Author: Shahid Javed Burki
Publication: Publication: The Asian
Age
Date: October 6, 2001
Who says history does not repeat
itself? In 1979, both Pakistan and its leaders were treated with indifference
bordering on contempt by most of the civilised world. Pakistan's fault
was to have trespassed once again on what were now regarded as universally
accepted norms of behaviour. The men in uniform, who then ruled Pakistan,
had not only dismissed an elected government but also deposed a man who
had a good reputation outside the country.
The world looked at Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, the dismissed prime minister, as a modern - albeit, sometimes,
a misguided - man. When the military sent him to the gallows in April 1979,
the world was horrified. It was seen as an exceptionally barbaric act.
The military's claim that Bhutto
had been sentenced by a civilian court after a long and open trial did
not persuade the West that justice had been fully done. In the eyes of
most of the world, Pakistan was a pariah state, its leaders despised by
a majority of world leadership.
And then the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in the fall of 1979. The West - in particular, the United States
- panicked and offers of assistance began to arrive at the door of General
Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's military president, accused not too long ago for
murdering an elected prime minister. General Zia labelled the initial help
for assistance from the administration of President Jimmy Carter as "peanuts."
He held out for much more and was
granted that by President Ronald Reagan. Both Pakistan and the men who
ruled the country were back in favour. They were now part of a "crusade"
against international communism. Why did America change its stance towards
Pakistan in such a dramatic way?
Washington was concerned for two
reasons. It was fearful that Moscow seemed to be striking towards the warm
waters of the Indian Ocean. The only way to reach these waters was through
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many in the West believed Moscow would gain a
foothold in an area of great importance to the West. It will be within
easy striking distance of the oil-rich countries of West Asia. There was
a consensus that the Soviet advance had to be reversed.
The second concern was derived from
the United States' Vietnam experience. It did not have the stomach to get
engaged in another ground conflict with an enemy that it did not fully
understand. The people of Afghanistan had humbled invaders before and,
possibly, with some external assistance, they could do it once again.
While Washington was not prepared
to be directly involved, it was prepared to fight a proxy war. Pakistan
would be the main partner.
For some time - at least from the
perspective of Washington - Pakistan's effort in Afghanistan was a spectacular
success. The Soviets were not only forced to leave Afghanistan.
Their defeat contributed also to
the collapse of European communism, the break-up of the Soviet Union, and
the emergence of the US as the only superpower in the world. But historians
have begun to see that there was a cost associated with this success. This
price was paid by the United States on September 11.
While the United States waited for
twenty years before it paid the price for its earlier engagement in Afghanistan,
the cost to Pakistan became evident much earlier. When the troops from
the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, Pakistan had a great deal of negative
fallout in spite of the billions of dollars worth of assistance it had
received over a decade.
It is true that the economy expanded
at a respectable rate during this period, returning to the rate of growth
registered during the golden years of Pakistan's development - the early
Sixties.
But once the flow of foreign capital
ceased, it became apparent that the growth rate of the Eighties was not
sustainable. The access to billions of dollars of largely unaccountable
capital - since a good proportion of it came from intelligence agencies
- encouraged corruption on a vast scale. Great fortunes were made and some
of the families whose wealth is directly related to the war in Afghanistan
went on to corrupt Pakistani politics.
The other negative consequence,
of course, was the nurturing of Islamic fundamentalism in the country.
The war against the Soviets in Afghanistan introduced two words into the
political vocabulary of the West - Mujahideen and Taliban. Pakistan's partners
in the Afghan conflict had relied on the religious fervour of those who
were prepared to fight the forces of occupation.
These were the Mujahideen of the
war, prepared to battle against heavy odds and prepared to lay down their
lives. The sons of the Mujahideen produced the Taliban, students trained
in schools established all along Pakistan's 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan.
The Taliban were the orphans of the Afghan war. Hardened by the war and
toughened by exceptional religious zeal, they went on to conquer most of
Afghanistan.
Once the conflict with the Soviet
Union was over, the impressive fervour that won the Mujahideen the war
in Afghanistan was mobilised in an effort to turn Afghanistan and Pakistan
into fundamentalist states. The effort succeeded in Afghanistan largely
because of the collapse of the state and all the institutions of economic
and political governance in that country.
It made some advance in Pakistan
but did not succeed since the Pakistani state and the institutions of governance,
albeit steadily and greatly weakened, did not totally collapse.
Pakistan has now come full circle.
A military government shunned by the West for two years has gained entry
into the corridors of power in Washington. As an editorial in the Wall
Street Journal put it recently: "Pakistan is the pivotal regional player
in US plans to hunt down Osama bin Laden."
Pakistan's motive for jumping on
the bandwagon that began to roll soon after the terrorist attacks in New
York and Washington was prompted not only by its grim economic situation
and the need to break through the wall that had been built around it after
the military intervention of October 1999.
That Pakistan is now prepared to
fight the "global war against terrorism" is also the result of the lesson
many of its people have learnt from the 1979-1989 conflict in Afghanistan.
They understand that an unhappy populace becomes an easy target for the
recruitment of disgruntled people into all kinds of unsavoury causes.
The important question is whether
the West has also drawn these lessons. Will the war about to begin in and
around Afghanistan produce the same results for Pakistan and other Muslim
nations in its neighbourhood as did the war of the Eighties?
Will all this happen again? Will
this part of the history also repeat itself? Will the effort being currently
mounted under the leadership of the United States once again leave an institutional
graveyard in some of the countries that will be on the front line - in
particular Pakistan? Will some of the states that will get involved in
this struggle be so weakened that they will fall easily to the forces of
resistance this effort will inevitably produce?
By arrangement with Dawn
