Pakistan: A Hard Country (68 page)

Above al , the ANP were long hindered in confronting the Taleban by the views of the vast majority of their own supporters and activists, who, to judge by my interviews with many of them, regard the US

presence in Afghanistan as il egitimate and who see ANP support for a military crackdown on the Taleban as essential y launching a Pathan civil war on the orders of the United States. As Fakhruddin Khan, the son of the ANP General Secretary, said to me, ‘one main reason for sympathy for the Taleban is that every Pashtun has been taught from the cradle that to resist foreign domination is part of what it is to do Pashto’ – in other words, to fol ow the Pathan Way.

Part of the ANP’s problem in fighting the Taleban is that to be seen to help even indirectly the US military presence in Afghanistan goes against its own deepest instincts, both Pathan nationalist and anticolonialist. The party’s founder, Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890 – 1988), whose grandson leads the party today, was ostensibly a Gandhian pacifist, but his poetry is more reminiscent of the warlike Khattak: If I die, and lie not bathed in martyr’s blood, None should this [Pashtun] tongue pol ute, Offering prayers for me.

Oh mother, why should you mourn for me, If I am not torn to pieces by British guns?7

The history of the origins of the ANP under British rule il ustrates both the power of Pathan nationalism and its weakness in the face of appeals which mix nationalism with religion. Thus, remarkably, Abdul Ghaffar Khan was able to found a Pathan mass nationalist movement, the Khudai Khidmatgars, or Servants of God (popularly known as the Red Shirts, from their uniforms), dedicated to al iance with the overwhelmingly Hindu Indian National Congress and, in principle at least, committed to Gandhian principles of non-violence.

No more unlikely product of Pathan culture can easily be imagined.

The explanation is, however, obvious. So deeply did most Pathans loathe British rule that they were prepared to al y with the main Indian force struggling against that rule, the Congress. They opposed Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League, which, though made up of fel ow Muslims, was regarded quite rightly as much more interested in doing deals with the British in order to safeguard Muslim interests than in seeking to expel the hated alien rulers. This sentiment al owed the Red Shirts and their political al ies to dominate NWFP politics in the last fifteen years of British rule, and Ghaffar Khan’s brother, Dr Khan Sahib, became chief minister of the province.

When in 1946 – 7 it became apparent that the British real y were preparing to quit, the position of the Khan brothers and their fol owers quickly col apsed in the face of the religious-based propaganda of the Muslim League in favour of an independent Muslim state of Pakistan.

The idea of living in a Hindu-dominated India proved absolutely unacceptable to most Pathans, and the Congress leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, was almost lynched by a Pathan mob on a visit to the province.

Undermined by both the Muslim League and the departing British, a last-ditch attempt at an independent ‘Pakhtunkhwa’ linked to Afghanistan also failed.

Thereafter, the relations of Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his movement with the Pakistani state were natural y deeply troubled, since that state and army had good reason to doubt their loyalty. He and his leading fol owers spent many years in Pakistani jails, with their party banned, under both military and civilian governments, including that of the PPP

in the 1970s. In part because of the rigging of elections against them, they never succeeded before 2008 in forming the provincial government of the NWFP, though they several times took a share in government.

The links of the ANP and its predecessor parties to Afghanistan, though dictated by their Pathan nationalism, have also over the years proved a disastrous liability. Afghanistan proved enough of a threat to Pakistan to terrify the Pakistani security establishment and deepen their opposition to enhanced Pathan autonomy within Pakistan; but not remotely enough of an attractive force to win over large numbers of Pakistani Pathans to union with Afghanistan; and from the late 1970s the ANP also became in part hostage to the dreadful y radical and violent swings of the Afghan domestic spectrum.

First, in the 1950s, Ghaffar Khan and his fol owers became associated with the campaign of the Afghan Prime Minister (and later President) Sardar Daud Khan to mobilize Pathan nationalism so as to bring about the union of the NWFP and FATA with Afghanistan – a campaign which included providing funds and armed support for tribal rebels against Pakistan. Then, after 1979, Abdul Ghaffar Khan became closely tied to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and its Afghan Communist al ies. He lived in Afghanistan under Soviet occupation and is buried in the Afghan city of Jalalabad. Because of the ANP’s anti-British legacy, and because the Pakistani state and military had general y been al ied with the United States, ANP ideology took on an anti-American cast.

Today, this mutual hostility between the ANP and Washington has of necessity greatly diminished, and the US of course greatly welcomes ANP ties to the Afghan administration of Hamid Karzai. The problem is that – to judge by my own interviews with Pakistani Pathans – Karzai is despised by most of the ANP’s own activists and voters as a US

colonial stooge, and the association with him does nothing for ANP

prestige among Pakistani Pathans, and weakens the party vis-à-vis the Taleban.

The ANP shares certain features with its main political rival within the province, the Islamist Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). Both are ostensibly radical anti-establishment parties which nonetheless have involvements in electoral politics stretching back decades, and have often formed part of coalition governments. Both are deeply integrated into Pakistan’s system of political patronage and corruption. Yet both only formed their own governments in the NWFP very recently: the JUI as part of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (United Action Council) Islamist coalition which won the elections of 2002 in the Frontier; the ANP as a result of the crushing defeat of the MMA in the elections of 2008.

In both cases, the victories were hailed as crucial political turning points, for good or evil. In neither case does this appear to have been true. To judge by my own interviews with ordinary voters in the NWFP, the truth was closer to what Sikander Khan Sherpao (a member of the Provincial Assembly and son of the aforementioned Aftab Sherpao), told me in August 2008:

The people who say that the religious parties have been smashed for good and the moderate parties have triumphed are wrong. If you look at the issues on which the MMA got their votes in 2002 and the ANP this year, the most important ones are the same. This year, people voted for the ANP because they were against Musharraf, and too much of the MMA was seen as pro-Musharraf. And they voted for the ANP because, like the MMA before, they are hostile to the American presence in Afghanistan and promised peace with the militants and a bigger role for the Shariah.8

Apart from the issue of Afghanistan and the Taleban, the changes in government in 2002 and 2008 were also part of the rather melancholy cycle of Pakistani political life, in which incumbent governments are voted out because of their failure to fulfil their promises, to be replaced by their opponents – who then also fail. Both the ANP and JUI are deeply divided internal y, partly along purely factional and family lines, but also over ideology and strategy. This constant, time-and energyconsuming infighting helps swal ow up any potential for reform and good governance that may original y have existed.

Businessmen with whom I talked in the NWFP said that there had been absolutely no difference between the last three governments (PML(Q), MMA and ANP) in terms of corruption. The level of bribetaking had remained the same – in other words extremely high.

Indeed, a Western businessman in the security construction field said that even in the Middle East he had never seen anything quite like the level of corruption that he had experienced in Peshawar, under both the MMA and ANP: ‘Everyone wants a bribe. And the worst of it is, the government is so chaotic and faction-ridden that even when you pay half a dozen people you can’t be sure of getting a result, or that some new guy won’t pop up asking for his share.’

The voters have little real expectation of radical improvement, but hope that things wil get a bit better, and above al that their neighbourhoods or families may draw some specific benefit. As far as the JUI is concerned, taking over the government proved as much of a curse as a blessing. As a result, many ordinary Pathans have come to see the party and its al ies as just as corrupt and incompetent as the Pakistani national parties, and no sort of radical alternative to them.

A common answer on the streets of every NWFP town I visited, when I asked people how they had voted in the last elections, was either that they had not voted at al , because ‘the parties are al the same – none of them keep their promises,’ as Sayyid Munawar Shah, a shopkeeper in Peshawar, told me; or, if they had voted for a given party, it was because ‘my father and grandfather voted for them’, or ‘we are fol owers of such and such Khan, and so we vote for him’. Any kind of convinced support for any of the parties was extremely hard to find.

This was true even outside the front door of the ANP’s headquarters on Pashaggi Road in Peshawar, where the shopkeepers told me that they had not voted in the last elections. ‘Why should we? They are thieves, al of them. They promise and promise, and then do nothing,’

as one told me. The doing nothing was rather obvious. The street was deeply potholed, without street lamps, and littered with stinking rubbish. The idea that enlightened self-interest and party propaganda alone might have dictated an attempt to improve the neighbourhood did not seem to have occurred to any of the party activists lounging listlessly inside their cavernous headquarters – and the same was true of the other party headquarters I visited. With the exception of the Jamaat Islami and the MQM, this is not how Pakistani parties think.

Looking at the condition of Peshawar, I asked several ANP leaders if they had ever thought of trying to initiate some kind of urban renewal scheme like the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi. No one even seemed to understand what I was talking about. However, in this they are only reflecting their own society – for, after al , the shopkeepers on Pashaggi Road might have organized themselves to clean up the rubbish from their front doors, and it hadn’t occurred to them either.

As of 2009, the same fate that befel the MMA seems to threaten the ANP. The party stood for election in February 2008 on a platform of negotiating peace deals with the Islamist militants, gaining increased autonomy for the NWFP, changing the name of the province to Pakhtunkhwa (in line with the other four provinces, which al have a name related to that of the chief local ethnicity) and restoring the judges sacked by Musharraf. Al of these demands, including talks with the Taleban, were extremely popular with the ANP supporters and activists with whom I have spoken.

However, the ANP set out no detailed or coherent economic policy or plan for social reform – though to be fair that is difficult for any provincial government when the powers of the provinces are so limited. As of 2010, its hopes of extracting more powers from the centre had – as so often in the past – been frustrated by stonewal ing in Islamabad. As a result, the party’s programme has in practice been limited to attempts at peace with the Taleban and to the demand that the NWFP be official y renamed Pakhtunkhwa. The PPP-led government in Islamabad agreed to this (in the form of ‘Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’) in April 2010 – a decision which immediately sparked riotous protests by the Hindko-speaking Hazara minority in the NWFP

which left seven people dead in the town of Abbotabad. The protesters were demanding a new Hindko-speaking province of their own – another example of the way in which separatism in Pakistan is held in check by local ethnic opposition.

In one respect, however, the position of the ANP altered radical y in the course of 2008 – 9: for the first time in its history, the party was forced by the Taleban revolt not just to make a covert deal with the Pakistani army, but to al y with them publicly and explicitly; and, since the ANP leadership is now completely dependent on the army for protection against assassination by the Taleban, this relationship is likely to remain. It represents a complete reversal of the party’s previous Pathan nationalist and anti-military positions, and a key political question among Pakistani Pathans for the next generation wil be whether ANP activists and voters stick with the party regardless, or whether they move away to found other parties – or even are drawn by Pathan nationalism to join the Taleban, as the last Pathan nationalist force left standing.

JAMIAT-E-ULEMA-E-ISLAM (JUI, COUNCIL OF

ISLAMIC CLERICS)

The contrast between public rhetoric and actual addiction to deal-making is if anything even more true of the other mainstream Pakistani party based in the Pathan areas, the Islamist JUI. In its origins this party was not Pathan, but rather a continuation of the tradition of Islamist groups from elsewhere finding fertile soil for growth on the Frontier. The party grew out of the pro-Pakistan wing of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, the leading Islamist group in India under British rule.