Arising tide of anti-Americanism is threatening to swamp Pakistan. What are its implications for the stability and health of state and society?
In the first four decades since independence, Pakistan was pro-America and Pakistanis were pro-Americans. The mutually beneficial state-to-state relationship was nurtured by good people-to-people contacts encouraged by both states under various cultural, economic, political and military assistance and exchange programmes. The only anti-American sentiment in the country was expressed by the trade-unionist “left”. But the “left” had no political clout. Meanwhile, the position of the religious right, as articulated by the Jamaat i Islami, was dubious – its dependence upon and links with Saudi Arabia, a staunch US ally, made it relatively quiescent. In fact, when the US sanctioned jihad or holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Jamaat was a veritable ally of America because its nominee Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was Washington’s blue-eyed boy in Afghanistan. But the end of the Afghan jihad in 1988, followed by the closure of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, heralded a new and uncomfortable reality in South Asia in the 1990s. It is during this decade that the seeds of anti-Americanism were sown in Pakistan. The signposts are easily discerned.
In a stunning move in September 1990, the US abruptly turned its back on Pakistan when Ambassador Robert Oakley accused Pakistan of crossing the nuclear “red light” and Washington swiftly applied economic and military sanctions. It refused to supply military hardware, including F-16s jets, ordered and paid for earlier. In the next few years, Washington leaned on Pakistan to “freeze, cap and roll back” its nuclear programme. When Pakistan refused, the relationship soured. Pakistanis felt “betrayed” and “used”. The US had turned a blind eye to the country’s nuclear programme when it “needed” Pakistan. But now the same nuclear programme was unacceptable to the US. The sense of Pakistani outrage was all the greater since the US sought to deny military hardware needed for Pakistan’s defence against arch-enemy India. Worse, Washington seemed bent on compounding the injury by refusing to return the hard cash paid for the F-16s.The Gulf war in 1991 reinforced anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Reeling from the American cold shoulder, Pakistanis flooded the streets to protest American role in the Middle-East. The US had tricked Saddam Hussain into invading Kuwait so that it could have an excuse to attack Iraq, alleged one popular conspiracy theory. The US wanted control of Iraqi oil, said another. Suddenly, the reality of the US-Iraq relationship seemed to resemble the reality of the US-Pak relationship. Critics pointed out that the US had aided and equipped Iraq to wage war against revolutionary Iran in the 1980s, but now that Saddam Hussain had outgrown his utility, the US had determined to cut him down to size. The flood of anti-Americanism in Pakistan soon engulfed the Pakistan army as well, compelling its chief of army staff, General Aslam Beg, and the former ISI chief General Hamid Gul, to make the “hopeful” prediction that Iraq would be America’s “new Vietnam”. Of course, this merely served to confirm Washington in its opinion that Pakistan was neither “necessary” nor “reliable”. The cold refrain in Washington was, “Pakistan? It’s not even on our radar screen”. By the late 1990s, Pakistan was well on its way to becoming the “most sanctioned” American “friend” in the world.
The ethnic conflict in Muslim Bosnia notched up the anti-American scorecard. The hypocrisy of the Western powers, coupled with a studied delay by the American government in bombing the Serbs, reinforced the perceptions. Indeed, Muslim passions were so inflamed that the Pakistan government secretly broke UN sanctions to provide arms to the Bosnian Muslims fighting the Serbs. It now seemed that the West in general, and the USA in particular, were somehow against “Islam” because Muslim nations seemed to be at the end of the Western stick.
This rising anti-American sentiment was reinforced by two other developments in the 1990s. The bloody intransigence of Israel led to the desperate Palestinian intifada that was reinforced when the Washington backtracked on its commitment to a fair and just peace and emboldened Israel to swing to the extreme right. Since then, television screens and newspaper headlines have daily brought the tragic and bloody story of a stone throwing David before a mighty Goliath to every middle-class home in Pakistan and channelled the anger against Israel towards its sole benefactor in Washington. The other “war against Muslims” was in Chechnya where America was perceived as giving Russia a carte blanche to crush the misguided “liberation” movement in exchange for Russian support of the American doctrine of pre-emption. The intellectual context in which the debate now began to be conducted in the West was the “clash of civilisations” thesis expounded by Samuel Huntington. Political theory, it seemed, was now ready to explain and justify American realpolitik.
The arrival of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, along with a swarm of alienated, angry jihadis and disgruntled former state actors from Pakistan, inevitably followed in the late 1990s. The stage was thus set for 9/11. The American bombing of Afghanistan, coupled with an American-supported Pakistani dictator’s personal antipathy against the mainstream political parties, created a fertile ground for the birth of the Muttahida Majlis Ammal, an unprecedented grouping of six religious parties in Pakistan. In due course, four developments were to lead to another surge in anti-American feeling in Pakistan.
First, the Pak-American cooperation in the war against terrorism has brought the FBI to Pakistan and empowered it to take charge of the hunt inside the country. This has created resentment not only in the local law and order bureaucracies that it has sidelined or overpowered but also among the many middle-class, religious minded, supporters and sympathisers of al-Qaeda ( nationalism and sovereignty being classic urban middle-class passions). Second, it has manifested itself in the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists formerly dubbed jihadis or freedom fighters by the Pakistani establishment, thereby provoking them not just to target Westerners, especially Americans, but also those in the establishment who would be America’s allies and friends (General Pervez Musharraf is a prime target). Third, joint US-Pak paramilitary operations against al-Qaeda operatives hiding in the tribal borderlands have aroused the wrath of traditionally conservative people with ethnic or religious affinities with the al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Fourth, and largely as a consequence of the first three, the harassment, humiliation and even detention of Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular in the US, whether residents or visitors, at the hands of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has outraged all and sundry. This seems likely to keep the wound open for a long time.
If the roots of anti-Americanism in Pakistan lie in misplaced American policies at home or abroad, whether of neglect of Afghanistan or rejection of Pakistan or a bit of both, the result is an unstable Afghanistan, an unsure Pakistan and an insecure America. Now America is on the brink of a war with Iraq. What will be its fallout?
Pakistani Islamicists like Qazi Hussain Ahmad (MMA) or jihadis like Maulana Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed, claim that the Iraq war will light a fire in the Muslim world and trigger the demise of the sole superpower. Theirs is an apocalyptic worldview that is self-serving and wishful. An equally improbable view suggests that Pakistan will be inflamed and an Islamic revolution will lead to the overthrow of the Musharraf regime. That is not likely to happen for two reasons: the mainstream political parties in and out of government are in no mood to take an anti-American posture, so they are not likely to help mobilise people against the US; and the Musharraf government will keep a tight rein on mass protests and demonstrations as it did in the immediate aftermath of the American bombing campaign in Afghanistan last year. There is also a general feeling among the citizenry that Pakistan is in a difficult fix in which it is far more “pragmatic” as a nation to sit inside the American-UN camp than to be in the cold with the radical Islamicists, despite the everyday “humiliation” and sense of “powerlessness” that is visited upon Pakistan and Pakistanis and Muslims all over the world.
Therefore, while anti-Americanism is likely to engulf Pakistan in the wake of the war in Iraq, it is not likely to be rabid; nor is it likely to lead to an overthrow of the Musharraf regime by street agitation or revolutionary upheaval. To be sure, there will be demonstrations, terrorists will set off bombs, opposition politicians will denounce American imperialism and provincial parliaments in the NWFP and Balochistan will pass condemnatory resolutions, but the storm will pass. Of course, much will depend on how the “war” is conducted, whether it is short or long, how many innocent Muslim civilians are killed, and whether or not America is successful in achieving the goals it has set for itself.
It is, however, in the longer-term that the blowback of the American military intervention in the Middle-East will give cause for worry. The Iraq war will doubtless create the breeding ground for many more alienated, frustrated, angry young Muslims across the globe to join the ranks of the jihadi resistance against America. Thus there may be more, not less, al-Qaeda suicide squads to contend with everywhere in time to come.
Meanwhile, Pakistan will remain in the eye of the gathering storm. The social psyche of Pakistanis is seriously bruised. The country is home to al-Qaeda. It has nuclear weapons. It is accused of trying to export nuclear technology. It has come to the brink of war with India. Its interests in Afghanistan do not always coincide with those of America. The word abroad is that Pakistan is “potentially the most dangerous place in the word”. That is a not a happy prospect for the new year.