Many of Pakistan's anomalies are evident in its sprawling capital, Islamabad the name means an "abode of Islam." Since late January, a group of stick-wielding female students of the Jamia Hafsa Madrassa, or Islamic seminary, have occupied a state-owned children's library.
Initially, this group of girls, covered completely with traditional black-colored hijabs, protested the demolition of seven mosques and madrassas in Islamabad that were allegedly constructed without government permission. This was supposed to be part of a government campaign to exert greater control over some of Pakistan's 13,500 madrassas, a small portion of which are supposed to engage in militancy and sectarian warfare.
In the face of the protests, the government has already backtracked, indicating that it will rebuild the demolished places of worship. But another student demand, as yet unaddressed, concerns the implementation of Islamic Shariah law. "This is to ensure that the evil [of an un-Islamic political system] is eradicated from its roots," one protesting student told a local TV journalist.
Not far from the site of this ongoing confrontation, the city is undergoing a major facelift as highways are expanded and overpasses built to facilitate the ever-increasing vehicular traffic. One skyscraper offers quarter million dollar apartments across from the mud slums that dot the city's Green Belts groves of trees separating neighborhoods.
While such contradictions have always defined Pakistan, they have intensified since 9/11 when its military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraff, joined - or rather was forced to join the Bush administration's war on terror. The country's geopolitical dilemma is highlighted in a well-timed and topical book, "Frontline Pakistan; the struggle with militant Islam," written by Zahid Hussain. The book is essentially a tale of the past five years, a period in which Pakistan became one of the international linchpins of global security. As the Pakistan correspondent for the Times of London, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, Hussain has had firsthand knowledge of all the important events in Pakistan during this crucial time, including: Musharraf's U-turn against the Taliban after 9-11; Pakistan's nuclear stand-off with arch-rival India in the summer of 2002; arrests of 9-11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Ramzi bin al-Shibh; the December 2003 twin assassination attempts against Musharraf; the war in Pakistan's western tribal borderlands; the nuclear proliferation scandal, and the ongoing saga of Islamabad's love-hate relationship with Washington.
In a country where eight journalists have been killed and dozens more abducted, harassed or detained since 9/11, Hussain's painstaking description of the rise of the Jihadis, and of the links between al-Qaida, the Taliban, Pakistani and Kashmiri Islamist militant groups along with sectarian terrorists, is extremely courageous. More significant is his detailed account of how the military viewed and used many of these groups as "strategic assets," and of the blowback it had to face when, under American pressure, the same people were declared "miscreants."
Such contradictions created dilemmas in Pakistan's government policies and actions. "The politics of expediency cost Musharraf and the country dearly," Hussain rightly observes.
Hussain and his generation is witness to a major political soap opera spanning three decades. The 1979 Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan provided the United States with an opportunity to settle scores for its Vietnam debacle. As Washington subcontracted its largest-ever covert Afghan operation to the Pakistani military, it fashioned the Afghan insurrection against Soviet occupation as an Islamic Holy War Jihad.
After a decade of conflict, in which Afghans did most of the fighting and dying, the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and subsequently collapsed; America discovered new interests elsewhere, and Afghans were left with their predatory neighbors. The Pakistani military establishment declared itself the victor of Afghan Jihad and pursued more militant goals around the neighborhood. Thus the 1990s saw the rise of domestic sectarian terrorists in Pakistan and the Jihad in the disputed Himalayan state of Kashmir. The global Jihadi conglomerate found a secure base in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush with supply lines running through Pakistan.
September 11 brought home the blowback. Washington rediscovered Afghanistan, but the subcontracted project to rollback Jihad didn't work as planned. The dismantling of the Jihadist infrastructure proved more challenging than anticipated, and neo-conservative blunders further compounded an already grim situation.
The misguided invasion of Iraq provided al-Qaeda with a golden opportunity to lend credence to all its theories about western imperialism. In Pakistan, the military and the militants were pitted against one another. Musharraf has undertaken a delicate balancing act, but, so far, most of his efforts have failed to please either Washington or the Jihadis.
Similar to any journalistic narrative, Frontline Pakistan could have been expanded and, instead of being a journalist's reportage, might have been stretched to be more analytical and explanatory. One of the weaknesses of the book is the lack of a thorough and critical analysis of American policy, though most of Hussain assertions about it would appear to be self-evident truths.
"The war against militancy and Islamic extremism can be best fought and won in a liberal democracy," writes Hussain. "Musharraf's authoritarian rule has blocked any hopes of democratic process taking root. It is very clear that the restoration of democracy in Pakistan is not a priority for Washington, because a leader in uniform can deliver far more than a democratically elected one. Any army general ruling Pakistan does not trouble the West, so long as he happens to be an effective ally in the war against terror."
Abubakar Siddique is a freelance reporter in Islamabad.
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