Stuck in poverty and the militarys grip, Pakistan is on the road to ruin
By Stephen King
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
IT WAS 8 oclock on Sunday morning and I had woken early. Breakfast long since eaten, I thought Id pop to church. What I hadnt bargained for was a dozen or so armed policemen stationed outside and being frisked before I went in.
I was half-expecting some VIP but no: this is the new normal in Pakistan, it seems. The church itself was reasonably full. The congregation comprised a few married couples, one policeman, two Africans, a few local lads and about 50 nuns. I was the only European. In fact, I didnt see another white person in two days on my "weekend break with a difference".
"We live in dark days in Pakistan," the priest, himself Pakistani, intoned. Ever since Osama bin Laden had been killed by American special forces some four hours drive away, he had been receiving threats. "But we will continue to bear out our witness of Christs love," he concluded, resignedly. The nun next to me beamed.
But it is a city few Westerners have visited. That situation is unlikely to change very soon. In fact, getting a Pakistani visa requires a special kind of bloody-mindedness. When the Punjab was split in two in 1947 to satisfy Muslim demands for their own state, literally millions died as Muslims fled west and Sikhs and Hindus migrated east. Its not hard to see why the loss of Lahore with its great bazaars, temples, mosques, fort and lush colonial centre traumatised India.
Today, Lahore is a shadow of its former self: an overwhelmingly Muslim city everywhere dotted with monuments testifying to a rich multicultural past. Women maintain a discrete profile but most have their heads only lightly covered. The fundamentalists are trying to make inroads though. If you want to watch the news read by a female newsreader with her face completely covered up, you can.
More immediately obvious on the streets than the menacing green-turbaned bin Laden lookalikes are the police and army. They are everywhere. Riding around in their pick-up trucks, brandishing their German automatic rifles, they look and, by all accounts are ill-disciplined forces, a parallel state only nominally answering to the elected government.
It is said that most countries have an army but only in Pakistan does an army have a country. Revealingly, when the Americans took out bin Laden, they informed the head of the Pakistani military, not the prime minister or the president.
By and large, ordinary Pakistanis are welcoming, if curious. "Are you a Christian?" one waiter asked me, wide-eyed. "Sort of," I stammered.
I was tucking into my kebabs truly astounding taking in the scene when a young man plonked himself at my table. "I want to talk to you." With his bushy beard and skull cap the tell-tale signs of a less-than-inclusive Muslim, I might have been more taken aback were it not for his broad smile. His name was Mian. He wasnt sure of his age "20, 21, 22, something like that" and was keen to practice his English. "Do you like Pakistan?" I prattled on about the food and the friendly people although he seemed offended when I said it was cheap (which it is).
"But what about politics? What do you think of Pakistani politics?" Suddenly I came over all bashful, professing ignorance and tried to get back to the topic of kebabs. "Do you agree with what the Americans have done?" Again, I thought it wise not to be drawn. "Im not an American ask them. But a lot of people do find it hard to believe bin Laden was living in Pakistan and no one knew about it."
"Of course we in Pakistan knew! Osama bin Laden had the right to life. He had to live somewhere." Images of 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attacks with at least an equal right to life flew through my head but all I could do was the push the plate of kebabs in his direction: "Theyre delicious, you know." He refused.
"Have you travelled to any other countries?" I asked. "No, but I want to. I want to go to England there are many Pakistanis in England. And to Afghanistan. Have you been to England?" I was prattling about the many successful Pakistani businessmen in England when he got up: "Nice meeting you. Salam Alaikum." And he was gone.
Will he end up running a jeans factory in Yorkshire or shooting Yorkshire men in Kabul, I wondered?
Perhaps he will just end up teaching the Koran to another generation of Pakistanis. Pakistan itself faces a similar choice. Its economy largely textiles and food is growing but such taxes as the government can collect disproportionately go towards paying for the vast military apparatus and the ever-expanding nuclear weapons programme.
Poverty is widespread but public social services are all but non-existent. Many Pakistanis rely on the mosque to provide or on money sent from family members in Europe or the Middle East.
But until the government gets a grip and wrests real power from the security services, Pakistan isnt going anywhere fast. Last week, the parliament passed a unanimous resolution to form a commission into bin Ladens death. The focus, however, is not on how he ended up living unmolested a stones throw from the countrys main military academy. Rather, it is on how America could do what it did without so much as informing a fellow nuclear and, supposedly, allied nation.
Most Pakistanis are outraged at this lèse-majesté to their mighty armed forces. Hotheads are demanding the American supply route into Afghanistan through Karachi be broken. Certainly, an army commission to look into the armys own shortcomings is unlikely to produce anything very rigorous or meaningful.
Now that the army has again been humbled a report into the loss of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, didnt see the light of day until it was leaked decades later this might be an opportunity for the politicians to assert their authority. That seems unlikely. Few countries are blessed with such a mediocre and patently venal political class as Pakistan. The cleanest are, depressingly, the jihadist parties.
Pakistans central problem is that it lacks much by way of a shared sense of history, a defining idea. Poor is the country that has no heroes, it is said. Off the cricket field, Pakistan has just one: Mohamed Ali Jinnah who inconveniently died the year after Pakistan was born leaving little behind by way of a master plan.
The path to creating a Pakistani nation is doubtless difficult. As the population explodes, oceans of poverty deepen, limbless beggars in the streets multiply, water and clean air become scarce, education is stalemated, true democracy remains elusive, and the distance from a rapidly developing world increases.
The temptation is to give up on Pakistan. But those nuclear weapons deny the rest of the world that option.
Read more: Stuck in poverty and the military
By Stephen King
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
IT WAS 8 oclock on Sunday morning and I had woken early. Breakfast long since eaten, I thought Id pop to church. What I hadnt bargained for was a dozen or so armed policemen stationed outside and being frisked before I went in.
I was half-expecting some VIP but no: this is the new normal in Pakistan, it seems. The church itself was reasonably full. The congregation comprised a few married couples, one policeman, two Africans, a few local lads and about 50 nuns. I was the only European. In fact, I didnt see another white person in two days on my "weekend break with a difference".
"We live in dark days in Pakistan," the priest, himself Pakistani, intoned. Ever since Osama bin Laden had been killed by American special forces some four hours drive away, he had been receiving threats. "But we will continue to bear out our witness of Christs love," he concluded, resignedly. The nun next to me beamed.
But it is a city few Westerners have visited. That situation is unlikely to change very soon. In fact, getting a Pakistani visa requires a special kind of bloody-mindedness. When the Punjab was split in two in 1947 to satisfy Muslim demands for their own state, literally millions died as Muslims fled west and Sikhs and Hindus migrated east. Its not hard to see why the loss of Lahore with its great bazaars, temples, mosques, fort and lush colonial centre traumatised India.
Today, Lahore is a shadow of its former self: an overwhelmingly Muslim city everywhere dotted with monuments testifying to a rich multicultural past. Women maintain a discrete profile but most have their heads only lightly covered. The fundamentalists are trying to make inroads though. If you want to watch the news read by a female newsreader with her face completely covered up, you can.
More immediately obvious on the streets than the menacing green-turbaned bin Laden lookalikes are the police and army. They are everywhere. Riding around in their pick-up trucks, brandishing their German automatic rifles, they look and, by all accounts are ill-disciplined forces, a parallel state only nominally answering to the elected government.
It is said that most countries have an army but only in Pakistan does an army have a country. Revealingly, when the Americans took out bin Laden, they informed the head of the Pakistani military, not the prime minister or the president.
By and large, ordinary Pakistanis are welcoming, if curious. "Are you a Christian?" one waiter asked me, wide-eyed. "Sort of," I stammered.
I was tucking into my kebabs truly astounding taking in the scene when a young man plonked himself at my table. "I want to talk to you." With his bushy beard and skull cap the tell-tale signs of a less-than-inclusive Muslim, I might have been more taken aback were it not for his broad smile. His name was Mian. He wasnt sure of his age "20, 21, 22, something like that" and was keen to practice his English. "Do you like Pakistan?" I prattled on about the food and the friendly people although he seemed offended when I said it was cheap (which it is).
"But what about politics? What do you think of Pakistani politics?" Suddenly I came over all bashful, professing ignorance and tried to get back to the topic of kebabs. "Do you agree with what the Americans have done?" Again, I thought it wise not to be drawn. "Im not an American ask them. But a lot of people do find it hard to believe bin Laden was living in Pakistan and no one knew about it."
"Of course we in Pakistan knew! Osama bin Laden had the right to life. He had to live somewhere." Images of 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attacks with at least an equal right to life flew through my head but all I could do was the push the plate of kebabs in his direction: "Theyre delicious, you know." He refused.
"Have you travelled to any other countries?" I asked. "No, but I want to. I want to go to England there are many Pakistanis in England. And to Afghanistan. Have you been to England?" I was prattling about the many successful Pakistani businessmen in England when he got up: "Nice meeting you. Salam Alaikum." And he was gone.
Will he end up running a jeans factory in Yorkshire or shooting Yorkshire men in Kabul, I wondered?
Perhaps he will just end up teaching the Koran to another generation of Pakistanis. Pakistan itself faces a similar choice. Its economy largely textiles and food is growing but such taxes as the government can collect disproportionately go towards paying for the vast military apparatus and the ever-expanding nuclear weapons programme. Poverty is widespread but public social services are all but non-existent. Many Pakistanis rely on the mosque to provide or on money sent from family members in Europe or the Middle East.
But until the government gets a grip and wrests real power from the security services, Pakistan isnt going anywhere fast. Last week, the parliament passed a unanimous resolution to form a commission into bin Ladens death. The focus, however, is not on how he ended up living unmolested a stones throw from the countrys main military academy. Rather, it is on how America could do what it did without so much as informing a fellow nuclear and, supposedly, allied nation.
Most Pakistanis are outraged at this lèse-majesté to their mighty armed forces. Hotheads are demanding the American supply route into Afghanistan through Karachi be broken. Certainly, an army commission to look into the armys own shortcomings is unlikely to produce anything very rigorous or meaningful.
Now that the army has again been humbled a report into the loss of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, didnt see the light of day until it was leaked decades later this might be an opportunity for the politicians to assert their authority. That seems unlikely. Few countries are blessed with such a mediocre and patently venal political class as Pakistan. The cleanest are, depressingly, the jihadist parties.
Pakistans central problem is that it lacks much by way of a shared sense of history, a defining idea. Poor is the country that has no heroes, it is said. Off the cricket field, Pakistan has just one: Mohamed Ali Jinnah who inconveniently died the year after Pakistan was born leaving little behind by way of a master plan.
The path to creating a Pakistani nation is doubtless difficult. As the population explodes, oceans of poverty deepen, limbless beggars in the streets multiply, water and clean air become scarce, education is stalemated, true democracy remains elusive, and the distance from a rapidly developing world increases.
The temptation is to give up on Pakistan. But those nuclear weapons deny the rest of the world that option.
Read more: Stuck in poverty and the military
