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| India-Pakistan |
| Pakistan after Musharraf |
| 2007-06-24 |
| Khaled Ahmed Everybody is pushing for the ‘big change’ in Pakistan. It is not like anything in the past. It didn’t happen when General Zia-ul Haq fired the government of Mohammad Khan Junejo. The politicians who took over after Zia’s death were the fruit of his loins. The army slid into the background. It did not rule through martial law, but acted as arbiter under Article 58/2/B. In this role, it was actually more lethal. That was the ‘democratic’ phase of the 1990s. Are we preparing to go back to it? Or has the final ‘cut-off’ happened this time? In the past there was always somebody who was not against the army. That meant that the party that took on the army was stabbed in the back by another party. The phrase ‘security risk’ was common currency in the civilian discourse. This time no one is on the side of the army, strangely not even the ruling PMLQ. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 What if we discover on a closer scrutiny of the past that the army becomes ‘interfering’ or ‘intervening’ if it is ideological? Can we agree on getting rid of the army’s dominance by agreeing to get rid of its ideology? We suddenly come across our first intellectual challenge. We think that we have put all challenges to rest by agitating for the freedom of the judiciary, but the real challenge lies in rethinking the ideology of the state. What is Pakistan’s ideology? What moves the state to act the way it does? When we think of Pakistan’s ideology what do we mean by it? Most of us think it is religion. At least the religious parties think like that. The rightwing non-clerics and the clerics find in the ‘two-nation doctrine’ their common point: the treatment of non-Muslims as the ‘second nation’ in Pakistan. But the rightwing non-cleric in some cases is exclusively thinking of India when he talks of the two-nation doctrine. Some people have made the mistake of seeing Musharraf's work as a load of rubbish about countering terrorist insurgencies, but clever people like me, who talk loudly in restaurants, see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a miltarized world. The points are frozen, the beast is dead. What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Peshwar. The point is taken. If Osama's goat would spurn Ahmadinejad the engine must be our head, the troop carrier our oesophagus, the border guard's our left lung, the petrol truck our shins, the artillery the piece of skin at the nape of the neck and the security checkpoint an electric goat called Fatima. The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? It's over there in a box. Musharraf is saying the 8.15 from Karachi when in reality he means the 8.13 from Karachi. The train is the same only the time is altered. Ecce homo, ergo goat. Osama knew his sister and knew her bloody well. The point is taken, the beast is moulting, the fluff gets up your nose. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as al-Maliki observes, in the box? No there isn't room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the goat is dead, the beast stops at Islamabad, Kahn stops at nothing, I'm having treatment and Osama can get knotted. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-06-24 21:33 |
| #3 Soon to be called Radioactiveglassistan. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-06-24 09:21 |
| #2 I'll tell you what will happen to Pakistan, Khaled. Eventually you'll push India too far and will be broken into a bunch of smaller, less dangerous, states. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-06-24 06:30 |
| #1 The army and its nuclear arsenal will be made safe only by changing the nature of the Pakistani state. Pakistan doesnÂ’t have the intellectual resources needed to make this transition. But action taken exclusively on the basis of economic self-interest can lead us to the same result. I am sorry to have to break this to you but when the choice comes down to Islamist culture or rational self-interest, Islamist culture consistently wins out. If these people were rational to begin with, Islamic fundamentalism would not even exist there. |
| Posted by: Clinesh Ghibelline2687 2007-06-24 03:50 |