APOCALYPSE PAKISTAN
An Anatomy of 'the World's Most Dangerous Nation'
Francesca Marino and Beniamino Natale
Niyogi Books; 180 pages; Rs 395
Pakistan is a nation of contradictions. It's a country created in the name of religion, where the father of the nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, wanted to build a liberal democratic state. It started as a democratic country, like India, but soon slipped into military dictatorship, which shaped Pakistan's ideology in the years that followed. It's both a victim and a promoter of religious terrorism. It's a country that proved many wrong in the past but remains the centre of global geopolitical risk assessments. It's not an easy country to understand. Apocalypse Pakistan: An Anatomy of 'the World's Most Dangerous Nation', written by two Italian journalists, Francesca Marino and Beniamino Natale, attempts to do the nearly impossible job of unravelling the mystery that is Pakistan.
Not many would disagree that Pakistan today is in a mess, though whether it's the "world's most dangerous nation" is debatable. So what went wrong? Noted Pakistan analyst Ayesha Siddiqa writes in the Foreword of the book that the fundamental ideology of the Pakistan state is national security. "Muhammad Ali Jinnah … did not leave clear directions on the fundamental ideology of the new nation state. However, he was quite clear about its status as a national security state that would seek rents from the international community for its superb location - between South and Central Asia," Ms Siddiqa writes. Apocalypse Pakistan builds its case on this national security doctrine of the Pakistani state, and analyses how it went so wrong that it impacted all aspects of life in Pakistan.
For decades, the Pakistani army has used religion as a tool to gain strategic importance in the region. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Pakistan, then ruled by General Zia ul-Haq, joined hands with the United States and Saudi Arabia to train mujahideens fighting against the Soviet army and the Soviet-backed communist government in Kabul. After the Soviet withdrawal and the subsequent collapse of the communist bloc, Pakistan started directly supporting Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan had a two-pronged strategy: to gain strategic influence in Afghanistan and to leverage terror groups to promote instability in Indian Kashmir. In the 1990s, the country employed this strategy rather well. However, the subsequent decade saw the dangerous limitations of this strategy, which let the forces that Pakistan had helped create grow beyond its control.
Today, Pakistan is in a de facto civil war with radical Islamists. The country is being targeted almost every day, while sectarian tension is rising in several parts. "… the 20 per cent Shiite religious minority has been by far the most persecuted and harmed over the years by acts of terrorism and sectarian violence… Three of the country's four provinces, Punjab Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have experienced violence, to different degrees at the hands of the Islamabad government in the 'Punjabi' domination of their country," the authors write. These ongoing crises have hit the national economy badly, further deteriorating the living standards of millions of its people. "Electricity can be cut off for more than 10 hours a day; petrol is diverted to army and is sometimes unavailable for the rest of the population; and interruptions to gas supplies have sometimes left homes with no means of cooking for days at a time."
The book paints a grave picture of the South Asian nuclear power, but the authors do not blame any single factor for these troubles. The first five chapters are about the makers of Pakistan's history and politics in recent decades. The next five chapters deal with problems such as "Islamic terrorism, Balochistan, domestic and international intrigues centred on Pakistan and social and political events in Karachi that we consider urgent and likely to take unexpected turns in the future". The remaining chapters discuss the country's atomic bomb, nuclear proliferation and the strategic realignment. The book is built around the crises that Pakistan finds itself in. It indirectly attributes these crises to the country's strategic policies that went wrong. The question is, what did Pakistan gain after all these years of strategic manoeuvring in South and Central Asia at the cost of its own domestic development?
Ties with the US have hit rock bottom after the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan is waning since India has made inroads into the latter country through reconstruction and aid. Domestic crises and the growing threat of Islamic militancy have threatened the legitimacy of the Pakistani state. The army, whose morale is down after the Bin Laden operation by the US, doesn't appear to be in a position to take direct control of the government once again. But it will retain its influence on the crucial foreign policy and national security issues, further complicating things at Islamabad. It's a very complex situation: Pakistan is not gaining much from its policies, but it is still not in a position to effect a policy change out of fears that such a change would weaken it further. As the authors say, "[Pakistan is] on the edge of a precipice into which it risks falling. If it does so, there will be fateful and immeasurable consequences for its inhabitants, the region and for the rest of the world".
