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ANALYSIS: What is false within Salman Tarik Kureshi
A holistic process of integration will be needed. Such a process is only possible after (and if) the cleansing process, commenced so far in Swat and Buner, is fully and successfully extended to FATA
Three weeks into action, the Malakand campaign is mercifully uninterrupted by faint-hearted politicos, milquetoast Assembly resolutions or disastrous deals. Unlike in the past, it certainly seems that this action will continue until substantive results are achieved. A little introspection would not be out of place.
In a time that now seems many ages away, the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto mused upon the stirrings of a revolution in the Third World and felt that this could never be suppressed. He said, We all [are] children of revolution, a revolution whose onward march may sometimes be arrested by our own weaknesses and contradictions but cannot be stopped... We in the Third World should not be swayed by conspiratorial theories and forget the fact that the fault lies on the ground and within ourselves. To quote Meredith, we are betrayed by what is false within.
In the three-and-a-half decades since these musings, the revolution perceived by Mr Bhutto seems to have evaporated and conspiratorial theories spawn unendingly as the Pakistani state shakes itself to pieces. The fatal flaw truly lies, it seems, within our selves, in what is false within.
Even at the time Mr Bhutto recorded these observations, at least one such fatal falsity was exemplified in the fawning figure by the prime ministers own side of a military general, whose obsequious manner disguised immense and ruthless personal ambition. Where we are today, in Swat, Waziristan and elsewhere, is owed in substantial measure to the dark regime visited on the country by this satanic general.
But it is altogether too easy to pin the blame for all that has gone wrong on the shoulders of a single fanatical evildoer. There was much that was false within during the regime of Mr Bhutto, his predecessors and his successors the prime ministers own blind hubris being not the only fatal flaw.
A fatal flaw is a fundamental defect a blind spot, a false intent, a dishonourable policy that ineluctably leads to tragic disaster. These are distinct from the societal fault lines (of ethnicity, class, sect, tribe, whatever), so beloved of political commentators, which cause conflicts within a political entity. Properly handled, such angularities are capable of yielding powerful syntheses.
But the kinds of fatal flaws that lie deep within the psyche of our ruling groups, have led only to violence, bloodshed and social breakdown. They are the false institutional threads woven through the warp and woof of this countrys social and political fabric.
One such fatal flaw has been the contempt for constitutional principles and the rule of law that has permitted continued existence of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas: these are all said to be under the direct charge of the President of the Islamic Republic.
But, let it be quite clear, the laws of the state of Pakistan do not prevail here. This is both a legal fact and a reality on the ground. Now, if the normal laws of a state do not apply in a particular region, meaning that the legislature of the state cannot legislate regarding that region, ordinary logic inescapably suggests that the state cannot be considered as sovereign in that region.
From the beginning, Pakistan has done nothing to integrate these regions with the rest of the country. Worse, where the administrators of the British Raj, through a combination of guile and clever management, had generally succeeded in exercising substantial indirect control over these areas, even their kind of hikmat-e amli has since disappeared altogether.
A flourishing trade in smuggled goods sprang up in the FATA belt. Customs check posts were established well inside the borders of Pakistan in a futile attempt at preventing these goods from entering our cities without paying customs levies.
In the course of time, other extra-legal trades developed: illicit weaponry and illicit drugs. Kalashnikovs, Uzis, TTs and Mausers were streaming southwards to meet the demand of the criminal bands, ethnic gangs and sectarian killers of Karachi.
As regards drugs, the heroin factories in FATA, which appeared in the subcontinent for the first time, churned out their lethal powders for marketing into Karachi (which came to boast of the largest population of hard drug addicts anywhere) and export to the rest of the world.
By the 1990s, motor vehicles stolen in Lahore and other cities were being spirited away into the tribal areas, there to be repainted and sold back into those very cities. Kidnap victims were lodged in this wild region-beyond-the-law while their fingers and toes were cut off one at a time and dispatched to their relatives to stimulate rapid compliance with ransom demands.
The point is that, thanks to the negligence of every Pakistani government over the decades, these regions had been allowed to become a Criminals Paradise an extended band of lawlessness along our northwest that sheltered and offered a staging ground for every kind of organised crime and hospitable refuge to fugitives from justice. These latter have included the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
At first, they used these regions principally as staging grounds for incursions into Afghanistan, actions that both NATO and President Karzai are continually protesting. But, after 2003, the regime of General Pervez Musharraf permitted the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan of Baitullah Mehsud and others to gain control of a huge swathe of territory, within which it now actively governs collecting taxes and operating a crude police force and primitive justice system.
Whatever negligible writ of the threatened state of Pakistan may have existed, it has completely disappeared now and this region has become an entirely separate Islamic Emirate. The violent primitives spawned here have erupted outward to the districts of Pishin, Peshawar, Bannu, Kohat and, most dramatically, the Swat valley. They have carried their war against the state of Pakistan into our major cities, from Peshawar to Karachi, and abroad to Mumbai. Their terror bombings have caused the mass murder of citizens everywhere and they are clearly implicated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Victory in Swat will be utterly incomplete if the tribal regions are not also cleansed of these murderous insurgents. More, the state of Pakistan will remain in mortal peril. The point is that the FATA Band of Anarchy will continue to fling out destructive tendrils in every direction, until such time as this belt ceases to exist as a separate political and administrative entity.
As I have suggested in these pages before, a holistic process of integration comprising a raft of constitutional, economic, ideological and administrative measures will be needed. Such a process is only possible after (and if) the cleansing process, commenced so far in Swat and Buner, is fully and successfully extended to FATA.
To enlarge on the lines from George Meredith that Mr Bhutto quoted above:
Its morning: but no morning can restore
What we have forfeited...In tragic life,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betrayed by what is false within.
The long-standing neglect of the tribal areas is only one of the many fatal flaws that is destroying us. There are others, on some of which I will touch in later articles, but this one has had a special significance. Worse (and this is the tragic part), it had been capable of less painful remedy for most of our history.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet
A holistic process of integration will be needed. Such a process is only possible after (and if) the cleansing process, commenced so far in Swat and Buner, is fully and successfully extended to FATA
Three weeks into action, the Malakand campaign is mercifully uninterrupted by faint-hearted politicos, milquetoast Assembly resolutions or disastrous deals. Unlike in the past, it certainly seems that this action will continue until substantive results are achieved. A little introspection would not be out of place.
In a time that now seems many ages away, the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto mused upon the stirrings of a revolution in the Third World and felt that this could never be suppressed. He said, We all [are] children of revolution, a revolution whose onward march may sometimes be arrested by our own weaknesses and contradictions but cannot be stopped... We in the Third World should not be swayed by conspiratorial theories and forget the fact that the fault lies on the ground and within ourselves. To quote Meredith, we are betrayed by what is false within.
In the three-and-a-half decades since these musings, the revolution perceived by Mr Bhutto seems to have evaporated and conspiratorial theories spawn unendingly as the Pakistani state shakes itself to pieces. The fatal flaw truly lies, it seems, within our selves, in what is false within.
Even at the time Mr Bhutto recorded these observations, at least one such fatal falsity was exemplified in the fawning figure by the prime ministers own side of a military general, whose obsequious manner disguised immense and ruthless personal ambition. Where we are today, in Swat, Waziristan and elsewhere, is owed in substantial measure to the dark regime visited on the country by this satanic general.
But it is altogether too easy to pin the blame for all that has gone wrong on the shoulders of a single fanatical evildoer. There was much that was false within during the regime of Mr Bhutto, his predecessors and his successors the prime ministers own blind hubris being not the only fatal flaw.
A fatal flaw is a fundamental defect a blind spot, a false intent, a dishonourable policy that ineluctably leads to tragic disaster. These are distinct from the societal fault lines (of ethnicity, class, sect, tribe, whatever), so beloved of political commentators, which cause conflicts within a political entity. Properly handled, such angularities are capable of yielding powerful syntheses.
But the kinds of fatal flaws that lie deep within the psyche of our ruling groups, have led only to violence, bloodshed and social breakdown. They are the false institutional threads woven through the warp and woof of this countrys social and political fabric.
One such fatal flaw has been the contempt for constitutional principles and the rule of law that has permitted continued existence of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas: these are all said to be under the direct charge of the President of the Islamic Republic.
But, let it be quite clear, the laws of the state of Pakistan do not prevail here. This is both a legal fact and a reality on the ground. Now, if the normal laws of a state do not apply in a particular region, meaning that the legislature of the state cannot legislate regarding that region, ordinary logic inescapably suggests that the state cannot be considered as sovereign in that region.
From the beginning, Pakistan has done nothing to integrate these regions with the rest of the country. Worse, where the administrators of the British Raj, through a combination of guile and clever management, had generally succeeded in exercising substantial indirect control over these areas, even their kind of hikmat-e amli has since disappeared altogether.
A flourishing trade in smuggled goods sprang up in the FATA belt. Customs check posts were established well inside the borders of Pakistan in a futile attempt at preventing these goods from entering our cities without paying customs levies.
In the course of time, other extra-legal trades developed: illicit weaponry and illicit drugs. Kalashnikovs, Uzis, TTs and Mausers were streaming southwards to meet the demand of the criminal bands, ethnic gangs and sectarian killers of Karachi.
As regards drugs, the heroin factories in FATA, which appeared in the subcontinent for the first time, churned out their lethal powders for marketing into Karachi (which came to boast of the largest population of hard drug addicts anywhere) and export to the rest of the world.
By the 1990s, motor vehicles stolen in Lahore and other cities were being spirited away into the tribal areas, there to be repainted and sold back into those very cities. Kidnap victims were lodged in this wild region-beyond-the-law while their fingers and toes were cut off one at a time and dispatched to their relatives to stimulate rapid compliance with ransom demands.
The point is that, thanks to the negligence of every Pakistani government over the decades, these regions had been allowed to become a Criminals Paradise an extended band of lawlessness along our northwest that sheltered and offered a staging ground for every kind of organised crime and hospitable refuge to fugitives from justice. These latter have included the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
At first, they used these regions principally as staging grounds for incursions into Afghanistan, actions that both NATO and President Karzai are continually protesting. But, after 2003, the regime of General Pervez Musharraf permitted the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan of Baitullah Mehsud and others to gain control of a huge swathe of territory, within which it now actively governs collecting taxes and operating a crude police force and primitive justice system.
Whatever negligible writ of the threatened state of Pakistan may have existed, it has completely disappeared now and this region has become an entirely separate Islamic Emirate. The violent primitives spawned here have erupted outward to the districts of Pishin, Peshawar, Bannu, Kohat and, most dramatically, the Swat valley. They have carried their war against the state of Pakistan into our major cities, from Peshawar to Karachi, and abroad to Mumbai. Their terror bombings have caused the mass murder of citizens everywhere and they are clearly implicated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Victory in Swat will be utterly incomplete if the tribal regions are not also cleansed of these murderous insurgents. More, the state of Pakistan will remain in mortal peril. The point is that the FATA Band of Anarchy will continue to fling out destructive tendrils in every direction, until such time as this belt ceases to exist as a separate political and administrative entity.
As I have suggested in these pages before, a holistic process of integration comprising a raft of constitutional, economic, ideological and administrative measures will be needed. Such a process is only possible after (and if) the cleansing process, commenced so far in Swat and Buner, is fully and successfully extended to FATA.
To enlarge on the lines from George Meredith that Mr Bhutto quoted above:
Its morning: but no morning can restore
What we have forfeited...In tragic life,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betrayed by what is false within.
The long-standing neglect of the tribal areas is only one of the many fatal flaws that is destroying us. There are others, on some of which I will touch in later articles, but this one has had a special significance. Worse (and this is the tragic part), it had been capable of less painful remedy for most of our history.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet
