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Indian Terrorism Dossier: Pakistan Foreign Office exposes Indian support to terrorism

Moeed Pirzada
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Indian Terrorism Dossier: Pakistan Foreign Office exposes Indian support to terrorism

A joint presser by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and DG ISPR Gen. Iftikhar Babar, in the second week of November 2020, provided details to media from a large dossier, “Indian Efforts to destabilize Pakistan”. This dossier since then has been shared with the UN and the representatives of P-5 countries.

Though this is not the first time, Pakistan has accused India of launching covert operations against its territories but in terms of scope and the intelligence driven details shared this “Foreign Office Dossier” was a remarkable compendium.

Dossier’s brief abstract of around 8 pages was shared with media persons however a detailed dossier (over 100 pages) – shared by Foreign Secretary Mr. Sohail Mahmood, with the representatives of EU, OIC and non-permanent members of UNSC – outlined how Indian Intelligence Agency (RAW) has been using its diplomatic missions (Embassies and Consulates) in countries bordering Pakistan for organizing, directing and supporting the various terror outfits across Pakistan.

While it used the term “neighbouring countries”, subsequent details in the dossier, made it clear that most of these RAW activities are taking place through Afghanistan. Interconnected nature of details, with names of Indian officers, details of banking transactions, letters, transcripts and audio clips of taped conversations between Indian intelligence officers and their Afghan and Pakistani assets and members of the terror outfits were revealed to send a clear message to New Delhi (and its allies) that its modus-operandi stands exposed.

Economically prosperous Pakistan does not fit in with Indian vision

Perhaps the most shocking revelation was that the Indian PM, Narendra Modi is directly supervising a covert cell against CPEC projects in Pakistan (see details in: Indian PM Modi directly running Anti-CPEC terror cell). This Anti-CPEC cell, created in RAW Headquarters in 2015, with an initial allocation of approximately US $500 million (PKR. 80 billion) is mandated to “undermine, delay and disrupt CPEC projects through patronage of proxies supplemented by well-orchestrated information offensive”.

RAW has also managed to organize a militia of 700 persons to undertake terrorism in Balochistan. A commission of 24 members was created, perhaps to supervise operations, with 10 RAW operatives. $60 million were dedicated to the operations of this force – from Dossier it is not clear if this, 700 strong militia, is also being managed by the CPEC cell or it is a separate initiative.

But one thing is clear, CPEC which is primarily a commercial initiative (with Chinese low interest long term loans) to create better integration in Pakistani economy, production and logistics chain, is considered a strategic threat by Indian establishment.

There is much evidence to suggest that till end of 2015, US State Department did not identify CPEC as a threat. More than one US envoy openly welcomed it, considering it positive for Pakistan’s battered economy. However, by the June of 2015, US diplomats were quietly telling Pakistanis that Indians were doing massive lobbying in Washington to convince the Administration, Congress, media and think tanks that CPEC is a threat to the US and western interests.

Indian activities in recent years – since the arrest of RAW agent, Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav in 2016 – and now elaborately revealed by the Foreign Office Dossier make it clear that an economically prosperous and politically stable Pakistan does not fit into Indian establishment’s strategic vision for the region.

Joint briefing mentions and the dossier explains in depth that Attacks on Pearl Continental Hotel Gawadar (May 2019), Pakistan Stock Exchange, Karachi (June 2020), Agricultural University Peshawar (2017), Army Public School (December 2014), Chinese Consulate Karachi, and scores of other attacks across Pakistan were all planned and coordinated by RAW working with different entities. For instance, attacks in Balochistan and Karachi and all along the coastal belt are being coordinated through the Baloch sub nationalists like BLA, BRA and BLF while attacks across KP and Punjab are coordinated through splinter units of TTP.

In recent months RAW officer, Col. Rajesh based in Kabul, has worked extensively to create a consortium of Islamist terror outfits with the Baloch sub nationalists to provide for better synchronisation of their operations. (see details in: Indian Colonel Rajesh directing terror in Pakistan from Kabul) Joint presser gave facts and information that must have been collected over several months if not years.

Much relevant information was about Karachi and how MQM under Alftaf Hussain (referred to as AHG) kept receiving funding from the Indian intelligence agency, RAW. Presser pointed out that intelligence work is difficult and not every transaction can be traced.

However, it referred to financial transactions about which solid evidence now exists about amounts, routes and dates. For instance, MQM Altaf Hussain was being financed, at one point, through two Indian companies (JVGT and Paras Jewellery) via Britain and received at least US $3.23 million through this route alone. (more than £ 2.45 million, sterlings).

At another point, a table in the dossier points out that out of Rs. 22 billion Indian Agency spent in supporting terrorism across Pakistan around Rs. 18.57 billion went to militants of Balochistan. This again emphasizes the great importance of “destabilizing Balochistan” in the overall India design.

However, there is a word of caution when it comes to financial figures. Sources familiar with the compilation of this dossier explain that actual figures could be much higher – these Rs. 22 billion represent the transactions that have been documented through intelligence work, confessions of arrested individuals and debriefings of suspects.

Presser informed how Indian agencies had been directing terrorists for key assassinations of political, religious and civic leadership and offering financial rewards for successful execu tion of assassinations, suicide bombings and blowing up IEDs. A Rs. 10 million reward was usually settled for suicide bombings, vehicle based improvised explosives device (VBIED) and targeted suicides.

Lesser financial rewards like Rs. 1 million was offered for simply blowing up an IED. Much of that “financial calculus” corresponded with the strategic thinking, referred to as “Defensive Offense” expounded by Ajit Doval in 2014 – for instance his lecture at the Sastra University, Chennai.

He had also spoken extensively about these and similar ideas at several universities and think tanks; his lecture at the Australia India Institute, in early 2014, when he was still with the BJP supported Vivikanada International Foundation is very helpful to understand where all this is coming from. Interesting part is whereas India – unlike Pakistan – never fought and suffered for the west; it successfully created an exaggerated narrative of suffering at the hands of Al-Qaeda and other international terrorists connecting these with Kashmir and Pakistan in global consciousness.

Indians – being masters of shaping narratives – have spoken about Al Qaeda and OBL as if these were not by-products of middle eastern politics and street reactions against the west, were not essentially Arabs, but creations of Pakistan. This was important to preserve India’s diplomatic influence across the Arab middle east, but students of international affairs and diplomacy must appreciate the refinement Indian foreign office has displayed in handling these narratives.

All this – Dossier being only the tip of the iceberg – brings us to the fundamental question that what India’s overall vision for this region is? And how can Pakistan fit into it? 73 years is a brief moment in the kaleidoscope of history. India, in these past 73 years, has used covert operations, political destabilization and coercive military action to change demographics, political landscape and state structures.

1947 Genocide in Jammu, Operation Pollo in Hyderabad, Integration of Goa and Sikkim through covert operations, creation of civil war in former East Pakistan leading to Bangladesh and creation of insurgencies in Balochistan, FATA, Swat and massive political destabilization across Pakistan through the use of proxies after 9/11.

And while it was doing all this, New Delhi was telling the world that it was a victim of Pakistani terrorism and that it wants a peaceful democratic Pakistan. Modi regime, since August 2019, is once again embarked on a mission of “demographic change” in occupied Kashmir with shameless silence of the international community.

What can Pakistan achieve with the Dossier?

Or more specifically with this new bold audacious initiative which has happened because Imran Khan government had the spine to take a stand – in its national interest. One can now understand why Modi regime had spurned all offers of talks from the Imran Khan government and instead went on front foot attacking and vilifying Imran Khan from the very moment he offered dialogue (We will move two steps, if India moves one step, July 25th 2018, Election Victory speech).

New Delhi saw Nawaz Sharif – and perhaps Zardari – as “useful idiots” small characters at the helm of affairs in Pakistan. It was easy to manipulate them, they simply did not belong to the class of men that is supposed to rule nation states. Delhi correctly identified Imran Khan as a potential problem. And the emergence of this Dossier only proves that Delhi’s fears were correct.

Pakistan Foreign Office expects after its detailed dossier – at least in its formal position – that Delhi needs to do the following: institute cases against the officers and individuals mentioned in the dossier, stop using “terrorism as a state policy” and stop using third countries for terrorism against Pakistan.

Privately however all diplomats understand that demands of real politick, strategic and commercial interests of P-5 and most western nations are aligned with New Delhi, so no real pressure is expected. One real breakthrough which Pakistan desperately needs and is not obvious immediately is that this initiative and its diligent follow up sharing more details with media can help eradicate the deep penetration of Indian narrative in Pakistani politics, media and civil society.

New Delhi – especially before the rise of Modi regime – had successfully persuaded large sections of Pakistani media, politics and civil society that India wants peace and stability for Pakistan, and it is Pakistani establishment that wants a continuous unending conflict with India. Nawaz Sharif was not the only “useful idiot” New Delhi was using, these were in hundreds.

If Pakistan Foreign Office and Establishment can manage to win the internal front it will lay the basis for better realistic relations between India and Pakistan. Geography cannot change. Islam and Hinduism have coexisted for more than 1000 years, likes of Khadim Hussain Rizvi and Narendra Modi are aberrations not norms.

India or Hindustan was always a reality; New Delhi establishment has to grasp that Pakistan too is a reality, it has earned its place under the sun, it won’t collapse whatever New Delhi may do and the way forward is a broadbased dialogue (may be a secret one, away from media radars). If Foreign Office Dossier can achieve this “realism” in Delhi, then it has certainly done its job.

Khadim Hussain Rizvis’ of France

Moeed Pirzada
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Khadim Hussain Rizvis’ of France

France and its revolutionary ideas have given much to the world. From Rousseau and Voltaire to Emile Durkheim to Fernand Braudel – the historian and leader of the Annales School whose work, “History of Civilizations” was a treat for intelligent minds everywhere. French ideas have inspired respect for French intellect.

Unfortunately, the narrow-minded reactionary mentality that has gripped France in recent years does not look good for this great nation. A decision, a few weeks ago, by French cities – Montpellier and Toulouse – to project Prophet of Islam’s controversial depictions from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo onto town halls in Montpellier and Toulouse for several hours appears to be the classic textbook example of this “shrinking mindset” -and unfortunately being defended in the name of “ideas”.

Within this issue, we have discussed the “reactionary mindset of “Khadim Hussain Rizvi”, the tragedy for this country’s liberals and most across the world is that while they can readily agree that someone like Khadim Hussain Rizvi – originating from the Muslim world – was a “reactionary” but they fail to grasp that Mayors of Montpellier and Toulouse were far bigger reactionaries. Khadim Hussain Rizvi was, after all, not a public official.

If any Muslim government, for any perceived reason, reacts by displaying insults outside a church – and remains unchallenged by a superior authority of the land – it will be seen insane by most of the world. Yet most in France have not realized that actions like the ones repeated in Montpelier and Toulouse – with official blessing were disgusting acts of hate towards two billion Muslims of the world. And these are precisely the kind of arrogant acts that are increasing hatred and mistrust in an increasingly shrinking world.

Samuel Paty’s murder was an unbelievably horrific crime, and every decent man and woman in the world is appalled. It would have been better if his insane murderer had been tried and hanged (by introducing capital punishment) instead of being shot dead by French police. President Macron did the right thing when he posthumously awarded Paty the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian award.

Every French city should have hung his images from the government buildings but insulting Muslims all over the world – who are not even aware of what’s happening inside France’s complex political crucible – does not bring any glory to French people and institutions.

Few days before Paty’s tragic murder, Emanuel Macron had made comments that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis everywhere”. No one should deny that. Muslim countries, communities and societies are passing through difficult transitions trying to adjust with the demands of post-industrial modernity – look no further than Saudi Arabia, UAE and Pakistan. But can Macron or any French political philosopher in all honestly deny that France itself is passing through a huge crisis of identity?

It is continuously battling with its five million-plus Muslim citizens, almost 10% of its population. Instead of accepting this as part of its difficult and cruel – if not outright barbaric – colonial legacy in Algeria and elsewhere – its elite are trying to put it on Islam. And French societal and political problems and challenges are not restricted to its Muslim citizens, but this will take us beyond the scope of this discussion.

Coming back to the “Prophet’s caricatures” this needless provocation is being permitted across France and Europe for one or the other pretext. When it first started, around 2005, it landed in courts and was dealt with utmost hypocrisy and double standards. Outlandish claims – like the one Macron made about Islam – were made about “our values” which had to be defended at all costs.

Failure of the courts to deal with the controversy lead to trouble and violence on the streets. An awkward moment of truth came when Flemming Rose, culture editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, in Denmark, told CNN’s “American Morning” program that his paper – as per the policy of freedom of expression – will also publish the Iranian Holocaust cartoons.

Hamshahri, an Iranian paper, not without encouragement from Tehran, had said it wanted to test the boundaries of free speech, echoing the reasons Jyllands-Posten and other European papers had given for publishing the caricatures. But the European claim of “our values” ended in naught when Fleming Rose, the Danish editor, who had earlier commissioned the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) cartoons, at the centre of a global row, was sent on forced leave.

Jyllands-Posten’s editor-in-chief Carsten Juste apologized for the offence caused by Fleming’s state of mind and told a Danish newspaper that the paper’s editors told Rose “to take a vacation because no-one can understand the kind of pressure [Rose] has been under”. No one across Europe stood up, and no one was sleepless. So much for the values.

A few weeks later, Fleming Rose, had what we euphemistically refer to as “Software update” in Islamabad when he told the media and the world, “I have committed an error – I am 100% with the newspaper’s line”. Khadim Hussain Rizvi had suffered the same kind of “software update” when he issued “videos of apologies” from jail in 2018 – after the insolent comments he had made.

Going back to Europe of 2015; within those days, we also found out that earlier the editor of Sunday edition of Jyllands-Posten had refused publishing cartoons of “Jesus resurrection”. “I turned them down because they were not good – their quality was not good,” Jens Kaiser, the editor, was now telling the world that his decision to turn down was purely a “matter of artistic quality”. But several months ago, when he had rejected the “Jesus cartoons” he did not tell the cartoonist that he expected “better quality”, he told him that these will “provoke an outcry.”

In 2015, five years ago, a US-based Turkish origin academic, Mustafa Caglayan reminded the Europeans about Der Sturmer and Julius Streicher. He reminded them that in Nazi Germany, there was an anti-Semitic weekly newspaper called Der Stürmer. Run by Julius Streicher, it was notorious for being one of the most virulent advocates of the persecution of Jews during the 1930s.

Streicher’s humour and values were loved by the Germans of his generation, and he made millions out of it. What everybody remembers about Der Stürmer was its morbid caricatures of Jews, the people who were facing widespread discrimination and persecution during the era. Its depictions endorsed all of the common stereotypes about Jews – a hook nose, lustful, greedy.

Jewish academic, Norman Finklestein reflecting on the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad argued that these did not constitute “satire,” and what they provoked were not “ideas,” Satire is when one directs it either at oneself, causes his or her people to think twice about what they are doing and saying, or directs it at people who have power and privilege, Finklestein argued.

“But when somebody is down and out, desperate, destitute, when you mock them, when you mock a homeless person, that is not satire,” that is “sadism”, Finkelstein said.

He argued that in the beginning of 21st century Europe, the “desperate and despised people” of today are not Jews of 1930s but Muslims. And this Jewish professor reminded his readers that at the end of the war, Streicher was convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trials, and was executed. Streicher was the first member of the Nazi regime held accountable for inciting genocide by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and he was hung for those cartoons.

French and the Europeans need sombre reflection on what they are doing. They have a difficult history with Islam – and the middle east. They consider themselves above and beyond religion. But maybe this is not truly “beyond religion” but an evolution within a historical religious identity.

Christianity has been the principal idea that defined and created Europe. Anyone who denies this knows nothing. But Christianity like Judaism is an Eastern idea born into the Middle East. Initial Christian societies were in what is today Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Christianity arrived in Europe marching along with the Roman legions. Islam -as an idea – later replaced Christianity from its birthplace, and that is why we had crusades in the 12th century.

West’s “ideas of secular society” originated from 15th century onwards as a result of internal conflict between various Christian denominations. This “secularism” was not born between religions, it’s a system of thought inside Christianity -and is supported by a common history, and evolution of consensus. There is a larger Christian identity in the background of European secularism that helps bind and connect. Thinking that it automatically applies beyond Christianity is a false idea. Anglo-Saxons have somehow handled these fault lines better.

May be continental Europeans can learn something from the “treacherous English” across the Channel. Khadim Rizvi was not merely the name of a man; he represented a “reactive mindset”. And reactive mindset – whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Hindu – is only “reactive mindset”. From descendants of Voltaire, Rousseau, Durkheim and Braudel one expects better rationality than being displayed by those in Macron’s France.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi: The Man and the phenomenon! Will this be the end of TLP?

Moeed Pirzada
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Khadim Hussain Rizvi: The Man and the phenomenon! Will this be the end of TLP?

In November, Covid-19 claimed a very unusual and controversial life in Pakistan. Khadim Hussain Rizvi, the founder of Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), died on 19th November in Lahore. He was suffering from fever and breathing difficulties – though he never got himself tested for Covid; reason could lie in the fact that in his sermons, he had claimed that Covid afflicts sinners. Despite his illness, he arrived to speak on the second day of Faizabad rally (dharna) in Islamabad organized by his party, TLP, against the French President, Emanuel Macron on the issue of Prophet (PBUH) caricatures.

During his speech, that turned out to be his last, Rizvi categorically denied that TLP protesters had ever planned to attack the French embassy – but demanded Pakistani governments (with thinly disguised references towards the country’s establishment) to become a protector of the Prophets’ respect and reminded them that Pakistan cannot survive by denying its basis – which is Islam.

The Khadim Hussain Rizvi Phenomenon

In the last few years of his life, Rizvi had aroused strong emotions for and against him. Almost two hundred thousand people attended his funeral in Lahore around Minar-e-Pakistan – though it was not an organized funeral that allows few days between death and burial. Islam emphasizes the earliest possible burial, and the crowds assembled spontaneously.

All combined opposition parties of Pakistan now protesting against the government under the banner of PDM are unable to gather such a crowd on 24 hours’ notice. No doubt the governments and establishment of the country were wary of him and dealt him with caution. PM of Pakistan, Imran Khan and the country’s powerful Army Chief, Gen. Bajwa tweeted condolences for him – though both in last few years suffered utter profanities from Rizvi and had every reason to hate him.

English speaking Twitter was celebrating his death and was full of ugly words for him, despite a strong tradition across the Muslim world not to say bad words for the dead. In short Khadim Hussain Rizvi was a phenomenon.

Question on all minds is what the future of TLP is after him? To answer that question, one must first grasp the nature of TLP around which the personality of late Khadim Hussain Rizvi blossomed. Rizvi had formed this party in March 2016, the very day Mumtaz Qadri, the convicted murderer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer was buried after execution in a jail in Rawalpindi.

This is a political front for “Tehreek Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah which literally means: “Rasool, I am here”. This religious group first appeared in Punjab as Tehreek-e-Rehai Mumtaz Qadri (movement for Mumtaz Qadri’s release) in 2013 and was later renamed the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR). This is the genesis of TLP that started challenging Pakistani governments and state on the streets.

But it was not a violent movement per se, its importance and fear were connected with its widespread appeal that resonated with the masses – especially in Punjab. It was seen as politically destabilizing. From an academic lens, it can be described as a backlash against globalization – as explained below.

Till the assassination of the Governor, Salman Taseer, Rizvi was an unknown, undiscovered, character serving as a junior Auqaf official in the Punjab government. Auqaf is the department that is responsible for maintaining religious sites, mosques and shrines.

He delivered Friday sermons at Lahore’s Pir Makki Masjid under Religious Affairs Department. The assassination of Taseer and arrest of Mumtaz Qadri served as the trigger that catapulted Rizvi into the phenomenon that he will be remembered for. He started justifying, in his Friday sermons, Governor’s assassination on the pretext that Taseer had termed the country’s blasphemy law as a “black law”. Auqaf Department served warning notices to him to stop his lectures.He refused and was sacked from the government job.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s Rise as a Preacher

Rizvi’s real rise into prominence as a preacher starts after his sacking from the government job. He travelled across the country to build support for Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, which deals with blasphemy committed against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). He also spoke out for the release of Mumtaz Qadri.

Rizvi was fluent in Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic and could say verses in Persian. He had also written books like Tayaseer Abwab-ul-Sarf, Maktba Majadia Sultania, Taleemat-e-Khadimiya and Fazail-e-Durood Shareef – mostly dealing with rituals. But it will be utterly misleading to describe him as a scholar of Islam. His peculiar religiosity and world view were a function of his socio-economic class and lack of broad-based education. He was born in 1966 in the Pindigheb area of Attock District, Punjab, that has long provided soldiers and officers to Pakistan Army.

His brother, Ameer Hussain, is a retired Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) from Pakistan Army – who must have joined as a soldier several years ago and became a JCO after several years of service. Socio-economic class and the limiting nature of early education and exposure also explains the kind of reactionary world view he developed, and it also explains the type of religious following he later created – and that thronged to attend his funeral ignoring the raging wave of corona pandemic.

He was a kind of a verbal Robin Hood, a Punjabi Robin Hood against Pakistan’s English-speaking elite; a verbal warrior to his followers who adored him to the dismay of educated Pakistanis.

After Taseer’s assassination, in January 2011, it was argued by some sociologists that reaction of Punjabi ulema and maulvis is best understood not in religious fault lines but the class differences. Taseer – founder of Taseer Hadi, World Call and Daily Times – belonged to a wealthy western-educated class of Pakistanis, his father, Dr Mohammad Din Taseer, had obtained PhD from England before partition and was a noted Muslim professor in British India and close to Marxist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Taseer’s mother, Christobel George (English lady converted to Islam and called Bilqis Taseer) was the sister of Faiz’s wife, Alice Faiz. Taseer’s dismissive comments on the maulvis, on the issue of Asia Noreen (Asia Bibi) were thus seen as his class arrogance towards maulvis who are referred respectfully as “Ulema” by media and public in Pakistan – but usually come from lesser-educated sections of society.

Islam entered Northern Hindustan, from 9th century onwards, via Central Asia, mostly through Persian speaking Turkish origin nobility. South Asian term “Maulana” was derived from the Turkish “Mevlana” (like Mevlana Rum, Rumi). Gradually the words “Maulvi” and “Maulana” have become interchangeable in the Indian Subcontinent as a title of respect, but Maulana was more often associated with formal qualification following study at a madrassa or Darul Uloom in the heydays of Islamic civilization when Maulanas were indeed embodiments of the world’s best broad-based education.

In post-colonial Pakistan, the word “Maulvi” has often been understood as derogatory. Taseer represented the educated classes that held “maulvi” in utter contempt. All those commenting on Taseer’s murder and the rise of TLP without understanding these nuances are wasting their time and misleading the world. This class and world view divide may also explain the equally reactionary comments from some on Twitter who unnecessarily compared Rizvi, after his death, with Hitler and Hilako Khan (grandson of Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan).

Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s Rise as a Political Opponent

Rizvi was a foul mouth preacher who uttered profanities against Ahmadis, Hindus, westernized Pakistanis and did not spare country’s top politicians, Prime Ministers and Army generals. His videos in Punjabi became popular because these were seen as entertaining and became part of the genre of “Punjabi Juggat Bazi” against country’s ruling elite – that is either seen as “westernized” or seen aligned with western values.

His utterances, spread through YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, can easily be compared with bravado dialogues of Bollywood characters that challenge the powerful. TLP can thus be understood as a political product of the country’s socio-economic and world view fault lines. Mumtaz Qadri’s hanging may have triggered TLP’s emergence, but its roots lie deeper – and that is the challenge that Pakistani intelligentsia, politics and establishment have to grapple with.

TLP Timeline: 

Rizvi had used his platform to ridicule and blast all he despised – his last lecture, on the night of 16th November in Faizabad, was a parody of country’s “Agencies”. He will be remembered for his 2017 dharna at Faizabad, Islamabad that had paralyzed the twin cities and for the November 2018 short outburst of violence across Punjab in which at least one man died. 2017 dharna was against the change in the country’s blasphemy laws, and the 2018 protests were against the supreme court judges who had set Asia Noreen (Asia Bibi) free.

The politico-religious effect

It was in the context of Asia Bibi’s release that Rizvi and other firebrands of TLP kept demanding death for judges lead by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa. In 2020 he also barged into the world of arts when he took a position against the release of film “Zindagi Tamasha” and accused noted filmmaker Sarmad Khoosat of blasphemy. Interestingly the material he considered blasphemous was at best an artistic critique of the socalled “ulema”. Despite clearance by the Senate Committee on Human Rights, the film could not be released.

However, despite creating these side issues, the central plank of the politics of TLP has remained “Respect for Prophet”. But no one in the country ever disrespects the Prophet; Muslims cannot think of disrespecting the Prophet and Muslims are the only religious group of the world that respects other Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Judaism.

The opposite is not true, since Christians and Jews do not accord the same respect to Islam or its Prophet. But this is not a national issue, Hindus, Christians and other minorities of Pakistan fully understand the local cultural nuances. Any digressions from this norm that may happen at angry moments of private disputes are far and few and don’t pose a challenge to social order.

Muslim kings that started to rule Northern Hindustan from 10th and 11th century onwards never thought of any blasphemy laws. British in 19th and 20th century first created these legal instruments – of fine and brief punishments – to discourage Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs from creating village disputes on trivial personal matters. After partition, Pakistan’s religious parties first used “Anti-Ahmadiyya Movement” and later “Blasphemy laws” to unite ultra-right vote banks and gain political importance.

Capital punishment got added to “Pakistan’s Blasphemy laws” only in 1990 when PMLN was trying to woe religious right to prove itself more Muslim than the liberal-minded PPP. Laws were subsequently misused right and left to settle personal vendettas, but no government dared to get these out of statute book. Even reform became impossible.

TLP’s importance and fear are connected with its popular appeal that resonated with the masses – especially in Punjab. It was seen as politically destabilizing. From an academic lens, it can be described as a backlash against globalization.

Musharraf government tried diluting by giving authority to deputy commissioners to ascertain facts before registration of police reports (FIRs) – and failed against a religious backlash. Since European governments and NGOs supported by them kept demanding reforms, it started to become an issue of “national assertion” versus the “West”.

Given that “blasphemy” is not a commonly occurring societal challenge inside Pakistan, TLP’s demand around which it structured its politics is thus basically a national paradox and can only be understood as a reaction against the world outside – the strength of its feelings around the Asia Bibi case testifies to that.

Asia Noreen’s fate created an international outcry – and it was the only case where the sentence was upheld by a High Court – before that government-directed bureaucracies were always able to buy reprieve at the High Court level. Salman Taseer’s murder, Mumtaz Qadri’s hanging, TLP’s rise and violence of November 2018 against the supreme court are all interconnected.

The problem now for Pakistani politics and establishment is that while TLP may not have obtained more than 2.2 million votes, in 2018 elections, but the appeal of its anti-elite feelings packaged as “religion” resonates across large sections of populations especially in the provinces of Punjab and KP.

And that explains the fear that it invokes in both the governments and the establishment. TLP sentiments can also be hijacked by external agencies and used in clandestine ways to disrupt political harmony – it may not have happened so far but is a definite possibility. In the game of political chess, the pawn may not know the hand that moves it.

Another case of Hereditary Politics

Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s position has now been taken by Saad Hussain Rizvi, his young son – whose first speech on YouTube has been watched more than half a million times in 72 hours. Given the genesis of TLP in Pakistan’s fault lines of world view, its appetite for street protests and other demands will not go away.

Instead of dealing with TLP as a demon, or making comparisons with Hitler, as some liberals do, Pakistani governments need to focus on the issue of school and college education. An effective school education that empowers student’s capacity to learn about the world, and the diverse majestic history of the Muslim world – Seljuks, Fatimids Andalusia, Ottoman etc. and how Muslim empires interacted with their world and the minorities inside – instead of a narrow focus on 31 years of Khilafat-e-Rashida will go a long way in reforming the mindset that lies behind the movements like TLP.

Muslim predicament in the current world order and a realistic way forward for integration into a globalized world needs to be understood by the average Pakistani. Even the so-called “liberals” don’t understand it. Discussions of street protests, small events here and there and conspiracy theories – of this colonel and that general – will not serve the purpose of a nation-state of 200 million. Challenge is to address the issue of world view being imparted by school education. Herein lies the real demon.

Biden: New Man in the White House; Pakistan’s way forward?

Moeed Pirzada
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Biden: New Man in the White House; Pakistan’s way forward?

Elections 2020 have stained the American democracy, and the toxic political divide will continue to polarize the US politics for an indefinite period – unless some societal leadership or intellectual movement emerges that comes up with new solutions to unite America’s fractious multiple identifies.

United States in the beginning of 21st century is a victim of its social and political evolution. Steadily progressing from the all-white male republic of the founding fathers, it has evolved through its war of revolution against the English crown, its civil war against slavery, its industrial revolution and participation in European wars to become leader of the western world and its civil rights movements that ultimately led to America electing its first black president in the form of Barack Obama who was so popular till the end that – if law permitted – could have been elected the third time.

But in the process of its remarkable evolution, United States – once a conservative Christian society of White Puritan founding fathers – kept reinventing itself again and again. It accepted and embraced newer immigrants, ideas and freedoms with relish becoming something so openly diverse in the process – White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and also Gay, lesbian and ultraorthodox – that has perhaps never existed before in the history.

Francis Fukuyama who had once stimulated our minds with his “End of History” thesis had a few years ago written another masterpiece, under the caption of “Identity-the Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment”; that work most accurately describes America’s current dilemmas and agonies. And it helps understand why its elections are no so divisive. This year, as some commentators have described it was not about Biden at all; it was about a war of identity between those who loved “Trump” and those who hated him.

Unless a new intellectual movement unites these “fractious multiple identities” within the same crucible, it will either implode like the Rome of 5th century (though this time from barbarians from the inside) or will unite under Margaret Atwood’s frightening vision of “Gilead” as beautifully conjured up in her novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

No one has realized, so far, it’s not China that threatens America; its America’s fractious polarized politics that now threatens the soul, mind and body of America. The great “American Dream” world had seen is fast becoming the “Undiagnosed Nightmare”

Joe Biden: Why Pakistan must understand this post-modern American?

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will now take over as President of this divided, split and dangerously fractious America. Pakistan and the Imran Khan government – unlike the Hindutva regime of Narendra Modi that had openly aligned itself with Trump – had no candidates in this race. This will help in its initial dealings with the new man in the White House. However, to understand how Biden will interact with Pakistan and the world around Pakistan, one has to understand his post-modern personality and political background.

Trump and Biden; it is difficult to conceive if two men in US politics could have been more different. Trump a product of the power-driven culture of construction industry sold himself as a super-masculine, real man who was known for possessing beautiful trophy wives. Biden is known for his affectionate relationships, empathy and compassion for family and friends.

In August 1966, a 24-year-old Biden married Neilia Hunter a student at Syracuse University after persuading her parents to let her wed a Roman Catholic. In 1972, the year a young Biden was elected first time Senator from Delaware, Neilia died in a tragic car crash along with daughter Amy leaving behind two injured sons: Beau and Hunter. A distraught Biden decided to resign to take care of his two young sons but was persuaded by Senate Majority leader, Mike Mansfield, to continue.

Many believe that Biden’s outlook on politics – and his lifelong quest to promote human rights, health and public welfare – was much affected by that early traumatic period. In May 2015, his son Beau Biden died of glioblastoma, a kind of brain cancer. Throughout election campaign, Trump and his supporters kept attacking Biden for the drug and psychological addictions of his only surviving son, Hunter. Biden kept defending with compassion, without irritation but would never indulge in personal attacks on Trump’s troubled married lives and horrid women accounts.

But the list of differences with Trump runs long. Trump’s first public office was US presidency. Biden, in 1970 at age 28, was elected New Castle County Councillor and became the sixth youngest senator in the US history in 1972. He was later elected six times to the US Senate, from 1973 to 2009, and was its fourth senior-most member when he resigned to become Obama’s Vice President in 2009 continuing in that position till 2017. Biden had earlier run unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and again in 2008.

Biden, as US Vice President, was a great supporter of opening up with Iran and remained engaged with the 8 year-long “Five plus Two Negotiations” with Iran that ultimately concluded in the form of 2015, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the US-Iran Nuclear Deal that was unilaterally violated by the US under Trump in 2018.

Biden always took great interest in how the world was being shaped under the US leadership; he was a long-time member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and eventually its chairman. He also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, dealing with drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties issues; he led the effort to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act, and oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Unlike Donald Trump, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is an institutional man who has remained deeply involved with fifty years of US domestic policy making, legislative agendas and foreign relations. He has voted for and against wars and has worked assiduously for a carbon-free world, for Paris Convention on Climate Change, expanded Health coverage and poverty alleviation.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office and commentators have to grasp that at age 78, he is bound to act through the prism of politics and principles he has lived through. If Trump represented Margaret Atwood’s “reactionary America” that almost created the dystopian “Republic of Gilead” then the Roman Catholic Biden who supports “same sex marriages” represents the complex microcosm of a multi-dimensional America that has evolved over the past 50 years through civil rights, Vietnam Anti-war, feminism, Gay & Lesbian movements and the experiences of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and opening of China.

Biden-Harris Administration: Attitudes towards India & China

Kamala Harris, standing next to Biden as vice-president of the United States means several things: She is first woman vice president in the US history; she represents US minorities – Black Asian and Latino and provides face to 1.4 billion Indians (20% of world population) on the arena of US politics; she thus appears as a symbol of post-modern, multicultural, liberal democratic America.

Joe Biden – Kamala Harris administration will thus firmly engage the old world of Europe and will love the narrative of Nehruvian India but will shy from hugging the butcher of Gujarat. Indian establishment will probably tutor Narendra Modi to avoid his embarrassing crude bear hugs with Biden. This new administration may sound critical on Indian actions and relentless human right violations in occupied Kashmir and the ill-treatment of minorities. Arundhati Roy may get a senate testimony.

But nothing much can change beyond that; such is the depth of Indian English speaking communities, and nature of American paranoia about a “rising China” and Indian Establishment has so cleverly sold itself as both “victim of Pakistani terrorism” and “counter-weight” of China that Biden who shares a rare “China Fear” with Trump will not be able to see through the Indian chicanery of wheels within wheels.

So New Delhi will cry “Chinese wolf” and will continue to arm itself with the latest American gadgets to be used against Pakistan. So next time PAF may find it difficult to jam the communications of Abhinandan’s plane – as American policy makers will keep selling latest technologies to a foxy New Delhi dreaming of the day when an assertive India will be ready to confront China.

Pakistan’s challenge is to keep telling Americans and the west (even when they pretend not listening) that wily Indian Establishment – that has never fired a bullet or lost a life for the west – is taking them for a joy ride. No one has fooled “the west” more than the Indian Establishment – and at some point, western intelligentsia may get to realize this.

On China – like India – there is a bipartisan consensus. Biden’s democratic administration will share Trump’s fear of China – minus his uncivilized rhetoric. American crusade against Chinese telecommunications and trade will continue with greater elements of multilateralism, European support, albeit with a softer language.

Pakistani governments, GHQ and foreign office should not confuse Pakistani Urdu media’s desire of Sino-US confrontations with ground realities. Beijing has neither the capability nor the desire to confront the US. This whole paradigm of an “assertive and combative China” under Xi Jinping is mostly an American and western construct now ably exploited by Indian story tellers to extract more and more from Washington.

Chinese do see a commercial and technological competition between themselves and the US. BRI is a vision of economic engagement and managing Chinese growth engines but there is no palpable desire for all that competition to turn into a rivalry with the west. Most Pakistanis ended up hating Trump, as their own enemy, because their only sources of understanding the US politics are the CNN and the New York Times.

It’s important that Pakistani institutions, media and govt officials should resist understanding China and the world only through the prism of US and Indian media. Pakistan needs to find a balance between Beijing and the US; it had once played a crucial role in creating trust and opening China to the west; it still needs to develop capacities for intense diplomatic engagement on both sides and should conceive itself as a bridge between the US and China. Admittedly, it’s an uphill task made more difficult by the deep penetration of Indian and US media and ideas into Pakistani minds but that is the way forward and is not impossible.

Biden: Challenge & opportunity in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, Pakistan has now both a challenge and an opportunity. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s PM, writing in Washington Post in September 2020, “Peace is within reach in Afghanistan” argued that a hasty international withdrawal would be unwise. Was that pre-positioning by Pakistani government in anticipation of Biden? It’s not clear; but Pakistani state institutions, media and public opinion have often shown remarkably contrasting positions on the issue of US withdrawal; till a few years ago it looked as if everyone in Pakistan loved the idea of an “immediate US withdrawal” however over the past few years both Foreign Office and the GHQ started showing greater acceptance of the US role in Afghanistan in terms of providing stability to the region.

Its heard, in Islamabad’s diplomatic circles, that even Chinese, Russians and Iranians assess the same. It’s not that all these stakeholders don’t want the US to withdraw, but they want to avoid a sudden US withdrawal – a continuing limited US engagement is considered necessary for the region to adjust to new equilibriums.

Trump had committed himself to almost total withdrawal, he had the guts to defy the input of Pentagon and CIA but Biden – the quintessential institutional man – would listen more to his military and intelligence. US thus may be staying in Afghanistan for long in some capacity. While this may be considered desirable from Pakistan’s own point of view as Islamabad wants Washington’s continuing help in producing political solutions and peace inside Afghanistan – but there is a lingering fear of how Indian Establishment may like to exploit this situation.

After 9/11, India, under the US watch, penetrated deep into the newly emerging Kabul government and its institutions like NDS. It then ruthlessly exploited its space and access inside Afghanistan to play havoc inside Pakistani tribal areas, Baluchistan, SWAT valley, Karachi and used Afghan proxies to launch attacks all across Pakistan creating a spectre of an ungovernable nuclear state – imploding from within.

Pakistani media, thinktanks and intelligence have been slow and disorganized in understanding the Indian strategic game. It was difficult because Indians as a strategy were using Afghan and Dari speaking assets from within Afghanistan – but with gradual arrests and disclosures and finally, with the high-profile arrest of Indian intelligence officer, Commander Kulbhashan Jhadav in early 2016, things started to become more and more clear.

Throughout this time period, despite Pakistani protests and intelligence sharing, the US side kept ignoring the Indian activities inside Afghanistan giving rise to Pakistani fears that perhaps the US is a party to the design of an imploding Pakistan.

Much improvement and trust developed under Trump and the relentless work done by his envoy, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad who in his commitment and indefatigability was a reincarnation of Richard Holbrooke. Will Khalilzad continue under Biden? Too early to say, but Pakistani Foreign Office and military need to redouble their engagement with all stakeholders of Afghanistan including the US, Russia and China to ensure continuing peace and stability.

No one – after Afghans themselves – has suffered more the consequences of Afghan civil wars. Much negativity and mistrust exist in Kabul about Islamabad, but Pakistan remains the biggest external stakeholder of Afghanistan – which provides Pakistan with much needed geographical, historical, religious and cultural connectivity.

With Biden administration in place, Pakistan has an opportunity to continue with the mission of pacifying and uniting Afghans under one government in Kabul. India will try its level best to ensure that this does not happen – and in that respect, Islamabad has a huge diplomatic challenge at hand.

New opportunities with Iran, Saudi Arabia & Israel

Biden administration’s expected pacifying approach towards Iran opens up multiple opportunities for Pakistan. First, it will instil a sense in the over-eager minds in Riyadh who after placating Trump through arms deal and hasty moves towards Israel were behaving erratically in the region – including towards Pakistan.

Yemen war will hopefully come to an end, Pakistan will have greater opportunities to resolve its recent tensions with Saudis and also UAE and should be able to expand its engagement with Tehran. Qataris might breathe a slight sigh of relief, and Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan of UAE, might replace Saudi MBS in terms of US affections.

Pressures upon GCC countries – and thus indirectly upon Pakistan – to recognize Israel will stop for the time being. This offers Pakistan a great opportunity for some important diplomatic work.

Because of the toxicity of its domestic Islamist politics where idiocy has turned “Israel” and even “Yahudi” into blasphemous words, Pakistan missed the bus in early 1990’s when, after the collapse of erstwhile Soviet Union, it was the real time to make meaningful moves towards Israel in a luxurious time frame. India realizing that it had been in the anti-west Soviet camp hastily landed in Washington through Tel Aviv.

This smart move did much good to overall Indian strategy since then as it successfully aligned the powerful Israeli lobbies with the Indian needs – causing much harm to Pakistan’s interests. Admittedly, Pakistan missed the bus for not being able to manage its medieval domestic politics. But given this new opportunity when the middle eastern rush to recognize Israel will stop for the time being, it needs to move quietly to engage and build bridges of trust with Tel Aviv.

This engagement can be done through friendly third countries including the US. Whenever this topic is broached up by this analyst, many idiots across Pakistan think that a case is being made for the diplomatic recognition of Israel and that public opinion is being shaped. Reality is that Pakistan is far from that point. Its key institutions first need to do internal soul searching, detoxifying themselves from the incessant low-end mind destroying theories of mullah mind set in Urdu media and now a series of deranged vloggers.

Pakistani institutions need to focus on a dialogue of civilizations. For the greater part of history, since 7th century, Muslims and Jews have lived in harmony. Zionist movement in the early 20th century, Palestinian Naqba and then Arab Israel wars created anti-Israeli toxicity of Pakistani street. But given the developments of the past quarter century – Camp David, Oslo Accord, Palestinian recognition of Israel, Intifada movements, Iraq Syrian Wars and growing Arab need to recognize Israel – it’s time to move beyond those mid twentieth century street feelings.

At this point, efforts are not needed to test and shape public opinion in Pakistan, this will be a useless provocation; this is the time to quietly engage Israeli institutions and sensible personalities through third countries – like the US, Jordan or Norway – on neutral grounds, to understand each other to build bridges of trust.

Pakistan, Iran and Turkey are the three most important Muslim nation states– because of their historical inheritance, interaction over centuries and potential for the future. Islamabad and Istanbul share an increasingly common world view – though it needs more meaningful engagement and bridges of understanding.

Tehran is part of the geographical continuum. In the 1960’s when all three were in the US camp, then something like “Regional Cooperation for Development” (RCD) looked possible. Future can hold much for these three countries and the region if better sense prevails. Can Islamabad and Istanbul also impress upon Tehran that policy of confrontation has not done much good to it over the past 50 years and may be all three need the “Biden moment” for deeper reflection, renewal and reengagement?

Engagement on issues of Environment & Climate Change

Since 1979, the single issue on which Pakistani governments and establishment have found engagement with the US administrations is Afghanistan and after 9/11 it was terrorism but that too mostly in the context of Afghanistan. India successfully added its strategic needs – to suppress Kashmiris struggle for freedom against Indian occupation– to the international agenda against terrorism– and ultimately landing Pakistan into FATF.

Many in the Foreign Office, government institutions and corporate world have wondered if there could be something else to define relationship, but they have failed to find issues where Pakistan can resonate with concerns important to the US and the west. With Biden administration there is a new opportunity.

Given the traditional hard issue thinking and related mental barriers in Foreign Office, military, media and the business community this can be easily ignored but with Imran Khan government – and its track record of genuine interest in these issues – this may be an opportunity.

Since 2014, PTI led govt in the province of KPK, with its “Billion Tree Tsunami” became the first sub-national govt., in the whole world, that had tried successfully to align itself with the international commitments reached at “Bonn Challenge”.

The Bonn Challenge was a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s degraded and deforested lands by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. It was hosted and launched by Germany and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bonn on 2 September 2011, in collaboration with the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration and targets delivery on the Rio Conventions and other outcomes of the 1992 Earth Summit.

Pakistani Foreign Office had been happily signing international conventions without bothering to implement these or even understanding the implications of the commitments given. However, PM Imran Khan has for the first time – as part of his manifesto and electoral pledges – given political leadership to issues of forestation, climate change, food security, agricultural yield and poverty alleviation-for instance his repeat emphasis on Ehsas program run by Dr. Sania Nishtar and his shift of CPEC phase II towards environment friendly industrial zones, agricultural yield, and food security.

Most of these issues connect with the Paris Convention on Climate Change. For instance, restoration of 150 million hectares of the world’s degraded and deforested lands by 2020 would have helped in sequestration of 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide which could reduce the global emission gap by 20%.

President elect Biden has, amongst his first public declarations, announced re-joining Paris Convention on Climate Change and added that his administration will pledge $2 trillion for clean energy and infrastructure and will set programs in motion to achieve “Zero Emissions” from the US by 2050. Currently China, the US and India are amongst the worst global emitters.

Pakistan, under PM Imran Khan, needs to emerge as a major player and advocate of these concerns on international stage. It must align itself deeply with institutions, movements and commitments like the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), World Economic Forum’s “Trillion Tree Campaign” Bonn Challenge, Green Belt Movement launched by Nobel laureate, Wagari Maathai, and Plant for Planet Foundation. All this connects with the Paris Convention on Climate Change.

Under someone like Imran Khan, Pakistan can provide much leadership to these causes and find genuine issues to resonate with the post-modern world of Joe Biden.

Kashmir, Gurdaspur & Mountbatten?

Moeed Pirzada
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Kashmir, Gurdaspur & Mountbatten?

Alan Campbell Johnson, in his famous book, “Mission with Mountbatten” writes – while trying to explain why Kashmir, amongst the princely states, represented a special problem that “there was a Hindu ruler with a state geographically contiguous to both dominions and the majority of his subjects (were) Moslem.”

Campbell Johnson may have never created this logic of “geographically contiguous” he was merely repeating what everyone generally believed – and perhaps still believes. And it was true; on a map, Jammu & Kashmir appeared perched between India and Pakistan.

Yet in reality, for all practical purposes Maharaja Hari Singh’s princely state – surrounded by the ferocious Himalayas and other mountain ranges from three directions – till 16th August 1947, had no real physical links or lines of communication with the territories that were about to constitute India. In literally every respect Jammu and Kashmir was wholly and solely dependent for all its logistic needs on the territories that were about to form Pakistan.

Geography: Map versus reality?

State of Jammu and Kashmir came into existence in the middle of 19th century – it was a patchwork that was stitched by Gulab Singh mostly after the 2nd Anglo-Sikh war and the Sikh defeat of 1846 when cash strapped East India Company sold him Kashmir for the infamous Rs. 75 lacs.

Kashmir valley, from past several hundred years, had only two main reliable physical links with the outside world: One through the Jhelum Valley Road (also called Pindi-Srinagar or Muzaffarabad-Srinagar Road); second through the Old Mughal Road that entered Jammu via Sialkot corridor (Bhimber, Jammu, Rajouri route and entering Kashmir at Shopian).

Old Mughal Road was the route, Mughal emperor Jehangir took many times to reach Kashmir – though he also used the Jhelum valley route on at least one occasion. In addition, Kashmir had several small hilly tracts from where traders and preachers from Central Asia and Iran penetrated the valley from pre-historic times but all from routes in North (present-day KP, Gilgit and Ladakh etc.). And thus the human life in the Kashmir valley was inextricably linked with the people and cultures that now constitute Pakistani Punjab.

This confusion about “geographic contiguity” got combined with another piece of misinformation. And that is the continuing false belief that Maharaja Hari Singh of J&K in August 1947 also had the option to stay independent

Almost 73 years after 1947, the Indian government in 2020 is still struggling with a Leh-Manali all-weather road that will connect Ladakh with Himachal Pradesh.

But this is now 2020, let’s go back to the middle of 20th century when two dominions of India and Pakistan were being created out of British India and its 565 princely states – out of which one was Maharaja Hari Singh’s Jammu and Kashmir.

Kashmir valley had one reliable (not all-weather but reliable) cart road, over Bannihal Pass (made all-weather through the famous Bannihal tunnel, in 1956) that connected it with Jammu.

But then Jammu itself could only be accessed via Sialkot (a city in Pakistan). All human traveling and trade between Jammu and Punjab, over the past several centuries, took place via Sialkot.

The bottom line is that State of Jammu and Kashmir (as it existed in 1947) may have looked – on a school atlas or wall hanging map – perched between the two potential dominion states of India and Pakistan but in reality, J&K had no physical relation with the areas that now constitute Indian Union.

It was the way geography and history had shaped the region. Maharaja Hari Singh’s state, for all practical purposes of statecraft, was not “geographically contiguous” with both dominions.

Yet these words, “geographic contiguity” and the wider sense they conveyed – repeated hundreds and thousands of times by historians, authors, academics, young doctoral candidates in their dissertations and by journalists in their articles had given rise to a “mental barrier” that has limited most people’s ability to understand the malignant politics that has given rise to the tragedy of Kashmir and its people.

But that was not alone; this confusion about “geographic contiguity” got combined with another widely believed “misinterpretation”. And that is the continuing false belief that Maharaja Hari Singh of J&K in August 1947 also had the option to stay independent.

How Bengal & states like Kashmir lost the option of Independence?

In reality, after the Shimla meeting (May 1947) between Mountbatten and Nehru, the third option for any state to “stay independent” was simply not available. The actual “partition plan” prepared by Viceroy’s team to be announced on May 17th had a complex option that could have theoretically provided a mechanism for British Indian province of Bengal to emerge as an independent third dominion; this could have paved way for large states like Hyderabad and Kashmir to claim independence – after the lapse of British paramountcy on 15th August.

However Mountbatten – against the advice of his team – shared that “partition plan” with Nehru and Krishna Menon in the quiet privacy of Shimla hills in first week of May 1947. Nehru violently reacted making it clear that Congress will reject and protest. Mountbatten had to surrender; he brought changes demanded by Nehru and created a new plan typed by VP Menon the same day.

This plan was then again sent to London for approval and thus instead of May 17, it was then announced on June 3 – and is known as the “June 3rd Plan” In this new partition plan, there could be only two “dominions” (Independent Bengal was ruled out) and while princely states were still theoretically independent (after 15th Aug) it was made clear through preaching and practice that every princely state had to opt for either Hindustan or Pakistan – keeping in view their population and geography. (Freedom at Midnight, Collins & Lapierre)

In university classrooms from Columbia to Oxford and media chat rooms the discussants often believe that Hari Singh, the erstwhile Maharaja of Kashmir, under the principles of “partition plan of 3rd June” could join either India or Pakistan or could have stayed independent.

Building their narratives on this misunderstanding, most people still think and argue that Maharaja had decided to join neither, was exercising the third option; he wanted to stay independent till the tribal lashkars from the then province of NWFP reached Srinagar, and the poor Dogra ruler was forced to sign the Instrument of Accession of 26th October in haste. Scores of publications, like Karan Singh’s “Heir Apparent” have further reinforced this misunderstanding.

This is more or less the same in “Mission with Mountbatten” with the difference that Johnson places the Kashmir visit in the third week of June while Mountbatten was returning from Shimla

Nothing could have been far from the truth. If anything, this patently false – yet immensely popular narrative – has limited the ability of three generations of scholars, academics, political interlocutors and media persons to understand the tragedy of Kashmiri people and how unjustly and clandestinely they were dealt in 1947 – by Maharaja Hari Singh, Nehru, Gandhi and above all Britain’s last viceroy: Mountbatten

This “misleading popular narrative” of a Dogra Maharaja (opting to stay independent) denies most people the insight to understand the roots of fury that have made Kashmir an enduring flashpoint between 1.5 billion people of India and Pakistan.

They don’t understand why Kashmir erupted into a violent cataclysmic insurgency in 1989 that continues in myriad ways despite 40 years of unrelenting Indian repression and how it is converting India from an “occupying state” into a ruthless, tyrannical “colonial power” – worse than the British Imperialism Gandhi fought 100 years ago.

Mountbatten told Maharaja to join either Pakistan or India?

Immediately after the partition of 1947, several key figures wrote their first-hand accounts; these included “Mission with Mountbatten” by his press attaché, Alan Campbell Johnson, “Story of the Integration of Indian States” by VP Menon (who worked for Mountbatten and later Sardar Patel) and many others who were part of the drama of the last few months including, “Memoirs of Gen. Lord Ismay” (Ismay served as Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff) and the “The Emergence of Pakistan” by Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, former PM of Pakistan.  There are many other good works; mentioning them all is beyond the scope of this piece of writing.

After these initial authors came several dozen secondary publications by academic and journalistic researchers. Some of these are very influential like the famous “Freedom of Midnight” by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre who were inspired by Mountbatten and whose account – relying upon interviews with Mountbatten – reads more like interesting fiction.

And there have been meticulously researched accounts like, Stanley Wolpert’s biography, “Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny” that does not deal exclusively with the partition but provides lots of well-researched information. 

Given the kind of hopeless nerd, this scribe has been all his life, I have read most of these and even other books that dealt indirectly with those events like Janet Morgan’s biography of Edwina Mountbatten, “Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of her own”.

And one thing that strikes – a Kashmiri like me – is that Mountbatten, Edwina and the team around them were comfortable believing that Hari Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir – with 80% plus Muslim population with strong emotional, historical and cultural bonds with people in the adjacent areas of Pakistan and all links of communications with Pakistani Punjab, had the right to choose any of the two dominions: India or Pakistan. And they never found anything intrinsically repugnant, morally unethical or simply wrong in the idea.

For instance, in “Freedom at Midnight” (Chapter: 10, “We will always remain brothers”) Collins and Lapierre describe Mountbatten’s main meeting with Hari Singh when Viceroy visits him in Kashmir in July (in reality it was June 1947, perhaps 19th June, and authors have made a mistake) and the Maharaja takes him out for fishing.

State of Jammu & Kashmir was almost 80% Muslim, and all its communication links were with areas into Pakistani Punjab then what could have been the basis of Mountbatten’s advice?

So, Mountbatten advises Hari Singh that before 15th August he must join either of the two dominions, i.e. India or Pakistan. This is more or less the same in “Mission with Mountbatten” with the difference that Campbell Johnson places the Kashmir visit in the third week of June while Mountbatten was returning from Shimla. Johnson’s account is a faithful production of his daily diary, and events are interconnected logically.

While words used by Johnson are different, it’s clear that Mountbatten is advising Maharaja to join either of the two new states (India or Pakistan). Others including Edwina’s biographer, Janet Morgan presents the same picture. Finally, Hari Singh agrees to have a formal meeting with Mountbatten on the third day (the day of Viceroy and Edwina’s departure).

It was Mountbatten’s plan – we learn from more than one narrator– that in a formal meeting including George Abell (Civil Servant & Viceroy’s secretary) and Col. Webb (British Resident in Kashmir) he would repeat his statements to Hari Singh for the record, however, next morning Hari Singh’s ADC informs that Maharaja has developed colic which Mountbatten refers to as “diplomatic colic”, and the formal meeting for the record never takes place.

Accounts in different books are so similar, virtually identical, that it is obvious that the source of all these myriad narrations is only one: Lord Mountbatten who provided this account to his press attache, Alan Campbell Johnson. Seventy-three years later, we have no option but to rely upon Mountbatten’s account of his discussion with Maharaja Hari Singh. However, the troubling thought remains that there has never been a second independent source to verify what actually transpired between the last British Viceroy and last Dogra ruler of Kashmir.

So, we are supposed to believe that the all-powerful last Viceroy of British India, former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in South East Asia and cousin of King Edward VI tried convincing Maharaja Hari Singh for almost three days that he should join either of the two dominions, but Singh gives him a shut-up call?

Can we trust what Mountbatten tells us of this private conversation? Could it be possible that Mountbatten, in June 1947, actually encouraged Hari Singh to keep delaying the decision? Could it be possible that Mountbatten was telling Hari Singh to stay put with his ambivalence while options are being created for him?

None of the British or Indian authors wonders: how was Mountbatten persuading Hari Singh to join either of the two dominions? (India or Pakistan). Was not a princely ruler bound to decide as per the wishes of his subjects, geographical realities or communication links?

From Alan Campbell Johnson’s diary-based account, “Mission with Mountbatten” we know that the last Viceroy of British India had his plate full of insurmountable challenges – from Khyber to Kanya Kumari – that kept him busy 24/7

State of Jammu & Kashmir was almost 80% Muslim, and all its communication links were with areas into Pakistani Punjab then what could have been the basis of Mountbatten’s advice?

It was one of the 565 princely states, and almost 560 of these ended up joining India before 15th August; many of the rulers (like Nizam of Hyderabad & others) and Maharajas had either wanted to stay independent or defy the limitations of “population” and “geography” – to extract a better deal from Jinnah like Hindu Maharajas of Jodhpur and Jaisalmer  (both geographically contiguous with Pakistan) – but Mountbatten and his team admonished them strictly; Why not the same clarity with Hari Singh in Kashmir?

Could Hari Singh had joined India without Gurdaspur?

Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, the author of “Emergence of Pakistan” who briefly served as PM of Pakistan (1955-56), had also worked as one of the two secretaries of the Partition Plan assisting Mountbatten in 1947. His book makes it obvious that he was someone who directly dealt with issues on the ground.

He picks up V.P Menon’s narration, of Mountbatten’s Kashmir meeting in which Menon describes: “[Mountbatten] assured the Maharaja that so long as he made up his mind to accede to one dominion or the other before 15th August no trouble will ensue, for whichever Dominion he acceded to would take the state firmly under its protection as part of its territory” (Story of the Integration of Indian States” by VP Menon).

Muhammad Ali then raises this provocative question; “But India and Pakistan were not equally well placed to undertake Kashmir’s defence. Indeed, there was a world of difference between the two Dominions in this respect. All of Kashmir’s lines of communications led into West Pakistan, whereas there was no link with India.

Unless Gurdaspur district was divided in such a way as to provide India access to Kashmir, India could not have taken the state under its protection or assumed responsibility for its defence. (Chapter: 10, Radcliffe Award, Emergence of Pakistan, 1967).

Gurdaspur District, in 1947, had four tehsils: Gurdaspur, Batala, Shakargarh and Pathankot. District, on the whole, was Muslim majority and only one tehsil, Pathankot, had a non-Muslim majority. District bordering Jammu, at the foothills of Himalayas, was the only land link connecting Jammu with Indian Punjab.

However, even if Radcliffe had awarded Pathankot to India, it would still not get access since Muslim majority Tehsils of Batala and Gurdaspur to the south would have blocked the way.

Gurdaspur (when Radcliffe Award was announced on 16th August) was the only Muslim majority district where Radcliffe’s pencil lines defied the majority principle; no Hindu or Sikh majority district in Punjab was given to Pakistan on any consideration.

The special triangular relationship that developed between the Edwina, Mountbatten and Nehru – that automatically developed into antipathy towards Jinnah

Mountbatten Nehru Simla Meeting: Was there a Deal?

Boundary Commission had to start its work in end June 1947. However, at a press conference on 4th June, (two weeks before his meeting with Hari Singh in Kashmir and 4 weeks after the Simla Meeting with Nehru & Krishna Menon) Mountbatten was asked why he had in his broadcast of the previous evening on 3rd June partition plan categorically stated that “the ultimate boundaries will be settled by a Boundary Commission and will almost certainly not be identical with those which have been provisionally adopted”.

Viceroy had immediately replied that because in the district of Gurdaspur, Muslims are only 50.4%. With this slim majority, it’s unlikely that Boundary Commission will throw the whole district into Muslim majority areas.

In reality, Mountbatten was slightly mistaken; the Muslim majority was 51.4%, and non-Muslims were concentrated mostly one Tahsil (Pathankot). However, Muhammad Ali in his book wondered that Mountbatten’s mistake was immaterial, what was actually significant was that Mountbatten had made a close study of the statistics of this particular district and had made it public that this should be divided.

From Alan Campbell Johnson’s diary-based account, “Mission with Mountbatten” we know that the last Viceroy of British India had his plate full of insurmountable challenges – from Khyber to Kanya Kumari – that kept him busy 24/7. It was indeed surprising that his mind was focused on one particular district in Punjab – perhaps it was ominous of the things to come!

Perhaps in the Simla meeting when Mountbatten had to revise the original partition plan under dire warnings from Nehru there developed a tacit understanding that for Congress to join British Commonwealth and maintain good relations with London there is no compromise on Calcutta, Hyderabad and Kashmir (for details read: Freedom at Midnight, Chap:6, Precious Little Place, Simla May 1947, P: 155-160, 1996 Ed). One may also keep in mind that within next few weeks, Nehru and Gandhi both formally asked Mountbatten to continue as independent India’s first Governor General – providing a legacy conscious Englishman with something unimaginable.

Let’s fast forward: On 25th October 1947, when after the tribal incursion via Muzzafarabad-Srinagar Road, Mountbatten ordered British Indian Army to move into the state of Jammu & Kashmir the first Sikh Regiment definitely landed at Srinagar airport – but what about the large army that follows?

Mountbatten, the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in South East Asia, had taken command of all civilian flying aircraft in India and a huge airlift to save Kashmir from presumably Pakistani backed tribals was in motion.

Yet, over the next few months, almost 100,000 Indian Army soldiers battled the Pathan tribals and allegedly the regulars of Pakistan Army who by defying their British commanders, under tacit nod from the new Pakistani government had joined in from November onwards to help tribals with military planning. The continuous Indian reinforcements with their logistic and motorised support could now enter through the “only land link joining India to Kashmir, the inadequate road Cyril Radcliffe’s pencil had providentially delivered to India when he had assigned New Delhi the town of Gurdaspur with its largely Muslim population” (“Kashmir – only Kashmir”, Chap:15, Freedom at Midnight, Collins & Lapierre, P: 448, 1996 Ed)

This huge Indian force, starting from end October 1947, along with its motorised equipment and logistic supplies, did not arrive via Srinagar airport. It simply could not. It arrived via the dirt road that passed through Gurdaspur District – the only and the only road link that connected Indian Punjab with Jammu -and later provided the route for NH-44. Former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in South East Asia had delivered to Nehru what he may have promised him in the Simla Meeting in the second week of May 1947.

Why Mountbatten handed Kashmir to Nehru?

From the accounts of all those who worked with Mountbatten and the later day authors – like Collins and Lapierre – who were literally giving Viceroy’s version we know that Mountbatten was extremely conscious of the fact that Nehru – and even Gandhi – were desperate to possess Kashmir; we find mention at several points that both Nehru and Gandhi did not want Maharaja to declare his “Independence”; Campbell Johnson mentions Nehru’s desire to possess Kashmir as part the complexity of Kashmir along with the fact that it was “geographically contiguous” with both dominions.

Everyone who is reading this now knows that it was total baloney -fabricated nonsense which was easily bought because on the map the state of Jammu & Kashmir looks like perched in between India and Pakistan. And for all practical purposes of statecraft, state of Jammu and Kashmir had no geographical contiguity with India.

But was Nehru’s desire so important, so decisive for Britain’s last viceroy that it overruled all other fundamental considerations of “80% Muslim majority” and “contiguous territory”, that he went on influencing Radcliff Award? And in the wake of that treachery left behind a legacy of hatred, contempt and ever-growing hostility between 1.5 billion people of India and Pakistan?

It’s not difficult to see that tragedy in Kashmir has not only created dangerous wars in South Asia, but it has affected the overall direction of politics and society in India and Pakistan – injecting such toxicity that keeps finding ever new ways to multiply.

Kashmir is a disaster created principally by the follies of two men: Nehru and Mountbatten. Nehru, in the final analysis, can perhaps still be forgiven for lacking a broader vision of future, for being a selfish unprincipled politician but what about the British Viceroy, Why Lord Mountbatten, Earl of Burma so visibly shirked his historical responsibility?

The answer probably lies in two areas: One, Mountbatten’s compulsion to please Nehru and Congress to persuade masters of new independent India to join as members of the British Commonwealth, which was London’s strategic requirement, but Congress was playing hardball; Second, the special “triangular relationship” that developed between the Edwina, Mountbatten and Nehru – that automatically developed into antipathy towards Jinnah. Denying Kashmir was also Mountbatten’s way of taking revenge from the old barrister he and Edwina had come to hate.

Tracing the roots of BLA in the backdrop of PSX attack

Moeed Pirzada
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Tracing the roots of BLA in the backdrop of PSX attack

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), came back into the limelight after it took responsibility for an audacious attack on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) in Karachi on June 29. Four BLA militants stormed the PSX building and killed three security guards and a police officer before being killed by the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).

The attack happened at a time when reportedly an important Chinese business delegation was inside the premise of PSX. In recent years, Chinese bourses and corporations have invested in PSX and BLA since 2014 (emergence of CPEC as part of BRI) has reinvented itself as an Anti-China militia.

Its statements on social media paint itself as a people’s resistance against Chinese imperialism. It also took responsibility for the attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi in Nov 2018, and on Pearl Continental Hotel – frequented by Chinese engineers – in the port city of Gawadar in 2019.

BLA: Historical Evolution of an idea from the 1970s

BLA’s reinvention as an Anti-China militia can only be understood in historical context. While dealing with guerrilla cum terror organisations dates are always tricky, but it was founded in 2000 as a militant outfit. However, Baluch militancy – as an idea – has been around from the early 1970’s.

This gradually germinated from a deep-seated sense of anger and alienation that has lingered in sections of the Baluch elite since 1948. Pakistan’s British era bureaucracy left scars in sections of Baluch elite and intelligentsia as it was negotiating, cajoling and persuading different tribal setups of British Baluchistan and Kalat to join the newly formed state of Pakistan.

But the grievances have been more a function of elitist narrative shaping than a genuine reflection of ground realities. Same Baluch elite – powerful Bugtis and Marris – who kept on taking up arms against the Pakistani state, have also been enjoying massive privilege and political power as parliamentarians, ministers, senators and chief ministers.

Province was resource-rich – but only on paper. Its population at the time of partition was less than 0.5 million (around 1.5% of west Pakistan’s total of about 31 million) spread over 43% territory of western Pakistan that was mostly barren and without water and thus without agriculture.

Such sparse population, living in pockets, spread over enormous distances, made it virtually impossible for the governments, in a poor developing country, to provide structural development or growth of a market-based economy. Almost 50% population is Pashtun of Afghan origin – inherited from the British conquests of Afghan territory, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1883).

Name Baluchistan is thus a misnomer -since Baluch constitute less than 40% of the population. However, all these historical, demographic and administrative challenges coupled with ethnic and religious fault lines (Pashtuns being very religious and Baluch very secular-minded) have helped create a narrative of alienation against the state.

This narrative has been invested, exploited and utilised by all sorts of internal and external interests. Province saw a full-fledged insurgency in early 1970s (during the govt. of PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) that ended with negotiated surrenders – through political discontent was not resolved.

It is documented that the erstwhile Russian Intelligence Agency (KGB) in the late 1970’s was instrumental in structuring a militant outfit from Baluchistan Student Organization (BSO). Later during the US-supported Afghan war of resistance against the Soviet occupation Indian Intelligence (RAW), Russian KGB and Afghan KHAD kept on using Baluch militants for all sorts of purposes in the name of freedom.

What happened in Mumbai, they wanted to do the same [in Karachi]; they wanted to spread uncertainty. We have no doubt India did this, the premier said

However, after the end of Afghan war and withdrawal of Soviet forces and Indian influences from Afghanistan – replaced by Afghan mujahideen and later Taliban – Baluch militancy lost its external support, strategic direction, finances and geographic depth. So BLA’s emergence, in around 2000, many months before 9/11 is a matter of curiosity and interest for Islamabad based experts who follow developments in Baluchistan.

BLA: From a political resistance to a terrorist organization

Since 2000, the BLA has gradually evolved into a much more violent armed separatist movement. It mainly draws its members from the Marri or Bugti tribes; it was first recognised after it claimed credit for a series of bombings in markets and railways that targeted Pakistani soldiers and police.

It has earned notoriety for small scale bombings and attacks since its inception – however it had never demonstrated much of an institutional character. In 2005, while the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was stationed in Camp Kohlu, an attack was carried out by the BLA. This event was a decisive one that eventually compelled the government to designate the BLA as a terrorist organisation in 2006.

Once the Pakistani government listed it as a terrorist organisation, the UK followed, however, the US only declared it as a terrorist organisation in 2019 before PM Imran Khan’s first official US visit. The Pakistan Stock Exchange attack further aggravated tensions between Pakistan and India as Pakistani law enforcement, intelligence and Karachi Rangers suspected an institutional setup, of a large intelligence organisation, behind the attack.

In a break from past Pakistani traditions, fingers were pointed towards New Delhi for supporting and orchestrating the terrorist attack. Prime Minister Imran Khan, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, along with other top government and military officials – in what was unprecedented – clearly blamed India for being the mastermind behind this attack.

“What happened in Mumbai, they wanted to do the same [in Karachi]; they wanted to spread uncertainty. We have no doubt India did this,” the premier said, referring to the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which more than 160 people were killed.

Tracing roots of BLA

While on another occasion, Pakistan’s National Security Advisor (NSA) categorically stated that the BLA had a longstanding well-established link with India, which has been supporting its proxies to carry out terrorist activities inside Pakistan.

The PM’s National Security Advisor Moeed Yusuf said, “There is an established link between BLA, an international listed terror organisation, and India, a state-led by [a] fascist government that has again perpetrated terrorism in Pakistan through its proxies”.

BLA: Reinvention as Anti-China outfit?

BLA’s reinvention as an Anti-China outfit is a recent development and an interesting one. As pointed out above, it always needed external mentors for strategic support, finances and narrative shaping.

Given the unsettled nature of Indo-Pakistani relations, increasing tensions after 9/11 with India seeking a role in Afghanistan and rise of RSS and BJP politics India has started to emerge as a more vocal supporter of the Baluch cause which it had historically avoided. New Delhi also attempts to build Baluch militancy as a moral equivalent against Pakistani claims of Indian human right violations in Indian occupied Kashmir.

BLA’s Indian connections help explain BLA’s reinvention as Anti-Chinese militia since 2014. While Baluch elites in power want more of CPEC routes through the province, BLA’s narrative of China as an exploitative imperialist power – in the mould of 19th century British and French colonial empires – help win it international sympathies and attention.

BLA’s leadership

Sardar Akbar Khan Bugti is considered as one of the founding fathers of the BLA. He was the former Chief Minister of Balochistan. Akbar Bugti was killed during an operation conducted by the Pakistani security forces on August 26, 2006.

Mir Balaach Marri, also a key BLA leader, was responsible for gaining the support of the local community of Balochistan for pursuing his organisation’s agenda. He held considerable political influence due to his close association with the political leadership of Balochistan.

Mir Balaach Marri was himself a former provincial parliament member. It is unclear when he may have taken control of the BLA. Pakistani security forces carried out numerous attacks against Balaach Marri, and he was eventually killed by what was believed to be a Pakistani security forces operation on November 21, 2007.

Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, also known as “the godfather” of the Baloch armed resistance was responsible for the 1970’s insurgency in Balochistan. Khair Bakhsh Marri died in June 2014. His death occurred in the course of nature and from natural causes.

Brahamdagh Khan Bugti was a BLA leader, who never openly confessed being a part of the militant outfit. Once during a live television interview, Bugti called for the killing of all non-native residents of Balochistan.

Another prominent leader of the BLA was Bijar Khan. In July 2015, Khan was killed in a raid conducted by the security forces. In 2018 the Baloch Liberation Army executed an attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi. Aslam “Achu”, an alleged chief of a subgroup of BLA, was the mastermind behind this. Aslam died in a suicide attack in December 2018.

Pakistan’s NCOC: Birth of a powerful democratic institution

Moeed Pirzada
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Pakistan’s NCOC: Birth of a powerful democratic institution

Last week I had the opportunity to spend a whole day at National Command and Operational Centre (NCOC) and I left with this palpable feeling that Corona Pandemic has induced Pakistan into creating a quintessential national institution – in the form of NCOC. An institution that may serve this South Asian nation of 200 million plus in dealing with other crises in future.

But odd as it may sound, little is known about Pakistan’s NCOC. As I was requested to cover its proceedings, in my tv program, related to discussions between centre and provinces on the centre’s recommendations to ease lock downs, I went searching on net. I wanted to contextualize my commentary – but I found nothing of substance.

Yes, there were some press reports, tv news stories and 2-3 TV programs but nothing to help you understand what Pakistan’s NCOC actually represents and what is its scope. From tv footage one gets the idea of a large meeting room where ministers huddle, around an oblong table, with uniformed officers – with swanky display of plasma screens and microphones. But this is only a part of story – a very small part.

Pakistan’s NCOC: Birth of a democratic institution

NCOC was preceded by NCC (National Coordination Committee) in the second week of March 2020. But the journey towards this institution started in the fourth week of February, when Dr. Zafar Mirza, SAPM on Health, started to have his first meetings to tackle the challenge of as yet nascent threat of corona.

In its operations room, you find doctors, experts and officers in uniform pouring over the data that is continuously arriving from a nation state spread over almost 900,000 sq. kilometres

Meetings, I have been told were taking place in National Institute of Health (NIH) when a participant from the military pointed out to others that what is developing appears to be huge; we won’t be able to manage a coordinated response unless we have a command and operational centre that brings along provinces and dependent territories.

As others listened with incredulity, he argued that large resources will have to be mobilized and directed; provinces, public and media have to be taken into confidence and all that will not work from the old rusty structures of NIH. Dr. Mirza and others bought the idea. Presentations were prepared, soon a summary landed in PM Office. National Coordination Committee was born on March 13. On 27th March, it created National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC).

Located on Murree road, not far from Islamabad club with green elevations of Shakarparian and iconic Margalla hills in the background – NOCC found birth in the old offices of Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA). Quiet, like a demure lady, from the outside with its unimposing buildings, but ready to surprise you with feverish activity inside. This is how you feel when you enter NCOC.

In its operations room, you find doctors, experts and officers in uniform pouring over the data that is continuously arriving from a nation state spread over almost 900,000 sq. kilometres. With a population estimated to be around 220 million, Pakistan has around 300 cities with populations over 10,000 – 8 of these have populations above a million. Karachi is above 20 million and Lahore 10 million plus.

Pakistan’s NCOC: Platform uniting a diverse country 

Every morning, since NCOC’s inception Chief Secretaries of the four provinces and two dependent territories (AJK and GB) brief the team of civil military experts – headed by Asad Umar, the planning minister – through video screens on the situation as it evolved through the last 24 hours. Information is flowing to Chief Secretaries from all district administrations and intelligence and army’s field formations provide support to this data collection and verification.

In terms of management, this may be South Asian country’s biggest war. Conflicts with India – with the exception of 1971 for people of erstwhile East Pakistan – have all been fought away from the cities and towns. Even the insurgencies post 9/11 were mainly in the periphery, but the war against the pandemic is being fought from every city and town across the 900, 000 sq. Kilometres. Clearly this is Pakistan’s biggest war.

This information management structure connected across the country then forms the basis of evidence-based analysis and decision making inside the NCOC. Morning proceedings are headed by Asad Umar, the planning minister. However, Interpretations, projections and conclusions drawn by the infectious diseases’ experts and government officials are fed to Prime Minister, Imran Khan, who remains the final decision maker.

 

Pakistan's democratic NCOC

Dr Faisal Sultan, Prime Minister’s Focal Person on Covid-19, has been one of the key point man to drive policy for collating, interpreting, processing and analysing the data flowing in from across the country. But he is not alone; senior doctors, experts of infectious diseases from Army Medical Corps (AMC) are present inside the NCOC operations.

In addition, Dr Amjad Mehmood, an infectious diseases specialist, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Dr Faisal Mehmood, a specialist in infectious diseases from Aga Khan University, Karachi, Sindh, Dr Rubab Buledi, parliamentary secretary for health and Dr Yasmeen Rashid, Health Minister of Punjab all add to medical expertise available to the NCOC. In addition, two data science experts – Syed Tajammal Hussain and Tayyab Tariq – have been available as consultants to plot data projections according to international best practices.

Pakistan’s NCOC: Support from NRSP & Military 

But this is not all about the machinery of NCOC. Data of the health facilities sent by the provincial governments was then counter-checked and re-verified by reports from the ground. For that NCOC harnessed the wide network of the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) to get situation reports from the ground in terms of infections and deaths reported at district and local hospitals. Reportedly, Pakistan’s work with polio vaccination, its data and experience were a great support in this crisis.

But NCOC did not stop here; realizing that quality of decision making depends upon accuracy of data additional independent counterchecks were requested through Intelligence and military set ups across the country. The state intelligence machinery is also playing a leading role in the Tracing, Testing, Quarantine (TTQ) strategy employed by the government to aggressively do ‘smart suppression’ of the infection.

It will not be exaggeration to say that military has played a pivotal role in this management of pandemic from the conceptualization and need assessments of NCOC to facilitation of its work. Civil servants in the provincial governments admit that they have been actively assisted by military commanders.

The reports from the ground by the NRSP, intelligence and military outfits help NCOC to assess that the health facilities, across Pakistan, were holding well to the pressure and the official death rate appeared fairly accurate. Pakistan was initially projected by May 15 to have 175,000 infected people with 10,000 of them in critical condition and nearly 3,500 deaths. However as of 10th May, deaths in Pakistan were less than 700. It’s understood, with experience, that overwhelming number of deaths could not have been hidden.

As mentioned above, by the turn of second week of May 2020, the total reported deaths across Pakistan (from its 4 provinces and 2 dependent territories; a population of around 220 million) were still less than 700. Even a single death is tragic but given the large number of deaths reported from the United States (almost 80,000) with population of 330 million versus Pakistan’s 220 million and Western Europe (well above 100,000) Pakistan’s risk appears low and manageable.

How Pandemics End, New York Times

Infectious disease’s experts, like Dr. Faisal Sultan, are under no illusions. Talking to me, Dr. Sultan admitted that several factors could be at work. The virus that attacked across the United States and Western Europe appears different in its lethality; Pakistan’s younger population, its generalized exposure to infections and hot weather all may have played a role in low fatality rates being observed.

Pakistan’s NCOC: Platform for Evidence based Decision Making 

Similar data is being observed from India – in a population of more than 1.3 billion the reported deaths are around 2000. However, irrespective of the underlying scientific causes, this data collection, collation and interpretation has enabled federal government to make evidence-based judgements. The million-dollar question has been: Open now to ease economic pressures and risks of political melt down or wait further? Data analysis has helped Prime minister to move towards a partial open up from 9th of May. It remains a difficult decision.

NCOC proposes recommendations to ease countrywide lockdown

Data analysis at NCOC could help federal government understand that health facilities across cities and districts – hospitals, wards, beds, masks, ventilators etc – still had excess capacity to cater to the pressure. The number of patients were increasing gradually but nowhere was there any run on hospitals – as it happened in Italy, UK, France, Spain and the United States – reported across Pakistan that would indicate that the health infrastructure was near being overwhelmed. However, this once again underscores the importance of accuracy of data.

Pakistan's democratic NCOC

CM Sindh, and his representatives, have consistently been critical of the decisions of partial lock down or easing the lock downs. They have consistently maintained that rate of infection and death have not been astronomical because Sindh – with Pakistan’s largest urban centre – went for early lockdown. Their arguments have weight – data from the US and Western Europe reveals that corona pandemic has principally hit the large congested urban centres. In Pakistan this means Karachi and Lahore.

But even Punjab, KP, Baluchistan, AJK and GB have not always been on the same page. When I watched the proceedings -as a fly on the wall – many recommendations of the centre were accepted by the provinces, but many were also turned down. It was almost a 50/50 kind of situation.

GB wanted funds to tackle the crisis, AJK did not like the idea of traffic from other parts of the country; Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan opposed opening trains, planes, intra-provincial and intra-district bus services and so on. But herein lies the strength and utility of NCOC – and that is why I say at the outset that a great institution has been born.

Pakistan is not authoritarian China, monarchical Saudi Arabia or computer-controlled Singapore. It’s a democracy like the Italy, United States and the UK – albeit immature, imperfect and noisy like India next door. Without a platform like NCOC, where centre and provinces could wrangle, fight, agree and disagree every morning with the help of data slides, figures, stats it would have found it almost impossible to confront the humungous challenge of corona pandemic.

NCOC: Institution to improve Democratic Governance 

It was in NCOC meetings that everyone – from PM of Pakistan to Chief ministers to Chief secretaries – had to grapple daily with the facts, figures and challenges of Pakistani industry and populations. What is the number of PVC & steel units, electrical cable and switchgear manufacturing plants, steel/aluminium manufacturers, ceramic manufacturers, paint factories, sanitary ware and ceramics products, paint shops, steel/aluminium retailers, electrical cable switchgear retailers, hardware stores and how their closures are affecting economy, workers, taxes and so on. How many tertiary care hospitals do we have? How many private hospitals? What skill sets exist in health sciences?

How the shops in rural areas, are different from large towns and cities. How many shopping malls exist, how many schools, colleges, universities, mosques and madrassas are spread around the country. NCOC presentation also discussed traffic data learning that how on motorways, cars traffic since post-corona has reduced by 55 per cent; coaster/minibus traffic has reduced by 73pc; and bus traffic has come down by 95pc. This data portrayed that the impact of the lockdown is far heavier on the financially weaker segments of the population.

Fernand Braudal, celebrated author of History of Civilizations, and Arnold Toynbee, known for Study of History, had both argued that challenges test civilizations and cultures. Pandemic forced Pakistani system to create an institution like NCOC – and NCOC compelled ruling elite to confront the challenges of governance.

Fernand Braudel FRENCH HISTORIAN AND EDUCATOR

Political leaders had to come face to face to grapple with facts under deadlines of life and death. It was no more possible to appear on tv only with your own version and sleep happily ever after – because next day you had to sit in NCOC dealing with real facts. Pakistan has willy nilly created a new institution – a quintessential institution of governance and policy making. Let’s see if we manage to continue with this learning experience -and where we take it from here

Remembering Muhammad Pickthall: Quran’s first credible English Translator

Moeed Pirzada
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Remembering Muhammad Pickthall: Quran’s first credible English Translator

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall died on 19th May, 1936. Today, few in the Muslim world remember him but maybe they should for he was the first Englishman to come up with a credible translation of Muslim’s Holy book, Quran, into English.

Pickthall was a convert from Christianity, he has been variously described as a novelist, esteemed by D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, and E. M. Forster, as well as a journalist, headmaster, and political and religious leader; and we are told at Harrow he was a class fellow of Sir Winston Churchill. But above all these identities he was a British Muslim scholar -and that is how he should be remembered by more than one billion Muslims across the world.

21st Century Muslim scholar, A.R. Kidwai, offers a moving tribute to Muhammad Pickthal while writing a review for, “The Meaning of Glorious Quran”. Kidwai reminds us that in the “Foreword” to his English translation of the Quran, The Meaning of the Glorious Quran (1930), “partly out of the innate modesty of a scholar and partly in deference to the truism that the Quran being literally the Word of God is untranslatable” Pickthall had lamented his inability to capture and articulate in his English version “that inimitable symphony [of the Quran], the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy”.

Meaning of the Glorious Quran, by Muhammad Murmaduke Pickthall

These lines are present even in the latest editions being sold by Amazon and other book companies.

Quran moves its readers to tears and ecstasy! 

Yet, as A.R Kidwai argues Pickthall’s work published ninety years ago has been remarkably successful to this day in moving its numerous readers to tears and ecstasy, and in inspiring scores of later Muslim scholars to embark upon their own Quran translations.

This humble scribe had the opportunity to read from, “The Meaning of Glorious Quran” during his school days on the recommendation of his father and later while preparing for his Islamic studies paper for CSS and like any other English speaking Muslim he too can testify to the mesmerizing power of this English translation.

Today, the English translations of the Quran by Muslims, number more than fifty, but even today Pickthall’s work holds pride of place for at least two reasons: One, it was the first worthy translation, and Second, it served all along as the touchstone against which all later ventures have usually been measured for their faithfulness to the original Arabic/Quranic text and for gauging their mastery or otherwise over the English idiom and usage.

Though Pickthall’s majestic English translation of the Holy Quran was finally completed in 1930, as the final culmination of a project sponsored by the Nizam of Hyderabad, the ruler of what was once the richest princely state in British India, but he had this project in mind soon after his internal acceptance of Islam in 1914. How he finally declared himself as a Muslim makes for an interesting story. It was after delivering a talk on ‘Islam and Progress’ on 29 November 1917, to the Muslim Literary Society in Notting Hill, West London that he dramatically declared himself a Muslim.

Marmaduke William Pickthall: son of an Anglican clergyman

Marmaduke William Pickthall was born in Cambridge Terrace, London on 7 April 1875, the elder of the two sons of the Reverend Charles Grayson Pickthall (1822–1881) and his second wife, Mary Hale, née O’Brien (1836–1904).

Charles was an Anglican clergyman, the rector of Chillesford, a village near Woodbridge, Suffolk. So, interest in religion and scripture was in his blood and DNA.

Young Pickthall spent the first few years of his life in the countryside, living with several older half-siblings and a younger brother in his father’s rectory in rural Suffolk. He often suffred from bronchitis.

On the death of his father in 1881 the family moved to London. He attended Harrow School but left after six terms. As a schoolboy at Harrow Pickthall was a classmate and friend of Winston Churchill.

We don’t know when he started to convert to Islam internally in his heart, since he never publicly declared till 1917 as mentioned above. However, from his writings, his articles, we know that he had started feeling the need for a quality translation of Quran, in English, which might help readers “feel the power of inspiration in it”.

The Meaning of Glorious Quran: First credible English translation

Pickthall’s translation in English – though often referred to as the first, in India and Pakistan, was not literally the first. My father and later the erudite looking librarian in the Quad-e-Azam Library Lahore (1989) had told me so. But as I mention above it is for all practical purposes the first credible translation in English that can help a native English speaker to discover the majesty and power of Quran because of the correct use of English idiom that is understood by native speakers.

Prior to Pickthall’s work three types of English translation existed: One, those by Orientalists namely, Alexander Ross (1649), George Sale (1734), J.M. Rodwell (1861), and E.H. Palmer (1880). Second, those by another group, Ahmadi translators, namely, Muhammad Abdul Hakim Khan (1905) and Muhammad Ali (1917), and by Ghulam Sarwar (1920) who had Ahmadi leanings. And third, Those by some well meaning but very poorly equipped and incompetent Muslims of British India namely, Abul Fadl (1911) and Hairat Dihlawi (1916)

Ross, Sale and Rodwell could not fully understand Quran – perhaps because of lack of command over Arabic and also because of lack of the kind of love and devotion that was needed for the work. Ahmadiyya translations introduced issues that can be considered controversial by most Muslims.

And the two earliest translations by Muslims namely, Abul Fadl (1911) and Hairat Dihlawi (1916) had the ambitious plan of countering the Orientalists’/missionaries’ charges against the Quran in their commentary. However, as observed by A.R Kidwai, these deliver very little in terms of meaning. If Ross, Sale and Rodwell were not well versed in Arabic then Fadl and Dihlawi did not know English well. Neither of them had academic credentials or any real grounding in English idiom and presentation skills. So while they did record for the first time the Muslim presence in the field of English that was it. Perhaps this passionate task was to be undertaken by Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall.

The translation, “Meaning of the Glorious Quran” was authorized by the Al-Azhar University and the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) praised his efforts by acknowledging him as the “noted translator of the glorious Quran into English language, a great literary achievement.”

Pickthall had identified himself as a, “Sunni Muslim of the Hanafi school”. He remained active as “a natural leader” within a number of Islamic Organizations and travelled actively across Middle East and British India. He was often condemned, in Britain, for being a staunch supporter of the Ottoman Turkey and reportedly refused fighting against the Turks during the First World War (1914-18).

He preached Friday sermons in both the Woking Mosque and in London. Some of his khutbas (sermons) were subsequently published. For a year he ran the Islamic Information Bureau in London, which issued a weekly paper, The Muslim Outlook. Pickthall and Quran translator Yusuf Ali were trustees of both the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking and the East London Mosque.

In 1920 he went to India with his wife to serve as editor of the Bombay Chronicle, returning to England only in 1935, a year before his death at St Ives, Cornwall. It was in India that he completed his translation, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, in 1930.

Pickthall was buried in the Muslim section at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England where Abdullah Yusuf Ali was later buried. Muslim world owes him a debt by remembering him on his 74th anniversary. He died on 19th May, 1936.

Post-Corona World Order: Democratic or Authoritarian?

Moeed Pirzada
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Post-Corona World Order: Democratic or Authoritarian?

Francis Fukuyama’s, End of History and the Last Man (1992) – influenced by the events triggered by Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (1987), Fall of Berlin Wall (Nov, 1990) and Dissolution of Soviet Union (Dec, 1991) – had argued that ascendancy of Western liberal democracy, over other political models, has finally brought humanity to its final era of stability – and a world order that will last.

Fukuyama argued that world had not reached “..just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. Less than 30 years later, Fukuyama’s words that sounded prophetic then now appear dangerously preposterous – if not alright ludicrous.

Responding to liberal democracy’s challenge in the wake of Corona pandemic, Henry Kissinger, ex-US Secretary of State, in a far reaching piece, “The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”, wrote that: “..when the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus. To argue now about the past only makes it harder to do what has to be done. (WSJ, 3 April 2020)

Liberal World Order: Under threat?

Kissinger then argued that “the contraction unleashed by the coronavirus is, in its speed and global scale, unlike anything ever known in history” and that the United States must lead the western democracies and allies to “safeguard the principles of the liberal world order”.

He reminded his readers that enlightenment thinkers had argued that the purpose of the legitimate state is to provide for the fundamental needs of the people: security, order, economic well-being, and justice and that individuals, anywhere cannot secure these things on their own. He ended by pleading that “a global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally”.

While Kissinger is not alone in expressing these fears; with the rise of Trumpian politics in the United States and Britain’s painful and unnecessary divorce – Brexit – from Europe these rumblings were occurring from universities, think tanks and media on both sides of the Atlantic. But it will be difficult to deny that Dr. Kissinger is perhaps one of the most important, loyal, blue-blooded sons of western establishment of the past fifty years – and when this octogenarian speaks many are forced to sit up and listen.

Corona: Bigger Political threat than 9/11?

So, it appears that within 30 years of Fukuyama’s “End of History” western liberal democracy – and the world order built around it – has reached its most serious crisis. When Huntington came up with “Clash of Civilization” and when 9/11 happened, Fukuyama and followers had argued – and perhaps quite convincingly – that these challenges and skirmishes will continue to exist.

Islamists – despite their exaggerated presentation by the western establishments, media and think tank battalions – and despite their dangerous medieval tactics – suicide bombings, televised decapitations and attempts to recruit armies of cerebrally challenged Muslim youth – were in reality far too primitive, anachronistic and fragile an enemy.

Islamists were – to be fairly honest -puny of a challenge to the deeply entrenched sophisticated western establishment and many in the Muslim world and on the left of global politics (even in most allied of allies, Britain) kept suspecting, in conspiratorial tones, that these idiotic bearded, gun-toting contraptions like Al Qaeda, various Al-Jihads and later day ISIS, and ferocious looking mullahs in search of paradise and voluptuous yet modest virgins represent rich juicy imagination and scripts of CIA and MI6, Mossad and FVEY, Five Eyes etc.

But now the powerful western establishments – and formidable scientific communities- and the world order they represented suddenly look impotent in this war against an invisible, microscopic messenger RNA that looks innocent and sexy with its multiple spikes in coloured images produced from electron microscopes– Novel Corona Virus, given a fancy name by a confused WHO as Covid-19 (March 11).

As of now, more than 100,000 people have died across the world; but almost 85% of these deaths (almost 88,000) have happened in the United States, Italy, Spain, UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Canada – and this attack by Angel of death continues with an untiring frenzy creating unbelievable spectres of mass graves in a city like New York – something Fitz Gerald’s Big Apple had not experienced even during the Second World War.

But it’s not the fear of death, loss of loved ones or health catastrophe that is worrying a cold-blooded, calculating realist like Kissinger; it’s the economic and political repercussions of the pandemic of fear and uncertainty – lockdowns, closures, bankrupt airlines, empty hotels and shopping malls, deserted mass transits, 17 million filing for unemployment benefits, Boeing and others shutting down their plants, General Motors making ventilators, AIRBNB out of business, Hollywood of “Contagion” now haunted by the realization of its own ghastly scripts in the form of empty cinemas and so on – that has suddenly landed a robust US economy into depression.

China now for multiple reasons emerges as a role model of authoritarian competence and for all those – in Middle East, Central Asia, East Europe, Africa, Pakistan and within India’s ruling BJP

News from across the Atlantic are even more worrisome where French are riding on a new wave of national reliance shunning the trans-European interdependence and they are not alone. Whole basis of wealth generation and prosperity through mass production, consumption and trade across Europe has been jeopardized like never before – Kissinger is right; the very basis of the post-war social contract, around which liberal democracy has been built -as a relationship between the governing elite and the governed – is now under attack.

Authoritarianism works and is efficient

But threat to liberal democracy is not just the looming economic depression. Many in Pakistan and across the world – including Europe and the United States – have been suitably impressed by a China that has apparently opened up Wuhan – epicentre of novel corona virus – for business.

No new cases are being reported by the Chinese government. World also hears that Chinese reaction to virus was so swift, lock downs so complete, monitoring of potentially infected so scientific, cremation of dead bodies so stoic that virus could never effectively reach other large urban and commercial centres like the capital Beijing – and everyone concurs that such audacious management where dead bodies were cremated under order of National Health Commission, where mass transit systems came to a halt and where inter-city trains deleted Wuhan – a city of 11 million – from their maps was not possible in a liberal democracy.

Post-Corona World Order

In Italy where PM, Giuseppe Conte, suspended all flights to and from China on 31st January, it was troublesome to reach any consensus on what to do, and how to do between its 20 decentralized regions. Tourists, ski fun lovers, Chinese performers, immigrant families, students and lovers of all sorts kept pouring, and rubbing cheeks, from all over Europe – rest of Europe where planes, trains, buses, lorries and cars were crossing borders across 27 countries without terminal controls it was not much different.

In France, President Macron had to quickly summon 100,000 troops to impress upon citizens to stay indoors. Authoritarian Saudi Arabia and Gulf Sheikhdoms could quickly – and no doubt rationally – decide to shut down all points of assembly including mosques – something that could not be implemented in a relatively open society like Pakistan to this day.

In United States where more than 100 million travellers use domestic and international airports every month and another 100 million crosses into and out of the United States from Mexico it was – in January and February – unthinkable to stop this activity. Discipline of authoritarian decision making has thus succeeded where consensus making institutions of liberal democracy have failed – and miserably.

Trump’s peculiar style of communication and his toxic relations with liberal dominated media have now made him look like a buffoon– an idiot who could not understand the risks, who could not listen to his scientific advisors. But the fact is that WHO and its DG – Tedros Adhandom– never blew the trumpet; they were the international body responsible for coming up with a clear assessment and prescription, but they downplayed the risks, warned against panic and protested when countries like Italy were stopping their flights with China.

WHO’s conduct in this crisis represents a textbook case for study of organizational failure and weaknesses of global architecture and governance– and has led to allegations that Tedros and WHO were under Chinese influence and were deliberately trying to downplay the risks of virus spread. Others remember that Tedros, former foreign minister of Ethiopia, was tainted by charges of corruption and inefficiency and his elevation as DG WHO in 2016 was bad news.

All this may be true but WHO’s weaknesses also reflected a loosely arranged liberal and chaotic world order where robust decision making was difficult; WHO had prematurely declared a pandemic in 2009 HIN1 crisis (Swine Flu) and was bitterly criticised by member countries.

Bottom line is that Corona crisis has suddenly exposed the weaknesses of decentralised liberal democracies, open societies and chaotic global architecture – and suddenly authoritarian regimes like China, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Gulf kingdoms look decisive smart and efficient in managing crisis protecting the lives of their citizens – making all future exhortations, by west, for rule based democracy meaningless.

Post-Corona World Order

But this is not just an academic question that should interest scholars at Harvard, Yale or Columbia but this is a development that will have far reaching implications for fledging democracies like in Pakistan, Central Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe – and will boost the hyper-nationalist political movements in Europe and other parts of the world. The ability of western governments and institutions to advise and persuade for democratic change, freedom of press and minority rights will be seriously compromised.

It is this risk of “global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy” which haunts Kissinger. It is this challenge, that is not only from authoritarian regimes, like China and Russia, but from authoritarian political entities and philosophies within the countries, that demands United States and allies – Europe and beyond – to come up with a new “Marshall Plan” for the world to defend and preserve liberal democracies and their institutions.

China can be both villain and hero: What will it choose? 

China now for multiple reasons emerges as a role model of authoritarian competence and for all those – in Middle East, Central Asia, East Europe, Africa, Pakistan and within India’s ruling BJP – who are looking for an alternate political model to justify their aspirations of control and power grab in the name of “efficiency”. But China was admitted into the global club – especially into WTO – on the assurances that it will gradually bind itself into a ‘rule-based system’. Many hoped that China will gradually become a democracy.

This entry into the Club has worked very well for China, and its continuing prosperity depends upon it. Next few months will see huge tensions between the US lead western alliance and China on these issues that may take different forms. China will have to make concessions to retain its good will inside the system – otherwise instability will ensue.

Pakistani PM, Imran Khan’s appeal to UN and international financial institutions to develop an understanding of the economic challenges now being faced by countries like Pakistan will make tremendous sense if Kissinger’s argument is understood

Kissinger’s Wall Street Journal piece sparked a heated debate, more than 1400 comments till the WSJ editors decided to close it – almost one third, if not more, vehemently attacked Kissinger for being a friend of China and someone who set the stage for brining China into the global system and ultimately into WTO – without full compliance of its regimen.

Many wondered how China (despite being in WTO) could be allowed to maintain wet markets with unregulated wild animals (in contrast to tightly controlled food supply chains of farm animals like in rest of the world). China’s official position is that corona virus jumped on to a human being in the Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood market. Though increasingly western governments and key institutions fail to find it credible.

Much has been said for and against the Dean Koontz 1981 novel, Eyes of the Darkness – that had claimed that Wuhan-400 is a Chinese bio-weapon developed in RDNA labs near Wuhan – however, irrespective of that it is now widely known and discussed that China’s level-4 Wuhan Institute of Virology existed near the city of Wuhan – and viruses could have escaped through an accident or mishap due to bad safety protocols.

US intelligence and scientific community are convinced that it was not deliberate, and virus is zoonotic – not product of a lab. But more than 100,000 are dead, almost 85% in the US and key western countries and a shrinking global economy is heading towards a recession – and the virus that caused all this originaged originated from China whether from a wet market or a lab.

Western politicians, opinion makers and key institutions have been, for past one decade, trying to grapple with ideas like “Thucydides Trap” that had argued that whenever a rising power attempts displacing a status quo power there is conflict – or war. While a traditional war has not been declared, the fact remains that a virus originating from a the “rising power” has destabilised lives and economy of the “status quo powers” – and this is something that will continue to reverberate over the next few weeks and months -as political negotiations take place to fix the global economy and its future.

China will have to accept some responsibility for what happened in Wuhan and take steps to mitigate its negative outfall. This can be a robust economic engagement with the world, closing of wet markets and becoming more transparent on its biological programs through increased safety regulations and protocols.

US, Germany and Japan have come up with sizeable economic stimulus packages, but these are not enough – developing countries need debt relief to protect them from political meltdowns. This is again cash rich China’s opportunity to play an active role along with the US to bail out developing countries. China that took significant initiative after the 2008/9 crisis can once again help the developing world – that has been adversely affected by an accident or irresponsibility in Wuhan.

Pakistani PM, Imran Khan’s appeal to UN and international financial institutions to develop an understanding of the economic challenges now being faced by countries like Pakistan will make tremendous sense if Kissinger’s argument is understood. The risks of authoritarian ascendancy from outside and from within – for those who can grasp – are real. China must not be seen encouraging these authoritarian elements and forces in any way.

Do Muslims believe in mantras of “Liberal World Order” – Why not?

Moeed Pirzada
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Do Muslims believe in mantras of “Liberal World Order” – Why not?

Do Muslims in general – and Pakistanis in specific – care for liberal democracy? This question came to my mind, unbidden, unprompted, as I was writing, for Global Village Space, an Editorial analysing Kissinger’s latest piece (The Coronavirus Pandemic will forever alter the World Order, WSJ: 3rd April) in which this octogenarian policy thinker had warned that the corona pandemic carries the gravest risks for the liberal world order and that the United States needs to step in and provide leadership like it did with Marshall Plan (1950’s) and Manhattan project (1940’s) to come up with a unifying vision for the troubled global economy – that depends upon movement and trade.

Do Muslims believe in Liberal World Order? 

As I was writing (Post Corona World Order: Democratic or Authoritarian?) for mainly Pakistani readership and was trying to make myself clear as to why “liberal world order” is something vitally important, for the west, for the world and for us, I felt that I was merely playing with words and the term like “liberal democracy” and “liberal world order” in reality may not mean much to most Pakistanis. Yes, the analysis I was offering may be of some help to those who prepare for CSS exams – but then only to the extent of the exams.

Why it is so? I started to wonder! Why a political concept so vitally important and so majestic like the liberal democracy – for which countless millions laid down their lives in 20th century – does not resonate with most Pakistanis? Several explanations came to my mind. First, I could readily see that Pakistanis have never really experienced a genuine liberal democracy and rule of law government. Often, what they got under slogans was corrupt kleptocratic dynasties or oligarchies that milked public resources for personal enrichment.

Muslim League: Struggle merely against Hindu Domination? 

But the void runs deeper. Even the freedom struggle of Muslim leadership against the British Raj under Jinnah, remained focus on the Hindu Muslim issue – and was not motivated by concepts of human rights, political freedoms and so on. For Muslim league, I guess after years of study and reflection, British rule was less of a problem; they were rather afraid of the domination by Hindu oligarchy and intelligentsia if the British left without offering a suitable political solution.

Muslim struggle was for preservation of historical identity and interests linked with identity; it was not for political rights of individuals. Yes! after 1947, impressive sounding constitutional documents were produced but these were not necessarily backed by evolution of thought among political segments of society.

Creation of two hostile states of India and Pakistan – locked into an existential conflict for survival (Pakistan) and hegemony (India) – has not helped either. Though, in most global literature India is prominently mentioned as “liberal democracy” in reality both India and Pakistan have been illiberal democracies at best – term popularized by Farid Zakaria in his 1997 essay for Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec, 1997) that was subsequently turned into a book.

Admittedly India – despite its failings has continued at least as an electoral democracy (perhaps now facing its worst challenge under the rise of Hindutva) and Pakistan for a significant period in its history was not even that -and whenever it had a democratic government as it has now it remains under the shadow of military establishment.

Prominent Pakistani politicians, ministers, media commentators and important citizens openly and unabashedly refer to the establishment, or Pindi, or the boys as the real power and to many it’s the only legitimate power – so epithets like, “Imran Khan is about to be dismissed” or “How long this government will last?” etc are common even these days.

Whether there is any such thing happening is irrelevant; what is important is that this is the legitimate, kosher, dominant narrative – and no one has any compunctions or guilt about it. Tragedy of Pakistan is that Pakistanis, for all practical purposes, have never come to believe in “democracy” – now this is a long discussion and beyond the scope of this short opinion piece.

Let me leave on this: Liberal Democracy and the continuation of “Liberal World Order” is as vital for Pakistan and the Muslim world as it is for many in the west

No wonder then that global literature and popular sites that describe and discuss democracy and liberal democracy often conveniently ignore Pakistan – though technically Muslim country of 220 million considers itself a democracy; its constitution and its courts continuously refer to “rule of law” and lawyers on tv are never tired or referring to “our scheme of things under Westminster parliamentary system”

Western Duplicity & Hypocrisy damaged the credibility of Liberal World Order? 

Going forward, this national history alone is not the only reason why liberal world order does not resonate with most Pakistanis – because barring 1-2 exceptions, it does not resonate any where in the Muslim world. The peculiar interpretation of religion – that dominated Muslim societies as they suffered and struggled against the brutal and humiliating colonial rules in 20th century – the shameless hypocrisy of western powers in international arena, the toxic influence of Arab-Israel conflict on Muslim minds, the continuing influence of feudal and tribal mind set and fears of modernity movements, like feminism, all have played their role in making Pakistani mind believe that “liberal world order” is merely another name for western control and domination.

Bottom line is that due to historic experiences of Pakistanis they don’t understand or grasp the word, “liberal democracy” and as such their understanding of the term is merely academic. Liberal democracy to most Pakistanis – even reasonably educated ones – means “western form of government” which in a roundabout way even sounds true since the genuine liberal democracies exist only in 14-15 states of western Europe, Australia New Zealand and North America. However liberal democracy as a political concept may have originated from the western experiences of 19th and 20th centuries but it now exists in its own right and encompasses a world of ideas and aspirations bigger than the traditional west.

Liberal World Order & West: Not the same thing? 

Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Spain, authoritarian regime of Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America were all part of the west but not part of the “liberal west”. Today an uncertain France, a Brexit inflicted Britain and an inward looking United States under Trump can be threats to the ideas of Liberal democracy.

So cutting it short: Liberal Democracy- with its myriad, multilevel battle of ideas – defines the modern era between 19th and 21st centuries and without grasping its essence one cannot hope to understand the modern world – or what it is about. There is no point reading about WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Kissinger, Obama, George Orwell, GATT, WTO, World Bank, IMF, ADB, Yuval Harriri and Farid Zakaria even if we are not ready to grapple with the term, “Liberal World Order”. How can you understand Shakespeare, Romeo Juliet or Heer Ranjha if you have never loved?

Can China be a liberal democracy? 

So for most Pakistanis – even those who study hard for CSS and most of those who go to study abroad – Kissinger’s fears that Coronavirus Pandemic will unravel the “Global Order” – the liberal world order means that western domination – that is racial, religious and ethnic in nature – is being challenged by an assertive China and Russia.

Little do they realise that Pakistan itself is supposedly a liberal democracy and “liberal world order” is not merely about American domination but is a much bigger concept; something which Pakistan and Pakistanis need for their future -as part of the world around them.

A liberal democracy may adopt different constitutional structures that may look distinct from each other; so it may be a constitutional monarchy – such as Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom – or a republic such as France, Germany, Poland, India, Pakistan, Italy, Ireland, Mexico, and the United States.

It may have a parliamentary system such as Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Pakistan, Israel, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom or a presidential system such as Indonesia and the United States or a semi-presidential system such as France, Poland and Romania. An increasingly affluent China, shackled in golden chains of WTO and rule based system can emerge as a liberal democracy – albeit with its own sets of racial, ethnic and civilisational biases. But that’s a bigger debate.

Let me leave on this: Liberal Democracy and the continuation of “Liberal World Order” is as vital for Pakistan and the Muslim world as it is for many in the west. Though most Muslim nation states are not democracies – yet liberal world order helps them to save their people from far more dangerous and tyrannical authoritarian structures that may crop up, if liberal world order fails. Corona pandemic has created these fears. I hope I am understood

Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan

Moeed Pirzada
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Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan

Peace Agreement signed in Doha between the US and Taliban is certainly historic and a moral victory for Pakistan. But New Delhi is bound to see it as a strategic reversal and will react in its own ways. Without Pakistan engaging India, to allay its fears, peace in Afghanistan remains uncertain. Editor GVS examines.

The “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” signed between Afghan Taliban and the US in Doha on 29th February is a development of huge historic significance for Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Qatar and the whole region – and off course the United States.

This was and still is, United States’ longest war in its own history that began on Oct 7, 2001 when the US and the UK started bombing on Taliban ruled Afghanistan exactly 25 days after the terrorist attacks on World Trade Centre that killed more than 2000 innocent men and women in downtown Manhattan.

Since then more than 100 well researched books, hundreds of policy papers (more than 100 in US publication, Foreign Affairs alone) and thousands of media reports have been written or broadcast about this conflict – yet there is no consensus or clarity across the dividing lines on why United States was in Afghanistan and what was it trying to achieve.

Was the US preventing another 9/11, was it on a nation building mission or it wanted to use Afghanistan as a strategic outpost (like South Korea) against China, Pakistan, Iran and Russia?

On 29th Feb, two agreements were signed; one was at Doha and the other was in Kabul. Zalmay Khalilzad, US Special Envoy and Mullah Baradar, Taliban’s point man signed in Doha while Pakistani delegation observed – Afghan government was not part of this deal

Perhaps opposing sides to this conflict will never be able to agree on the real motivations of the United States – just like there has never been a consensus on why the Soviets entered Afghanistan in December of 1979. Just consider this: to this day Taliban are not convinced that Al Qaeda planned 9/11 sitting from within Afghanistan -and one can imagine the agreement on other issues.

Today – according to a report in New York Times – youngest US soldiers serving in Afghanistan were born after 9/11, they have no idea why they are there, most US public is disgusted by this unending war and it’s not only Trump but all presidential candidates for 2020 want the troops to come home. In the end, war is ending due to internal US political dynamics, past is dead, mystifying and perplexing; everyone is tired and it’s time to move forward into future.

Doha Peace Agreement: Pakistan’s Moral Victory

Many US and western analysts will continue to find excuses – like sanctuaries in Pakistan, disunity among Afghans, interference from neighbouring countries, capacity issues of Afghan National Army – for a “good war” to have gone astray but the fact remains that US failed despite all its financial and military muscle because this adventure was conceptually flawed.

Barnett Rubin, an authority on Afghanistan from long before 9/11, had brilliantly summed up the situation in his August 2019 article in the Foreign Affairs. (Diplomacy Can’t Solve All of Afghanistan’s Problems). Rubin had argued that the US must withdraw because while it is not a perfect solution it is still better than all other options.

Agreement in Doha is a huge moral and political victory for Pakistan, its key institutions and its current Prime Minister, Imran Khan – who had always argued that war in Afghanistan was a US mistake and there is no military solution to this conflict.

US military, intelligence, strategic community, media and think tanks had demonized Pakistan for not taking decisive coercive actions against what was described as “Haqqani Network”. Pakistani institutions had always asserted that maintaining engagement with Taliban groups was a must for finding a solution and for delivering them to the US on negotiation table.

It goes without saying that Pakistani institutions played a crucial role in making possible the “Peace Agreement” signed in Doha. Without their continuous efforts, it was not going to happen. When on 20th Feb, opinion piece of Sirajuddin Haqqani – leader of the Haqqani Network – appeared in New York Times, it was obvious that Pakistan had won its case.

Question is: what lies ahead? On 29th Feb, two agreements were signed; one was at Doha and the other was in Kabul. Zalmay Khalilzad, US Special Envoy and Mullah Baradar, Taliban’s point man signed in Doha while Pakistani delegation observed – Afghan government was not part of this deal.

But at the same time, US Defence Secretary joined President Ashraf Ghani, in Kabul, in making a joint declaration – that reiterates continuous US support to Kabul regime and its assistance in the negotiations with Taliban to agree on a “Post-Settlement Afghan Islamic Government” -and this is where real challenge lies.

Both documents – signed in Doha and Kabul – overlap with each other. US forces will be reduced to 8,600 troops in 135 days of signing of the agreement, full withdrawal will be completed in 14 months and the US will withdraw from all five bases– and given fulfilling of conditions by Taliban, all US assets including special forces, air units will leave Afghanistan by the end of 14th months.

Anti-Muslim feelings bred under the RSS/BJP power politics of past 25 years have now assumed a life of their own. Even in February, BJP stoked these feelings to gain advantage, in Delhi elections, against Arvind Kejriwal’s AAM Admi party

US will work with the UN to end sanctions on Taliban personalities and prisoners will be released. US has accepted most of Taliban demands – complete withdrawal of the US forces is a huge victory for the Taliban. What the US wants in return is mostly a figure of speech; it wants Taliban to guarantee that Afghan space will not be used against the US and its allies.

This fits with the overall narrative – but in reality, there was always a limited scope of Afghanistan being used to do another 9/11 or something even remotely similar. Taliban were never an extra-territorial or pan-Islamist force. Nothing has ever suggested that they had the slightest of inclination to hurt the US outside the theatre of Afghanistan.

However, the rather mysterious presence of “ISIS” and term, “allies” may become problematic as those unhappy with the Doha Peace Agreement may find ingenuous ways to test the US resolve to leave. The risk is that Afghanistan, in the run up to complete US withdrawal, may revert to the old fault lines of pre-9/11 era when country was divided between different zones of influence.

Afghanistan: battleground between India and Pakistan?

Before the US arrival in Oct 2001, for more than a decade country was a battle ground for influence between India, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. After 9/11, India got a relatively free hand in using Afghan soil, citizens and institutions against Pakistan. New Delhi created huge influence with Kabul establishment and used its access to destabilise Pakistan’s Baluchistan and erstwhile FATA areas.

US kept blaming Pakistan for providing “sanctuaries” to Taliban but ignored the Indian activities. India later emerged as the only country in the region that continuously opposed US withdrawal. Peace Agreement in Doha is thus a huge setback for New Delhi.

A peaceful post-settlement “Afghan Islamic Government” as being referred to in the Agreement will be unacceptable to New Delhi – because Taliban (whom Delhi sees in the image of Ahmad Shah Abdali) will have huge influence upon this hybrid set up and this means that New Delhi’s two decade long investments will fizzle out – so it’s only logical from the lens of international relations that Delhi will do whatever works to destabilise the process.

If our reading is correct, then the US is exiting under its domestic political compulsions – it will thus not be willing or motivated to spend huge energies on managing affairs after few months. Pakistan will have to engage New Delhi directly in its own way to reassure Delhi that it will respect Delhi concerns and redlines. However, this will be an uphill task.

First Delhi real needs in Afghanistan are very different than what it affords to admit. Its official position is that Afghanistan’s space can be used against it the way it was used in 1999, when an Indian plane (IC-814) was hijacked, allegedly by Harkat ul Mujahideen, and was brought to Kandahar.

But India’s real needs are to keep Pakistan under pressure (strategic squeeze) from both east and west. It’s a geo-strategic requirement from Delhi’s lens. Pakistani overtures towards New Delhi – however sincere – may not work with Modi regime. The kind of violence that emerged in Delhi, before Trump’s visit, in third week of February, was proof once again of the nature and direction of Indian politics set into motion under BJP and RSS rhetoric.

In a weeklong mayhem, at least 43 people (mostly Muslims) died and hundreds were injured. Shops, houses, mosques and schools in Muslim majority areas were attacked and burnt by BJP/RSS crowds directly incited by the BJP leaders like Kapil Mishra.

Modi and Amit Shah would certainly not have desired ugly violence and riots at the eve of Trump’s visit. But Kapil Mishra could not have been acting on its own. It looks like that BJP wanted to clear Delhi roads of the Anti-CAA protesters, before Trump’s visit, but the aggressive approach backfired.

Anti-Muslim feelings bred under the RSS/BJP power politics of past 25 years have now assumed a life of their own. Even in February, BJP stoked these feelings to gain advantage, in Delhi elections, against Arvind Kejriwal’s AAM Admi party.

Hatred against Muslims and Islam has thus become the political lifeline of Narendra Modi and BJP/RSS combo. Such a regime will find it impossible to negotiate meaningfully with Pakistan on any issue.

Hindutva’s discourse controls Indian politics

PM Imran Khan, in his speech, on Feb 26, as part of the “Surprise Day” celebrations expressed his disappointment that how Indian media has been producing more and more negativity – he referred to film Panipat, on Netflix, as being very biased. He might have been troubled by the historical inaccuracies of the film but much larger issues exist underneath.

Movies like Panipat (2019), Padmaavat (2017) and Kesri (2018) all are part of an aggressive Hindutva discourse. At times producers have been accused of currying favours with the ruling BJP. But there might be a bigger problem. This discourse now sells. Padmaavat, produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, was one of the largest box office hits; it grossed almost INR. 6 billion in its first year.

These powerful cinematographic products present Muslims as crude savages attacking cultured and often peace-loving Hindu kingdoms for lust or money. Two essential themes flow out: Muslim were crude tyrannical invaders and sophisticated Hindus were their victims. Both Padmaavat and Panipat end up with painful tragedies.

In Padmaavat, Rani (Deepika Padukone) commits “jauhar” a collective self-immolation with hundreds of Rajput women instead of letting the savage Alauddin possesses her. In Panipat, Parvati Bai (Kriti Sanon) wife of Sadashivrao Bhau, Marhatta general, dies of her shock in remembrance of her loving husband slain by soldiers of Abdali.

Gone are the days of films that united Indians like Mughal-e-Azam, produced by Shapoorji Pallonji in 1960, starring Prithviraj Kapoor, Madhubala and Dilip Kumar and Umrao Jan Ada (1981) starring Rekha, Naseeruddin Shah, Raj Babar and Farooq Sheikh. In the present India these movies will probably not be box office success.

Indian emotional appetite has moved on – along with direction of Indian political identity. Peace Agreement signed in Doha is certainly positive but what will follow in Afghanistan remains uncertain.

Complex Kaleidoscope of Pakistan’s political theatre

Moeed Pirzada
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Complex Kaleidoscope of Pakistan’s political theatre

Political system remained under stress from Peshawar to Karachi. It seems as if outgoing Chief Justice, Asif Saeed Khosa, had fired a “silver bullet” through his verdict of November 2019, into the body politic of Pakistan – producing cracks in all possible directions. Since then, PM Imran Khans’ ruling PTI is managing an uneasy alliance with almost all its allies.

In the second week of January, MQM’s only real member (MQM disowns Dr. Farogh Naseem, the law minister) is left in the federal cabinet, while Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, the Minister of Information Technology & Telecommunication resigned and despite efforts by PTI leadership has refused coming back to the cabinet – though negotiations and platitudes continue from both sides.

This crack was followed by PML-Q that expressed its dissatisfactions, leading to a fresh round of talks with PTI handled by Khan’s troubleshooting team consisting of Jahangir Khan Tareen (JKT) and Pervez Khattak.

PMLQ wanted better access to funds and administrative say in its constituency districts of Gujrat, Chakwal and Bahawalpur, genuine empowerment of its ministers in Punjab and was demanding full implementation of its 2018 Agreement with PTI.

All PMLN sources insist that the party’s unconditional support to the Armed Forces (Amended) Act 2020 has empowered the party and increased its leverage with the establishment.

After JKT/Khattak meetings, it looked as if things were resolved – however, during Imran Khan’s visit to Lahore, in the last week of January, his inability to meet the PMLQ leadership led to fresh speculations. Earlier, in the third week of January, a strange 20-member strong forward bloc emerged inside PTI Punjab.

Sources claimed that this bloc led by Syed Shahab Uddin, a PTI MPA from Layyah, had the support of around 30 members from South and Central Punjab. This bloc demanded that CM should not make bureaucratic appointments without consulting them and that they need better access to development funds.

Some media sources claimed that this bloc was, in fact, the creation of CM Buzdar, who wanted to shield himself from any possible “Vote of Confidence” in the Punjab assembly in which PTI could have looked for a replacement.

Reportedly, Buzdar feels very insecure after the major administrative reshuffle of November 2019 in which new Chief Secretary Capt. Azam Suleiman and IGP Shoaib Dastgir have been empowered by the Prime Minister turning CM into a mere figurehead.

If this was the case, then Buzdar achieved his desired results; by end January, almost all PTI, including the PM, were standing on one leg and singing that Buzdar is irreplaceable and is not going anywhere.

Dr. Awan, the de-facto Information Minister, was announcing that Buzdar will complete five years, and PM himself was telling the world that Buzdar cannot be replaced. PTI teams also remained busy addressing concerns of allies like BNP-Mengal, Baluchistan Awami Party (BAP) and GDA.

Amidst all this brouhaha, it appeared that PM Khan was inclined to mend fences with the PPP government in Sindh. After his meeting with CM, Murad Shah, in the last week of January, he hinted that the federal government would be willing to consider sending a new IGP to Sindh replacing Dr. Kaleem Imam.

However, this bonhomie was quickly disrupted when its junior ally, GDA, demanded that Dr. Kaleem Imam should not be sent back, and PM’s federal cabinet objected to the Sindh’s choice of Mushtaq Ahmed Mahar as IGP.

PPP in Sindh has a long history of remaining at loggerheads with all IGP’s. Fault lines emerge around transfer-postings and recruitment of sepoys and constables. Between 2016 and 2018, the Sindh government continued fighting to get rid of IGP, AD Khawaja.

There was an interesting triangular political battle involving civil society activists like Jibran Nasir, Courts and Sindh government. First, Sindh High Court and later Supreme Court stopped the PPP government, and it failed to get rid of AD Khawaja.

Even now, the situation is more or less the same. However, this time it erupted around the time when Dr. Rizwan Ahmed, SSP Shikarapur, accused Imtiaz Sheikh, Sindh Energy Minister, and a friend of Asif Ali Zardari, of supporting criminal gangs and being involved in the murder of his political opponents.

PPP, in turn, blames SSP of playing politics and IGP of incompetence. Sindh High Court has stopped the PPP government from surrendering IGP, Dr. Kaleem Imam, till the federal government decides – Jibran Nasir, the indomitable civil society activist, was the petitioner once again.

Kaleem Imam is a highly decorated police officer from 16th Common Training Program (CTP) of Pakistan Civil Services and has served with distinction across Pakistan and abroad and was the No. 1 choice of PPP in 2018 when the new PTI government offered them three names for selecting an IGP replacing Amjad Javed Saleemi who was sent as IGP Punjab.

Imran Khan, in the normal course of circumstances, would have solidly supported IGP, but 17 months of exposure to Pakistan’s real politick has made him a bit more practical.

Continued hostility with PPP may not suit him at a time when almost all his allies are trying to extract something out of him. Given this background, it is expected that he will try to win the goodwill of PPP in giving it an IGP of its own liking.

Khosa’s “Silver Bullet” & PMLN ambitions?

Nowhere the magic of Khosa’s “silver bullet” is more visible than on the morale of PMLN. While Nawaz Sharif has refused coming back from London on health grounds, Shahbaz Sharif is expected back in February or latest by March.

According to Rana Sana Ullah, who is now out on bail – after creating considerable embarrassment for ANF and federal minister, Shaheryar Afridi – this is an election year and Shahbaz has to take important decisions to set things into motion to get rid of the incompetent Khan government.

While this may sound a bit over-ambitious or over-optimistic, almost all PMLN sources insist that the party’s unconditional support to the Armed Forces (Amended) Act 2020 has empowered the party and increased its leverage with the establishment.

According to a well-placed PMLN source, “we are now much beyond the stage of the ceasefire”. However, that source also agrees that much more work is needed for confidence-building because of the poison created by the anti-establishment posturing of Nawaz Sharif and his daughter, Maryam Nawaz. What does that mean in real terms? No one can be sure at this stage.

While Shahbaz Sharif had always remained a nationalist at heart and under worst of hardships had never confronted Pakistani state institutions, the fact remains that Nawaz and Maryam were seen using their Indian connections as leverage against the Pakistani state.

Will that toxicity end any time soon? Shahbaz may be good-intentioned but cannot hold the political field in Punjab without active support from Nawaz. So, will Nawaz and Maryam play by rules set by Shahbaz? Can this arrangement be trusted by those who matter? How will PM Imran Khan react to all this? There are so many questions but no clear answers.

US president, Donald Trump described Khan as “a very good friend” promised to raise Kashmir with India and said in full glare of world media that relations between Pakistan and the United States have never been that good

While Imran Khan’s government remains troubled on the domestic political front – compounded by continuing economic slowdown, its foreign policy performance keeps on giving it breathing space.

So right at the moment when media were attacking the government on its mismanagement of flour supply (Atta Crisis of January) that led to prices as high as Rs. 70/kg across the country, PM Khan was creating a global impact at the annual meeting of World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.

US president, Donald Trump described Khan as “a very good friend” promised to raise Kashmir with India and said in full glare of world media that relations between Pakistan and the United States have never been that good.

Crucial other public and corporate figures lined up to meet Khan – including Ivanka Trump, and leadership of global financial institutions. In the same week, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi announced a renewed diplomatic offensive on Kashmir.

From the commentaries in the Indian media, it appears that Indian establishment has lost hopes of pushing Pakistan into “FATF Blacklist” and will now try its best to keep its western neighbor into the grey list at the Paris meeting of Feb 2020.

PM Khan is traveling to Malaysia in the first week of Feb, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to arrive in Islamabad in the second week of Feb.

Whether Khan will be able to fully recover from the loss of face that happened when Saudis blocked his participation in the Kuala Lumpur Summit in December remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: A robust foreign policy continues to be Imran Khan government’s saving grace!

Gandhi’s India unravelling: was Mahatma’s vision flawed?

Moeed Pirzada
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Gandhi’s India unravelling: was Mahatma’s vision flawed?

At 5:17pm on 30 January 1948, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a boudhik karyawah (worker) of RSS, emerged from a small crowd around Birla House and fired three shots into the frail chest of a 79-year-old man world had venerated as “Mahatma” – thus ending a life that had dominated and transformed Indian politics for the past three decades.

Godse, Narayan Apte, Gopal and other RSS conspirators believed that Gandhi was responsible for partition, had betrayed the principles of the Indian movement for independence and was appeasing Muslims. Gandhi’s assassination had led to a ban on RSS. But today, 72 years later, RSS is in full control of Indian politics. From 1980’s onwards, its progeny, BJP, utilized and manufactured fault lines of Indian politics and society to empower itself.

Ram Rath Yatra, Mandal Commission, Ram Janma Bhoni movement, Attack on Babri Mosque, Demolition of Babri Mosque, Bombay riots, Nuclear Explosions of 1997, Kargil Conflict, Attack on Indian Parliament, Mobilization against Pakistan, Gujrat Pogroms, Mumbai terrorism everything in one or the other was skilfully utilized in redefining Indian narrative and politics moving it ever closer to the realization of a Hindu Rashtra which now exists in reality though it still needs a legal and constitutional cover.

Last few weeks of 2019, have seen hundreds and thousands of Indian Muslims demonstrating against the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register for Citizens (NRC) – laws made by RSS controlled BJP government that have in many ways excluded Muslims from the basic definition of equal Indian citizen. Many have died on streets and hundreds have been injured.

Einstein, on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 70th birthday had exclaimed: “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.”

WhatsApp is full of videos of police brutality on streets and homes, Muslims being dragged by Hindu vigilantes and RSS militias parading on streets to show their own muscle power. While it all looks troubling, there is evidence to believe that the RSS/BJP duo will again benefit from this mayhem politically – for a starter, it has diverted attention from a massive economic slowdown.

On 5 August, RSS controlled government in Delhi unilaterally abrogated Art. 370 and 35-A ending “Special Status” of Jammu & Kashmir at a time when the only Muslim majority state in India had no elected government or legislature.

Five months later, Kashmir valley – now turned into a Union territory – is still literally cut off from the world; thousands arrested are languishing in jails across India, internet and cellular networks are still suspended, government employees have been forced to sign affidavits affirming acceptance of Kashmir’s new constitutional position and RSS committees are now active across Kashmir’s rural areas. What exactly is happening in Kashmir is not known – media crackdown has created a veil of secrecy.

This is frightening in a state where a few years ago, thousands of mass graves were discovered – where young men were killed and dumped by the Indian army. So, it’s time to ask: Has Gandhi’s professed vision of “religious pluralism” finally collapsed forever? Was it ever real? Was Mahatma mislead; had based his politics on flawed assumptions about the history of Hindustan, about the nature of British India?

Or his opponents who considered him a shrewd wily politician masquerading like a saint to advance his political interests right? With history’s tyranny, unfolding in front of our eyes, these questions have assumed a new meaning. These questions become significant because, throughout the 20th century, the world had understood modern India through the lens of Mahatma

Popularized Gandhi vs Historic Gandhi?

Einstein, on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 70th birthday had exclaimed: “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.” This was the theme faithfully picked up and echoed by scores of biographers, historians, academics, filmmakers and social activists across the world.Image result for Einstein"

On 26 December 1999, Time Magazine declared Albert Einstein as “Person of the Century”. Mahatma Gandhi was one of the Time’s two runners up, for the coveted slot because, according to Time Magazine, he symbolized the ability of individuals to resist authority to secure civil rights and personal liberties.

Reflecting back on this pristine image, Col. GB Singh, a revisionist political analyst, in his 2005 book, “Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity” wrote, “To see highly educated, supposedly rational-minded people in the West following Gandhi has often left me in an awkward predicament and forced me to pause and reassess my initial impressions of the Western world”.

To Singh’s mind, this is the result of pervasive propaganda material that has flooded libraries and bookstores and his 2005 book is an attempt to close the gap between the “popularized Gandhi” and the “historical Gandhi”.

For instance, Gopal Godsey, brother of Nathuram Godsey, insists that when Gandhi was shot he never said, “Hai Ram”, it was actor Ben Kingsley in 1982 film “Gandhi” who said that (Film directed and produced by Richard Attenborough was half financed by Indian government) Gandhi even in his life had been an enigma.

Even a cursory look reveals how he was often pulled in different directions to satisfy different constituencies and interest groups. He launched a non-violent struggle (Ahimsa) for rights in South Africa in the early 1890’s and has been known ever since for his non-violent struggle, Satyagraha, against the British empire, but he had also indirectly supported the British war effort in Boer Wars.

In April 1918, during the latter part of World War I, the British Viceroy invited Gandhi to a War Conference in Delhi. Gandhi, on Viceroy’s urging, agreed to actively recruit Indians for the war effort. This was in sharp contrast to the Zulu War of 1906 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 when he merely recruited volunteers for the Ambulance Corps.

All these developments within 5-6 decades of direct British rule created the impression of the existence of a nation state. But in reality, it was not; it was an imperial order that relied upon the presence of British as a “catalytic third force” – for this order to continue after the departure of British, it needed a new constitutional framework,

Now this time around, Gandhi attempted to recruit real combatants. But between 1939 and 1944 when British civilization actually faced the existential threat, when London was being obliterated by Nazi bombing, Gandhi advocating “Non Violence”, advised British to “invite Hitler and Mussolini to take their beautiful island with its beautiful buildings” and demanded British to “Quit India” – persuading one to believe that his political instincts often dominated his humanitarian urges.

Gandhi stood for the rights of the suppressed, but when British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald granted “separate electorate” to the depressed classes (Dalits), Gandhi kept a “fast unto death” to force Ambedkar, leader of the Dalits, to back out from his demands leading to Patna Pact of 1932 – a surrender which Ambedkar regretted till his death in 1956.

Dalits constitute 25% of what is called “80% Hindu vote bank” and historically -as Arundhati Roy points out in her lectures – before the arrival of the British concept of “one man one vote” Dalits were not considered Hindus. But the separate electorate for Dalits in 1932 could have broken the domination of Hindu vote bank and Congress’s huge bargaining power in British India – it would have changed India’s political history.

My Experiments with Truth?

Gandhi’s contradictions went much beyond politics. Jad Adams, author of “Gandhi: Naked Ambition” (published 2010) reminds us of some of the most controversial aspects of his complex personality. At the age of 38, in 1906, Gandhi took a vow of “brahmacharya”, which meant living a “spiritual life” that is normally referred to as chastity.

So, he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual conversation, letters and behaviour. Within a year of his vow, Gandhi was telling his readers of his newspaper Indian Opinion: “It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry.

In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife.” But Jad Adam recounts that Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. Mahatma set up ashrams in which he began his first “experiments” with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk.

Men and women were segregated, and Gandhi’s advice was that husbands should not be alone with their wives, and, when they felt passion, should take a cold bath. These ridiculous rules did not, however, apply to Mahatma. Sushila Nayar, the attractive sister of Gandhi’s secretary, also his personal physician, attended Gandhi from girlhood.

She used to sleep and bathe with Gandhi. When challenged, he explained how he ensured decency was not offended. “While she is bathing, I keep my eyes tightly shut,” he said, “I do not know … whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses soap.”

As he grew older (and following wife Kasturba’s death) he was to have more women around him and would oblige women to sleep with him whom – according to his segregated ashram rules – were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands.

Gandhi would have women in his bed, engaging in his “experiments” which seem to have been, from a reading of his letters, an exercise in strip-tease or other non-contact sexual activity. By 1947, a 33-year-old Sushila Nayar was replaced by 18-year-olds – Manu and Abha – who were with him till his death.

Gandhi India's flawed vision
Mahatma Gandhi with Manu (Right) and Abha (Left).

While much of this odd behaviour was known to his family and close political circle in the last years of his life – and some of them were reacting badly. But the world at large started to know about it only after his assassination in 1948.

However, amazing as it may sound, this has not dimmed the fondness of academics, political analysts and civil libertarians who continue to see him as the moving spirit that defined the Indian struggle against the British imperialism.

His experiments with truth and sexuality have been considered just one aspect of the complex person he was. The argument, with some credibility, is that any great life when placed under a microscope will reveal such contradictions. Gandhi despite his many ferocious critics and detractors in India and abroad still looms large on the South Asian historical map.

Though Gandhi – the man and phenomenon – with his unmistakable imprints on British Theosophical ideas and civil libertarian movement of the 20th century is definitely far more complex, bigger and intriguing than his politics – but it is his politics that defines him in in Pakistani minds and memories. Could his politics be based on flawed assumptions just like his strange understanding of human sexuality?

Gandhi’s India: Real or Imaginative Construct?

Gandhi was part of my growing experience as a child in a family of Kashmiri immigrants from Srinagar. It was not only through his books – An Autobiography: The Story of my Experiments with Truth – and books written about him – like “The Life of Mahatma Gandhi” by Louis Fischer and “Gandhi: A Memoir” by William Shirer- but through the intense debates between my father and my grandfather.

My father, a medical doctor, a fanatic believer in Jinnah would took great comfort in Churchill’s diagnosis of Gandhi as the “seditious naked fakir” who, according to my father had used “sainthood” and “humanity” as covers to extend his shrewd politics that only favoured rising Indian bourgeoisie that was financing Indian National Congress – and thus acted against the Muslims.

To my maternal grandfather, Gandhi was an embodiment of humanity someone who genuinely believed in the indivisible nature of Indian people, their “religious plurality” and their existence as one multireligious nation defined by history and geography and connected by bonds of rivers, hills, mountains, love ballads and art forms.

“While she is bathing, I keep my eyes tightly shut,” he said, “I do not know … whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses soap.”

Gandhi to my maternal grandfather was a soul above religion, someone who kept ‘fast unto death’ to compel Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister, to release Pakistan’s funds and supplies – and this is what earned him Godsey’s bullets.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – like Jinnah, Nehru and ZA Bhutto – was present on my breakfast table, he was part of my lunch and dinner as I was growing in a sleepy town of Mirpur Azad Kashmir overlooking the placid blue waters of Mangla lake.

Coming back to his politics, the fundamental question is: could his vision be based on flawed assumptions? Let’s look at the discussions between Gandhi and the British government during the 1931–32 Round Table Conferences in London.

Gandhi vehemently opposed any form of a constitutional package that enshrined rights or representations based on religious identities. He argued that it would not bring people together but divide them, perpetuate their status and divert the attention from India’s struggle to end the colonial rule.

The British were offering reforms that would keep the Indian subcontinent as a dominion short of full independence, like Australia and New Zealand. The British negotiators thus proposed constitutional reforms on a British Dominion model that established separate electorates based on religious and social divisions.

The British questioned the Congress party and Gandhi’s authority to speak for all of India. They invited Indian religious leaders, from Muslims, Sikhs and Dalits to press their demands along religious lines. B. R. Ambedkar was invited as the representative leader of the untouchables.

These were the initial political ideas that remained on the table with different modifications till the final rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan by Congress in 1946. Muslims by that time – though still without effective leadership – were getting clear that they have a separate distinct identity and that they need “constitutional safeguards” to protect their economic and social interests – especially if British leave.

Without these constitutional safeguards they will be forced to become part of a hypothetical Indian nation, but they had realized that this “Indian Nation” will exist only on paper and in reality, it would be a Hindu dominated political order, a Hindu Rashtra, in which they feared that they will be compelled to lose themselves, their distinct history and identity.

It was principally Gandhi’s intransigence during the Round Table Conferences in 1931/32 – on behalf of Congress – that blocked all progress. On a tactical level, Gandhi was then jostling to obtain greater leverage for Congress, but on a strategic level, his argument was that Indians were one nation.

This is where his assumptions may have been flawed. At the beginning of the 20th century, British India may have started to look like a “nation state,” but in reality, it was an imperial order stitched together by an external force: English.

Gandhi India's flawed vision
Dr. Sushila Nayyar, Gandhi’s personal physician

Throughout the past two thousand years, Hindustan had seen powerful empires in north or south or east and west of that large sub-continent and British themselves had stitched more than 560 princely states with varying levels of autonomy with British India through various legal instruments.

From the battle of Plassey, in 1757 till 1947, Britain had ruled East and South of India for altogether around 190 years; but this was a very uneven rule that varied in its depth and control.

English conquered Punjab only in 1842, Sindh in 1849 and Balochistan in 1881. British India started to look like an “Indian nation” because of so many things that suddenly happened, in rapid succession, after 1858 when the British crown took direct control of Delhi.

These included: the emergence of a common judicature, cantonments of British Indian army, Indian railways, the advent of the telegraph, India Radio, press, rise of Congress and other political parties and a process of political struggle and reforms.

All these developments within 5-6 decades of direct British rule created the impression of the existence of a nation state. But in reality, it was not; it was an imperial order that relied upon the presence of British as a “catalytic third force” – for this order to continue after the departure of British, it needed a new constitutional framework.

So, it’s time to ask: Has Gandhi’s professed vision of “religious pluralism” finally collapsed forever? Was it ever real? Was Mahatma mislead; had based his politics on flawed assumptions about the history of Hindustan, about the nature of British India? Or his opponents who considered him a shrewd wily politician masquerading like a saint to advance his political interests right?

Today the ubiquitous presence of a single sentence “Muslims demanded a separate homeland” misleads young and unaware readers and negates the Indian political process that continued for a quarter-century from 1920 till 1946.

It could have resulted in a loose federation or confederation replacing British imperial order. In time, even a confederation, with a common market, could have matured into a federation.

But all of this needed robust political work and continuing dialogue. Gandhi’s fixation (along with Nehru and others) on the pre-existence of an Indian nation or the “idea of India” actually derailed the “idea of India” – it was a work in making; it needed an out of box constitutional framework.

Gandhi India's flawed vision

What is now happening on Indian streets – after CAA and NCR – and what is happening in Kashmir, what happened in Gujarat in 2002 pogroms under Modi, what happened to Babri Mosque in 1991, how an Indian Supreme Court ultimately decided the fate of Babri mosque and how Indian Muslims have fared educationally and financially over the past 70 years are the developments that manifest a reality of South Asia.

And this unfolding of reality, this expression of the genotype of Hindu Rashtra, persuades us to believe that either Gandhi’s vision was flawed or he was a shrewd politician who masqueraded as a “Mahatma” to advance and protect the narrow interest of his own side. Perhaps the cerebrally challenged Nathuram Godsey could not understand this “fine point,” and maybe my father was right and my grandfather was just an idealist.

Why Govt must send “Judge’s Reference” to Supreme Judicial Council?

Moeed Pirzada
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Why Govt must send “Judge’s Reference” to Supreme Judicial Council?

Many lawyers, members of Bar Associations, retired Judges and media commentators are now making a case that Govt. should not rush to Supreme Judicial Council because its reference against the crazy judge, Waqqar Seth may not be admitted, may not meet the legal requirements, may not be a fit case for declaring the judge medically “insane” and so on.

They are wrong -and they may also represent a clandestine effort to frustrate and defeat the “right thing” government needs to do. PTI government and its ministers also appear confused. They fear that this may represent another confrontation with the judiciary and since all Bar Associations will support the “crazy judge” therefore chances of success are slim.

Cromwell saga represents an England that was struggling to emerge from its medieval era. Criminals and rebels were often quartered and their bodies dragged without sledges on streets

Unfortunately, PTI government – and its multifarious allies of all colours and shades in and outside the parliament – have never been known for “moral clarity” and with every next compromise this motley crowd is weakening its position.

Para- 66: Where its coming from? 

First let me connect those who may have missed the context for one or the other reason. I am referring to the infamous “Para-66” of the verdict of a special court in Pakistan that awarded death sentence to Gen. Musharraf, ex-President of Pakistan for his Nov 2007 decision of imposing emergency and detaining judges he had forcibly removed through a Provisional Court Order (PCO of Nov 3, 2007) which was later deemed invalid by a restored Supreme Court in 2009.

I am not discussing the verdict of death sentence – though there is much to discuss there, but here I am exclusively concerned with the “Para-66” of the verdict in which Waqqar Khan Seth, presiding judge of the Special Court (who ironically also happens to be the Chief Justice of Peshawar High Court) wrote that:

“We direct the law enforcement agencies to strive their level best to apprehend the fugitive/convict (Musharraf) and to ensure that the punishment is inflicted as per law and if found dead, his corpse be dragged to the D-Chowk (in front of the Parliament House), Islamabad, Pakistan, and be hanged for three days.”

D-Chowk is a popular land mark in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital famous for political speeches and rallies. And the sentiments are apparently drawn from the 17th century exhumation and post-humous execution of Oliver Cromwell and other regicides at the orders of Charles-II.

Wrong Lessons from Cromwell Saga? 

Most in Pakistan don’t realise that post-humous execution of Cromwell, on 30th January of 1661 was arranged exactly on the anniversary of beheading of Charles-I ordered by the High Court of Justice on 30th January of 1649. It was to take revenge for the regicide in a medieval era England where 12 other regicides (who were found alive in 1659) were quartered and their bodies were dragged in streets.

To most Pakistanis, including many in the legal community, Cromwell saga represents the plight of a usurper who had destroyed parliament and was punished to restore democracy or rule of law. Pakistanis also apparently believe that England became safe for democracy after the post-humous execution of Cromwell.

In reality, this 17th century saga is part of the English civil wars when briefly between 1649 and 1659, England was declared a republic after the defeat of Stuart Kings at the hands of parliamentarian army raised by a defiant House of Commons.

Cromwell was not a solider but a parliamentarian (Short & Long Parliaments, 1640-48) who ended up becoming a commander in the parliamentarian army. In 1899, British Parliament commissioned an expensive bronze statute to commemorate services of Oliver Cromwell to British democracy and this still exists outside House of Commons. I have recently explained all this in a video blog to educate young Pakistanis.

Pakistan: Primitive & Medieval in 21st Century?

But Cromwell saga represents an England that was struggling to emerge from its medieval era. Criminals and rebels were often quartered and their bodies dragged without sledges on streets. A High Court judge, in Pakistan in 2019, first half of 21st century, writing in a court verdict dealing with the ex-President of the country that “his corpse be dragged to the D-Chowk (in front of the Parliament House), Islamabad, Pakistan, and be hanged for three days.” represents an unacceptable side of Pakistan’s own primitive medieval psyche.

Many on streets, in politics, on media use such a violent language. But this is not a mere catharsis of a frustrated public. In past 20 years there has been more than one instance of a tribal jirga implementing primitive medieval era punishments.

Mukhtaran Mai’s who was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal jirga of Mastoi tribe in 2002 is one example known world wide but many more such instances – in the context of “Wani or Karo-Kari” may have happened and some were reported too. But can this be accepted from a High Court judge?

Courts and judges are different from Jirgas. Court derives its power and authorisation from either a constitution or some statute. It does not operate in a vacuum. How judge “Waqqar Seth” justified his order in Para-66, where he derived legitimacy and authority for this order remains to be examined.

What is the state of mind, quality of education and world view of a judge who actually writes something like that in ‘black and white’ in an official judgement next to a court seal representing a state? Can this “mind set” be allowed to exist on a high court bench; can such a man be elevated to Supreme Court of Pakistan?

What’s the right thing to do? 

Coming back to the Question: Should the government file the reference against this medieval era mentality judge, Waqqar Seth, to the Supreme Judicial Council or not?

Most in the Bar Associations will not welcome that. And many lawyers and media commentators specialise in obfuscation, in creating newer issues and sub-themes to distract from a subject and defeat the “Truth”.

Thus the latest arguments, being debated on the media channels are that: Supreme Judicial Council may not (or should not) accept reference built around a court judgment, that judge’s “mental competence” or ‘insanity’ can only be determined through a medical board; reference will weaken Pakistan’s position in the ICJ because a past decision of this judge was quoted in proceedings there and finally that government may be embarrassed because of its failure in getting the Judge Seth disqualified from Supreme Judicial Council.

All these arguments are patently dishonest arguments (some like the reference towards ICJ are based on flawed assumptions) appear to be part of a well planned political campaign to frustrate and stop the government from doing something “right” which this government has to do for preserving the sanity and self-image of the nation state of Pakistan.

Fundamental reality is that elected Government of PM Imran Khan, Supreme Court of Pakistan and its Supreme Judicial Council are answerable to history and to global consciousness. No amount of legal chicanery, references to this decision or that, or sub-sections of one the other law can be allowed to defeat something which represents a state’s “moral responsibility” towards its people and to the world in the beginning of 21st century.

If we lose out to the trickery of lawyers and media spin masters then we will accept that Pakistan is such a primitive nation that a High Court Judge who displayed his “medieval mind set” in writing in an official verdict was not challenged because of mere technicalities.

Should Govt cite previous judgements?

Absolutely not! Some quarters, perhaps in a deliberate attempt to confuse and defeat the government initiative had suggested that some previous judgments of the same judge (eg, Release of terror accused etc) should also be made part of the Reference to Supreme Judicial Council.

Logic is that it will show that this judge is consistently erratic or unreasonable. This is either plain stupid or a conspiracy. Any additions to the reference will only weaken it. – and dilute the enormous significance of the savagery of “Para-66” Any such additions will give rise to a bigger debate, will broaden the proceedings and will backfire.

Supreme Judicial Council will not submit to excuses of trivial legal lacunae or technicalities to reject or delay applying its mind to challenge of Para-66

Government should simply file the reference only and only focused on Para-66. President of Pakistan should inform the Supreme Judicial Council that government is of the considered opinion that in view of Para-66, this judge (Waqqar Seth) is not fit to be on the bench. Let Supreme Judicial Council of Pakistan apply its mind to the issue.

Let judge explain its position. Supreme Court and Supreme Judicial Council both are responsible to the Pakistani nation, history and the world. Many quietly fear that Courts in Pakistan have often operated in whimsical fashion.

A bizarre looking petition from a character without any credibility or suspicious antecedents may be accepted and a substantive petition from a trustworthy citizen may be rejected or left lying for years without being taken up. Well meaning and most intelligent arguments are shot down and patently superficial arguments are sometimes accepted.

While there may be elements of truth in such fears, but I am pretty hopeful that Supreme Judicial Council will not submit to excuses of trivial legal lacunae or technicalities to reject or delay applying its mind to challenge of Para-66. We all are answerable to history – including Supreme Court of Pakistan. Let the Apex Court apply its mind to the gravity of “Para-66” and its implications.

How rogue lawyers are destroying courts?

Moeed Pirzada
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How rogue lawyers are destroying courts?

How Pakistan’s judiciary is being undermined by rogue lawyers? Apparently this is not being understood by the top minds in Pakistan’s bar and bench. How else do we make sense of an amazingly weak decision of an Anti-Terror Court (ATC) in Lahore on 12th December and total silence by Supreme Court of Pakistan – lead by a scholar judge like Asif Saeed Khosa.

ATC Judge, Honorable, Mr. Abdul Qayyum Khan, denied police’s request for ‘physical remand‘ (custody) of 46 arrested lawyers. These 46 lawyers, arrested after two FIR’s, were part of around 250-300 lawyers who attacked Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) on 11th.

Their pretext was a satirical video made against their key leaders by a certain Dr. Irfan of PIC Hospital. In this video, this young doctor, looking like a joker, standing on a bench, and surrounded by doctors and nurses, was making fun of the lawyers who according to him had gone from post to pillar but could not register an Anti-Terror FIR against him and his colleagues (that incident also related to an earlier scuffle inside the hospital).

Satirical Video cited as provocation? 

Logic and rationality have suffered so badly in Pakistan’s legal profession and politics that many senior lawyers and at least some key politicians have tried making the case in full public view (on TV and parliament) that attacking lawyers are not wholly responsible since they were provoked by the video.

This bizarre logic is symptomatic of Pakistani mental pathology where words like “Rule of Law” and “Justice” etc are used without the slightest of understanding of principles that define the evolution of law.

It’s even more disappointing for a Muslim nation whose governing philosophy, Islam, effectively differentiates between both Equality and Equity. It’s the concept of “Equity” that is more or less defined as “proportionate” in modern western law. Islam was clear about “Equity” 1500 years ago.

So it is more than funny when senior lawyers and a politician try justifying the attack on a hospital – because a video by a young doctor had made fun of lawyers. With this definition of “provocation” being debated on TV, no wonder, Pakistani lawyers, the legal profession, courts, and jurists have not earned any place or impact in the world of jurisprudence.

Hospital Attack: Primitive Mindset? 

What happened was grisly and unbelievable. A group of rogue lawyers, between 250-300, wearing their customary black jackets, marched from Lahore courts, with sticks and bars in their hands, raising slogans of revenge and after marching for almost two hours like a primitive Lashkar – of Nader Shah Durrani or Ghulam Qadir Rohilla – attacked and ransacked Punjab’s Institute of Cardiology beating doctors, nurses, paramedics.

These lawyers, wearing black jackets, barged into Operation theatres, ICU, Radiology and Nurse’s wards and destroyed sophisticated equipment. During this mayhem, 3-4 patients died inside the hospital and few lawyers were caught on TV cameras openly displaying pistols. Patients, many of whom critically ill, had to run off saving lives. The hospital remained closed for the next two days with its equipment under repair and patients were shuffled to other hospitals.

This event was grotesque in itself, unparalleled in the history of the sub-continent at least, but what followed was even more ugly. Instead of being condemned, most Bar Associations across Punjab and even in Islamabad went to demonstrations, strikes, and protests to support the “Rogue Lawyers of Lahore” that had attacked a hospital.

And when 46 arrested lawyers were presented by police to an ATC Court for physical remand, the honorable judge refused to remand to police and sent the arrested lawyers to judicial lock-up – that means police will not be able to investigate, not collect evidence and will end up with a weak case leading to easy acquittal of these lawyers who had attacked a Hospital.

Hospitals are not attacked even in wars. When such attacks rarely happened (accidental aerial strikes) they were almost always accepted as blunders and attackers apologized. Actions of lawyers in Lahore are thus unprecedented, but the way things are on ground it looks likely that they will remain unpunished and courts will not be able to act decisively to set a deterrent.

I have commented on this bizarre situation in two video blogs on two consecutive days.

But I have noticed that these two blogs have generated less interest than my blogs on politics of Imran Khan and his opposition or issues of India and Pakistan- this is another tragedy of consciousness because attack on Hospital by lawyers and a muted reaction by courts has far serious implications for Pakistan than anything Imran Khan and his opposition can do on a daily or weekly basis.

In Pakistan law is mostly debated as sections and sub-sections of statutory law or articles of the constitution. Smartness lies in giving new meaning to these sections and sub-sections or reinterpreting past judgments. A country of 220 million does not have proper law colleges and practitioners of law are hired as faculty for the outfits that function as law colleges.

There is no real concept of legal academia. Pakistan has no legal researchers, writers or jurists and whatever has been produced in the last 70 plus years has not created an impact in the world.

The goal of all legal education, in Pakistan, is to get a degree (with or without studying) that can facilitate getting a license. In many instances, both degree and license may have been obtained by fraud or cheating. Many Pakistani lawyers that have gone to the UK for getting LLM (I have been told by lawyers) have never passed their exams but they keep on introducing themselves as LLM.

Young lawyers without proper education, skill sets and practice are extremely frustrated and ideas of protests, demonstration and violence allure them. They can be easily seduced by terms like Democracy, Justice, Bureaucracy and so on – often without any understanding that may lay behind these concepts.

Courts: Exist for themselves or for the realm? 

In this peculiar climate much hyped by a nascent expansion of TV media (of which I am a part), it is not understood that modern law, implemented through courts, is a sophisticated concept. A crude underdeveloped state or administration can exist without independent courts.

Ideas of Executive Magistracy are not much far in our past and still many legal and administrative jurisdictions in the world may be toying with similar ideas where governments and administrations run their own courts and legal dispensations. Bottom line is that courts, in a historical perspective, are not indispensable.

For those who fail to grasp this rather academic statement, there is more to chew. Courts exist and function in a supportive political and administrative setup. Courts can function when a sovereign exists with its structural wherewithal and provides the physical force that is needed for the implementation of court decisions. Courts don’t possess troops or policing and administrative power to implement whatever they decide.

Courts thus function as brains, as highest forums of logical and rational decision making of a realm – but of a realm. They don’t and cannot exist on their own. And let’s not forget, courts fall when a sovereign falls due to defeat, destabilization or anarchy. When Mughal Emperor Shah Alam was being kicked by goons of Ghulam Qadir Rohilla, no Qazi courts could function to give relief to the public or the realm.

When Mughal princesses were being raped in Red Fort by Rohillas they were not expecting help from Mughal courts and Qazis but were praying for soldiers of Maratha General, Mahadji Scindia to arrive and save their honor. When Bahadur Shah Zafar falls then it was the courts of East India Company or later the English Crown that mattered.

It is said that law and music are the highest achievements of human civilization and mind – the reason perhaps is that both reflect the human grasp of proportion. Law is the codification of human logic and reasoning. While it finds expressions as sections and sub-sections but if interpretation ignores the philosophy behind then courts cease to exist – for buildings, furniture and fixtures don’t constitute a court; it’s the moral authority of the decision that matters.

If courts fail to support a realm, then sooner or later they cease to exist for a frail, chaotic and disorderly realm fails to provide the structural strength which courts need for their functioning.

It’s high time for Pakistan’s legal minds in bar and the bench to grapple with the challenge thrown up by rogue lashkars of young lawyers.

Decision by ATC Judge has set a stage for a very weak state that will fail to effectively punish an “Act against Humanity” unless culprits who planned and attacked the Punjab Institute of Cardiology on 11th December are convicted and punished effectively to set a deterrence, state of Pakistan (the realm) and its courts both will not be able to save themselves from the “Anarchy” that awaits them.

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