The Pakistan Problem isn’t Just the Government. It’s the People
By
Jonathan Kay
Feb 18,
2012
Since the
Taliban resurgence began gaining force in 2005, a common refrain in the West
has been that Pakistan must “do more” to rein in the Jihadis who are drawing
support from bases in the borderlands of Balochistan and Waziristan. American
officials have made countless visits to Pakistan to deliver variations on this
message — with nothing to show for it.
Earlier
this year, the BBC disclosed a secret NATO report, based on 27,000
interrogations with captured Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees, concluding that Jihadis
operating in Afghanistan continue to receive support and instruction from
Pakistani military handlers. One interrogated al-Qaeda detainee quoted in the
report declared: “Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can’t
[expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching.”
The usual
Sunday-Morning-talk-show explanation for this is that Pakistan is hedging its
strategic bets: Pakistani military leaders doubt the United States military can
tame Afghanistan before American combat forces’ scheduled exit in 2013. And
rather than see the country degenerate into absolute chaos (as occurred in the
early 1990s, in the wake of the Soviet departure), Pakistani military leaders
want to be in position to turn Afghanistan into a semi-orderly Pashtun-dominated
client state that provides Islamabad with “strategic depth” against India. And
the only way for them to do this is to co-opt the Taliban.
This
elaborate Great Game theorizing all makes sense. But there is another, simpler
explanation: Most ordinary Pakistanis loathe America — indeed, not only
America, but the whole of the non-Muslim world — and are only too happy to
support jihad against the NATO forces next door in Afghanistan.
Pakistani
support for the Taliban is not just a cynical expression of foreign-policy
realpolitik, in other words, but a true expression of grass-roots Pakistani
public opinion.
A good
indication of what ordinary Pakistanis think comes to us courtesy of a U.S.
government-sponsored study called “Connecting the Dots: Education and Religious
Discrimination in Pakistan,” recently produced by the U.S.-based International
Center for Religion & Diplomacy, in conjunction with an independent
Pakistani policy think tank called the Sustainable Development Policy
Institute. Together, their researchers conducted an in-depth study of the
attitudes toward non-Muslims reflected in 100 sampled Pakistani textbooks, and
in interviews with teachers and students at 37 of the country’s public schools
and 19 madrasas.
The
interviews with teachers were especially telling: This is precisely the stratum
of society — literate, educated middle-class — that one would expect to embrace
relatively moderate and enlightened attitudes. But generally speaking, the
opposite is true. Almost half of the surveyed public-school teachers did not
even know that non-Muslims could become citizens of the Pakistani state. A
common theme was that non-Muslim religions are inherently sinister, and that
friendly relations between the faiths are worth maintaining only insofar as they
can generate opportunities for Muslims to attract converts.
“All of the
public-school teachers interviewed believed the concept of jihad to refer to
violent struggle, compulsory for Muslims to engage in against the enemies of
Islam,” the report concluded. “Only a small number of teachers extended the
meaning to include both violent and nonviolent struggle.”
Ironically,
despite the negative connotations we associate with the word ‘madrasa,’ many of
the surveyed madrasa students and teachers actually displayed a more nuanced
understanding of jihad than their public-school counterparts, and even supplied
interviewers with religiously-based arguments against suicide bombings.
Nevertheless, “in every madrasa textbook reviewed, the concept of jihad has been
reduced from its wider meaning of personal development to violent conflict in
the name of Islam, considered to be the duty of every Muslim. The Koranic verse
commanding the believer to ‘kill the pagans [or infidels or unbelievers]
wherever you find them’ is often cited with no context.”
In
Pakistani textbooks, the line between mosque and state is virtually
non-existent. Students learn that international boundaries – say, between
Pakistan and Afghanistan – don’t count for much: “In all the textbooks analyzed,
the student is presented a world where concepts such as nation, constitution,
legality, standing armies, or multi-lateral organizations – except where they
are prescribed by Islamic doctrine of Sharia law – do not exist.”
There is
some good news in the report: Many of the interviewed Pakistani teachers
expressed the belief that, on an interpersonal level, non-Muslim students and
their religious practices should be treated with respect. But overall, “as many
as 80% of the respondents considered non-Muslims to be enemies of Islam.” This
feeling of enmity was justified by reference to a grab bag of complaints
against the West: acts of anti-Islamic “blasphemy,” “spreading the evil of
alcohol in Muslim society,” “killings of innocent Muslim citizens through missiles,”
and “the banning of veils [in France].”
These views
help explain why Pakistani mobs often erupt in incendiary spasms of anger not
only at drone strikes in Pakistani territory, but also at symbolic slights —
such as perceived defilements of the Koran: Bitterness and anger at non-Muslims
are deeply felt, widely shared attitudes in Pakistan; and it is doubtful they
can be addressed by any sort of goodwill campaign or foreign-policy adjustment.
Jihad, if only by proxy, will remain a popular cause for Pakistani governments
seeking to promote their Islamic bona fides.
In the long
run, in fact, Pakistan (which, let us not forget, has been a declared nuclear
power for 14 years) may prove to be an even more dangerous problem than Iran,
whose population is well-educated, and not nearly as anti-American as the
increasingly unpopular Shiite dictatorship that rules over it.
The Iranian
problem can be solved by replacing the regime. In Pakistan, the problem goes
much deeper.
Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at
the National Post, and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in
Washington, D.C.
Source: fullcomment.nationalpost.com