope he could sieze the old Afghan provinces west of the river Indus and humiliate his old enemy. The war began with the invasion of the tribal belt, in what is today Pakistan, where Amanullah expected to rouse all the tribes against the British. British-Indian forces retaliated by fighting their way across the mountains and back up the Khyber Pass. For the sake of a better peace, the Third Afghan War ended with Britian granting autonomy in foreign affairs to the Afghans in the Treaty of Rawalpindi. Whilst air power had played a significant in the British success, the Afghans had issued a stark reminder that they were formidable adversaries.

General Sir Andrew Skeen was one of Britian's most experienced frontier warfare officers and spent the years 1919-1920 fighting the Mahsuds and Waziris, the most notorious of all cross border groups. The majority of troops under his command were initially wholly inexperienced and barelt fit for frontier service. Lessons in Imperial Rule(first published in 1932 under the title Passing it On) was written with a view to imparting sound, practical advise on fighting in this region for future generations.

The lesson explained include the various aspects of work in establishing new camps, securing parameters, moving platoons, setting up watching posts, methods foraging and demolition, and the emergency occupation of villages. Despite the later introduction of armoured cars, light tanks and aircraft, it retains much of its value and it was recently reissued to the Pakistan Army.

Britian's return to Afghanistan in 2001 alongside Coalition forces and the Pakistan Army fighting in Waziristan, conjures inescapeable parallels with earlier conflicts, and the third Afghan war in particular. Remarkably many of the ideas and principles Skeen identified still hold true. Now as then, the arena of fighting was tough and unforgiving. The Afghans and Pashtuns have proved themselves incredibly resourceful, skilled and resolute, demanding the very best expertise, tactics and dedication from the Coalition troops. This book offers a evocative insight into the period and serves as a timely reminder of Britian's historic association with the North West Frontier and Afghanistan.

General Sir Andrew Skeen, KCb; KCIE; CMG (20 January 1873-18 Feburary 1935) served in the British Indian Army, rising to the position of Chief of General Staff (CGS). He also served in China during the Boxer rebellion in 1900 and in Gallipoli during the First World War.
Robert Johnson is the author of Spying for Empire and The Great Game in Central and Southern Asia

 

[muse]

BOOK REVIEW: Is radical Islam normal Islam? —by Khaled Ahmed

Radical Islam and International Security: Challenges and Responses;
edited by Hillel Frisch & Efraim Inbar;
Routledge 2008;
Pp227; Price £70;
Available at bookstores in Pakistan



Bassam Tibi, professor of international relations at the University of Goettingen, and a visiting faculty member at Cornell University as the AD White Professor-at-large, has contributed significantly to this volume. As someone educated in Germany, he attributes extremism and radicalism among Muslims there “to the discrimination and denial of young Muslims to joining the German community”. He is from the ashrafia of Damascus and would have gone astray had not some Jewish teachers given him support. The label of ‘guest-worker’ turns people to radical thoughts. (p.29)

Tibi questions the term extremism (Arabic tatarruf) as applied to political Islam. Questioning the use of “extremism” is important in order to know that political Islam is not a fringe phenomenon of delinquency, but rather an ideology of political movements that represent the major oppositions in most countries of the world of Islam, particularly in the Middle East (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt). Some of these movements of political Islam (e.g., Hizballah in Lebanon; SCIRI and the Mahdi Army in Iraq) already participate in power and governance. (p.11) Extremism is thus increasingly the characteristic of mainstream Islam.

After the ‘religionisation’ of a political conflict, issues become non-negotiable since the discourse of negotiation becomes absolutist. The formula Filastin Islamiyya versus Israel indicates an Islamisation of the conflict with non-negotiable claims. (p.12) Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, later embraced by Hamas, Hasan Al Banna wrote Risalat al-Jihad in the early 20th century, which is used today as a basic reading for the indoctrination of the jihadist ideology. (p.13) This is the paper used by madrassas all over the world and in Western Europe in their policy of recruitment. They first teach jihadism, then create an appeal for action under it. This is the two-track strategy to deal with Islam and Islamism. (p.13) Without jihadism, radicalism will not march.

Scholars in Europe who refuse to include Islamism in security studies are fearful of the accusation of Islamophobia. This sentiment adds to the confusion between Islam and Islamism. (p.21) Important components of Islamist jihadism exist throughout Europe, Germany being a prominent case in point. The new German tolerance vis-à-vis Islamism is among the wrong lessons contemporary German scholars have drawn from their shameful past. (p.24)

Tibi shares Fukuyama’s view that Europe has become a battlefront of Islamism. To avoid misunderstandings, it is important to note that at issue is a small but highly active minority among the Islamic diaspora, not the entire diaspora itself. In the case of Germany there are approximately 100,000 Islamists among the diaspora community of 3.7 million. This figure varies from one country to another. The Islamists comprise 10 percent of the diaspora in the Netherlands. (p.26)

Rushda Siddiqi, an Associate Fellow with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi, has contributed her article, The Islamic Dimension of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, and thinks that Pakistan, created to safeguard the identity of a religion, is the realisation of a fundamentalist imagination. She thinks, “Pakistan has been one of the first states in contemporary history to employ non-state proxies to safeguard its interests in the region and in the international arena”. Initially, Pakistan benefited from its non-state actors and the mechanisms they employed. The government used its foreign office to support terrorist activities in Kashmir. “In the long run, however, the use of non-state actors backfired, increasing the state’s vulnerability to a backlash not only by the states affected by Pakistan’s terrorist proxies, but also by the non-state actors within Pakistan”. (p.153)

According to her, there are two institutions that play the main role, the madrassa and the ISI. A coordinated effort between the two has been responsible for the use of terrorism as a tool of foreign policy. The ISI has also created organisations that play a role in the domestic politics of target countries. The Taliban in Afghanistan and the Lashkar-e Tayba in India are two examples. The aim of having a controlled homegrown movement in Afghanistan ensured that Pakistan would not face hostility on the western border. And a friendly polity in Afghanistan would be an effective counter to the Shia government in Iran. Afghanistan could also provide Pakistan with strategic depth in its conflict with India. (p.158)

Arye L Hillman in his An economic perspective on radical Islam quotes the well known Muslim economist Timur Kuran who sees economic impediment in Islamic jurisprudence. He also looks askance at the practice of waqf or charity trust which came into being to avoid being bothered by the ruler and to avoid normal taxation in the name of charity. He points out that the Islamic legal system did not necessarily apply to Jews and Christians living under Islam, and, and in consequence, Jews and Christians came to dominate economic activity in Islamic societies. (p.55)

Barbara Crossette explains female genital mutilation and denial of sexual satisfaction of women as reflecting lack of trust of women by men. Lack of trust is also pressed into prohibitions on women being in the company of men, “which reduces income”. When social mobility and incomes are low, gender relations provide compensating benefits or “rents for males through polygamy”.

Hillman pursues Timur Kuran’s thesis about the Muslims, likening his work to that of Max Weber who first linked economics to religion, dividing Christianity into Catholicism with a weak work ethic and Protestantism of the ‘north’ with a strong work ethic. If Islamic economics doesn’t help, what explains its existence and popularity? Why would anyone believe that Islamic economics is capable of raising productivity, stimulating growth, or reducing inequality? These questions mask an essential, if paradoxical, fact: “the main purpose of Islamic economics is not to improve economic performance. Its purpose is to help prevent Muslims from assimilating into the emerging global culture whose core elements have a Western pedigree.” (p.59)

According to Kuran, the ‘supreme values’ of radical Islam deprioritise economic achievement and impose self-deprivation on their own population. “Theories of economic development presuppose that intended beneficiaries experience economic improvement. These theories lose applicability when ‘supreme values’ require economic self-deprivation and when ongoing life has no value.” (p.62)

 

[fatman17]

BOOK REVIEW: The madrassa puzzle in Pakistan —by Khaled Ahmed

View attachment 3517

The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan; By C Christine Fair; Vanguard Books Lahore 2009; Pp145; Price Rs 500

On the face of it, no madrassa looks either jihadi or sectarian, but research has shown that the seminarians are more narrow-minded and intolerant than the pupils of normal schools

Christine Fair served at the Centre for Conflict Analysis and Prevention of the United States Institute of Peace, and currently is a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation. She is co-author of Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S Interim Security Assistance (USIP Press, 2006).

According to an estimate in Jang (January 6, 2006), there were 11,221 religious seminaries (madrassas) in Pakistan in the year 2005. This number had grown from 6,761 in 2000. This meant that in the five years that also saw the terrorist attack of 9/11, the apostatising seminaries had almost doubled in Pakistan. There were 448 madrassas for women too.

The largest number of madrassas, 8,191, belonged to Wifaqul Madaris Arabiya, 1,952 to Tanzimul Madaris and 381 to Wifaqul Madaris Shia. The majority seminaries are Deobandi. For instance, in Punjab 444,156 pupils are Deobandi as opposed to 199,733 Barelvi, 34,253 Ahle Hadith and 7,333 Shia. The largest number of madrassas is not in Lahore but Bahawalpur, then in Lahore, in Bahawalnagar and Faisalabad.

It is accepted that South Punjab is home to the most aggressive and poisoned of all madrassas. South Punjab stretches from Jhang to Bahawalpur, dotted with madrassas that private citizens from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait fund generously, thinking they are spreading the message of Islam. This is the region where the countryside is dominated by feudal lords with large landholdings and cities teeming with the poor masses controlled by jihadi groups.

Only in Dera Ghazi Khan, the origin of the dreaded clerics of Lal Masjid in Islamabad, there are 185 registered madrassas, of which 90 are Deobandi (with a total of 324 teachers), 84 are Barelvi (with a total of 212 teachers), six are Ahle Hadith (107 teachers) and five are Fiqh-e-Jafaria (10 teachers). Multan is the traditional base of madrassas, while Rahimyar Khan and Bahawalpur have seen their proliferation in recent years.

Together with Peshawar, Islamabad is the most vulnerable city as far as the possibility of a sudden takeover by the Taliban is concerned. Islamabad was supposed to have 80 madrassas just two years ago. Reported in Jang (June 18, 2009), the government had discovered that there were 260 madrassas in Islamabad, out of which one dozen were illegal. Some madrassas were busy spreading hatred against the armed forces of Pakistan. One Jamia Masjid Qasimiya in F-8/3 and its leader Ehsanullah Khan were warned by government to give up these activities in 15 days.

Ms Fair thinks that in some ways the madrassas in the Islamic world are the centre of a civil war of ideas. Westernised and usually affluent Muslims lack an interest in religious matters, but religious scholars, marginalised by modernisation, seek to assert their own relevance by insisting on orthodoxy. She writes: “Poor students attending madrassa find it easy to believe that the West, loyal to uncaring and aloof leaders, is responsible for their misery and that Islam as practiced in its earliest form can deliver them.”

But she is careful to point out that a study had revealed that terrorists in involved in the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa, the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Bali nightclub bombing, and the London bombings in July 2005 were not madrassa graduates. The masterminds of the attacks had had university degrees. (p.5) In a survey she scans, of the 141 mujahideen in the data set, the vast majority served and died in Kashmir. Of these mujahideen, only nineteen were reportedly recruited at a madrassa—the same number recruited at a public school.

But she can’t completely absolve the madrassa of all blame. She says: “Available evidence suggests that madrassas are important sources of supply of suicide attackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attacks in Afghanistan are relevant because many are attackers from madrassas in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The reasons for this are not quite clear. In the case of Afghanistan, the validity of suicide attacks as an acceptable means of warfare are contested, with many Afghans seeing them as suicide rather than a legitimate mode of waging jihad.” (p.68)

According to her the registered madrassas in Pakistan number just over 6,700. Since a Pakistani will usually accept 20,000 as the total number, one must assume that the state will have a tough time registering those that stand outside the record. One reason could be the condition of rendering annual audit account, telling the government how much money was contributed by whom.

She finds the madrassas in the following order: Wafaq-ul-Madaris Arabia Pakistan (Deobandi) founded in 1959 in Multan; Tanzeem-ul-Madaris (Barelvi) founded in 1960 in Lahore; Wafaq-ul-Madaris Salafia (Ahl-e-Hadith) founded in 1955 in Faisalabad; RabitatuI Madaris Islamiya (Jama’at-e Islami) founded in 1983 in Mansoora Lahore; and Wafaq-ul-Madaris (Shia) founded in 1959 in Lahore.

Fair also finds the terrorists better educated than the average Pakistani: “Of those thirty-three madrassa products, 27 attended a madrassa for four or fewer years, and most also attended public schools. In contrast, 82 of the 141 were very well educated by Pakistani standards, with at least a matriculation qualification tenth-grade education, in stark contrast to the average level for Pakistani males. Only 9 of the 141 had no formal education, the militants in this sample were much better educated than the average Pakistani male.” (p.69)

She finds that many madrassas refuse to accept government funding because they think the money is coming from America. She discovered it to be true as “the amount allocated to Pakistan through USAID exactly equals the funding pledged by the government to the religious sector”. (p.86)

The madrassas insisted to her that there was no evidence that their students were involved in illegal activities. She could recall that the younger brother of Hanbali, Al Qaeda’s organiser in Southeast Asia, and mastermind of the Bali blasts, was arrested along with 17 people from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Burma, and in raids on three madrassas in Karachi.

Fair writes: “I did confirm during fieldwork that substantial numbers of foreign students from Africa, Europe and the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Central, South, and Southeast Asia were at many of the madrassas visited. In fact, Jamia Banuria at SITE in Karachi still has a large foreign students’ section, and one can still visit its Website to obtain information about applying for the foreign students’ programme’.” (p.90)

Some facts are well known about the madrassa background of some jihadi leaders. For instance, the leader of Jamia Banuria, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, was the patron of both Harkatul Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Muhammad and inclined more to the latter as the two bickered and split. The leader of Jaish, Maulana Masood Azhar, was his student at Jamia Banuria. So was the leader of Sipah Sahaba, Maulana Azam Tariq.

Shamzai headed many madrassas and was funded generously by Saudi Arabia. On the face of it, no madrassa looks either jihadi or sectarian, but research has shown that the seminarians are more narrow-minded and intolerant than the pupils of normal schools. *

 

[muse]

The largest number of madrassas, 8,191, belonged to Wifaqul Madaris Arabiya, 1,952 to Tanzimul Madaris and 381 to Wifaqul Madaris Shia. The majority seminaries are Deobandi. For instance, in Punjab 444,156 pupils are Deobandi as opposed to 199,733 Barelvi, 34,253 Ahle Hadith and 7,333 Shia. The largest number of madrassas is not in Lahore but Bahawalpur, then in Lahore, in Bahawalnagar and Faisalabad.

The arby have played a huge role in the militarization of Deeni Madaress Tulaba and they continue to use Pakistan as the playground of thier version of civil war, pitting their obscuritanist ideas against those of ordinary Pakistanis.

 

[muse]

June 25, 2009
Books of The Times
Here’s a Clue: Mr. Kumar, With a Gun, in India
By JANET MASLIN

SIX SUSPECTS

By Vikas Swarup

470 pages. Minotaur Books. $24.99.
“Q&A,” the novel that became the basis for the smash-hit film “Slumdog Millionaire,” used questions from a television quiz show to prompt flashbacks about its main character’s life story. Here’s a question for its author, Vikas Swarup: Can a novel be any more high-concept than that?

Yes it can. Mr. Swarup’s second novel, “Six Suspects,” is a Bollywood version of the board game Clue with a strain of screwball comedy thrown in. Its stock characters are easily identified: the Bureaucrat, the Actress, the Tribal, the Thief, the Politician and the American. Each attended the party at which a man named Vicky Rai, a playboy film producer, was murdered. Each has a gun and a motive. And although the story’s geographical span is even bigger than India, the whole thing feels handily confined to the kind of isolated, air-tight setting that Agatha Christie’s readers love.

Thanks to such a schematic setup “Six Suspects” is gleeful, sneaky fun. But it’s also a much more freewheeling book than the format implies. Mr. Swarup, an Indian diplomat, brings a worldly range of attributes to his potentially simple story. And he winds up delivering a rambling critique of Indian culture, taking shots at everything from racism to reality TV. Yet Mr. Swarup’s style stays light and playful, preferring to err on the side of broad high jinks rather than high seriousness. A fizzy romp seems to be the main thing he has in mind.

Oddly enough, that ambition turns this formulaic-sounding book into a refreshing oddity. It bears no resemblance to any of the cookie-cutter genre books of this season. Its idiosyncrasy becomes apparent with the first of the six suspects, the Bureaucrat: Mohan Kumar, who was a man of power and influence until he hit forced retirement at 60. Thus adrift, he lets himself be coaxed to a séance at which the spirit of Gandhi is scheduled to appear. “I see dead people,” someone at the séance says with a snicker.

Mohan has no belief in the claptrap of séances. And as a hard-drinking, meat-eating adulterer, he hasn’t much use for Gandhi anyhow. But a funny thing happens at the gathering: Mohan has the strange sensation that a foreign object is sliding down his throat. Soon afterward he develops a split personality. He insists that he is a holy man half the time. But he can forget all about this posturing and resume his old vices as if nothing had happened.

“Six Suspects” is zany enough to get Mohan jailed and give him a cellmate who utters nothing but the titles of novels. For instance: “What are you in jail for?” “Atonement.” “And what do you think will be your punishment?” “One hundred years of solitude.” “Who is your best friend here?” “The boy in the striped pajamas.” Laugh or groan at this, either way it gets your attention.

So do Mr. Swarup’s plot machinations about Shabnam Saxena, a smoldering Bollywood star who somehow takes her marching orders from Nietzsche (and at one point grills another character about his familiarity with the writing of Bernard Malamud). Shabnam worries so much about her image and reputation that she really ought to anticipate how much trouble the story has thrown her way, once there turns out to be an innocent country girl who looks enough like Shabnam to be her double.

Meanwhile, on a plane from the United States, an idiot named Larry Page is headed from Texas to India with plans to make Shabnam his bride. Somebody duped him into falling in love with her picture and mistaking her for a mail-order bride.

Larry, of course, has his own capacity for creating mix-ups, since he shares his name with one of the two Google founders and strikes ruthless terrorists as a good target for kidnapping. Mr. Swarup generally treats his characters warmly, but this American is made a boorish lout. The book says that Larry might look like Michael J. Fox, but only if he lost a lot of weight.

“Six Suspects” also condescends to the character it calls the Tribal, a black, five-foot-tall Onge tribesman who is treated like a slave when he is brought from his native island to mainland India. Yet this character, whose name is Eketi, still becomes Mr. Swarup’s most lovable creation. While the others have their venal motives, Eketi has a kind heart, but he is beautiful to only the blind woman who falls in love with him. The odd-couple romances that bloom in these pages help tie together what are essentially six novellas. And they lead to the fateful night that culminates in Vicky Rai’s murder.

Eventually Mr. Swarup will provide the necessary denouement to his whodunit. And that denouement may be even more mysterious than it had to be. But the real fun here is in watching the separate story lines develop and in watching Mr. Swarup weave commentary into even his book’s looniest moments. When Shabnam makes a film in Australia and watches blond female dancers trying to perfect their Bollywood choreography, she wonders if she isn’t watching some kind of colonialism in reverse. When a rich girl falls in love with a poor boy, in a plot twist straight out of Indian romance movies, that boy responds with a figurative wink. “I don’t know whether to thank God or Bollywood for this remarkable turnaround,” he says.

“Six Suspects” aspires to broadly entertaining pratfalls, and it is endlessly eager to please. Not even the corrupt politician who figures in the plot (and whose wheeling and dealing are conveyed by transcripts of his outrageous phone calls) is terribly complicated, although Mr. Swarup can use the simplest characters to create frissons of mystery. The politician is Vicky Rai’s father, and he has grown increasingly impatient with his son’s arrogance.

“You must be familiar with the concept of sacrifice,” he tells his chief henchman. “Have you heard of Abraham?” That makes him one more murder suspect in this book’s expertly delirious scheme.

 

[Neo]

How India got it wrong in Kashmir ​

By Khaled Ahmed

​

My Kashmir: Conflict and the Prospect of Enduring Peace
By Wajahat Habibullah; Vanguard Books Lahore 2009; Pp201

Wajahat Habibullah’s view is important because he served as a civil servant in Jammu & Kashmir when it was going through the throes of the insurrection starting 1990. He was the only Muslim in that year’s batch of the Indian Administrative Service, a branch of the All India Services, and the ruling chief minister happened to be a friend of his father’s, which became “the subject of some conjecture in the press gossip”.

The majority of the Jammu and Kashmir population now living within India — more than 5.4 million according to the 2001 census — are in the Kashmir Valley, known as the Kashmir Division. The Kashmiri language, spoken in the valley and in the areas immediately abutting it, is a Dardic language. The second major component is the Jammu Division, with a population of just under 4.4 million, more than 60 percent Hindu and 30 percent Muslim — the latter forming a majority in three of Jammu’s six districts with languages that are variations of Punjabi, distinct from Kashmiri.

The third component of Jammu and Kashmir, though administratively under the Kashmir Division, is Ladakh (population 233,000), the largest of the three in area, with a slim Muslim majority, mostly Shia, in contrast to predominantly Sunni Kashmir. One of Ladakh’s two districts, Kargil, theatre of war between India and Pakistan in 1999, is predominantly Shia Muslim (73 percent), as is adjoining Baltistan in the Northern Area of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The district of Leh, to the south, has a Buddhist majority. (p.7)

Habibullah is disturbed by Pakistanis’ newfound contempt for the tolerant Sufi culture in Islam. He writes: “In November 2003, while talking to a group of Pakistani Americans in Washington, DC, over an iftar, I was surprised to learn of the Pakistani Americans’ low regard for the influence the Sufi shrines still exert over common folk in India and Pakistan. The general feeling was that these shrines were the haunts of deluded illiterates and instruments for extortion by avaricious con men. Although many Indians, Muslims as well as Hindus, look askance at the extortion in the guise of religion that occurs at several Sufi shrines — identical to what occurs at many Hindu temples — the Indian intelligentsia does not view the shrines with the same contempt expressed by the Pakistani intelligentsia.” (p.17)

The author is clear about why Sheikh Abdullah, the charismatic leader of J&K, did not join Muslim Pakistan: “As a National Conference leader, Sheikh Abdullah faced a clear choice: he could join a Muslim nation whose leadership would surely be Punjabi, a people whom Kashmiris feared and distrusted and who were unlikely to respect the distinct religious tradition and identity of Kashmiris. Alternatively, he could join a secular state, where Kashmiris would be assured freedom in a new nation and the source of those assurances of freedom was someone of Kashmiri descent, who cherished that heritage and was a personal friend of the Sheikh’s, with an inclusive vision of what India was to be.” (p.19)

India had its first war with Pakistan immediately after Independence, after it moved to annex J&K. Nehru went to the UN for justice but got an in-between verdict from the Security Council. The UN Resolution of August 13, 1948, called for determination of the future status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir; it was qualified by the resolution of January 5, 1949 which called for a plebiscite to determine the future of Jammu and Kashmir, with the limited choice of opting either to be a part of India or of Pakistan.

This also caused the first wrinkle to appear in the Abdullah-Nehru friendship. In May 1953, the National Conference, led by Sheikh Abdullah, set up a committee to address the prevailing uncertainty and explore the feasibility of a plebiscite, allowing also for the third option of independence. That committee included Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, GM Sadiq, Girdharilal Dogra, and Shamlal Saraf, many o whom went on to serve in government (p.21)

The book reveals another cause for the disturbance in the New Delhi dovecotes. What is said to have particularly incensed the Indian government were Abdullah’s two meetings in Srinagar with Adlai Stevenson, the recently defeated US Democratic presidential candidate. Supposedly, Stevenson urged the Sheikh to opt for independence, perhaps in return for US bases in Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah was arrested on charges of treason in August 1953. (p.22) The ‘third option’ which is reality in 2009 could thus be the seed sown by Sheikh Abdullah and watered by the Americans.

The Sheikh was arrested in 1953 without even the opportunity to bid his family farewell. He was released in 1958, only to be arrested again. Released in 1964 as part of Prime Minister Nehru’s final effort to settle Kashmir, the Sheikh visited President Ayub Khan in Pakistan. But he was arrested again in the summer of 1965 on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca. Released in 1967, he was detained once more in 1968, when his political activism for greater autonomy was perceived as a threat by Indira Gandhi’s Congress government. He was finally returned to power in February 1975 after a November 1974 Sheikh Abdullah-Indira Gandhi Accord. (p.33)

When Sheikh was restored to power in 1975, wealthy Kashmiri businesses were eager to assist the government, but the Sheikh’s political support was largely limited to the Kashmir Valley. Further support would have to be bought. Thus, the Bakshi tradition — which the Sheikh had re turned to power on a pledge to eradicate — not only persisted but was relied upon. There was growing corruption in the Abdullah government that lasted from 1975 to 1977. (p.47)

The author was deputy commissioner when the 1977 election came around. All the deputy commissioners in Kashmir were given orders requiring that leading National Conference volunteers be arrested under the Preventive Detention Act, which permitted detention without trial. Under the law, the deputy commissioner, as signatory of the arrest warrant, was expected to exercise judgement in reviewing grounds, and the detention had to withstand the scrutiny of a judicial review. (p.39)

After Sheikh Abdullah, New Delhi had to deal with his son Farooq Abdullah. The relationship soon went sour. Indira Gandhi’s cousin, BK Nehru, governor of Jammu and Kashmir since 1981, had advised against unseating Farooq. BK was replaced in April 1984 by Governor Jagmohan who advised that popular rule be replaced by governor’s rule under Article 92 of the Constitution. The overthrow of Farooq’s government in 1984 was reminiscent of the events of 1953, down to the collusion of his cohorts with the ruling party at the centre.

Did violence against Kashmiri Pandits begin after Pakistan sent in its non-state actors? The book tells us that it actually began in 1986, with the Rajiv Gandhi government in its infancy. The most remarkable aspect of this outbreak was that even though the community had faced persecution by bigoted rulers in the past, this marked the first person-to-person conflict in all of Kashmir’s history (p.55).

This is new information for a Pakistani reader. Also new is the fact that many Muslim clerics fled anti-Muslim violence in Assam and filled up the Kashmiri madrassas run Jamaat Islami. They became a potent influence on young minds and played a critical role in nurturing the religious mind-set of young Kashmiris by the close of the 1980s, when the insurgency erupted. (p.57)

Just as the elections of 1977 were a referendum on the Indira-Sheikh Accord, the state assembly elections in March 1987 were a referendum on the Rajiv-Farooq Accord. The alliance was returned to power with an overwhelming majority: sixty-six seats between the two parties, forty for the National Conference and twenty-six for the Congress party.

The elections were partly rigged but this decided the career of Syed Yusuf Shah, the discomfited candidate in the Amira Kadal constituency in 1987, who went on, under the nom de guerre Syed Salahuddin, to become head of the militant Hizbul Mujahideen. (p.63) Note the observation: ‘partly rigged’. This is definitely not the way Syed Salahuddin looked at what happened in 1987.

What is surprising is the fact that the Kashmiri Pandits were attacked by the JKLF and not by the mullahs of the Jamaat. Even though the JKLF philosophy was supposedly secular, minuscule minority of the pandits from the Kashmir Valley became the principal targets of terrorists from both JKLF, and the violence sparked emigration of almost the entire Pandit community from the valley into Jammu and different parts of India. (p.66)

For Habibullah, the insurgency of March 1988 was caused by disillusionment, carefully nurtured and armed by the ubiquitous ISI. It led to an outflow of young men to Pakistan Kashmir and Afghanistan for training in the use of weapons seized from the retreating Soviet armies. The AK-47 became the preferred armament. Among those who took charge of this training was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, ‘a fanatical Afghan warlord and among the bitterest opponents of the USSR’. (p.67)

Then Hizb fell out with JKLF. In April 1993, the chief ideologue of the JKLF, Dr Guru, was kidnapped and brutally murdered by the Hizb militant Zulqarnain. Guru, a leading Srinagar physician who had funded a medical college, had commanded wide respect and presented reasonable face of separatism. (p.82) That year also came the Hazratbal Shrine Incident, followed by a far more damaging debacle at Charar-e-Sharif in March 1995.

Charar-e-Sharif is located near Shopian, District Badgam, in South Kashmir and straddles the ancient route through which the imperial Mughal caravan brought India’s Mughal emperors from Agra or Delhi to the summer retreat in the valley. It is a shrine dedicated to the fourteenth-century saint Sheikh Nooruddin Wali of the Kubravi School of Sufis, known t s Hindu devotees as Nanda Rishi or Sahajanand. Charar Sharif was destroyed in May 1995 and the terrorist Mast Gul escaped to Pakistan to be feted as a hero. (p.94)

The book wants a bit of all the solutions so far at hand: autonomy, Indo-Pak joint handling, and Manmohan Singh’s devolution ‘without changing maps’. Above all, he wants Kashmiri pride assuaged. *

 

[Neo]

Eyewitness: Pakistan ​

By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
Published: July 10, 2009

Taking office in January, Barack Obama promised a radically different vision of foreign policy from that of his predecessor. But on perhaps the most critical issue, the new king looks a lot like the old one. In Pakistan, President Obama has retained the Bush administration’s targeted drone missile attacks against suspected militants and may quietly be expanding the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert battle against jihadis along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

TO LIVE OR TO PERISH FOREVER

Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan

By Nicholas Schmidle

Illustrated. 254 pp. Henry Holt & Company. $25

Excerpt From ‘To Live or to Perish Forever’ (Google Books)As Nicholas Schmidle, a contributor to publications including The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Slate, reveals in a richly reported book based on his two years traveling across Pakistan, United States policy does not change because Pakistan, sadly, does not change. Birthed in 1947 by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the lawyer son of a rich merchant, the country remains in the grip of venal, feudal, wealthy politician-landlords like the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and the current president, Asif Ali Zardari, for whom democracy means one vote one time, after which the victors go on to dominate indefinitely. Worse, greed and graft have led Islamabad’s ruling class to ignore large portions of the population, who remain illiterate, and their incompetent governance has opened the door to Islamists’ offering average Pakistanis promises that the first Mayor Daley would have recognized — safe and orderly streets — not through machine politics but through the brutal application of Shariah law.

Founded as a homeland for Muslims, Pakistan never coalesced into a nation: from Sindh to Peshawar, Schmidle uncovers a politics based on identity, rather than ideological platforms, and thus incapable of compromise. Schmidle finds that there is not one Pakistan, but that “each province” represents “its own, distinct Pakistan.” In his time in the country, he sees the collapse of identity politics only once, when students organize to oust the dictator Pervez Musharraf. “For the first time in more than 20 years, students gathered for a cause . . . and not just an identity or an ideology,” Schmidle writes. But when Musharraf goes, and terrorists kill the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the country descends into identity-first bloodletting once again.

At times, Schmidle’s work, a collection of chapter-length anecdotes, coheres little better than Pakistani politics. Parts read like stand-alone articles, and Schmidle diverges into topics, like politics in Bangladesh, that stray from the narrative thrust about the long-term survival of Pakistan.

But what anecdotes. Brave enough to seek out some of the country’s toughest jihadis despite the grave dangers facing American reporters in Pakistan, Schmidle has amassed a treasure chest of stories. And unlike some traveling correspondents who turn the lens inward, he never allows himself — his reactions to being dropped in the Talibanized northwest or in the middle of an urban protest march — to overshadow his Pakistani characters. Schmidle ventures into Baluchistan, a province ignored by most Western reporters, though it is the site of a bloody separatist struggle every bit as dangerous to Pakistan’s unity and survival as the fight against the Taliban in the North-West Frontier. In his sharpest, most elegant portrait, he describes Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who fought to the death in the bloody siege of Islamabad’s Red Mosque two years ago, not as a mere radical but as a complex, media-savvy cleric-politician capable of massaging his public image to appear both intimidating enough to draw in young jihadis and modern enough to attract Western interest.

In another timely account, Schmidle travels into the remote Swat region, crossing at one point on a zip-line tram, to meet Maulana Fazlullah, a leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Again, Schmidle presents more than the brutal jihadi of most media coverage. He encounters Fazlullah in a “bulky black turban and a goofy smile,” assuring Schmidle that “you are our guests.” And yet the reader cannot forget that Fazlullah is believed to have masterminded the string of murderous attacks by the Taliban in Lahore, Islamabad and other cities in recent weeks.

Unlike a more nuanced work of reporting (say, George Packer’s 2005 book on Iraq, “The Assassins’ Gate”), Schmidle’s project leaves us with few conclusions, few ideas of how to create function out of Pakistan’s chaos. In his last few pages, after his final trip to Pakistan, where he had been pursued relentlessly by the police and intelligence agents, he simply cops out. Recalling a question put to him by his grandfather — “What’s wrong with that place?” — Schmidle writes, “I realized that I was no closer to offering a comprehensive answer now than I had been” at the start of the journey.

Then again, in his confusion about how to understand Pakistan, Schmidle finds himself in good company: from Truman to Obama, and from Jinnah to Zardari, no American or Pakistani president has figured out a solution in the country, either.

Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World.”

 

[fatman17]

BOOK REVIEW: Signals from a failing state —by Khaled Ahmed

Pakistan Aik Nakaam Riyasat? By Mujahid Husain;

Nigarishat Publishers 24 Mozang Road Lahore 2009;

Pp416; Price Rs 500

Politicians signing brilliantly democratic but unfamiliar charters confuse Pakistan by swearing that they will be friends and not destabilise each other in the old pavlovian reflex of toppling that the country is used to. In fact if you don’t topple, there is something seriously wrong with you

Mujahid Husain as a journalist is a man of the field but lately his columns in daily Aajkal have caught the attention of the reader who wants something new in Urdu journalism. He knows the facts that back his perceptions and is easy with the language so that the message gets across, and he keeps himself out of his message, which is quite unusual in Pakistan where the column has been reduced to anecdotal egotism that readers must accept as analysis.

He is alerted by yaksaniyat (uniformity) of thinking in a state where discord is the most threatening aspect of its failing health, a kind of brainwash absorbed from the centres of power within the state that patronise you only if you mouth their shibboleths. Hatred of America, hatred of India, and a kind of blind faith in the muslimhood of the Taliban is what this uniformity relies on for growth. The scene that these elements of identical thinking present becomes murkier when they start wrestling each other for power.

He thinks the fall of Peshawar to the domination of the terrorists is clearly indicated by the free run the Taliban have on the NATO trucks that pass through Peshawar to Torkham border in the Khyber Agency. The frequency with which these trucks are blown up and looted by the Taliban tells us how Peshawar has been ‘taken’; and if Peshawar is taken then one can imagine that a takeover of Islamabad would be the next easy step. Those who think that in case there is another Indo-Pak war the Taliban will stand with the Pakistan Army may be favouring a Taliban takeover of Islamabad as well.

One could actually link the looting of the NATO trucks to the way Islamabad has been reacting to the build-up of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. In fact Islamabad is partly convinced that NATO presence in Afghanistan is against the interests of Pakistan and therefore the trucks for which Islamabad receives a hefty fee from the US are being targeted and looted freely by the Taliban. And when Islamabad realised that one billion dollars on account of the trucks were still outstanding from the US it must have realised that the stuck ‘truck money’ could be the American message for the free run on trucks that was allowed in Peshawar. The Americans lost nothing; we lost Peshawar.

Fifteen leaders of PMLQ have money in banks in France, Belgium Germany and Holland and they fear no disclosures because the accounts are held jointly with the local Pakistanis. Because the author lives in Belgium he has inside information about others too. But these ‘partners’ talk all the time; and information is therefore available. A former minister has a grand house in Brussels in the name of a Polish lady who makes him welcome and comfortable whenever he goes visiting to be home away from home. Big men in Pakistan imperiously survey Spain, Portugal, Italy and Holland for parking their excess money in the shape of properties. The local expat Pakistanis offer services of caretaking, and all is well after that.

A former federal minister of Musharraf lived in Germany for six months because he had bought four houses in Bonn and had to get them decorated properly in his presence. NAB, who got after the Bhuttos in a big way, was unaware of this ‘lota’ minister who had suddenly become rich after deserting his original party. The PMLN too is no sacred cow. Two of its office holders have vast properties worth 80 million euros in Belzano in Italy (p.236). Close relatives of a former ISI officer have a large property in Luxembourg and have ‘joint accounts in a well known local bank’. He visits now and then to look after the accounts of a relative of his who was also a minister for some time.

Politicians signing brilliantly democratic but unfamiliar charters confuse Pakistan by swearing that they will be friends and not destabilise each other in the old pavlovian reflex of toppling that the country is used to. In fact if you don’t topple, there is something seriously wrong with you. The book informs on page 254 that a meeting took place in which a plan to topple the Zardari-Gilani government was actually set on foot. The campaign of defamation to instrumentalise this was to be based on the amount of money Musharraf ‘returned’ to the Bhuttos after the NRO was put through by him.

It is said that the total assets returned to Zardari after the NRO were worth Rs 98 billion which was confiscated — courtesy Sardar Farooq Leghari as president — together with other assets it was thought had been acquired through corruption and fraud. The idea was to spread lethal rumours about the PPP leadership and bring them to a point where the 2008 government would have to leave. The obstacle was General Ashfaq Kayani who insisted on having a normal working relationship with the president and prime minister and was in no mood to go into the toppling mode.

Mujahid Husain keeps asking questions like why are Pakistanis so intent on taking revenge in all spheres of life, from foreign policy to family life; why are they determined to annihilate the opponent in political contest; why are the powerful intent on not using the law but punishing their perceived opponents with their own hands; why are Pakistanis using religion to vent their aggression till religion itself starts looking an evil inspiration to the world outside? *

 

[fatman17]

In debut novel, Ali Sethi astutely captures the contradictions of his native Pakistan

By Sandip Roy

for the Mercury News


Posted: 07/16/2009

A coming-of-age story could hardly ask for a more dramatic backdrop than a coup. Set in Pakistan, Ali Sethi's "The Wish Maker" comes with a choice of coups, intercut with the romantic promise of democracy. But this debut novel is not weighed down by the fraught history of his country.

His characters manage to find pleasure even when the odds are against them. There's usually a way around anything — whether its martial law, Islamic ordinances or family rules. Alcohol and bars might be banned, but there's always the neighborhood liquor smuggler. As one character says, "Everything goes on underground. Everyone does everything "... parties-sharties, coke-shoke, anything and everything." The list goes on — orgies, partner swapping, gays. And bombs.

Though growing up with this explosive cocktail of vice and violence, Zaki Shirazi still retains a curious innocence. Fatherless and raised in a house of women, he gets an intimate child's eye view into the tensions that wrack a traditional society caught between cosmopolitanism and feudalism, a political system where the electorate returns again and again to the same cast of actors — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaaz Sharif — as if returning to the same lover even after one's heart has been broken.

Love is, in fact, at the heart of this novel. Zaki's mother is romanced by a dashing air force officer and marries him, though he dies before their son is born. Zaki grows up with his "cousin," (technically an aunt) Samar Api, and watches her girlish crush on Bollywood idols turn into a dangerous secret teenage love affair with an older man, a transgression that will change their lives irrevocably.

Sethi has a wonderful ear for dialogue and the singsong cadence of English on the Indian subcontinent. His portrayal of a young, affluent generation in a city like Lahore is vivid and realistic. The turbulent politics whirl around their lives (Zaki's journalist mother is packed off to jail for an offensive article) but never overwhelm the narrative. Despite war, nuclear tests, growing Islamic fundamentalism, Zaki and his friends worry more about curfews imposed by their parents than those imposed by military dictators.

In one splendid sequence, Zaki's mother, his grandmother Daadi and the family maid Naseem surf foreign news channels as Gen. Pervez Musharraf (though not named) comes to power in a military coup. The Pakistan state channel keeps showing an old recording of a singer.

"Martial law," said Daadi.

"Martial law," said my mother.

They changed the channels and Naseem went into the kitchen.

Martial law or no martial law, dinner has to be made.

Sethi's deft touch prevents the story from getting bogged down in Pakistani history. But his canvas is still a sweeping one, and he sometimes struggles to keep his focus. The key relationship in the book is between young Zaki and Samar Api, but at one point she is whisked away to her village home and disappears from the book. The reader is left, instead, with detailed accounts of Zaki's school days, all of them well-written but without the emotional heft of his relationship with Samar Api.

Her love affairs have been chronicled through his observant eyes, but his own budding sexuality remains somewhat opaque. His mother calls Zaki with bad news late on a Friday night. "I was in a room, not mine, and hurried out into the hallway with my shirt only half on," says Zaki. He does not tell the reader whom he is with.

Other characters turn up toward the end of the book without much of a preamble. Sethi tries to show the creeping tide of Islamic fundamentalism, especially among the poor, through the story of Yakub, the son of the Naseem. Though interesting, this story feels tacked on. What is perhaps most telling of the class gap is that, though Naseem raises Zaki and Samar Api, they never seem to meet her own son.

Even if the story occasionally loses its focus, Sethi is a marvelously engaging writer with a deceptively light touch. He astutely captures the contradictions that bedevil a society like Pakistan's. Zaki's grandmother, a staunch Pakistani patriot, stands ready to vilify archenemy India at the slightest provocation. But when reception is interrupted during her favorite TV program of Bollywood songs, telecast from India, she is distraught. "My India is not coming!" she cries in anguish.

It's a delicious moment, funny, ironic and political, showing the true promise of Ali Sethi.

Sandip Roy is an editor with New America Media and host of its radio show New America Now on San Francisco's KALW-FM (91.7).

The Wish Maker


By Ali Sethi
Riverhead, 432 pp., $25.95