Zia’s Army and two ‘useful idiots’

http://www.asianage.com/columnists/zia-s-army-and-two-useful-idiots-602

Sep 07, 2014

Ashok Malik

Pakistan has made itself central to a sectarian conflict. From a professional Army to the Army of Islam to the Army of the Sunnis, it has been a steep decline for the generals in Rawalpindi.

Usually attributed to Lenin, the term “useful idiot” refers to an individual or political activist who has been used to provide propaganda ammunition for a cause he does not entirely understand. Given the street tumult in Islamabad, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Imran Khan, Pakistan’s most iconic cricket captain, has now become its most iconic useful idiot.

Along with Tahir-ul-Qadri — a religious scholar turned politician who has flown home from Canada with the avowed intention of cleaning up Pakistani society — Mr Khan is leading large mobs and demanding Nawaz Sharif resign as Prime Minister. Mr Sharif and his party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), won a handsome victory in an election in 2014. Mr Khan claims the election was rigged.

Both Mr Khan and Mr Qadri are close to the Pakistan Army. It is widely believed the Army is orchestrating the protests, while pretending to be neutral. It is probable Mr Sharif will survive, but emerge out of the crisis as a lame-duck Prime Minister. He will have to compromise with the military brass on several issues. He will have to give amnesty to Pervez Musharraf, who is facing a host of criminal charges. More important, the Army wants control of Afghanistan and India policy.

If and when this is achieved, the useful idiots would have served their purpose. The Army will probably be happy enough if Mr Qadri then goes back to Canada and Mr Khan goes back to giving television interviews. However this crisis ends — with advance for the Army or an unexpected gain for Mr Sharif — it is impossible to see how Imran Khan will benefit.

The politics of a delusional, theatrical former cricketer is a side-show. The crucial question is why is the Pakistan Army acting in this manner? Why does it want to announce its re-emergence? Why has it chosen this juncture to in effect junk all that talk of peace and amity, of trade with India being more meaningful than a stand-off on the Siachen glacier? Why is it more confident about not needing to say those sweet nothings about peace, and give appropriate interviews to impressionable foreign correspondents?

The Pakistan Army has an abiding institutional memory and has been consistent in its motivations. These propel it to think tactically for itself rather than strategically for its country. It senses 2015 may just be its year, that domestic, regional and international factors are combining to allow it to win back influence it had lost in recent times, particularly after the ejection of Gen. Musharraf, the election of a government in 2008 and the killing of Osama bin Laden three years later.

If the assumptions the Pakistan Army is making are correct, the implications are deep. They tell us something fundamental is happening to Pakistan as a society, a nation and as an international actor. What then are the assumptions the Army is making? First, the generals in Rawalpindi calculate the departure of American-led troops from Afghanistan at the end of the year will give them and the Afghan Taliban groups they sponsor a chance to regain Kabul or at least vast swathes of southern Afghanistan.

Second, the success of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has temporarily downgraded the Afghanistan-Pakistan zone in comparison to the tectonic shifts of West Asia. A Shia-Sunni battle is waging between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Syria as its first major platform. While Saudi support for the ISIS militia was part of this anti-Shia struggle, the ISIS has grown too big and too strong for the Saudi royal family itself. The ISIS represents an extraordinarily fundamentalist manifestation of Islamism that even Saudi authorities can no longer control and which they fear could turn on them.

The Saudi government is preparing for an ISIS attack. Of course, this attack is not imminent. It will require the ISIS to consolidate in central-northern Iraq, come down to southern Iraq, where a substantial Shia population lives, subjugate it and then invade northern Saudi Arabia. This is when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be threatened by an ultra-Wahhabist army that it helped spawn.

Where does Pakistan come into all this? Pakistani troops have moved to the Saudi Arabia-Iraq border to help seal it and fortify Saudi defences. In Bahrain, Pakistani soldiers have been helping a Sunni ruler quell a Shia majority. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, Iran’s relations with Pakistan have worsened of late. The Pakistan Army is not bothered about what Tehran thinks; it is revelling in its renewed criticality to the rulers of Riyadh.

In the process, Pakistan has converted itself into the eastern flank of the Sunni world. It has made itself central to a sectarian conflict that could tear apart West Asia. From a professional Army to the Army of Islam to the Army of the Sunnis, it has been a steep decline for the generals in Rawalpindi.

Yet, this decline reflects a transformation in Pakistani society itself. A nation founded by a Shia leader as a homeland for all Muslims has become the embodiment of Sunni supremacism. Not just religious minorities, even Shias are being killed or forced into exile. In times when Hazaras — a Shia people of Mongol ethnicity — are being singled out for brutality, it is sobering to remember that in the 1960s a Hazara General, Muhammad Musa Khan, succeeded Ayub Khan as Chief of the Pakistan Army. Today, this would be a miracle.

It is telling that not since Asif Iqbal and Zaheer Abbas in the early 1980s has a Shia captained the Pakistani Test team. That was in the early years of Zia-ul-Haq’s reign. Today, cricketers born or raised in the Zia era have put the Pakistan cricket team in the grip of a Tablighi Jamaat clique, representing an austere, proselytising Sunni order. Simultaneously, the fresh recruits of the Zia period are gradually becoming generals. They have endowed the Army with a narrower, strictly-Sunni, semi-Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Pakistan’s Zia (counter)-revolution has reached maturity. That is what should bother us, not Imran’s antics and wedding plans.

The writer can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com