The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

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And so Asma Jahangir with this small, formidable, fiery woman who was willing to stand up for the most dispossessed people in her country and was also willing to stand up loudly to the most powerful ones. The Diplomat’s Shah Meer Baloch interviewed Declan Walsh about his latest book, Pakistan, regional politics, media freedom, and more. Below are excerpts.

Walsh found Pakistan perplexing and fascinating: crowded with places of unmatched natural beauty, inhabited by people with whom he formed deep friendships and yet pierced with danger. Navigating through the labyrinth, he came across various faultiness in Pakistan’s body politic: faith and identity, praetorianism and the oversized role of intelligence agencies, underdevelopment and ethnic nationalism, corruption and tax evasion culture, a self-serving and hypocritical elite which flouts law, violence fueled by religious extremism, and unscrupulous and compromised political parties, mostly dynastic and dependent upon state patronage. It is quite common for statesmen to display three qualities: mixed motives, ambiguous character and abnormal drive. Cold and impenetrable, Jinnah, as Walsh shows, was no exception. He was however, committed to the idea of a secular and democratic Pakistan which is at peace with its neighbours. The ideal soon wilted as Pakistan was beset- right from the start- by issues of faith and identity, which were later exploited by military dictators to prolong their stay in power although the price which the country has paid is heavy.

A highlight for me was the profile of Chaudary Aslam Khan, notorious as Karachi’s toughest cop. In a career spanning almost three decades, Khan targeted the dark underbelly of the “brooding megalopolis” dominated by crime lords and undercover spies. Having survived eight assassination attempts, he used to joke that one day his trademark white shalwar kameez would become his funeral shroud. This prophecy came true in 2014 when he was killed in a bomb targeting his convoy. While Walsh tries his best to acclimate himself to the ethos of each place he visits, at times he emphasises exoticism over nuance. Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan’s most important Sufi shrine, is a place straight out of a fantasy novel, teeming with snake charmers, circus dancers, drummers and pilgrims, most of them high on hashish. One of the time-honoured practices there is dhamaal, the practice of whirling to the sound of music performed by devotees to honour Sufi saints. I found this claim glaringly assumptive. This quote is in fact in direct accordance with The Charter of Madina, widely considered the first civil constitution to set the basis of a multi-religious Islamic state in Medina, drawn up on behalf of the Prophet Muhammad. A vital clause of the document granted non-Muslim members autonomy and freedom of religion. WALSH: Well, it was this - you know, it was a mystery. When I was being expelled, I remember sitting in a hotel in Lahore. The intelligence service had posted people outside my door to make sure I didn't leave until I was driven to the airport later that night. And even though it was this moment of democratic flourishing for Pakistan - they just had an election. The vote had gone fairly smoothly. The results were coming in. People were hailing this as a milestone for the country. I realized that despite all of that, at the end of the day in Pakistan, the military and its intelligence services - on certain issues, at least - ultimately call the shots. And no matter who I tried to get to help me, no matter what position they occupied in the country, how senior they were, what sort of influence they had, they were unable to reverse that decision. And for me, that was a very striking moment. It really taught me a lot about how the country really works.

But I came to realize that the conflict had an importance greater than its size. It was a product of a powerful fault line that runs deep across the length of Pakistan – the tension between the marginalized people of the peripheries and a powerful, army-dominated center. There’s been periodic uprising by disgruntled Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Balochs, always directed at Punjab and military-centric governments. And that, in turn, stems from the great unresolved question: what do they all share, as Pakistanis? The original idea – Islam – is clearly not enough. The terrifying wave of Islamist militancy — suicide bombings and many thousands of deaths — that threatened to rip Pakistan apart for about a decade following the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in 2007 has thankfully receded. But the issues that gave rise to the militant explosion remain unresolved. Much evidence suggests that Pakistan’s generals have not renounced their ardor for the Islamist proxy fighters who have wreaked so much havoc. But they have, for expedient political and financial reasons, forced many of these groups underground for now. And the rivalry with India, which has driven that policy for decades, has only gotten worse, in part as a result of the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi. So while things have quieted in Pakistan there is little reason to believe, alas, that they will stay like that. He then presents his ruminations on some of the touchiest subjects in Pakistan; from the military’s involvement in politics and the intelligence agencies’ activities to the delicate religious fault lines that are ever-present yet often obscured. Among the many themes discussed, he dissects the Red Mosque seizure, gives accounts of tribal leaders and their ways of war and life, and the many unconventional stories of Pakistanis he stumbled upon during his time here. WALSH: So that's a chapter about Asma Jahangir. She was Pakistan's most prominent human rights activist. She came from a fairly well-to-do family in Lahore but had spent her life on the streets of the country, standing up for the dispossessed, for minorities who are being discriminated against, for women who had suffered and still suffer heinous crimes. And more generally, she stood for civilians against the country's military. This is - Pakistan's a country where the army has been in charge directly for about half of the country's history. And for the rest of the time, frankly, the military has pulled the levers of power, indirectly.

Reviews

One of the most problematic chapters for me was the portrayal of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. A stoic, enigmatic figure compared to his flashy contemporaries Nehru and Gandhi, Jinnah’s legacy had suffered the repercussions of his reticence, leading his countrymen to recast everything from his attire to his speeches for self-serving motives.