New existential paradigms by Najam Sethi

The army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, has raised some core national issues in an Independence Day address to cadets. Since the military still determines national security policy, it is important to contextualize his message for everyone's benefit.

General Kayani says "the war against terrorism and extremism is the entire nation's war" and can only be won if the nation stands united behind the army to win it, failing which it will be faced with civil war. An important preamble of what constitutes a terrorist and what amounts to religious extremism in Islam underlines his conclusion.

All this is true. But the problem is that polls show the "nation" doesn't generally think the war against extremism and terrorism is Pakistan's war at all or that it is a core issue for them or the country. Indeed, as opposed to General Kayani's definitions, the "nation" unfortunately thinks that notions and expressions of Islamic rage, Muslim honour and religious certainty (intolerance) should be the prime motivating forces of Pakistani nationalism. Consequently, it cannot imagine, let alone believe, that Muslims can kill Muslims, despite the overwhelming daily evidence of Taliban terrorism and sectarian bloodshed.

How and why the "nation" thinks what it thinks is due, in no small measure, to the ideological brainwashing it has received at the behest of the civil-military establishment, via the "ideological" education system and media, especially since the 1980s when "Islamisation", "jehad" and "religious nationalism" became the core drivers of state and society. Therefore, when General Kayani reminds them that the "purpose behind creating Pakistan was not only to carve out a piece of land but also to establish a welfare Islamic state where the foundation of a tolerant and modern society could be laid...where life and property of minorities were safe and they could freely practise their faith", he should not be surprised why "this agenda could not materialize after 1947". The spirit of the 1947 Constituent Assembly speech of the Quaid i Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was displaced in the constitution of Pakistan by General Zia ul Haq.

General Kayani believes the "country is passing through a critical phase" in which the biggest threats are "religious intolerance, political turmoil and anarchy... In this situation all our efforts should be directed at improving and correcting our internal situation". This statement is doubly welcome because it explicitly identifies, for the first time, internal existential threats to Pakistan rather than external enemies and ubiquitous "foreign hands".

But it also raises a couple of more fundamental questions. Are we now to believe that this formulation signals a paradigm shift in the military's doctrinaire position in which external "Hindu India" is projected as the eternal enemy and Pakistan's internal (Islamic jehad and Muslim nationalism) and foreign policies (strategic alliances with America, Afghanistan policy) all revolve around this position? And if General Kayani's Pakistani state cannot "tolerate a parallel system and military force", which is a reference to the Taliban who espouse a brand of militant Islam totally alien and opposed to the constitutional political system in Pakistan, why is he ready to put up with militant "sectarian" or "jehadi" forces or Afghan Taliban in FATA who are equally inimical to the law, constitution and sovereignty of Pakistan?

Clearly, there are many contradictions here. General Kayani's civil-military predecessors have spent six decades battering at the social, political and moral edifice of the new Pakistan imagined by Mr Jinnah and one statement by him is hardly likely to galvanize his own institution behind him for a paradigm shift in national security policy let alone harness the people of Pakistan to put the pieces together again. But the least he can do by way of practising what he is now preaching is to lend his institutional shoulder to the efforts of those who wish to bury the hatchet with India, stop pushing favourites in Afghanistan; make Pakistan a champion of regional peace; paint Pakistan in the colours of Muslim moderation and tolerance; and help it aspire for international legitimacy and economic comfort in relations with the international community.

Admittedly, this is a tall order. But time is running out for dramatic initiatives by the civil-military leadership to stop the downslide. First, we must fast track our "normalization" process with India so that a modicum of trust can be built up to lay the framework for an end to the "war of the Intel agencies" that has necessitated a soft policy towards our "radical Islamist" assets at home and Taliban in Afghanistan. Second, we must rebuild the national economy by cobbling a new "budgetary paradigm" in which development expenditures and military expenditures are prioritized according to revised notions of "national power" and international financial assistance is geared to restructuring the fundamentals of the economy to increase revenues, plug leakages, reduce subsidies, emphasize poverty alleviation, mass education, social welfare and self-sufficiency. Last but not least, we must revise our education system and curriculum to reflect the needs of modernity and moderation in all dimensions of social and cultural life.

http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta3/...0120817&page=1