The International Community and Pakistan.

• Author: Dorschner, Jon P.

In his book Pakistan: A Hard Country (1) Anatol Lieven joined the long parade of South Asia scholars attempting to A) explain what is happening, B) provide some explanatory variables C) provide specific foreign policy recommendations, and D) forecast what will happen in the future.

Scholars grappling with these issues fall into two very broad categories. The alarmist group concludes that things have already deteriorated too far and that it not a question of if Pakistan will disappear but when.

The second group (often called the "muddle through" group) is more fatalistic. It believes that while Pakistan has gone to the brink of destruction on numerous occasions, it has always found a way to muddle through. Lieven belongs to this group.

There is a well-founded consensus reflected in Lieven's assessment that, "Pakistan is divided, disorganized, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive towards the poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism." However, unlike the alarmists, Lieven points out that Pakistan "is in may ways surprisingly tough and resilient as a state and a society," (2) and "failing a catastrophic overspill of the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan will therefore probably survive as a state." (3)

Lieven argues that this "resilience" is based on the unique character of Pakistani society. Pakistan is a "weak state" with a "strong society." Pakistan's deeply entrenched social norms are only partially based on Islam. Pakistanis are not the diehard Islamic fanatics often portrayed in the press. Rather, Pakistanis are inherently conservative. Their conservatism includes their attitude towards Islam, but extends to a wide variety of social and political attitudes and practices. As is the case in any deeply religious society, Islam is manipulated to provide religious sanction to attitudes and practices that are in many cases not explicitly Islamic. Many of these attitudes and practices that predate Islam were assigned an Islamic significance after Islam became the predominant religion in the region. The founding of Pakistan as an explicitly Islamic state has only speeded up and encouraged this ongoing process.

In the Pakistani context, a small minority of violent Islamists are the revolutionaries. They use extreme methods in their attempt to force or convince a reluctant population to abandon its inherent conservatism and embrace their version of Islam based on a narrow and violent definition of jihad and a stark anti-modernism disguised as Islamic purity.

Pakistan's Islamic radicals belong to a variety of groups claiming to espouse a "pure" form of Islam. The leading Islamic radical group is the Tehriq-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), often called the "Pakistani Taleban." The TTP is allied with an alphabet soup of Islamic extremist groups with varying agendas. Some are determined to "eliminate" religious minorities, others to wage "jihad" against India, others have extended jihad to include the United States and western countries in general. All want to purge Pakistan of what they view as non-Islamic and Western accretions.

The Islamic radicals initially received a sympathetic hearing from many Pakistanis. They capitalized on many Pakistanis' long-held antipathy against India, and a growing wave of anti-Americanism. They raised the cry of "Islam in danger," and painted themselves as defenders of the faith. Some Pakistanis viewed the radicals as heroes. However, the inherent radicalism of these movements has run into the inherent conservatism of Pakistani society. Lots of the initial sympathy has dried up, and the radicals are finding it increasingly difficult to convince skeptical Pakistanis of the inherent rightness of their program. They have had a hard time in Pakistan and have not been embraced by the people at large.

Disappointed by their poor reception, the Islamic radicals decided to terrorize Pakistanis into submission. They unleashed a wave of terrorist attacks on innocent Pakistanis that grows more violent and widespread with each passing day. The radicals have long targeted Shia Muslims and Ahmadiyas (4), denouncing both groups as heretics. They then turned their attention to Pakistani Christians. Now they have begun to target the Pakistani population at large. Distressed that most Pakistanis remain heavily influenced by Sufism and Pakistani folk practices (often loosely organized within the predominant Barelvi sect (5)), Islamic radicals expanded their target list to include highly revered Sufi shrines, Sufi saints, liberal and westernized Pakistanis, women, and Sunni Muslims who reject their extreme doctrines.

The Pathans

As Lieven and others have pointed out, the TTP has found its greatest following among members of the Pathan ethnic group living in the wild "frontier" region encompassing the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). The Pathans living in this area are culturally different in many ways from Pakistanis living in other regions. They live in a remote area and are not urbanized. They have remained largely outside the purview of the government. They have not received many of the services provided to other Pakistanis. This is particularly true of education. The culture of this region is extremely patriarchal and the role of women is high restricted. The general literacy rate is very low (30 percent for males, and only 3 percent for females). (6)

This region has internalized rebellion against outside authority. The inhabitants resent the presence of the government. During the British era Pathans routinely revolted against British rule, most often under the guise of an Islamic jihad, aimed at "saving Islam from danger." This pattern continued after the British departed. The government of the new state of Pakistan naively...