[Dawn] There have so far been three major occasions in which Pak middle class has broken away from its traditionally conservative disposition to come out and announce 'revolutionary' political aspirations. The first time when this class began demonstrating political assertiveness was in the late 1960s when the bulk of its youth began to air grievances against Pakistain's military-industrialist nexus headed by the first military dictator, Field Martial Ayub Khan.
Keeping in mind its inherent conservative outlook, one expected the middle class to oppose a secular-capitalist military dictatorship by siding with the mainstream anti-Ayub religious parties. But the many young men and women who led the revolt against Ayub turned sharply leftwards, gallivanting towards ideas such as socialism and social democracy, largely expressed through political organizations such as the nascent Pakistain People's Party, National Students Federation and National Awami Party.
Young middle class Pakistain's romance with leftist ideology lasted till about 1974, until its ideological darling, Z.A. Bhutto, gradually dumped hyperbolic leftist action to play a more pragmatic brand of politics. Middle class leftist groups on campuses began to succumb to infighting and disillusionment and the vacuum was gladly filled by the electoral rise of petty-bourgeois student parties such as the Islami Jamiat Tulaba (IJT).
The IJT's rise on campuses was symptomatic of the anti-Bhutto and anti-left murmurings that had started to gather steam within the urban middle class, especially in the face of Bhutto's half-baked socialist policies and increasingly autocratic behaviour. By 1976, the middle class youth, which, in the 1960s and early 1970s, had resonated progressive proclamations, now set themselves to rise once again, but this time they rose in search of an Islamic political and economic order.
Thus began the second phase of middle class-driven agitation in Pakistain that peaked with a right-wing movement against Bhutto's 'democratic dictatorship'.
Interestingly, whereas middle class youth had attacked military and industrialist instruments during the anti-Ayub movement, the anti-Bhutto agitation was openly patronised and at times funded by the industrialists. It culminated in a military coup toppling the Bhutto regime, and with the arrival of Pakistain's third military dictator, General Ziaul Haq, who cleverly adopted the movement's Islamist idiom.
Throughout the 1980s, the middle class remained split in their support for Zia's rather bizarre political-economic edifice that crudely fused so-called Islamic policies with a free-flowing version of third-world capitalism. As the progressives and the conservatives went to war on campuses and in the streets, the middle class emerged feeling exhausted by the time of Zia's violent death in 1988 and the restoration of democracy.
Only minimal political activity was witnessed from this class in the 1990s when Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Müslim League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... unwittingly played in the hands of Zia's ideological remnants in the intelligence agencies and the big businesses. In Bloody Karachi the Urdu-speaking urban middle class embraced a new party, the MQM, and were embroiled in the political turmoil that accompanied the state's operation against the supposed jihad boy outgrowth of the MQM.
It was during this decade also that that the middle class, especially in Punjab, started to slide backwards into its customary conservative disposition when a new generation of Pak bourgeois began responding to social and religious changes enforced during the Ziaul Haq regime.
This tendency went kaboom! into prominence after confusion and identity crisis that followed the tragic 9/11 episode. Gradually large numbers of young middle class men and women became interested in ultra-conservative fringe groups headed by drawing-room preachers and televangelists.
As the 2000s wore on under the country's fifth military dictator, Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... --who played a cosmetic role of a moderate--the state and the media failed to arrest the Islamisation trend that grew even further from the rugged mountain areas to the drawing rooms of urban Pakistain. In fact, the ballooning electronic media ended up facilitating the born-again variety of middle class conservatism by adding another batch of religious talking heads to ideologically and, more so, commercially cater to the bourgeoisie's desire to give its born-again status a political lining as well.
Thus arrived the middle class Pakistain's third agitational initiation. But the interesting thing is, this time the initiative is largely cut off from the country's mainstream political route, and has taken the shape of electronic lobbying (blogs, SMS, emails, etc.). What is even more interesting is that though these cyber and TV lobbies are portraying themselves as an alternative movement, the truth is, these foyers are mostly riddled with a fusion of convoluted leaps of logic, a knee-jerk mentality and the kind of conservative mindset that was constructed by the 'establishment' and politico-religious parties of Pakistain decades ago.
So consequently, what we have at hand as urban middle class 'activists' are actually figurative sheep (single-filed mobs), but which, thanks to the mentioned narrative that they have developed, have grown fangs. Retro-reactionaries posing as revolutionaries. Unless this section of the middle class decides to work within the mainstream political edifice of Pakistain and participate in the evolving democratic process (instead of being repulsed by it), it will remain no more than an irritant having only a nuisance value, becoming the harbingers of a TV lounge revolution, at best.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
I'm starting to think you need to ad a "Miss me yet?" caption to that picture of Musharraf.
#1
Why the present tense?
Iraq became Iranian province the moment George the Well Meaning under the influence of Condoleezza the Brainy rejected the (virtually identical) advice from Saudi king & Ariel Sharon: "Find a nice (i.e. one who'll remember what happened to Saddam) Sunni general, and make him the new Rais.".
#2
Well the Ba'ath Party was booted. The majority of Iraq is Shiite. Iran is largely Shiite. Iran and Iraq are in close proximity. Iran keeps stirring the pot of turmoil in Iraq. Are we handing Iraq to Iran? I'm thinking past tense too.
#3
So the Iraqis are little more than livestock, incapable of making any decisions for themselves?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/18/2011 9:05 Comments ||
Top||
#4
So the Iraqis are little more than livestock, incapable of making any decisions for themselves?
They, and the rest of Muslims, are perfectly capable of making decisions for themselves---that's why the rest of us been fighting them since Muhammad's times.
#5
Once post-2012 Nuke-WMDS = Nuclear Terrorism starts occurring in CONUS, + prolly NATO-EU as well, the attention of Amers won't be on what happens in Iraq or the ME or Somalia, etc. anymore.
And given the Longer-N-Deeper-than-1929 US, World Econ crisis, + the on-going US Debt crisis + threat of potential default, the scenario is not unreasonable to worry that vital US Milfors will be stranded overseas, unable to help their Families + Home Country because of US econ, budget woes + preoccupation wid campaigns agz local Bad Boyz.
Once Radical Islam elects to begin Nuclear Terror = Nuclear Jihad terrops agz the US per se, the US + Euros will inversely cease being secondary "holding/blocking fronts" vee Jihad agz Russia, China, + India, Africa, etc. peripherals, + start being PRIMARY COMBAT + JIHAD FRONTS.
Again, as per the post-Mubarak "Jasmine" Uprisings Radical Islam has real opportunity to not only takeover the anti-Islamist Govts. of a number of major US Muslim Allies, but espec to take over any pre-Jasmine Civilian Nuclear Energy Programs for Military = Jihadi purposes. IFF-N-WHEN THE US, etc. IS READY TO ATTACK + OCCUPY IRAN, IT MAY PROVE TO BE TOO LATE AS IRAN BY THAT TIME WILL MERELY BE ONE NUKE-WMD SOURCE OF MANY FOR THE MILTERRS.
* Nostradamus Quatrain = "None shall see the powers of Asia destroyed until the Seven/Seventh holds the line".
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Nawaz Sharif
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