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The devastating terrorist attack in Norway by a demented Christian fanatic on the 23rd of July this year sent a wave of shock and surprise across the western world.

That’s understandable, because after all, nations and governments, both western and otherwise, had been nervously looking out for modern terrorism’s best friends of the past decade, the Islamic extremists.

Thus, a shocking act of carnage in Norway undertaken by an extremist from some other creed stunned a number of people.

But should one really be all that surprised by what happened in Norway? What makes people slaughter men, women and children in the name of God?

Of course, one expects the usual answers: Economic frustrations, social misplacement, the supposedly insulting deeds of the modern secular ways towards the believers, the cultural, political and economic hegemony of powerful military states, et al.

All these at once are understood to be the main reasons behind making certain sensitive souls go bonkers. The question however arises, why now?

Violence by vengeful religious groups and individuals on the scale we are witnessing today is quite clearly a recent phenomenon. The above-mentioned reasons that are said to give birth to such violence were there thirty years ago as well. Why weren’t they producing religious nut-jobs that go on blind killing sprees in markets, mosques, schools and streets?

Till even the early 1970s, politicians, psychologists, philosophers and the press weren’t psychoanalysing such nuts the way they started to do once the whole hogwash notion of ‘post-modernism’ began to kick in from the late 1970s onwards.

Post-modernism began as a philosophical trend in Europe that rejected the attitude of conventional science, ideology, politics and economics, replacing it with a sympathetic look at what conventional modernism would denounce as irrational.

As post-modernism began placing a new-found respect to trendy ‘New Age’ lifestyles (pseudo-sciences, ‘alternative medicine,’ ‘eastern spiritualism,’ kitsch pop cultural trash, etc.), its ‘alternative’ mantra soon entered the ways of modern economics, sociology and politics as well.

Since the whole concept of irony was so vital to the post-modernist literati, it was indeed ironic (unwittingly, though) to see this trend eventually facilitating the death of old-school social democracy and the left (attacked for being anti-individualistic and based on outdated meta-narratives).

It perpetrated the rise of a new kind of individualism, the sort best represented by transcendental corporate yuppies of the 1980s, rich New Age gurus and an almost spiritual belief in the power of greed and laissez faire economics – all upheld by the ‘anything goes’ conservatives like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

The trend didn’t quite fold with their departure. Despite the obvious economic gaps emerging from post-modernist capitalism, that spiritual aura around corporate capitalism and individual greed continued well into the 1990s.

One look or a visit to any corporate ‘team building session’ may be enough to fully absorb the herd-like nonsense (in the name of individualism) and the clichéd self-improvement silliness that pours out from the mouths of corporate gurus at such events.

But what has all this got to do with violent religious crazies? A lot. Because one should remember post-modernist economics and politics were convinced that limitless capitalism signified by spiritually attuned yuppies, shopping malls, hackneyed ‘self-help’ books and an unhinged desire to get rich quick will produce a hard-working, tolerant and conflict-free trading society. A society where no-one would judge the other person’s motives because they’ll all have the same motive: To get rich and at the same time keep in touch with their spiritual ‘inner self.’

However, anyone going against this tide of thinking was judged and pronounced as a sour loser. Before those who have sympathies for violent religious nut-jobs get all too excited, they must know that such faith-driven idiots too are a part and parcel of the post-modernist whiplash.

It’s nonsense to believe that religious fundamentalists who go bonkers are symbols of defiance against the kind of economic, political and cultural hegemony post-modernist thought generated from the 1980s onwards.

They are very much part of it simply because their madness is/was not judged to be a mental condition (that would have been ‘politically incorrect,’ in the post-modernist lingo).

Their madness was sympathised with and given convoluted reasons. ‘Western imperialism,’ ‘the rational coldness of secularism,’ ‘Orientalism,’ ‘death of spiritualism,’ and, in Pakistan’s context, all this plus, of course, the drone attacks.

You see, it is politically incorrect to call faith-driven violence despicable without first cursing the awful things that makes a nut a nut. It is ironic that most of these awful things may as well be exactly the things that a politically correct person is also indulging in.

For example, in Pakistan, on the eve of a terrorist attack by a Muslim fanatic, the politically-correct, progressive and conscientious person is obliged to first blame western imperialism, then the drone attacks. Then he goes to have a Big Mac. Of course, by then he usually forgets to also issue at least a token condemnation of the death and destruction caused by the religious nuts.

The bottom-line is there are now more religious fanatics willing to go on murderous killing sprees in the world because they are more tolerated in the society than ever.

Nations are just too busy navel gazing about airy-fairy abstract concepts about spirituality and political-correctness that have nothing to do with the twisted images that pollute a religious fanatic’s head. Such spineless post-modernist behaviour actually ends up (indirectly) justifying a fanatic’s mad existence.

It is an odd thing to feel relief when 76 people have died. But then, being Pakistani has become an odd thing to be. When the news coverage of the grotesque terrorism in Oslo began, the world watched it unfold with a sense of sadness. In Pakistan, we watched it with gritted teeth and clenched expectations. We had but one prayer, selfish but understandable: Please don’t let it be a Muslim. Specifically, please don’t let it be a Muslim who had received training on our soil. The eventual revelation that a blonde man with a distinctly ethnic Norwegian genetic skin tone had been arrested gave us a moment’s respite before we then started worrying about his being a convert. We are always told that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Unfortunately, no one details which Islam. The one practiced by the people around me who have a deep and unshakeable belief in the Almighty and his Messenger and find it a source of peace and comfort? Or the Islam that is subscribed to by the people running amok through the lives of those just described who have somehow found the message of submission to be one that requires mass murder and destruction. Fortunately, for the first time in recent memory, the attack was perpetuated by neither of these adherents. Instead, it was a lone lunatic who felt that the best way to protect his nation from dark forces he perceived was to slaughter the young. And so we all let out a sigh of collective relief, a sound that was effectively drowned out by the frantic back-scrabbling of ‘expert’ commentators on every single foreign news channel.

From the moment the first gunshot echoed through Utoya Island, and that last pane of glass shattered in central Oslo, every single person who had ever attended a class on foreign affairs or had passed within pinching distance of a Muslim was loudly proclaiming the clear guilt of al Qaeda. They did it with such solemn sagacity that one feels they are actually disappointed now that it has been proven to not be a Muslim at fault. The discovery that extremists can belong to any belief system and maybe it is something inherent in the person himself and not in the religion he subscribes to, that paradigm shift is causing them all sorts of motion sickness. All the nations who put a comforting arm around Norway in the initial moments of the attack, promising unity against this Muslim terror, are now backing away as if Norway vomited over it’s own furniture, telling it that it’s on its own in the clean-up.

The irony in all this, if you can manage to consider such a tragic event with cold scrutiny, is that the killer feared the “Pakistanisation of Europe”. His understanding of that phrase was that Europe would be full of small Muslim countries with extremist views. But his actions, instead, created another form of “Pakistanisation”, in the way that we Pakistanis understand it. Norway is truly like us now in that it, too, understands that the actions of a random extremist with a head full of bad wiring is not representative of the majority. That it takes a single day planned with fanatical focus to completely redefine a nation’s sense of security and identity. And that it will require the patience and understanding of a multitude to cope with the changed world that they now exist in. It is a reality we Pakistanis struggle against every day.

The primary description of the attacker in the media is that he is a ‘lunatic’. Let us hope that the next time an act of terror on such a scale occurs anywhere in the world, the same description is applied to the culprits, regardless of religion.

The cottage industry registering the fastest growth nowadays is the one dedicated to advising Pakistan’s generals to wake up and save the country before it is too late. Not a day goes by without this precious advice bubbling up in one form or the other.

The argument goes that waiting for the next elections will be too late, because by then everything will have gone down the drain and nothing will be left to save. This forecast is less than flattering to what we like to call the fortress of Islam. Are its foundations so weak? It is also the highest compliment that could be paid to President Zardari.

For it implies that, whereas Pakistan could survive the extended nights of its four saviour-generals, including their unwanted wars and the country’s break-up, it won’t survive another year-and-a-half of the Zardari dispensation. Which puts Zardari on a higher pedestal than all who came before him – mightier in the mischief he will have wrought than all the do-gooders and dimwits who preceded him.
In times past a tenth of this prodding would have impelled the General Staff to act. Mercifully, not now…not because of Facebook or Twitter, or the power of independent television, but because of the American presence in Afghanistan and the Taliban wars our army is having to fight as a consequence. The army’s hands are full and it is all it can do to keep its head above the raging waters.

Take a sinner’s word for it: the Indus can rise to the mountains, and the mountains can come down to the seas, but this country is not going under, certainly not by the end of 2012 when election bugles sound. So why don’t the self-appointed consultants to the General Staff take a rest and think of going to the masses if they are so keen on cleaning the national stables? Or is the nagging thought hitting them that unless judges and generals act in tandem, reading from the same page, Pakistan may have to endure five more years of Zardari and his artful handiwork?

Tough luck, then, especially if conspiracy and wishfulness are the only things Pakistan’s fastest-growing industry can produce. The answer to Pakistan’s woes, the answer to corruption and economic mismanagement, is political mobilisation – between now and the next elections. Make the masses hearken to your call. Cast a spell with your words and strike the notes which rouse their dormant senses. With the power of the ballot, storm the bastions of power. Sadly, there is no other alternative.

But if hearts are empty, and minds barren, and not a single fresh idea descends even if you pray to the gods for assistance, it is unfair to look to the General Staff for miracles.

Is this what we call the sum of our national discourse, the sum of the intellectual treasures at our command, that while we stick resolutely to our armchairs we expect General Kayani and his corps commanders to pull our chestnuts out of the fire?
Let them only try, and Pakistan will be in a greater mess than ever before. On our souls, then, let it be branded with iron that of all the recipes of disaster available in the market none is likely to prove more ruinous than the siren calls of army intervention, including that fairy tale (increasingly heard) of an honest interim government.

Consider these lines from Flecker’s great poem, “The Golden Journey to Samarkand”:
We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

Somewhere in the distance, perhaps over the horizon, lies this golden road that our most burning desires seek, but to discover it and then take it our hearts must be worthy of the enterprise. If the political landscape of Pakistan remains bereft of ideas and inspiration, no tree of paradise will grow from that arid soil.
But is there no escaping the collective death wish of the Pakistani governing class? In the Supreme Court is being played a masque we could do without. If the government has made an art of stonewalling, which it has, their eminences have presided over a state of affairs which has seen their once imposing authority erode to a point not far removed from raillery.

The Indian Supreme Court is also very active in public litigation issues, but its word is heard and respected. A far cry from our situation, where the government is making a mockery of the SC’s authority. Why this difference?

While great things were expected from the judiciary’s restoration, it has to be said with a heavy heart that their eminences have spread themselves too thin, taking up issues that angels, or indeed the furies, would have left alone – like trying to set the price of sugar and regulate petroleum prices. Their intervention into the sale of the Steel Mills has left the country with a big white elephant it doesn’t know how to tame. Should the SC have intervened in the liquefied natural gas issue? The list goes on and on. As for the notice famously taken of the two bottles of liquor recovered from Ms Atiqa Odho’s fetching possession, light lie the dust on the memory of that droll undertaking.

This hyper-activism contrasts with the neglect towards some other pending matters – like Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s petition about ISI funding to political parties in the 1990 elections, some cases affecting particular political parties, etc. This has given rise to charges of selective enthusiasm.

In response to this perceived selectivity, the ruling party has adopted a posture of defiance. It was not so in the beginning but it has become so now. There is a need for good sense to prevail, instead of conduct being guided by newspaper headlines.

The question that Stalin asked regarding the Pope applies also to the judiciary: how many divisions does the Pope have? The judiciary’s most powerful weapon is its moral authority, not anything else. When that, for whatever reason, is squandered, all is not well with the nation.

From the cottage industry devoted to the honorary service of the General Staff are coming too many loose references to Article 190 of the Constitution which asks all “executive and judicial authorities throughout Pakistan (to) act in aid of the Supreme Court.” This does not amount to a marching order to General Headquarters to rush to the aid of the SC, 111 Brigade in the lead. If the generals want to come to Islamabad, let all of us rest assured that they will not consult the Constitution before doing so. There will be other imperatives at work beyond the pages of the Constitution.

And let us bear in mind what happened in Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah’s time. He asked General Karamat to come to his assistance and, as was only proper, the general forwarded his letter to the defence ministry. It is not for the General Staff to act alone, and whenever it does so, it is in defiance of the Constitution. There should be no ambiguity on this score.

The establishment secretary, now put out to pasture, who issued the notification for the transfer of Hussain Asghar without the prime minister’s permission, clearly exceeded his authority. His stance before the SC should have been that the summary of the transfer had been sent to the PM’s office. If the SC was not satisfied with this reply, it could directly ask the PM to explain matters. There is a precedent, after all: Sajjad Ali Shah’s summoning of Nawaz Sharif when the latter was PM. If elephants must fight, so be it. We have had enough of covert warfare.

Things may look unpromising, but as Chairman Mao was fond of saying: there is great disorder under the heavens and the situation is excellent. From the present welter of our discontent some good may yet arise, but only if we remain committed to correct constitutional form and procedure – and the General Staff, mastering some of its deepest prejudices, refuses to take the bait being offered so desperately by armchair gladiators.

Ever since my column of July 13th (‘The greatest dilemma of the general’) I have been swamped with friendly and not-so friendly phone calls, emails and run-ins, with everyone asking me to “explain” the ominous sounding quote of a multi-starred khaki.

The quote was: “The army works in a different manner. A point comes where if the chief does not, or cannot, run the army then the army runs the chief.” So, was I talking about a coup against COAS Kayani by his own handpicked lot of corps commanders? Storming of the generals by angry colonels? And if neither, then how would the army run its own chief? I have been asked.

Allow me to explain. A generals coup is not even a remote possibility in an army structured like a pyramid, with the chief sitting at the pinnacle. The Pakistan army has a peculiar professional culture and anyone having the slightest insight into our khaki psyche and countenance would tell you that an inside coup is a ludicrous thought. Similarly, the chances of the mid-ranking officers going for their generals is as much a possibility as Osama bin Laden’s son becoming the next president of the US.

So how does the army then run its chief? The answer is deceptively simple as explained by my wise khaki friend. As matters stand today, all the corps commanders have been posted by COAS Gen kayani himself. The GOC’s too did not land in their coveted perches without his approval. The head honchos of the ISI and the MI serve at his pleasure. In fact, a large number of the freshly made major and lieutenant generals owe their elevation to Gen Kayani. And where he may not have as direct an involvement, all key posts have been filled by likeminded officers in turn appointed by his own trusted likeminded top guns.

All said, he today heads the circle of military elders handpicked by him, and hence the obvious deduction that their viewpoint and thinking had to be in line with his own. It would not be unreasonable either to assume that with none of this lot being a vestige of Gen Musharraf, the incumbent COAS can rest assured that his top generals are thinking their own thoughts and not being influenced by some third covert interest. His is today one happy family of trusted lieutenants.

And here comes the twist. What does the chief do, if he senses a slow but gradual divergence of views between the majority of his top generals and himself? He knows they want the best for him, the institution, and possibly the country as well, but while he agrees with the set of identified problems, his remedy may not entirely be in consonance with their desired solution. What happens when the bulk of his top officers, whom he chose with excruciating patience during the last three years, are not as patient as him in waiting for things to improve or for the present ruling dispensation to mend its ways. Add to that the burden of the three-year tenure extension and the perpetual struggle to reassure all of his loyalty being with the institution and the country and not to any one individual. He is then left with three choices: first, he either questions the judgment of his generals, or his own.

Secondly, he either leans their way or convinces, or forces, them into seeing things through his prism. Or he makes one last assessment of where the coin is likely to fall and then synthesise the views of the best, and the rest to come up with a compromise solution.

All scenarios however have one thing in common: the chief is being softly steered into taking hard decisions (which ultimately would be of his choice though) and the combined pressure of external events and internal opinion is forcing a timetable of sorts upon him. It’s not as if it is a deliberate ploy by a band of scheming generals but simply the compounded effect of “respected peer opinion” pressure. The army controls the chief by simply nudging him into speeding up his decision-making process.

And the fast deteriorating situation in the country is not helping in easing the pressures either. As the cliched slogan goes: democracy is not about how votes are cast but how they are made to count. What we are witnessing here is anything but democracy. What we have here is a mandated autocracy rather than a people’s democracy. The elected no longer appear answerable for their acts of omission and commission (pun intended).

The ruling political junta is openly defying the Supreme Court and ridiculing the chief justice-led benches. The country is in the midst of an economic meltdown and the government’s only response has been to print billions by the day and spend even more by nightfall. There has been no mentionable direct foreign investment in the last three years and even existing multinationals have started pulling out. The governor State Bank and the nation’s chief economist resigned within days of one another citing serious political manipulation of national finances, but nobody cares. The FBR has just been caught with its pants down while lying about its tax receipts. That in turn, amongst siring other problems, has also jeopardised badly needed foreign loans. The energy crisis is forcing the closure of industry and causing losses of billions of rupees on a daily basis, but where is a serious government policy response? A hundred people die in Karachi within 72 hours, thanks to power games between PPP, MQM and ANP, and the interior minister blames jilted lovers and vengeful wives (sic). There is a serious state security crisis.

Lawlessness is the new law both in Fata and the settled areas of the country. The army is stretched beyond its capacity to fight internally, while exposing the country to external aggression.

On the external front too the army has its hands full with the US, and others. Admiral Mullen, the once trusted friend of Kayani, openly states that military-to-military relations are in very difficult times and need “recalibration.” Admiral James Winnefeld dubbed Pakistan a very difficult partner who “did not always share the same worldview or the same opinions or the same national interest.” Add to that the very strong belief in Rawalpindi that if left to its own, the US would ensure that the organisational and operational structure of the Pakistan army is changed max within the next year or two. In other words, just like the country itself, the institution too is faced with an existentialist threat.

The only democratic resolution to all our national ills lies in a political alternative to the existing ruling setup. Unfortunately, utter confusion prevails on this count. Nawaz Sharif does not want to go the agitation route out of his fear of any khaki exploitation of the situation and would like to wait till the next general elections in 2013, or even 2012 as President Zardari is said to be toying with the idea of calling snap polls after the Senate elections in March next year. The question is, can the country survive that long if it continues to be (mis)managed in this manner? Will anyone be able to revive the badly stalling economy at that stage? Or whether there will even be anything left at all to salvage by then. Everyone is thinking about all these things including the generals, and voicing their opinion, including the generals. This is how collective thinking influences and ‘runs’ an individual perspective my friends.

Nothing seems to be going right in Pakistan-US relations. Just when we were wondering what Pakistan needed to do to restore some semblance of normalcy to its ties with the US, the latter decided to arrest Ghulam Nabi Fai, long a voice against violence and an advocate for peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue. Are the two agencies playing games with each other?

Next, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to serve another ‘demand note’ on Pakistan and that too while in India, which made it needlessly provocative. Her other remarks at the end of the US-India strategic dialogue were not helpful either, particularly her support for India’s quest for transit rights across South and Central Asia. It was, however, in the southern port city of Chennai that Clinton became India’s unabashed cheerleader, stressing that India-US ties would be the defining partnership of the 21st century, while nudging India to play a more assertive role across the Asia-Pacific region, arguing that it “is an ambitious agenda, but we can afford to be ambitious.” Her assertions must have fallen on receptive ears, as Indian Foreign Minister Krishna confirmed that “we discussed our shared interest in peaceful and stable Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean region architecture in the region”. As if to demonstrate how much the two are in sync, it was announced that the Indian president would be undertaking official visits to South Korea and Mongolia, two countries of special interest to China, while the joint statement revealed that “India, the US and Japan plan to commence a trilateral dialogue at the senior official level.”

Increasingly, Clinton has been sounding as if she has joined those in the US who are convinced of the need to galvanise South East Asian nations to confront China now, rather than in the future, when it may no longer be feasible. A year ago, at the annual Asean Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Hanoi, Clinton had waded into the choppy waters of the South China Sea, where China and its South Asian neighbours are embroiled in a contentious dispute, declaring America’s support for the right to freedom of navigation. Suspecting it as America’s effort to fish in troubled waters, China was constrained to warn the US and other major powers to stay out of disputes in the region. At last week’s ARF annual meeting, Clinton renewed her efforts to encourage South East Asian nations to be more assertive in their claims to the strategically located and potentially lucrative waters of the South China Sea.

Clinton’s remarks in Chennai appear to flesh out the bare bones of the US-India strategic partnership envisaged by Bush and the neocons. Its scale is huge and ambition unlimited, as Clinton herself admitted. Though an Indian Ocean power, the US is committing itself to making India a Pacific Ocean power as well, and for this purpose encouraging her to work with Japan on security issues relating to the region. The East Asia Summit would be turned into the premier regional forum for dealing with security issues and India invited as an observer, for the first time, in the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Nothing could be more provocative to China.

Do Clinton’s exhortations in Chennai represent the Obama doctrine for ‘containment’ of China? Getting India into this arrangement may sound like a stroke of genius, but could turn out to be a huge folly as well. Coming as it does at a time when the American economy shows no sign of recovery and its debt to China exceeds $1 trillion, Clinton and company are engaging in an audacious gamble and one that is likely to add greatly to regional tension and turmoil.

Given Pakistan’s strategic relations to China and continuing tensions with India, the Obama administration’s encouragement of India to become more assertive and ambitious in both South and South East Asia demonstrate the limitations of US-Pakistan relations, while creating huge challenges for Pakistan.

I AM going to say it again: not in my name, your shenanigans (for there is no better word for what you do), sirs; not in mine or in that of the other luckless Pakistanis who try to live honourable lives and endeavour to feed and clothe and educate their children as best they can.

Every week brings forth new and newer allegations which only hurt our country evermore as if it was not wounded enough already. The newest news is the arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai the head of the Kashmir American Council, supposedly working for the cause of the Kashmiri people.

Before I go any further let me quote from an article by Khalid Hasan who was a Kashmiri in his heart and soul and who wrote so eloquently and wisely on Kashmir and its pain. Khalid lived in the Washington D.C. area for many years immediately preceding his untimely and sad death and was deeply involved in Kashmir-related activities across the world.

In August 2006, writing about Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan’s visit to Washington, Khalid Hasan says: “Asked what he thought of the recent Kashmir Conference held in Washington where the sponsor, the Kashmiri-American Council, refused to include any reference to self-determination in what it grandiloquently called ‘The Washington Declaration’, Sardar Qayyum, whose political acumen and skill even Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto acknowledged, replied, ‘If you take out the right of self-determination from the struggle of the Kashmiris, you are left with nothing. So how can you cast it aside?’

“When someone said that it was Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai who had seen to it that the final document issued by the Conference in controversial circumstances should carry no reference to self-determination, Sardar Qayyum smiled wanly and said, ‘What can I say? What Fai does is not on his own’. What he left unsaid is clear and it is time those who back operations that do a disservice to the Kashmir cause rather than advance it, were to re-examine their conduct and reassess their erroneous assumptions.”

He also wrote: “The links between the Council and certain sponsored Kashmir outfits in London, Toronto and Brussels are too well known for me [to make] a listing here. It is time this charade was brought to an end and the agencies (or more accurately The Agency) masterminding them were to begin to concentrate on the work for which it/they were originally set up. It is quite clear that unless the ‘Invisibles’ get out of the act, we will keep sinking deeper into the morass in which we find ourselves. The damage done, some feel, is already beyond repair, so let The Boys pick up their hats and their gadgets and leave by the nearest exit without saying goodbye.”

Now then, before the Ghairat Brigades get into an almighty lather in the matter of Fai’s arrest let them take two deep breaths and digest this:
— Dr Fai is an American national who holds dual nationality of India.

— He did not declare himself to be an agent of a foreign government (Pakistan) and therefore was outside the pale of the law when large payments were allegedly traced to him through emails and sworn testimony.

— The law’s spirit is: “The Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) of 1938 requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.”

Dr Fai is in jail pending trial.

Now then, since he is a US citizen, what got into our Foreign Office to issue a démarche to the US embassy — taken so seriously by the Americans that a lowly political counsellor received it, thank you very much — in rather bombastic and convoluted (as is our wont) language. The Foreign Office’s statement:

“Dr Fai is a US citizen. A démarche was made to the US embassy in Islamabad today to register our concerns, in particular the slander campaign against Pakistan … upholding [the] fundamental rights of Kashmiris is the fundamental responsibility of the international community and all conscientious people who value human rights and values … campaigns to defame the just cause of the Kashmiri people will not affect its legitimacy.”

Several problems here. How is this a “slander campaign against Pakistan”? Were the payments made in a clandestine manner or were they not? If they were not, the FO should say so. How is Fai’s arrest for what surely is dubious funding too, a “campaign to defame the just cause…”? Did such funding not happen? If it did not, the FO should say so. This newest jewel will not affect the ‘legitimacy’ of the cause of Kashmir? Of course it will when the pointsman of the cause is arrested for violating the law of his own country.

Whilst one sympathises with the FO for perpetually having a pistol held to its head by the arbiters of foreign policy of the country one wishes that one, just one honourable FO babu will stand up one day and say to what Khalid Hasan called ‘The Boys’: ‘I will not do your stupid bidding because it will hurt our country.’

In the end, just this for The Boys to chew on while they plan their next brilliant move: just one-third of US supplies for Afghanistan now go through Pakistan, with the Americans working hard to develop other routes, as ‘relations with Pakistan continue to deteriorate’.

The situation in which Pakistan finds itself today, as it with the United States, is very different from the one that led to a tight embrace between the two countries more than half a century ago. Then, both needed each other. Pakistan was seeking a partner that would help build up its defences against India. The first generation of Pakistani leadership did not fully trust their neighbour’s intentions towards the new state they were hard at work to establish. Pakistan also needed finance to quicken the pace of economic development. The United States needed a partner in South Asia, which could be a part of the virtual wall it was erecting against the spread of communism.

Now more than 50 years later, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Washington needs Islamabad more than Pakistan needs the United States. Even after the death of Osama bin Laden, the Americans remain apprehensive about the harm Islamic extremists could do to its economic and political interests around the globe. Terrorism experts believe that Pakistan is now the epicenter of international terrorism inspired by Islamic fundamentalists. But Pakistan is not alone; there are other even more unsettled places around the world — Afghanistan, Somalia to name three but perhaps also Libya, Iraq, and Syria if the current unrest in these countries cannot be brought under control  — that could become exporters of terrorist activities. America and Europe are keen on throwing a fence around this troubled area and both believe that Pakistan could be a critical partner in such an enterprise. Pakistan, however, would like to partner but on its own terms.

There are at least three items in Pakistan’s term sheet for cooperation with the West. The first is that the announced pull out from Afghanistan by the United States should not leave a regime in Kabul that would be openly hostile to Pakistan. There was such a regime in place for 30 years, from 1947 (the year of Pakistan’s founding) and 1978 (the year the Soviet Union moved into Afghanistan). Then Kabul campaigned actively for the creation of an autonomous Pakhtun state that would extend to the western bank of the Indus River. It would also not want an Afghan government that was very closely aligned with India. That said, the change in thinking on security issues in Islamabad does not preclude a tripartite arrangement involving Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, in which all three countries work together to collectively promote their economic interests. Building of cross-country pipelines would be an important part of such an arrangement. Sustainable economic growth at reasonable rates will not be possible in mainland South Asia, unless a way is found to resolve critical shortages of energy. One way of doing this is to import natural gas through pipelines that would connect the area with energy-surplus Central Asia and the Middle East.

The second item on the Pakistani term-sheet, is to ensure a steady flow of foreign capital to augment its very low levels of domestic savings. Even if the country embarks on a structural adjustment program that would bring about increases in the rate of domestic savings and tax-to-GDP ratio, foreign flows would still be required for many years into the future. In that context the United States has been an unreliable partner.

The third item is Pakistan’s requirements that the United States desists from those acts that add to the state of fragility in the country. Some of the US sponsored activities in recent months fall into this category. For instance, CIA agents are operating freely in Pakistan — as The Economist wrote in a recent issue there were “CIA agents who roamed across cities without the oversight of local intelligence agencies.” One of them — a man by the name of Raymond Davis — murdered two individuals in broad daylight on a busy Lahore street. He was let go after spending several weeks in a Pakistani jail. The same issue of the magazine expressed surprise at the gathering in the compound of the American embassy in Islamabad of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. It wrote: “Even at the best of time it would have been unusual for America’s embassy in Islamabad to organise (such a meet). Given the grim state of bilateral relations, the meeting looked downright provocative. Some in Pakistan’s religiously conservative society accused America of conspiring to attack them by spreading outrageously liberal sexual views. One Islamic political party called it ‘cultural terrorism’”.

Most in Pakistan, including the country’s civilian leadership and the military establishment, believe that an alternative is available to which Islamabad could now turn more openly. In recent months, a number of senior people from Pakistan have gone to Beijing hoping to cultivate a relationship that will be more durable and less demanding. This year Pakistan will be celebrating the fiftieth year of the establishment of a formal relationship with China. This will be done with great fanfare and will no doubt bring in more indications of Chinese economic help and military support. To distinguish its relations with Beijing, Pakistan has begun to call it an ‘all-weather friendship’. Three weeks after the death of Osama bin Laden, Ahmad Mukhtar, Pakistan’s defence minister announced that China would take over the management of Gwadar, a deep-water Pakistani port on the Arabian Sea. The port is currently managed by a company from Singapore. But there was some confusion about what had transpired. According to one western newspaper, “the government in Beijing said the Gwadar takeover had come as news to China”. Even if the claims Pakistan was making about China’s interest in their country are somewhat exaggerated, it is clear that a tilt has occurred. There cannot be any doubt that Islamabad was moving away from the United States and was leaning towards China. Such a move will have profound implications not only for South Asia but for the evolving world political order as well.