What breeds extremism?
By: Rasul Bkahsh Rais.
21/04/2009.

Some fundamental questions divide Muslim societies today: who should determine what is Islamic or not; does an individual have the right to practice or not practice religion; or should religion be rigidly imposed by the modern state through its coercive institutions?

Religion may provoke controversy in other societies, but there, the issue of the relationship between religion and the state is largely settled. Such societies consider religion to be a matter between an individual and his creator; the state does not regulate the religious lives of citizens. Through experience, these societies have learned that it is better to leave religion out of the affairs of the state, and have realised that otherwise the state would be oppressive and would leave little space for personal freedoms.

The relationship between state and religion has not been a simple issue in Muslim countries. Why?

Societies are polarised to different degrees on the principles that would guide the restructuring of state-society relations in the modern age. The consensus of the medieval period, of two separate realms — of religion and of worldly authority — based on mutual non-interference and the condition that no rule violating Islam would apply, seems to have disappeared.

New ideologies in the early decades of the last century, like communism, fascism and nationalism, stirred a debate as to which ideological stream could best fit Islamic societies. Religious intellectuals and political activists wanted to chart a new course, independent of western ideologies, much like the modern-day line of the Iranian clergy: neither East nor West.

Unfortunately, Islamic societies were divided then, and remain divided along sectarian lines, even if one ignores the cultural and regional aspects of Islamic thought and practices beyond the fundamentals of belief. The troubling question, therefore, is: whose Islam is it going to be? Who is the legitimate authority to interpret it? To what extent is religion a private matter and to what extent will it be transferred to the state?

The debate is not about finding absolute answers. If it were that simple, we would have found the answers by now and would have also achieved a grand Islamic consensus on what constitutes an Islamic political order.

All political orders have some principles or ideological foundations. Therefore, no society can hope to progress if its political order is reduced to a lawless power-grabbing game played by greedy individuals. Constitutional democracy is one such framework that restrains individuals, forcing them to stay within legal bounds.

It is the weakness of constitutionalism and democratic norms, and a general crisis of governance, in Pakistan that has created such great space for Islamist groups. An odious alliance between corrupt bureaucrats and the political class at the district level and the higher echelons of power has caused the collapse of governing institutions.

It is not really class conflicts or mobilisation of the poor by the militants that might cause a shift from traditional power structures to the Taliban order, but the erosion of hope and frustration at the lack of fulfilment of legitimate expectations. The failure of the state in performing its tasks is fuelling questions of legitimacy of the political order.

Once a political order loses its legitimacy, it becomes vulnerable to any force — religious, secular or revolutionary — that promises change. The disillusioned Muslim population of Iran turned to the clergy. Some would argue that the Iranian clergy hijacked the revolution, which comprised many fronts with the clergy being just one of the forces that shaped it.

In Pakistan, it is partly the old unsettled debate about the relationship of Islam with the Pakistani state, but also how the rapacious ruling elites have repeatedly failed to live up to the promise of building a democratic, constitutional state and exercising power within the limits of the law. They have flagrantly violated their end of the social contract, and have thus weakened the system and their own moral authority.

Can the Taliban or similar groups be the alternative to these largely discredited elites?

Some may object to the term ‘discredited’ on the grounds that these leaders have been re-elected and returned to power through the popular vote. True. But that is what alienates sections of society from democratic politics when corrupt politicians escape accountability. Not all of them fall in this disgraceful category, but their dominance clearly gives religious militants a propaganda point, that ‘western type’ democracy has failed Pakistani society.

In fact, the reverse is true. The democratic process did not get enough time and space to gel, and every democratic effort was aborted prematurely.

Extremist ideologies, including militant Islamism, have flourished not under true democracies but in less open, misgoverned societies. Like other ideological brands, Islamists have used religion as an alternative way of organising society and a panacea for all the evils inflicted by traditional elites.

Religious politics is therefore less about piety and more about power and using religious symbolism to question the legitimacy of the traditional ruling classes. Religious values become embedded in one’s life, though in different degrees and practiced in different ways. Those who take a hegemonic view of religion may not accept religious pluralism and term the individual’s search for true faith, if it happens to be different in any manner from established norms, as heretic deviation.

The age of such religious hegemony has long past in almost every part of the world, but not here. A section of the religious right in Pakistan rejects religious pluralism, and does not respect or tolerate the historical diversity of belief within Islam.

The religious and the secular have historically co-existed in all faith streams, more so in modern times with the increasing neutrality of the state. But what is happening in Pakistan is quite the reverse of contemporary political trends elsewhere. It is the political function of religion that needs to be examined closely and rejected as a hegemonic cultural quest.

Religion is embedded in our society, its culture and values system, and is equally a very strong force that shapes social institutions and the general attitudes of people. Religion is not at risk, and does not need to be rescued through the agency of the state; it is the liberties of the citizens and the idea of a free society that are at risk if the hegemonic view of religion replaces pluralism of faith.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

Solidarity against violence —Rasul Bakhsh Rais
28/04/2009.


Pakistan has, like many other societies, faced violence of many types — sectarian, ethnic, and now religious. But there is a difference. Most societies in Asia, Africa and Latin America that went through agonising cycles of violence, revolutionary or motivated by criminal and other considerations, have largely stabilised or are in the process of defeating them. Some have been more successful than others.

What is our story; what forces and elements fuel violence and what we can do about it? We need to debate these questions very candidly. In our view, violence is not a cultural trait of any society as is generally assumed. Therefore, it cannot be ascribed to or associated with any particular regional group.

National, regional and international circumstances produce various groups and shape their choice of violence as a weapon of political and social coercion. In making this terrible choice, two sets of belief guide the perpetrators of violence.

The first is about the self; that these individuals and groups are pursuing the right cause, have justified grievances and can convince their followers about the moral basis of violence against the state or other communities and groups that may be competing for the same space, political power or resources.

The second belief is that they can get away with violence, and that the state is too socially and politically weak to sustain a confrontation with them. There are also external interests that have destabilised Pakistan and many other states facing challenges of nation and state building. Local groups organised around ethnicity, religion or sect associated with regional states is more of a norm than an exception in South Asia, because states in this part of the world have yet to embrace the fundamental value of the Westphalian system: inviolability of borders and sovereign jurisdiction within national boundaries.

Foreign support for local militants, whether in Pakistan or other South Asian countries, is not a primary factor, however. It is the outcome of adversarial relations in the past and a covert form of coercion parallel to normal diplomacy. Foreign elements become active only when local groups create a critical mass to disrupt activities of the state or start posing a challenge to national security.

While debating what role our neighbours play in fomenting trouble inside our territories by aligning with anti-state groups, we cannot shift our analytical or policy focus away from what propels some of these groups to take up arms. Not all violent groups have similar motivations; in our history, we have confronted ethnic, sectarian and religious groups.

Ethnic and sectarian groups are pretty old and have confronted us in many forms, but their power and ability to harm the nation has depended on the political and security climate of the region and the country. For example, the absence of democracy and true federalism has alienated some sections of the Baloch people.

This created bad conditions for national integration because autocracy and centralisation worked against the spirit of ethnic and regional pluralism. The Baloch more than others rightly felt robbed of their resources, powerless to influence the policies of the centre and humiliated by the personal style of governance of Pakistan’s last strongman, General Pervez Musharraf.

And the history of internationalising domestic conflicts, particularly in relation to Afghanistan and India, has created the right atmosphere for local groups in Pakistan and these countries to work together against Pakistan’s national interests. Much of the trouble we face today in Balochistan and the Pashtun borderlands have both domestic and regional roots.

We are facing multiple security challenges today, not just the one from the Taliban. Too many groups confronting us may stretch our security resources and also divide our political attention.

As we think about our collective response to security challenges, it is also important to shape them appropriately. Parliament and political consensus among the major parties can be the starting point. Fortunately, it is already happening both on Balochistan and the Taliban threat. Provincial autonomy for Balochistan and other provinces under the 1973 Constitution should have been granted long time ago. Denial of autonomy and provincial rights is a clear violation of the social contract by the federation. This naturally feeds into the grievances of disillusioned nationalist leaders.

There appears to be an emerging sense among the major political parties that the issue of provincial autonomy is serious and needs to be settled quickly and made part of the new package of constitutional amendments. But while we wait for that to happen, the transfer of the concurrent list to the provinces shouldn’t await new amendments. That will be simply implementing the national consensus and honouring the federation’s compact with the units. Things will then hopefully start calming down in Balochistan.

Talibanisation is a complex issue because it is not confined to a particular ethnic group or region of the country. Also, it mixes politics, power and religion; and that combination makes such movements difficult and costly to defeat.

Unlike the ethnic demands of devolution of power, assertion of provincial rights on resources and autonomy that are negotiable, the Taliban’s demands about changing the very identity and writ of the Pakistani state are beyond the framework of the Constitution.

While we may employ power when there is no other choice left against a group that takes up arms and is unrelenting, something that every state does no matter how weak or small or how big the challenges, we need to mobilise society. Local communities quite often become hostage to the power and cruelty of armed groups. Also, outside the affected areas, other parts of society blame the state and security forces more than the militants. Nor are the militants always engaged in reactive violence, as people outside the conflict zones tend to believe.

It is equally necessary, if not more, to mobilise society against the violent groups, as is it is to use to force, if and when inevitable.

The cultural, historical and civilisational foundations of solidarity among the people of Pakistan are strong and have manifested themselves even without the agency of the state on occasions of national distress and emergency. Religious extremism and the violence associated with it cannot be left out of the social sphere as the exclusive responsibility of the state.

It is our country, our society, our identity and our political order under our Constitution that are threatened. Our resolve to stand up against violence and show greater solidarity would morally and socially weaken violent groups and give us the collective strength to face our challenges. We cannot afford to pass on our responsibility to others.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

__________________
CSS 2009, 2010, 2011 Qualifier

People often put this question to us, at intellectual forums or social gatherings. And then, without waiting for comment, answer it themselves: no, we don’t have democracy!

Why do people think we don’t have democracy, when we have held elections, have representative governments at the centre and in the provinces, and Pervez Musharraf is no longer our president?

The answer we get is in the form of more questions, about everything that is wrong with our society, policies, education, the economy etc. People ask: what has really changed; is this government not following the same policies as its predecessor; don’t the same people get elected every time elections are held; is it democracy when the same ruling families return to power again and again?

There are other questions, too, that raise doubts about the relevance of democracy to the socio-economic conditions of Pakistan. Some literate urbanites wonder in their conversations about democracy how a poor and illiterate population can make sensible decisions in the electoral process. They ask: is this why the same lot is elected again and again; why aren’t the poor or even the middle class represented in the provincial and national assemblies?

These are the kind of questions that we need to discuss and debate as we reflect on the quality of democracy in our country, so that we can make it better by putting greater effort into our democratic project. Interestingly, the people who raise doubts about the quality of democracy would not welcome dictatorship, they also don’t believe there is a better alternative to democracy.

Let us address some of these doubts and questions. But before that, some general remarks about democracy:

First, democracy in its simplest and basic form is about giving people the right to elect their government. Second, through this system, the aim is to create stability and certainty in society by establishing a system under which a government can be created and changed peacefully. Third, public approval of a political party to form government gives it political legitimacy and social support to manage public affairs, and formulate and implement policies. At the centre of this system is the idea of fundamental rights, political equality and individual freedoms.

These are some of the underlying assumptions about the goodness of democracy and its relevance to all cultures and civilisations. Why, then, do some societies have democracy and others don’t; why is it that the quality of democracy in some countries is better than others; and why are some societies better candidates for a transition to democracy?

The answers to these questions lie in the history of political development in a society, the nature of its elites and the political consensus among them, and how long democracy, even it its procedural, basic form, has been practiced.

Thus when looking at Pakistan, questions about democracy are more about what it could and must have done than about its inherent weakness as a system or about its relevance. Natually, popular expectations of elected governments to deliver services, maintain law and order, promote economic progress and social stability are much higher than of other forms of government. And it should be noted that other forms of government, especially dictatorships, do not require popular legitimacy; they want acceptance based on better performance.

It is still debateable whether military dictatorships have out-performed civilian governments or vice versa. Though it should be kept in mind that except for the government that came to power in 2002, no civilian government after 1985 was able to complete its tenure. We also cannot ignore the distributive effects of economic growth and investment in social projects, which were emphasised more during democratic periods than during dictatorships.

The development of democracy, let us not forget, has been hampered by the troublesome legacies of the military regimes, including ethnic fragmentation, alienation of the smaller provinces, and concentration of wealth and privilege among the class co-opted by the dictators.

Democracy is an evolutionary system; and it does not come in a perfect template. We may have some universal principles like popular sovereignty and representative government, but these have to be rooted in the socio-cultural climate of a country. The class character of society and the layers of influence and power are reflected in who usually gets elected.

During the first phases of democratic development, it is always the aristocratic classes that dominate the electoral process, but the urban landscape may have a different set of representatives, for example from Karachi or some urban centres of Punjab. Greater representation of the middle and professional classes increases over election cycles, within political parties as well, and the stability of elected governments increases too.

To meet popular expectations, and to out-perform rivals and predecessors, elected leaders need to ally with the middle and professional classes. In many countries, this has become a political necessity rather than a choice.

The quality of democracy and its stability has thus depended generally on the growth of the middle class, which in our view has expanded, and continues to rise. But the middle clas is neither organic nor ideologically homogenous. Its economic character wants to achieve more and pulls it closer to the idea of freedom, and makes it a stakeholder in political stability.

The Pakistani middle class may not be seen as yet in the elected assemblies but it occupies alternative spaces of influence, in the robust civil society movement, in the intellectual circles and in the media. The freedom of the media and the emergence of civil society and its successful movement for the restoration of deposed judges are signs of democratic change.

Pakistan may remain a transitional democracy until we have had at least three peaceful transfers of power through elections. Our elected representatives have a heavy burden to disprove the sceptics inside and outside the country by forming coalitions as they have and by building national consensus on difficult issues, as they appear to be doing.

Democracy is a natural system for an ethnically diverse and culturally pluralistic society like Pakistan. And this is why after every failed and discredited dictatorship, we have returned to democracy. Yes, we have democracy, but it may not be comparable with the quality of democracy in countries that have consistently followed this path of social and economic development.

We need to make our democracy better in the interest of the common man. And it is a collective social enterprise that we cannot leave to the dominant elites. Popular stakes and popular civic engagement will keep us on the democratic track and will speed up the process to make up for lost time.

__________________
CSS 2009, 2010, 2011 Qualifier

People often put this question to us, at intellectual forums or social gatherings. And then, without waiting for comment, answer it themselves: no, we don’t have democracy!

Why do people think we don’t have democracy, when we have held elections, have representative governments at the centre and in the provinces, and Pervez Musharraf is no longer our president?

The answer we get is in the form of more questions, about everything that is wrong with our society, policies, education, the economy etc. People ask: what has really changed; is this government not following the same policies as its predecessor; don’t the same people get elected every time elections are held; is it democracy when the same ruling families return to power again and again?

There are other questions, too, that raise doubts about the relevance of democracy to the socio-economic conditions of Pakistan. Some literate urbanites wonder in their conversations about democracy how a poor and illiterate population can make sensible decisions in the electoral process. They ask: is this why the same lot is elected again and again; why aren’t the poor or even the middle class represented in the provincial and national assemblies?

These are the kind of questions that we need to discuss and debate as we reflect on the quality of democracy in our country, so that we can make it better by putting greater effort into our democratic project. Interestingly, the people who raise doubts about the quality of democracy would not welcome dictatorship, they also don’t believe there is a better alternative to democracy.

Let us address some of these doubts and questions. But before that, some general remarks about democracy:

First, democracy in its simplest and basic form is about giving people the right to elect their government. Second, through this system, the aim is to create stability and certainty in society by establishing a system under which a government can be created and changed peacefully. Third, public approval of a political party to form government gives it political legitimacy and social support to manage public affairs, and formulate and implement policies. At the centre of this system is the idea of fundamental rights, political equality and individual freedoms.

These are some of the underlying assumptions about the goodness of democracy and its relevance to all cultures and civilisations. Why, then, do some societies have democracy and others don’t; why is it that the quality of democracy in some countries is better than others; and why are some societies better candidates for a transition to democracy?

The answers to these questions lie in the history of political development in a society, the nature of its elites and the political consensus among them, and how long democracy, even it its procedural, basic form, has been practiced.

Thus when looking at Pakistan, questions about democracy are more about what it could and must have done than about its inherent weakness as a system or about its relevance. Natually, popular expectations of elected governments to deliver services, maintain law and order, promote economic progress and social stability are much higher than of other forms of government. And it should be noted that other forms of government, especially dictatorships, do not require popular legitimacy; they want acceptance based on better performance.

It is still debateable whether military dictatorships have out-performed civilian governments or vice versa. Though it should be kept in mind that except for the government that came to power in 2002, no civilian government after 1985 was able to complete its tenure. We also cannot ignore the distributive effects of economic growth and investment in social projects, which were emphasised more during democratic periods than during dictatorships.

The development of democracy, let us not forget, has been hampered by the troublesome legacies of the military regimes, including ethnic fragmentation, alienation of the smaller provinces, and concentration of wealth and privilege among the class co-opted by the dictators.

Democracy is an evolutionary system; and it does not come in a perfect template. We may have some universal principles like popular sovereignty and representative government, but these have to be rooted in the socio-cultural climate of a country. The class character of society and the layers of influence and power are reflected in who usually gets elected.

During the first phases of democratic development, it is always the aristocratic classes that dominate the electoral process, but the urban landscape may have a different set of representatives, for example from Karachi or some urban centres of Punjab. Greater representation of the middle and professional classes increases over election cycles, within political parties as well, and the stability of elected governments increases too.

To meet popular expectations, and to out-perform rivals and predecessors, elected leaders need to ally with the middle and professional classes. In many countries, this has become a political necessity rather than a choice.

The quality of democracy and its stability has thus depended generally on the growth of the middle class, which in our view has expanded, and continues to rise. But the middle clas is neither organic nor ideologically homogenous. Its economic character wants to achieve more and pulls it closer to the idea of freedom, and makes it a stakeholder in political stability.

The Pakistani middle class may not be seen as yet in the elected assemblies but it occupies alternative spaces of influence, in the robust civil society movement, in the intellectual circles and in the media. The freedom of the media and the emergence of civil society and its successful movement for the restoration of deposed judges are signs of democratic change.

Pakistan may remain a transitional democracy until we have had at least three peaceful transfers of power through elections. Our elected representatives have a heavy burden to disprove the sceptics inside and outside the country by forming coalitions as they have and by building national consensus on difficult issues, as they appear to be doing.

Democracy is a natural system for an ethnically diverse and culturally pluralistic society like Pakistan. And this is why after every failed and discredited dictatorship, we have returned to democracy. Yes, we have democracy, but it may not be comparable with the quality of democracy in countries that have consistently followed this path of social and economic development.

We need to make our democracy better in the interest of the common man. And it is a collective social enterprise that we cannot leave to the dominant elites. Popular stakes and popular civic engagement will keep us on the democratic track and will speed up the process to make up for lost time.

__________________
CSS 2009, 2010, 2011 Qualifier

What is happening in the borderlands of Pakistan is blowback from the policies that we pursued in the second wave of the Cold War as an American ally and a front-line state against the former Soviet Union. According to American strategic thinking at that time, communists were the greatest enemies of humanity and a primary threat to the stability of the global system.

Islamists from all over the world were encouraged, trained, financed and supported in the war against the Soviets. The United States and Pakistan gave no serious consideration to the long-term consequences of supporting an Islamist insurgency and effects of the militarisation and empowerment of the multi-national Muslim groups that came to dominate the Afghan jihad.

The history of this conflict cannot be forgotten. We continue to deal with its repercussions in FATA and other areas of Pakistan and around the world. And it is for this reason that quite a few leaders and commentators in Pakistan questioned our support to the US-led war on terror. These questions were not about the morality or legality of the required actions, but how dangerous and difficult it would be to comply with an unending list of unreasonable American demands.

Even after close cooperation with the US, American leaders have continued to doubt our commitment and sincerity as an ally, and continually point fingers at us for the resurrection of the Taliban insurgency. Given this attitude, would the Americans have accepted and respected our neutrality? Not really.

In national fury and frustration, the Americans lost sight of some bitter realities of asymmetric conflict. The lessons learnt from Vietnam and the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan did not figure prominently in their assessments. They had a new enemy now — political, militant Islam; more immediately visible in the form of Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. They conveniently forgot about the long patch of Afghan history during which they had aligned themselves with these very Islamist forces. Hence this new adversary had its genesis in America’s own anti-communist strategy, and also in the many wrongs that it had committed against the Arabs and Palestinians in support of Israel.

Pakistan and the world understood the American reasons for going after the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There was hardly any international outcry against the American invasion to oust them from power; rather there was great support for the military operation against the Taliban within and outside the region. There was, and still is, vast support for rebuilding Afghanistan as a secure, stable and peaceful nation.

But the degree of that support and goodwill for the US-led coalition is dwindling fast. Plenty of time, money and policy focus have been wasted on the wrong priorities, with greater focus on war than on the reconstruction of Afghan economy and state institutions.

The initial policy — winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans — has ended up in a mess that has generated widespread anti-American sentiment not only in Afghanistan but also across the Durand Line. This is clearly a loss for the US as it has failed to create a favourable impression and lost support among the local population.

Something has gone terribly wrong in the American approach to Afghanistan. US policymakers are not examining the failures and weaknesses of their framework. The ethnic lopsidedness of the power structure they have created in Afghanistan has alienated majority of the Pashtuns; their focus has remained keeping the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border out of the conflict.

It has not been an easy for Pakistan to prevent Taliban movement into Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban also frequently enter our troubled zones along the border. These groups are bound by ethnic, religious and historical linkages, especially against foreign forces.

Pakistan’s border areas have been greatly influenced by the three cycles of war in the region: the war against the Soviets, the Afghan civil war and then the post-9/11 American-led occupation.

In this latest war, the US, in its efforts to sanitise Afghanistan of terrorists, tasked Pakistan to effectively control the border, and flush out Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan primarily employed the same strategy in the border regions that the US applied across the border, including a larger military presence (in some areas for the first time ever), capture of foreign and Pakistani terrorists, and military operations against militant hideouts.

Perhaps the successful stabilisation of Afghanistan would have positively contributed to Pakistani efforts in effectively controlling and governing the border. But contrary to their expectations, the US and its coalition partners faced tough resistance, which has been growing in ferocity every year.

One major flaw in the American strategy has been heavy reliance on guns and bombs, which is the same mistake that the Soviets had committed. By relying on the military component and not employing reconciliation tactics, the Americans have shown that they have learned nothing from Afghanistan’s history.

For Pakistan, this was not a controversial policy because its forces have often taken action against their own people and territory, something that runs against popular sentiment. The political and security costs of these operations have been horrendous. Not only has Pakistan lost over two thousand security personnel, but the entire Pashtun region, as deep as Swat, has been destabilised. Many Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border have become alienated and drifted back towards supporting the Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan attempted to reverse this trend by singing a peace accord with the tribes in Waziristan in September 2006, and then again with the Taliban in Swat in 2008 after elected governments took over. The deal promised peace and stability in return for cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Pakistani forces. The Taliban, though, had other designs; they used peace agreements more as pauses to regroup and reorganise than to reintegrate into society peacefully.

There were many critics of the peace deals with the Taliban inside and outside Pakistan, but the elected provincial and federal governments wanted to give the strategy a chance. This was interpreted as surrender and a weakening of Pakistan’s resolve to stay the course in the war on terror. Subsequent events have proved the critics right.

This time around, public opinion has turned against the Taliban both in the insurgency-hit areas and in rest of the country. Another positive sign is that the major political parties are on the same page; there is growing realisation in the country that we cannot surrender anything to the armed groups or allow the Taliban to threaten the local population.

Winning this war remains a major challenge for the entire nation. With the evolving political consensus, we need to mobilise the society in support of national efforts to stabilise the country.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

__________________
CSS 2009, 2010, 2011 Qualifier

Consensus against violent groups--- 19/05/2009

Dialogue with violent groups is about ending violence and not about conceding political ground or territorial control. In a fragmented political scene like ours, it is a major challenge to reach this understanding

Political support for fighting insurgencies of all types requires national consensus. The term consensus however doesn’t mean perfect or total agreement. The major stakeholders, players and state institutions must have an agreement on who the enemy is and how best to end the violence against citizens.

In the present political map of Pakistan, the political parties, civil society and social groups from the Swat region and FATA are the real stakeholders. Rationally speaking, their interests are peace, stability, progress and good governance. There should be no doubt about the true aspirations of the people of this region.

All militant political or religious groups that take up arms against the state have a narrative of grievances, both real and fictional, that they use to build up a support base and to convince people about their path. But argument is never a strong weapon for the militants; it is through the gun, through torture and through mass murder that they establish control over communities.

Every insurgent group in our region, throughout history, has the narrative of injustice and hopelessness. They deliberately trashed the good intentions of governments and those political elements that wanted to reach out to them, and doubted their sincerity in resolving disputes through negotiations and peaceful means. This is not to say that all governments or those in positions of authority in Pakistan or other parts of South Asia were always people of peace and good judgement. Many of them are greatly responsible for the conditions of conflict.

We have often written about the causes of our current troubles, but this piece is essentially about how we can defeat those who are not willing to live under the Constitution and threaten the people, society and state of Pakistan with violence.

Sadly we have been through many violent conflicts and the threat of non-religious political violence still persists. Ethnic violence in Karachi for the past few years, notably on May 12, 2007 and April this year is a stark reminder of the many trouble spots that could divert our political attention and spread our security resources too thin.

What is then the consensus about? It is primarily about zero tolerance of violence and violent groups, regardless of their religious, sectarian or ethnic make-up. One reason some of these groups have become more violent is to establish territorial domains and dominance in the face of a weakened state and government. It is weak in terms of political legitimacy, moral standing and the political capacity to take bold decisions. Economic strains, ineffective leadership and disagreements among some vital sections of society on how to deal with terrorists further add to the weakness of the Pakistani state.

The narrow political interests of Pervez Musharraf and political expediency shaped his regime’s alliances with an ethnic group with a violent past in Karachi and the religious right, which has very close affinity with the Taliban. We now face the boomerang effects of his political strategy both in Karachi and in the border regions.

The writ of the Pakistani state is threatened by more than one group and in more than one region. Our present focus on Swat shouldn’t blind us to even greater and clearer dangers that we may face if we continue to fail in building national consensus against violent groups.

There are two important reasons for this failure. The first is duplicity; for example when a head of state celebrates violence in one part of the country as a sign of his political strength while using force against militants in another part, or when a political government fails to call a spade a spade owing to political expediency.

Such duplicity is a clear and dangerous sign of the weakening of the state. The politics of any party or group needs to be separated from the violent and criminal acts of activists, workers or hired guns, regardless of their affiliation. Tolerating the violence of one group encourages others to do the same, and further undermines the legitimacy of use of force by the state, especially if it is being selective in its targeting.

Use of force is not the preferred solution or the only option that a state must employ; and in an ethnically pluralistic and politically complex society like Pakistan, it cannot be the weapon of choice. As we have seen, it can be more divisive than uniting when the violent groups have a strong ethnic social support base and are plugged into nationwide religious networks.

The second important reason for our failure is a lack of clarity among our political elites on the identity of the enemy. The definition of enemy is politically loaded and every group will have its take based on its particular political imperatives. The picture becomes more confusing when there is more than one enemy, internal and external, and prevents the formation of a national consensus both on the identification of threat and how to deal with them.

Pakistan faces multiple internal and external threats today; we have referred to the linkages between the internal enemies, and the identity of our external foes is also very clear. We need to have clarity on these threats and how best to use our social, political and military resources to counter them, and to bring violent groups into mainstream politics and society.

This is what makes politics an art, and not a science; it seeks to make things possible and explore the outer limits of dialogue and understanding to resolve conflicts. But dialogue with violent groups is about ending violence and not about conceding political ground or territorial control. In a fragmented political scene like ours, it is a major challenge to reach this understanding; but without such an understanding and consensus, we will neither be able to point out our enemies nor find the right means to fight them.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

After more than a decade of negotiations and many ups and downs, Iran and Pakistan signed the framework on the Iran-Pakistan ‘peace’ pipeline during President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to Tehran, pushing the much-delayed project a notch forward. The gas pipeline project makes economic sense: Iran has surplus gas to sell and Pakistan needs gas.

But situations, particularly in the extended Southwest Asian region, don’t always follow economic logic; instead, they are determined by politics, strategic interests, rivalries and conflicting views, particularly about Afghanistan.

Since the pipeline project presently concerns Iran and Pakistan, it would be better to comment on the nature of Pak-Iran ties and whether or not moving forward with pipeline will also move forward the somewhat troubled relationship between the two states. The answer lies in how we read the nature of this relationship and how it is likely to develop in the context of the larger context of power between a variety of players — Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the United States.

The smiles and tight embraces of diplomats and political leaders of Iran and Pakistan don’t tell much about the hidden tensions, mistrust and cloak-and-dagger behaviour between the two countries. All the talk about common cultural and civilisational roots doesn’t carry much weight for territorialised nation states, which have their own interests.

It is the conflict or congruence of these interests that can either cause rifts between states or bring them closer together. And in today’s world, specific issues drive relations between states like Iran and Pakistan, and within the context of the larger strategic vision of each country.

We are not sure if the strategic visions or regional and outside powers and the games they play create any groundswell for comprehensive partnerships beyond certain specific issues. The strategic partnership between Iran and Pakistan was shaped by the dynamics of the Cold War, and American dominance in Iran ended three decades ago with the Iranian clergy’s capture of the state.

The Iranian clergymen, like their counterparts in Pakistan, have a worldview, a strategic map and a policy framework to order Iran’s regional and global relationships. In their bipolar view of the East (Muslim countries) and the West, Pakistan has been on the other side of their policy and ideological fence. It has not been easy for Pakistan to win real friendship of the post-Shah Iranian leadership.

We don’t think Pakistan’s pragmatic tilt toward the West, more specifically the United States, was or could be a major roadblock in the way of closer relations between Tehran and Islamabad. What causes these hidden tensions, then, are conflicting interests in Afghanistan and horizontal partnerships between feuding Afghan social groups and regional states like Pakistan and Iran. This rivalry has fuelled the fire between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, causing tremendous harm to Afghan society at large.

Conflicting visions of Iran and Pakistan have not changed in the structural sense, but there appears to be a growing agreement on three specific issues that may perhaps help to transform this relationship: the war on terror; the stability and reconstruction of Afghanistan; and energy trade.

These are not ordinary problems. They are critical and have the potential to reshape the development and security paradigms of the entire region. They key to all these issues is closer cooperation between Iran and Pakistan on the one hand, and between Afghanistan and Pakistan on the other.

While stabilising Afghanistan and creating a shared regional interest in the future of this state may take a long time, and the war against terrorism may require greater understanding than we have at the moment, the gas pipeline has a real chance of success. It can be a great infrastructural project, and the first of its kind to connect Pakistani consumers, industries and power plants to Iranian gas-fields.

What are its potential benefits and drawbacks for Pakistan?

A straightforward argument is that the pipeline project is a perfect match between a country with an energy surplus and an energy-deficient country, and that the deal is going to benefit both. It is a win-win situation.

The real potential benefit of energy trade between Iran and Pakistan, with the possibility of its extension to India once New Delhi is on board, is in creating latent interdependence. The reason for naming the proposed gas pipeline as a ‘peace’ pipeline is because of its value in making the three countries interdependent on one another, and thus subjecting old disputes to the economic rationalism required in this day and age.

Economic interdependence leads to much larger and complex relationships, forming an unbreakable web and creating dense partnerships, and causing a spill-over from one set of issues to another. It is of course not an automatic process, and is subject to critical political decisions.

And those decisions are about how to harmonise conflicting strategic visions that dominate in our region in all other aspects of inter-state relations. We can also approach the issue of energy trade and larger economic cooperation by separating them from conflicting strategic pursuits, and then let the real economic benefits work on reshaping the respective strategic visions of each country.

The outcome will depend on whether it is economic rationalism or divergent strategic views that shape this partnership. It is better to realise economic benefits and let them shape the future course of our relationships than unsettled strategic problems and conflicts. But in a region like ours, competing security interests cannot easily be sidelined from the decision-making process.

Pakistan, however, runs the potential risk of over-dependence on Iranian gas, which may affect efforts to explore and develop our own gas fields. If all or most of the Iranian gas is used for the power sector, as stated by the government, then our energy mix will remain lopsidedly dependent on imported fuel.

Another serious question is why our rulers continue to ignore our hydroelectric power potential and the Thar coal deposits, some of the largest in the world. The lack of consensus that is often cited as the reason for not utilising our own resources is also politically manufactured, as the interests of important political players at a given point in time may demand something else.

Before we find leadership with a national vision and the political will to help ourselves through our own resources, let us do what energy-starved countries do: import.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

Battling warlords and religious militants cannot be a seasonal venture or an on-and-off operation. As indicated by the plight of millions of displaced persons from the conflict zones and the great sacrifices made by our security forces and civilians, it is an extraordinary situation that nobody would like to repeat.

The presence of militant groups, both religious and ethnic, their warlordism — coercive self-imposition — on local populations and holding them hostage under perpetual fear of violence poses a grave national security threat. We cannot leave people at the mercy of private armies and their gendarmes.

If we allow such situations to develop, as has happened in our western borderlands, not only would the sovereignty of the state erode, as it has, the successful warlordism of one group would encourage similar or other types of groups — sectarian or ethnic — to take up arms against the state and challenge its writ.

It is not only the logic of coherence and territorial unity of the state, but also a fundamental constitutional responsibility of the state to guarantee freedom and safety of local populations and free them from brutal warlordism.

The nation state and the warlords trying to run a parallel system of security and governance have a dialectical relationship. The two cannot co-exist; one has to eliminate the other for its own survival. Pakistan faces this challenge because violent groups have established little fiefdoms on the periphery that now threaten the peace and security of our major population centres.

Why have such groups emerged and how can we effectively defeat them?

There is a pile of well-argued explanations for the emergence of militant groups, from the residue of our support to the liberation of Afghanistan from Soviet occupation to the rise of militant political Islam. Also there happened to be a confluence of interests between an international coalition led by the United States during the Cold War to defeat communism, against which Pakistan was a frontline state, and the Islamist groups that had purely religious motivations against the Red Army.

The alliance between the two was opportunistic and accidental; neither ideological nor beyond the limits of Afghanistan. There was no clarity on what they would do after the common enemy was defeated, except for a vague expectation that the United States would stay on the ground and lead efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.

But Washington washed its hands of Afghanistan as soon as the Soviets began to withdraw, leaving it at the mercy of warring Mujahideen factions and Afghanistan’s predatory neighbours.

The international coalition that supported the Afghan Mujahideen gave no serious thought to normalising the devastated Afghan state and society. No one really bothered to consider the impact religious forces gloating over a historic victory against the Soviet Union and Afghan communists would have on regional security.

Being fixated just on humiliating and defeating the Soviet Union and not devoting political attention and resources to rebuilding Afghanistan and reintegrating Islamic militants peacefully back into society was a mistake of titanic proportions.

We now know the consequences of that neglect: civil war among Afghanistan’s social groups and the eventual emergence of the Taliban movement. Every neighbour of Afghanistan got sucked into the conflict, fuelling the fire of a war that demolished what was left of Afghan state and society.

The Taliban movement, backed by Pakistan and the Pashtun ethnic groups inside Afghanistan, routed other groups and warlords that were supported by Iran, Russia, India and some Central Asian states. That victory further contributed to two dangerous developments: rule by military conquest and transnational linkages among Islamist groups from an extended Central Asia to Pakistan.

It is a moot question whether it was the triumphalism of the transnational Islamists and their regional networking or the weakened position of countervailing forces like local opposition groups or the collapse of the state that facilitated the Taliban victory.

While making references to all other reasons related to the Cold War and Pakistan’s policy, let us not forget that militant religious groups and warlords have risen from the ruins of the states and their weak governing structures. In Afghanistan, there was no state left; only rival ethnic groups were left to fight the Taliban, and they couldn’t stand against the ferocious and determined Taliban force until the American-led international coalition with the cooperation of the Taliban’s ethnic rivals displaced them from power in 2001.

The governing capacity of the Pakistani state has gradually weakened in all areas, but notably more in the border regions because of the social, religious and political impact of the wars next door in Afghanistan.

Pakistan today faces the adverse consequences of the failure of the United States and other coalition partners in Afghanistan. After eight years of brutal and costly war, Afghanistan remains a fragile state, fragmented and in a state of perpetual war. The Taliban are now once again a rising force in Afghanistan as they have so far resisted the American efforts to pacify and rebuild the Pashtun areas.

There has indeed historically been a nexus between what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s western borderlands. In this part of the world, conflicts and groups involved in conflicts have often spilled over across borders on grounds of religion or nationalism or both. Now there is yet another malignant factor: the presence of our adversary across the border that acts with malicious intent to destabilise the country and make our war against the Taliban costlier.

The mission and determination of the armed forces, political leaders and the nation at large today is to defeat the Taliban and their affiliated militant groups permanently. The political consensus and national solidarity that we have succeeded in building against the Taliban can lead us to an enduring victory if we pay greater attention to the non-military components of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the millions of displaced persons.

More importantly, the very causes that have contributed to the rise of the Taliban militancy need to be addressed. We have to rebuild credible state capacity with a focus on strengthening the police, the paramilitary forces and intelligence, accompanied by transparent development and good governance.

As Afghanistan is largely an American baby and its responsibility in terms of security and reconstruction, we can only hope the US will do better than it has done so far. We have a direct stake in the peace and political integrity of Afghanistan because its failures are going affect our security very adversely.

One way we can isolate our borderland from the conflicts in Afghanistan is to integrate these regions into mainstream Pakistan with similar institutions, legal system and social services delivery.

It is time to rethink tribal exceptionalism and its outdated institutions. The Afghan wars and the rise of militancy have damaged Pakistan, and no amount of social repairing is likely to succeed. The solution lies in slow political integration, economic development and effective and participatory statehood. Only that will win us the current war and future peace.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

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CSS 2009, 2010, 2011 Qualifier

There is no doubt that this is a historic moment in American history and a great opportunity for the US to refashion its relations, particularly with the Muslim world

No American president in recent history has raised such high hopes at home and abroad, and on every issue, from equality among races to settling one of the most challenging rifts between Muslim societies and the Western.

This optimism about Obama presidency is not without reason. It is not just about his personal qualities, his rise to power from a very humble background, his personal struggles or the quality of his leadership; it is also — more so — about his charisma, his liberal vision and his political capacity to build coalitions.

After the countless blunders of the Bush presidency, and a mostly flawed worldview of the neo-conservatives, Barack Obama appears to be the right person at the right time to restore faith in American ideals at home and trust in its leadership abroad.

The United States has accumulated a great trust deficit with a large number of countries. Its image as a benign and generous power always willing to help societies in need during the early Cold War years has changed dramatically over the last quarter-century.

It is now viewed generally as an imperialistic, pushy, greedy, self-centred and interventionist hegemonic power in most of Latin America. These perceptions have a history and some bitter facts behind them.

But if one looks at the larger global perception of the US, such images are not confined to Latin America alone. Even some European countries, including close allies of the US, have negative perceptions of American power and its ruling establishment.

This is only one side of the story about American society, values and culture. At a more personal level, many people who may have a negative image of the American establishment show great praise and recognition of the strength of American society, its ideals and institutions. It is not without reason that American colleges and universities attract the largest number of the brightest students, scientists, philosophers and intellectuals from every corner of the world.

Compared to many European countries, the former colonial powers, the US has treated ordinary immigrants, foreign students and intellectuals much better, often giving them the same benefits and privileges as US citizens.

Today, perhaps the greatest number of immigrant Muslims in any single foreign country might be found in the US. It has been historically a welcoming society, very warm and non-hostile to peoples from other religions, civilisations and nationalities.

Therefore, multiculturalism, individualism, personal freedoms and generally dignified space for all have been the real strength of the American society.

But like any society, it had its flaws, like resistance in some spheres to granting equal rights to members of coloured races, specifically African Americans. In fact slavery, racial segregation and denial of civil rights were the norm until the civil rights movement of the ‘60s, successfully led by a charismatic and determined American leader, Martin Luther King Jr.

The election of a black person, the son of an immigrant exchange student from Kenya with a Muslim background, to the White House, justifiably characterised as the most powerful office on earth, is not an ordinary political event. American society, in contrast to traditional societies like ours, recognises personal merit, achievement and excellence.

Obama being the first African American President represents the soft and real strength of American society, which is constant accommodation of new social forces like creativity and the ideas of positive change. He symbolises a revolution in American politics, something that many people unfamiliar with American history, institutions and values are unable to fathom.

There is no doubt that this is a historic moment in American history and a great opportunity for the US to refashion its relations, particularly with the Muslim world.

How to reach out to the Muslim world has been one of the central questions on the mind of Barack Obama, along with how to rehabilitate American prestige and respect, which seemed to be a running theme even in his inaugural address. With American troops involved in two wars in two Muslims states, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the troubling legacy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has historically fed into alienation and anger of Muslim societies, Obama faces a big challenge of selling his vision of reconciliation.

It is a liberal belief that reconciliation between the Muslim societies and the West is not only desirable but also a workable project, and very fundamental to peace and harmony in the world.

Only the conservatives in Western society, though not all brands and shades of them, and the fundamentalists and religious right in the Muslim world, again not all of them, may think that reconciliation is neither possible nor necessary. Civilisational confrontationists represent only a tiny minority and cannot be allowed to cause conflict that leads to suffering and pain, mostly in Muslim countries.

President Obama’s landmark speech in Cairo last week represents a new vision, truly a way forward in seeking co-existence and reconciliation based on mutual respect and recognition of each other’s rights and obligation to achieve peace and stability.

It is heartening that he has recognised the centrality of the Palestinian issue to the larger menu of perceptual issues between Muslims and the West. The central message is that let us not be held hostage to history and continue to live on grievances and victim-hood of the past. This is as good as it sounds though.

The real challenge for the United States and President Obama is the creation of a Palestinian state that is coherent and sustainable; the challenges being the return of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 that will require rolling back Jewish settlements on lands owned by the Palestinians and the return of Palestinian refugees that were forced to leave by the Zionists in 1948. Other American presidents in the past have been unwilling to use the power and influence that the US has over Israel, due to the countervailing force of pro-Israel lobbies in Congress and other power centres.

Have American interests changed in relation to the Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world at large to an extent that warrants a major shift in American policy? Will Obama be able to build the necessary coalition between the Democrats and the Republicans to push forward his agenda of reconciliation with the Muslim world? And finally, how much pressure and influence can he really exercise over Israel to make genuine concessions to the Palestinians?

Talking peace is good but good speeches are hardly the stuff that peace and reconciliation are made of. They are merely statements of good intentions that require concrete steps to make others, in this case the Muslim world, believe that US policy has changed.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

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CSS 2009, 2010, 2011 Qualifier

Culturally, there is not one but three Punjabs, excluding the one on the Indian side. If we don’t consider religion and its influence on community and identity formation, Indian Punjab would culturally and linguistically be a part of Central Punjab in Pakistan.

Apart from the familiar commonalities that are found among the ancient lands and peoples of the Indus, their dialects and social structures are very different. So are the patterns of leadership, elite formations and power relationships in society.

Southern Punjab, much like other parts of the country, no longer represents any ethnic cohesion. The ethnic-linguistic mix has greatly changed with migration from the other Punjabs since canal colonisation. And the pattern of migration through various land acquisition schemes, particularly after the absorption of the State of Bahawalpur into Punjab, has continued.

Powerful civil bureaucrats with political roots in Central Punjab have allotted hundreds of thousands of acres state land to relatives, friends, and to those who could bribe them. This pattern continues in Cholistan and Thal (Layyah). Fake land claims by the migrants from India at the time of Pakistan’s creation, which continued to be entertained for decades, were another factor that robbed a great majority of local (Seraiki) landless peasants of their rights to own land.

In some areas, migration has even changed the historical demographic balance, particularly in major cities and towns of Southern Punjab. The region today represents a complex mosaic of linguistic and ethnic groups, including Baloch, Punjabis, Seraikis, Mohajirs and Pashtuns. The latter are in smaller numbers as a residual social class of the Pathan rulers of the Derajat (Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismail Khan) and the Multan state before its conquest by Ranjit Singh.

Social characteristics of a region, complex as they are in Southern Punjab, are important to understanding which social groups control resources — land, political power and social influence — and how they affect social relations and development patterns.

The ever-expanding towns of Southern Punjab represent a very complex picture of ethnicity and culture, provide a common space for all and an opportunity for liberation from feudal bondage for the peasant as well as the middle income agriculturalist.

Although all cities of Punjab have been rotting for decades under massive political and bureaucratic corruption, the towns of Southern Punjab have suffered the most.

Just visit any town, including Multan, the seat of some of the ruling families of the region: the dust, smog and litter will hit you in the face. You will see broken potholed roads, leaking sewage and constant construction under special programmes by prime ministers, presidents and hordes of provincial and federal ministers from the region.

The villages and rural areas of the region are worse than the towns. At least in the towns, there might be some functioning public schools and a few colleges, but not in most of the rural areas. There is at least one ghost degree-college that this writer has observed in one of the southern districts. In town colleges, teachers do not attend classes or lecture regularly. The teachers of natural sciences run private academies and don’t devote themselves to teaching at the colleges.

The same is true of government hospitals where even the poor patients needing some surgery are driven to private clinics run by doctors on the payrolls of government hospitals. There might be a few noble exceptions to this practice that robs both state and society, but what this writer has witnessed over several visits to the region is heartbreaking.

What hurts more is that the ruling classes of the region continue to be elected by the same helpless peasantry that is hauled to the polling station every time to confirm political legitimacy on their lords. Democracy therefore has to go a long way to make the ruling classes accountable to anyone — the law, institutions or the common voting citizen. But this is the only route to progress; we have tried all others.

Great difference is visible in the quality of education delivery and some other social services among the rural areas of Southern Punjab between the native and the settler communities. The settler or migrant communities fare much better in terms of quality of education, particularly in areas where they have demographic strength.

The native villages that we have observed in more than one district of the region have seen very little or no development: their schools are dysfunctional or most of the teachers are absent; basic health centres have no doctors; and roads break down within a few months of their construction. This is no fiction; it is a cruel reality that is very visible in so many areas.

How do we explain these troubles of Southern Punjab?

They are primarily because of feudalism, semi-tribal social structure and monopoly of landowning families over political representation. This class has misused its power and continues to do so. There appears to be an unbreakable nexus between the civil bureaucrats heading different government departments at the district level and the elected representatives both of local governments and the members of provincial and federal legislatures.

Again, with few exceptions, they have joined hands to misappropriate development funds by spending very little on projects and pocketing most of the money. During the Musharraf years, Southern Punjab witnessed greater plunder than perhaps any other region of the country. Transparent and fair accounting and auditing, including quality checks of public works programmes in the region, would reveal the scale of this plunder.

Has any thing changed under the new elected government of Punjab?

No. Sadly, nothing has really changed in Southern Punjab. We have the same number of ghost schools — mostly girls’ schools — absentee teachers and doctors, and poor quality of public works.

Punjab as whole and Southern Punjab in particular has been in constant decline as a result of poor governance and an ineffective system of accountability. Regrettably, the greatest number of poor, landless and miserable people live in Southern Punjab. These are perfect conditions for alienation and driving people towards hopelessness and desperate actions.

Accountability of both corrupt bureaucrats and public representatives — past and present — may gradually restore some trust in governing institutions. The new rulers of Punjab need to understand the troubles of Southern Punjab and take remedial actions. Some of these actions are doable, like better governance through efficient and reliable service delivery. For change in social and power relations, we’ll have to wait till true democracy takes root.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

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CSS 2009, 2010, 2011 Qualifier