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Military Policies Create Disaster that will Break Up Pakistan and Wreak Havoc on the Region
By Reza Hossein Borr
Unintended consequences of mass migration of civilian residents of Sawat and its neighboring regions will be very grave in the very new future. The people who have been uprooted by the military operations of Pakistan's army will create immense problems, and the Taliban will migrate with them, in disguise, into different areas of Pakistan, which are closer to the capitol of the country.
If the people of the Swat Valley weren’t able to move freely before, they can now travel freely to in search of jobs, safety, and a better life. Wherever they go, they will carry their ideology with them. They were confined before in small areas, but thanks to the army, they have now been forced to disperse. The end result of the military operations has been the equivalent of opening the doors to prison cells and discharging a large number of potentially dangerous people (remember Sadam prior to the U.S invasion).
Like all indoctrinated people, the Pashtuns in general and the Taliban more specifically have become religious people with very strict ideas they carry with them wherever they go. They were quite satisfied in living their particular way of life for centuries in their own regions. Their culture provided a way of life after their land was joined officially to Pakistan in the 1960s. Their culture was then suddenly shaken and replaced with a system that did not fit with their ideology. Since then, they have been campaigning for the restoration of their old traditions and systems in which Sharia was only a part. The same government that is currently destroying their way of life has even signed an agreement with these people, an act which officially acknowledges the legitimacy of seeking one’s own favorable system.
The old system was very effective, locally born, native and efficient in its own way. The nostalgia for the old days drove them to seek an Islamic system of their own choice, which conflicted with the human rights charter and civil laws of Pakistan, however. But it is not only the Taliban breaking the law and violating the human rights charter. The Pakistani governments, other institutions and organizations have broken the law and violated the human rights charter more so than the Swati Taliban. Respect for law and order must first be observed by the government and its affiliated organizations. The masses follow and retaliate by mirroring the behaviors of their leaders. If the leaders respect human rights, the masses will do the same. Those who have caused the disappearance of hundreds of people are not eligible to defend the law. Those who have broken the law for 60 years cannot brake the acceleration of Talibanism.
One Pakistani general has even written a book claiming that Talibanism is the product of injustices in Pakistan. Bringing about justice, he wisely asserts, is not possible through acts creating and repeating injustices.
In the name of eradicating the Taliban, the government has hit hard a large number of Pashtuns. A disaster has been created because of lack of long-term vision and strategy. Pakistan, like any other country, must act according to the interest of its people, not under the pressure, especially for money. The money which has been promised is not even enough for reestablishing these displaced people and reconstructing the region that has been destroyed.
The present scenario has displaced 1.5 million Pashtuns, according to the United Nations. This is similar to what happened in Pakistan in the 1970s. The People's Party Leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was the Prime Minister then, when civil unrest began in Baluchistan. Under pressure by the Shah of Iran and the Americans, Bhutto brought the army to crush the civil unrest, which led to the death and displacement of a large number of the native people. A mass movement soon began against Bhutto, and the army eventually seized power and hanged Bhutto for its own actions!
It is claimed that the Punjabis dominate the Pakistani army and that the Punjabis use ruthless policies and actions to suppress the smaller provinces of Sindh, Baluchistan, and the North West Frontier. When General Musharaf was the chief of the army and president he used the army to control the Taliban in the North West Frontier very skillfully. He did not take actions of such large scale because he knew there would be unintended consequences that he could not resolve. Now, the civilian government of the Pakistan People's Party has instructed the army to use force to eliminate the Taliban, mainly because of U.S pressure.
Now the government of Pakistan is responsible. The army is using strategies contrary to guerrilla warfare, hence causing the mass migration of a large number of people. The ones responsible for this disaster will not be the army and General Kiyani but the People's Party leaders, Zardari and Gilani.
This disaster will create its own disastrous results for the Pakistan People's Party. When the mass movement against the present government begins, the army will act in the same way that it acted in the 1970s. Zardari has committed a grave mistake, a mistake that has dug his own grave. If he is a wise politician, he will find a way out of this disaster but that is very unlikely.
Once again, the Punjabi dominated army has found a new Sindhi victim. The army spokesman emphasizes that the army has acted according to the instructions of the present government. The majority will blame Zardari more than the army. The army will suppress the Pashtuns and victimize Zardari, hitting very hard at two of its enemies at the same time.
The people who have lost everything are prepared to take revenge. The Pashtuns are very revengeful people who have never forgotten their enemies. They are closely interrelated to each other, whether they live in Afghanistan or Pakistan, They have a great sense of shared identity, destiny and vision. Islam has been a useful tool for their advancement since the advent of the religion, and they have used jihad as a tool for conquering the neighboring regions. They have gained from Islam enough to employ it again for the political outcomes and the most basic services that the ever-changing governments of Pakistan have failed to deliver.
The Americans have even affirmed again and again that the Pakistani governments have not been able and are not able not to deliver the basic services. So, what are the people to do? The American people have the choice of changing their governments in elections if they do not like them. The people of Pakistan clearly have been deprived of this choice for a long time. The U.S has never adopted a policy to empower the Pakistani people in improving their lives. Instead, they’ve supported dictators without viable visions for their country.
Pakistan has been under the influence of the West since its foundation, and if it has not been able to deliver the basic services for the last sixty years under Western systems, how they can stop people from looking for a new system by which they think they can achieve decent standards of living?
An Islamic system will not be able to deliver any tangible results, just as the example of the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown, but there are no other options available to the people of Pakistan when there is no freedom of the press and no democratic debates about finding a way out of the country’s quagmire.
Like all shortsighted politicians, the American leaders abandoned Pakistan and Afghanistan after they destroyed the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was destroyed because the two superpowers were fighting their wars in Afghanistan instead of fighting it in Europe. They abandoned a destroyed country and they abandoned a large number of Jihadist they had brainwashed to kill the Soviets. You cannot abandon indoctrinated people and go home and rest.
The West was responsible for the reconstruction of Afghanistan but they did not do it, just as they are not doing it now in Iraq. They are also responsible for the unintended consequences in both present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What the Pakistani army is doing under pressure of the West will generate even more unintended consequences. In turn, this will create more problems for Pakistan and the region. It seems that the West has lost the idea of long-term visions and strategies and how to design policies that can work over a long period of time. As a direct result, the newly emerging powers the West disdains are gaining more moral authorities than ever. A public poll in the Middle East indicated that President Ahmadinejad of Iran and Hassan Nasrrallah of Hezbollah were the most popular leaders in the region.
The psychology of forced migration shows that when people are on the move, their religion becomes more consolidated and more powerful. A new sense of nationalism emerges and triggers the development of an ideology, which combines nationalism and religion. The present miseries the Pakistanis are experiencing only aggravate and bolster an already existing ideology.
The nostalgia for returning home and experiencing the comfort and privileges of living amongst their own people is so powerful that the majority of people who have been forced to leave their homes return after decades, even when they’ve found a better life elsewhere. The Jews are a good example of this as well.
Reza Hossein Borr is a political analyst based in London.
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