Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [3]
PPP Pakistan People’s Party, led by the Bhutto – Zardari dynasty.
RAW Research and Analysis Wing (Indian intelligence agency).
SHO Station House Officer, the commander of a local police station.
SSP Sipah-e-Sahaba, Pakistan, anti-Shia militant group.
TeI Tehriq-e-Insaf, party founded and led by Imran Khan Niazi.
TNSM Tehriq-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi, Islamist mili tant movement in Swat, since 2008 allied with the Pakistani Taleban.
TTP Tehriq-e-Taleban Pakistan.
PART ONE
Land, People and History
1
Introduction: Understanding Pakistan
Eppur si muove
(And yet it moves)
(Galileo Galilei)
There have been times during the writing of this book when it seemed that it would have to be titled ‘Requiem for a Country’. At the time of writing, the pressures on Pakistan from without and within are unprecedented even in its troubled history. Yet such despair would be premature. Tariq Ali wrote Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State in 1983, a generation ago. That’s quite a long deathbed scene by any standards.1
It is possible that the terrible floods of the summer of 2010 have fundamentally changed and weakened the Pakistani system described in this book. This, however, will not be clear for a long while – and in the meantime it is worth remembering the extraordinary resilience that South Asian rural societies have often shown in the face of natural disaster, from which they have repeatedly emerged with structures of local authority and political culture essentially unchanged.
What is certainly true is that if floods and other ecological disasters on this scale become regular events as a result of climate change, then Pakistan will be destroyed as a state and an organised society – but so too will many other countries around the world. Indeed, such a development would reduce present concerns about Pakistan to relative insignificance. In the meantime, however, the floods have obviously damaged Pakistan’s national infrastructure, and retarded still further the country’s already faltering economic progress.
This book is intended to describe and analyse both Pakistan’s internal problems and the sources of Pakistan’s internal resilience. In consequence, it of course deals extensively with the threat from the Pakistani Taleban and their allies, the roots of their support, and the relationship of this support to the war in Afghanistan. It also examines the policies of the Pakistani security establishment towards Afghanistan and India, since these have had very important effects on domestic developments in Pakistan. It is not meant, however, to be a study of Pakistan’s international position, though the conclusions contain some recommendations for Western policy.
Trying to understand Pakistan’s internal structures and dynamics is complicated; for if there is one phrase which defines many aspects of Pakistan and is the central theme of this book, it is ‘Janus-faced’: in other words, many of the same features of Pakistan’s state and government which are responsible for holding Islamist extremism in check are at one and the same time responsible for holding back Pakistan’s social, economic and political development.
Pakistan is divided, disorganized, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive towards the poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism – ‘and yet it moves’, and is in many ways surprisingly tough and resilient as a state and a society. It is also not quite as unequal as it looks from outside.
Pakistan contains islands of successful modernity, and of excellent administration – not that many, but enough to help keep the country trundling along: a few impressive modern industries; some fine motorways; a university in Lahore, parts of which are the best of their kind in South Asia; a powerful, well-trained and well-disciplined army; and in every generation, a number of efficient, honest and devoted public servants. The military and police commanders of the fight against the Taleban in the Pathan areas