Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [231]
However, the ANP set out no detailed or coherent economic policy or plan for social reform – though to be fair that is difficult for any provincial government when the powers of the provinces are so limited. As of 2010, its hopes of extracting more powers from the centre had – as so often in the past – been frustrated by stonewalling in Islamabad. As a result, the party’s programme has in practice been limited to attempts at peace with the Taleban and to the demand that the NWFP be officially renamed Pakhtunkhwa. The PPP-led government in Islamabad agreed to this (in the form of ‘Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’) in April 2010 – a decision which immediately sparked riotous protests by the Hindko-speaking Hazara minority in the NWFP which left seven people dead in the town of Abbotabad. The protesters were demanding a new Hindko-speaking province of their own – another example of the way in which separatism in Pakistan is held in check by local ethnic opposition.
In one respect, however, the position of the ANP altered radically in the course of 2008 – 9: for the first time in its history, the party was forced by the Taleban revolt not just to make a covert deal with the Pakistani army, but to ally with them publicly and explicitly; and, since the ANP leadership is now completely dependent on the army for protection against assassination by the Taleban, this relationship is likely to remain. It represents a complete reversal of the party’s previous Pathan nationalist and anti-military positions, and a key political question among Pakistani Pathans for the next generation will be whether ANP activists and voters stick with the party regardless, or whether they move away to found other parties – or even are drawn by Pathan nationalism to join the Taleban, as the last Pathan nationalist force left standing.
JAMIAT-E-ULEMA-E-ISLAM (JUI, COUNCIL OF ISLAMIC CLERICS)
The contrast between public rhetoric and actual addiction to deal-making is if anything even more true of the other mainstream Pakistani party based in the Pathan areas, the Islamist JUI. In its origins this party was not Pathan, but rather a continuation of the tradition of Islamist groups from elsewhere finding fertile soil for growth on the Frontier. The party grew out of the pro-Pakistan wing of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, the leading Islamist group in India under British rule. The JUH stemmed from the revivalist religious tradition established by the Deoband madrasah in what is now the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and known as ‘Deobandi’.
For several decades the different branches of the JUI have become more and more overwhelmingly Pathan – unlike the other leading Islamist political party in Pakistan, the Jamaat Islami, which has a much more all-Pakistani character. The JUI also differs from the Jamaat in being far less intellectual and in having a far looser organization and leadership structure. In fact, rather than a modern Islamist party it resembles the ANP in being an alliance of local notables, though in the case of the JUI the notables are religious figures rather than local khans, and there is no hereditary dynasty to hold it together. Instead, there has been a succession of charismatic leaders, which has led to the party splitting into two wings, the JUI(F) led by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, and another branch led by Maulana Sami-ul-Haq.
As Joshua White writes:
Key decisions by the JUI-F are routinely made by Fazlur Rehman and a traveling coterie of personal advisors, and the party has only recently invested in a well-equipped headquarters. The combination of charismatic leadership and decentralized party structure has led to nearly constant dissension within the JUI-F, most of which is dealt with informally in Pashtun-style shuras and quiet deals.9
The JUI’s Islamism, like the ANP’s nationalism,