Fault line of Pakistan

On Monday afternoon a significant part of the subcontinent stood transfixed as retired General Pervez Musharraf announced with moist eyes that he was resigning as President of Pakistan after nine tumultuous years at the country’s helm. It was either that or being hounded out of office by the man he had deposed, Nawaz Sharief, a turnabout that only surprised those outside of Pakistan.

The mistake most analysts make while looking at Pakistan is to deal with one or even just two aspects of the process of decision making in the country. It’s either the army/ISI bloc or the democratic parties, or even the Jihadists/Islamists’ complex. All these are intertwined and most of all opinion is more sharply divided among various sections in the country. The lawyers’ movement against Musharraf is one manifestation, and it is also important to distinguish between the Islamic parties and the Jihadist groups; after all, Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamat Ulema-e-Islam has on more than one occasion said that the Shimla Agreement should be the reference point for Kashmir.

It is in this context that this book, authored by Zahid Hussein, a seasoned journalist, works. The introduction itself gives a taste of the tone of the book. It begins with Donald Rumsfeld welcoming President Musharraf’s help in the war against terror, just weeks after the Twin Towers were destroyed and terming Pakistan as a state that was sponsoring terrorism.

This also marks Musharraf’s days as a marked man. From this point on the book goes into great detail of not just Musharraf’s engagement with the West, but also the effect his decision to publicly break with Jihadist groups had on these groups and democratic processes within Pakistan.

In chapter after chapter, Hussain talks about how Musharraf’s new position put him at odds with the Jihadist elements in the military, and his insecurity and assumption of more and more powers made him a hate figure among the democratic groups. At the same time, more and more evidence of the Pakistani military involvement in Jihadist groups and the US’s frustration with the “successes” of the war on terror made life difficult for Musharraf.

The book in a sense is a faithful recounting of the events that led to Monday’s announcement. Musharraf slowly became redundant to everybody’s plans for Pakistan as he could not sustain the tightrope walk between the Jihadists, the Army brass sympathetic to Jihadists, democratic aspirations and US support.

The book in fact should be read in conjunction with Ahmad Rashid’s book Descent Into Chaos for a fully rounded look at ground zero of the war against terror. While Rashid looks at the US and Pakistan’s engagement in Afghanistan and the failure of the US at state building in that country, Hussain’s book looks at the effect on Pakistan.

The book has an exhaustive recount of the author’s own encounters with Musharraf and other players in Pakistan. It is not an academic work but a journalist’s reading of a situation which he has been covering for over 17 years. Despite the racy account, the author is successful in conveying the complexity of the situation in Pakistan, a complexity which many in India and the US sometimes try and simplify for heuristic purposes.

More than anything, the book comprehensively travels the distance between the Zia-ul-Haq era of Pakistan-US relations and the suspicions post 9/11 — from the time when it was said that Zia and his main generals were the last 10 men standing between communism and the free world in the war in Afghanistan to a time when the US army makes forays into Pakistani territory to pursue the Taliban, not entrusting the Pakistani Army with the job.

For Indian readers especially, this is a good book to read as it takes the reader beyond just the Kashmir-ISI nexus to the whole gamut of jihadist activity in Pakistan, and is a kind of explanation to India’s own foreign policy thaw with the United States.

FRONTLINE PAKISTAN
THE STRUGGLE WITH MILITANT ISLAM
Zahid Hussain Viking
Rs 395, 220 pages