Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [250]
The line you often hear from the Pathan upper classes, that traditionally mullahs had little prestige in Pathan society, being little better than common village servants, paid in kind to perform prayers at marriages and funerals, is therefore only partially correct.
Or rather, it is correct enough as far as the lowly village mullah is concerned. As with your average Catholic parish priest in the Mediterranean in the past – semi-literate, venal and living in sin with his ‘housekeeper’ – the population needs their sacred services, but not their advice. They are in fact regarded rather like a service caste, one step above the potters and plumbers (or how plumbers would be regarded if there were any plumbing). This is especially true because, as in the villages of traditional Catholic Europe, the population knows very well not only all the mullah’s personal failings, but also how much he is under the thumb of the local landlords. ‘You wife of a mullah’ is a common Pathan insult. Or as another saying has it, ‘The mullah should have his milk, be it from a bitch or a donkey.’
As with medieval Catholic Europe, however, this ironical attitude to the local priest in no way implies mockery of the sacred as such, or blocks admiration for figures who seem to have a direct relationship with the sacred. In the Pathan lands, as elsewhere, this is associated originally with a successful claim to be a Sayyid, or descendant of the Prophet. Such figures never become village mullahs, or ‘imams’ of local mosques – this is far beneath them. Sayyids have always played an immensely important and prestigious role in local society. According to Barth:
The status of saints makes them particularly suited to the role of mediator or arbitrator ... In making political use of their role as peacemakers, saints must take numerous variables into account and in fact be rather clever. In the words of one prominent saint, ‘I look like a simple man; I live simply – but oh! The things I do!’ The settlements which a saint proposes must be justified by reference to some rule or ideal. They must also take cognizance of de facto situations, and the saint must be skilled in inventing compromises and face-saving devices ... But without some force to back them, such manipulations sooner or later fall to the ground. The necessary force derives from several sources, but if the saint himself disposes of some military power, however little, this greatly enlarges his field of manoeuvre.21
One last element must be mentioned in the historical genealogy of jihad on the Frontier. This is the role of non-Pathan Islamists from elsewhere, who move to the region partly to find safe havens, and partly to mobilize the warlike Pathans to join in wider international struggles and agendas. From the early nineteenth century, radical Islamists in India intermittently moved to the tribal areas, as the only unconquered areas of the Indian subcontinent, and home to famously warlike people who might be inspired to join in jihad, first against the Sikhs, then against the British. A century later, in the wake of the First World War, another Islamist, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni, wrote of his group’s anti-British strategy:
Without violence, evicting the angrez from Hindustan was impossible. For this, a centre, weapons and mujahidin were necessary. Hence it was thought that arrangements for weapons and recruitment of soldiers should be conducted in the area of the ‘free tribes’.22
The veteran Frontier political agent and last British governor of the NWFP, Sir Olaf Caroe, wrote that such forces from outside, as well as the Pathans’ own religious leaders, were unable to sustain jihad for long:
A leader appears, and unites tribal sentiment in a surge of enthusiasm that carries all before it. For a while internal jealousies are laid aside, and an enthusiastic loyalty is forthcoming. Individuals are found ready to face death for a cause, and no one counts the cost. The idea of sacrifice is in the