 "Nawaz Sharif")
What makes Pakistan ‘Ivy League of terrorism’ and how a nexus of abject poverty and religious fundamentalism pushes scores of youngsters into militancy? A Pakistani journalist and an academic explore their country’s endless obsession with Kashmir. Adnan Ali reports on the political economy of the ‘Liberate Kashmir’ movement in Pakistan, while Ahsan Butt attempts a cost-benefit analysis of Kashmir as an issue in Pakistan’s relations with India and the world
The business of militancy in Pakistan
Every year, charitable and political organisations mint millions of rupees by selling animal hides, following Eid-ul-Azha celebrations. Karachi, where leather processing industry thrives on this raw material, exports finished leather goods worth $800 million every year.
This year, owing to the ban on Karachi’s largest political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the biggest beneficiaries of the hide donations were the Jamat-ud Dawah and the Jamaat-e-Islami.
“They were standing at mosques and their volunteers went door to door to collect skins. This is strange given that the JuD is a banned organisation,” said MQM leader Farooq Sattar.
According to MQM, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed-led JuD has complete patronage of the army. “In Karachi, such rightwing militant parties are allowed to operate with impunity while parties like the MQM are shackled,” said Sattar.
It is money from such enterprises that fuels the JuD and other militant organisations which spend it not only on welfare projects in Pakistan but also on their activities in Kashmir. “The Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) is now active in Hindu-dominated Thar area where they are digging wells for communities and converting the residents to Islam,” said Jibran Nasir, a local politician.
Money is also funnelled to madrassas in south Punjab where entities like JuD, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operate under protection of the local law enforcement agencies. “It is like a university of madrassas,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, political and defence analyst, who owns land in the area. “Every day, you see more madrassas springing up.”
Both Thar and South Punjab are among the poorest regions in Pakistan. And, it is from here that militant outfits recruit. There is also such activity taking place in Balochistan, where large parts of the population live in abject poverty.
“What we are seeing is a business model that seems to be very successful,” said an analyst. “Raise money in the cities and spend it in the poorer areas. Sympathies and memberships are gained through quick and active response during human tragedies and natural disasters. The JuD responds particularly effectively to such situations.”
During all this, the government looks the other way. Thousands of young men are recruited each year from madrassas in poorer regions. Selected few are sent for training to the camps set up by the army in the Abbottabad area and in what Pakistan calls Azad Kashmir and India calls Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The camps are well protected. One Murree-based reporter recalls how he was nearly arrested after he strayed into an area where such a camp was located. “These are no-go zones,” he said.
Fidayeens emerge from places like these, said a local journalist. They are sent to Indian part of Kashmir or to Afghanistan. Some end up in Balochistan where the army is fighting a bloody war with pro-independence fighters.
However, like most entities sponsored by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the JuD is spreading its wings into politics and public life. The establishment of “summary Sharia courts” in Lahore, where residents can seek quick and cheap “justice”, has not gone down well with the military high command. “The government is uncomfortable with the manner in which some of the militant outfits are now getting ideas of their own,” said an observer. This is a sensitive issue as the military wants total control over the outfits it patronizes.
In the past, the army has seen some of its creations turn against it. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a prime example. Army doesn’t want a repeat of that.
To make such organisations fall in line, security agencies continue to retain control on the money supply. With dwindling foreign donations and reluctant military establishment, militant outfits are trying to raise funds on their own.
JuD has collected billions of rupees in campaigns led from the front by Hafiz Saeed and his colleagues. “The more funds they collect on their own, the better standing they have with the agencies,” said an analyst. Based on such performance, official patronage is doled out. The impunity with which the JuD operates in Pakistan clearly suggests that it is in the good books of the intelligence agencies. There has been no effort to restrict its activities. And, Hafiz Saeed has proved a wily businessman. After madrassas and social welfare organisations, he is extending his influence to the coveted English-medium schools and other profit-making enterprises.
But organisations like JuD don’t always act according to the script. This is evident by the intense rivalry between these groups. There have been armed clashes on control of properties, particularly mosques. Leaders of one group or another have been killed. But at the end of the day, say observers, it is the army high command that calls the shots. This is not likely to change any time soon.
Adnan Ali, is a journalist and independent political commentator based in Pakistan
Why Pakistan is obsessed with Kashmir
In my experience, proffering the idea that Pakistan should abandon its quest for Kashmir is generally rewarded with condescension. Tell self-styled foreign policy experts of this hair-brained scheme, and you are met with the rhetorical equivalent of a patronising pat on the shoulder; one is not considered anti-national so much as naive, not unpatriotic but unserious. In the real world of power politics, these strategic gurus tell us woolly-headed fools, states do not abandon their national interests, they fight for them — by hook or crook.
Pakistan is no different. In this view, Kashmir is a vital symbolic and strategic interest, tied to both Pakistan’s foundational religious nationalism as well as its geopolitical goals. As such, it needs to continue the political, diplomatic, and yes, military struggle for Kashmir, no different to how big and small countries have fought for their interests for centuries. It’s Realism 101, kid.
Without getting mired in the intricacies of Realist theory, it is worth considering, from a realpolitik perspective, just how sensible Pakistan’s longstanding desire for Kashmir is. The costs of Pakistan’s existing strategy in Kashmir are well known and do not require extensive elaboration. On the security front, it has bred terrorism which has claimed over 50,000 citizens since 9/11. Politically, it has helped cement the army’s hold over the country, hindering the development of representative institutions. Pakistan’s economy has suffered due to this.
Extremism and militant violence affect domestic and foreign investment, while the military’s dominance in politics ensures crowding out of spending on public goods, such as education, in favour of plots and pensions for generals. Finally, insofar as diplomacy is concerned, Pakistan’s revisionism leads to isolation and opprobrium, even from its friends. In contrast to these substantial costs, the tangible gains to Pakistan of its Kashmir strategy are difficult to locate: the territorial status-quo in Kashmir has not significantly changed in close to seven decades, despite repeated attempts. For a strategy pushed by so-called realists, such a balance of costs and benefits is surely puzzling.
By contrast, consider a world in which Pakistan was satisfied with “West Kashmir,” so to speak. It is a matter of pure conjecture what such a world would look like. Nevertheless, three expectations seem reasonable. First, the state would make more of an effort to target militant groups in its midst, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, that severely compromise its writ. Second, the incidence of crises that threaten the nuclear annihilation of hundreds of millions of South Asians would transition from regular to rare. Third, the sharpest thorn in Indo-Pak relations would be removed.
In turn, an improved relationship with India would dramatically benefit Pakistan. India’s sheer size ensures that the economic base upon which it builds its military power – the ultima ratio in realism – will always be bigger than its substantially smaller neighbour’s. When one juxtaposes the trajectory of each country’s GDP since independence, it becomes clear just how irresponsible challenging India in the long-run is. Ensuring that Pakistan’s next seventy years are not marked with enmity with India to the same extent as the previous seventy should be the foremost priority of Pakistani strategists.
Of course, one should be careful to not overstate the case. Just because Kashmir is the biggest issue dividing India and Pakistan does not mean it is the only one. As the two most powerful countries in South Asia, all realists can safely agree that it is almost natural for the pair to butt heads. Aspiring regional hegemony, a description that assuredly fits India, should not be expected to enjoy the subservience of secondary powers. In other words, even without revisionism over Kashmir, it is unlikely that Pakistan would enjoy a strong friendship with India, or anything close.
But there is a meaningful difference between obeying the baseline level of security competition expected in international politics, on the one hand, and blasting distantly past that baseline due to one’s own irrational goals, on the other. That Pakistan’s relationship with India would not be perfect in the absence of the Kashmir issue is no reason to ignore the vast benefits that would accrue to it through the relative “normalisation” of ties.
Argentina and Brazil serve as an imperfect but useful analogy. At loggerheads for over a century, Brazil today is comfortably Argentina’s largest trade partner, even while the latter opposes the former’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (sound familiar?). Northeast Asia is the site of squabbles over territory and textbooks, yes, but China is also Japan’s second-largest export destination and the country from which it imports more than any other. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, hardly a region known for interconnectedness, Somalia’s top import supplier is Ethiopia, despite strained relations between the countries for decades.
Aside from realist considerations, one might oppose Pakistan’s abandoning of Kashmir on humanitarian grounds. Though realists do not, as a general rule, concern themselves with humanitarian causes, the question is worth posing: should Pakistan not speak for the rights of the Kashmiri nation, crushed by the Indian state at various times since 1947? By all means, Pakistan should object to human rights violations it finds objectionable.
But it bears noting that few countries enjoy the moral high-ground concerning Kashmiris’ well-being less than Pakistan. Its numerous armed interventions in Kashmir, from the war in 1947-48 to the one in 1965, from the 1989-1994 insurgency to Kargil, have intensified the violence Kashmiris face, and made their freedom less likely. My own research has shown that when third-parties get involved in separatist disputes in rival countries, they invite nothing but trouble and repression for the secessionist group.
As such, if Pakistan is genuinely motivated by a concern for Kashmiris’ welfare, its best course would be to cease demanding, and working towards,their accession. From a consequently more neutral position, Pakistan’s political and diplomatic support for Kashmiri rights and autonomy would carry more weight in multilateral and regional fora.
Of course, the least “realist” element of the above strategy is that it is not very realistic: it is exceedingly unlikely that Pakistan will abandon its demand for Kashmir in the immediate or medium terms. As long as Pakistan’s foreign and defence policies are in the hands of its army, the state is beholden to a view that considers the territory its vital national interest. But my purpose here is not prediction but prescription. I believe that abandoning the desire for Kashmir would serve the national interests of Pakistan, a goal all Pakistani realists share, as well as the interests of the Kashmiri people and the cause of peace on the subcontinent, which are wider, more humanist concerns.
Ahsan Butt teaches at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. His main research interests lie in nationalism, international security, and South Asia
