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Everybody loves Raymond?

  Erum Haider
The Davis case casts a long shadow over issues of foreign policy and security

It seems that Imran Khan has gotten his wish. A suitably ambiguous yet highly contentious issue? Check. A slow and blundering civilian government? Check. A no-objection certificate from rival party the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and finally, a tacitly acquiescent Army? Check.

Raymond Davis is a godsend amongst a baffling barrage of events that threaten to render even mainstream parties redundant in their helplessness: blasphemy and minority rights abuses, rising inflation, and political instability. Issues such as unemployment and inflation are notoriously difficult to build consensus around. On the other hand, even the most hardened rationalists have trouble arguing that the core of the Davis issue was not inherently unjust.

The Davis case casts a long shadow over issues of foreign policy and security, on which many good articles have been written already. It has exposed fissures in the US-Pakistan relationship, something which observers have been pointing out from the very beginning. And it is one of those rare cases where the entire parcel of the incumbent government is so thoroughly complicit in the crimes it allows on its territory that only those parties which have nothing to lose and no alternatives to put into practice can afford to take a stand.

Enter Imran Khan. Skillfully lumping together the army, the central government and sitting political parties, Khan reserved the worst of his vitriol for his rivals in Punjab, the Sharifs. The “rich factory-builders” who promised to try Davis in court were in all likelihood aware of the American’s eventual release. There was also almost certainly an expectation that religious parties will make a cause célèbre out of such issues. What few people in Pakistan were expecting is that PTI would be leading the charge. Amidst the contempt heaped on Imran Khan for colluding with Syed Munawarul Hasan of JI (although this isn’t the first time such an alliance has been made), and the outright ridicule of Khan’s young, urban (read: “burger”) supporters; is a deep, underlying insecurity. Has the Khan, with his Oxford roots and ostensible “enlightened moderate” leanings, finally “gone fundo”?

The hundreds of people who showed up on Friday in various parts of the country were not the tens of thousands who came out on the 9th of January in support of the blasphemy laws, although many of them may support a more conservative view on the issue of blasphemy. From blogs and various forums it appears that PTI’s nationalistic rhetoric which is big on ideals and shy on particulars is especially appealing to young people and those in the upper-middle class who are deeply distrustful of mainstream politics. As one supporter in Karachi noted, the entire draw of Khan’s party is that it is different from the horse-trading that takes place in Islamabad: “we need to show that we haven’t been bought out, like the other parties.”

And yet, as Khan reaches out to religious parties and “opens dialogue” with mainstream parties, as his party members like to put it, PTI finds itself struggling to remain the only “clean and non-corrupt” party in town. Perhaps his followers, contemptuous as they are of dirty politics, will abandon Khan as his party begins the messy business of electoral campaigning and bargaining in 2013. However, some supporters have already begun to reconcile themselves with the idea of going mainstream.

The strike call on Friday last week was one such example. According to the PTI, it was a necessary show of strength for all the threats made during the Davis trial. For parties outside the fold during a period of civilian rule, such protests are the bread and butter of their work. The Jamat e Islami echoes this view: “we took a principled stand during the trial,” says JI Secretary of Information, Sarfaraz Ahmed. “We can’t face our constituents if we do not follow up on these threats, no one will take us seriously.”

Such is the lot of minority parties during civilian rule. In the absence of seats in government, whether incumbent or in opposition, they are constantly on the verge of total anonymity. During times of prosperity they may support mainstream parties, adding to numbers on the street during rallies. During times of distress they distance themselves, calling for radical change. So far, such calls for change by the PTI and the JI have been ridiculed by mainstream parties and the press. However, the anger that these parties opportunistically exploit, and thereby amplify, is not completely insignificant.

Davis’ case falls into a lowest-common-denominator agenda between parties on the left and right, conservative and liberal: national sovereignty. The JI calls it “anti-Americanism” and adds it to the general idea that American “involvement” is the root cause of problems facing Pakistanis today; PTI stands for respect for human rights and autonomy writ large. Such opportunities for agreement and street mobilization are few and far between.

The argument is not, therefore, whether this tiny victory will matter, if at all, to the PTI’s miniscule voter base in 2013. However, it is almost certain that the chairman of the party was left with little choice but to take this opportunity in order to be in the running for the polls.

His supporters, similarly, have little choice but to ignore their own logical inconsistencies – benefiting from the gains of globalised Pakistan while wanting to distance themselves from a superpower, despising political parties but struggling to be taken seriously at the same forum. Such is the nature of politics everywhere, and they will be no worse off for attempting to learn the rules of the game.

As always, the clear winner in this round (besides, I suppose, Raymond Davis himself) is the Pakistani intelligence. Artfully playing the same game they’ve perfected over the last three decades, they reiterate private assurances of support for the war on terror as their anthem of “national sovereignty” is chanted over by the media and “popular movements.” Digging deeper trenches of mistrust between the people of the two countries, they’ve convinced both that they are the last bastion of freedom against the animals on the other side.

The writer is a research analyst based in Karachi

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Writing aloud (but to the same audience)

Erum Haider
is stimulated and exasperated by the Karachi Literature Festival

By Monday morning, the Karachi Literature Festival has been hailed, celebrated, and slammed in dozens of columns, blogs and newspaper articles. The program itself reads like a heady freshman-level course catalogue at the most fabulous college in the world, the only problem being that the bright-eyed visitor with a keen interest in, say, national security and Urdu poetry would end up inevitably disappointed for having to choose one over the other. On the other hand, this enormously successful event left people quite spoiled for choice and left each session abuzz with unanswered questions.

The KLF, for all its merits, seemed somewhat overrun with anxious hand-wringing over the crisis that Pakistan is currently facing, with perhaps less attention paid to the quality of writers that have emerged from the country in the last couple of years. The fact that Pakistan is in dire economic straits is a concern for everyone, but the fact that few world-class fiction books have been published since Daniyal Mueenuddin’s ‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’ is a far more troubling fact for the ardent reader of Pakistani prose. It seemed at times that the reality of elitism and extremism, terrorism and terrified-ism had taken over a festival devoted ostensibly to the much more bookish and impracticable craft of reading and writing.

“Look, the point is, there are bombs going off all around us. But if somewhere a boy happens to fall in love with a girl we can’t tell the poet not to write about it,” said acclaimed Urdu writer Fahmida Riaz in the session titled “Literature in the Age of Extremism.” It is impossible to divide the two worlds, as this session suggested. Writers, poets and authors of all hues agreed that in reflecting life around them, the inevitable bomb, or reference to terrorism, was bound to creep in. Such is the reality of living in Pakistan.

Even beauty and art can only tolerate so much, however, when the tranquility of poetry seminars is interrupted by the rattle and hum of earnest civil society members crowding the hallways to listen to Ahmed Rashid, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Maleeha Lodhi and other politics-parsing pundits. Intellects such as theirs will never be unwelcome anywhere; however, as the conference hall shrank under the weight of hundreds of attendees, it became abundantly clear that this was the same well-tuned choir they’ve always addressed. Dr. Hoodbhoy recalled growing up in Karachi when it had a population of one million – “as many of my friends in the audience will remember.” The fact is, this city today is a world away from the Karachi they remember. And that’s because it’s teeming with young people: children of the Class of ‘71, children of migrants, children of families across Pakistan; a staggering youth bulge of some 7 million Karachiites under the age of 25 who were sorely under-represented at sessions such as “Where are we today?” and “Re-imagining Pakistan.” The “youth” in Pakistan are a constant source of stress for Pakistani civil society and their Western friends, yet there seem to be few good ideas on how to involve them in events such as these.

The spatial divide is just one symptom of this condition, says Hoodbhoy: “Outside the high walls of DHA we encounter a majority that is united against people like you and me, who will then fight amongst themselves.” The threat of extremism inevitably spills over into an unhappy realization that the polarization of “liberals” and “extremists” runs perplexingly close to the divide between the Cambridge O-level crowd and the Intermediate crowd, the increasingly rich and the exceedingly poor, the English-speaking and the vernacular, those who managed to make it all the way out to Carlton Hotel (situated at the very end of the Manhattan-like peninsula that makes up the DHA and Clifton areas of Karachi) and those for whom the trip was too far.

Zahid Hussain, author of ‘The Scorpion’s Tail’, takes a relatively optimistic view, while acknowledging that terrorists operate within a climate of fear that engulfs both liberals and moderates. While there is vocal support for the murderer of Salmaan Taseer, for example, we cannot assume that the majority of people subscribe to this view. “We cannot afford to become diffident,” said Hussain to murmurs of agreement from the front rows, adding that a society of intolerance is not our fate.

But evidence to the contrary is ubiquitous. Nasim Zehra’s address from the podium was the stuff of “awareness campaigns.” An attempt by Senator Nilofer Bakhtiar to recite the fateha for Taseer has been rejected, Zehra tells us. A senior politician asks for a text message to be declared blasphemous for calling the late Governor “Shaheed.” The prosecutor for the trial of the assassinated political leader fails to show up in court. Each one of these blows is suffered with sighs of appreciative horror from the audience.

Appeals from the panel were made to the army, to civil society to reimagine itself, to break away from the past: “Pakistan cannot continue to see itself as an alter-ego to India,” said Zehra. The existential threat must be taken seriously by the Pakistan army, said Hoodbhoy. “We’ve got to look after ourselves,” he asserted, before we pledge support for other countries. In doing so, however, it certainly helps to be cognizant of the world around us. According to Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan “missed” two important moments in history to change the tide of its national security narrative. To have scaled back dependency after the fall of the Soviet Union and invested instead in regional alliances would have been enormously beneficial. Similarly, taking the attack on the World Trade Center as a sign that Pakistan can no longer use non-state actors would have led down a very different road. Civil society needs to push for change, according to the panelists, and find alternatives to the religious-nationalist narrative.

Those desperate for some literary element in this discussion may want to take note of the irony of a secular, economically-elite class that is historically disinclined to popular shows of strength wanting to take on a populist, street-savvy force. “It takes extreme passions to bring people out on the street,” noted leading columnist Khalid Ahmed, articulating a need for liberals to do what they do best – talk, and use channels of influence.

The fact is that the liberals of Pakistan remain confined to echo chambers filled with like-minded people, unable to reach out to conservative groups, moderate forces, political actors, or even a younger generation.

By accident or by design, none of the panelists felt it necessary to situate politicians in either the history or the future of the country. Poverty and inequality, being the forte of politicians, also evaded analysis. Religion and faith, being the specialization of extremists, also failed to make an appearance. Particularly in the light of the haunting assassination of January 4th, desperation has replaced curiosity and indignation has replaced humility. We’re no longer looking to read, but to write and assert. And even our fiction writers, instead of living with and mirroring the fear and hopelessness of war, poverty and the rising tide of intolerance – as their peers in India, Turkey, Iran, and elsewhere have – have resorted to using their pulpit to analyze and explain the world they live in.

This being a literature festival, it was still possible to seek reprieve from the charged atmosphere of political discussions, and slip into a session on translation, or emerging writing in Pakistan, or a recitation of Punjabi poetry. Between the calls of appreciation heaped on Mudassir Aziz and Ali Akbar Natiq, and the roars of laughter elicited by Mohommad Hanif, it is comforting to think that there are writers who can make us laugh and cry – at ourselves, and our vanity, in these difficult times.

The writer is a Research Analyst based in Karachi

If you haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker, on how Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media are “lazy activism,” then you’re missing out on the biggest existential crisis of the Internet in, like, forever.

Gladwell’s concluding statement is as follows:

(Social networking is) a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.

Google News informs me that the article received over 100 related blogposts, articles and follow-ups. The vast majority – the main-page blog, the article that gets into the Guardian – think he’s “wrong”.

Leo Mirani of the Guardian points out that Twitter, for the first time, made middle-class Indians “interested” in the Kashmir protests. “Gladwell ignores the true significance of social media, which lies in their ability to rapidly spread information about alternative points of view that might otherwise never reach a large audience.”

It’s true, Gladwell didn’t talk about Kashmir – a deliberate omission, say many detractors. Nor did he mention the Obama campaign, says HuffPo writer Sam Graham-Felsen, author of “What Gladwell got wrong: beyond ‘Like Button’ activism.” The internet was a powerful tool in organizing the Obama campaign, says Graham-Felsen: “while Obama’s supporters can’t be compared to the Greensboro lunch counter protesters, their engagement was far from trivial.”

Their contribution wasn’t trivial, he says, because they donated huge sums to the election campaign during an economic downturn.

The posts follow a similar in format. Malcolm “Got it Wrong” captions one post. Gladwell’s “Twitter-Hating article.” Malcolm “Misses the Mark.” They then present half a dozen counter-examples, all of which have nothing in common except a vast Twitter and Facebook presence. What about Haiti? asked one. What about Iran, said another. What about Greenpeace, the elections, and incidences of a journalist getting beaten up or a health care facility brought to justice for malpractice. As Pakistanis, we can join the chorus. What about the Sialkot lynching? We would’ve never known, had it not been for Twitter and Youtube.

Most articles also concede that Gladwell makes the distinction between boots-on-the-ground activism and the cloud of silent supporters hovering around them. Which is not incorrect, they say, but he underestimates how important knowing and letting someone else know about an election, election fraud, or protest is.

We mean to say, he trivializes how important our job is. And we don’t like it.

The mantra of “social networking” is “Spreading Awareness.” Twitter users let the world know that Iran was protesting, it let people know of an earthquake in Haiti and riots in Kashmir.

Here’s how the fairytale goes: you’re a middle-class Indian or Pakistani, and you learn by tweet that the people whom your governments screwed over for sixty-three years are in fact, still bleeding and dying. You sit up and take notice. You’ll re-tweet it, blog about it. The major news network you watch will realize that you and your coterie of valued customers ‘likes’ Kashmir protest, and will send a reporter up to Srinagar. Images will flood the screen, politicians will sweat, speeches will be made, more blogs, tweets and re-retweets. Some scrap of paper may be signed, money might be raised, petitions written. But way before that, a mighty chorus will have struck up – all hail social media, look at how much awareness was raised!

Why all the fuss? Is Kashmir an independent country? Have protesters stopped being killed? Has Martin Luther King made his “I have a dream” speech and has the Civil Rights Act been signed? Are there more boots in the ground, and are they going to stay there?

No, God no. We’re just celebrating the fact that we know. The fundamental problem – of the breakdown of political institutions for activism, of weakened student unions and community organizations – has not changed.

Celebrating social networking’s role in aiding activism is like celebrating the car that drove you to the protest. It’s like holding an award ceremony for the kid who passes out pamphlets on the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. It’s like celebrating yourself, really, for your enlightenment from a sheltered middle-class university grad to a revolutionary, trailblazing Twitterati getting a million hits and a million likes. It’s great that everyone can be an activist without having to skip classes to join a rally, having to spend hours in the heat getting tear-gassed by the police or having to take orders from a hierarchical organization.

One commenter on the “Gladwell gets it wrong – again” post writes:

Many advocates of social media seem to imply that the various activist movements of recent years would not have developed in the way they did or, worst, would not have happened at all if it wasn’t for Twitter. Which is patently absurd. Perhaps social media facilitated or modestly accelerated the spreading of the message, but it was by no means responsible for it.

Another blog, another comment:

I have to disagree that a $5 donation on Facebook is equivalent to a direct action or an activist with real skin in the game, willing to show up in a community, have challenging conversations with decision makers, develop solutions with stakeholders and the like.

The commentators have it right. Just because we want to feel good about “knowing” and “blogging” doesn’t mean we get to glorify the Internet or, in the instance of one post, redefine activism to fit our “digital world” better. Calling ours a digital “world” is astonishing hubris: anyone who thinks the Twitter – or even the Internet – is “revolutionary” because it reaches every corner of the globe is in desperate need of some perspective.

Gladwell got it right, for correctly using a phrase that’s become rapidly misused and totally unstylish – ‘status quo.’ The status quo does not mind being blogged or re-tweeted, it does not mind a million hits against it on Facebook. I’m no activist, but I have a feeling that if I’m ever truly brave enough to fly in the face of the status quo, like those black kids who sat down at a white lunch counter in 1960, or the hundreds of Kashmiri protesters facing down barrels of guns, I probably will have bigger things on my mind than how many ‘likes’ I have on my Facebook wall.

1. The Aafia mafia
Oooh, this one has the most hits. Imma say it’s been written by… George Fulton. It’s about how the Aafia issue has been politicized by the MQM, the JI, everyone. “Look at the other side of the issue.” Comment:
Zahid: there is no proof of her actions…. if US is convicting her then why is it so afraid of prooff…. dont u think???

2. For Musharraf’s Facebook fans
Ok, I know this was written by Ayesha Siddiqa but I originally guessed NadyaV. Close enough!
It’s about how Musharraf ruined institutions, put corrupt people in power, expanded the army, blocked the media, etc etc (again this is unfair b/c, shit, what else would AS say?)
Comment:
Erum: Ayesha thank you for such a clear and articulate piece of writing. We unfortunately have very short term memories when it comes to dictators. If only everyone had the kind of patience and tolerance for democracy that I do. Then again, not everyone is a UofC grad either. Pity.

3. ‘Nation will forgive Zardari if he returns its money’
Statement made by someone in opposition? First guess N/Shabby Sharif. Next guess Maulana Deisel. Third guess some PML-Q goon.
“We do not want to destabilize democracy, but Zardari is bringing name of Pakistan down, he has lost confidence of the people. He must return the money and we will be confident again. Failing that, we should burn Islamabad down.”
Comment: what about your own money mr politician please return it.. only army is not corrupt…

Correct answers:
1. Fasi Zaka (argh, so close!! Come on, he’s like a desi George Fulton, isn’t he?)
About – Giving Aafia a fair trial. (Completely off. doof )
Comment: pro americans would agree with the writer but none of them has come out with aquestion how she was sold. the culprits that is the sellers should be brought to the book and given exaplery punishnent. (ka-ching! 10 pts. This part is so easy. And so rewarding.)

2. AS
About – “After all, these ‘bad’ politicians are the only ones who are ever held accountable.” (1 point!)
Comment: Brilliantly Analyzed Report You Revealed Madm, I Agree To Your Concerns & Facts That You’ve Shown To Us. Thank You…!!! (yay, 10pts!)

3. Nawaz Sharif!! (Oh man, I am so good at this. 2 points!)
About – “He said the army should not be involved if the government does not implement the Supreme Court verdicts as there were other means of their implementation” (2 pts)
Comment: “Parvez musharraf waapas aao!
Mulk ko choaron se chhutwaao!” (10pts )

So much fun.

Never mind the thousands of civilians dead, displaced, and dispossessed by militancy and its backlash. Never mind that a politician who was set to capture a significant percentage of votes was assassinated by a terrorist organisation based not in India, but on Pakistan’s own territory. Never mind that hundreds of armed soldiers and security guards have been kidnapped, beheaded, and blown up by groups claiming a hard-line Islamic ideology.

The idea of a “pro-Pakistan,” Taliban regime in Afghanistan makes us grin. A pro-India regime in Afghanistan makes us queasy. Sixty years on, Pakistan (still) has an India problem.

In Washington DC, an understanding of Pakistan’s regional strategy in Afghanistan is defined by what they call the country’s ‘national security calculus’ – in other words, ‘Pakistan’s India problem.’ The story goes as follows: the Pakistan Army fomented insurgency in the 1980s with the help of the CIA, mostly because it wanted to hedge its bets against a hostile India by having a favourable regime in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, it continued its campaign of using militants in Kashmir as low-level irritants against the Indian Army.

In recent years, intelligence agencies have found their network amongst militants to be disassembling. Meanwhile, army officials have been targeted by the same militants they once cultivated, and the Frontier Corps have faced high casualties. As a result, the strategy has “switched” from one of FOIN (fomenting insurgency) to one of all-out COIN (counter insurgency).

The Pakistan Army now realises that the Pakistani Taliban are part of the national security threat, which is why there has been a “paradigm shift,” in the words of strategic analyst Haider Mullick of the Joint Special Operations University in Florida. Mullick’s new book, Pakistan’s Security Paradox, provides insights into what has been the cornerstone of the Pakistan Army’s strategic outlook for the last 30 years.

The powers that be remain reluctant about owning up to the Pakistan Army’s dealings with militant groups. But assuming a FOIN strategy exists, what would it look like? Mullick describes FOIN in great detail: for the numerically weaker Pakistan Army, “friendly” militants in Kashmir provided “plausible deniability.” That is, they did not operate on domestic soil and therefore posed no immediate threat to the country. They were a cheap tool against the Indian forces in Kashmir and acted as a force multiplier. After all, says Mullick, the Indian Army had more guns pointed at militants than it did at the Pakistani force in Kashmir.

Of course, even while fostering militancy, the Pakistan Army simultaneously conducted its own brand of counter-insurgency. Secessionist movements from Bangladesh to Baluchistan have faced the full force of the army. The picture is complicated when, between 2002 and 2008, the army seemingly increased domestic COIN tactics even while refusing to go after those groups it had carefully cultivated over the years. It is only in recent weeks, with the capture and killing of several high-level militant figures, that the army has shown that it can have its cake and eat it too.

The question persists, though: why does the Pakistan Army single-handedly continue to define national security, despite the installation of a democratically elected government at the centre? If analysts such as Mullick are correct, then the army has outwitted fate – by creating a problem and then solving it. Secondly, such an argument claims that it is perfectly reasonable to expect Pakistan to have national security concerns against India and deal with them in any way it sees appropriate, while simultaneously fighting terrorists that have killed thousands of Pakistani civilians.

It doesn’t take a military strategist to understand that what has happened in the Pakistan Army’s calculus is not a “paradigm shift,” but a “selective readjustment.” India is still the number one enemy, and militants are still the best resource for the Pakistan Army to maintain its influence in the region.

Although Pakistanis do not like the US government telling us our army harbours militants, we are not ready to admit that, at some level, our national security concerns are driven entirely by the “Indian threat.” Some seek solace in the fantasy that perhaps India is behind the terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil. Many among the public are willing to believe that Islamic hard-liners in Waziristan and Punjab take orders from Hindu agents, rather than admit the obvious.

In any other country in the world, it makes perfect sense to deal strategically with an army, and diplomatically with a civilian government. The underlying assumption is that the civilian government defines a country’s overarching goals while the army deploys the best possible strategy to fulfil those goals. In Pakistan, the army has had the privilege of being able to define national security goals and see them to their end. The civilian government, meanwhile, particularly in recent decades, has taken cues from the army and not the other way around.

Today, Washington puzzles over why the Pakistan Army is successfully “clearing” swathes of militant territory, but has not been able to “hold” it. The answer, any analyst will tell you, is that there is a complete lack of engagement of political parties when it comes to military strategy: they don’t understand it and are therefore justifiably left out of decision-making processes on the issue.

America would do well to realise that a long-term settlement of the tribal regions must involve political parties such as the Awami National Party and other vote-seeking, representative groups. Far more crucially, this is an excellent time for us to realise that there is something inherently dangerous and self-destructive about leaving the process of defining a nation’s goal to its brute force.

We in Pakistan like to think that as long as our army is strong, no external force can touch us. This is absurd logic for people whose house is on fire. Part of the army’s strength as the country’s “most efficient and stable institution” derives from our blinkered faith in, and support for, its policies, regardless of how disastrous they are for the country in the long run. Consequently, neither the Pakistan Army, nor the decision makers in Washington want to seriously engage with politicians.

Allowing the army to make decisions on our behalf is a comfortable way out of having to make hard decisions about the country’s ideology and national security. For instance, it is time we asked why India continues to be our biggest national security threat?

The fact is, engagement with politicians is the only long-term solution to Pakistan’s security problems. Political parties need to be given the encouragement and support they need to define national security goals. And they certainly need to be at the dead centre of any solution in the tribal areas. Anything else is a stop-gap measure.

Whatever the outcome, one wonders why the ruling party took a year to clear the issue of the judges in Parliament. Obviously, the party anticipated that future attempts to cut its rule off mid-term would be undertaken by the opposition: keeping the judges’ issue on a string was crucial insurance.

So let’s say that the PPP tables and passes the motion to restore the pre-Nov 3 judiciary once and for all. Say the Zardari cases begin their slow, languid process through the courts in full glare of the press corps. Let’s even say the opposition tables the motion to repeal the 17th Amendment in the Assembly. What guarantee does the party have that some element, whether from within or outside the political system, will still not insist on mid-term elections? None whatsoever.

In the event of a national “crisis” –a food shortage in 1948,or anti-government riots in Dhaka in 1970, the near-sacking of a general in 1999 or an economic meltdown in 2010– political parties have always been the first to get the axe. The logic is that politicians and parties are the source of corruption. This is fairly accurate, because in every political game in the world, actors must act in self-interest and cover their back; the law of the marketplace usually settles on some equilibrium of compromise. But only in Pakistan, where at any moment the entire playing field is at risk of being flipped, does history reveal the uglier side of real politik.

In 1946, Mohammad Ali Jinnah had one aim only: to prove to the British government that the Congress party was not representative of a significant portion of the Muslim-majority provinces. The Congress was immensely popular in the North-West Frontier Province; in provinces such as Sindh no single party had a clear majority. Whether by imperial design or otherwise, Punjab and Sindh were conglomerations of powerful landlords who allied themselves with power alone, in whatever shape or form. In the 30’s, Punjab Leaguer Sikandar Hyat Khan was the darling of the British Governor in the province, offering troops in the war effort – unlike “troublemaker” Nehru and his anti-imperial oratory tours of the country side. Jinnah had to show that landlords like Sikandar were behind him on the issue of Pakistan in order to lobby the Crown. So when Sikandar attempted to make contact with the increasingly popular Congress Party in 1940, Jinnah published a scathing reply to Sikandar’s letter in the press. Political expediency trumped mutual tolerance; “using” provincial leaders as pawns set a troubling precedent where political parties dissolved as soon as their short-term goals were realised.

By 1947, historian Keith Callard notes that “cabinet ministers understood clearly that they held office as the agents of the Governor-General, and the Assembly, with its powerless Opposition, was in no mood to challenge any actions of its own President.” Jinnah, for all his integrity and sincerity to the cause of Pakistan, showed no signs of needing political parties, or wanting to work with politicians. In spite of NWFP’s decision to join Pakistan, Jinnah punished Dr. Khan Sahib’s government for maintaining its differences with the Muslim League post-Partition by dissolving the provincial assembly in the North-West. His successors followed suit: in 1953 Ghulam Mohammad declared an emergency and dissolved the Nazimuddin government on the grounds that it was “inadequate to grapple with the difficulties facing the country.” Yet again, a Governor General successfully dissolved an Assembly. The English press and “educated” public supported the move.

What good are political parties, anyway? Ostensibly, they are institutions that organise and collect votes in exchange for goods. Their goal is to achieve power, and preserve the machinery that lets them achieve power. Western political scientists tend to assume that this means politicians will preserve the democratic machinery. History shows that they’ll preserve any machinery that allows them access to power. Voting within a parliamentary system has simply proven to be the best way for everyone – peasants, businessmen, landlords, right-wing religious groups, left-wing liberals – to gain the most (or at any rate, lose the least) from a system while ensuring some kind of stability.

Myron Weiner, perhaps the most-cited student of the politics of the subcontinent, remarks that in order to gain power the Congress had to develop critical mass. This meant organising support at the grassroots. In an act of political inspiration that would be devious if it wasn’t so brilliant, Gandhi’s brand of nationalism happily incorporated peasants as well as the landlords who exploited them, factory owners as well as the workers that agitated against them. Congress had offices in every district, put up members for elections, and spent an entire decade simply learning how to engage in politics – and yet even India’s democracy teeters occasionally to the brink of dysfunctionalism. Of all the provinces that comprise present-day Pakistan, only the NWFP possessed a political party that could legitimately claim to have any grassroots support. We often complain that politicians don’t bother to represent their voter’s interest: is it possible that our MNAs are simply lazier and more corrupt than your average stock of South Asian politician?

Countries devise creative ways to keep corruption to a minimum. Pakistan’s tried and tested way is by sending politicians to court and occasionally to jail. Mohommad Ayub Khuhro, for example, was sent to jail no less than eight times during his fruitful career as the first Chief Minister of Sindh. Not that Jinnah did not know that Khuhro was a “corrupt landowner” when he originally recruited him to be part of the Muslim League in the 1940’s –Khuhro’s voting constituency was crucial to winning Sindh at the 1946-7 polls. Post-Partition, Khuhro realised that he didn’t need Jinnah’s patronage – quite the opposite, in fact – and he attempted to form a new party. He was suddenly deemed unworthy of being a politician by Jinnah; much less a CM. Khuhro got off his corruption charges on a “technicality.” Courts, after all, could use a little extra clink in their coffers too.

The political inheritance of the PPP and the PML-N is therefore this: no one respects you, everyone is out to prove your incompetence; so know the source of power, and what you have to offer it. What do Sharif and Co have to lose from demanding mid-term elections? Nothing, because everyone expects them to play a dirty game. The educated people of this country (and the media hounds, to an extent) have incredibly low tolerance for politicians – that, after all, is their inheritance. The PPP must now compromise with other allies in the provinces, and attempt to gain all it can from power while it can. It has very little to fear – in the event of mid-term elections it will be knocked out of power and can spend two years complaining that it never got a chance to prove itself. Two years – until it can return the favour to Sharif’s government.

There has been a failure to understand that corrupt politicians the world over aren’t as afraid of the army, the bureaucracy, the courts, the opposition or the rebels as much as they are of a full and fair term in government, and a very angry voter at the end of it. We’ve simply never gotten that far.

A friend recently posted a YouTube link for the trailer of a new documentary and Sundance Film Festival entry titled Bhutto on Facebook. The trailer opens with these words: “From one of the most dangerous places on earth… a land where women didn’t matter… comes the story of a woman with the courage to accept her destiny.” The clip draws from interviews of Benazir Bhutto on international television and with private reporters, shots of her from the 1980s, and glimpses of Z.A. Bhutto and her brothers.

Young Pakistanis – at home, and studying abroad – tore it apart. It was kitschy because it glorified Benazir, and it was insulting because it made us sound like monkeys. “I’m so tired of the West obsessing with her,” said one friend, a young journalist in Karachi. “She was no different from the entire spectrum of corrupt politicians and feudal landlords.” The movie, just by virtue of the trailer, reeks of “orientalist garbage and images of oppressed Muslim women,” according to a young lady working in a Karachi- based non profit.

None of these people dislike Benazir Bhutto – a few of them may have even voted for her. But the West’s support for her political campaign automatically put everyone off.

For the West, Benazir was (after Pervez Musharraf) a final bastion of liberal hope amongst a sea of intolerance, the nuances of which they never bothered to figure out. This may be one reason for her unpopularity amongst certain segments of society. The movie draws heavily from her lobbying efforts in London and Washington, which is usually a sure-fire way to draw ire from Pakistanis who follow the international news. Indeed, the fastest way to close a conversation in Pakistan is to accuse the opposing side of being backed by, or pandering to, Americans.

Nine years after the September 11 attacks, America still seems to know very little about a country it confusingly describes as its top non-NATO ally, but treats as “the most dangerous place on earth.” Equally, after decades of dealing with America, the educated upper-middle and middle class in Pakistan isn’t quite sure how they feel about the US, making public opinion of the US uniformly reactionary.

There are several solutions to our grumpiness at being on the receiving end of the US’s stepmother treatment. Option one: we pick leaders who will comply fully with the superpower’s demands. Military dictators are a good way to go: they tend to efficiently repress opposition and have plenty of military aid-driven incentives to use force against militants and non-militants in the tribal areas and in Baluchistan. They pick up “suspects” with ease, deny trouble-making politicians entry into the country, and generally run the country like a police state. If America wishes, they’ll promote a few news channels, attend a few fashion shows, and coin clever phrases like ‘enlightened moderation.’ The downside is, of course, that it takes several months of protest and beatings and a cacophony of bad press to eventually get them thrown out, to say nothing of the long-term damage to political institutions.

Option two: Pick a person who has several long-term interests, including, but not limited to, re-election in a second term. Having quickly realised that any leader who comes to power in Pakistan will have to deal with the US in one way or another, we can choose someone who is on reasonably good terms with them. Could the US have rigged an election for Ms. Bhutto? Probably not – there was good money on the possibility that the original January 8 elections would’ve been much closer than the post-assassination polls. That said, her party is now getting considerable amounts of non-military aid.

Politicians are surprisingly simple creatures because they tend to follow the money. The democracies of Europe, for example, were born at least in part out of the monarch’s need for taxes from small businessmen, merchants, and traders. Today, the average British politician is therefore remarkably sensitive to unemployment and inflation. The danger has always been that in the face of corpulent loans, grants, and kickbacks from foreign donors, Pakistan’s politicians will have very little to gain from building up the economy or being accountable to voters in general. The military operation and missing persons issues will likely continue. But a few years down the line, no matter what America feels or thinks, the PPP will have to face the voters – so we hope. And that’s where their all-powerful ally can do very little.

America realises this, a fact manifest in Washington’s efforts to make US aid to Pakistan more non-military, and more “visible.” At least on paper, its objective is to make the Pakistani government look good to its own people. It may be an effort doomed to failure for several reasons (if nothing else, there’s a danger that politicians will eat up all the aid). The alternative, then, is option one – larger military aid packages. If we genuinely feel that Musharraf-era F-16 donations beat US$ 1.5 billion, of which at least some may trickle into a new school or a power grid upgrade, then country-wide protests are in order. But we’ve got to pick one of these options and work with it, because being America’s ally means getting aid.

Unless we don’t want to be America’s ally, in which case, there’s an option three: Sit in opposition.

Pre-Cold War, there was a fourth choice, of non-alignment, which the PPP’s founding father turned to during the party’s experiment with socialism. Today, not many states can count as non-aligned countries in the cause of global anti-terrorism without being slapped with sanctions, accused of harbouring terrorists, enriching uranium, or some combination of the three. North Korea and Cuba don’t harbour “Islamic terrorists,” for example, but at last count no Pakistani pundit or pulpit holds them up as paragons of anti-Americanism. Iran and pre-2002 Iraq are other examples of non-aligned states that seem to be meeting unpleasant ends.

Even “non-alignment” can’t be done in isolation, and it is unclear who Pakistanis would rather see their state ally with diplomatically instead of the US. China? Saudi Arabia? Neither holds a position that is significantly different from the US’s position on global terrorism. Such is the nature of the post-Cold War world, whether we like it or not. Not to say that there isn’t a clear choice. If anti-Americanism is truly something Pakistanis believe they will benefit from in the long run, then let’s be very clear about what we’re demanding and why. And what the consequences will be.

There is genuine fear amongst the middle classes of the fate of Pakistan, and therefore of its enemies. India wants to destroy the country (because clearly dealing with the Taliban at its backdoor is going to be great for their economy). America also wants to destroy us. Israel hates all Muslims anyway. Every suicide blast is a plot against the country by its Jewish, Christian, and Hindu enemies.

Remember, we love to hate.

What we’ve been abysmally bad at is identifying our friends, as we learnt from our bad romance with the US during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If Pakistan, like most developing nations, is forced to be dependent on other states, then it is crucial that we diversify support, and look out for our own best interests in the long run. The US seems to have an interest in Pakistan’s long-term development, at least for now. Let’s be shrewd businessmen and make the most of it, before someone sells them a better game plan.

History has been alluded to again and again in this debate. Comparisons to the Soviet invasion, the British Empire’s attempts to control the region, and America’s own failure in Vietnam are abound. But one man openly defies history, one man (and he may be one amongst many) encourages America to believe that THIS time, it will be different. His name is Abdul Rahim Wardak, and this is what he has to say:

I reject the myth advanced in the media that Afghanistan is a ‘graveyard of empires’ and that the U.S. and NA TO effort is destined to fail. Afghans have never seen you as occupiers, even though this has been the major focus of the enemy’s propaganda campaign. Unlike the Russians, who imposed a government with an alien ideology you enabled us to write a democratic constitution and choose our own government. Unlike the Russians, who destroyed our country, you came to rebuild.

To be fair, I wouldn’t know what the Afghan Defense Minister thought if it weren’t for good friend General McChrystal, who possesses the kind of self-righteous sincerity that I find both frightening and rampant in good soldiers:

Our strategy cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces; our objective must be the population. In the struggle to gain the support of the people, every action we take must enable this effort. The population also represents a powerful actor that can and must be leveraged in this complex system. Gaining their support will require a better understanding of the people’s choices and needs.

Dear General McChrystal: Afghanistan spoke loud and clear two months ago when it voted against Karzai’s corrupt government. Did you listen? Or did you listen to commentators such as Ahmed Rashid who continuous depict Karzai as a misbehaved but ultimately harmless dog – one who only needs a tighter leash?

Ahmed Rashid is another one who constantly defies history, and logic. And barring a few brave souls, this warped logic has crept into the minds of sane people. Consider this one: corrupt governments need a little more money to sort themselves out. Asif Zardari and Hamid Karzai lack the resources to end corruption. As if to say “if only we give them a little more, they’ll want a little less.”

But Rashid is a master pragmatist. He will convince you that more pressure is actually less pressure: “under such enormous external and internal pressures, there are no guarantees that the (Pakistan) army will stay committed to a democratic system.” Let’s think this through. Troops increase in Afghanistan, driving most of the remaining Al-Qaeda network and militants into Pakistan. Suddenly the Pak Army finds itself with a full-on war and (possibly) another Afghan refugee crisis. How is this going to improve the civilian government’s ability to a) keep the army under control and b) fix internal economic problems? A war in Afghanistan (if Obama truly takes McChrystal’s report to heart) means more of all the wrong things: more money to be siphoned off, more guns, more movement along the border. Suddenly those in the Pakistan army who are even slightly sympathetic to the Taliban find themselves at the center of a very large, very lucrative war. How does Mr. Rashid propose we abet such seductions of power and money?

“Pakistan will have to be wooed, cajoled and bribed with aid and support to resist all forms of extremism.” Yes, that’s right. Let the corrupt and unaccountable governments of Karzai and Zardari remain and make sure the funds keep flowing. Rashid is more than the perfect analyst, he is every war government’s wet dream.

Finally, the last word on this hideous charade comes from Washington itself, a city-state that has been accused of being totally immune to opinions outside those that come from Virginia and its close friends in Kabul and Islamabad. E. J. Dionne might count as the voice of the American moderate-liberal, one that is fundamentally opposed to wars but sees no good way out of this. They will say that America waited far too long for this surge, that it needs to be done carefully and sustainably and, finally, that it’s the “only good solution.”

Which is ultimately the most dangerous thing Mr. Obama has to offer the world: the belief that yes, he can. Yes, he and America can “fix” Afghanistan. No, no, no you can’t. The right thing to do would be to announce a gradual pullout, to accept that America cannot always have things its way. It can ensure that money stops flowing into Karzai’s pockets, thus depriving the Taliban of rich friends in the region. It can keep closer tabs on oil, drug, and arms money and flows into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Other than that, not much.

It will suffer accusations from Pakistan and Afghanistan of “abandonment,” it may even face an Islamist government in Afghanistan akin to Iran. That government might one day acquire nukes from Pakistan. Or maybe by then both governments, having no one to support them but the revenue and enterprise of their own people, will have a real stake in non-proliferation, in peace, and the stability of their economies. The sad thing is that while an increase in troops may still lead to the first outcome, it will almost definitely never, ever lead to the second.

Clearly, I’ve been away from home for too long. And I am almost certainly going to be accused of batting for the other team now. But why would a smart and politically savvy anchor like Asma Shirazi tell Hillary Clinton that Pakistan is fighting “your war, not our war?” Is there still doubt that the Taliban are very much Pakistan’s problem, notwithstanding anything the US or previous Pakistani governments had to do with creating the hydra-headed monster?

It’s difficult to fight a common enemy when you’re secretly convinced that you’re on opposite teams. While watching Clinton’s hour-long discussion with some of the top news anchors in the country, I realized, yet again, how uneasy a path the “liberal” forces in Pakistan tread. While all of us agree that that militancy perpetrated by extremists needs to end, we’re less sure about whether we support the United States’ campaign to put an end to the Taliban and other extremist forces. In fact, we’re not even convinced that the US is sincerely trying to end terrorist violence in the region.

Which is funny, because that’s what they secretly believe about us, too.

Three weeks ago, a closed-door discussion between Pakistani and American political analysts brought the degree of mutual suspicion between the countries to the forefront. A prominent lawyer who is currently working on several high-profile cases related to national security dissected the renamed Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill during his presentation. This isn’t about money, our journalists and analysts argued; it’s about respect. And when you insinuate that an army that has lost soldiers in a war is secretly funding militants, we consider it an insult. Secondly, implying that the civilian government does not already have complete control over the army (or its nuclear weapons) hit a raw nerve: it is simply not the business of outsiders to take speculative information and state it as fact. For one thing, intelligence agencies the world over infiltrate terrorist groups, but making spy tactics a public fact defeats the purpose of classified information. Members of the Pakistan delegation went on to point out that while the military and the ISI may be strong institutions in Pakistan, Americans tend to think of them as a parallel government. Which is, at best, a pretty tall claim and should be backed up by hard evidence.

Just moments later, a former US Ambassador articulated an analogous complaint. “There are people in your country, educated and informed people, who believe that US intelligence agencies are secretly funding Al-Qaeda. Or that the CIA actually orchestrated the 9/11 attacks… which is preposterous.”

I was suddenly left feeling just a little exposed.

As someone in the news business, or simply part of the “intelligentsia,” I’ve always found it far more comfortable to err on the side of suspicion. Which may be a safer position to take, but often makes me only a shade better than your average conspiracy theorist. For every myth the US is guilty of indulging in with regards to Pakistan, I have a few of my own: that the US ultimately wants to take over the country, one embassy at a time; that America is really just facilitating the breakup of the state and will divvy up the provinces between Afghanistan and India; and that they have imperial designs on our economy, trade and agriculture.

These may or may not be true; equally, it is anyone’s guess whether the CIA or ISI is secretly channeling funds to terrorists in Waziristan. But while conspiracy theories are comfortable “I-told-you-so” sticks to beat your opponents with, the mutual suspicion that follows certainly doesn’t make for very good military strategy. And that may just be the greatest edge that a rabble of intolerant and ruthless militants has over two powerful and democratic nations.