Preference of a blood-soaked tyrant over a benevolent dictatorship!
A Pakistani enigma
By Iqbal Latif
Pakistani Islamic and opposition leadership over the years have shown a bizarre propensity of supporting the strongman of the Arab world over relatively benevolent domestic indigenous dictatorships. Since last one year Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have emerged as the new idols of Islam, although they may be better presented as the twin nemeses of the Islamic World through their portrayal of Islam as a religion that allows callous murders compounded deceit and waging undeclared wars against civilians. Nevertheless, in the minds of many imbued with the spirit of political Islam, these are the very heroes of Islam battling an oppressor who threatens to cast Islamic civilization to oblivion. The broad-spectrum prevalent logic of anti-Americanism in Pakistan is based on theory that US will thrust aside Pakistan until it is no longer useful then will move on. It is generally assumed that for some perverse reason, the only country they have absolute and unwavering allegiance to is Israel and it’s the country that has the least to offer. This lack of consistency of strategy on the part of US vis- a-vis Pakistan has a definite bearing on actions of present anti US demonstrators.
America’s track record with regards to Muslim populations can be defined by the four crises it responded to during the ‘80s and ‘90s. In Afghanistan, against the invading red armies, a country infamous for her reputation, where “God only comes to weep.” The Gulf War liberated the Kuwaiti people from the yoke of Saddam, whilst American intervention in the Balkans saved Bosnian lives whilst ethnic Albanians were spared Serbian wrath in the neighbouring Kosovo solely because of America’s intervention. In every instance, the liberated were Muslim peoples! America undertook a disastrous military campaign in Somalia to save the latter’s starving population, Muslims all. In Mogadishu, a battle that killed eighteen US Rangers and Delta, the attack was primarily intended to capture the warlord’s top lieutenants responsible for killing of the 29 peacekeepers!
American administrations have had to prove that they were not anti-Muslim; indeed it was explicitly stated that the operations in Bosnia were to placate an increasingly hostile Muslim world. Indeed Serbians seeking to avenge the humiliation inflicted by the Ottoman Empire and reclaim Kosovo were bent on a genocidal drive to expunge the last Muslim from their lands. To prevent this holocaust in Europe, America resorted to bombing an Orthodox Christian nation and thus ensured the survival of Islam in the Balkan region.
Indeed, President Clinton continued to bomb Yugoslavia during the holy days of Eastern Orthodox Easter, nevertheless, halted the bombing of Iraq during Ramadan in a tribute to Islam. Christian Belgrade was razed to the ground for the preservation of 7 million Muslim lives yet there is no gratitude from Muslims for these altruistic gestures.
In a unipolar global order, America has risen as the patron of oppressed Islamic populations and even now gears itself for the onerous task of liberating the Muslims of Iraq from their dictator. This fundamental truth must be acknowledged by Muslim populations throughout the globe, especially Pakistanis. Pragmatism and geopolitical reality should be the order of the day, not vague ramblings against a superpower, whose remarkable partiality towards Muslim populations is routinely ignored.
The Pakistani populace’s enmity towards American action in Iraq stems as much from the feelings of betrayal as it does from the Pan-Islamic sentiments that continue to linger on in the national consciousness. There is some justification in it since the ISI perceived United States as calculating and untrustworthy – a “mixture of innocent abroad and Machiavellian superpower.” Indeed it was believed that American’s intervention in Afghanistan during the 80’s was to only avenge the debacle of Vietnam and with its success they abandoned critical pivots such as Pakistan. Nevertheless, despite this, America has redeemed itself by liberating the Afghani population from the Taliban and once again renewing its innate bond with Pakistan. The spin-offs from the Afghani liberation for Pakistan alone have been immense, with cement and infrastructure-oriented industries rapidly growing to cater for the growing Afghani market.
The relationship with Iran is once again warming; a stark reverse to the dangerous drift of that nation to India in response to Pakistan’s pro-Taliban policies of the 90’s. Aid has been flowing into Pakistan and the stability ensured by the American presence has allowed Pakistan to return to the fast track economic growth that once characterized the nation. The liberation of the Afghani people from their tyrants, in this case Muslim theocrats, is yet another instance when Muslim peoples need foreign intervention to save them from themselves.
The Islamic world has progressed through the milestones of the last century recoiling from failure to failure. The inherent inability of Muslim nations to discern the true victor of global conflicts has led to immense setbacks. In the First World War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Kaiser Germany leading to the dissolution of the Caliphate whilst Mufti Hussein, the spiritual leader of Palestinian people during the 40’s, actively abetted Hitler in his mission to exterminate European Jewry. Failing to get to grips with geopolitical reality, rather, retreating to the escapist fantasies of “Western & Jewish conspiracies” against Muslims, have defined the Islamic response to the events of the modern age.
Pan-Islamism is a variant of this recent phenomenon where the impulse to identify with Muslim leaders induces stultifying intellectual isolation and enmity towards the West. The Pan-Islamism strain afflicting Pakistanis is reminiscent of the Khilafat Movement, when in the early 20th century, 18,000 sub-continental Muslims sold all their possessions and means of livelihood to depart British India for the Afghani frontier, only to be refused at the border by the Wali of Afghanistan. Shattered by the disestablishment of the Ottoman Empire by Ataturk, revered as father of the Turkish nation, sub-continental Muslims failed to reconcile themselves with the demise of the Turkish Caliphate.
The drive amongst Muslims to embrace modernity in Turkey was largely absent in their co-religionists in the subcontinent who, instead, mourned the loss of the last Islamic Empire. This incident of the early 20th century was largely mirrored when Sufi Muhammed led 15,000 Pakistanis to fight for the Taliban across the Afghani border, only this time for their bodies to return in containers.
This impulse to demonstrate solidarity with the rest of the Islamic world was further manifested when thousands of Pakistanis rallied in the streets to support Saddam Hussein. Saddam, in his latest incarnation as the saviour of the Muslim world, is a tyrant who may very well go down in history books as the one cause for the loss of most Muslim lives. Indeed to idealise Saddam as an Islamic icon is folly when his actions share more with Stalin than Saladin. Even the ideological roots of Saddam’s Ba’athist party is not Islamic, rather, it lies in a secular Arab nationalistic movement co-founded by a Syrian Christian, Michael Aflaq.
The Ba’ath party has no solidarity with Islamic nations rather it solely propounds the unity of the Arab World. This is evinced by the fact that not once has the Ba’athist party controlling Iraq voiced its support for Pakistan, even when one million soldiers flank our troubled eastern borders. Iraq has never supported Pakistan on any major global issue, indeed on all resolutions concerning Kashmir, it has sided with India. Have there even been demonstrations in Baghdad orchestrated to show solidarity with the Pakistani cause? There is no trait of reciprocity or acknowledgement on the Ba’athist side even when Pakistan virtually abstained from the Gulf War.
Pakistanis deserve that their overtures be met with equal gestures, not vain words! Saddam’s Islamic track record is nonexistent save when it comes to the decimation of Muslim populations. In Halabja, five thousand Sunni Kurds were gassed because of their irredentist tendencies, whilst in his Anfal campaign, 50,000 were estimated to have lost their lives. Saddam is wholly responsible for the bloody cleavage in the Islamic world, indeed his vicious attack on Iran polarized Islam into Shi’ism and Sunni’ism. In what way could the mass annihilation of the children of Ahvaz, where Saddam launched his Scud missiles, or the destruction of the Shiraz Hospital for Children with an estimated loss of life to over 600, advance Islam?
The disconcerting quietness of the Ummah when Muslim blood was spilled by this particular dictator is in stark contrast to the present, where the MMA has taken upon itself to advocate the cause of this “Muslim Saviour.” Ironically, Qazi Hussein Ahmad stated that he would rather resign from the National Assembly than sit in one where LFO (Legal Framework Order) is part of the constitution. Yet, paradoxically, he has no difficulty in accepting Saddam Hussein’s brutal suppression of the constitutional rights of the Iraqi people.
Pakistani Islamists shrilly condemned Musharraf for the recent referendum, where he received 75% of the vote, but how do they respond to their champion, Saddam Hussein, staging referendums where he was elected by a 100% margin? It is a curious yet quintessential Pakistani trait that our benevolent dictator is frowned upon but a bloody tyrant is hailed because of Pan-Islamism.
Muslims must now arise from their conspiracy-induced stupor and realize that the blood-soaked regime of Saddam is not the true champion of Islam. Megalomaniacal delusions of some of these demonstrators with their hot-wire urges for revenge against the US completely overlook the ground realities on which Pakistani economy and welfare of its 140 million is attached to the global systems. Pakistan’s inability to exist in isolation is completely beyond their grasp. Much as we Pakistani strive for a free democratic country that allows freedom to condemn our leadership, Iraqis deserve no less.
Even oil-rich Arab states know that any attempt to influence the United States using oil would strain their own economies to breaking point; the politics of oil as weapon has been discarded. They cannot fight militarily and in the absence of any realistic economic leverage, the best they can do is to reconcile their long-term interests with those of the United States. If oil-rich nations can overlook many injustices of the present system for the sake of their nations, why can’t Pakistan, for the sake of its own populace, play an innings for Pakistan only? |
