Solomon2
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Pakistan’s chattering classes can be divided into what are sneeringly referred to as the liberal elite, who are often neither liberal in the western sense or particularly elite in the economic sense but are identified by their adherence to English as their lingua franca
Despite growing up in the west, a distant childhood spent studying in Pakistan — somewhat improbably at an English medium public school nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas — has left me with a legacy of regular daily correspondence with old school friends and colleagues from Pakistan. Apart from run of the mill updates on work, family and friends, I am also regularly forwarded articles, newspaper clippings and YouTube clips highlighting the absurdities and incongruities on some aspect or another of daily life in Pakistan.
The correspondence ranges and reflects a veritable kaleidoscope of Pakistani opinion. These range from deep ideological driven rants against the current Zardari government, former military dictators, US foreign policy, the latest political scandal that has gripped the nation or to the more bizarre clips highlighting the absurdity and contradictions of life in the struggling country. We see the 14-hour-a-day electricity outages in a country where the summer heat hovers at around 45C, the astronomical hike in prices for daily commodities as the IMF imposed austerity measures begin to squeeze the economy and the sheer hopelessness and incompetence of a corrupt and venal political class. As you can imagine my inbox is rarely empty and the range of opinion never ceases to amaze and horrify me in equal measure.
The question that I have often asked myself — a question that has racked political analysts around the world — is: who really ‘gets’ Pakistan? Is it the failed state whose demise has been predicted since before its inception by the departing British at independence, or is it really the west’s counterweight to Indian pretensions of regional hegemony? At one time, it was a bulwark against the communist Soviet Union but now, in the eyes of many, it is a terrorist swamp mired in a fight to the death with Islamist rebels anxious to turn the clock back to a middle ages Caliphate. It is a nuclear state with enough firepower to destroy itself and most of the region but unable to provide uninterrupted electricity to its overcrowded, sweltering, gasping cities that are heaving with a multitude of humanity anxious to finish the day intact and not become the victim of the almost daily suicide attacks that have become endemic in its towns and cities. The recent suicide bombing of a police station in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Taliban badlands) by a husband and wife team led someone to caustically remark, “And they blew up happily ever after.”
Pakistan’s chattering classes can be divided into what are sneeringly referred to as the liberal elite, who are often neither liberal in the western sense or particularly elite in the economic sense but are identified by their adherence to English as their lingua franca. The writers and commentators in Urdu regard themselves as the true voice of the people and view the English speakers with disdain and regularly accuse them of having a colonialist mindset. But, if Urdu is the voice of the people, then it is a voice that is often shrill, forever prone to conspiracy theories and always hankering to a highly romanticised Islamic golden age.
There is little doubt of course that these golden ages of Islam existed in the times of Haroon-ur-Rashid of Baghdad, or the glory that was Moorish Spain, or Sultan Osman the Magnificent of Ottoman fame. But go on to remind these commentators that the glory of these societies was their celebration and assimilation of other cultures and their confidence in accommodating a plurality of faith and ideas within their Islamic empires and you are met with blank stares, incredulity and accusations of naivety. This narrative is firmly rejected and instead Wahabi indoctrination prevails where modernity is firmly rejected, and the only Islamic age that has any legitimacy is that of the ‘Rashideen’ — the four caliphs of Islam who ruled following the death of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).
The piety and nobility of these four great titans of the Islamic world notwithstanding, it is the Islamic shariah, and in particular the hotly disputed and debated punishments laid out in the Islamic code, that are at the forefront of all these prescriptions for another Islamic golden era. Lop off the hands of thieves and stone a few adulterers and lo and behold you have created aman (peace) within society. The proponents of this idealised notion of an Islamic society are either the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-US commentariat, whose adherence to all things Islamic extends occasionally to a bearded stubble and an oft lauding of the deeply ‘misunderstood’ Mullah Omar and his ‘reformist’ Taliban! Like Mullah Omar and his acolyte (or is it the other way round), the late departed Osama bin Laden, they hanker for a purer age, an age uncorrupted by modernity, and display a Luddite rejection of the benefits of science, advancement in medicine and all the accoutrements of modern society. Omar bin Laden, the eldest son of the late head of al Qaeda, in a recently published memoir, remembers his father refusing to use the air conditioner despite the searing heat in Saudi Arabia and insisting on a diet of milk, honey, dates and figs emulating the times of the Arabs of yore. Whilst Mullah Omar is widely accepted to have adopted this frugality of spirit, the Pakistani mullah remains a more venal breed. One of the most notorious of these mullahs goes under the sobriquet of Maulana Diesel, referring to his penchant for taking a cut from the trade and traffic of this commodity through his area of control. The mullah and his party sit in the Pakistani parliament in alliance with whoever is in power. At one time he was an ally of the ‘Daughter of the East’, Benazir Bhutto no less, and served as chairman of the foreign relations committee. A party member who served in the Zardari government as the minister of religious affairs was charged with having fleeced and extorted millions of rupees from pilgrims to the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. President (10 percent) Zardari felt moved enough by this scandal to sack this individual from the cabinet although one is not sure whether Zardari’s anger was a result of being aggrieved at not receiving his cut, or simply the fact that he thought it bad form for the mullah to get caught. Recent WikiLeaks reveal that the venerable and deeply misunderstood Maulana Diesel appealed to the US ambassador that he was a suitable candidate for the post of prime minister, and should not be ignored by the US but until that opportunity arose, would like a visa to visit the US, thank you very much!
But there is another Pakistan that comprises of people like the philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi, whose Edhi Foundation ambulances and emergency workers have become a regular sight at each new scene of terrorist outrage or natural calamity. New confident Pakistani writers such as Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif and Kamila Shamsie have created waves in western markets for their skill and art of storytelling. The scion of the ubiquitous Bhutto family no less, Fatima Bhutto, has created a stir with her literary output both in poetry and prose. The country’s media is bursting with writers, commentators, and broadcasters ranging from across the political spectrum. The cities of Lahore and Karachi have a thriving literary and artistic culture that somehow manages to seek expression and exposure that defies logic and the fatwas of the ever-present mullahocracy.
I would not dream of suggesting that I ‘get’ Pakistan. But those who seek to view Pakistan through the prism of terrorism, religious obscurantism and persecution of women/minorities may only get one part of the picture. Anatole Lieven’s recent book is titled Pakistan: A Hard Country, which is an understatement of magnificent proportions. The reality is that most Pakistanis do not get Pakistan themselves and most seem to have stopped trying to understand its myriad of contradictions, daily compromises and duality in policies. Instead they have adopted an attitude of quiet resignation and choose to live the life that fate has dealt them as best they can, and leave other commentators to try and ‘get’ Pakistan. Its own citizens are long past caring and simply want to survive one day to the next!
The writer is a lawyer working in the Middle East. He writes on regional affairs and can be reached at munirkhan74@rocketmail.com
