Criterion

Criterion
July/September 2008
Volume 3, Number 3
Editorial
New Government, Old Problems
S. Iftikhar Murshed
Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs
The MQM and Identity Politic in Pakistan
24
Niloufer Siddiqui
41
Khaled Ahmed
62
Shahwar Junaid 107
Nation of Saints and Scholars:

a Portrait of Ireland
Essays
The Status of Women in Pakistan: A Ray of Hope
FATA at the Crossroads
7
A.G. Noorani
Transformation of Al Qaeda
Patterns of Regional Cooperation:
Options for Pakistan
Toheed Ahmad 130
Talat Farooq 155

Ayaz Wazir 166
Publisher
S. Iftikhar Murshed
Marketing Coordinator
Aman Abbasi
Editor-in-Chief
S. Mushfiq Murshed
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Navid Zafar (Research)
Iffat Rashed
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Ismet Murshed
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Editorial
IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT
The four-party ruling coalition announced on 7 August 2008 that

President Pervez Musharraf would be impeached and this would be
followed by the restoration of the pre-3 November 2007 judiciary. No
timeframe for the impeachment has been specified and neither is there
any indication whether the judges will be reinstated through a simple
executive order or through a constitutional amendment.
In an interview to a Singapore newspaper before the 18 February
elections, Musharraf said that he would step down if the new government
decided to impeach him and elaborated with his usual blustering selfconfidence: If that happens, let me assure you that Id be leaving
office before they would do anything. If they won and they formed a
government that had the intention of doing this, I wouldnt like to stick
around. However, the experience of this country is that its leaders, past
and present, seldom live up to their pledges.
After a near five-month slumber the coalition seems to have woken
up to the grave political and economic crises confronting the country.
The president is accused of various acts of commission and omission
such as striving to derail the transition to democracy, weakening the
federation and bringing the country to the verge of economic collapse.
The process could be protracted and will start with the adoption of
resolutions by the provincial assemblies seeking the impeachment of the
president. The federal parliament will then deliberate upon the charges
and initiate the proceedings.
Editorial
Under article 47 of the constitution the president can be removed

on grounds of mental or physical incapacity and impeached because of
violating the constitution or gross misconduct. Coalition leaders claim
that they have more than the required 295 votes i.e., the two-thirds
majority required from a joint Senate-National Assembly session.
The move to impeach the president is unprecedented in Pakistans
brief history. At issue here is much more than the mere impeachment of
an individual, albeit the president of the country, it is a question of the
precedent it will establish and whether or not such a precedent is based
on principles and conducive to the long-term stability of the country.
In an interview to the BBC on 16 November 2007 Musharraf
admitted that the imposition of the 3 November 2007 emergency and the
promulgation of the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) constituted
infringements of the constitution and were therefore illegal. Despite this,
his actions were validated by the Supreme Court whose judges had taken
oaths under the PCO as did the members of the coalition government.
The Supreme Court, in effect, validated the extra-constitutional
steps of the Proclamation of Emergency of the 3rd day of November
2007, the Provisional Constitution Order No. 1 of 2007, the Provisional
Constitutional (Amendment) Order, 2007, the Oath of Office (Judges)
Order 2007 and the Presidents Order No. 5 of 2007. The formulation,
extra-constitutional, thus enabled the Court to avoid describing the
measures as unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court Order was tempered with the requirement that
the validation was subject to the condition that the country shall be
governed, as nearly as may be, in accordance with the Constitution
and that the period of constitutional deviation should be brought to an
end at the earliest. The validation was not open ended and the Court
may, at any stage, re-examine the continuation of the Proclamation of
Emergency if the circumstances so warrant.
Perhaps the most controversial part of the validation was that in
accordance with the principle of salus populi lex or, let the welfare of the
4
CRITERION Volume 3 No.2
Editorial
people be the supreme law, Musharraf was empowered to perform, all

acts or legislative measures which are in accordance with, or could have
been made under the 1973 Constitution, including the power to amend
it. The amendments would be resorted to only if the Constitution fails
to provide a solution for the attainment of the declared objectives of the
Chief of Army Staff/President.
Thus of the seven constitutional amendments introduced by
Musharraf, the new article 270 AAA validated the Proclamation of
Emergency, promulgation of the Provisional Constitution Order and all
acts done by him on or after 3 November. He could therefore violate the
provisions of the constitution that disallows government officials from
contesting elections for two years after their retirement. The amendment
to article 270 (c) allowed the judges who had taken oath under the Oath
of Office (Judges) Order 2007 to be deemed to have been appointed
under the Constitution whereas those who had not taken the oath were
considered to have ceased to hold office as a judge.
Although Zia-ul-Haqs martial law had to be validated by the 8th
Amendment and Musharrafs 1999 coup by the 17th Amendment of the
Constitution, the Attorney General declared that the Proclamation of the
3 November 2007 emergency cannot be challenged in parliament.
Against this background it would have been politic to first restore
the pre-3 November judiciary in accordance with the Murree Declaration
of 9 March 2008 and the main plank of the PML (N)s election pledge
and then, if the need arose, to initiate proceedings for the presidents
impeachment. The Supreme Courts validation of the 3 November
emergency implies that there are no legal grounds for Musharrafs
impeachment as per the provisions of article 47 of the Constitution.
It is tragically ironical that the ruling coalition which wants to
impeach Musharraf for the economic and political plight of the country
is itself culpable of doing little to remedy these ills in the five months
that it has been in power. The economy is in shambles as is evident from
its rapidly decelerating growth, depleting foreign exchange reserves,
soaring inflation, falling exports, flight of capital, plunging exchange
CRITERION April/June 2008
Editorial
rates and burgeoning external and internal debt. The writ of the state is
being eroded in the face of recurring acts of terrorism and militancy.
The argument that these are problems inherited from the previous
dispensation is no longer convincing. One hopes that the impeachment
process whatever its outcome will be completed quickly. The summer
vacations in Dubai and London for the leadership of the coalition is over.
It is time for a hands on approach to deal with the serious challenges that
confront the country.
Interview
with
Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday
Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday gave a three-hour interview

to Criterion in Lahore on 19 July 2008 on the eve of the anniversary
marking the one year anniversary of the historical Supreme Court
judgment that reinstated Chief Justice IftikharMuhammad Chaudhry.
Justice Ramday who was the presiding judge of the Supreme Court
bench hearing the case, was subsequently removed from office, along
with the other judges who refused to take oath under the PCO on 3
November 2007. Justice Ramdays replies to some of the important
issues raised with him are given below almost verbatim from a recording
of the interview. The Criterion team consisted of Ms. Talat Farooq, Mr.
Navid Zafar and Mr. Mushfiq Murshed.
Q: Looking at the 61 years of legal history in Pakistan, what are your
views on the present day scenario? Do you think it was a natural
outcome or has something suddenly gone wrong?
A: The courts in any country reflect the aspirations, expectations or,
to be more precise, the conduct of the people themselves. The courts
of law are not equipped with tanks and guns and fighter planes. Their
strength lies in the people and the public. So its always the strength of
the public or the weakness of the public which determines the strength
or weakness of the judiciary in any country at any time. Ive always
said that the county judge who summoned President Nixon or the
county judge who summoned President Clinton was not made of steel.
He was also made of the same flesh and bones as I am. The difference,
however, was that that this petty county judge in Washington knew that
he was summoning the President of the United States of America , the
Interview
most powerful man on this planet, and he knew that he would come.
The reason was that they both knew that the people of the country
were standing behind that county judge and the President, despite all
the power and might he enjoyed, dare not disregard the summons from
the court. Do you see the difference? Unfortunately, the situation here
has been worsening day by day. There was a time when the judge of
the Lahore High Court summoned the Marshal Law Administrator, a
three star general, and that three star general came to the court. Weve
also seen times when two years back the court summoned a retired army
officer who was the secretary of a housing scheme and he refused to
come. So the judiciary is what the public and the people are because
their strength lies in the public. The difference is simple and apparent.
At the time the three star General was summoned, the man knew that
the public would not accept his defiance of the court summons. So the
effectiveness of the courts depends on how weak or strong public opinion
is. There have been, on occasions, individual judges who have showed
strength of character but then they just fizzled out. People forgot about
them. It was as if they never even existed or as if they had never done
anything commendable for the people, the nation or the constitution. So
unless there is awakening and awareness amongst the people that this
institution belongs to them and that they need this institution to protect
them from any aggression or any encroachments and unless the people
show their determination to stand behind the judiciary, the courts will
become ineffective.
Q: By peoples strength do you mean the laws of the parliament, the
peoples representatives or people in the street?
A: The public at large.
Q: How does the public at large support the law?
A: Like theyve done since the 9th of March. In 61 years this is the
first time that people have expressed their concern for the judiciary and
expressed and displayed their determination that they are behind the
judiciary and if anybody plays around with the judiciary they will not
accept it.
8
Q: The judges and the people have intermingled so much

A: They have not intermingled. Its not intermingling. Its not an
interaction between the judges and the people. There never has been
any interaction anywhere in the world. The institution of the judiciary
belongs to the people. And like any other institution its the people
who have to own that institution and declare and demonstrate the
determination that they are prepared to make any sacrifice and go to
any length to defend the judiciary and nobody dare touch it.
Q: This has happened for the last 18 months but do you think
A: These things dont only happen in Pakistan. They have been going
on all over the world. Ill tell you something very interesting. Now
UK, for instance, is known as the mother of liberties and all rights.
There the judges used to be appointed and removed at the whims of the
crown. Towards the end of the 17th century, the people put their foot
down. There was a famous Chief Justice Coke who was sought to be
removed. The people had had enough and opposed this. Eventually an
act of parliament, the Act of Settlement, was passed in the year 1700
where the crown felt compelled to ensure security of tenure, salaries and
wages, etc., for the judges. So people had to fight for this. Nobody gives
anybody anything on a platter. You have to fight for your rights.
In the US as well there was a tussle between the executive and the
judiciary after the constitution had been framed. Washington D.C. had
been built: Capital Hill had been built, the Whitehouse had been built,
the secretariat and other offices had been built. Everything had been
built except the Supreme Court building. A 40 ft by 50 ft room was
taken from the Congress and that is where the Supreme Court functioned
for all those years. So whatever is happening here is nothing unheard
of nor is it something which has never happened anywhere else in the
world before. Then there were other battles that followed such as those
of John Marshall and Chief Justice Ray. This is exactly what went on
in India as well. So, throughout history the judiciary has struggled all
over the world.
CRITERION July/September 2008
Interview
The judiciary has not been set up and the courts have not been
set up to pay for the bread and butter of the judges and lawyers. The
courts have been set up as one of three pillars of the state that secure
and guarantee the rights of the people. Its an institution owned by the
people. So the people have to decide finally that they will not let anyone
encroach their institution. No institution can function without public/
civil support, including the army. We had one of the best trained armies
of the world, yet they could not fight in East Pakistan even for a day.
This was not because there was anything wrong with our soldiers but
because the public support was not there for them. Its only when the
public decides to protect and defend their institutions that these kind of
encroachments, assaults, interventions and interferences cease to exist.
Q: In the present scenario does the PCO have to be ratified by the
assembly as it had been in 2000?
A: It has today become a political issue and as people think that I am
still a judge I would not like to express my opinion about this. What
I can safely tell you, however, is what happened in earlier situations.
The two earlier martial laws in 1977 and in 1999 were validated by
the Supreme Court. Despite this validation by the Supreme Court the
parliament ratified it through the 8th amendment in 1985 and through
the 17th amendment in 2002. Now you can ask that when the Supreme
Court had validated it then why was it felt necessary for the parliament
to ratify it? Or why did the ones imposing the martial law feel compelled
to secure an amendment of the constitution for it? The reason is that
on both these occasions when the Supreme Court granted validation the
constitution was not in force. The constitution was suspended. As a
student of law we know that howsoever independent and powerful the
Supreme Court may be, it cannot say anything that is in derogation of
the clear command of the constitution. The Supreme Court has no such
power. Now lets say that the constitution says that our president has to
be a Muslim who is at least 45 years of age, the Supreme Court cannot
pass a judgment stating that a Hindu wants to be or a Christian wants to
be the President so let him be one. Now at that time - when the martial
law was validated - the validation stemmed out of something absolutely
contradictory to what the constitution had said. The constitution does
10
not permit an army chief to start ruling the country or suspend the
constitution. However, at the time of the validation, the constitution was
suspended. The day the constitution gets revived then everything which
is repugnant or offensive to the commands of the constitution disappears
automatically. Like darkness disappears from the emergence of the sun.
So that Supreme Court validation was given when the constitution was
not in force and since the validation was contradictory to the commands
of the constitution, when the constitution re-emerges and re-surfaces
the validation by the Supreme Court disappears because whatever the
Supreme Court had done was absolutely offensive to the constitution.
Therefore, the constitution needs to validate that act.
Q: Historically speaking judges have been taking oath under the PCO.
What is so different about this one?
A: As I look at it, I have no reluctance and hesitation in saying that I also
took an oath under the PCO in the year 2000. The reason is that certain
things at certain stages in ones individual or national life are condonable
or acceptable but the same things in another situation become absolutely
repulsive and unacceptable. And these situations do change with time.
We know that there was a time when the Quaid-e-Azam was a member
of the Congress party and it was after quite a while that he switched
from his stance of Hindu-Muslim unity. Nobody accused the Quaide-Azam that before you were a member of the Indian Congress and
you were talking of Hindu-Muslim unity and today youve joined the
Muslim League and youve started talking about two separate states and
the two nation theory. The reason is that the situation at times demands
a change. So what was okay or acceptable or condonable 30, 20 or 10
years back may not be acceptable in todays set up.
There are two obvious reasons that I understand behind what you
asked me. In 1999, 1977 and in 1958 the imposition or coup was for
political reasons and not with the object or purpose of crushing the
judges who were about to deliver a judgment in a matter in which the
one imposing the martial law was himself a party. And on all those three
previous occasions which I witnessed, even the 58 martial law, I was
then 12 or 13 yrs old, rightly or wrongly, fortunately or unfortunately,
11
Interview
the steps taken by the army chiefs were generally welcomed, not just
accepted but generally welcomed by the public at large. Of course some
of the judges, as I mentioned earlier, showed their character and refused to
take oath under the PCO. But generally, since everybody seemed to have
accepted it - the whole nation seemed to have accepted the imposition of
those martial laws - the judges also went along. Technically of course
there was reason for not doing it but generally, politically and according
to the atmosphere the taking oath of the judges was never really ever an
issue.
Q: So the Doctrine of Necessity made sense then?
A: Call it Doctrine of Necessity, but generally taking of oath by the
judges was never an issue. And people never looked down upon or
said anything to the judges who took oath. The public, the political
leaders and everybody accepted it and it was never an issue. This time,
for the first time in the history of Pakistan, this had become an issue and
this was in fact the only issue because the public, including the judges
themselves, thought that this was not a political act but an assault to
destroy the institution of the judiciary.
People are also attempting to confuse the issue. Now some leader
says that Ramday also took an oath. The issue is not my oath. The issue
is an act of somebody else which he took on the 3rd of November. That
is the issue. I have not been thrown out of service or office because
Ive taken an oath in 2002 or 2000. This is not the issue. The issue is
whether what was done to me on the 3rd of November valid? Was it
valid morally, ethically, legally, constitutionally or by any standard?
Was it a valid act? That is the issue. If the nation or someone thinks
that I should not have taken oath in 2000, alright prosecute me for it or
hang me for it. But first decide whether my removal from office on 3
November was a valid step. Could it be justified by any constitutional,
moral, legal, ethical norms? Let the people decide on this and if they
say that this act was unconstitutional then undo whatever has been done.
And then if somebody thinks that I had committed a misconduct or I had
done something wrong in the year 2000 for taking oath under the PCO,
alright hang me for it. I dont mind. Why is the fact that I also took
12
an oath an issue right now? Right now the issue is the action taken by
somebody on the 3rd of November. What is the validity of that action?
Q: So what you are saying is that the main difference between the
previous PCOs and this one is public support and right now the support
is not there.
A: Yes. That is number one. And secondly, and more importantly, this
was an assault on the judiciary. Those martial laws were not an assault
on the judiciary. And people have reacted. I was locked up. I did not take
out any procession. The ones agitating are not the judges. I have not
agitated or even addressed any bar of the law courts despite invitations.
I am not agitating. The people are agitating against what was done on
the 3rd of November. How could you remove all these judges from
their offices, especially the judges who were about to deliver or take a
decision in a matter in which you were involved? How can you do it?
If I had taken a wrong oath then I should have been removed ten years
ago. They should have taken me out when Musharraf came into power
in 1999. Or remove me now for it. If that was a misconduct, I am ready
to face those charges. But that is not the issue. Some people are trying
to confuse the issue. They want to dilute this issue.
Q: Has the judiciary played a part in the perpetuation of military
intervention? If we look at the doctrine of necessity (Justice Munir),
do you think in some level we can hold the judiciary responsible?
A: Yes you could. I will not deny it. But one may have a difference of
opinion on the reasons which led to that action. Its a debatable issue.
Some say that it was absolutely foolish on the part of the judiciary to
validate martial law each time. There are others who justify it. But the
fact is that the judiciary did say that we validate this and we were a party
to the imposition of Martial law. So I cant deny it.
The thrust in each of those judgments was that the whole nation had
accepted it, so much so that the leaders had not even raised a petition. I
remember in 77 the whole nation was on the streets and clamoring that
a martial law should be imposed. Your political leaders wrote letters
13
Interview
to the army chief. The people of the nation had taken out rallies and
processions asking the army to come in. The people had accepted it.
Technically, in an absolute puritan theory, one may not agree with it.
Q: This is the second time that the judiciary and the executive have
been at logger heads with each other: first Nawaz and then Musharraf.
Where does this problem stem from? Are the roles not clearly defined
in the constitution? Is it the individuals involved? Is it something
else?
A: The existing case, first the chief justice one and then the other one,
has nothing to do with the executive or any other institution. This is the
act of one individual. A President filed a reference. The question was
whether it was validly made. And the question also was in the manner
in which the reference should have been made. Is this the manner
permitted by the constitution to remove a judge or a chief Justice? That
you put him behind bars and you lock up his entire family. So I dont
understand where this clash between the judiciary and the executive
come in? It was an act of one individual which came up to the court
for a decision and the court decided. So where is the clash? I said this
in court also on the 20th of July last year. There was a statement made
by Chaudhry Shujaat after the 9th of March (2007) saying that this is
between the judiciary and the army. I said what a silly thing to say. You
are putting two institutions very important and impressive institutions
of the country- on a war path. How was it a clash between the army and
the judiciary? This was a reference sent by the president of the country.
The one against whom the reference was sent, he questioned it. The
court gave a decision. So where is the clash between the army and the
judiciary or between the executive and the judiciary?
Q: So you dont think that it is necessary to add any special provisions
in the Constitution.
A: What is the need for it? These two cases were just ordinary cases
involving an individual or an act of the President or the eligibility of a
certain individual to contest for a certain office. That is the end of the
matter. I dont look at it as being anything else beyond that. Now if
14
some individual wants to make it a clash then it is his choice.

Q: One objection is that the lawyers movement has been politicized by
various political parties. What is your view regarding this?
A: Is the issue of the judiciary and the constitution an issue of just the
lawyers? It is an issue which involves the public. Yes the lawyers gave
a lead. But then what is politics? Politics is the public. Why should the
public not come in? Why should they have stayed back? If it was an
issue just pertaining to Khalil Ramday or Latif Khosa or some other
lawyer then it is fine. Then why would Nawaz Sharif or Asfandyar Wali
or Qazi Hussain get involved? It would be our personal issue. But this
is an issue pertaining to one of the pillars of your state. Do you want
this pillar of the state to exist or do you want it demolished? That is the
issue. Now if that is the issue then why shouldnt the public be involved.
If the public wasnt involved then I wouldnt consider this an issue.
And if the public is going to get involved then the political parties who
are the representatives or agents of the public will of course also have to
come in on one side or the other. Whichever side they want to take, they
should come in. If I was in the Bar I would not be embarrassed if the
public came in. This not an issue just pertaining to the judges and the
lawyers, it is an issue of the public. Tomorrow if, God forbid, somebody
assaults the army then why shouldnt the public rise. The people of
Pakistan who made the constitution have said in it that we want a certain
type of judiciary. In my judgment that is not being delivered. An issue
raised in my draft is wheter access to justice a fundamental right of the
people or are the courts and judiciary just something that involve and
interest the judges and the lawyers? The impression that the courts are
established by the nation, the state and the people to only please the
judges and the lawyers should not be there. This is not the reason why
courts were set up; so that Khalil Ramday would get a salary. These
courts are made for the people. You will find judgments before that of
20 July (2007) where it is stated that access to justice and to have justice
delivered and administered is the fundamental right of the people. So
if you interfere with the judiciary or if it is assaulted this is in fact then
an encroachment on the fundamental rights of the people and its for the
people to agitate. Why should I be embarrassed if, lets say, the PPP
15
Interview
went to a certain procession or rally or why did the Maulvi participate

or why did Nawaz Sharrif participate? The issue is actually theirs. The
lawyers as a Bar have nothing to do with the issue except as individuals
and citizens of this country. This issue is the publics. It is a matter of
the public and its for the public to decide.
Q: When the Supreme Court becomes a victim then who do they turn
to?
A: The answer is, to the people.
Q: Is the check of the Supreme Court also the people?
A: That is what I told you earlier. It is only the people that can defend
these institutions, protect these institutions and claim supremacy and
sovereignty of these institutions. Otherwise who am I? The reason
that I am in this house is the people. Whenever they tell me to leave a
procession comes and stops the eviction. They were about to throw my
belongings out from my Islamabad residence. Everyone turned up there.
I was here (in Lahore) watching the proceedings on TV and wondering
what was going on. Now if you start pulling the hair of the chief justice
and a soldier slaps him then the chief justice will accept the slap. He
cant take on the soldier. Or if I, being 60 or 61 years old, am attacked
by a soldier then I would not be able to fight back. Its for the people to
defend me if they want to defend me. This is a test of the people.
Q: You delivered a historic judgment on July 20th 2007. What
influenced your decision?
A: Actually I received undue credit only because of I was the captain.
But the match is never won by the captain alone. Some other player
makes the century and some other player, Wasim Akram, takes the
wickets. Some names of players are not even remembered but the fame
goes to Imran Khan because in the end he is holding the cup. He is the
captain. The real credit actually and honestly goes to the 10 judges who
withstood pressure and stress yet they stood by what was right. It was
just a coincidence that I happened to be a senior amongst those judges.
16
The hearing started on the 15th of May (2007) and the judgment
was delivered on the 20th of July (2007). I can only give you my
perspective and not of the other judges. My opinion was that the manner
of seeking the removal of the chief justice was not the one which was
envisaged by the constitution. You are sitting in the army house. It was
very forcefully and rightly argued that if the issue was regarding the
reference of the chief justice then the law minister, attorney general, law
secretary should have been present there. Those are the relevant people
and not the heads of the intelligence agencies. So what had remained
with me was that it appeared that the purpose of this exercise was not the
purpose envisaged or admitted by the constitution. The purpose was not
as was indicated from whatever transpired on the 9th and thereafter that
theres a judge who should be removed due to misconduct. If this was
the purpose then the reference should have come in routine. It should
have come to the Supreme Judicial Council and the Supreme Judicial
Council should have taken a decision on this. The whole exercise
appeared to have been done not for the purposes permitted by law but
for the purposes extraneous to the constitution. It appeared that you just
wanted to get rid of somebody for whatever reason but the purpose was
not of getting rid of a misconducting judge.
Q: When a government changes the attorney general also resigns.
This is the first time that the AG continued in the office. What are
your views on that?
A: I dont think that I will comment on this. This is for the people to
decide for themselves. Usually the first day a new government takes
over the attorney general is changed because attorney general is not
a beaurocrat. He is the lawyer of the executive. Usually, one would
presume that you keep a lawyer that is in your confidence.
Q: Regarding the present situation, under what law can a single
individual make the decision and how can you undo that?
A: I dont want to comment on this because I may have a biased opinion
as I am one of the victims or sufferers of that scenario. I would not be
the proper person to answer that.
17
Interview
Q: Do you think the 1973 constitution answers the situation that we

are in?
A: Absolutely. And let me also tell you one basic fact that you must
remember. It used to be one of the topics of debate in college and it is
that there is no system which is good or bad. Now we have nations
before us who have no written constitution and they are surviving and not
just surviving but thriving. And the most powerful of nation today has
the briefest of constitutions. The American constitution is the shortest
and most brief constitution that you could ever come across and it is
working. So for the constitution to work you need a political will to run
that system on those lines which are the basic fundamental principles.
You must have heard of constitutional conventions. No matter how
detailed you write the constitution or how much you explain it, the fact
remains that its a human effort. It can never be all pervasive. There are
always things lacking or things deficient but with consensus, conventions
and true political will it can work. Let me give you an example. There
were no fundamental rights in the American constitution. They were
subsequently added. And when they were added they were without any
rider. These fundamental rights, basic rights guaranteed in the American
constitution even today, are unrestricted. It is written in it, for example,
that the people will have the right of association. There is no limitation
on it. Now how will the country run if there is no limitation on it? If
the constitution has said that this is the absolute right and there can be
no limitation or restriction on it then how will the country run? The
Supreme Court, therefore, recognized the police powers of the state and
supplied whatever was deficient. They said that even though there was
no mention of limitations in the constitution this didnt mean that these
rights were absolute and could not be limited or restricted. The state can
always put reasonable restriction on these. This they called the police
powers of the state. So if there is a will to work things out then issues
are gradually settled.
Q: How do you see the future of the judiciary in Pakistan?
A: There are lots of forces working on either side. This is the defining
18
moment. Out of this melting pot you will either get a judiciary which
will be the pride of the people or you will get a judiciary only in name.
When I was studying in Gordon College we used to go to Zumzum
caf to drink tea. The unique thing of that caf was that the owner
had an amazing collection of Urdu, Punjabi and Indian records. Some
people who frequented the caf regularly were given the privilege of
requesting songs that that the owner would then play. Correlating that
to the present scenario, let us see what we get. Will we get courts or a
Zumzum cafe where only some privileged peoples requests are catered
to?
People have been clamoring for courts for the past one year. This is
the first time in 61 years that the people have identified their rights and
they have raised their voices for it.
Q: What is the solution, in your opinion, to the present judicial
crisis?
A: One should go with whatever the people or nation think is the right
path. Governance is never through cleverness. Governance is always
through wisdom and wisdom always lies in following the right path. It
is just a question of putting two and two together. What is the cause?
What is the irritant? The cause of this entire crisis is the action taken on
the 3rd of November. Give a decision on whether this decision was right
or wrong and implement it. Thats it. When one starts getting clever
and wants to please everyone, be it Musharraf or Khalil Ramday, etc.,
there can be no solution. The intensity of this movement may decrease
but it will never die out. It will come back one day or the other and
when it comes back it may be with very disastrous consequences. One
should not let that stage be reached.
Q: Certain organization and people are demanding Shariah. What
are your views on that?
A: I am glad that youve asked me that. We have unfortunately coined
a very simple equation which is that since these laws were made by the
19
Interview
British and since the British were kafirs and not Muslims, therefore, all
these laws must be non-Muslim and un-Islamic. This equation and the
formula or the presumptions on which this situation was founded were
based on absolute ignorance. The result was that ever since 1947 or ever
since I can remember one has heard in every sermon and in every dua
(prayer) the desire to bring the Islamic system and law. Influenced by
this, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq created the Federal Shariat Court in 1981. One of
the tasks assigned by the constitution to this Federal Shariat Court which
was to examine all laws, federal, provincial and local, which were in
force in the country and to determine whether any of those laws or any
provision in those laws were against the injunctions of Islam. If it was
found that there was any provision or any law that was offensive to the
injunctions of Islam then that law was to be struck down. Fortunately
or unfortunately, I was then assistant advocate aeneral, Punjab. I was
deputed by the Punjab government to appear in the Federal Shariat
Court during this exercise. This Court took up laws starting with 1841
down to 1983 or 84. We went through each and every law and each and
every provision. Let me tell you, the court could find hardly anything
offensive to the Islamic injunctions in all the laws. And whatever little
un-Islamic provisions were found, unfortunately were the ones enacted
after 1947 and not by the British.
In the Quran, if one has read it, there is no civil procedure code,
no criminal procedure code, no Pakistan penal code, no rent laws, etc.
There are very few dos and donts which are culpable, very few. The
rest the Quran and Allah only say, go and do justice. Allah with His
infinite wisdom knew that these demands or dictates of justice and the
justice perspective would change from time to time, society to society
and people to people so Allah couldnt have given a hard and fast law
saying that this is it. Allah only says go and do justice. All these AngloSaxson laws advance the cause of justice and there is hardly anything
un-Islamic about that.
Let me tell an interesting incident. It was the year 1983 or 1984. At
around 9 or 10 at night I receive a packet through special dispatchers.
What I received in that bundle was a draft law. It was a draft of the Law
of Evidence which was proposed to be promulgated by the federation.
20
The federal government had sent the draft to the Punjab government,
along with the other provincial governments, to get their views on it.
A note in the package said that there would be a meeting with the chief
secretary the next morning at 10 to discuss the same. I panicked as I
knew that I could not go over the whole draft in one night. However,
as I started reading the draft at night I was relieved. I went through
the draft and the next morning I went to the meeting. Everyone was
asked their opinion and when my turn came I said, Sir if you ask me
you should write a very short and simple note and send it to the federal
government saying that the government of Punjab has no objection to the
renumbering of the provisions of the old Evidence Act. I brought the
old Act and the new draft to the meeting. The old was promulgated by
the British in 1872 by the Kafir, by the non-Muslim. This was the height
of intellectual dishonesty. Some people had convinced the president
that the law was un-Islamic, so they made it Islamic by a verbatim
reproduction of the provisions of the Evidence Act of 1872 which was
said to be a non-Muslim Act. They only rearranged the provisions.
They have promulgated that law now. They have changed the name to
a Muslim name. Instead of Evidence Act it has been named Qanoon-eshahadat Ordinance. Get hold of the old Evidence Act of 1872 and pick
up this new Qanoon-e-shahadat of 1984. Its a verbatim reproduction.
They got away with it. This is a trait slogan of our religious leadership
and there is nothing to it really.
Now they are saying that we want Islamic law in Swat/Dir; or the
other place, Malakand. What sort Shariah has been imposed there?
What have they changed? For instance, the additional sessions judge is
called additional zillah qazi and the civil judge has been renamed illaqa
qazi and the sessions judge has been renamed zillah qazi. Thats all.
And the maulvis are happy thinking that all has been Islamized and so
are the others.
Whatever system that is in force in this country or has been in
force in this country ever since the British rule, is not any offensive or
contradictory or even a deviation from any Islamic injunction. Id like to
see one provision in any law which somebody could show me as being
repugnant to Islamic injunctions. This is a challenge coming from a
person who has been a student of law for the last 40 yrs. However, no
21
Interview
one questions this. Out of fear or ignorance nobody actually asks what
is un-Islamic in these laws.
Q: They ask why dont you cut hands and stone people?
A: The provision is there. It is there in the law. Right or wrong it
is there. But the thing is that even if you look at that. I am sure you
know that Hazrat Umar, there was no one as severe as him, in his time
abolished the punishment of amputating hands for theft. Now this is
a fact acknowledged by the maulvis, known to maulvis. This is not
something which is unknown to people. You see the thing is that you
should see the spirit of Islam.
Q:What is your opinion on Blasphemy law?
A: There is logical reason behind the blasphemy law and not a religious
one. The reason is that every society has basic norms. In pre 91 or
92 communist Russia, for instance, could anybody be permitted to
abuse Stalin or Lenin? Would any of their laws permit this? Before the
Cultural Revolution in China would any law permit criticism or abuse
of Mao? Does any country allow you to talk against its constitution? So
irrespective of whether a country is in the West or the East or whether a
country is Islamic or otherwise, there are always certain basic foundations
of a society or state that are sacrosanct. This is a basic norm universally
acknowledged and practiced.
So what is my religion? My religion, faith and belief stems from the
Quran. My Islam is what the Quran tells me. Now I did not receive the
Quran directly from Allah through TCS. Neither is there any certification
from Allah or a seal saying that this message is from Allah. Then why
do I believe the Quran as being the Quran? Only because there was a
person in Arabia who said that this is a book or message from Allah.
I believe that the Quran is genuine because Muhammad told me that
this is Allahs book. So my entire Islam depends on Muhammad. If
Muhammads zat (person) is doubtful then my Quran will be doubtful.
I believe in the Quran and believe that it is the book of Allah because
Muhammad has told me so. So if Muhammads zat (person) becomes
controversial or his integrity or his character becomes controversial then
22
the Quran will also become doubtful. Therefore, for my faith or my

belief it is the person of Muhammad which is pivotal. I dont know
Allah. Why do I accept Allah as Allah? Because Muhammad has told
me so. I have never seen Allah and neither has Allah ever spoken to
me. So, therefore, before Muhammad became a prophet, Allah had the
entire society within which he lived admit that the prophet was Sadiq
and Ameen (honest and trustworthy). This was acknowledged before
he was appointed a prophet and before the revelations commenced. He
was accepted by the entire Meccan society as Sadiq and Ameen. Hence
the indispensable reason to protect the person of Muhammad. Otherwise
Islam would finish.
I, not as a maulvi or fundo, but as a man who looks at it through
reason would say that if any community, society or state takes any steps
to protect its foundation then Ill have no objection to it.
The educated person has to explain this. The maulvi can never do
it. One has to explain it through reason and logic. Other countries also
protect their foundations and defend them. And Islams pivot is this.
Minus the Prophets person therell be no Islam. And I think logically
this point should be understood.
Now, regarding its implementation and enforcement. Look there is
no law in the world that cannot be abused. What do you think of all the
cases of murder cases against people? Do you think they are all true and
there is no abuse? I dont have statistics but Im telling you of what Ive
seen in the last 20 years as a judge. One person has died and one bullet
has been used and 15 or 20 people have been accused of the crime. This
is one of the widely abused provisions. Just because of this should we
just do away with murder as an offence? If a provision is being abused
the cure is not to do away with the provision but to check the abuse.
And I agree with you that the Blasphemy Law has been mostly used for
being abused. This is true. I have seen such cases. However, the cure
is not in its removal but in checking the abuses.
23
JINNAHS WORLD VIEW/OUTLOOK

ON WORLD AFFAIRS
A.G. Noorani*
Abstract
(Jinnahs vision of Pakistans foreign policy had elements of both
idealism (joint defence with India) and realism (the need for alliances).
The policies Nehru and he pursued rendered the ideal irrelevant. Both
countries turned to realpolitik in pursuit of their respective national
interests. Author).
The worst kind of diplomatists are missionaries, fanatics and
lawyers; the best kind are the reasonable and humane sceptics.1
For four good reasons, a study of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali
Jinnahs outlook on world affairs is relevant and necessary. First, for its
sheer intrinsic interest; the fascinating evolution of the world view of
a brilliant lawyer-politician who did not claim deep interest, let alone
expertise, in the subject. He missed no opportunity to ridicule Jawaharlal
Nehru for his obsession with it. You very honestly say that your
mind is obsessed with the international situation and the terrible sense
of impending catastrophe that hangs over the world so you are thinking
in terms entirely diverse from realities which face us in India Jinnah
wrote to Nehru on 12 April 1938.2
Nehru did not conceal his disdain for Jinnahs limitations in his
Autobiography and his book Democracy of India. Immediately before
and after independence the clash between the two gifted narcissists
shaped the relations between their two countries with consequences that
blight them still. Volumes have been written on Nehru. Jinnah remains
*
A.G. Noorani is an eminent Indian scholar, legal expert and a noted columnist.
neglected.
The second reason is that Jinnahs world view shaped his vision
of Indo-Pak relations. Thirdly, it is necessary to ask how far it affected
Pakistans foreign policy. In India, a bunch of self-proclaimed realists
joined hands with the Hindu-revivalist BJP to demolish Nehrus
legacy in foreign affairs. Lastly, the flaws in the notions entertained
by the leaders of yore in this realm must be acknowledged to appreciate
why they acted as they did.
Jinnahs outlook cannot be discussed in isolation from the conditions
of his times, especially the outlook of his contemporaries. In South Asia,
the study of world affairs is affected by chauvinism and blighted by state
patronage. The region has produced world class historians, economists,
scientists and writers. Significantly, it has not produced to this day a
single scholar of world class in international relations. Global affairs,
the origin and course of the Cold War remain neglected by academics
who produce works like court historians, or in sheer self-absorption, to
support the nations case.
Jinnah was but a product of his times. The Indian National Congress
of which he was a member till 1920 passed resolutions on foreign affairs
since 1885, condemning British expansionism in the region. The All
India Muslim League, which he joined in 1913 became engrossed in
the travails of the Ottoman Empire. In later years Nehru emerged as the
foremost expert and drafted resolutions galore on foreign affairs. In a
devastating critique justly titled They were ignorant of international
politics, Nirad C. Chaudhuri wrote The most unexpected aspect of
the ignorance was its extent in the two Cambridge men in the Indian
nationalist movement, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose, who were
always talking about the international situation. They were also regarded
by their political colleagues as expert authorities on international politics.
In spite of all that, not only their knowledge but also their approach
were wholly unreal. Both of them saw it in the light of their personal
predilections which were shaped by their temperaments and feelings.
And their predominant feeling was hatred of British rule in India. In
short, their ideas on international politics were only a projection of their
25
A.G. Noorani
nationalism, which prevented their seeing any international situation for

what it was.3
To think these men gave a call for Quit India in August 1942 after
the US and the Soviet Union had joined the war against Hitler. Nehru
told the Congress Working Committee at Allahabad (27 April 1 May
1942) that it is Gandhijis feeling that Japan and Germany will win.
This feeling unconsciously governs his decision.4
Gandhi did not expect to be arrested after the Quit India resolution
was passed by the AICC on 8 August 1942. He told his secretary,
Mahadev Desai, After my last nights speech, they will never arrest
me.5 After the boundary dispute with China erupted in 1959 Nehru
repeatedly said that any war between the two countries would mean a
world war.6
Evidently the literature on limited war had escaped his notice. Denis
Healeys seminal article, The Bomb that Didnt Go Off, had appeared
in Encounter in July 1955. Henry A. Kissingers book, Nuclear Weapons
and Foreign Policy, published in 1957, aroused interest for its exposition
of the concept of limited war the war of 1962 was just that.
Jinnahs limited intellectual equipment on foreign affairs and neglect
of the military aspect proved as fateful. He received his first shock
upon discovering that Pakistan was militarily incapable of securing the
accession of Junagadh.7 This is astonishing in a man who always took
a keen interest in defence. As far back as on 18 March 1918 he said
in the Imperial Legislative Council it is absolutely essential that the
Government and the military authorities should recognize that we should
have a citizen army as soon as possible, because India must recognize
that there are possibilities of external as well as internal danger.8
The Sapru Report acknowledged Jinnahs consistent advocacy of
Indianisation of the army and admiringly quoted his speech at the Round
Table Conference in London in 1930. Britain was expected to hand
over the defence of India as soon as possible to India.9 He evidently did
not anticipate that India would send its army to Junagadh or to Jammu
26
& Kashmir, after the tribal raid from Pakistan; or to Hyderabad to foil
its plans for independence.
This was particularly strange in a lawyer who, unlike most of the
tribe, was alive to the play of power. In his presidential address at the
Lucknow Session of the Muslim League in October 1937, Jinnah noted
with the stark realism for which he was famous, that all safeguards and
settlements would be a scrap of paper unless they are backed by power.
Politics means power.10
This realism about power deserted him when he dealt with foreign
affairs. By then he had become the advocate par excellence. Reckless
assertions, false analogies and far-fetched precedents came handy to
prove a point. Jinnah supported the Sudeten Germans of Czechoslovakia
in 1938, comparing them to Muslims of India, at a session of the Sindh
Muslim League on 8 October 1938. The notorious Munich Pact was
signed on 30 September 1938. This is how he explained the upheaval.
It was because the Sudeten Germans were forced under the heels of
the majority of Czechoslovakia, who oppressed them, suppressed them,
maltreated them and showed a brutal and callous disregard for their
rights and interests for two decades hence the inevitable result that
the Republic of Czechoslovakia is now broken up and a new map will
have to be drawn. Just as the Sudeten Germans were not defenceless,
and survived the oppression and persecution for two decades, so also the
Mussalmans are not defenceless, and cannot give up their national entity
and aspirations in this great continent.11 Khaled Ahmed recalled in The
Friday Times of 1 November 2003 that Czechoslovakia abstained from
voting in the General Assembly on Pakistans admission to the United
Nations and in 1976 its President Gustav Husak refused to accept a
commemorative medal issued by Pakistan on the centenary of Jinnahs
birth. As everyone knew, the Sudeten Germans campaign was fomented
by Hitler. He marched into Prague on 15 March 1939.
Jinnah told Beverly Nichols on 18 December 1943 when Ireland
was separated from Britain, the document embodying the terms of
separation was approximately ten lines all the details were left to the
future.12 That document, Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between
27
A.G. Noorani
Great Britain and Ireland, signed on 6 December 1921 far exceeded

approximately ten lines. It ran into 18 articles over 5 pages.13
During their talks in Bombay, Jinnah wrote to Gandhi on 17
September 1944 by all canons of International Law we are a nation. That
is a misnomer. International law covers inter-State relations. It defines
states, not nations. The concept of nation belongs to the discipline of
political science. No lawyer familiar with this highly specialized branch
of the law will speak of its canons; only of its rules or principles.14
Whatever led men of stature like Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru to blind
themselves to the realities? What is it that drove a person of sterling
integrity and high sense of responsibility like Jinnah to become so
reckless in his advocacy of the cause of Pakistan? We must answer
these questions but we do not. South Asians like to see such men either
as saints or demons; not humans of great qualities and grave failings.
Britains debt to Winston Churchill did not prevent Geoffrey Wheatcroft
from tearing him apart, not least for his proneness to lying.15
As on domestic affairs, Jinnahs rich, myth-studded record must
be studied as a whole. Contrary to myth he was an ardent supporter
of the Khilafat cause from the very outset. He parted company once
Mustafa Kamal abolished the Caliphate and Gandhi and the Ali Brothers
meshed the movement with Gandhis non-cooperation movement. Prof.
Naeem Qureshi characterizes him as a sincere Pan-Islamist.16 On 14
November 1946 Jinnah dismissed Pan-Islam as an exploded bogey.
On 21 May 1947 he repeated the theory of Pan-Islamism has long ago
exploded.17
Of a piece with his stand on Khilafat was his equally ardent
espousal of the cause of Indians abroad from the outset of his political
career till the partition and beyond; regardless of the religious divide.
Palestine fitted in this scheme of things. The ardour on the Khilafat was
manifest even in the days when he was an Indian nationalist of the front
rank. Jinnah spoke at the Lucknow session of the League in 1916 with
circumspection. His constituency was Muslim. He shared its sentiments
but was careful not to stir up emotions. May I, therefore, urge that
28
the Government should have regard for their dearest and most sacred
religious feelings and under no circumstances interfere with the question
of the future of the Caliphate. It should be left entirely to the Mussalmans
to acknowledge and accept their own Caliph. I do not desire to dilate on
this grave and delicate subject, but much deeper currents underlie this
exceptional exhortation of mine, which I have ventured to make both in
the interests of the Mussalmans and the Government of Great Britain,
than it would be expedient at present to discuss on a public platform.18
This is where admirers and detractors alike went hopelessly
wrong. Jinnah did not stride from Indian nationalism into Muslim
communalism. He was a fervent Indian nationalist who espoused the
Muslims genuine claims and sought Hindu-Muslim unity on this basis.
He was not an Uncle Tom. Nor was he sectarian. Those who drove him
to extremes in 1939 and who wrecked accord with him on a united India
in 1946 bear a heavy responsibility. It is in this context that his vision of
world affairs before and after 1940 must be judged.
Jinnah led the Leagues delegation to present a Memorandum to
Prime Minister Lloyd George on 17 August 1919. For generations
past the Muslims of India generally have recognized the Khilafat of the
House of Osman and Constantinople as Darul-Islam and Khilafat (the
seat of Islam and the Khalifa). For many centuries the Sultan of Turkey
has been recognized as the Servant of the Holy Places of Islam and
their custodian by all the Muslims of the world, including the Shareef of
Mecca. Whenever Turkey has been in trouble a reaction of it has been
felt in India, and the Muslims have done all to help the Sultan of Turkey
as the head of Islam to maintain his spiritual and temporal honour and
position. More than once the Government of India itself encouraged the
Muslims in that sympathy. The greater the danger for Turkey the more
concerned Muslims have felt. So much so that in modern times during
the Balkan Wars, the Muslims of India organized a Red Crescent fund
for Turkey at a very great cost.
The relations between the Muslims of India and the Sultan of
Turkey have always been a recognized and established fact. As late as
27th January 1909 when a deputation of the London Muslim League
29
A.G. Noorani
waited upon Lord Morely, the then Secretary of State for India, his
reply contained these words: I know very well that any injustice any
suspicion that we were capable of being unjust to Mohammadans in
India would certainly have a very severe and injurious reaction in
Constantinople.19 He was a signatory to the address presented to the
Viceroy on 19 January 1920.
In his presidential address to the Leagues special session at Calcutta
on 7 September 1920 he said first came the Rowlatt Act accompanied
by the Punjab atrocities and then came the spoliation of the Ottoman
Empire and the Khilafat. The one attacks our liberty, the other our faith
notwithstanding the unanimous opinion of the Musalmans, and in breach
of the Prime Ministers solemn pledges, un-chivalrous and outrageous
terms have been imposed upon Turkey and the Ottoman Empire has
served for plunder and been broken up by the Allies under the guise of
Mandates. This, thank God, has at last convinced us, one and all, that
we can no longer abide our trust either in the Government of India or in
the Government of His Majesty the King of England to represent India
in matters international.
The Indian press is flooded by accounts of occurrences in the
colonies which show but too well how India is sacrificed to the individual
interests of these Englishmen who have settled in these colonies which
Indias manpower and Indias work power have built.
In one of the most important speeches Jinnah delivered, he said One
degrading measure upon another, disappointment upon disappointment,
and injury upon injury, can lead a people to only one end. It led Russia
to Bolshevism. It has led Ireland to Sinn Feinism. May it lead India to
freedom And what of the sacred land of the Crescent and Star and the
blue and golden Bosphorus its capital seized and the Khalifa virtually
a prisoner, its territories overrun by Allied troops groaning under the
imposition of impossible terms. It is a death warrant, not a treaty.
These are the enormities crying aloud, and we have met today face
to face with a dangerous and most unprecedented situation. The solution
is not easy and the difficulties are great. But I cannot ask the people
30
to submit to wrong after wrong. Yet I would still ask the Government
not to drive the people of India to desperation, or else there is no other
course left open to the people except to inaugurate the policy of noncooperation though not necessarily the programme of Mr. Gandhi.
From a purely Musalman point of view the Khilafat question was a
matter of life and death.20
At its Nagpur session in December 1920, the Congress endorsed
Gandhis programme. Jinnah was a brave solitary dissenter; denounced
by the audience, respected by posterity. But unlike Annie Besant, Jinnah
was not fundamentally opposed to non-cooperation. I see no other way
except the policy of cooperation he told the Congress session at Calcutta
the very next day on 8 September 1920. But he counselled against
making a declaration which you have not the means to carry out.
Advocacy of the Khilafat cause continued. He told a London audience
on 23 June 1921 what must be the feeling of a Mussulman who poured
out his money, who poured his blood, who willingly allowed his sons to
go and fight in the different battlefields, when today he finds his Holy
Places under I do not speak disrespectfully of any religion but under
a Christian religion? What must be the feeling of a Mussulman when he
finds today that those dear Turkish homelands are handed over to Greece,
and Constantinople today stands as purely a mortgage security for the
Allies, under the guns of Britain and her Allies? He met the Viceroy
Lord Reading on 1 November 1921 who reported to London he holds
strong views about the acceleration of Swaraj, redress of Punjab wrongs
and is in favour of Khilafat agitation.21
One of Jinnahs earliest reported speeches was at the Anjumane-Islam Hall in Bombay in July 1908 denouncing the Asiatic Law
Amendment Act and the Immigration Restriction Bill of the Transvaal
government. He began his innings in the Imperial Legislative Council
on 25 February 1910 with a speech on Indentured labour for Natal in
which he clashed with the Viceroy, Lord Minto, who was in the Chair.
I must call the Honble gentleman to order. I think that is rather too
strong a word, cruelty. The Honble Member must remember that he
is talking of a friendly part of the Empire, and he must really adapt his
language to the circumstances. Jinnah: Well, my Lord, I should feel
31
A.G. Noorani
inclined to use much stronger language, but I am fully aware of the

constitution of this Council, and I do not wish to trespass for one single
moment, but I do say this that the treatment that is meted out to Indians
is the harshest which can possibly be imagined, and, as I said before, the
feeling in this country is unanimous.
Jinnahs record of support to Indians abroad is striking in Kenya
(August 1923), in South Africa (14 September 1925, and 25 March 1926),
Ceylon (11 February 1930); Zanzibar (September 1937); Burma (1938);
South Africa (24 May 1939); sympathies with the Indian nationals who
had settled down in Java, Burma, Malaya, and Singapore who suffered
shameful discrimination; South Africa (15 April 1943 and 10 April
1946); Ceylon (17 July 1946). The Lahore resolution on Pakistan in
1940 did not affect Jinnahs stand. In some of these cases he got the
League to pass resolutions.
The Leagues Council which met in Bombay, on 27-29 July 1946
to withdraw its acceptance of the Cabinet Missions Plan and pass the
resolution on Direct Action also adopted a resolution asking the Big
Powers of the UN to accept the demands for national freedoms and
independence of Indonesia, Indo-China, Malaya, Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Palestine, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Tripolitania, Tunis, Algeria, Riff
& Morocco. A separate resolution expressed solidarity with the
Musalmans of Iran and Turkey then facing threats from Stalin in the
Cold War that had begun in earnest. The Council conveys its message
to the Turkish and Iranian brethren that the salvation and security of
Muslim peoples all over the world in particular, and of Asiatic peoples
in general, lies in their unity and solidarity and it is time the Muslim
peoples revive the spirit of Islamic brotherhood and rise as one man for
the defence of the rights and interests of renascent Islamdom from the
East to the West and from one corner of the world to the other.
It was a blend of attack on colonialism with advocacy of Muslim
unity that was to mark Pakistans foreign policy. On very many issues
India and Pakistan spoke and voted in harmony in the UN General
Assembly.
32
The cause of Palestine received support from the Congress as well

as the League. In his presidential address to the historic League session
in 1937 Jinnah said The whole policy of the British Government has
been a betrayal of the Arabs, from its very inception. As GovernorGeneral of Pakistan he sent a cable to President Truman on 8 December
1947 expressing his shock at the UN General Assemblys decision to
enforce partition of Palestine. It was ultra vires of the UNs Charter
and was immoral, besides.
In the intervening decade the criticism never ceased. The Viceroy
was told on 5 September 1939, that London should try and meet all
reasonable national demands of the Arabs in Palestine. At a public
meeting in Bombay on 8 November 1945 he said I have no enmity
against Jews. I know they were treated very badly in some parts of
civilized Europe. But why should Palestine be dumped with such a large
number of Jews? Why should the Arabs be given a threat which will
wipe them out of Palestine? If the Jews want to re-conquer Palestine, let
them face the Arabs without British or American help.
Jinnahs perspicacity deserves praise. He foresaw the parlous plight
to which Palestinians would be reduced if the US and the UK pursued
those policies. Truman pressed the British to allow 1,000,000 Jews into
Palestine, while he had agreed after a long period of vacillation to allow
only 100 Indians to immigrate into the US Why does not President
Truman take 1,000,000 Jews into the U.S.? he asked.
The two World Wars played havoc with the Muslim world. In October
1916, Jinnah denounced Prussian militarism while demanding the
Indianisation of the armed forces. In June 1940 the League denounced
Nazi aggression. In their aftermath the European powers flouted the
pledges made during the war. A long statement which Jinnah issued to
the press on 3 June 1945 on Algeria, Syria and Lebanon testified not
only to the depth of his commitment but his close attention to world
affairs. General de Gaulle should be dealt with in the same way as the
war criminals.22
Indonesias struggle for freedom received Jinnahs enthusiastic
33
A.G. Noorani
support. He met its first Prime Minister Sultan Shahriar in New Delhi on
26 July 1947 and denounced the Dutch Governments resort to attack
with armed forces.
No Muslim leader won as much admiration as Mustafa Kamal
Ataturk did. He read a review of H.C. Armstrongs biography Grey
Wolf in The Literary Supplement of The Times in London in November
1932 and bought a copy. Hector Bolitho writes For two days Jinnah
was absorbed in the story of Kemal Ataturk: when he had finished, he
handed the book to his daughter then aged thirteen and said, read
this, my dear, it is good. For many days afterwards he talked Kemal
Ataturk; so much that his daughter chaffed him and nicknamed him
Grey Wolf. 23 On his death Jinnah praised him on 10 November 1938
as the greatest Musalman in the modern Islamic world. He pleaded for
solidarity of Muslims when Pakistan was no more than a dream. He said
on 2 November 1940 It is duty to help our Muslims brethren wherever
they are, from China to Peru, because Islam enjoins that it is our duty
to go to the rescue of our Muslim brethren We have not got arms and
ammunition but we can in a thousand and one ways help our Muslim
brethren if they are stricken. Genuine sentiments; but expectation of
reciprocal support could not have been absent altogether.
An interview to the Arab News agency on 7 November 1946
concerned the conference in New Delhi of Muslim countries Egypt,
Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Levant and all other countries where
Muslims predominate. Jinnah met the Mufti of Palestine, Muhammad
Amin El-Husseni, in Cairo in December 1946.
In the context of his policy towards Muslims states, Afghanistans
cynical revival of its demand for Pakhtoonistan just as the British were
about to transfer power in 1947 must have come as a rude shock to
Jinnah. He did his best to avert a rift and sent Saidullah Khan to Kabul
as his Personal Representative. The Prime Minister, Shah Wali Khan,
met him on 30 September 1947 and asked him to give us the whole
of the North-West Frontier Province and the tribal areas as a proof
of your large-heartedness. The course events took thereafter is outside
the scope of this article as indeed, is Jinnahs vision of Pakistan in its
34
entirety or the place of Muslim minorities in India in that vision.

It is enough to say that from the outset he visualized joint defence
between the two States of the sub-continent and cited the Monroe
Doctrine. A.S.R. Chari, a noted Communist lawyer was correspondent
of the British Communist daily The Daily Worker. His memoirs record
Jinnahs courtesy when he met him on 5 October 1944, Jinnah declared
We will say Hands off India to all outsiders. Pakistan will not tolerate
any outside design or aggression on this sub-continent. We will observe
something like the Monroe Doctrine.24 The Doctrine was revived at a
press conference on 14 November 1946.
The editor of The Statesman, Arthur Moore, was told on 22 January
1946 We would cooperate in world affairs and have a common policy.
The Cabinet Mission was assured on 4 April 1946 that he would agree
to a defensive alliance.25
That was not to be. India and Pakistan were born in acrimony and
were instantly overwhelmed by disputes that grip them still. But Jinnah
persisted in his vision of old. He told Eric Streiff correspondent of
the Neue Zurcher Zeitung of Zurich on 10 March 1948: it is of vital
importance to Pakistan and India as independent sovereign states to
collaborate in a friendly way jointly to defend their frontiers both on land
and sea against any aggression. But this depends entirely on whether
Pakistan and India can resolve their own differences and grave domestic
issues in the first instance. In other words, if we put our house in order
internally, then we may be able to play a very great part externally in all
international affairs.26
In contrast, Nehru was impatient to play a role in world affairs.
There was something wildly unreal about his initial approach. On 11
March 1947, when the country, torn by strife and pressing issues of
domestic concern, cried for attention, Nehru minuted: India cannot be
indifferent to the future of Germany. In a note on Indias candidature
in the elections to the United Nations Security Council, he wrote on 30
October 1946: India can no longer take up an attitude other than that
demanded by her geographical position, by her great potential and by
35
A.G. Noorani
the fact that she is the pivot round which the defence problems of the
Middle East, the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia revolve. This is
far from true even now. In 1946, it verged on the ludicrous. To M.C.
Chagla, a member of the first delegation he sent to the U.N. General
Assembly in 1946, Nehru wrote (October 3): We want to make a splash
at this General Assembly meeting.27
Nehru nailed his colours to the mast of non-alignment. He sought an
alliance with the US in 1948 privately but was rebuffed.28
Pakistan did the same. It sought the US help but, till the military
pact with the US, pursued a policy of non-alignment. Which brings us to
the question: What was Jinnahs outlook on alliances? The record shows
that he very much had it in mind. His interview to Doon Campbell of
Reuters on 21 May 1947 received much notice because Jinnah said
Yes when asked whether he would demand a corridor between
the two parts of Pakistan. But far more important were his remarks on
foreign policy on the eve of the partition. Pakistan would be the weaker
for the partition of Punjab and Bengal. A weak Pakistan and a strong
Hindustan will be a temptation for the strong Hindustan to try to dictate.
I have always said that Pakistan must be viable and sufficiently strong as
a balance vis-a-vis Hindustan. That balance cannot be ensured without
an alliance. Hence his remark Pakistan cannot live in isolation, nor can
any other nation do so today. We shall have to choose our friends and I
trust, wisely.29 Donald Edwards of the BBC had been given the same
line on alliances when they met on 2 April 1946.30 The preferred ally was
Britain. Jinnah told Lord Ismay, Mountbattens Chief of Staff, on 9 April
1947 who recorded: Pakistan could not stand alone. They would require
to be friends with a big power. Russia had no appeal for them. France
was weak and divided; there remained only England and America, and
of these the former was the natural friend. Apart from anything else he
added jokingly the devil you know is better than the devil you dont.31
A week later the stand with the same joke was repeated to Sir Terence
Shone the British High Commissioner in Delhi.32
Jinnah was, however, too well aware of the Soviet Unions interest
in the region to overlook the worth of the Russian card. It emerged in
36
an interview to Norman Cliff of the News Chronicle on 12 April 1946.

Inevitably, notes Mr. Norman Cliff, Russia came into our discussion,
and Mr. Jinnah saw in this problem only another strong reason for
Pakistan. Russia means trouble as far as I can judge, he said, and I
think the sooner you agree to Pakistan the better it will be for you and
us. No Muslim state can look on with complacency if Russia establishes
a stronghold in Persia and one thing is certain that the entire Muslim
bloc will stand together in its own interests. As soon as we become selfgoverning and have Pakistan there will be powerful and friendly state.
Asked if secure defence was possible in terms of modern warfare, Mr.
Jinnah said : Even a mouse can free a Lion.33
In a press interview on 3 September 1946 to a foreign news agency
Jinnah said: I do believe that Russia has more than a spectators interest
in Indian affairs, and she is not very far from India either. It is a serious
menace if Britain pursues her present policy of completely eliminating
the Muslims not only in India but in the entire Middle East. In my
opinion, it is a very dangerous policy to pursue.34
During a cabinet meeting on 7 September 1947, Jinnah said:
Pakistan (is) a democracy and communism (does) not flourish in the
soil of Islam. It (is) clear therefore that our interests (lie) more with the
two great democratic countries, namely the UK and the USA, rather
than with Russia.35
The memorandum which the Government of Pakistan gave to the
US State Department in October 1947 said, In its external and defence
policy , the proximity and vulnerability of Western Pakistan to Russia,
is the most dominant factor If Pakistan yielded to any external threat,
the defence of India will become almost an impossibility. If Pakistan
is to become strong enough to defend itself, even with the generous
assistance of and close collaboration with Great Britain and the United
States of America, it will first need to be economically developed and
extensively improved, the existing air and military bases modernized
and expanded, and new ones established, the production of essential
arms and ammunitions enlarged and speeded up.36
37
A.G. Noorani
Yet, when one reads the minutes of Jinnahs talks with Hyderabads
delegation in Delhi on 4 August 1947 the detachment from the realities is
so stunning as to prompt one to ask whether he spoke as an advocate or as
a statesman: If it came to the worst, one should die fighting rather than
yield on a point of fundamental principle. Mr. Jinnah gave the illustration
of what he called the greatest martyrdom in history, the example of
Imam Hussain standing for what was right and giving his life for it. All
the sanctions in the world then existing were applied against him and
his followers but they withstood them and suffered wholesale butchery.
It was a moral triumph and they gave their lives for it. That should be
the attitude which the Nizam and his advisers and people should adopt.
If it came to the worst, rather than yield to coercion or to the surrender
of what was right, he should be prepared to abdicate and go in the last
resort and show to the world that he had fought uncompromisingly for
right as against might. Mr. Jinnah said that, in our own times, England
had done the same against the heaviest odds. Her people had fought till
the end and had reversed the position, by perseverance and conviction,
from defeat to victory. If Hyderabad was short of petrol or kerosene,
it would not matter if, on the other hand, Hyderabad had abundance of
firmness, perseverance and courage. The Russians were threatened by a
blockade against them but they won the war. If Hyderabad was similarly
threatened, there would be other ways to fight, not necessarily with guns
if there were no guns, and not necessarily with mechanized transport if
there was no petrol.
But he astutely refrained from giving any firm assurance of support.
As regards His Exalted Highness question as to how far Pakistan
would be able to assist Hyderabad economically or politically or with
troops or arms and equipment and the like, Mr. Jinnah said that it was
not possible for him at present to give any specific undertaking but that,
generally speaking, he was confident that he and Pakistan would come
to the help of Hyderabad in every way possible. There should be no
doubt on that point. He said that even countries with long-established
Governments could not give specific undertakings of the nature desired
except by reference to the situation as it developed.
The unreal far-fetched analogies must be put down to the advocates
38
zeal. Jinnahs vision of Pakistans foreign policy had both elements

idealism (joint defence with India) and realism (the need for alliances).
The policies Nehru and he pursued rendered the ideal irrelevant. Both
countries turned to realpolitik in pursuit of their respective national
interests. The realpolitik as conceived by the masters they little
understood. The national interest was narrowly defined. Still, Jinnahs
outlook on world affairs merits close study, closer than what this writer
has attempted. His legacies of legalism and exaggerated reliance
on tactical skills hampered Pakistans foreign policy. His vision was
forgotten. Harold Nicolson would have disapproved of the legalism and
Jinnahs passion for tactics. He would have lauded Jinnahs vision.
References:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Nicolson, Harold; Diplomacy; Oxford University Press, 1969, p.24.

Pirzada, Syed Sharifuddin (ed.); Quaid-i-Azam Jinnahs Correspondence; East and West
Publishing, Karachi, 1977, p.267.
The Times of India, 28 February 1982.
Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances 1942-43, Government of India, 1943,
p.43.
Tendulkar, G.D.; Mahatma; Vol. VI, p.216.
Manchester Guardian, 23 October 1961; also in parliament on 6 December 1961.
Jalal, Ayeshah; The State of Martial Rule; Cambridge University Press; 1990; p.44.
Ahmad, Riaz; The Works of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah; National Institute of
Pakistan Studies; Quaid-i-Azam University; Islamabad; Vol. IV, p.393.
Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee; 1945; p.278.
Ahmed, Jamiluddin; Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah; Vol. I. p.30; see also p.43: a
definite share in power.
Bolitho, Hector; Jinnah; p.118.
Ali, Mehrunisa (ed.); Jinnah on World Affairs, Selected Documents 1908-1948, Pakistani Study Centre; University of Karachi; 2007; p.229. (This outstanding document
will be cited hereafter rather than the primary sources it draws on. Other excellent compilations are: Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada (ed.), The Collected Works of Quaid-i-Azam
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Vols. 1-3, Karachi; Waheed Ahmad, The Nations Voice, Vols.
I-VII, Quaid-i-Azam Academy, Karachi; and the compilation by Riaz Ahmad noted earlier).
Keith, Arthur Barriedale; Speeches and Documents on the British Domains, 1918-1931;
Oxford University Press; 1932; pp.77-82.
Jinnah-Gandhi Talks, Central Office, All India Muslim League, 1944, p.22.
Vide Churchill and His Myths, The New York Times Review of Books, 29 May 2008.
Jinnah and the Khilafat Movement, 1918-1924, Journal of South Asian and Middle
East Studies, Vol. I No. 2, pp.82-107.
Ali; pp. 326 and 378 respectively.
39
A.G. Noorani
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
40
Ali; p.68.
Ali; pp.72-73.
Ali; pp.90-91.
Qureshi; p.97.
Ali; p.252 (I advisedly refrain from citing pages from her compilation in some smaller
matters in order not to clutter up the text. She has drawn from other compilations and the
sources are easy to find out).
Jinnah; p.102.
Jinnah-Gandhi Talks; p.80.
Ali; pp.277 and 289 respectively.
Dawn; 12 March 1948.
Vide the writers article, Task of Democracy, Frontline. 21 December 2007.
M.S.Venkataramani, An elusive military relationship, Frontline, 9 April 1999, 23
April 1999, 7 May 1999 and 21 May 1999. They are based on archival material.
Ali; pp.377-380.
Ali; p.287.
Ali; p.360.
Ali; p.366.
Ali; p.296.
Ali; p.320.
Kux, Denis; United States and Pakistan 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies, Oxford University Press, p.20.
Ali; p.583.
THE MQM AND IDENTIY POLITIC

IN PAKISTAN
Niloufer Siddiqui*
Abstract.
(The MQM, Pakistans third largest political party, was formed in the
mid-1980s as the Mohajir Qaumi Mahaz to represent the interests of the
Mohajir (migrant) community. Its success in tapping into an increasing
sense of Mohajir insecurity was evident upon its formation as the party
gained, almost overnight, the support of the majority of the Mohajir
community. Socio-economic factors were integral both to the MQMs
immediate impact and to the cementing of a common notion of Mohajir
identity, as was the failure of successive governments to achieve their
goals of state-building and nation-building. Both Z.A. Bhutto and Ziaul-Haq struggled to deal effectively with increasing demands made on
ethnic grounds, particularly on behalf of Sindhis. Over the years, the
party-cum-political movement has seen a change not only in its name
(becoming the Muttahida Qaumi Movement), but also ostensibly its
central ideology. While the partys support base remains strong, and the
following of its leader, Altaf Hussain, borders on god-like veneration
and reverence, many others view the MQM as a fascist organization
and accuse it of employing terrorist techniques to achieve its aims. The
mobilization of Mohajir identity, and the MQMs role in this identity
formation, is a valuable case study of the means by which ethnicity can
become a symbol of identity when threatened and how in the face of
failure to provide for basic socioeconomic needs, a political party based
on ethnic mobilization can gain ground. Author).
On 12 May 2007, 48 people were killed and hundreds injured
*
Niloufer Siddiqui is an MA candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC.
Niloufer Siddiqui
in Karachi as riots broke out during the visit of chief justice Iftikhar
Chaudhry who was, at the time, facing a presidential reference. The
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), then a coalition partner of the
government in Sindh and generally considered as the government
of Karachi,1 held a rally against what it termed as the politicization
of the chief justice issue. Opposition parties responded in kind. The
ensuing tragedy was integral to the broader political instability which
reflected growing resentment of the Musharraf administration. It was
the precursor to a series of events that led to the declaration of national
emergency on 3 November 2007. The violence captured on television
and the print media propelled, not for the first time, the MQM to the
centre of peoples mind, some even went so far as to brand it a terrorist
organization.
The recurring unrest and violence in Karachi over the last three
decades has been linked by many to the emergence of the MQM,
which in itself was partly a consequence of riots in the city in the
early 1980s. The MQM, the countrys third largest political party,
was created in 1984 as the Mohajir Qaumi Mahaz to represent the
interests of the Mohajir, or migrant, community. The brainchild of Altaf
Hussain, the MQM aimed to have the Mohajirs recognized as a fifth
ethnicity in Pakistan in addition to the Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis
and Balochis. According to the 1951 Census, A Mohajir is a person
who has moved into Pakistan as a result of Partition or for fear of
disturbances connected therewith.2 However, the term today has come
to refer specifically to the non-Punjabi migrants who moved from India
to West Pakistan after Partition and settled in Sindh, primarily in the
urban centres of Hyderabad and Karachi.3 The majority of the migrants
from India who came from East Punjab, settling and assimilating into
life in West Punjab, arent included in contemporary discussions of the
Mohajir movement.4 Rather, discussion centres on only those migrants
who, despite being from distinct ethnic groups, gravitated towards a
singular Urdu-speaking identity. Even though these groups comprised
only 20 percent of the migrants from India, they radically altered the
ethnic composition of Sindh.5 This ethnicity, however, became a central
means of identification only as the Mohajirs began losing the socioeconomic privileges they initially possessed. According to the 1951
42
Census, the Mohajirs made up 6.3 million of the 33.7 million people
in West Pakistan, about one-fifth of the population.6 Another 700,000
settled in East Pakistan. Only 14.28 percent of the residents in Karachi
spoke Sindhi as a first language in 1951 as opposed to 58.7 percent who
spoke Urdu as their mother tongue.7 By 1981, according to census data,
the citys population was made more diverse by later migrations of other
ethnic groups and stood at 61 percent Mohajir, 16 percent Punjabi, 11
percent Pashtun, 7 percent indigenous Sindhi and 5 percent Balochi.8
Today, the figures represent a similar pattern of linguistic composition;
according to the 1998 census, while Urdu-speakers make up only 7.57
percent of Pakistans population, the distribution in Karachi is 48 percent
Urdu speaking, 14 percent Punjabi, 7 percent Sindhi, 11 percent Pashtu
and 4 percent Balochi.9 It isnt surprising that this city, the original capital
of the new state of Pakistan, became the locale of most of the unrest, and
has remained so till this day. As Yunas Samad argues, the emergence
of Mohajir identity politics has been synonymous with ethnic conflict
in Karachi.10
While the growing importance of Mohajir identity and the creation of
the MQM should not be viewed as identical processes, as they represent
differing approaches to ethnic configuration,11 they are nonetheless
inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing. The success of the MQM in
tapping into an increasing sense of Mohajir insecurity was evident upon
its formation, as the party gained, almost overnight, the support of the
majority of the Mohajir community. In 1988, the MQM won a landslide
electoral victory in municipal elections in Hyderabad and Karachi. By
1991, it had established a virtual monopoly over representation of the
Urdu-speaking community in urban Sindh.12 Socio-economic factors
were integral to the rather drastic switch from supporting a Pakistani
notion of identity to rallying behind a Mohajir identity. Yet, any analysis
of this transformation needs to take into account the broader failure of
the federal government in achieving either its goals of state-building or
nation-building, creating a vacuum which was filled by ethnic groups
and political parties based on ethnic mobilization.
That the MQM has substantially altered its political agenda during
its short period of existence indicates, however, a limitation to its ethnic
43
Niloufer Siddiqui
basis of support as well as a recognition of broad political gains that could

be achieved through expansion. As the change in the organizations name
suggests, the MQM has transformed from a political movement that
represents solely the interests of a particular ethnic group to one which
is attempting to solidify its position as a mainstream political party with
support bases around the country. Its lack of success in achieving the
latter, as seen in its recent failure to grab seats in non-Mohajir areas in
the February 2008 election, is indicative of a fundamental contradiction
in its very political existence. Julian Richards argues to this effect when
he states, the party remains somewhere between a traditional political
party, with seats in local and national parliaments, and a spiritual ethnonationalist movement with little to offer beyond protection against the
opposing other.13
The Stimulus for Organization
Many scholars, notably Farhat Haq, have analyzed the Mohajir
situation in Pakistan as fitting within a framework of relative deprivation.
According to Ted Gurr, tension leading to violence can develop where
a discrepancy exists between what a collective group believes they
should have and what they actually have. The point of reference is
what the group had in the past, an abstract ideal or standards articulated
by a leader.14 Mohajirs, primarily in Karachi, have gradually lost the
privileged position both economic and political which they possessed
immediately after independence, giving way in relative terms to other
ethnic groups in the country. The independence struggle for Pakistan,
engineered and propelled by Muhammed Ali Jinnahs Muslim League,
had drawn the basis of its support from Muslims living in areas that
remained part of India following Partition. The indigenous Pakistanis
Muslims living in parts of British India that became Pakistan played
a much smaller role in the struggle for a Muslim homeland. Aside from
the Punjabis, who were the majority ethnic group in West Pakistan,
these groups received few immediate benefits upon the creation of the
country. In fact, pockets of resistance in Sindh, Balochistan and the
NWFP provided early challenges to the fledgling government, with
many groups viewing the Muslim League and the Mohajirs as akin to
foreign colonizers.
44
The vagueness of the call for independence in the 1940s had resulted
in different groups, both in East and West Pakistan, attaching different
meanings to what the new state for Muslims was meant to achieve.15
For the Pakistanis of the west wing, and particularly for the muhajirs,
Pakistan was a state in which the Muslim nation would reach fulfilment,
developing its strength on the basis of Islam and Islamic solidarity.16
In being premised upon a two-nation theory which rendered Muslims a
distinct nation of their own, Pakistan was created on the basis of a united
religious identity. The Mohajirs notion of national identity fit with that
put forward by Jinnah; the importance given to distinct ethnicities was,
therefore, antithetical to what the Mohajirs stood for. They clashed
with other ethnic groups on such issues as further migration of Indian
Muslims, local languages and provincial autonomy, and supported
initially the religious political party, the Jamaat-i-Islaami.17
After independence, Mohajirs continued to occupy a privileged
position in the new Pakistan government. Both the first Governor-General
and Prime Minister were Mohajir, and Mohajirs held 21 percent of the
jobs in the Pakistan Civil Service. By 1973, they held 33.5 percent of all
senior jobs in the federal bureaucracy and 20 percent in the Secretariat
group in 1974.18 Mohajirs also dominated business and industry in the
early years of Pakistans industrialization. Many were of an urban and
professional background and were able to fill the gap that Hindus had left
after migrating to India post-Partition. Their position remained strong
through Ayub Khans rule, and the bureaucratic-military alliance which
dominated politics in Pakistan was in turn characterized by a PunjabiMohajir nexus.19 Land policies further privileged the Mohajirs at the
expense of Sindhis, as refugees were given land to compensate for their
losses in India.20 These early skirmishes over who was entitled to land
left by evacuees from West Pakistan worked to create an initial divide
between migrants and indigenous Pakistanis.21
By the end of the 1950s, however, the rising power of the military,
which was beginning to become more dominated by Punjabis and
Pashtuns, began to push the Mohajir elites into a subordinate position.
Many Mohajirs contested the decision to move the federal capital from
Karachi to Islamabad, but continued to hold many prominent policyCRITERION July/September 2008
45
Niloufer Siddiqui
making positions.22 It was primarily after the separation of East and

West Pakistan, as Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, himself a Sindhi,
began implementing his policies of Islamist socialism, that much of the
antagonism in Sindh against Mohajirs came to the fore. Many Sindhis
expected Bhutto to rectify what they perceived as a longstanding
socioeconomic imbalance. In the initial years of Bhuttos rule, in 1973,
Mohajirs, while still about 7 percent of the population, occupied 33.5
percent of the posts in the bureaucracy.23 Sindhi agitation led to Bhuttos
recognition of Sindhi as an official language in the province as well
as the imposition of a quota on the number of Urdu-speakers entering
the Pakistan Civil Service.24 Bhuttos nationalization policies resulted
in a drop in business confidence and industrial growth stalled, with the
Gujarati-speaking community particularly harmed by these policies.25
The language issue was a source of much agitation, first on the part of
the Sindhis, for whom the imposition of Urdu was seen as discriminatory
and served as a significant disadvantage in terms of education and jobs.
Bhuttos support of the Language Bill was couched in ethnic terms. In a
speech, he spoke about how the Sindhis had given our lands; we have
given our homes; we have given our lives . . to people from all parts .
. living in Sindh. What else can we do to show our loyalty . .?26 The
Language Bill required Sindhi to be taught as a second language to those
students for whom Sindhi wasnt a first language and for all provincial
government officials to learn the language.27 While this could hardly
be seen as a threat to the dominance of the Urdu language, the bill and
resulting controversy became symbolic of more than the dispute itself,
as had the language issue in the crisis of East Pakistan/Bangladesh. In
1972, language riots broke out, and worked to further divide the two
communities. According to a biographical account, Altaf Hussain points
to these Sindhi-Mohajir language riots as a turning point; it was then
that he began to fully realize the need for Mohajirs to organize on an
ethnic basis if their rights were to be protected.28
The implementation of the quota system was another central
source of contention and unrest, leading directly to a decline in Mohajir
socioeconomic status. The quota system differentiated between the
rural and urban and meant an ethnic quota for Sindhis (rural) and Urduspeaking Mohajirs (urban).29 Allocation was made based on 60 percent
46
rural and 40 percent urban domiciles in Sindh.30 11.4 percent of the

seats in the federal bureaucracy were reserved for indigenous Sindhis
and strict rules were laid down for the definition of a rural Sindhi.31 The
very notion of a quota system flew in the face of what the Mohajirs stood
for because Pakistan had been created on the basis of a united identity,
to have quotas in place which questioned where you were from in your
own land and assigned opportunities on the basis of this designation
seemed unwarranted.32
The quotas ensured that the Mohajirs lost in relative, not absolute,
terms. However, the prominent role which the Mohajirs saw themselves
as having played in the independence struggle is integral to contemporary
notions of superiority and is used to justify claims that the Mohajirs
are entitled to, and deserve, certain preferential treatment for all that
they wagered and lost. Azim Ahmed Tariq, the former chairman of the
MQM, effectively conveyed this emotion in a 1991 interview when he
stated, We thought, we had given such sacrifices: two million were
killed in the Partition.33 Altaf Hussain too has been quoted as saying,
What have we gained after sacrificing 2 million lives for the creation of
Pakistan?34 As with any discussion of ethnicity, the mythic components
of collective solidarity are integral to understanding what transforms a
latent ethnicity into a central means of identification. In the case of the
Mohajirs, this is based on the idea that they, more than any group, were
committed to the idea of the nation of Pakistan and hence, should be
treated as such.
The hope that General Zia-ul-Haqs coming to power would reverse
these policies and reinstate the Mohajirs to their traditional place of
power was soon thwarted when Zia retained many of Bhuttos policies.
Zias deeply held religious beliefs and emphasis on a Pakistani culture
with a strong Islamic basis, and above all his determination to defuse
Sindhi nationalism encouraged many Mohajirs to place their support
behind him.35 However, his retention of seat reservations in the federal
and provincial bureaucracy and institutions of higher education worked
against the Mohajirs, and solidified Punjabi dominance.36 The inability
of both the Bhutto and Zia administrations to provide for the needs of
either the Mohajir or Sindhi groups was partly a result of the leaders
47
Niloufer Siddiqui
pitting groups against one another to serve their own political needs.
Bhuttos inconsistency with presenting the PPP as a national party while
also appealing to his own Sindhi identity served to spread nationalist
feelings among Mohajirs. Additionally, allegations abound that Zia
played a key role in promoting the MQM as a counterweight to the
PPP.37
The growing influence of the Pashtuns in the military, partly due
to Pakistans intervention in Afghanistan, during Zias time meant
that the Mohajirs had another ethnic group to contend and compete
with.38 In fact, these patterns of migration, particularly to Karachi,
played a defining role in the citys continually changing demography
and in turn, the relative privileges received by various ethnic groups.
Waseem characterizes four waves of migration into Karachi: Mohajirs
in the 1940s-50s, Punjabis and Pashtuns in 1960s-80s, Sindhis in the
1970s-90s, and foreigners in the 1980s-90s. By 1998, migrants as a
proportion of the total population amounted to 22 percent. Of these,
31 percent had arrived from outside the country.39 The initial wave of
Mohajir migration is differentiated from the later wave of the Punjabis
and Pashtuns. The latter migration, referred to as circular migration, is
characterized by migrants maintaining relations with their families back
home and visiting often.40 This difference has enabled the Mohajirs to
consider themselves natives of Karachi and Sindh and to effectively
pursue a sons of the soil movement. Mohajirs and Sindhis have even
managed to ally with one another against these later migrants, although
each alliance has been politically motivated and short-lived.
Riots and Unrest
A series of riots broke out between Mohajir and Pashtun migrants in
Karachi during the mid-1980s. During 1985, the Karachi police recorded
608 cases of rioting, which resulted in 56 deaths,41 and between January
1986 and August 1987, there were 242 incidents of rioting.42 One of the
most significant incidents between the two groups was what became
known as the Bushra Zaidi affair of April 1985. A young Mohajir
schoolgirl was hit and killed by a Pashtun bus driver and within two
days, clashes erupted between Pashtuns, who owned and operated the
48
minibuses, and Mohajirs, the passengers of these minibuses.43 Violence

continued in Karachi after the Sohrab Goth operation of December 1986,
whereby government security forces bulldozed the homes of mostly
Pashtun residents in an apparent cleanup of drugs.44 The Operation was
followed by rumors alleging that it had been launched at the behest
of the Mohajirs. Seen as a plan to remove Pashtuns from Karachi,
the Pashtuns in a call to attack (that) was couched in highly emotive
language provoking the pride and dignity of Pashtun manhood45
attacked Mohajir neighbourhoods. The riots were induced in part by the
socioeconomic crises of state, including transport problems and lack of
basic public services such as water and housing, lending credence to
the argument that the demonstrations and unrest were consequences of
direct or indirect government actions.46
Built-up frustration at the lack of socio-economic opportunities and
the Mohajirs relative decline in power soon became politicized and it
was in this context that the precursor to the MQM, the All Pakistan
Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO) was formed. Created by Altaf
Hussain and other students who felt victimized by the quota system
in place at Sindh University, the party also represented the Mohajir
students need to contend with a host of student organizations organized
on a linguistic or ethnic bases, from which they felt excluded.47 The
religious parties student wings, to whom the Mohajirs had initially
shown allegiance, were denounced as Punjabi-dominated organizations,
effectively dividing student political life on stark ethnic lines. In this
way, the university represented a microcosm of Pakistani society and
indicated to the Mohajirs the need to unite around an identity of their
own. By 1986, Mohajirs share of senior jobs in federal bureaucracy had
fallen to 18.3 percent from 33.5 percent in 1973, and to 14.3 percent
of jobs in the Secretariat group from 20 percent in 1974.48 The partys
Karadad-i-Maguasid, or Charter of Demands, demanded among other
things, increased representation of the Mohajirs in the university and
the administration, a change in the definition of domiciled in Sindh
to refer to only those who had been living there for the last twenty
years, the repatriation of Biharis to Pakistan, and nationalization of
local bus services.49 The question of Biharis remained a source of
much contention for many years, partly for humane reasons but also
49
Niloufer Siddiqui
on the basis of a politico-strategic recognition that moving the 250,000

Biharis into Karachi would increase the MQMs support base. In an
essay written just a couple of years after the inception of the MQM,
Farida Shaheed described the creation of the party in clear-cut terms:
Sub-state nationalities have become so important that the multi-ethnic
mohajirs have declared a nationality by the recently formed Mohajir
Qaumi Mahaz (Refugee Peoples Front).50
Political Leanings
From the very beginning, the MQM showed itself to be politically
malleable. Its definition of Mohajirs was largely in terms of what
Mohajirs are NOT rather than in terms of what they are. In his
autobiography, Hussain defines Mohajirs as those who do not belong to
any of the other ethnonationalities of Pakistan; in other words, that they
are neither Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi nor Pashtun.51 Altaf Hussain has
even gone so far as to admit that the banner of Mohajir nationality was
indeed a reaction to the slogan of the other four nationalities.52 While
the party cannot be perceived as anti-state in the sense that it denounces
Pakistani nationalism, there has nonetheless been some separatist talk,
even mention of the creation of a Karachisubha or Urdu Desh.53 On
25 March 2007, a statement by Hussain on the MQM website warned
the government that if provincial autonomy would not be given to the
provinces the slogan of autonomy could turn into the demand for the
right for self-determination.54 The extreme irony of this position (albeit
more rhetoric than reality) is clear as Mohajir identity has historically
been premised on a commitment to the nation of Pakistan and the
Mohajirs own complaints against ethnic groups in Pakistan were on the
grounds of their separatist tendencies. In a speech in Delhi in 2007, Altaf
Hussain labeled the very creation of Pakistan a blunder, although he
spent many subsequent months distancing himself from his comments.
Hussains controversial rhetoric serves to emphasize the sometimes
inconsistent and contradictory aims of the MQM, as well as the extent to
which the party is itself continually developing and evolving its goals.
This inconsistency is seen partly in the MQMs many political
alliances. Because it was defined primarily as a party in opposition
50
to others, the MQM was able to capitalize on different ethnic groups

insecurities by forming alliances of convenience. In 1988, it entered into
a tenuous alliance with the PPP, at the time led by Benazir Bhutto, despite
the Mohajirs resentment of Sindhis and the many years during which the
two ethnic groups had stood opposed to one another. The alliance was
couched in terms of countering a Punjabi-dominated centre and proved
possible due to the dramatic success of the MQM immediately upon
its creation, winning 13 seats in the National Assembly in 1988. This
consistent electoral success has, in fact, been the primary reason that the
larger parties have had to engage with the MQM; the partys seats have
proved vital to helping the larger parties gain a parliamentary majority.55
The 1988 PPP-MQM alliance was short-lived, despite a 59-point Karachi
Accord that was signed between the parties. It broke down in just a
matter of months over the contentious issue of repatriating Biharis from
Bangladesh and general MQM resentment at non-implementation of
the agreement.56 This served to once again exacerbate tensions between
the Mohajirs and Sindhis, which worsened when the MQM joined the
Ittihad Jamhouri Ijtehad (IJI) headed by Nawaz Sharif. This alliance
was majority Punjabi and seen by supporters of the government as antiSindhi.57 Tension between Mohajirs, on the one hand, and Punjabis and
Pashtuns, on the other, however, worked to strain the alliance between
the MQM and IJI.58 Thus, while ethnic tensions interfered with the
functioning of political alliances, the political alliances themselves
had little lasting impact on easing ethnic relations. Bitter conflict and
a power struggle continued in Karachi, with Samad arguing that a
process of ethnic cleansing took place.59 Throughout this decade of
democracy, the MQM made politically strategic partnerships, as the
various governments at the centre struggled to control the increasing
violent nature of politics and ethnic conflict in Karachi.60
In 1992, in the infamous Operation Clean-Up, the military moved
against the MQM, a decision taken by the army and prompted in part
by increasing concern that the MQM was beginning to take control of
the state machinery.61 The military used the MQMs separatist rhetoric
as a justification for the operation and also unearthed 22 MQM torture
cells.62 At this time, the MQM split into two parties, with the breakaway
party attaching the term Haqiqi (meaning real) to their acronym. The
51
Niloufer Siddiqui
ideological battle over the partys goals and objectives found its way
on to the streets, making Karachi a turbulent and violent city for most
of the 1990s.63 The army employed a strategy of divide-and-conquer by
initially supporting the Haqiqi group and then arresting its leadership
and militants. It hoped to rid the country of Altaf Hussains MQM, but
instead worked to de-legitimize the Haqiqi faction in the eyes of the
Mohajir supporters, who viewed it as a puppet of the government.64
MQM: Political Movement or Political Party?
The internal division of the MQM centred partly upon Altaf
Hussains decision to alter the partys outlook from one representing
only Mohajirs to one which represented all of Pakistans poor and
oppressed. This transformation has been partial at best; the MQMs
actions have conflicted starkly with its rhetoric and even today, it has
been unable to move away from being seen primarily as a Mohajir
party. Because the MQMs leadership and support, however, have both
stemmed from the lower-middle and working class segments of the
Mohajir population, it has allowed for a smoother transition than may
otherwise have been possible. Because it was the middle and lowermiddle class Mohajirs who faced the brunt of the quota system, while
the upper and upper-middle classes continued to fare well, unemployed
Mohajir youth and students historically held the central executive and
leadership position in the party.65 A significant source of the MQMs
support stems from these class origins, which are in sharp contrast to the
feudal leadership which has historically dominated rural Sindh. Even
the national mainstream parties, such as the PML and the PPP, have at
their helm well-off, prominent families.
Altaf Hussains lower-middle class background contrasts sharply
with the privileged position of these leaders and his personal history
sheds light on the creation of the MQM. According to his autobiography
available on the official MQM website, Altaf Hussain in his mid
twenties not only saw and felt the unfairness of the admission policies
in schools but also in the broader spectrum he saw and felt the unfair
feudal framework consisting of only 2 percent of the elites who were
busy in writing the fate of 98 percent of the middle and lower middle
52
classes of the country. In general, a son of an immigrant started a struggle

of awareness against the unfair feudal system of Pakistan.66 Hussains
complete dominance of the MQM since its inception, despite being in
self-imposed exile in England since 1992, effectively represents the
notion of cult of personality. Referred to as the Quaid, a term which
means founder but is usually used in association with Muhammed Ali
Jinnah, Altaf Hussain is often seen as the spiritual leader and is also
referred to as pir. Videos of him speaking demonstrate the extent to
which his oratorical skills and personal charisma are central to the partys
support. Richards argues, The party demonstrates a curious combination
of nationalist, secular, ethnic-chauvinist, and socialist tendencies, all led
by an unelected spiritual figurehead more Pir than President with
whom the party is inextricably associated. A party with almost fascist
tendencies, the MQMs training pamphlet requires from its supporters
blind faith in the partys leadership and elimination of individuality.67
A strong belief in the partys ideological base is also required, and
in the case of the MQM, this ideological base is tied strongly to the
opinions of Altaf Hussan. A common slogan at the time of the 1988
elections, loosely translated from Urdu, demonstrates this: Any person
that betrays the Quaid deserves death by execution.
The MQMs 1998 agenda purports to outline its main goals, but
is couched in vague jargon Ideologically speaking, MQM is not a
proponent of Socialism, Communism or unbridled Capitalism. It only
believes in Realism and Practicalism which prevents it from being
too closely aligned with any specific ideology. The 1998 agenda does
not associate the MQM with representing the interests of any specific
ethnic group, nor does it propound a unitary Pakistani identity. Rather,
it states:
MQM wholeheartedly accepts the cultural, linguistic,
regional, racial and religious identities of all citizens of
the state. To deny such distinctions and identifications is
tantamount to denying reality. . . It is therefore imperative
to recognise and accept the constitutional rights of Sindhi,
Punjabi, Pakhtoon, Mohajir, Baloch, Saraiki, Brohi,
Makrani and all other nationalities, fraternities, lingual,
53
Niloufer Siddiqui
cultural and religious units to provide them justice so that

the fervour of national integration could grow and kinship
develop.68
The MQMs website makes its transformation as a party representing
the poor clear: To further the programme of national development and
a nation-wide campaign against feudal domination, Mohajir Quami
Movement was formally transformed into Muttahida Quami Movement
on 26 July 1997. In an interview, Altaf Hussain outlined his partys
goals as such: Our immediate political objective is to change the corrupt
medieval feudal-military political system of Pakistan. We are, therefore,
the only genuine party of the lower and middle classes, totally devoid
of feudal lords and army Generals.69 However, the party has lacked
any programs or policies aimed at the direct alleviation of poverty, land
reform, or change in the social order.70 In addition, when politically
expedient, the party maintains ethnic divisions and rhetoric, even if this
requires pitting the poor of two ethnic groups against one another.
A determining factor in changing the name and ideology of the
organization was a simple recognition of political reality. Having become
the third largest party in the country and having already achieved a loyal
and substantial Mohajir support base, the MQM saw an opportunity
to expand its influence in other provinces. In addition, its reputation
as an anti-state organization had landed it in trouble in the past and it
used this opportunity to tone down its divisive rhetoric.71 Yet, much of
the speculation regarding the change in nomenclature, and ostensibly
ideology, is difficult to conjecture partly because of the revisionist history
that the party has engaged in. By revising the very discourse surrounding
its creation, the MQM has effectively shed any initial linkages to its
exclusive Mohajir ethnicity, allowing that to take the back-seat. In an
open letter written by Altaf Hussain about the events of 12 May 2007
and posted on the MQM website, for instance, the MQMs origins are
described as such: Following the Constitution and the law of the land,
in the history of the country, poor, middleclass and educated people
broken away from the traditional and hereditary politics to establish the
Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). The formation of the MQM by
the poor and middleclass people was not liked by the Establishment
54
and feudalistic hereditary politicians and the parties on the payroll of

the Establishment and all such political and religious parties formed an
alliance against the MQM. In fact, this letter contains no mention of the
Mohajir community at all, even in discussion of how the party came into
being. Hussain similarly rallied other ethnic groups in a speech made on
15 April 2008. He appealed to the Sindhi, Baloch, Punjabi, Pakhtoon,
Seraiki, Hazarewal, Kashmiri and minority workers of the MQM to fully
play their role and maintaining the peace and law and order, refrain from
emotional reactions, observe and demonstrate peace and patience.72
The MQM is still today, however, referred to in common parlance as
the Mohajir party.
Although the MQM is now a central player in Pakistans political
system, it continues to function as much outside the system as a pressure
group as within it. It has resorted to underhanded measures including
street tactics. These have included targeting the press, such as burning
thousands of copies of the widely-circulated Dawn newspaper and
attacking the houses of journalists, as well as torturing those Mohajirs
who hadnt pledged allegiance to the MQM. The MQM today propounds
an anti-Islamist stance, and is quick to portray itself along liberal and
anti-terrorist lines.73 That its main constituents are people who once
provided support to religious political parties such as the Jamaat-iIslaami indicates the tenuous nature of issue-based politics in Pakistan.
Hussain had justified the MQMs retention of pressure group methods
by distinguishing the MQM from other political parties, arguing that it
has a higher purpose: Explaining the difference between a Movement
and a Political Party, Mr Hussain said that sometimes a Movement
is compelled to participate in politics, however, its aim remains the
completion of its mission, whereas, the purpose of a political party is to
get into power.74
Constantly changing roles? A look to the future
Mohammed Waseem has termed the Mohajir identity an ethnicityin-making and other scholars have similarly hesitated in classifying
the Mohajir question in Pakistan as a straightforward ethnic dispute.
This reflects, to an extent, the artificial nature of the Mohajir ethnic
55
Niloufer Siddiqui
construction which lacks a singular origin and a common language. Yet,

more significant is the manner in which ethnicity becomes a symbol of
identity when threatened and how, in the face of state and federal failure
to provide for basic socioeconomic needs, a political party based on
ethnic mobilization can gain ground.
With the advent of a new ruling coalition government in Pakistan
following the 18 February 2008 elections, the political scene in Pakistan
remains far from certain. Questions regarding the future of President
Musharraf and the reinstatement of the judiciary, continue to be, at the
time of writing, unresolved issues. On 29 April the PPP and MQM finally
reached a power-sharing agreement for the Sindh Cabinet, whereby
the MQM would be given 13 ministries.75 The MQM has shown that,
despite its political ideology, it is willing to form alliances and engage
in coalitions with various power holders in the country. These coalitions
have allowed the MQM to come to power at the provincial level and have
helped establish it as the third largest party in Pakistan, although it is
often regarded with suspicion by other parties and groups. No discussion
of Pakistans political future is complete without a serious reckoning
of Hussains party. However, what the MQMs precise ideology is has
been subject to change over the years, and is likely to continue evolving
with the political climate in Pakistan.
Table I
Patterns of Migration
Number of
Regugees
Share of Refugees
Ratio in Total
Population
1.
Pakistan
7.22 million
100
10%
2.
East Bengal
0.7 million
9.67%
1.7%
3.
W. Pakistan
6.52 million
90.3%
20%
4.
Punjab
5.3 million
73%
25.6%
5.
Sindh (ex K)
0.55 million
7.6%
11.7%
6.
Karachi
0.61 million
8.53%
55%
Source: Census of Pakistan 1951, Vol. I, Table 19-A, Vol. 6, p. 65.
Taken from: Mohammad Waseem, Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: The
56
Case of MQM. The Pakistan Development Review. 35:4 Part II (Winter

1996).
Table II
Population by mother tongue
(In percent)
Administrative Unit
Urdu
Pakistan
Punjabi Sindhi
Pushto Balochi Saraiki Others
7.57
44.15
14.1
15.42
3.57
10.53
4.66
Rural
1.84
42.51
16.46
18.06
3.99
12.97
4.53
Urban
20.22
47.56
9.20
9.94
2.69
5.46
4.93
0.78
0.97
0.04
73.9
0.01
3.86
20.43
Rural
0.24
0.24
0.02
73.98
0.01
3.99
21.52
Urban
3.47
4.58
0.11
73.55
0.03
3.15
15.11
0.18
0.23
0.01
99.1
0.04
0.45
Rural
0.18
0.18
0.01
99.15
0.04
0.43
Urban
0.18
1.85
97.0
0.96
4.51
75.23
0.13
1.16
0.66
17.36
0.95
Rural
1.99
73.63
0.15
0.87
0.90
21.44
1.02
Urban
10.05
78.75
0.09
1.81
0.14
8.38
0.78
21.05
6.99
59.73
4.19
2.11
1.0
4.93
Rural
1.62
2.68
92.02
0.61
1.50
0.32
1.25
Urban
41.48
11.52
25.79
7.96
2.74
1.71
8.80
0.97
2.52
5.58
29.64
54.76
2.42
4.11
Rural
0.21
0.43
5.27
32.16
57.55
1.87
2.51
Urban
1.42
9.16
6.57
21.61
45.84
4.16
9.24
10.11
71.66
0.56
9.52
0.06
1.11
6.98
Rural
2.33
83.74
0.08
7.62
0.02
0.3
5.91
Urban
14.18
65.36
0.81
10.51
0.08
1.53
7.53
NWFP
FATA
Punjab
Sindh
Balochistan
Islamabad
*
Refers to a very small proportion
Source: Population Census Organization, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Statistics,
Government of Pakistan. Available on the World Wide Web at URL:
http://www.statpak.gov.pk/depts/pco/statistics/statistics.html
57
Niloufer Siddiqui
Table III
Results of National Elections in Pakistan and
Provincial Elections in Sindh
Year
National Elections:
Number of Seats
Provincial Elections:
Number of Seats
1988
13
31
1990
15
1993
Boycott
28
1997
12
28
2002
17
42
2008
25
51
References:
1
2
3
4
6
7
8
9
58
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Carnage in Karachi: A City Under Siege

12/05/07. Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.hrcp-web.org/pub_
home12-05-07.cfm
South Asia Forum for Human Rights, The Mohajirs of Pakistan. Available on the World
Wide Web at URL: http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch14_5.htm
This paper, too, will use the term Mohajir (alternative spellings include Muhajir) to refer
to the specific ethnonationalist subset of people to which the MQM appeals.
The situation diered between the various migrants for a number of reasons. The Mohajirs who migrated to Sindh diered substantially from the indigenous Sindhis in terms
of linguistic, cultural and historical background. On the other hand, Muslims migrating
from East Punjab found more cultural similarities with their counterparts in West Punjab. Rehman, J. Self-Determination, State-Building and the Muhajirs: An International
Legal Perspective of the Role of Indian Muslim Refugees in the Constitutional Development of Pakistan. Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 3, Issue 2, 1994.
Rashid, Abbas and Farida Shaheed. Pakistan: Ethno-Politics and Contending Elites.
Discussion Paper No. 45, June 1993. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.unrisd.org/unrisd/
website/document.nsf/240da49ca467a53f80256b4f005ef245/49e58dad1f9390b6802
56b6500565470/$FILE/dp45.pdf
Jarelot, Christophe. A History of Pakistan and its Origins. Wimbeldon Publishing Company, London, 2002. Page 34. See Table I.
Mohammad Waseem, Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: The Case of MQM. The Pakistan
Development Review. 35:4 Part II (Winter 1996). Page 620.
Jarelot. A History of Pakistan and its Origins. Ibid. Page 34.
The rural-urban linguistic divide in Sindh is also clear: while 92percent of the people
in rural Sindh speak Sindhi and only 1.62percent speak Urdu, in urban Sindh, there are
42percent Urdu-speakers as opposed to 25percent Sindhi-speakers. See Table II. Popu-
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
lation Census Organization, Ministry of Economic Aairs and Statistics, Government of

Pakistan. Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.statpak.gov.pk/depts/
pco/statistics/statistics.html
Samad, Yunas. In and Out of Power but not Down and Out: Mohajir Identity Politics.
In Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation. Ed. Christopher Jarelot. Zed Books, London, UK. 2002. Page 63.
Samad distinguished between the two by arguing, One was about the construction
of a community, which in Andersons terms was about imagination, and the other was
the instrumental character of political organizations representing Mohajirs interests. .
Ibid. Page 65.
Haq, Farhat. Rise of the MQM in Pakistan: Politics of Ethnic Mobilization. Asian Survey, Vol. 35, No. 11, Nov. 1995. Page 991.
Richards, Julien. An Uncertain Voice: the MQM in Pakistans Political Scene. Pakistan
Security Research Unit (PSRU), Brief Number 11. 26th April, 2007. Page 4.
Gurr, Ted Robert. Why Men Rebel. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1970.
Cohen, Stephen. The Idea of Pakistan. Brookings Institution Press, USA. September
2004.
Oldenburg, Philip. A Place Insuciently Imagined: Language, Belief and the Pakistan
Crisis of 1971. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 44, No. 4, August 1985.
Waseem, Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: The Case of MQM. Ibid.
Ibid. Page 621.
Samad, In and Out of Power but not Down and Out: Mohajir Identity Politics. Ibid.
Page 66.
Shaheed, Farida. The Pashtun-Muhajir Conflicts, 1985-6: A National Perspective. In
Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia. Ed. Veena Das.
Oxford University Press, Delhi. 1990.
Maniruzzaman, Talukder. Group Interests in Pakistan Politics, 1947 1958, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 1/2, (Spring - Summer, 1966), pp. 83-98.
Haq, Rise of the MQM in Pakistan: Politics of Ethnic Mobilization. Ibid. Page 991.
Jarelot, Christophe. Nationalism without a Nation: Pakistan Searching for its Identity. In Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation?. Ed. Christophe Jarelot. Zed Books,
London, UK. 2002. Page 23.
Samad, In and Out of Power but not Down and Out: Mohajir Identity Politics. Ibid.
Page 67.
Ibid.
Jarelot, Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation. Ibid. Page 23.
Rashid, Abbas and Farida Shaheed. Pakistan: Ethno-Politics and Contending Elites.
Discussion Paper No. 45, June 1993. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.unrisd.org/unrisd/
website/document.nsf/240da49ca467a53f80256b4f005ef245/49e58dad1f9390b6802
56b6500565470/$FILE/dp45.pdf
Waseem. Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: The Case of MQM. Ibid.
Haq, Rise of the MQM in Pakistan: Politics of Ethnic Mobilization. Ibid. Page 992.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Richards, An Uncertain Voice: the MQM in Pakistans Political Scene. Ibid.
Ibid.
Hussain, Altaf. Life and Death of Mohajirs is Associated with Sindh Province. January 6, 2006. Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.mqm.org/EnglishNews/Jan-2006/news060107.htm
59
Niloufer Siddiqui
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
60
Rehman, J. Self-Determination, State-Building and the Muhajirs: An International Legal Perspective of the Role of Indian Muslim Refugees in the Constitutional Development of Pakistan. Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 3, Issue 2, 1994.
Haq, Rise of MQM in Pakistan. Ibid. Page 993.
Rashid and Shaheed. Pakistan: Ethno-Politics and Contending Elites. Ibid. Page 28.
Waseem, Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: The Case of MQM. Ibid. Page 624.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Richards, An Uncertain Voice: the MQM in Pakistans Political Scene. Ibid. Page 7.
Hussain, Akmal. The Karachi Riots of December 1986: Crisis of State and Civil Society
in Pakistan. In Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia. Ed.
Veena Das. Oxford University Press, Delhi. 1990. Page 189.
Haq, Rise of the MQM in Pakistan. Ibid. Page 990.
Hussain, The Karachi Riots of December 1986: Crisis of State and Civil Society in Pakistan. Ibid. Page 187.
Ibid.
Haq, Rise of the MQM in Pakistan. Ibid.
Ibid. Page 621.
Rehman, J., Self-Determination, State-Building and the Muhajirs: An International Legal Perspective of the Role of Indian Muslim Refugees in the Constitutional Development of Pakistan. Ibid.
Shaheed, Farida. The Pashtun-Muhajir Conflicts, 1985-6: A National Perspective. Page
200.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Autonomy denial can lead to demand for self-determination: Altaf. THE NATION.
MARCH 25, 2007. AVAILABLE ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB AT URL: http://www.nation.com.
pk/daily/mar-2007/25/index7.php
See Table III.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Samad, In and Out of Power but not Down and Out. Ibid. Page 69.
In 1997, for instance, the MQM entered an alliance with the PML(N), both at the federal level and in the Sindh province. The alliance was achieved after negotiations on
continuing MQM concerns, such as the repatriation of Biharis and the quotas for Mohajirs. Samad, In and Out of Power But not Down and Out. Ibid. Page 75.
Ibid.
Why Karachi is so Violent. BBC NEWS. OCTOBER 7, 1999. AVAILABLE ON THE WORLD
WIDE WEB AT URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/188644.stm
Rashid and Shaheed. Pakistan: Ethno-Politics and Contending Elites. Ibid. Page 27.
Altaf Hussain: Founder and Leader of MQM. Available on the World Wide Web at
URL: http://mqmhydzone.org/Biography.htm
Haq, Rise of MQM in Pakistan. Ibid. Page 1002.
What Does MQM Want? MQM Manifesto. 1998. Available on the World Wide Web
at URL: http://www.mqm.org/manifesto/manifesto-1998-mqmwant.htm

69
70
71
72
73
74
75
Ali, Dean. Altaf Hussain Visits India: His Keynote Speech. Chowk. November 8, 2004.
Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.chowk.com/articles/8314
Samad, In and Out of Power but not Down and Out. Ibid. Page 76.
Hussain, Altaf. MQM Does Not Want Confrontation with any Party. April 15, 2008.
Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.mqm.com/
Others outside of the party, however, continue to deem the MQM terrorist in nature.
This was evidenced in the recent legal action filed by Imran Khan, leader of Tehreek-eInsaf, against Altaf Hussein, holding the MQM Chief responsible for violence in Karachi
and referring to it as both fascist and terrorist. Imran Khan Plans UK Legal Action.
BBC News, June 2, 2007. Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://news.bbc.
co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6714551.stm
Hussain, Altaf. Life and Death of Mohajirs is Associated with Sindh Province. January 6, 2006. Available on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.mqm.org/EnglishNews/Jan-2006/news060107.htm
Ul-Ashfaque, Azfar. MQM to Join Sindh Cabinet. DAWN NEWSPAPER, APRIL 30, 2008.
AVAILABLE ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB AT URL: http://www.dawn.com/2008/04/30/top15.
htm
61
TRANSFORMATION OF AL QAEDA
Khaled Ahmed*
Abstract.
(The paper traces the origins of Al Qaeda, details the thinking of its
founders like the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam and the distant jurists in
history like Ibn Taymiyya whose writings jibed with the jihad planned
by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and his deputy Egyptian Aiman Al
Zawahiri. It talks about the early rifts that appeared in the organisation
and the rise of the Jordanian al Zarqawi who strengthened the sectarian
trend in Al Qaeda. The sectarian trend was acquired after the arrival of
Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the spread of its influence inside Pakistan.
It continued to patronise the jihadi outfits devoted to sectarian violence
without evolving a sectarian philosophy of its own. Finally al Zarqawi
completed the process in Iraq and forced Al Qaeda to embrace a
sectarian worldview. Author).
In 2006, Al Qaeda in Iraq was killing the Shia. This was a new
phase in the growth of the organisation. It came into being vaguely as
a promoter of jihad against the Soviet Union, then against the United
States. Its intellectual origins were confused between a sense of the
global and the regional. It set off on the global level but was soon
diverted to focus on the region of Islam. Its internal debate pointed it
to seeking revenge against Muslim states collaborating with the United
States and Israel. Thus a dynamic of change was built into its growth. It
moved towards a consolidation of its identity along with the condition
of change determined by the nature of the intellectual leadership offered
by its charismatic leader Osama bin Laden. It is therefore wrong to be
surprised that Al Qaeda is killing Muslims in Iraq.
The first deviation took place when Al Qaeda attempted to kill
*
Khaled Ahmed is Consulting Editor of the Friday Times, Lahore.
the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and bombed the Egyptian

embassy in Islamabad in 1995. But this was a Sunni-killing-Sunni trend
and was justified by the salafist-jahiliyya trend of thinking rampant
in the Islamist radicals of Egypt. Earlier, in the 1980s, Al Qaeda had
allowed, or supported, its Pakistani ancillary jihadi militias to kill the
Shia of Pakistan. These killings were underpinned by fatwas issued by
Pakistans Deobandi seminaries and the content of these fatwas relied
heavily on the salafist objection to the Shia faith by Ibn Taymiyya. Al
Qaeda supported the Taliban as they destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan
and killed the Shia Hazaras of Central Afghanistan. But when Al Qaeda
killed the Sunnis of Egypt it was not yet called sectarian. It is only in
Iraq that it had to accept the intellectually demeaning (among Muslims)
epithet of sectarian.
The first instinct behind what later became Al Qaeda was the concept
of jihad, fighting in the way of Allah. It was of a piece with the age-old
motivational force of Islam as a venture, as explained by Marshall
G.S. Hodgson, that is, Islam as a venture of ultimate domination1. Even
the moderate Muslim clerical leaders seek domination of Islam as a
religious duty albeit with peaceful means, through invitation (dawa).
Sheikh Qardawi, the Qatar-based middle-of-the-road (wassatiyya)
interpreter of Islam said in Ohio in 1995: We will conquer Europe, we
will conquer America, not through the sword but through dawa.2
The founding genius of Abdullah Azzam
In Afghanistan the Arabs changed the often peaceful efforts at
conversion (dawa) to war (jihad). The man who led the new movement
was Abdullah Azzam (1941-1989), a Palestinian Arab who travelled to
Damascus University in Syria for higher studies and joined the Muslim
Brotherhood (Ikhwan) there. He then went to Al Azhar University in
Egypt and completed his PhD there in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) in
1973. He met the family of Syed Qutb, the Ikhwan leader who gave a
new meaning to the concept of jahiliyya (Age of pre-Islamic Darkness)
after reading it in the works of Pakistans Maulana Maududi, and by
bringing it closer to the way it was earlier understood by Muhammad
ibn Abdul Wahhab of Saudi Arabia.3 It is from Syed Qutb that Islamic
63
Khaled Ahmed
radicals learned to apply it to the Muslims who actually professed to be

Muslims but did not follow the true sharia.
Abdullah Azzam thereafter taught at the University of Jordan in
Amman but was dismissed from his job because of his involvement with
the Brotherhood. After that he moved to Saudi Arabia and joined the
brother of Syed Qutb, Muhammad Qutb, on the faculty of King Abdul
Aziz University. It was here that Qutb and Azzam met and influenced their
pupil, Osama bin Laden. Azzam wrote his tract Defending the Land of
the Muslims is Each Mans Most Important Duty and acknowledged the
influence of Hanbali-Wahhabi thinkers on his work, especially Sheikh
Abdul Aziz bin Baz, the chief mufti of Saudi Arabia, who had declared
jihad obligatory on all Muslims instead of the Islamic state while
addressing the mosques of Jeddah and Riyadh. Azzam also quoted Ibn
Taymiyya: If the enemy enters a Muslim land, there is no doubt that
it is obligatory for the closest and then the next closest to repel him,
because the Muslims lands are like one land. It is obligatory to march
to the territory even without permission of parents or creditors.4 It was
under Azzams inspiration and a direct reference to Ibn Taymiyya that
Osama bin Laden would challenge the stationing of American troops in
Saudi Arabia in 1991. But by planning to strike at the enemy at his home
base, he broke with Azzam, as will be seen below.
The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union presented Azzam
with a situation where he was able to apply his theory of jihad. After he left
his position in Jeddah, the Muslim World League (Rabita Alam Islami)
appointed him to the International Islamic University in Islamabad,
Pakistan, in 1984, where he taught jurisprudence and his theory of
jihad while handling the affairs of the Muslim World League, already a
major source of funding of scholars engaged in anti-Iran and anti-Shia
sectarian writings. The World Muslim League office was later put in the
charge of the Jordanian Muhammad Abdur Rehman Khalifa who ended
up marrying one of Osama bin Ladens daughters. In time the League
office in Peshawar became a great feeding mechanism for what became
Al Qaeda. Azzam also ran the Muslim Brotherhood office in Peshawar.
Another important person who joined him in Peshawar in 1985 was
Sheikh Omar Abdur Rehman the blind Egyptian cleric who would be
64
involved in the first terrorist action against the World Trade Center by
half-Kuwaiti-half-Pakistani Ramzi Yousef whose trips to Islamabad also
included staying in the hostels of the International Islamic University.
Rehman was apprehended in the US and Ramzi Yousef was handed over
to the United States by Pakistan. Azzam opened his Maktab Khadamat
al-Mujahideen (Afghan Service Bureau Front or MAK) in Peshawar
and was apparently working in tandem with Pakistani authorities.
Azzam worked closely with Pakistans intelligence agency the
ISI while Osama bin Laden served as his deputy. They were helped
significantly by Saudi Arabia and its numerous private donors while
Muslim Brotherhood remained an important background influence. The
ISI was both the CIAs conduit for arms transfer and the principal trainer
of the Afghan and foreign mujahideen. The CIA provided sophisticated
weaponry including ground-to-air Stinger missiles and satellite imagery
of Soviet troop deployments.5 Azzam has been called the founder of
Hamas too, but when he was killed in 1989 he was more convinced of
fighting the global jihad than the more restricted and less effective jihad
in Palestine or in Egypt. His thinking went into the founding principles
of Al Qaeda when it came into being soon after his death. Another person
arrived from Egypt to become close to Osama and change the direction
of the new-born organisation.
Aiman Al Zawahiri takes over
Aiman Al Zawahiri came from a privileged family of doctors in
Egypt aligned with an equally privileged family of scholars and lawyers
on his mothers side, the Azzams. Himself a qualified physician, (he
was to acquire a PhD in surgery [sic!] later from a Pakistani medical
university while living in Peshawar6) he was inspired by the Quranic
exegesis of Syed Qutb and was able to radicalise its message even
further by applying violence to end the jahiliyya or Muslim societies not
living under sharia. Some think that Al Zawahiri was violent right from
the start and that he became a hardliner after he moved to Afghanistan.
The watershed event was the assassination of President Sadat in 1981
by Gamaa Islamiyya and an alliance of extremist outfits called Islamic
Jihad. Hundreds of activists of both were imprisoned. Al Zawahiri was
65
Khaled Ahmed
tortured till he betrayed his closest recruit in the Egyptian army, Al

Qamari, an act that would shape his later career through contrition. The
trauma bestowed on him the unbending quality that he in turn inculcated
into Al Qaeda.
Earlier when Gamaa Islamiyya had chosen Sheikh Omar Abdul
Rehman as its leader, Al Zawahiri had protested saying the sharia did
not allow a blind man to be the imam of an organisation. This was an
early sign of toughness from an otherwise soft-spoken and self-effacing
Al Zawahiri, an attribute that continued to arouse deep loyalty among
the warriors who followed him. Al Zawahiri left Egypt because it was
too free a society for his ideas to spread without being critiqued
in its free press. He first went to Saudi Arabia and joined the Abdul
Aziz University in Jeddah to be with two intellectual giants of jihad,
Muhammad Qutb - the brother of Syed Qutb - and Abdullah Azzam,
the inspiring Palestinian thinker profiled above. Al Zawahiri had
already visited Afghanistan after the war there in 1980 and had worked
at Seyyeda Zainab Hospital in Peshawar run by the Ikhwan. He was
imprisoned for the assassination of Sadat in 1981 on his return, for three
years; he came back to Afghanistan in 1986.
In Afghanistan (with a free run of Pakistan too) he had to marry
his plan of terrorism against Egypt with Osama bin Ladens money and
his wider confrontation. (Al Zawahiri called America the far enemy;
but the near enemy, Egypt, had to be attacked first.) Abdullah Azzam
however was in charge of operations in Peshawar. Al Zawahiri possibly
had Azzam and his two sons murdered in Peshawar in 1989 to get
the full attention of Osama bin Laden and take over the burgeoning
organisation. A Gamaa member was seen having an argument with Al
Zawahiri on the streets of Peshawar in the course of which Al Zawahiri
accused Azzam of being an agent because he had good relations with
Gamaa. He attended the funeral of the imam of the mujahideen the
next day!
Al Zawahiri attacked not only Gamaa for going quiescent after the
1997 massacre at Luxor, he had earlier attacked the Ikhwan in his book
The Bitter Harvest for giving up violence. He held to his view that Egypt
66
had to be attacked because that was where the West had to be fought
first. Located in Peshawar, he repeatedly tried to assassinate Egyptian
ministers and civil servants suspected of persecuting the Islamists. His
recruits narrowly missed two government figures in Cairo but killed one
informer. He had accused the Egyptian Islamists of randomness but they
too accused him of randomness when he tried to destroy the Egyptian
embassy in Islamabad in 1995, succeeding only partially. Pursuing
Osama bin Ladens agenda against the Americans after the setting up of
Al Qaeda, he tried to blow up the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-usSalam in Africa in 1998, again, with only partial success. However, he
was able to inflict more extensive damage in Yemen and Al Khobar.
Al Zawahiris redirection of Islamism
Al Zawahiri and bin Laden had to leave Afghanistan in 1994 for
Sudan because of the infighting among the Afghan mujahideen during
the presidency of Rabbani, and returned in 1996 after striking a deal
with Mulla Umar after the latters Taliban had established almost total
control over Afghanistan. Pakistan was on the side of the Taliban and
was weaned from it only after 9/11. It had also expressed its inability to
the Clinton administration to make the Taliban expel Osama bin Laden.
Al Zawahiri accepted the tough Islam of the Taliban even though it
would not sit well with the Islamists back in Egypt who were liberal with
regard to women. The Taliban accepted a Wahhabised radicalisation
of their projection of ideological power because they got bin Ladens
money in addition to the assistance they got from Islamabad. Pakistan
was greatly influenced by this Taliban-Al Qaeda fundamentalism in its
own ISI-driven internal transformation into an Islamised society.
Some Gamaa members of Egypt accuse Al Qaeda and especially Al
Zawahiri of causing great harm to the Islamist cause. In violation of past
practice, Al Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden would not own up to acts
of terrorism till the 9/11 incident, when both came on TV to only hint
at having done it. Al Zawahiri was accused of having miscalculated the
American response after 9/11. He thought it would be like the attacks that
came in the wake of the African cases, that is, bombing of Afghanistan.
But a full-fledged invasion of Afghanistan authorised through a Security
67
Khaled Ahmed
Council resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter had damaged the

Islamist cause beyond repair.
Kepel is of the opinion that Al Zawahiri began to monopolise
Osama after the Arabs settled down in Peshawar with their wives and
children and gradually managed to replace Azzam as Osamas spiritual
mentor. He turned Osama off Azzam and his Ikhwan background by
writing his anti-Brotherhood tract Sixty Years of the Muslim Brothers
Bitter Harvest.7 He was not very effective when he recommended an
anti-American course of action simply because the Arabs were being
supplied weapons by the CIA, but later, as the Soviets prepared to
leave, and the Americans looked like losing interest in Afghanistan, his
argument tended to prevail. Kepel says that in this period there was a
lot of violence among the Arabs and Azzam was assassinated. Bergen
adds that after Azzam was gone, Arabs, inspired by Azzam originally
agreed to turn the jihad against the United States, as happened in the
case of Muhammad Odeh, a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian descent
studying in the Philippines in the late 1980s and was inspired by a video
message from Azzam. In 1998, he played a key role in the bombing of
the American embassy in Kenya.8 Bergen also mentions the changing
orientation of Osama because of his closeness with the Afghan warlord
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who was host to the Egyptian Gamaa leader
Omar Abdur Rehman in Peshawar in 1985. By 2004, 25,000 Arabs had
found their way to the training camps of jihad with Saudi airlines giving
75 percent discount on air travel to and from Pakistan. Gunaratna is
more precise:
The broad outlines of what would become Al Qaeda were formulated
by Azzam in 1987 and 1988, its founding charter being completed
by him in that period. He envisaged it as being an organisation that
would channel the energies of the mujahideen into fighting on behalf of
oppressed Muslims worldwide, an Islamic rapid reaction force ready
to spring to the defence of their fellow believers at short notice. Toward
the end of the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign, Osamas relationship with
Azzam deteriorated, and in late 1988 and 1989, they disagreed over
several issues. One of these concerned the Al Masada mujahideen
training camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border. In early 1989 Osama
68
asked Azzam whether it could be turned over to Al Qaeda in order to

become its principal base. Azzam refused, notwithstanding Osamas
continued entreaties.9
Al Zawahiris near enemy and the death of Azzam
The truth is that Osama was persuaded by Zawahiris argument
in favour of al adou al qareeb (enemy who is nearby) in opposition to
Azzams global vision of jihad which was described to Osama as al adou
al baeed (enemy who is far away). This was in effect the beginning of
the narrowing of the vision of Al Qaeda. Once this strategy was adopted
the jihadists or mujahideen were permitted to vent their own local and
regional anger, which finally came to focus on the Shia. The Arabs at
first stayed aloof from the passions that swayed the Pakistani mujahideen
whom Osama trained in his camps. The jihad that was fought against the
Soviets was spearheaded by the ISI and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, neither of
whom was brought up on sectarian indoctrination. But starting 1985-86,
the Saudis had begun their anti-Iran campaign among the seminaries
in Pakistan, mainly among the Deobandi-Ahle Hadith ones. After that,
starting with the Taliban and the return to Afghanistan of Al Qaeda from
Sudan, the Arabs saw a changed battlefront. The Saudis had eliminated
the Iran-based Shia mujahideen from the Afghan government in exile
established in Peshawar in 1989 and the ISI was fighting its own war
against Iran. According to Barnett Rubin, in 1989, the Afghan mujahideen
government-in-exile came into being in Peshawar after the Soviet
retreat from Afghanistan. At the behest of Saudi Arabia, the exiled Shia
mujahideen of Iran were not included in this government. The Saudis
paid over 26 million dollars a week to the 519-member session of the
Mujahideen shura (council) as a bribe for it. Each member of the shura
received 25,000 dollars for the deal which was facilitated, according to
Rubin, by the ISI chief General Hamid Gul.10
The Taliban were linked to the Pakistani mujahideen through their
Deobandi faith mostly absorbed from the seminaries in the NWFP and
the Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Fawaz A Gerges, based on his extremely
informative interviews among the jihadists, gives a more intimate
account of how Azzams vision was superseded within Al Qaeda:
69
Khaled Ahmed
Azzams followers accuse Zawahiri of precipitating the final

divorce between bin Laden and Azzam by spreading rumours that
Azzam was an American spy. Osama Rushdi, a leader of the Egyptian
Islamic Group who knew bin Laden, Azzam, and Zawahiri, blames
Zawahiri for Azzams murder. Abdullah Anas, Azzams son-in-law and
a senior jihadist who fought in Afghanistan along his side, recalled that
Azzam had complained bitterly to him about the backbiting troublemakers, Zawahiri in particular, who spoke against the mujahideen. In
his memoirs Anas reported that Azzam would say, They have only one
point, to create fitna (sedition) between and these volunteers.11
Azzam was a non-terrorist internationalist. His concept of jihad
did not include the killing of innocent citizens as collateral damage.
With the removal of Azzam, Al Qaeda moved away from a defensive
jihad against an invading Soviet Union and embraced terrorism as its
methodology. Later, under the influence of Zarqawi, it would move from
the empirical to the conceptual by condemning democracy and justify
the killing of the Shia in Iraq because they had embraced democracy.
Gunaratna gives us yet another insight:
Though Azzam was the ideological father of Al Qaeda, bin Laden
gradually assumed leadership of the group. Toward the end of the antiSoviet Afghan campaign, however, bin Ladens relationship with Azzam
deteriorated. The dispute over Azzams support for Ahmad Shah Massoud,
who later became the leader of the Northern Alliance, caused tension.
Bin Laden preferred Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, former Prime Minister and
leader of the Islamic Party (Hizb-i-Islami), who was both anti-communist
and anti-western. Furthermore, together with the Egyptian members of
Al Qaeda, bin Laden wished to support terrorist action against Egypt
and other Muslim secular regimes. Having lived in Egypt, Azzam knew
the price of such actions and opposed it vehemently. Azzam and bin
Laden went their separate ways. Later, Azzam was assassinated by the
Egyptian members of Al Qaeda in Peshawar, Pakistan. After the Afghan
victory, bin Laden was lionised in the eyes of those who fought with
him in the war as a brave warrior and selfless Muslim ruler.12 Through
the slightly varying testimony of authors who watched Al Qaeda in that
period one can draw the conclusion that Azzam was killed because of an
70
internal organisational dispute, in which Al Zawahiri and Osama were

able to join together to isolate him. There is also a general consensus
that he was killed by members of Al Qaeda who accepted Al Zawahiris
leadership.
Al Qaeda allows Pakistani sectarianism
At the best of times, Pakistans close relations with the Taliban did not
result in the latters acceptance of Pakistans demand that sectarian killers
belonging to Sipah Sahaba, Lashkar Jhangvi and Harkat Jihad Islami, who
routinely escaped into Afghanistan after committing collective murders
in Pakistan, be caught and surrendered to it. The Taliban themselves
could not avoid a sectarian slant to their Sunni caliphate. They were not
able to co-opt the Hazara Shia of Central Afghanistan in their drive to
encircle and destroy the Tajik-Sunni warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud. In
fact, the Taliban prejudice was quite deep-rooted and was responsible
for the killing of many Hazaras who had fled into Pakistan. The siege
of Bamiyan in 2001 killed thousands of Hazaras through starvation and
sheer slaughter, in revenge for the 1998 massacre of the Taliban by the
Hazaras when the Taliban army tried to conquer the northern city of
Mazar-e-Sharif and ran up against an alliance of non-Pushtun forces.
The massacres were carried out with the help of Al Qaeda and members
of Sipah Sahaba and Lashkar Jhangvi, the sectarian Deobandi killers of
Pakistan. This explains why the Taliban never responded to Islamabads
demand for the surrender of the Lashkar activists. That year the Taliban
also destroyed the famous Bamiyan Buddhas after the Hazara pogroms
had laid the region low. That Al Qaeda was involved in the massacre of
the Shia was proved later when evidence came forth that it was Al Qaeda
that had persuaded the Taliban to destroy the ancient statues situated in
the territory of the Shia.
Mullah Umar didnt know Osama bin Laden before he arrived from
Sudan in 1996 and was given into the safe hands of Maulvi Yunus Khalis
in Jalalabad by the ISI. Osama himself courted Umar with a wheedling
letter which worked. They met finally after the Taliban had captured
Kabul. Kathy Gannon narrates how the Taliban began by securing the
Bamiyan Buddhas against vandalism by issuing edicts from Mullah
71
Khaled Ahmed
Umar describing them as Afghanistans cultural heritage in 1999.13 In

2001 Osama bribed Umars deputy prime minister and defence minister
into convincing him to issue another edict for their destruction! The
Taliban seemed to be religiously tentative. The hard Islam they adopted
came from three sources: their Deobandi faith, the Pakistan army and
its active arm the ISI, and the Wahhabi warriors of Osama bin Laden.
And the most persuasive factor here was not religious conviction but
money. After the Buddhas were destroyed, the Islamabad ministry for
religious affairs issued a statement saying the destruction was according
to Islamic principles. Pakistan was harder in faith than the Afghan
medieval marauder Mehmud Ghaznavi who had spared the Bamiyan
Buddhas but destroyed some of the most prominent temples of India in
1025 AD.
In 2003, the Hazaras of Quetta became victims of terrorism amid
reports that some important personalities connected with Osama bin
Laden were living in Quetta, including the son of the blind Gamaa
leader Umar Abdur Rehman now serving a life sentence in the United
States for planning the attack on World Trade Center in 1993. Osama
Bin Laden was later to plan another unsuccessful terrorist-hijack plan
to force America to free the blind Egyptian cleric. When the Al Qaeda
number three Ramzi bin al-Shibh was captured in Karachi in 2004,
the planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was with him in the
same safe house. He escaped to Quetta where he sought shelter in yet
another safe house of Jamaat Islami.
After the defeat of the Taliban in 2001, many of its activists and the
Al Qaeda Arabs fled into Pakistan. Karachi, which was to be transformed
into ground zero of Pakistans sectarian massacres became home to
them. They were welcomed by the seminaries already funded by Saudi
Arabia and by the religious parties that ignored or encouraged the antiShia campaigns of their youths. It was here that many terrorists from
the Middle East and Southeast Asia were trained and then sent out on
missions of sectarian violence. The tendency of not associating the Arabs
and Al Qaeda with Shia-killing in Pakistan is quite pronounced and has
accounted for the states inability to effectively counter sectarianism.
For instance in President Pervez Musharrafs account of how he faced
72
up to the attempts made on his life by the Deobandi militias and Al

Qaeda, he completely ignores the sectarian activities of these entities.
In chapter 24 of his book he gives a detailed account of Amjad Faruqi
the man who planned the attempts on his life in Rawalpindi in 2003 but
does not refer to his links with Lashkar Jhangvi while mentioning in
passing that he had links with Jaish Muhammad. In his three chapters
devoted to terrorism, he simply ignored the thousands of Shia killed by
the same people who had tried to kill him.14
A blanket sectarian outfit
General Musharraf should have got his intelligence services to give
him material for at least one chapter on the Shia killed by Al Qaeda and
its Deobandi protgs on his watch. Amjad Faruqi, with a bounty of Rs
20 million on his head was killed in 2004 in Sindh after a five-hour gun
battle. He was wanted for two abortive attempts on the life of Pervez
Musharraf in 2003, and the murder of the American journalist Daniel
Pearl who was personally beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. His
biggest link with Al Qaeda was his involvement in the 1999 hijack of
the Indian airliner IC-814 which sought to free a Harkatul Mujahideen
leader Masud Azhar from an Indian jail. Although Pervez Musharraf
clearly refers to Jaish as a terrorist organisation, it was not seen as such
by Islamabad before it attempted to take his life at the behest of Al Qaeda.
As noted elsewhere, the government of Pervez Musharraf handled him
as its favourite after his release from the Indian jail and let him roam
freely in the country despite his avowed terrorist and sectarian links.
In fact a lot of the sectarian slaughter that took place under Musharraf
would have been avoided had he moved to stop Masud Azhar.
Amjad Faruqi belonged to Harkat Jihad Islami, the largest
jihadi organisation with its headquarters in Kandahar and the largest
participation in it of the Taliban fighters who later occupied important
posts in the cabinet of Mullah Umar. One reason Musharraf did not
discuss Faruqi in more detail could be that Faruqis sectarian contacts
went deep into the army too. A Terrorist Monitor report sketches the
scene in Karachi in 2004:
73
Khaled Ahmed
Karachi continues to be a safe haven for extremist religious groups

like Lashkar Jhangvi and terrorists groups like Harkatul Mujahideen and
Harkat Jihad Islami (HUJI). In fact HUJI runs 48 seminaries in Karachi.
The biggest of these, Madrassa Khalid bin Walid, trains more than 500
students at any given point of time. It is the command headquarters of
Karachi Muslims fighting the military regime in Burma. Their leader
is Maulana Abdul Quddus a Myanmarese Muslim who fled to India
and made his way to Karachi where he received his religious training
before leaving for Afghanistan to join the jihad. A large number of his
students fought the Northern Alliance during the Afghan wars of the
1990s. Some went to Kashmir with other HUJI members to fight Indian
Security Forces but none returned to Myanmar or Bangladesh, choosing
instead to make Karachi their home. Their collective objective is to turn
Pakistan into another Taliban-style country.15
In 2006 a Bangladeshi suicide bomber killed the top Shia leader
of Pakistan, Allama Hasan Turabi, in Karachi after telling his parents
through a video message that he was promised Heaven for doing the
deed.
Because of the strong presence of the religious parties, their militias
and the Al Qaeda Arabs, Karachi was chosen as the scene of regular
Shia-killing. Akram Lahori, who took over Lashkar Jhangvi after the
death in a police encounter of Riaz Basra in 2002, was involved in the
assassination of several prominent Shias including the brother of the
federal interior minister, General (Retired) Moinuddin Haider. He also
killed 24 Shias in Mominpura in Lahore and 11 at Imambargah Najaf
in Rawalpindi, but his links with Al Qaeda came into the open through
Naeem Bukhari, whose involvement in the murder of Daniel Pearl was
traced to the Yemeni elements of the organisation. Wilson John reports
from the testimony of Fazal Karim, a Lashkar Jhangvi activist picked
up in Rahimyar Khan three months after the killing of Daniel Pearl:
Al Qaeda had merged with various sectarian and criminal groups in
Karachi to carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan.16 There was a strong
rumour in Pakistan that finally when Amjad Faruqi was killed in Sindh
it was the intelligence agencies who refused to allow him to surrender
as that would have revealed the hand of the state in his sectarian crimes
74
on behalf of Al Qaeda.
In many accounts of the 1994 bomb attack at the mausoleum of
Imam Raza in Mashhad in Iran, Al Qaedas Ramzi Yousef and Lashkar
Jhangvi are referred to as the perpetrators. In fact, it shows an early
penchant within Al Qaeda towards sectarianism. Lashkar Jhangvi is also
mentioned separately from Sipah Sahaba, its mother organisation and
other Deobandi religious parties. Suroosh Irfani notes this blurring of
the boundaries between the extremist and the mainstream in the
Islamist spectrum:
If the JUI (Fazlur Rehman faction) allowed the SSPs leader Riaz
Basra to contest the 1987 national election as its candidate both the
JUI(F) and Jamaat Islami joined SSP in an effort to prevent the death
sentence awarded to SSPs Haq Nawaz (for his role in the murder of
the Iranian consul Sadeq Ganji) from being carried out. These Islamic
parties reportedly went to the extent of demanding that if it was not
possible for General Musharrafs government to pardon Haq Nawaz,
he should be exiled like Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia. Moreover both
the extremist outfits and the mainstream religio-political groups look up
to bin Laden as a hero of Islam. This is borne out by the reaction of
the Mutahidda Majlis Amal (MMA) to the government ads carried in
the national media in June 2002 portraying bin Laden and his Al Qaeda
associates as religious terrorists.17
Just as there is evidence of mainstream religious parties support to
the sectarian killers, there is equally evidence of Al Qaeda supporting
and patronising the sectarian outfits from its very inception, and much
more openly after its return to Afghanistan in 1996 when it found the
hard-line Taliban ruling the country. Financial support from countries
in the Gulf - where hatred of the Shia as a proxy of Revolutionary Iran
was widespread dented the early Al Qaeda resolve of staying away
from internecine conflicts. Also, the induction of more and more Arab
warriors from the Shia-hating regions into Al Qaeda gradually changed
the character of the outfit. Finally, it was a consequence of the decision
to move from Abdullah Azzams distant enemy thesis to Al Zawahiris
near enemy thesis. Abou Zahab makes the following observation:
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Khaled Ahmed
The links between Pakistani Sunni extremists and Arab militants

were forged in the training camps of Afghanistan during the Taliban rule;
Pakistani militants belonging to Sunni extremist groups were involved in
the massacre of Shias in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997 and in Bamiyan in 1998.
After the fall of the Taliban the local jihadis and sectarian groups which
were already linked many sectarian parties were part-time jihadis and
vice versa became the voluntary foot soldiers of Al Qaeda networks in
Pakistan and were instrumentalised for global interests. Some of them
who seemed to work as freelancers and hired killers for foreign groups
were used to launch attacks on Western targets.18
The effect of non-sectarian and less introverted Abdullah Azzam
comes to the fore when one notes a lower sectarian profile of DeobandiAhle Hadith militias in Pakistan who came under his influence. When
Harvard scholar Jessica Stern asked Abdur Rehman Khaleel of Harkatul
Mujahideen (HUM) what book he revered most after the Holy Quran,
he chose the writings of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam.19 He then went on
to praise the genius of Azzam as a thinker. Khaleels organisation has
fractured under the pressure of a bifurcation it suffered in 1999 when
its number two leader Maulana Masud Azhar broke off and set up his
own Jaish Muhammad with the help of his teacher Mufti Shamzai of
Karachis Banuri Mosque seminary. Harkat boys indulged in stray
sectarian crimes only because Khaleels influence had declined and he
was not always able to keep his militants under control.
Similarly, Hafiz Saeed of Ahle Hadith-Wahhabi Lashkar Tayba has
kept himself and his outfit away as much as possible from the Arabdriven sectarian wave in Pakistan. Saeed was a pupil of Azzam when
he was in Saudi Arabia and was greatly inspired by him. His first great
venture in Muridke, a city-like training camp behind walls just outside
Lahore, was built with funds collected by Azzam. After Azzams death
he kept aloof from Shia-killing but could no longer avoid the influence
of the Arabs and Al Qaeda because of his training camps in Kunar, the
headquarters of all Arab warriors. His funds kept coming steadily from
the Gulf States and the Pakistani expatriate community living in the
UK and the US. In the end, on the occasion of Zarqawis death in Iraq,
he could no longer avoid owning up to his sectarian links when he held
76
his ghaibana (in absentia) funeral in Lahore. When he moved to his

new headquarters in Lahore on old Lake Road he named it Qadisiya, a
symbolic anti-Iranian gesture.
Zarqawi and Al Qaedas policy on Shias
Al Qaeda began killing the Shias of Iraq under the local leadership
of Abu Musab al Zarqawi who had fought as an Al Qaeda warrior 1990
onwards. He died in Baghdad in June 2006 with $25 million on his
head. The general impression in Pakistan is that Abu Musab al Zarqawi
was a soldier of Al Qaeda but was disliked by Osama bin Laden for
his anti-Shia feelings. Columnist Hamid Mir wrote in Jang Lahore (12
June 2006) that Abu Musab al Zarqawi was not liked by Osama for
his anti-Shia outlook but he soon gave it up and was thereafter owned
by Osama. Zarqawi began his career of a jihadist in Afghanistan in
the 1980s. In the 1990s he established a training camp there to prepare
guerrillas for rebellion in Jordan. He was jailed in Jordan on his return
for seven years but returned to Afghanistan again, was in Herat training
the jihadists and was in Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden in 2001. He got
injured in Kandahar during the American invasion and was evacuated
through Iran by Hekmatyar who had good contacts in Tehran. He moved
to Iraq after that - well in time to see the Americans invade the country
- and joined the Kurd-led jihadi militia Ansarul Islam there. Ansarul
Islam was founded as a terrorist group by one Mullah Krekar who came
to the Islamic University of Islamabad as a lecturer in the 1980s and
later joined the jihad in Peshawar.
Zarqawi was born in 1966 in the town of Zarqa in Jordan as Ahmad
Fadil Khalayleh and soon was seen as a bad student given to using
physical violence against other boys. (He later borrowed his name
Musab from a Companion of the Prophet, Musab bin Umayr who was
known as the first suicide-bomber, losing both hands in a battle.) In
1987 he was arrested for inflicting a knife wound on a boy and was let
off after his father paid a heavy fine. Two years later, at the age of 23, he
went to Pakistan to join the jihad only to find that the Soviet Union had
already pulled out of Afghanistan. He began to frequent the inner circles
of Al Qaeda which had just been founded by Osama bin Laden. He
77
Khaled Ahmed
lived in Hayatabad, Peshawar, and met the jihadi leaders like Abdullah
Azzam, Hekmatyar and Burhanuddin Rabbani. He also met for the
first time another personality who had arrived there from Jordan, Abu
Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Maqdisi was to direct Zarqawi to a polemical
opposition to democracy as a system destructive of Islams cardinal
principles. He was sent to Khost where he simply arrived as a victor, the
Soviets having left, but he remained in Peshawar and Afghanistan till
1993, fighting against the pro-Communist factions under the Najibullah
government.
Maqdisi was born in 1959 in Barqa in Nablus in West Bank but
was taken by his parents to Kuwait at the age of three. He was sent
to Iraq to study Islam in the 1980s but his salafi faith and hostility to
the Baath Party caused his arrest by the government. He was deported
to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where he soon impressed with his scholastic
ability and was put in charge of the World Islamic Leagues missions
to Afghanistan in 1984. In 1988 he joined the Society of the Revival of
Islamic Heritage in Kuwait which is today banned in Europe and the
US as a terrorist organisation. Maqdisi soon became the Arab worlds
leading thinker with a steady flow of tracts coming from his pen, mostly
reacting to modernism as spearheaded by the West, in particular its
liberal democracy which he thought as being against Islam. Eighteen of
his articles were found in the personal effects of Muhammad Atta, the
leader of the Hamburg Cell, who attacked the World Trade Centre on 11
September 2001. Maqdisi remained in Peshawar for three years, hosted
by the group Bafadat Mujahideen as a professor of religion. It is during
this time that Zarqawi became a follower of Maqdisi. Brisard places
Maqdisi in the ideological centre of Al Qaeda:
According to the Jordanian police, in 1997 some of Maqdisis
terrorist activities were personally financed from Afghanistan by Osama
bin Laden. The two men, said to be close, often met in Afghanistan at
the time, especially in Pakistan, the rear base of the Arab forces. One of
Osamas top associates in Afghanistan the Algerian mujahid Abdullah
Anas, now in exile in London, recalls sharing a meal in Islamabad with
Bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam and Maqdisi. In short Maqdisi was at the
heart of Al Qaeda.20
78
The influence of Maqdisi

It is important to put Maqdisi in perspective as a terrorist ideologue
to be able to understand the depth and significance of the split that took
place later between him and Zarqawi. Through the 1990s Maqdisi kept
writing his tracts and forming new terrorist units as an intrumentalisation
of his radical-Islamist views. His name cropped up in the confessions of
the four citizens arrested in 1994 following the Al Khobar attack mounted
in 1994 against the headquarters of the American soldiers stationed there,
in which five Americans were killed, and for which the Saudis at first
blamed Iran. The four men had been to Pakistan for the jihad and had
met Maqdisi there and read his two books Clear Evidence of the Infidel
Nature of the Saudi State and The Faith of Ibrahim. Brisard refers to
another terrorist Azmiri who was attracted to Maqdisi after reading his
Irrefutable Proof for Understanding Jihad. Azmiri was involved in the
so-called 1994 Bojinka plot to crash several airplanes simultaneously
over the United States which became the forerunner of 9/11. Azmiri
also took part in the aborted attempt to assassinate President Clinton in
1998.21
Maqdisis second close friend in Pakistan links him to Khalid
Sheikh Muhammad, the man who planned the 9/11 strikes. Muhammad
Shobana published an Islamist magazine Al Bynyan al-Marsus (The
Impenetrable Edifice) which was supported by Khalids brother,
Abid Sheikh Muhammad. It was this magazine that first announced
the foundational principles of Al Qaeda in 1989. And it was Shobana
who recruited an almost illiterate Zarqawi into the magazine staff on
Maqdisis recommendation. Zarqawis three sisters ended up marrying
jihad veterans, including one given to a friend personally in accordance
with the Arab practice of giving away sisters and daughters as tokens of
friendship. It was from his base in Al Bunyan that Zarqawi was to make
his way to the Sada camp of Abdur Rasul Sayyaf in Afghanistan and be
in the company of Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.
It is understandable therefore that when in 1992, he returned to Jordan
from Afghanistan, Zarqawi went looking for Maqdisi. Maqdisi was
ready to give him the next ideological injection. He had just published
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Khaled Ahmed
his new book Democracy is a Religion: According to this scathing

diatribe against the West and its form of government, democracy is a
social innovation condemned by the Quran, one that conveys heretical
message. The citizens of democratic states are infidels soon to incur
destruction. Democracy is a religion that is not the religion of AllahIt
is a religion of pagansa religion that includes other gods in its belief
In the democratic religion people are represented by their delegates to
parliamentThey and their associates legislate in accordance with the
religion of democracy and the laws of the constitution on which the
government is based.22
Zarqawi set up a cell of Afghanistan veterans around Maqdisi in
Jordan which was funded by Al Qaeda since it planned to attack important
targets in Jordan, including the blowing up of the intelligence service
headquarters, GID. In 1994 the leaders of the cell including Zarqawi
and Maqdisi were arrested, the latter along with explosives in the false
ceiling of his home. Both signed confessions that their planned terrorism
was meant to target Israel and not Jordan. They were sentenced to prison
for 15 years but were let out in 1999 when amnesty was offered them on
the death of King Hussein and the enthronement of King Abdullah. It
was in part young King Abdullahs mending of the fences with Muslim
Brotherhood whose leaders he then received in audience. (King Abdullah
later regretted his decision to release Zarqawi.) Maqdisi was freed but
kept under surveillance and was sent back to prison in 2002 where he
was at the time of this writing.
In 1999, Zarqawi then made the big decision of his life: to leave
Jordan and the teachings of Maqdisi behind forever. He left for Pakistan
planning to stay on a six-month visa and landed in Hayatabad in Peshawar,
the place of his fond memories of Afghan jihad. Once in Peshawar he
was welcomed by Pakistani Wafa Organisation, later banned by the UN,
which provided Al Qaeda funds and false passports for the jihadists.
Finally many of the important Al Qaeda terrorists including Khalfan
Ghailani, the man who had planned the attack on US embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, were arrested from Hayatabad in 2004.
Zarqawis sister was already living in Peshawar married to a religious
scholar. Zarqawis mother came up to Peshawar to see her son settled
80
there in 1999 and stayed there for a month. Soon his wife and children
too joined him in Hayatabad. But he had only six months to get close to
Osama bin Laden and launch himself at the head of a big operation.
In 1999, the international community became impatient with Pakistan
and its intelligence agency, the ISI. From 1994 to 1999 almost 100,000
Pakistanis had been trained in the Afghan camps run by Al Qaeda, and
the clerics of Pakistan, especially of the Deobandi variety, under the
Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), had begun to sense monetary and military
advantage in aligning themselves with Osama bin Laden. Jordan too put
pressure on Islamabad to arrest the planner of terrorism in Jordan, Khalil
al-Deek, from his hideout in Hayatabad. When the ISI moved to arrest
the Jordanian, Zarqawi too got arrested and was sent to jail. He was
released after a week although he was listed as a terrorist in Jordan. With
an exit permit in his hand, Zarqawi left for Karachi first, then decided to
go to Kabul instead and be one of the trainers of terrorists in Al Qaeda
camps. In Kabul he was given a house before being sent to Herat as a
trainer. He called his family over from Hayatabad but not before he had
married a young girl aged 13 in Kabul after falling in love with her. He
was to marry yet another girl of 16 in Iraq.
Zarqawis opportunity in Herat
The break for Zarqawi and his band of Jordanians in Afghanistan
came when Al Qaeda announced a big operation in the West and asked
for recruits. It was Al Qaedas famous recruiter Abu Zubayda, himself
a Jordanian, who finally picked Zarqawi and his men for the important
mission, lodging them in a house not far from Kabul in an area controlled
by the Afghan warlord Hekmatyar.23 By the end of 1999, Zarqawi had
succeeded in becoming an important mid-level leader inside Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda papers found in Jalalabad after 2001 refer to him as a friend
of Maqdisi, acknowledging the intellectual influence of Maqdisi on Al
Qaeda. Later letters sent by Al Qaeda to Abu Qatada the Al Qaeda leader
in the United Kingdom (now in prison there) speak well of Zarqawi as a
leader in charge of the camps in Herat.
Having sworn personal allegiance to Osama bin Laden, Zarqawi
81
Khaled Ahmed
soon proved his efficiency in Herat where his camp, concealed inside a
religious seminary carried the signboard Tawhid wal Jihad which was
to become the name of his outfit in Iraq later on. He sat on the Islam
Qila crossroads giving access to Turkey through Iran, on the one hand,
and to Chechnya through Turkmenistan, on the other. He was closely
watched by the Iranians although there was agreement between Iran and
Al Qaeda on the right of passage for mujahideen. Zarqawi knew that
the Iranians were financing the Shia militias against the Taliban. Osama
bin Laden was impressed with Zarqawis efforts at training jihadists
in explosives and chemicals (there was even a rumour that Al Qaedas
nuclear material was also stored in Herat) and therefore did not hesitate
to give him $35,000 for his plan to carry out terrorist attacks in Israel in
2000. But Zarqawis Jordanian bombers were arrested in Turkey after
they had crossed through Iran.
Brisard explains that Zarqawis maverick nature constantly induced
him to rebel against his mentors while his brave leadership kept the
Jordanian Al Qaeda in Herat intact as opposed to the Algerians in
Jalalabad who had gone to pieces through factional infighting. After
1999, he had said goodbye to his first mentor Maqdisi; now in 2000 he
wanted to break out of the ideological hold of Osama bin Laden and
Aiman al-Zawahiri:
In the past he had been careful to keep his distance from Maqdisi.
Now he was trying to get free of the political line imposed by Osama
himself especially by Al Zawahiri. This wish for independence was
reinforced by the geographical distance of the Herat camp and the
recurrent criticism of Bin Laden on the part of many jihadists. The Saudi
had the reputation of constructing his own myth to the detriment of the
common cause aimed at restoring the caliphate, and the two factions
in Afghanistan, one of which was Zarqawis, were said to be hostile
to him. But in 2000 Bin Ladens financial and political support was
still indispensable to Zarqawi, and he would have to be patient for
another few months before breaking free. For it was only when he fled
Afghanistan for Iran and then Syria that his expenses would be paid by
his networks in Europe and the Middle East.24
82
Zarqawi breaks free in Iraq

Zarqawi was in Iraq in 2001 two years before the Americans invaded
in March 2003 after the US Secretary of State Colin Powells public
statement about him being Saddams terrorist connection. Powell also
named Zarqawi, wrongly, as a Palestinian terrorist. Zarqawi was in fact
busy setting up an Arab militia in Kurdistan, already softened for the
purpose by Saudi Arabias generous funding there of a salafist movement.
Soon, the predominance of the Arabs in Krekars Ansarul Islam propelled
an increasingly sidelined Krekar into making the decision to flee Iraq
and seek asylum in Norway. The Islamic Movement of Kurdistan was
based on the 500 Arab fighters brought in by Zarqawi. Soon however
he ran into trouble with the Kurdish politician Jalal Talabani and had to
fight his militia first. In 2003 the Arabs in Kurdistan faced an American
offensive and had to run away to Iran and thence to the Sunni Triangle
northwest of Baghdad back in Iraq.
While in the Anbar province in Iraq, Zarqawi and his Tawhid wal
Jihad were to adopt a clear anti-Iran line, which simply goes once again
to prove that he habitually transcended the moral demands made on
him by loyalty. There is proof that Iran rejected Jordans request for
his repatriation from an Iranian jail on the excuse that he was carrying
a Syrian passport. (Iran repeatedly used the strategy of arresting the
Al Qaeda members it was facilitating.) His Arab and Chechen trainees
were allowed by Iran to routinely use its territory for transit. Irans
favours also included safe haven given to the son of Osama bin Laden,
Saad, through the intercession of Hekmatyar. As he embarked on his
war against the Americans from Anbar, he also reached a critical stage
in his relations with his mentor and guide Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi,
then in a Jordanian jail. Maqdisi was of the opinion that Zarqawi should
not wage jihad as a third party when the main warring parties were
both enemies of Islam. In his view Saddam Hussein and America were
both enemies of Islam and Zarqawi should not help either one of them
by intervening: Which Iraq are you talking about? The Baath Party
of Saddam Hussein, the man who killed our clergy, who exterminated
Muslims at Halabjah with his chemical gases? Where were you each
time the United States supported Israel against our Muslim brothers in
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Khaled Ahmed
Palestine?25
But this position changed soon. Al Qaeda announced its agreement
with Zarqawi and ordered its warriors to wage jihad against the Americans
in Iraq. Maqdisi seemed to recant his objection even as the Americans
captured many of Zarqawis warriors, including a Pakistani, Hasan Gul,
from a number of places in Iraq in the autumn of 2003. Zarqawi finally
struck back in April 2004, when he captured and personally beheaded
the American hostage Nicholas Berg. In April he had already posted his
lengthy justification for doing what he was about to do. He decided to
kill Iraqi and Kurd collaborators of America as a strategy of creating
chaos in Iraq. By October he had killed Shias in Nasiriyeh, Baghdad
and Karbala, culminating in his murder of 50 Iraqi National Guards at
a training camp in Kirkuk. (His most decisive act which unleashed the
sectarian war in Iraq was the 2006 destruction of the tomb of Imam
Askari in Samarra.26) He stole the salaries of the trainees in addition
to getting private funding from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and remittances
from the expatriate Muslim communities in Europe. In the beginning of
2004 he applied to Al Qaeda for patronage clearly from a position of
strength. It must be noted that he was already a member of Al Qaeda,
having sworn loyalty on the hand of Osama bin Laden. What he now
demanded was a change in the over-all strategy towards Iran and the
Shia.
The extremism of new ideologues
Al Qaeda viewed Iran as a kind of partner in its hatred of the
Americans and their Saudi protgs. While it tolerated the Shia
killing of its linked Pakistani jihadi organisations, it kept away from
pronouncing on the grand schism. It found Iranian cooperation useful
when it was infiltrating into Iraq and the Caucasus. It was now swayed
by Zarqawi because of his growing autonomous status and an increasing
tendency among the Al Qaeda-backed Islamist jurists to persuade
Muslims in the Middle East and Europe to approve Zarqawis campaign
on behalf of the Arab Sunnis of Iraq. The most persuasive cleric in this
regard was the Qatar-based Egyptian jurist Sheikh Yussef al-Qardawi,
who had earlier approved of Al Qaedas use of suicide-bombers. The
84
Sheikh, characterised as moderate by author Raymond William Baker

in his overly optimistic book, was put under a partial ban by the Qatar
government after this opinion, to guard itself against the protest coming
from the West. But the ban was soon ignored when Qardawi gave a
fatwa in September 2004 authorising abduction and killing of American
civilians in order to force the American Army to withdraw. Qardawi
was completely wrongly perceived by Baker as a representative of
the wassatiyya school among the salafists. He called him the greatest
living Muslim jurist of the 20th century because his one daughter was a
PhD scholar and working in the United States and his other daughters
were studying for their doctorates.27 After Qardawi, another jurist
representing Al Qaeda in the United Kingdom, Abu Qatada now in
a London prison too approved of Zarqawis decision to spread chaos
in Iraq by attacking America together with its collaborators. Another
statement by Zarqawi in October 2004 seems to confirm that Al Qaeda
had finally yielded and approved of his strategy.
Maqdisi was in jail in Jordan when Zarqawi obtained the acceptance
of Al Qaeda and renamed his organisation as Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia.
He was greatly upset over the new strategy of using suicide bombers
to kill people other than the Americans. He wrote two tracts as his
reaction, Al Zarqawi Advice and Support and An Appraisal of the Fruits
of Jihad (July 2004) criticising Zarqawis action in Iraq. Seeing the rift,
the Jordanian authorities released him in December 2004 in the hope
of causing a rift in the movement. Maqdisi sent a taped message to Al
Jazeera saying, My project is not to blow up a bar, my project is not to
blow up a cinema, my project is not to kill an officer who has tortured
meMy project is to bring back to the Islamic Nation its glories and
to establish the Islamic state that provides refuge to every Muslim, and
this is a grand and large project that does not come by small vengeful
acts. It requires the education of a Muslim generation, it requires longterm planning, it requires the participation of all the learned men and
sons of this Islamic Nation, and since I do not have the resources for
this project then I will not implicate my brothersin a small material
act that is wished for by the enemies of our nation to throw our youths
behind prison bars28.
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Khaled Ahmed
Maqdisi warned against indiscriminate suicide-bombing and against

killing the Shia. Zarqawi, now a leader many people saw well set to
supersede Osama bin Laden himself, thought it was time to respond to
his old mentor at the same level of polemics. He shot back a tract titled
The Grandchildren of Ibn Alqema29 have Returned in which he railed
against the Shia and called them reprobates and held that even if the
Shia were not infidels they could be killed if they came in the way of
his war against the Americans. Maqdisi stated in response on Al Jazeera
that on the question of the Shias he agreed with Ibn Taymiyya in not
declaring Shia lay people as unbelievers, and that as [Ibn Taymiyya]
says in his fatwa under the section of fighting the rebels that one should
not equate [the Shia] with the Jews and the Christians as to how they
are to be fought. Maqdisi warned that taking the campaign against the
Shia even further would lead to fitna, or upheaval, among the Muslims
and would deflect energy and attention from fighting the enemy. He said
expansion of the field of killing Shias and sanctioning the spilling of their
blood was due to a fatwa that emerged during the Iraq-Iran War from
the Sunni clerics as they defended Saddam Hussein in order to justify
his war against Iran. There was no justification, according to Maqdisi, in
targeting the mosques and holy places of the Shia, since the laypeople
of the Shia are like the laypeople of the Sunna, I dont say 100 percent,
but some of these laypeople only know how to pray and fast and do not
know the details of [the Shia] sect.30
Zarqawi was cut to the quick and hit back with a vengeance. His
repartee was carried by all the jihadi websites. Nibras Kazimi noted:
Although maintaining a respectful tone towards his former tutor, he
comes back to say that Maqdisi is essentially a relic of the past, and that
Zarqawi is now a soldier of Osama bin Laden. He hints that Maqdisi is
being used as a tool by the enemies of Islam who are waging the largest
crusader campaign of our times. Feigning hurt and bewilderment,
Zarqawi says that it is now clear to him after viewing the interview,
and from the earlier letters, that the matter is beyond being a lapse of
judgment on the part of his former friend. Zarqawi goes on to say that
Maqdisi was but one of several early influences on his thinking. He said
that he never sought to emulate a teacher and if that had been his goal,
he would have found someone more learned than Maqdisi.31 Jordanian
86
authorities, who had thought the rift would weaken Al Qaeda, now saw
Zarqawi emerging as the leader of jihad, reinvigorating Al Qaeda with a
new agenda. They quickly put Maqdisi back in jail.
Zarqawi apostatises the Shia and Iran
Two months before his death on 7 June 2006, Zarqawi recorded a
four-hour interview that brought out in full his sectarian worldview.32
One can say that the contents of this article by him mark a crossroads
in the evolution of Al Qaeda. Zarqawi consciously ignored the earlier
hesitations on the part of Al Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden to own
his anti-Shia slant on the war against America in Iraq. His separation
from the worldview of Al Qaeda began to take place in 2004 at the end
of which he needed to ask for a re-induction into Al Qaeda on the basis
of his view of the war in Iraq, which Osama bin Laden accepted. By
the beginning of 2006, he was ready to launch a different kind of war in
which the enemy number one was not America but the Shias of Iraq and
the Shia state of Iran. It is clearly with the intent of taking the leadership
role that he recorded his thoughts on the Shia creed two months before
his death. If there was any hope that his death would bring Al Qaeda
back on old tracks, it was soon betrayed. His successor at the head of
Tawhid wal Jihad and Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir
(or Al Masri) immediately posted his own anti-Shia diatribe to ensure
continuity to the ideology of the deceased leader.
In an excellent timely article posted on the Hudson Institute
Washington DC website, Nibras Kazimi quotes Zarqawi on his new
strategy for Iraq and the Sunni Arab world:
The Muslims will have no victory or superiority over the aggressive
infidels such as the Jews and the Christians until there is a total annihilation
of those under them such as the apostate agents headed by the rafidha
(rejecters or the Shia)...Jerusalem was only retrieved at the hands of
Salahuddin, even though Noureddin Mahmoud [Zenki] was harsher on
the Crusaders than Salahuddin. It was Allahs will that victory and the
liberation of Jerusalem would come at Salahuddins hand only after he
fought the Ubeidi rafidha [the Fatimids of Egypt] for several years,
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and totally annihilated their state and overthrew it, and from then he
could focus on the Crusaders, and victory was awarded to him and he
retrieved Jerusalem, which had remained captive for years under their
grip because of the treachery of the rawafidh. This is a very important
lesson that history gives us that should not be overlooked at all: we will
not have victory over the original infidels [alkuffar alasliyeen] until we
fight the apostate infidels [alkuffar almurtaddeen] simultaneously along
with the original infidels. The Islamic conquests that occurred during
the reign of the rashideen [the Four Righteous Caliphs] only occurred
after the Arabian Peninsula was cleansed of apostates. And that is why
the most hated figure among the rafidha is Salahuddin, and they would
tolerate death rather than tolerate him.33
There is no doubt that Zarqawi relied on the anti-Shia literature
produced in the Sunni Arab world to flesh out his approach to jihad. Just
as Abdullah Azzam and Aiman al-Zawahiri were inspired by the writings
of Syed Qutb, he too was provoked by the new anger permeating the
Sunni polemicists after 1979. There is a touch of Al-Zawahiri in Zarqawi
in so far as the former broke from Azzams view of the global rival in
the West and sought his targets nearer home, against the collaborators
of the United States. Zarqawis variation on the theme was that he
sought the collaborators rather ham-handedly among the Shia. The
intellectually more gifted Azzam was murdered; and an equally bright
Maqdisi was made to languish in jail. Al Qaedas ideological journey
was finally to be contingent rather than in accordance with a wellthought out and evolved strategy. Osama bin Laden improvised in order
to overcome his intellectual deficiencies. One can say that, faced with
practicalities, Osama bin Laden steadily allowed the non-intellectual
to triumph over the intellectual in his organisation. This downward
trend was encapsulated in a letter that Zarqawi wrote to Osama and
Al-Zawahiri in February 2004: The rafidha (Shias) have declared a
secret war against the people of Islam and they constitute the near and
dangerous enemy to the Sunnis even though the Americans are also a
major foe, but the danger of the rafidha is greater and their damage more
lethal to the umma than the Americans.34 As if in answer, Irans first
vice president Parviz Davoudi said, When a religion is to be abused to
such an extent, the so-called group, Al Qaeda, would also come forward
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and abuse Islam to take up terrorist actions.35

At first Osama bin Laden was reluctant to accept the merger of Al
Tawhid wal Jihad with Al Qaeda. He did not like that in addition to
targeting the Americans in Iraq, Zarqawi was killing the Shias and the
Kurds. Gerges opines: In contrast, bin Laden was not in favour of civil
strife between Shiites and Sunnis, lest it distract from the confrontation
against the Americans. As a militant Salafi, bin Laden undoubtedly
harbours anti-Shiite prejudices, but he views Iraq as a pivotal front in his
global jihad and has called on Muslim Iraqis and non-Iraqis of all ethnic
and linguistic backgrounds to cooperate in opposing the pro-American
order being installed in Baghdad. He has shown similar indifference to
ethnic, sectarian, and ideological distinctions in issuing condemnations
of Iraqis, including Sunni Arabs, who collaborate with the coalition
forces.36 However, in December 2004, bin Laden released a videotaped
statement which accepted Zarqawis argument, saying anyone joining
or collaborating with the Baghdad government set up after the 2003
invasion was fair game for Al Qaeda killers.
Enter Al Gharib the ultra-sectarian
The author Zarqawi appears to have followed most closely in his
apostatisation of the Shia is Abdullah Muhammad al-Gharib, an Egyptian
scholar, whose ideas had been expressed in his book Then Came the Turn
of the Majus.37 But soon the name al-Gharib was challenged because no
one with this name was writing anti-Shia tracts in Egypt, and the real
author, a Syrian named Sheikh Muhammad Suroor Zein al-Abedin, was
instead revealed as the real author. He had moved to Saudi Arabia to teach
jurisprudence there, after which he had transferred to Kuwait, finally to
settle in the United Kingdom in 1984. He may have taken a pseudonym
for many reasons, one of which could be his failure to agree with the
content he might have been writing for Saudi Arabia for money; or he
may have felt ashamed, like most Muslim scholars, of writing on the
subject of the grand Islamic schism. His first move to Saudi Arabia and
the second move to Kuwait clearly indicate that he feared being punished
by the Syrian government for writing against Iran. In Kuwait, where the
Shia form 35 percent of the population and find themselves in a position
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of some influence, he must have felt insecure, which might have caused
him to decide finally to go to the United Kingdom, considered the safest
place in the West for Sunni extremist elements. The UK later earned the
reputation of being a Londonistan for Al Qaeda.
The trend towards writing anti-Shia tracts began soon after Imam
Khomeinis Islamic Revolution in 1979 and Irans efforts in the early
1980s to export the Revolution through acts of terrorism - to the
Sunni Arab states in the Middle East with oppressed Shia minorities. In
India, an anti- Khomeini tract was first published in 1984 by Maulana
Manzur Numani with funding received from the Saudi-backed World
Muslim League. Al-Gharib is supposed to have written his book in the
late 1980s, following Manzur Numanis, which was translated in many
languages and distributed across the world by Saudi embassies. After
that, in 1986 the major Deobandi seminaries in Pakistan (most of them
funded generously by Saudi Arabia) issued fatwas of apostatisation
against the Shia, which were then compiled in a separate volume by
Numani again and became the basis of Shia-killing in Pakistan in the
years to follow.
Zarqawis scholarship on the issue of Shia apostatisation relied on
other Arab authors too, mostly of recent date, and most of them writing
under assumed names. One such is Mamdouh al-Harbi whose work is
available only as audio files on the Internet. Harbi attacks the petition
made by the Saudi Shia community to Crown Prince Abdullah in 2003
for the restoration of the Shia to normal citizenship in return for their
loyalty to the House of Saud. Harbi reacted by pointing to the danger
posed by Saudi Arabias Shia who are actively breeding through
community-funded mass nuptials, and who seek to control strategic
businesses such as bakeries and fish markets, and that the Saudi Shia
are similar to the Shia all over the world with regard to their heretical
doctrine, paganism and grave-worshipHe accuses the Shia of plotting
to use financial bribes to sway the rulers as well as making gifts of
Persian female agents fluent in Arabic and with force of character and
intelligence, in addition to being beautiful.38 He uses such terms as The
Protocols of the Elders of Qum behind a fifty year plan being employed
by the Shia to turn Sunnis to Shiism and to take over the Persian Gulf
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as well as Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the level

of scholarship in the tracts Zarqawi relied on is abysmal they do refer to
much better regarded authorities of antiquity, such as Ibn Kathir whose
book The Beginning and the End [Al-bidaya wel nihaya] describes the
Shia as betrayers of Islam. Ibn Kathir (1301-1373) was born in Syrias
Horan plain and allegedly studied under Ibn Taymiyya and wrote multivolume tracts on Islamic history containing virulent attacks against
Shiism.
Ibn Kathir is referred to by Imad Ali Abdul Sami Hussein, who
also claimed that the Shia Fatimid Caliphs were not descended from
the family of the Prophet but from a Jewish blacksmith! Another writer
Abdul Muhsin al-Rafi goes so far as to say that the Shia of Saudi Arabia
were demanding their rights in order to spearhead the execution of the
aforementioned plan in dismembering Saudi Arabia and bringing the
Shia to power, and giving the Crusaders control of the Holy Sites as
they did in Iraq, thus fulfilling the dream of the Jews. And Irans foreign
policy encompassed a Rafidhi-Russian Alliance and another RafidhiHindu Alliance, directed against the Muslims of the Caucasus and
Central Asia along with the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent.39
Al Qaeda descends into schism
In 2007, the decline of Al Qaeda into a schismatic organisation is
owed to a number of factors. First, it remained a predominantly Arab
enterprise where authority was bestowed on Arabs or half-Arabs, in the
latter case based on their linguistic ability. Second, it linked up in Pakistan
with jihadist militias whose hinterland seminaries were already funded by
Saudi Arabia to confront the sectarian challenge of Iran. Third, Al Qaeda
tolerated the sectarian violence perpetrated by its jihadist protgs in a
policy of laissez faire which nevertheless gave protection to them when
confronted with state action from Pakistan. Fourth, because Al Qaeda
relied on the approbation of the religious leaders in the Islamic world, it
could not oppose their schismatic leanings, since Islamic sectarianism
can be avoided only through non-religious nationalism. Fifth, because
of the non-intellectual nature of Al Qaeda owing to the non-cerebral
charisma of Osama bin Laden who allowed ideological transition from
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Abdullah Azzam to al Zawahiri and Al Maqdisi and other Hanbalite

thinkers without analysis. Sixth, ingress into Al Qaeda of Arab fighters
hostile to Iran and indoctrinated by Saudi-funded Arab literature reacting
to the aggressive policy of export of Iranian Revolution since 1980.
Seventh, the American invasion of Iraq and the division of Iraqi society
into three sectarian and ethnic domains and the compulsion of Al Qaeda
to enter Iraq and confront America there.
The first consequence of this transformation manifested itself in
Pakistan where Al Qaeda completely divested itself of its earlier hesitancy to link itself with Shia-killings. Three incidents of terrorism in
Karachi in 2006 the blast at the US Consulate, the Nishtar Park massacre and the murder of Allama Hasan Turabi were all carried out
by the sectarian militia, Lashkar Jhangvi, and were planned in South
Waziristan under the tutelage of Al Qaeda. The new combination was
Lashkar Jhangvi, the Waziristan city of Wana and Al Qaeda. Lashkar
Jhangvi was the blanket term used by the state for all manner of jihad in
which all the Deobandi-Ahle Hadith militants made common cause. All
the three incidents were staged through the device of suicide-bombings
and were traced to Wana in Waziristan by the Pakistani investigating
agencies. The bombing jacket of the boy who killed Allama Turabi was
made in Darra Adam Khel at the behest of Al Qaeda, the new activity
now spearheaded by Abdullah Mehsud who was released by the Americans from Guantanamo Bay in 2003.
In 2006, too, Al Qaeda clearly chose Lashkar Jhangvi as its instrument, marking its own transformation. A fresh targeting of the Shia
community was launched in the cities where they are found in large
numbers: Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Multan, Khanewal, Layya,
Bhakkar, Jhang, Sargodha, Rahimyar Khan, Karachi, Dera Ismail Khan,
Bannu, Kohat, Parachinar, Hangu, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Mirpur
Khas and Quetta. During the ashura of 2007, some of these cities were
actually attacked, killing and injuring state functionaries who had been
forewarned. A kind of sectarian war of great intensity seemed to have
taken hold of cities like Gilgit, Parachinar and Bannu, marking the sectarianisation of Al Qaeda.
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Will the sectarianisation of Al Qaeda lessen its capacity to strike

at the United States and its allies in Europe? The diversion of its
intensity to Iran will certainly affect its original jihad but the propulsion
for this diversion will come from the Muslims who accept the politics of
Al Qaeda.40 The diversion will be accomplished through a paradoxical
explanation of the Shia movement as a collaborator of the United
States, as propounded by Zarqawi. On the other hand, the targeted
Shia community will continue to think of their Sunni enemies also as
collaborators of the United States. This is a typical sectarian formulation
and was first noted in Pakistan in 2004 and welcomed by most columnists
there as an America-did-it explanation of the internecine sectarian
violence in the country.
Ahmad Rashid wrote in Sunday Telegraph that, in 2007, Al Qaeda
will continue to develop its original aims of trying to defeat the West,
carry out regime change in the Muslim world and increase its armies of
supporters worldwide, to hasten the advent of its dream of a worldwide
caliphate - Muslim state - ruled by Al Qaeda. Instead, 2007 saw an
unprecedented attack inside the Iranian territory from Pakistan. In the
Iranian border town of Zahidan an organisation named Jandullah, known
to be linked with Al Qaeda, bombed the town on 17 February which killed
thirteen people, including nine Iranian Revolutionary Guard officials.
The attack was followed by another incident in which four people were
killed, and two kidnapped from along the Pak-Iran border. Iran protested
officially to Pakistan, but predictably, the Iranians, while executing one
suspect, got the crowd to chant Death to America, implying that Al
Qaeda was now a partner of the United States.41
The trend of popular support for Al Qaeda among the expatriate
Muslim communities in Europe will increase, but most of it will be
directed at Iraq, and after the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq,
it will be directed against Iran and the Shia community. It is however
possible now to argue that those who go to Iraq will target both the
American troops and the Shia. An analysis of Muslim opinion in Europe
reveals a very high proportion of it related to Iraq and a weakening trend
in concern over Afghanistan. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the
European Muslim community was able to produce only Sunni objectors
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while the Shia stayed away. No Shia jihadist was found entering
Pakistan from the Arab world or from Europe to fight the Americans in
Afghanistan. This trend goes back to the period of Afghan war against the
Soviet Union when Shia and Sunni jihadi militias fought separately from
separate bases. The Sunni warriors were based in Peshawar in Pakistan
while the Shia alliance was based inside Iran. Al Qaeda easily presided
over these Sunni warriors. The Arabs among them were generally nonsectarian although those belonging to the Hanbali-Wahhabi background
were open to anti-Shia thinking. On the other hand, all the militias from
Pakistan after 1996 were Deobandi-Wahhabi with a highly evolved antiShia position inculcated since early the 1980s by Saudi Arabia.
In Europe the Muslim reaction against American occupation of Iraq
is very intense. This is a Sunni phenomenon which has been influenced
by Abu Musab al Zarqawi to a large extent. Before he died in 2006,
his ability to attract funds from Europe for his Shia-killing enterprise
became also the measure of how much Al Qaedas purely anti-American
stance had become watered down. In the event, sheer numbers that Al
Qaeda killed more Shias than it killed Americans in Iraq tell the story.
Londonistan was a Sunni phenomenon and continues to be so. Before
Iraq forced the sectarian obligation on the Muslims in Europe they did
not consciously relate it to jihad. But they certainly felt the anti-Shia
thrust of the radical Islam in the United Kingdom and in some parts of
Europe. In one Pakistani TV programme meant to bring the two sects
together on the day of ashura (10th of Muharram) most London-based
Pakistanis rang up to criticise the Shia while there was no Shia positive
response in favour of the effort being made by the channel. UK-based
Pakistani youths interviewed on BBC invariably expressed their anger
at the American occupation of Iraq. There is hardly any doubt that the
European anger was related to Iraq at the outset and did not contain any
anti-Shia element in it. But after Al Qaedas change of policy under
Zarqawi, the attitude must change, and it will be made easier because of
the Wahhabi-Deobandi orientation of the community.
Creation of chaos and American withdrawal
Another awkward confluence was in the offing as the Americans
94
prepared a change of policy in 2007. An American withdrawal from the

scene would change the way Al Qaeda under Zarqawi had been projecting
the conflict. Out of the two adversaries only one will be left; yet, as
seen above, his position was that it was the Shia and Iran that were more
dangerous as foes than the Americans. After the Americans are gone, the
majority population of Iraq would face the brunt of Al Qaedas revenge,
and most of the recruits it will deploy would be Sunni Arabs. From
Europe too the supply of suicide-bombers would come from Muslims
of Arab extraction although mixed with a rare Pakistani whose passion
has become redirected by Al Qaeda towards sectarianism.
Because of the presence of the United States in Iraq, at least three
entities (Sunnis, the Shia under Muqtada al Sadr and Abdul Aziz
al Hakim, and Iran) were compelled to postpone strategy and think
only of creating chaos, simply because the Americans were under an
obligation to create order. Order meant the perpetuation of American
control of Iraq and of the region. Chaos meant its opposite, but it also
meant inability of the other parties to control Iraq. America was thus
faced by three spoilers threatening discomfiture through internecine
violence. The killing of one American a day had to be matched with
100 Iraqis a day to secure this chaos. Iran and Al Qaeda, presumably
the final protagonists of the war after the United States has left, are both
spoilers and have no considered plan for creating order in Iraq. Most
Muslims, including the Muslims of the United States, presume that
once the American troops are withdrawn peace and order will somehow
prevail in Iraq. In the words of a CAIR (Council on American-Islamic
Relations) representative in Washington, if the Americans left Iraq, the
Muslims would be forced to come to a peaceful consensus.42 When Iran
was asked if it could cooperate with the United States to create peace in
Iraq, the answer was first the Americans should leave.
Irans policy of supporting all the contenders for power except the
Sunnis who will not accept any overtures from Tehran is chaotic
in the extreme. It supports all the warlords that field their militias in
Iraq and are busy collecting their revenues from the various city
governments and oil while being a part of the government. Its support
hardly inclines the warlords to mutual adjustment as a preparation for a
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post-American situation in the country. Iran also supports the ayatollahs

of Najaf but hardly does anything to protect their authority from being
undermined by the radical Shia militias. The Najaf clerics are aware
that Iran disagrees with their version of non-revolutionary and quietist
Shiism which rejects the central concept of velayet-e-faqih of Iranian
Shiism under Imam Khomeini. Iran and Syria have kept their links with
the Kurds in the north as a part of their old policy of supporting anyone
in Iraq persecuted by Saddam Hussein. (Iraqi Kurd president Jalal
Talabani held a Syrian passport till 2006.) The Kurds will make the third
side of the warlike triangle reflected in the devolved 2005 Constitution
of Iraq. After the American troops leave, Turkey is bound to follow an
intrusive policy towards Kurdistan, thus presenting Iran with a tough
policy choice if it wants to go on supporting the Kurdish cause.
Did the United States know that the execution of Saddam Hussein in
December 2006 would become a world-wide sectarian event, meaning
that its moral and legal status would not be accepted unanimously by the
Muslims of the world? It was assumed in the West that since Saddam had
been an equal opportunity killer of all the sects and ethnicities, there
would be a general acceptance of his execution. In fact strong public
protests broke out in several countries around the world - including Iraq,
Pakistan and India. Street celebrations were reported in Baghdads Shiite
Sadr City slums and other predominantly Shia areas. Kuwait officially
hailed the execution as fair and just, but its increasingly radical Islamist
Sunni population was silently resentful at the rulers having leaned in
favour of the 35 percent Shia population in the country. Iran called
it a victory for the Iraqi people but it must have been conscious of
the sectarian split the death had deepened. The Hamas-led Palestinian
government denounced Saddams hanging, and Libya declared three
days of official mourning.
The hanging of Saddam and the Islamic split
In Pakistan and India the governments condemned the hanging
because of their Sunni-majority Muslim populations. In India the protest
was intense and much larger than in Pakistan. The Indian government
ignored the fact that the Shia of India estimated to be equal to the Shia
96
population of Pakistan, which is already larger than the Shia population

of Iraq did not take part in demonstrations.43 The leftwing politicians
of India showed solidarity with the protesting Muslims because of their
anti-American stance, but had no realisation that they were taking sides
in a sectarian issue. Outsiders saw the protests in India and Pakistan as
an expression of anger against the United States. While it is true that the
Shia communities in both countries have followed the Iranian line against
the United States, they were unable to agree that this should be expressed
by mourning the death of Saddam Hussein. In India the longest and most
intense protest took place in the state of Jammu & Kashmir because
of its Muslim-majority status and because of the strong Sunni-jihadi
influence there since 1989 when the anti-Shia Saudi-funded Deobandi
freedom-fighters came in from Pakistan. The city of Lucknow saw a
very large demonstration led by Sunni clerics while the Shia, who form
a sizeable part of the Muslim community in this historically Shia city,
kept their reactions low-key. Some Sunni clerics openly condemned
the Shia together with the United States. The death of Saddam Hussein
could become a catalyst of Indian Muslims sectarian tendency.
Because of Indias secular constitution, the Sunni-Shia schism has
not led to any widespread violence. Although accused of discrimination
against the Muslims in general, the state is not inclined to favour either
sect in their contention. Even though the Sunni clergy has been paying
a lot of attention to the rising sectarian tension outside India, its writing
of anti-Shia tracts has not led to violence, as in Pakistan. The reason
for this is the non-existence, so far, of a strong jihadi core of militias
in India, although this may change in the coming years. The biggest
matter of concern is the tendency of the Indian Muslims to opt out of
the political system. More and more of them have started following their
religious leaders, as they shrink away from the secular political parties
that engage the electorate in India. Sectarianism spreads only when the
Muslims start following the clergy instead of the mainstream political
parties. This is what is happening in the Middle East after the demise
of Arab nationalism in the region. In Pakistan, the trend of not voting
the clergy into power remains strong even after the great success of
the clerical alliance MMA in the 2002 general election. In India, the
religious leader has become a part of the Indian Muslims paraphernalia
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of withdrawal from politics. The Indian Muslim clergy has been funded
by Saudi Arabia in the 1980s to produce books against Iran and Shiism,
with the result that now collections of fatwas exist containing edicts of
apostatisation issued against the Shia by Indias major Sunni seminaries.44
Highly regarded Indian commentator on Muslim affairs, Dr Yoginder
Sikand, has noted the growth of Muslim sectarianism in India:
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board had been reduced to
a conservative, largely Deobandi institution that was insensitive to the
concerns of other sects. Sectarian rivalry among the traditionalist ulema
reflects a fundamental inability to come to terms with the theological
other. Whether it be the non-Muslim other or the sectarian Muslim
other, they are seen and defined as enemies or deviants, threatening
the faith. This also explains why the Board has been unable to solve the
sectarian problem within its own ranks.45
The future of Expatriate Islam
Jihad continues to be the passion of a section of the expatriate
Muslims. It is from this community that a new sectarian Al Qaeda will
draw its strength. In their hinterland, the mujahideen are produced by a
complex interaction of Saudi money, salafist indoctrination through local
hard-line revivalists and even states using non-state actors to fight their
covert wars. The passion of the expatriate has its birth in the question
of identity, an introversion compelled by the conditions of living in
alien societies. The Muslim is differentiated from other non-Muslim
expatriate communities by reason of his transnational orientation. In his
own country he is habituated to feeling secure or insecure on the basis of
his identification with the mythical construct of the umma. This causes
alienation with the nation-state that insists on a nationalism based on
its self-interest. He carries abroad a dislike of his national identity and
reconstructs a new identity based on the idea of the transnational umma,
a function not encouraged by the nation-state but easily executed out in
the alien West with full citizenship rights.46
The reconstruction of a new transnational Muslim identity in
the West is assisted by the policy of multiculturalism that is, allowing
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integration through remaining separate without any obligation to

imbibe Western culture. In Western Europe and the United Kingdom,
the Muslims have been allowed to attain a hard-line Islamic identity
more in line with the influential, financially-leveraged Arab Islam than
the relatively moderate Islam of South and Southeast Asia. In the case
of Pakistani expatriates, some pride is experienced in becoming more
distinctly Muslim than the Muslims of Pakistan. The onus of discovery
is then placed by the expatriate Pakistani on fellow-Muslims back home
through a number of symbols, including a new style of self-grooming
and dressing. The first discovered identity is cast aside and a new
one, constructed under conditions of freedom, is embraced. The truth
however may be that this construction is under coercion from a group
and may actually be a discovery while growing up in an expatriate
Muslim home in the West.47
The new synthetic identity of the expatriate Muslim is puritanical
and judgemental of other Muslims, and that tends to focus ultimately
on Muslims who have been labelled heretical down the centuries. Out
of the dozens of heretical communities only the Shia stand out as an
emerging power in the Islamic world. The expatriate Muslim is now
compelled to turn his attention to the Shia and his new identity points
its animus more forcefully to the Shia and Iran than to the JudaeoChristian stronghold of the United States. Secretly observed mosques
by journalists in the United Kingdom and Canada now praise Al Qaeda
and the Taliban as sectarian organisations, an aspect missed or ignored
in the past.48
The future of expatriate Islam will depend on how the West tackles the
problems of its empowerment of Muslim communities through equality
of citizenship. New, stricter laws are being enacted at the cost of civil
liberties to allow the state to carry out an intrusive scrutiny of the mode
of life of the Muslims. Much of the intensity of the expatriate Muslim
reaction springs from the individuals awareness of his rights rights
not available in indigenous Muslim societies. The success of Al Qaeda
and its terrorist enterprise is integral to this civic freedom enjoyed by the
expatriate Muslim communities in the West. This intensity is bound to
subside under new laws at the cost of quality of life; yet the expatriate
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Muslim will continue to enjoy more rights than he would enjoy in a

Muslim host state or in his home state. There will be a general lowering
of the temperature of Muslim revival because of the transformation of
jihad into sectarianism through the low-level intellectual legerdemain
offered by Zarqawi and accepted by Al Qaeda.
Sectarianism after Al Qaeda leaves Pakistan
A welter of analyses is coming out of the various institutions in
the United States where intelligence experts are trying to interpret the
actions of Al Qaeda. It is agreed on all hands that Al Qaeda is getting
ready for a new offensive against Europe and the United States. This
is being predicted with the understanding that Al Qaeda has actually
failed to pull off a major action after 9/11. The rare Pakistani
journalist with access to Al Qaeda contacts in Pakistan is also reporting
a greatly enhanced Al Qaeda capacity to plan and execute new terrorist
acts. While some Pakistani sources report acquisition by Al Qaeda of
missiles and chemical payloads that it can deliver against chosen targets,
everyone is agreed on Europe being the immediate target rather than
the United States, so that America is deprived of its allies across the
Atlantic. It is assumed that, when targeted, Europe will generally move
to the policy of distancing itself from America, ignoring the policy of
stricter surveillance Europe is now applying to its expatriate Muslim
communities. It is also agreed among experts that Al Qaedas financial
outreach has actually increased.
There is also an awareness of the evolution of Al Qaeda into an
anti-Iran anti-Shia organisation. It is preparing to move out of Pakistan
since its target has shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq and Iran is no
longer available as a transit territory for its warriors to penetrate into
Iraq and the Caucasus regions of Russia. There is also a recognition
that Al Qaeda has moved closer to Saudi concerns about the rise of
the Shia in the region accompanied by Irans drive for hegemony in
the Gulf. If that is the case, Al Qaeda is bound to lose some of its antiAmerican edge as also its involvement with the Taliban and Pakistans
jihadi organisations. If it moves out of Pakistan and Afghanistan to its
new base in the Anbar province in Iraq, its training facilities will be less
100
easily available for Pakistani terrorists. Its exit from South and North
Waziristan will change the security situation in that region of Pakistan,
making it possible for Islamabad to arrive at new compacts with the
local centres of power there. Reports that Al Qaeda was meeting with
a lot of success in its policy of seeking new bases outside Pakistan
and Afghanistan may be exaggerated since the evidence in Somalia
and China so far proves otherwise. But the shifting of its base from
Pakistan-Afghanistan to Iraq is feasible and is quite evident. However, it
is difficult to say if the desert of Anbar would be as safe for aging Osama
bin Laden and Aiman al-Zawahiri as the more salubrious environment
of the Pushtun tribal areas.
One important source of information from the fastness of Al Qaeda
in Pakistan reports: Although many Arab fighters left Afghanistan and
Pakistan after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to join hands with the Iraqi
resistance, others are now following. This will further weaken the link
between al-Qaeda and the Taliban after the latters decision to strike a
deal with Pakistan. When groups, parties or individuals side in any way
with the state apparatus, al-Qaeda sees them as unreliable and potentially
harmful to al-Qaedas mission. This has happened with the Taliban over
their deal [over raids into Afghanistan across the Durand Line] with
Islamabad.49 Al Qaeda has also become alienated from the largest
Deobandi politico-religious party in Pakistan, the JUI whose leader has
been involved in enabling the army to reach a new understanding with
the Taliban50. Al Qaeda has similarly fallen foul of Pakistans premier
Wahhabi jihadi outfit Lashkar Tayba and its leader Hafiz Said51.
Jihad has been a logistical achievement and Al Qaedas terrorism has
depended on Pakistan as its pivot. Osama bin Laden left his headquarters
in Peshawar in the early 1990s and established himself in Sudan after
pressures on the political governments in Islamabad heightened from the
friendly Arab states. In Sudan he could not make much headway in his
enterprise of international terrorism, and with time the Sudanese leaders
became less and less determined to withstand American pressure. He
returned to Afghanistan after learning that the Sudanese government
was thinking of selling him to the Americans. From 1996 on, Al
Qaeda has operated successfully from Afghanistan, but not without a
lot of logistical help from Pakistan and its jihadi militias. Most foreign
101
Khaled Ahmed
terrorists passed through Pakistans seminaries to Afghanistan to take

their training, including the 19 suicide-bombers who destroyed the Trade
Center towers in New York and damaged the Pentagon in Washington
DC in 2001. Will Iraq be a good geographical point from where to strike
next at the United States and Europe?
Iraq will lack many of the facilities that Pakistan offered. The
Pakistani people are sympathetic and the Pakistani establishment was
in favour of using Al Qaeda in tandem with the Taliban for achieving
its strategic purposes in Afghanistan. Since Al Qaeda presided over a
combination of forces doing sectarian terrorism in Pakistan and because
the Shia in Pakistan were a minority and unable to hit back it remained
safe in the training camps it had established inside Afghanistan. In Iraq
it will have to locate itself in a province that is Sunni in population but
around which there is a large Shia population willing to, and capable
of, opposing it militarily. The Iraqi government will continue to be
predominantly Shia with strong links to Iran. Al Qaeda will have as its
neighbour Syria which is an ally of Iran and borders Lebanon where
Hezbollah and its Shia hinterland will form a strong deterrent to Al
Qaedas Sunni warriors. Despite proximity to Jordan and Saudi Arabia,
Al Qaeda in Anbar may not have the kind of favourable environment
it enjoyed in Afghanistan with Pakistans help. If the United States
stays on in Iraq it will weigh in heavily on the side of the Shia. In fact
conditions may be just the opposite of what they were in Pakistan where
the Saudis had financed sectarianism in the seminaries from where Al
Qaeda in turn drew its recruits.
Is Iraq the magnet that draws Al Qaeda? With the weakening of
Pakistani support and increasingly successful efforts by Islamabad to
regain control over the tribal region where Al Qaeda is compelled to
base itself, it will most likely seek to relocate. The exit of Al Qaeda from
Pakistan will weaken the sectarian trend in the country. Today, in 2007,
almost all the sectarian violence against the Shia is being perpetrated by
Lashkar Jhangvi, the only organisation left under the financial umbrella
of Al Qaeda. All other outfits doing sectarian killings on the side have
either been suppressed by Islamabad or have opted out. In 2006, for the
first time, Pakistan became aware that sectarianism was being driven
exclusively by Al Qaeda. After the folding up of Al Qaeda camps in the
102
Tribal Areas, more sectarian recruits will not be available to it in times

to come. Saudi Arabia will likely divert its resources to the Anbar base
and not be as deeply involved in defeating Iran in Pakistan as in the past
when the Arab states were not directly threatened.
By August 2007, however, it has become clear that Al Qaeda might
seek to establish its permanent base in Pakistan. This has happened after
its earlier plan to set up its own state in Somalia was firmly opposed
by the United States and the neighbouring states of Somalia. It appears
that Al Qaedas strategy in Pakistan is linked to its strategy to oust
the ISAF-NATO and US forces in Afghanistan. The advantage of this
strategy is that it has the popular support of the very state it is targeting.
Afghanistan, once free of the protective shield of NATO, will succumb
to a condominium of Al Qaeda and its ancillary Taliban, including the
Pushtun tribes of Pakistan, after possibly splitting into two.52 Such a
development will make Pakistan extremely vulnerable to Al Qaeda
control through the Sunni religious parties and their militias.
References:
1
2
3
4
5
Marshall GS Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (In Three Volumes), University of Chicago,
1974. The author explains the title of his book in the preface.
Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, Encounter Books New York 2006, p.56.
Jahiliyya means darkness in Arabic and is applied to times before Islam. Maududi in
India applied it to Muslim societies living without Islamic law (shariah) in the first half
of the 20th century. Syed Qutb in Egypt read it and gave it a violent turn by recommending that such societies be coerced through violence in modern times. In the 17th century,
Wahhab had already applied the term to Arabian society and used violence against it.
Dore Gold, Hatreds Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism,
Regnery Publishing Washington DC, 2003, p.95.
Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, Berkley Books New York
2002, p.26. The Saudi chief of intelligence Price Turki worked closely with Osama to
coordinate both the fighting and the relief efforts, while two Saudi Banks Darul Maal
al-Islami founded by Prince Turkis brother Prince Muhammad Faisal in 1981; and
Dalla al-Baraka founded by King Fahds brother-in-law in 1982 supported the antiSoviet campaigns. These institutions allowed MAK to develop its outreach to the US
through opening of offices.
Muntassar al-Zayyat, The Road to Al Qaeda: The Story of Bin Ladens Right-Hand Man;
Pluto Press, 2004. An account of Al Zawahiris career is taken from this book. Zayyats
claim that he took a PhD degree in Pakistan cant be proved, but then if the ISI wanted to
favour him they could have printed a special degree from any institution. Muntassar
al-Zayyat of Gamaa Islamiyya published the book in 2002 as a kind of repartee after
103
Khaled Ahmed
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
104
Aiman Al Zawahiri condemned the Gamaas decision to give up violence in the wake
of the 1997 massacre of 58 Western tourists at Luxor. This was in some ways also an
answer to Al Zawahiris book Knights under the Banner of the Prophet, written at Tora
Bora in Afghanistan in 2001, and an attempt to disclose Al Zawahiris own deviations
from views held at earlier points of time. The book is interesting in the sense that it
lifts the veil from the way the Islamists in Egypt conduct themselves, the extent of their
insulation from the free society of Egypt (and the consequent outlandishness of their
brand of Islam) and indirectly the stamp Al Zawahiris domination of Al Qaeda left over
the jihadi outfits of Pakistan.
Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West, Harvard University Press
2004, P.85 and p.86.
Peter L Bergen, Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, Simon &
Shuster 2001, p.56.
Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, p.28-29.
Barnett R Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From buffer State to Failed
State, Yale University Press, 1995, p.103.
Fawaz A Gerges, Journey of the Jihadists: Inside Muslim Militancy, Harcourt Inc 2006,
p.123
Rohan Gunaratna, Al Qaedas Ideology, in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Volume
One, Hudson Institute, Washington DC, 2005, p.62.
Kathy Gannon, I is for Infidel: from Holy War to Holy Terror, 18 Years inside Afghanistan, Public Affairs New York 2005, p.78.
Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Free Press New York 2006, p.261.
Wilson John, The New Face of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Terrorist Monitor, 7 October 2004,
in Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities, The Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC, 2006, p.305.
Ibid. p.306.
Suroosh Irfani, Pakistans Sectarian Violence: Between the Arabist Shift and IndoPersian Culture, in Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia, Chapter 7, AsiaPacific Center Honolulu 2004, p.165.
Mariam Abou Zahab, Sectarian Violence in Pakistan: Local Roots and Global Connections, in Global Terrorism: Genesis, Implications, Remedial and Counter-Measures,
Hans Sidel Foundation & Institute of Regional Studies Islamabad 2006, p.383.
Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, Harper/Collins
2004, p.199.
Jean-Charles Brisard, Zarqawi: The New Face of Al Qaeda, Other Press New York 2005,
p.20.
Ibid, p.21.
Ibid, p.33.
Abu Zubayda was arrested in Pakistan from Faisalabad in 2002, the home of the Wahhabi organisations and named after late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, after a battle with
the police, in which he was wounded, before being handed over to the United States.
Ibid, p.75.
Ibid, p.128.
Yitzhak Nakash, The Shii of Iraq, Princeton 1994, p.285: Samarra is home to the
Shrines of Ali ibn Muhammad al Hadi, and his son Hasan al Askari, as well as the hiding site of Muhammad Al Mahdi, the tenth, eleventh and twelfth imams respectively.
Raymond William Baker, Islam without Fear, Viva Books/Harvard 2005. This book by
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
a visiting scholar at Cairos American University correctly supports the new Islamists
calling themselves wassatiyya. The new Islamists claimed to go back to the thought of
the great Egyptian Muhammad Abduh and the Iranian reformer Jamaluddin Afghani.
A debate developed around this and went into the pages of Al Ahram. The wassatiyya
were led by Ghazzali (late) and Qardawi. Their message was considered of moderation
and anti-violence. Qardawi thereafter became radical within the wassatiyya of being
moderate towards Islamic societies but being anti-West at the global level.
Nibras Kazimi, A Virulent Ideology in Mutation: Zarqawi upstages Maqdisi, in Current
Trends in Islamist Ideology, Volume 2, Hudson Institute Washington DC 2005, p.66.
Nibras Kazimi, Zarqawis anti-Shia Legacy: Original or Borrowed? Hudson Institute,
Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Volume Four, 2006, p.2: In the jihadist version
of history, in 1258 the vizier Ibn Al-Alqamiallegedly a Shiaconspired with Nassireddin Al-Tusi, another Shia who acted as adviser to the Tatar commander Holaku,
to attack Baghdad and topple the Abbasid Caliphate. The last caliph, Al-Mustaasim,
was killed after being bundled up by the Tatars in sackcloth and trampled to death, and
the city was laid to waste with hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants put to the sword
or enslaved. To Zarqawi and the jihadists, Americas occupation of Baghdad in April
2003 mirrored those events many centuries ago because it also occurred through Shia
collusion.
Ibid, p.67.
Ibid, p.67.
Economist, 8 June 2006.
Nibras Kazimi, Zarqawis Anti-Shia Legacy: Original or Borrowed? in Current Trends
in Islamist Ideology, Volume 4, 2006, p.53.
Ibid, p.3.
Website Iranmania.com, quoting Iranian news agency IRNA on 25 November 2005.
Fawaz A Gerges, Journey of the Jihadists: Inside Muslim Militancy, Harcourt Inc, New
York, 2006, p. 252.
The word majus (majoos) is the Arabic rendering of Magus, singular of the Biblical
Magi who came from Persia to greet Jesus Christ at his birth.
Nibras Kazimi, p.60.
Ibid, p.63.
Gaith Abdul Ahad, The Jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans, The Guardian, 13 January 2007. The reporter describes the redirection of Al Qaeda terrorism and
its merger with the Sunni-Baathist reaction in Iraq.
Daily Times, Iran decides to wall Pak-Iran border, 2 March 2007.
A CAIR representative expressed this view in a discussion on C-Span TV channel on 14
December 2006.
Yahoo News India, 30 December 2006. The All India Shia Personal Law Board
(AISPLB) on Saturday took a rather strong stand on the execution of former Iraq
president Saddam Hussein. Terming Saddams execution as justified, the AISPLB
added that Saddam was tried by a court of justice and punished for his heinous crimes.
Saddam should not be seen as a Muslim as he was not following true Islam, the
president of AISPLBs Mumbai chapter, Sayed Mohammed Nawab, said in an official
release. Nawab said that Saddam was a tyrant and many other tyrants in Islamic history
are prostrated by Saddami Muslims who destroyed cities and killed millions of people
whom they called kafirs, (unbelievers). These people had imposed their own kind of
terrorist Islam, he added. These are the kind of Muslims behind Saddam, praising his
105
Khaled Ahmed
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
106
inhuman acts, Nawab said. (http://in.news.yahoo.com/061230/211/6apch.html).

Muhammad Manzur Numani of India wrote his first book against Iran and Imam
Khomeini in 1984 titled Irani Inqilab, Imam Khomeini aur Shiiat (Iranian Revolution
Imam Khomeini and Shiism), which was distributed all over the world by Saudi Embassies in translation. Then Numani called for edicts of apostatisation from all seminaries of India and Pakistan and printed them serially in a journal of Lucknow, India,
Al Furqan, in 1987 and 1988. He also compiled all of them in a book issued in 1987:
Khomeini aur Shia kay baray mein Ulema Karam ka Mutafiqqa Faisala, (Khomeini and
the Shia in the Consensual Verdict of the Ulema).
Yoginder Sikand, In Indian Islams Belly, the Stirrings of Reform, Tehelka.com, 5 March
2005.
Akeel Bilgrami, Notes towards a Definition of Identity, Daedalus, Journal of American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fall 2006, p.7: Bilgrami says identity is assumed in two
ways, by receiving it with dislike and by receiving it with devotion.
Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny, Norton 2006. Sen posits
discovery of identity against freedom to choose one or many identities. In his view
discovery is a coercive process leading to group identification and violence.
The Observer, London, Revealed: Preachers Messages of Hate, 7 January 2007; and
Tarek Fatah. 8 January 2007, through email reproducing similar reports from Toronto
Star, Canada.
Saleem Shahzad, Al Qaedas Resurgence: Ready to take on the World, Asia Time Online,
2 March 2007. Shahzad is a Pakistani journalist with a strong religious background
who has emerged as a source among the Pushtun contacts of Al Qaeda and has lately
emerged a leading analyst of Al Qaeda.
Ibid, Some Pakistani religious leaders have angered al-Qaeda, including the leader
of the opposition in Parliament, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who is chief of the Jamiati-Ulema-i-Islam, which in turn is part of a six-party religious alliance, the Muttahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). Rahmans closeness to the Libyan government and President
Muammar Gaddafi is one reason, and al-Qaeda believes that at the behest of the
Libyans, Rehman facilitated the arrest of a Libyan group that was hiding in Pakistans
North West Frontier Province, including Abu Dahda al-Barah. Mosa-i-Saiful Islam alKhayria, a Libyan welfare organization headed by Gaddafis son Saiful Islam, was used
as a cover for the intelligence operation. The Pakistani Taliban in the North and South
Waziristan tribal areas, under the influence of al-Qaeda, have already murdered the uncle
of the MMAs chief minister of North West Frontier Province and sent death threats to
Rehmans brother.
Ibid, Another person to have drawn al-Qaedas ire is Hafiz Mohammed Said. He is
suspected of embezzling about US$3 million that he was given by al-Qaeda to move
Arab-Afghan families to safety after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Abu
Zubayda handed over the money to Said, and when Said did not deliver on his part of
the bargain, Abu Zubayda demanded that the money be returned. Then Abu Zubayda
hideout in Faisalabad was exposed and he was arrested and delivered to the United
States. Said is believed to have betrayed him.
Daily Times, Editorial, 12 August 2007: If NATO is ousted from Afghanistan, Pakistan
too will be overrun by a much strengthened Taliban-Al Qaeda combine. Just as Pakistan
is hinterland to the Talibans forays into Afghanistan, Afghanistan will become hinterland
to forays into Pakistan till a clerical-jihadist state is established here.
PATTERNS OF REGIONAL
COOPERATION:
OPTIONS FOR PAKISTAN
Shahwar Junaid*
Abstract.
(The first recognizable initiative towards regional cooperation
appeared in Europe during the 1880s. By the 1940s an increasing number
of influential intellectuals were urging escape from a theoretical and
ineffective universalism into practical and workable regionalism1
Consideration of this option was understandable, under the strain of
war and, later, post-war reconstruction. Serious moves for regional
cooperation emerged only after World War II. As a result of the emergence
of regional groupings in many parts of the world, the region as a unit of
analysis in international relations becomes important. Author).
Definitions of regionalism within the global system of international
relations emerge from conceptual models for the study and analysis of
the subject. Such conceptual models are provided through the academic
study of international relations. The number and nature of assumptions
on which a theory of international relations is based tends to determine
its usefulness for analytical study. International relations (IR) theories
are generally divided into positivist/rationalist theories, which focus
on state-level analysis and post-positivist/ reflectivity theories, that
incorporate broader concepts arising from experiences of the postcolonial economic and security environment as well as socio-political
concerns and related phenomenon.2 A number of conflicting theories
exist, but the liberal and constructivist theories are in the mainstream
today. Modern day functionalism is the theory of international relations
*
Shahwar Junaid, a former Communications Media Consultant to the Pakistan

Government, is an eminent writer and intellectual. Her latest book is titled, Terrorism
and Global Power Systems, Oxford University Press, 2006.
Shahwar Junaid
that emerged from the post-World War II experience of European

integration.3 Functionalism is relevant to present-day discussions of
regionalism.4
One description of the term functionalism is the result of its use
as an argument explaining phenomenon arising from the functions of a
system: functionalist theory has been used to explain that the Westphalian
international political system arose in order to protect the emerging
international capitalist system.5 Functionalists give causal power to the
system itself, bypassing agents of the system. This is relevant for any
study of patterns of regionalism in the world today. The Thirty Years War
in Europe was the culmination of a number of large and small conflicts
that took place on religious grounds over a period of a hundred years.
Parallel economic developments had a profound impact on inter-state
and intra-state relations. In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia, that followed
the Thirty Years War, established that rulers had the right to determine
which religion would be observed within their territories.6 By the same
token it recognized the sovereignty of established states and condemned
interference in their internal affairs, including trade and commerce. The
Peace of Westphalia led to the establishment of nationalism as the preeminent force in international relations and the nation-state system as
the accepted political order in Europe.
Functionalist theory applied the same principles to later developments
in international relations: it grew in diverse directions as a result of the
experience of European integration in the post-World War II era.7 Instead
of the self-interest of states seen in the realist theory of IR, functionalism
now focused on the common interests shared by states and concluded
that regional integration develops its own dynamics: as states integrate
in certain fields of activity the momentum for integration in related areas
will develop.8 This is known as the spill-over of regional integration.
Functionalists are of the view that it becomes difficult for nationalist
forces to resist integration once this stage in policy induced regional
integration has been reached. According to one school of thought, the
yardstick for measuring interest in international regionalism is the
establishment of institutions to promote it. If institutionalization at the
regional level, as opposed to institutionalization of inter-state activity
108
Patterns of Regional Cooperation: Options for Pakistan
at the international level is the yardstick for measuring interest, then

it is difficult to find evidence of regionalism prior to 1945. The InterAmerican System was an exception.9
The first recognizable initiative towards regional cooperation
appeared in Europe during the 1880s. By the 1940s an increasing number
of influential intellectuals were urging escape from a theoretical and
ineffective universalism into practical and workable regionalism10
Consideration of this option was understandable, under the strain of
war and, later, post-war reconstruction. Serious moves for regional
cooperation emerged only after World War II. The treaty establishing
the Benelux Customs Union was signed in London in 1944 by the
governments in exile of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. It
entered into force in 1947. In 1952 Denmark, Iceland and Norway
established the inter-parliamentary Nordic Council with the objective
of forging Nordic regional cooperation. They were joined by Finland
in 1955. At the time, serious attempts were made to institutionalize
trade and commerce within Europe on advantageous terms. These
attempts were motivated by the thought that institutionalized economic
cooperation and regional interdependence would foster peace and the
states of Europe would be bound so closely in economic and political
ties that there would never again be a war on the European continent.11
In 1951 France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the
Netherlands established the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) in order to pool the coal and steel resources of member states.
On 25 March 1957 the same states signed the momentous Treaty of
Rome which established the European Economic Community EEC).
The European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) was established at
the time in order to manage nuclear power in Europe. The EEC was to
develop in multiple directions. As a result of the emergence of regional
groupings in many parts of the world, the region as a unit of analysis in
international relations becomes important.
In widely accepted definitions an international region is considered
a limited number of states linked by a geographical relationship and
by a degree of mutual interdependence. International regionalism has
been defined as the formation of interstate associations or groupings on
109
Shahwar Junaid
the basis of regions.12Analysts stress the need to differentiate between

regionalism, regional integration, regional organization, regional
systems and regional cooperation:13 the existence or acceptance of one
form was not a pre-condition for the existence or acceptance of other
dimensions of regional phenomena.14 This is particularly relevant where
the parameters of the region are not clearly defined, or, they differ in
the perception of the different states of the region. Political activists in
South Asia who would like to promote the post-war European model of
policy induced regional integration in the sub-continent find this aspect
of regionalism difficult to accept. Study of the possibilities of various
aspects of regionalism also provides insight into its limitations under
various circumstances.
Regionalism is the political philosophy that emphasizes the preeminence of the interest of groups of states within the region over the
interests of individual states within the group and, in some cases, the
international community. There have to be powerful reasons for states
to even consider giving up, or sharing their political and economic
space with neighbouring states: traditionally, they raise armies to
protect these aspects of sovereignty from their neighbours. In post-war
Europe regionalism was a reaction against forces of nationalism that
had thrust the continent into two devastating wars in the space of fifty
years. Elsewhere, regionalism emerged as a product of forces such as
decolonization that had shaped the world in the 20th century. In the postcolonial era newly independent states were faced with phenomenon
related to global structural change within trading systems, political
systems, governments, as well as in inter-state relations. The prospects
of continuing trade and commerce with their erstwhile rulers on terms
that had originally sparked movements for independence was not a
feasible one. Consequently, newly independent states sought economic
partners elsewhere.
The restructuring of the global political system and the Cold War
created a new set of constraints to free trade, since trade between entire
regions became impossible for political reasons. Where there were no
such constraints, regionalism was an option. Regionalism emphasized
the primacy of the interests of regional groupings with common interests
110
over those of individual state, and offered advantages in return. The end
of the Cold War in 1989 created a broad range of new opportunities
for global restructuring. The establishment of the WTO (World Trade
Organization) as the successor of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade) through the Uruguay Round set the stage for globalization
of industry and commerce and the restructuring of terms of trade. Both
events had a global impact and created waves within existing regional
arrangements covering economic activity, trade and security.15
Regionalism is one of the three constituents of the international
system of trade and commerce, the other two being multilateralism
and unilateralism. In any study of regionalism it is tempting to
measure success by quantifiable advantages accruing from institutional
arrangements designed to facilitate the free flow of goods and services
and the coordination of economic policies between countries in the
same geographic region while ignoring, or minimizing, the importance
of other concerns, such as security issues and questions of sovereignty
within regional arrangements at the institutional level a cumbersome
task.
According to one school of thought, analysis of regional trade
agreements (RTAs) tends to use tools from trade theory focusing on
trade creation, trade diversion and the impact of terms of trade. While
these tools are sufficient for analysis of shallow integration they do
not take into account the issues of deeper integration, characterized
by institutionalization. Analysis of this phenomenon should include
other aspects such as the relationship between trade and productivity,
endogenous growth, imperfect competition, rent seeking behaviour
and politico-economic considerations, including possible conflicts
between regionalism and multilateralism.16 The positive impact of trade
liberalization on agricultural production is an important consideration
within the regional trade context but there can be questions regarding
fair competition in view of high tariffs, the use of domestic subsidies
on agriculture inputs and special interest activism. The critical issue for
developing countries interested in regional preferential trade is to use it
as an element of a larger development strategy and in order to enhance
stability at the regional level. The experience of policy induced regional
111
Shahwar Junaid
integration in Europe offers invaluable insight into possibilities, but each

region faces unique challenges and must find its own response to them.
The origin of regional cooperation in Europe and the America
Economic regionalism is defined as a formal attempt to manage the
opportunities and constraints created by global structural change after
World War II, the decolonization that followed it and the bipolar world
order that subsequently emerged. Several arrangements for economic
integration in Europe were finalized in the decades following World War
II: These arrangements were made in the context of the Cold War and
parallel to regional security arrangements (such as NATO).17The strategy
to reconstruct Europe after World War II was formed in a bipolar global
system, under the cloud of the Cold War which dominated inter-state
relations until 1989.
As mentioned earlier, several arrangements for regional economic
integration were established in the decades following World War II.
The European Coal and Steel Community (Paris Treaty 18 April 1951)
sought to bring together control of the coal and steel industries of its
member states, principally France and West Germany. The Communitys
founders declared it a first step in the federation of Europe. Two
additional communities were created in 1957: the European Economic
Community (EEC) establishing a customs union, and the European
Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for cooperation in developing
nuclear energy. The European Free Trade Association was established in
1960.18 Finally, the European Union (EU), a supranational organization
of European countries which currently has twenty seven members,19 was
formed in 1993 by the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.
During the period of its transformation from the European Community
into the European Union, trade of member states with countries outside
the RTA (Regional Trade Agreement), shrank. Meanwhile internal trade
in Europe grew from 53 percent in 1952 to 70 percent of overall trade
in Europe in 1993. With almost 500 million citizens, EU member states
generate an estimated 30 percent share of the worlds nominal gross
domestic product (US$ 16.8 trillion in 2007). 20 The EU has developed
112
a single market through a standardized system of laws which apply in

all member states, guaranteeing the freedom of movement of people,
goods, services and capital.21 The EU maintains a common trade policy,
agricultural and fisheries policies, and a regional development policy.
Fifteen member states have adopted a common currency, the euro.
The European Central Bank in Frankfurt governs Euro zone monetary
policy. A single currency for the EU had been an official objective since
1969 and work began on Economic and Monetary Union in 1990. Nine
years later the euro was launched in eleven of the fifteen member states
as an accounting currency. This meant that national currencies remained
in use but the exchange rates were locked to the euro. On 1 January
2002, euro notes and coins were issued and the national currencies were
phased out in twelve countries. Currently 15 states are using the euro
as their sole official currency. All other EU members, except Denmark
and the United Kingdom, have agreed to join as a condition of being
members of the EU but dates for adopting the euro will be set later. A
number of countries outside the EU, such as Montenegro, also use the
euro unofficially. The euro, and the monetary policies of those who have
adopted it, is controlled by the European Central Bank (ECB).
The euro is designed to help build a single market in Europe by, for
example, easing travel and trade, eliminating exchange rate problems,
providing price transparency, creating a single financial market and price
stability. Having a currency that is used for a large amount of internal
trade within the euro zone and internationally as well as protects the
European Union against currency fluctuations. It is also a potent political
symbol of integration and stimulus for adopting others. In recent years
holdings of the euro have grown, and there is some speculation that if
the euro zone continues to enlarge and/or the U.S. dollar continues to
fall, the euro could become the main world reserve currency.22
The European Union has developed an international presence,
representing its members in the World Trade Organization, at G-8
summits and at the United Nations. Twenty-one EU countries are
members of NATO. The EU has a role in justice and home affairs of
member states. The abolition of passport control between many member
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Shahwar Junaid
states, under the Schengen Agreement has been a significant unifying

step.23 EU administration is a hybrid of inter-governmentalism and
supranationalism based on consensus and the will of the people of
member states. National level referendums are held in member states
in order to determine the will of the people regarding proposed EU
legislation on key issues.
The foreign relations of the EU are primarily dealt with through
the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Cooperation in
international trade negotiations, under the Common Commercial Policy,
dates back to the establishment of the European Community in 1957.
The CFSP itself has its origins in the formation of European Political
Cooperation in 1970. European Political Cooperation was an informal
consultation process between member states on foreign policy matters.
It was introduced into the European Community through the Single
European Act and subsequently renamed the Common Foreign and
Security Policy through provisions in the Maastricht Treaty.24 The
Maastricht Treaty gives the Common Foreign and Security Policy the task
of promoting both the EUs own interests and those of the international
community as a whole. This includes promoting international cooperation, respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law.25 The
Amsterdam Treaty created the office of the High Representative for the
Common Foreign and Security Policy (currently held by Javier Solana)
to co-ordinate the EUs foreign policy. The Representative speaks on
behalf of the EU in foreign policy matters and negotiates ambiguous
policy positions created by disagreements among member states.
The Common Foreign and Security Policy requires unanimity
among the twenty seven member states. This, along with the difficult
issues dealt with by the CFSP, makes disagreements, such as those which
occurred over the war in Iraq, common. Finnish Prime Minister, Matti
Vanhanen, cited the EUs common foreign policy as the reason why
Finland is, de facto, no longer a neutral country. The EUs emerging
international policy is accompanied by its growing global influence as
a consequence of the enlargement of its membership. The perceived
benefits of becoming a member of the EU acts as an incentive for
both political and economic reform in states wishing to fulfil the EUs
114
accession criteria and is considered a major factor contributing to the

reform of the former communist countries in Eastern Europe. This
influence on the internal affairs of other countries is generally referred
to as soft power, as opposed to military hard power.
European Union Security and Defence Policy
Member states of the European Union are responsible for their own
territorial defence. Many EU members are also members of NATO,
the transatlantic regional security organization. The Western European
Union (WEU) is a European security organization related to the EU.26
In 1992, the WEUs relationship with the EU was defined and it was
assigned humanitarian missions such as peacekeeping and crisis
management. Elements of the WEU are currently being merged into
the EUs CFSP, and the President of the WEU is currently the CFSP
High Representative. Following the Kosovo War in 1999, the European
Council agreed that the Union must have the capacity for autonomous
action, backed by credible military forces, the means to decide to use
them, and the readiness to do so, in order to respond to international
crises without prejudice to action by NATO. To that end, a number of
efforts were made to increase the EUs real military capability. The most
concrete result was the EU Battlegroups initiative, with the capability
to deploy about 1,500 men, at one time. EU forces have been deployed
on peacekeeping missions from Africa to the former Yugoslavia and
the Middle East. EU military operations are supported by a number of
bodies, including the European Defence Agency, satellite centre and the
military staff.
Economic policy
One method classifying different forms of economic regionalism
is by the level of institutional integration they achieve: deep or tight
integration is characterized by a high level of inter-state institutional
integration through norms, principles, rules and decision-making
procedures that are mutually agreed upon and tend to limit the autonomy
of individual members. The EU is an example of deep integration having
evolved from a limited free trade area to customs union, a common
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Shahwar Junaid
market and finally an economic and currency union, now on the way
to evolving a common foreign policy and credible defence capability
to be used by consent of member states and in their interest. Today the
EU has a parliament that legislates on a broad range of issues: member
states find it advantageous to adhere to the standards it sets. Economic
integration has had pronounced spill-over effects in the political, social
and security arenas.
Another method of classifying forms of economic regionalism is by
their treatment of non-members. Trade liberalization and unconditional
most-favoured-nation status in compliance with Article XXIV of GATT27
are characteristic of open regionalism that does not seek to exclude nonmembers from their markets.28 In contrast closed or exclusive forms of
regionalism impose protectionist measures to limit non-members access
to the markets of member states. The international trading system of the
Cold War period in which competing blocs enhanced their economic
power by pursuing aggressive trading policies, is one example of closed
regionalism. The European Union, NAFTA29 and APEC30 have a number
of institutional arrangements to encourage trade with non-member
states. However, these arrangements come into play selectively and are
frequently used as tools of foreign policy.
NAFTA
Regional arrangements across the Atlantic do not come close
to matching the sophisticated balancing act that is typical of the
European continent. For one, the perceived needs of the area differ.
Here there is no question of moving towards a federal structure, or, for
a structured convergence of security and foreign policy. Regionalism
on the American continent is concerned with more pragmatic matters,
such as preferential trade, the management of unemployment and the
development of backward territory. International security matters are
managed through multilateral security arrangements such as NATO, in
the case of the United States and Canada, and bilateral arrangements
or traditional international security mechanisms such as the Security
Council of the United Nations. The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) is a trilateral trade bloc in North America that was created by
116
the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States in December

1992. It was subject to ratification by the legislatures of all three.
There was considerable opposition to NAFTA in all three countries.
Nevertheless, the agreement came into effect on 1 January 1994. NAFTA
has two supplements, the North American Agreement on Environmental
Cooperation (NAAEC) and The North American Agreement on Labor
Cooperation (NAALC).
In terms of combined purchasing power parity GDP of its members,
NAFTA is the largest trade bloc in the world and second largest by
nominal GDP comparison (2007). There has been some convergence of
labour standards since the creation of NAFTA however the three countries
in the bloc have pursued different trade policies with non-members
making it difficult to create a customs union. Mexico, for example, has
signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with more than 40 countries.
NAFTA touches on very sensitive issues in trade, such as agriculture
liberalization and environment regulation; therefore few countries in the
region have shown interest in joining it.31 Instead, some countries, like
Chile, have preferred to negotiate separate bilateral agreements with
the three current NAFTA members, with different restrictions on the
liberalization of industry and the regulation of environment protection.
The effects of NAFTA, both positive and negative, have been quantified
by several economists, whose findings have been reported in a number
of publications.32 Some argue that NAFTA has been positive for
Mexico, which has seen poverty rates fall and real income rise, even
after accounting for the 1944-1995 economic crisis.33 Others argue that
NAFTA has been beneficial to business owners and elites in all three
countries, but has had negative impacts on farmers in Mexico who saw
food prices fall as a result of cheap imports from U.S. agribusiness,
and on US workers in manufacturing and assembly industries, who lost
jobs,. Some economists believe that NAFTA has not done enough to
produce economic convergence in the region, or to substantially reduce
poverty rates and additional investment is required in infrastructure and
agriculture.
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Shahwar Junaid
Trade
NAFTA has not caused trade diversion, aside from a few select
industries such as textiles and apparel, in which rules of origin negotiated
in the agreement were specifically designed to make U.S. firms prefer
Mexican manufacturers.34 The World Bank reported that the collected
NAFTA imports percentage growth was accompanied by an almost
similar increase of non-NAFTA exports. Some groups advocate deeper
integration into a North American Community. Sensitive issues have
hindered that process.
Agriculture was (and still remains) a controversial topic within
NAFTA, as it has been with almost all free trade agreements that have
been signed within the WTO framework. Agriculture is the only section
that was not negotiated trilaterally in NAFTA; instead, three separate
agreements were signed between each pair of parties. The CanadaU.S. agreement contains significant restrictions and tariff quotas on
agricultural products, mainly sugar, dairy, and poultry products, whereas
the Mexico-U.S. pact allows for a wider liberalization within a framework
of phase-out periods - it was the first North-South FTA on agriculture
to be signed. In essence this is against the spirit of regionalism and
downgrades the exercise in one area to a bilateral one. On the other hand
this method of dealing with a contentious issue, rather than scrapping
the whole deal, represents the kind of compromises that have to be made
when regional arrangements are institutionalized.
A study published in the August 2008 issue of the American Journal
of Agricultural Economics, stated that NAFTA has increased U.S.
agricultural exports to Mexico and Canada even though most of this
increase has occurred a decade after the ratification of the Agreement.
The study focused on the effects that gradual phase-in periods have
on trade flows, within the framework of regional trade agreements,
such as NAFTA. Most of the increase in members agricultural trade,
which was only recently brought under the purview of the World Trade
Organization, was due to very high trade barriers prior to NAFTA. There
have been controversies in many areas of economic activity under the
NAFTA regime. Since there are no precedents and there is no legislation,
118
litigation on many issues is pending.35 In the case of the European Union,

there is detailed legislation on most issues that arise. Matters that are not
covered are brought to the notice of the European Parliament which has
the authority to debate and pass legislation.
It is over fourteen years since NAFTA has been in force. In order
to analyze its impact on the economy of the region it is necessary to
consider the viewpoint of NAFTA opponents, as well as its supporters.
NAFTAs opponents include many categories of labour as well as
environment conservationists and consumer groups. Initially it was said
that NAFTA would lead to lower wages in the United States, eliminate
hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs and undermine democratic control
of domestic policy-making, threatening health, environment and food
safety standards. NAFTA promoters included many of the worlds
largest corporations. They were of the view that NAFTA would create
hundreds of thousands of new high-wage U.S. jobs, raise living standards
in the U.S., Mexico and Canada and improve environmental conditions.
NAFTA was expected to transform Mexico from a poor, developing
country, on the borders of the United States, into a booming new market
for U.S. exports. This was expected to have a positive effect on the
stability of the region.
Such divergent views were to be expected because NAFTA was
a radical experiment that undertook the merger of three nations with
radically different levels of economic development. This had never been
attempted before. Prior to NAFTA, trade agreements in the region dealt
with cutting tariffs, lifting quotas and setting other similar terms of trade
in goods between countries. NAFTA, on the other hand, contained 900
pages of rules to which each signatory nation was required to conform
its domestic laws regardless of whether similar laws had previously
been rejected by different national legislative bodies. NAFTA set quality
control standards on a broad range of goods and services in all member
states. Indirectly it set controls on the power of local government and
sought to eliminate preferences for local products or locally-grown food
through regional legislation. Its core provisions covered the relocation of
industry and the privatization and deregulation of a number of essential
services in the interest of the region as a whole.
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Shahwar Junaid
Other regional cooperation organizations

The levels of regional integration promoted through the European
Union and NAFTA legislation have precedents in a politicized form in
the economy of the former Soviet Union. The links between the successor
states of the Soviet Union, Russia, and the newly independent states of
the near abroad (both European and Central Asia) are not formal. They
have carried over from institutions that no longer exist.
The EU and NAFTA are two of the most highly evolved regional
organizations in the world today, with a politico-economic mandate.
NATO is equally evolved but has a security mandate. There are about
thirty, more or less active, regional groupings in the world today.36 Most
have a formal or informal interest in regional security as well. Some
are on the way to serious institutionalized regional integration, with
allied regional security interests, such as the Association of South East
Asian Nations (ASEAN), the alliance of ten independent countries that
promotes stability and economic growth in Southeast Asia. ASEAN
has set up the consultative ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) which has
been preparing to establish a quick reaction force to combat terrorism
in the region (27 July 2007). The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) is an organization created in 1989 for 21 Pacific-rim countries
or member economies, to discuss the regional economy, cooperation,
trade and investment and manage the interplay of economic, political
and security factors, APEC is an attempt at regime creation.
APEC membership claims to account for approximately 41 percent
of the worlds population, approximately 56 percent of world GDP
and about 49 percent of world trade. The activities, including yearround meetings of the members ministers, are coordinated by the
APEC Secretariat in Singapore.37 APEC covers one of the worlds most
economically dynamic regions at a time when the area is projected to
continue its unprecedented economic growth well into the 21st century but
lacks a regional institutional framework that can cope with developments
in other parts of the world.
Many other regional groupings across the globe are less structured,
120
in a nascent experimental stage, or dormant. They are characterized

by reliance on informal links, consultative mechanisms and consensus
building measures. Compared to the EU, they lack binding institutional
integration with shared norms, principles, rules and decision making
procedures that could limit the autonomy of individual members. The
economic spill-over of such integration is not attractive enough and the
political will not strong enough to lead to such levels of regionalism.
However the potential for profitable integration exists. These regional
groupings include the African Economic Community that runs parallel to
the African Union (formerly the Organization of African Unity (OAU)),
the Andean Community (CAN), the Arab Maghreb Union, the Caribbean
Community and Common Market (Caricom), the Central American
Common Market (CACM), the Central European Free Trade Area, the
Common Market of the South Cone (Mercosur), the Common Market for
Eastern and Southern Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
WTO regimes have had an impact on these organizations but within their
region they continue to serve as a cushion against the ongoing process
of globalization with its internationalization of industrial norms, Total
Quality Control, labour welfare concepts, the outsourcing of industrial
production, financial transactions and other aspects of trade in goods,
commodities and services.
The desire for regional stability and economic progress in the face
of international pressures was the motivating force behind the creation
of regional associations in South Asia. The Regional Cooperation for
Development (RCD) was a multi-governmental organization which was
originally established in 1962 by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey to promote
the socio-economic development of member states. In 1979, this
organization was dissolved. The intention in forming the organization
was to foster existing, longstanding cultural and economic links between
member states. The reality was that from the period of its inception to
the time of its dissolution the groups secretariat proposed 81 economic
projects out of which 49 were approved by member states but only 17
could be completed. RCD was replaced by the Economic Cooperation
Organization (ECO) in 1985. The basic Charter of the Organization, the
Treaty of Izmir was amended in 1990, providing a legal basis for the
revival of the organization. In 1992, ECO accepted seven new members,
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Shahwar Junaid
namely Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,

Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Since its expansion in 1992, ECOs long
term perspectives and sectoral priorities have been defined in two action
plans and a strategy document. Transport, communication, energy, trade
and investment were identified as priority areas for action.
During the ECO summit in 1995, documents pertaining to six ECO
institutions and 12 regional arrangements were signed. The Fourth
Summit Meeting (Ashgabat, 14 May 1996) marked the completion
of the ground work for ECOs reorganization and restructuring and
a Memorandum of Understanding was signed. This was the second
meeting of ECO marked with sharp differences between member states,
namely Pakistan and Afghanistan, regarding management of regional
security. Although the political leadership in both countries has changed
over the years the differences are more pronounced today than ever
before. As a result any meaningful dialogue between Pakistan and other
member state of ECO tend to take place at the bilateral level.
During the late 1970s, Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman proposed
the creation of a trade bloc consisting of South Asian countries. The
proposal was accepted by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka during a meeting
held in Colombo in 1981. In August 1983, the three counties adopted
the Declaration on South Asian Regional Cooperation during a summit
which was held in New Delhi. The South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) was established on 8 December 1985 by India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives and Bhutan. In
April 2007, at the Associations 14th summit, Afghanistan became its
eighth member at the insistence of India. The members of SAARC
agreed on five areas of cooperation: agriculture and rural development,
telecommunications, science, technology and meteorology, health and
population activities, transport and human resources development.
SAARC has an apolitical agenda and has intentionally laid more
stress on core issues related to the five areas of cooperation agreed
upon, rather than the more sensitive political issues that its members
have to cope with: these sensitive issues include the Kashmir dispute
and the Sri Lankan civil war. SAARC has also refrained from interfering
122
in the internal affairs of member states as well as in disputes between

member states. However, political dialogue is often conducted on the
margins of SAARC meetings and it does help in confidence building.
During the 12th and 13th SAARC summits, a great deal of emphasis
was laid on the need for cooperation between the SAARC members to
fight terrorism.
SAARCs inability to play a significant role in integrating South
Asia is laid at the door of the political and military rivalry between India
and Pakistan. Due to economic, political and territorial disputes, South
Asian nations have not been able to harness the benefits of a unified
economy. Over the years, SAARCs role in South Asia has diminished
and it is thought to be a mere platform for annual talks and meetings
between the representatives of member states. SAARC member states
have not been willing to sign a regional free trade protocol so far. India
has bilateral trade pacts with the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka,
but similar agreements with Pakistan and Bangladesh have been stalled
due to political and economic concerns on both sides. In 1993 in Dhaka,
SAARC countries signed an agreement to gradually lower tariffs within
the region. Eleven years later, at the 12th SAARC Summit at Islamabad,
SAARC countries devised the South Asia Free Trade Agreement which
created a framework for the establishment of a free trade area in South
Asia. In terms of population, the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation is the largest regional organization in the world. Its combined
population of about 1.4 billion provides a huge market.38
The establishment of SAARC was one of the regional initiatives
supported by the international community in the hope that it would help
reduce tension in South Asia. A related development was the initiation of
Track II (unofficial, non-governmental) diplomacy between India and
Pakistan. The hitherto futile expectation of the international community
was that SAARC would become the ideal vehicle to promote peace and
reconciliation in South Asia and that territorial disputes such as that of
Jammu and Kashmir would fade in significance over the years in the
face of economic prosperity that deep regional integration would bring.
Institutionalized economic cooperation was expected to work its magic
and lead to harmony in other fields. The modern functionalist theory was
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cited in support of this view.39 However, closer to the truth is that many
economic and security issues continue to beset South Asia. The existing
situation in the region was further complicated post-9/11 by the invasion
of Afghanistan by NATO forces (ISAF) and the widening scope of the
US-led war on terror, which has had a profound destabilizing effect on
Pakistan. Regional cooperation took a backseat until urgent economic
concerns revived interest in its possibilities recently.
Several states in South Asia are confronted with conflict situations:
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have grave security concerns
that impact on their national integrity and stifle their economy. They
also face serious economic problems that could be eased, to an extent,
through regional cooperation. Pakistan, for instance, does not have the
internal resources to ease its severe power shortage but Iran is energy
surplus and has recently shown its willingness to sell energy to Pakistan.
However, there is international pressure on Pakistan to avoid contact
with Iran. The prospective Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline,
whereby Pakistan would benefit both as a consumer as well as a transit
point is seen as undermining US sanctions against Iran.40
Iran which shares borders and has strong cultural, economic and
political links with two SAARC countries, namely, Afghanistan and
Pakistan has also sought membership. On 22 February 2005 its Foreign
Minister while expressing his countrys interest in joining SAARC,
stated that Iran could provide the region with East-West connectivity.
On 3 March 2007, Iran requested SAARC observer status and was
told by Secretary-General Lyonpo Chenkyab Dorji that this would be
considered at the next SAARC foreign ministers meeting.
A number of other states, including the Peoples Republic of China
and the Union of Myanmar, have also expressed interest in SAARC
membership. More possibilities for selective institutional integration at
the regional level, based on the urgent needs of member states, could
arise with SAARC expansion.
Major countries as well as organizations not geographically
contiguous to the SAARC region have also sought observer status. These
124
include the US and South Korea (April 2006) and the European Union
(July 2006). On 2 August 2006, SAARC foreign ministers agreed in
principle to these requests. The Russian Federation intends to become an
observer as well, and is supported by India. This has raised the political
profile of the organization and is indicative of intense international
politicking in the volatile South Asia region. It also points to the possible
creation of pressure groups within SAARC.
Regional cooperation options for Pakistan are limited by the
global political climate, the regional security situation as well as its
own economic and security compulsions. There are several concurrent
themes to be considered. Closer ties with Iran and Turkey on its western
border and the Gulf Cooperation Council states towards the south
make sense, but Pakistan is always pushed towards the east by the
international community. In any case Iran, Turkey and the GCC have
their own priorities. Throughout the world regional groupings in the
economic and security spheres have overlapping and complementary
footprints. Pakistan has longstanding security concerns as a result of
its dispute with India over the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir. Until
the perceived benefits of becoming part of an institutionalized regional
cooperation arrangement with India clearly outweigh the compulsions
of its position on Kashmir, Pakistan will not be comfortable with the
possibility of deep integration. It has been said that such an arrangement
could act as an incentive for political, economic and security reform in
member states but this argument has not been accepted so far. This is
why moves to link up with, and draw upon, the resources of Central
Asian states have always been encouraged. The bonds between the states
of a region may develop or change over a period of time: integration
with some states may deepen while links with others may become less
important.41 For example, direct foreign investment in Pakistan by the
Gulf States has led to interest in establishing links with them.
The EU and NAFTA have not had to put fundamental issues of
security and sovereignty before their citizens in referendums, since most
territorial disputes in Western Europe were resolved at the end of World
War II, while another set of territorial concerns came to an end with the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989. A different kind of symbolic,
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Shahwar Junaid
but equally potent, sovereignty issue has been raised there: the question
of whether to retain their national currency or to accept the EU currency,
the euro. In a number of member states the public rejected economic
union and voted to retain the national currency. Even today, only 15 of
the 27 EU countries use the euro as national currency.
The benefits of the US $ 7.4 billion Iran-Pakistan-India gas
pipeline include an incentive to establish a regional institution for
the smooth running of its administration: this could be a test case of
institutionalization in the region. Such an institution would need to have
an apolitical, supranational mandate in order to be effective at all times:
unresolved political and territorial issues within the sub-continent have
limited cross-border cooperation since Partition and the creation of
Pakistan, despite the deeply interdependent nature of the economy of
the area under colonial rule.
During the 1990s attempts were made to apply the experience in
Europe to other regions, particularly South Asia, with its history of
periodic conflict over territory and issues of sovereignty. A review of
regional integration initiatives in various parts of the world highlights why
each initiative may require a customized approach. However there are
some general guidelines that can smooth the path of regional cooperation
initiatives. Devising rules and regulations covering the issues that can
arise as a result of interstate economic activity under new arrangements
can be a laborious and cumbersome task. Nevertheless, it is necessary
in order to avoid the kind of litigation that has surfaced under NAFTA.
Regional cooperation associations should consider awarding special
status to countries that may not fulfil criteria for membership but may
be able to contribute to the prosperity and stability of member states.
In order to avoid confrontations and deadlocks, members should have
the choice of opting out of some arrangements within the framework
of a regional association, which they feel unable to accept. Member
states should make arrangements for the uplift of those states within
the regional association that are less developed. This is bound to create
goodwill and have a positive effect on regional stability.
126
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33. Weintraub, S; NAFTAs Impact on North America: The First Decade, CSIS Press, Washington , USA, 2004.
34. Hufbauer, G.C. and Schott, J.J., NAFTA Revisited, Institute for International Economics, Washington D.C. 2005.
35. Gantz, D.A., Dispute Settlement under the NAFTA and the WTO: Choice of Forum Opportunities and Risks for the NAFTA Parties, American University International Law
Review, 1999, 14(4):1025-1106.
36. Economic Regionalism, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008, Encyclopedia Britannica on
line, 19 May 2008, search . eb.com/eb/article, 9344528
128

37. Vinod K. Aggarwal, Charles E. Morrison, Asia Pacific Crossroads: Regime Creation
and the Future of APEC, Palgrave Macmillan, 15 May 1998, p.448; ref pp. 263,266.
38. Bannerjee, Dipankar; SAARC in the Twenty-First Century: Towards a Cooperative Future, 1 January 2002, p.362, India Research Press.
39. Haas, Ernst B., The Study of Regional Integration, International Organization, 24
(No.4), autumn 1970, 607-646, Cambridge University Press, University of Wisconsin
Press and the MIT Press.
40. Khan, Jasmeen, Irans Peace Pipeline, RSIS, 21 November 2007, ETH Zurich.
41. Junaid, Shahwar, Terrorism and Global Power Systems, Oxford University Press, 2005.
129
NATION OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS:

A PORTRAIT OF IRELAND
Toheed Ahmad*
Abstract
(Ireland is the only country in the world to have completely
leapfrogged from the Agricultural Age to the Information Age. Within
a generation this last island of Europe has progressed from being a
poor, backward agrarian society to a prosperous high-tech economy.
Today it is the world leader in computer software and pharmaceuticals.
This Irish miracle is the subject of study at many universities
and think tanks to draw lessons for a fast tracked growth in modern
times. Its Celtic civilization, counted among the oldest in Europe, is
sometimes traced back to the orient, even specifically to the banks of
River Indus. Britain ruled over both peoples for centuries. This has
led to some commonalities being noted between the people of the two
countries, which makes Ireland the natural partner of Pakistan in the
EU. Author).
Of my nation! What ish my nation! Which ish my nation! Who talks
of my nation ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. (A
drunken Irish soldier in Shakespeares Henry V (3.1))
No people have undergone greater persecution nor did that
persecution altogether cease up to our own day. No people hate as we
do in whom the past is always live, there are moments when hatred
poisons my life and I accuse myself of effeminacy because I have not
given it adequate expression...Then I remind myself that I owe my soul
to Shakespeare, to Spenser and to Blake and to the English language in
which I think, speak and write, that everything I love has come to me
*
Toheed Ahmad is a former ambassador of Pakistan.
Nation of Saints and Scholars: a Portrait of Ireland
through English; my hatred tortures me with love, my love with my hate.

I am like the Tibetan monk who dreams at his initiation that he is eaten
by a wild beast and learns on waking that he himself is eater and eaten.
This is Irish hatred and solitude, the hatred of human life that made
Swift write Gulliver. W.B. Yeats, A General Introduction for My Work
(1937).
The Pakistanis are as superstitious as the Irish. The two nations
share a phobia of spirits and witches as well as a love and reverence of
hermits and healers and holy men. William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali
(1998).
Ireland is a graceful country which has recently declared final
peace in Northern Ireland, a portion heaved off the mainland in 1922
mainly on sectarian grounds - when Britain ended its nearly 800 years of
colonial occupation of this Emerald Island. With a population roughly
half that of Lahore, Ireland has become the worlds largest exporter
of computer software and pharmaceuticals. The per capita income in
this Celtic Tiger is some $40,000. In July 1985, it was the most highly
indebted country per capita in the world; the same year at the Band
Aid concert led by Sir Bob Geldof and U2 (both Irish), Ireland was
the highest donor per capita. In this exploration of the Irish miracle,
I will search for parallels and lessons for us. The point to note is that
in the EU, English-speaking Ireland is our natural partner, not the UK
(because of the burden of history and the large obstructive presence of
our community) nor Germany nor France or Spain because of language
difficulties. With the Irish outreach in Europe and North America, our
companies with a presence in Ireland can hope to break into these rich
markets.
W.B Yeatss claim about the Irish being haters par excellence is
worth a reflection. You will see that today this intriguing observation
closely fits us Pakistanis. Many a writer and analyst in our media have
noted the rising level of hatred among our people. We have ideologies
of hate, private militias inflicting death and destruction to promote their
hate-filled causes, regional extremists purveying hatred to win followers
and even national hatreds which have kept us bound in a chain of poverty.
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Toheed Ahmad
Ireland focalised its hatred on its former colonial master, it refused to

join the Commonwealth and had deadly peoples militias such as the
Irish Republican Army, Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Ulster
Voluntary Force. India baiting has never become a national sport while
our relations with London have been at best ambivalent. Perhaps that is
why William Dalrymple chose to ignore this common quality between
the two peoples. And not just the all-pervading sentiment of hate but
also that the past is always alive with us too. Think of all the references
in our religious discourse which point to a golden era in a foreign land
several centuries ago. While Yeats accuses himself of not giving this
adequate expression in his poetry, I can quote verse upon verse of Munir
Niazi which articulate hatred, nostalgia, and solitude in equal measure.
Though we dont have a Swift in our tradition, given the malaise and
morbidity that gripped our writers in the last three decades, in a climate of
deepening economic and social injustice, we are ready for masterworks
of irony and satire in our languages.
The Irish miracle is the story of the rise of this Celtic Tiger. In less
than two decades, Ireland went from being a third world country with a
Stone Age culture to the top three richest EU economies. Today Ireland
is cited as the only country to have leap-frogged from the Agricultural
Age to the Information Age. It all started in the second half of the sixties
when a maverick Education Minister of Ireland, Donough OMalley,
battled his way to getting secondary education in the Republic made
free of cost. This set up a wind that raised all the boats in the Irish waters
soon the country not only rid itself of illiteracy but also enabled a big
chunk of its student population to enrol in the universities and colleges.
Massive reform and upgrade of the universities soon followed. The state
set up a chain of 14 Institutes of Technology all over the country to
produce manpower for the high-tech industry sprouting all over Ireland.
There is a great potential for institutional linkages of our universities
with their Irish counterparts for win-win partnerships.
With an educated youthful English-speaking population and a tax
rate of mere 10 percent, later raised in the face of stiff EU opposition
to 12.5 (compared with 35 percent in UK and elsewhere in Europe),
Ireland set itself up as the preferred destination for US software
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companies to outsource their routine jobs. Microsoft established its

European headquarters from where they produced localised versions of
their computer applications in major European languages. Soon Oracle,
Sun Microsystems, IBM, Motorola, Intel, Dell, America Online etc.,
followed and by 2004 Irelands total IT exports numbered three times
that of India. Similarly the major US and European pharmaceutical
companies based their manufacturing units in the southern port city of
Cork, making it the pharma-capital of the world. Ireland now exports
more pharmaceuticals than any other country in the world. All the
worlds legitimate Viagra tablets are manufactured in Cork.
Ireland was no more a poor agricultural backyard of Europe, it now
had a thriving knowledge industry, full employment and a rollicking
prosperity that not only reversed its brain drain but also offered
employment to many a new migrant from Europe. With the governments
declaration of art, music and book writing as tax free industries, a
creativity storm was unleashed in the Republic. Van Morrisson, U2 and
Westlife emerged as the leading music bands in the world, Irish movies
like Ryans Daughter and My Left Foot won many an Oscar award and
a book culture blossomed with annual Blooms Day being all over the
world to honour the hero of James Joyces novel Ulysses, itself rated as
the best novel of the twentieth century.
The countrys transformation into a high-tech centre and a portal to
Europe for foreign investors has more than once been called a miracle.
Luckily, its not a literal miracle, but the result of insightful political
ambition. The road that Ireland took is open to any other country
that faces similar problems. While 1987 marked the bottom of a long
recession, it was also the year Charles Haughey took over as prime
minister and decided that the economic system should be rebuilt from
scratch. He even managed to sell his idea to the opposition and to the
most important interest groups, including the unions.
Unlike Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, who confronted the
powerful interest groups, Haughey chose to sit down with them. What
would later be called a miracle started with a social contract between the
government, the employers, and the unions. The contract included tax
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Toheed Ahmad
cuts and some financial support for those worst off. The public sector
was quickly slimmed, and so the private sector had more room to grow.
The economy accelerated. The government cut taxes for corporations
and working citizens, while the jungle of regulations was cleaned up.
Publicly owned banks were prepared for privatization
It might seem strange that the unions would support a political
agenda with tax cuts and a smaller public sector. In retrospect, however,
we can conclude that the Irish employees did the right thing. Nobody
was happy with the previous situation. The labour market was anything
but flexible, and there was no growth to distribute.
The countrys openness to foreign investment was handled as onewindow operation by the Industrial Development Authority. With one
percent of the total euro zone market, Ireland drew as much as a third of
all US investment into Europe. The IDA built industrial parks all over
the country and provided training subsidies to companies which greatly
helped with up-gradation and employability of its manpower. This Irish
miracle spawned a host of case studies, and no less envy, especially in
the US and UK as they struggled to contain the slide of their economies.
The world raced to study how the Celtic Tiger was outperforming the
Tiger economies of the Far East. Ireland had become more a brand than
a country, a miracle indeed.
Ireland claims a place among the most ancient people of Europe.
Like Pakistans, the history of the Irish people began with the first
known human settlement around 8000 BC. That was when huntergatherers arrived from Britain and continental Europe probably via a
land bridge. Few archaeological traces remain of this group, but the
later arrivals, the proto Celts, were traced back to Asian shores, more
precisely, the Indus Valley. I heard this first from the mayor of the Irish
city of Limerick, Counsellor Diarmuid Scully, in whose office I was
receiving the documents of the two container loads of relief goods
donated by Limerickans for the victims of the 2005 earthquake. In his
speech Counsellor Diarmuid said that the origins of the Irish people
lay along the banks of the river Indus. Everyone in the audience, me
included, were stunned. On top of that the mayor proudly declared that
134
he had a Pakistani family, his maternal aunt had married a Mr. Siddiqui in
London and the couple had returned to Ireland to enjoy their retirement
along with their four (proto Celt) children.
Following the arrival of Saint Patrick and other Christian missionaries
from the UK in the early to mid-5th century A.D., Christianity became
the indigenous religion by the year 600.From around 800 A.D. more
than a century of Viking invasions brought havoc upon the monastic
culture and on the islands various regional dynasties, yet both of these
institutions proved strong enough to survive and assimilate the invaders.
The strong monastic orders retreated to monasteries built on hill tops
and on islands to escape destruction. Ireland, which was never a part
of the Roman Empire, was spared the invasion of the Germanic hordes
that ravaged the Empire. The Christian monks then alighted from their
perches and travelled on the smouldering pathways of Europe to relight
the candle of their faith. They studied in Arab schools in Sicily, Toledo
and Cordoba, and retrieved Greek knowledge for Europe by translating
Aristotle from Arabic into Latin besides several other works on alchemy
and astrology. They thus became the forerunners of the first renaissance
of Europe. This fascinating story is told in a gripping book, How the
Irish saved Civilization: the Untold Story of Irelands Heroic Role
from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, written by Tom
Cahill in 1995. Below we take a closer look at this burgeoning Irish
orientalism.
The Ireland of the early fifth century was a brooding, dank island
whose inhabitants, while carefree and warlike on the outside, lived
in quaking fear within, their terror of shape-changing monsters, of
sudden death and the insubstantiality of their world so acute that they
drank themselves into an insensate stupor in order to sleep. Patrick,
however, provided a living alternative. He was a serene man who slept
well without drink, a man in whom the sharp fear of death has been
smoothed away. The Christianity he proposed to the Irish succeeded
because it took away the dread from the magical world that was Ireland.
And once they were Christianized, the Irish founded the monastic
movement, copying the books being destroyed elsewhere by Germanic
invaders, eventually bringing them back to the places from which the
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Toheed Ahmad
books had come. And that, Mr. Cahill concludes with typically wry
unabashedness, is how the Irish saved civilization.
Just over a hundred years after the Battle of Hastings (1066), the
English moved into Ireland beginning their 800 year rule over the island.
Thousands of English and Protestant settlers were sent here under the
English policy of Plantation. As military and political defeat of Gaelic
Ireland became clearer, especially with the decisive Battle of Boyne
(1690) when Prince William of Orange defeated his Catholic father-inlaw, James II, the role of religion as a new division in Ireland became
more pronounced. From this period Catholic-Protestant conflict became
a recurrent theme in Irish history. By the end of the seventeenth century
all Catholics, representing some 85 percent of Irelands population then,
were banned from the Irish parliament. Political power rested entirely in
the hands of a British settler-colony and more specifically the Anglican
minority while the Catholic population suffered severe political and
economic privations. In 1801, this colonial parliament was abolished
and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland. Speaking Irish was declared an offence, Catholics
were not to be admitted to schools, and saying mass was outlawed. The
Westminster philosophy as encoded in these laws was that the Catholics
are born to be punished.
It is ironic that while the Irish were being brutalised and oppressed
at home, they readily agreed to serve in the British East India Company
army. My Irish friends unconvincingly claim that their ancestors merely
accepted the jobs because employment opportunities were extremely
scarce at home. The Irish economy and society were devastated by the
famine of 1840-45 which killed a million people. Starvation and disease
forced another million to emigrate. The famine was a watershed in Irish
history and its effects permanently changed the islands demographic,
political and cultural landscape. It is intriguing that in 1845 when the
Ottoman Caliph, Abdulmajid, offered to send 10,000 Sterling for Irish
farmers, he was requested by Queen Victory to slash the amount to
1000 Sterling as she had sent only 2000 Sterling. The Caliph agreed
but secretly also dispatched three shiploads of food which the British
tried unsuccessfully to intercept and the Ottoman sailors off-loaded the
136
cargo just north of Dublin. The famine, locally called the Great Hunger,
generated lasting bitterness towards the British government, whom
many blamed then and now for the starvation of so many people.
It is said of the British Empire that the Irish fought for it, the Welsh
and the Scottish ran it, while the English profited from it. Till the 1857
War of Independence, as many as 48 percent of the British soldiery in
India was Irish. Their cruelty and barbarities are legion. The commanders
who ordered the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre were Irish, the butchers of
the last Mughul Emperors family were Irish. The Irish fought for both
sides in the American Civil War. They were enlisted in several armies of
European kings and dukes giving fight to whomever their masters chose
to fight. Revolutionaries at home and mercenaries abroad is how best
these wild geese can be best described. In a memorable dialogue of
a 1991 Irish movie, The Commitments (Director Alan Parker), a young
Dublin musician reminds his fellow band player that the Irish were the
niggers of Europe, Catholics the niggers of Ireland, and northsiders (the
poorer but hard core Irish district of the capital city) the niggers of
Dublin.
Ignoring his peoples crimes against humanity in colonial India,
Irish President amon de Valera, while addressing a joint session of the
US Congress in 1964, recited the following stanza from a poem called
Irish National Hymn, which was composed at about the same time
as Brigadier Dwyer was ordering his troops to open fire on unarmed
civilians in Amritsar:
Oh, Ireland be it thy high duty
To teach the world the might of moral beauty,
And stamp Gods image truly on the struggling soul.
Is this a case of national hypocrisy? Do the Irish of the miracle age
remember these dark episodes of their past? Such is the stuff of history,
which in Irelands case, makes for an instructive reading. Although we
dont have a lived past that stretches as far back as that of Ireland, by
comparison, our national narrative is an innocent story.
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Toheed Ahmad
The Irish Parliamentary Party strove from the 1880s to attain Home
rule through a parliamentary constitutional movement eventually winning
the Home Rule Act which London chose to suspend at the outbreak
of the First World War. This postponement led to the Easter Rising of
1916 in which a motley group of revolutionaries led an insurrection and
proclaimed a Republic of Ireland. The Declaration is a sacred document
of the Republic which began: In the name of God and of the dead
generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood,
Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strike for her
freedom.
The Proclamation went on to say: We declare the right of the people
of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of
Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation
of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished
the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of
the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their
right to national freedom and sovereignty: six times during the past three
hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental
right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby
proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we
pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its
freedom, of its welfare, and its exaltation among the nations.
It ended thus, We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the
protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our
arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by
cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation
must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children
to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of
the august destiny to which it is called. Ringing words indeed! British
bullets and bayonets put down the Rising in six days, martial law was
clamped and rebel leaders were court martialled and executed. The
British Army reported casualties of 116 dead, 368 wounded, Irish
casualties were 318 dead and 2,217 wounded. While in Ireland 3430 men
and 79 women were thrown into prison, 1480 Irishmen were detained
in England under the Defence of the Realm Act. A terrible beauty is
138
born sang out W.B. Yeats as the Irish nation was rudely woken up to
its shackles. Todays miracle Ireland is getting ready to celebrate the
centenary of the Rising in 2016.
Within two years of the Rising, a Parliament of free Ireland,
comprising of Irish MPs elected to Westminster in the 1918 British
general election, met in Dublin and issued a Declaration of Independence.
We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion
of our national right which we will never tolerate, and we demand the
evacuation of our country by the English Garrison the Declaration
demanded, adding that, for seven hundred years the Irish people has
never ceased to repudiate and has repeatedly protested in arms against
foreign usurpation. The Parliament went on to seek the recognition and
support of every free nation in the world for Irish independence, and we
proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international
peace. Only the USSR responded by extending its recognition to the
independent Ireland.
London refused to recognise these Irish rebels. The Royal Irish
Constabulary, the British paramilitary, had 9700 men stationed in 1500
barracks across Ireland. Soon they came under guerrilla attacks by the
Irish Republican volunteers and mounted their own retaliation. The Irish
public, which was initially cool to the Declaration of Independence,
was increasingly won over by the British reign of terror unleashed upon
them. Some 400 British barracks were burnt down by angry Irish people
and the IRA volunteers. The British administration collapsed when the
people refused to pay taxes and boycotted the courts which had to be
closed down. Michael Collins, a leader of the pro-Treaty faction, was
the main leader of this independence movement.
An interesting aside to this War of Independence is provided by
the mutiny of some Irish soldiers in India in 1920. On hearing of the
outbreak of hostilities against the British, on 28 June, five men of the
Connaught Rangers, stationed in Jullundhur, refused to take orders from
their officers declaring their intent not to serve the King until the British
forces left Ireland. The Union Jack at Jullundhur was replaced by the
flag of the Irish Republic. Led by Private James Daly, 70 Rangers joined
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Toheed Ahmad
the mutiny and stormed the armoury. The loyal guards successfully
defended it. In all about 400 men mutinied of which 88 were courtmartialled, 14 were sentenced to death and the rest given up to 15 years
in prison. In 1970 the remains of Private Daly and two others were taken
back to Ireland and given a military funeral with full honours.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 ended the war with Britain with
the establishment of what was called the Irish Free State. About 1400
people died in the war between the Republicans and the Crown forces
and another 557 people died in the political violence in Northern Ireland.
But the victorious were divided between the opponents and proponents
of the Treaty that saw the war of independence morph into a bloody
civil war. The Treaty allowed Northern Ireland to remain part of the
UK. Ireland was thus partitioned, a bitter legacy of the colonial rule
which the Irish Republicans have ever since sought to undo. In the late
1960s Northern Ireland again erupted in a civil war that was largely of
sectarian inspiration. The Irish-American community generously funded
the Provisional IRA in its militant response to the Protestant violence and
the British troops search and destroy operations. The Loyalist majority
refused to acknowledge the rights of the Catholic minority who were
suspected of acting as Dublins agents. The Good Friday Agreement
of 1998, followed by St.Andrews Agreement(2006) has finally been
implemented with the withdrawal of British troops, deweaponization
of militias under international supervision, definitive cease-fire by
Provisional IRA and elections to a new regional government of power
sharing between the main parties. Addressing a joint sitting of the US
Congress in Washington on 30 April 2008, the outgoing Prime Minister
(Taoiseach) of Ireland Bertie Ahern proudly declared: After so many
decades of conflict, I am so proud, Madam Speaker, to be the first Irish
leader to inform the United States Congress: Ireland is at peace. In the
thirty years of troubles nearly 3600 were killed and 47000 injured.
The Irish Peace Process offers a useful model for other conflict
areas like Kashmir, the Middle East and Sri Lanka. The following main
elements of a peaceful settlement of the issue were agreed upon by the
Prime Ministers of Britain and Ireland in December 1993:
140
1. The British government had no selfish, strategic or economic

interest in Northern Ireland.
2. The British government would uphold the right of the people of
Northern Ireland to decide between Union with Great Britain
and a united Ireland.
3. The British and Irish governments would work for an agreement
among all the people of Ireland, embracing the totality of
relationships.
4. The Irish government recognized that Irish self-determination
(meaning, in this context, a United Ireland) required the agreement
and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.
Also, for the first time, consent of the majority of the people of
the Republic of Ireland would be necessary for reunification,
giving the South a say in the reunification process.
5. The Irish government would try to address Unionists fears of a
united Ireland.
6. A united Ireland could only be brought about by persuasion.
7. Peace must involve a permanent end to the use of, or support
for, paramilitary violence.
Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation located in picturesque
surroundings outside Dublin runs a series of workshops and seminars for
former enemy combatants of Ireland. It is patronised by the President
of the Republic of Ireland and is funded by the Irish Foreign Office.
At my request in 2005, they agreed to look at the possibility of sharing
their knowledge and experience for the Kashmir conflict and sent a two
member team to Islamabad and Muzaffarbad in December 2006 where
they met with many government and civil society personalities. A similar
trip was planned for New Delhi and Srinagar. True to their psychology
of denial on Kashmir, the Indian government refused their visa request.
In private conversations, Glencree people confided to me that Dublin
faced similar stonewalling by London to any outside help claiming
that Northern Ireland was an internal issue of Britain. They pointed to
the first undertaking given by Whitehall in the 1993 Agreement that
The British government had no selfish, strategic or economic interest
in Northern Ireland that paved the way for President Bill Clinton to
appoint Senator George Mitchell as a neutral Peace Co-ordinator to
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Toheed Ahmad
push the peace process forward. A similar change of heart and openness
to outside mediation is required of New Delhi if the Kashmir peace
process is to get anywhere.
Reflecting on the relevance of the Irish peace process to the world,
Peter Hain, former British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and
current Chair of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body, wrote in the
Guardian daily of 5 June 2008: Observing Northern Ireland today, its
hard to recognise what was, just a decade or so ago, the theatre for such
horror, barbarity, hate and bigotry. For 14 months now, old enemies have
worked together - and even smiled at each other - when they had never
exchanged a courtesy before.
Last years historic agreement has so far stuck, and I believe will
stick through ups and downs, precisely because it was brokered between
the two most politically polarised positions - Ian Paisleys Democratic
Unionist Party and Gerry Adams Sinn Fin. But what are the lessons for
international policy in other areas still locked in similarly bitter conflict
and crippled by terrorism?
First, a need to create space and time, free from violence, in which
political capacity can develop; second, identifying key individuals and
constructive forces; third, the importance of inclusive dialogue at every
level, wherever there is a negotiable objective; fourth, the taking of
risks to sustain political progress, including by talking with enemies;
fifth, the need to align national and international forces; sixth, avoiding
or resolving preconditions to dialogue; seventh, gripping and micromanaging conflict resolution at a high political level, not intermittently
but continuously, whatever breakdowns, crises and hostilities get in the
way.
The west urgently needs to match its commitment to global security
with a commitment to global justice and global conflict resolution. The
Northern Ireland experience, horrendous as it was, points to a rebalancing
of foreign policy that can overcome horror with hope.
Textual links between Celtic and Oriental cultures existed
142
independently in native Irish and Gaelic culture as far back as Irish

writing extends. Throughout the course of Irish cultural history, this
unacknowledged discourse of Orientalism has served as an important
imaginative and allegorical realm for Irish writers and intellectuals,
states Joseph Lennon in his monumental work Irish Orientalism: A
Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press, 2004). He
goes on to say that the stories of Irelands ancient past and legendary
Asian origins occupied a prominent place in Irish culture from the ninth
through the eighteenth centuries, offering political commentary since its
first recording.The political imperative of the narrative (legitimating
the Irish nation) had become bare and clearly evident to cultural
nationalist writers of (Ireland). The semiotic connection between the
Celt and the Oriental came to signify the dynamics of Ireland within
the British Empire perhaps best understood in gradations of resistance
and complicity. The origin legends became foundational to Irish cultural
nationalism in the eighteenth century and developed into a literary and
mystical connection during the Celtic Revival in the early twentieth
of which we will speak more in later paragraphs.
During my stay in Ireland, I made friends with Dr. Dennis OSullivan,
an Emeritus Professor of Space Physics at the Dublin Institute of
Advanced Studies. He had had some introduction to Allama Iqbal
through Pakistani friends and wanted to know more. In the mail one
day I received a packet sent by Dr. OSullivan containing a photocopy
of a 1944 booklet titled The Story of Irish Orientalism by Dr. M.
Mansoor described in the book as Examiner for the London Chamber
of Commerce. Dr. Mansoor had studied at Trinity College Dublin and
is described in the Introduction written by his former Trinity teacher
as A native speaker of Arabic and an excellent Hebrew scholar, well
versed in Aramaic and a keen student of other Semitic languages. My
space physicist friend could not have given me a better gift.
Dr. Mansoor notes Ireland could boast of a University early in the
fourteenth century, established in Dublins St. Patrick Cathedral and
that after Oxford, Dublin was not far behind as a centre of European
Orientalism. Love of travel and an affinity with the East had long been
part of the Irish temperament, he observes. The customs of the Celtic
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Toheed Ahmad
race, its tribal organisation, its tales and its traditions all embody Oriental
ideas brought by Irish travellers from the most distant East. He finds
evidence of this in that many of the popular tales and traditions in the
folklore of Ireland are identical with those of India and Egypt. Irish
writers, he claims, wrote the earliest grammars of Malayan, Aramaic,
Hebrew, Arabic and Ethiopic besides those of Pashtu and Kashmiri
languages. When in 1855 appointments to the Indian Civil Service and
to the British Indian Army were thrown open to public competition,
Trinity College Dublin (founded 1592 by Queen Elizabeth the First who
in 1601 signed the charter for the East India Company) was chosen as
a centre and the range of its academic curriculum was widened. Chairs
of Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, and soon after of Sanskrit were founded.
Mir Aulad Ali of Lucknow was one of the professors hired to man these
chairs. I have the text of a fascinating two-part lecture on the mores and
manners of Englishmen and life in Dublin he gave in Urdu at his native
school when he was on a years home leave in Lucknow in 1861.
By the end of the century over 200 graduates of Trinity College had
passed into the Indian Civil Service and the Army and held important
administrative and military posts. William Crooke (1848-1923) of the
ICS was editor of a journal North Indian Notes and Queries, meant
essentially for the use of the British residents of India, which informed
its readers about various aspects of India and Indian life, ranging from
archaeology to ethnography. Crooke also collected hundreds of folk
tales and recorded them with the help of natives, which were recently
issued as Folk Tales from Northern India (2002). However Mansoor
showers his praise and admiration on Sir George Grierson (1851-1941)
another Trinity graduate who served in India, as the greatest scholar
of India and its languages. Among other books he wrote The Modern
Vernacular Literature of Hindustani with a catalogue of 952 authors
writing in the dialects used from Rajputana to the borders of Bengal. His
chef doeuvre however was the 40 volume Linguistic Survey of India
which took Grierson 30 years to compile. Published in 1928, the same
year when Grierson issued his New English Dictionary, the Survey, hailed
as one of the most remarkable feats of recent scholarship, classifies and
describes 179 Indian languages and 544 dialects. He was 82 years old
when his last book Dictionary of the Kashmiri was published.
144
Nations are born in the hearts of the poets, wrote Allama Iqbal
in his 1910 diary published 51 years later as Stray Reflections. This is
best illustrated in the Irish literary renaissance that prepared the way for
the countrys political independence in 1922 after some 800 years of
punitive British colonial rule. Irelands national poet, W.B.Yeats insisted
that he wrote for the coming time as did Iqbal, and went on to explain
that the arts lie dreaming of what is to come and thus provide a kind of
anticipatory illumination. No wonder both saw poetry as being nearer
to prophecy.
Political leaders of the Irish independence struggle drew greatly
on the ideas of poets and playwrights. What makes the Irish Literary
Renaissance such a fascinating case is the knowledge that the cultural
revival preceded, and in many ways enabled, the political revolution that
followed. Pakistans own freedom movement which began essentially
as a struggle for cultural revival is traced back to the tracts of Sir Syed,
the stirring verse of Hali and Iqbal and the aesthetic achievement
of Chughtai. (This is said to be quite the opposite of the American
experience in which the attainment of cultural autonomy by Whitman
and Emerson followed the political Declaration of Independence by
full 75 years). The Gaelic League (which advocated widespread use of
the Irish language) and the Irish National Theatre were the other main
channels of this Revival movement which imagined a Republic for the
politicians to fight for and create. Richard Ellmann writing in his Yeats:
The Man and the Masks, makes a startling claim that, Every poem (of
Yeats) is a battleground and the sounds of gunfire are heard throughout.
One could say the same for many poems of Iqbal.
A comparative study of Iqbal and Yeats (born 12 years before the
Allama and outliving him by nine months) yields a wealth of insights
for the understanding of these two cultural republics of the post-colonial
era Pakistan and Ireland. Both poets lived in the times darkened by
creeping scientism and dehumanizing capitalism (both private and
public) and receding faith. Both saw the earthshaking Russian Revolution
(though surprisingly, Yeats was far too involved in his loves and life to
comment on it) and Europes largest civil war of 1914-1918. Both were
sceptical of democracy and had a clear penchant for authoritarian rule for
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Toheed Ahmad
wholesome cultural, spiritual and economic development of societies.

Having a common occupying power, the freedom struggles of Ireland
and India had many parallels. Rabindranath Tagore spent some years in
Dublin where he got a lot of support from Yeats in the campaign to get
the Nobel Prize for Literature. At that time Tagore was little known in
India and had no political role in his countrys emancipation movement.
There were contacts between some fringe groups like the Indian National
Army and the Ghadar Party with Irish activists but the Irish independence
movement had played itself out by the time the Indian Muslims were
politically mobilized. The period of Easter Rising and the Irish War of
Independence, in India, was that of joint Hindu-Muslim political action
for whatever it was worth. Mr. Jinnah was member both of the Indian
National Congress and the All-India Muslim League. The Irish, dubbed
as the white niggers by the British imperialists could appreciate (that
is if the Indians allow them) Mr. Jinnahs remark that the British were
the white bania. Again in a 1939 interview to Manchester Guardian
newspaper, Mr. Jinnah while replying to a question on democracy in
India, remarked: Even Ireland, after decades of Union, did not submit
to the British Parliament in spite of close affinity with English and the
Scot. I may refer to Lord Morleys dictum that the fur coat of Canada
would not do for the extremely tropical climate of India!
Then came the Khilafat Movement which aroused Pan-Islamic
feelings among the Muslims of India. This, in turn, may have been
detected by Mahatma Gandhi and his cohorts who decided to abruptly
end the Congress support for the Movement. The All-India Muslim
League, when looking abroad, never seemed to have looked beyond the
Muslim world Afghanistan, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Morocco,
and Sudan. There was great interest in Asia but that too was restricted
to Japan and the USSR. China for them was a non-entity and the Malay
world was politically too far removed. Given the strong anti-imperialist
leanings of Maulana Mohammed Ali Johar, I suspect that in the pages
of his English language magazine, Comrade, he would have taken note
of the British barbarities in Ireland. I scanned a selection of Comrade
articles published in Lahore in the 1960s; its scope too was restricted to
the Muslim world. Alas, even after independence, we continue to think
146
in a minority mode and refuse to open our eyes to the wider world. This
is not helpful for our younger generation who, with their wide exposure
to the new media, are able to see though our minority blinkers.
Unlike the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League,
which supported the British war effort, Ireland was opposed to sending
troops in aid of the allies during the Second World War. Dublin has
been following a policy of neutrality ever since independence from
Britain. The Irish government vehemently protested to the Germans
when Luftwaffe carried out bombing raids over Belfast, which were
immediately suspended by Hitler. However Ireland wanted to maintain a
public stance of neutrality and refused to close the German and Japanese
embassies during the war years. Prime Minister amon de Valera even
signed the book of condolence on Adolf Hitler on 2 May 1945 which
greatly displeased the British and the Americans. Unlike many other noncombatant countries, Ireland did not declare war on the near-defeated
Germany in order to seize German assets. Other neutral countries like
Sweden and Switzerland expelled German embassy staff at the end of
the war, as they no longer represented a state, but the German legation in
Dublin was allowed to remain open. Ireland has kept away from NATO
and all other Western European defence arrangements. During the Cold
War, Dublin refused to officially ally either with NATO or the Warsaw
Pact. It is inaccurate to describe Ireland as a neutral state in the same
way as Sweden or Switzerland, it would be more accurate to describe
it as a non-aligned state which takes conflict participation on a case by
case basis. However, Ireland takes its participation in UN Peacekeeping
operations seriously and is one of the largest troop contributors to
peacekeeping in Lebanon, Liberia, but, interestingly maintains a tiny
presence in the ISAF contingent in Afghanistan in keeping with its UN
obligations.
On 31 July 2006, I was witness to a demonstration of Irelands
neutral mindset while listening in to a debate in the Joint Foreign Affairs
Committee of the Irish Parliament (called The Dail) on the Israeli
attack on Lebanon. It was a charged atmosphere as all members of the
Committee roundly condemned Tony Blair and George Bush for refusing
to call for an immediate cease-fire. The EU statement too was rubbished
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Toheed Ahmad
as deeply disappointing for not calling for an urgent halt to hostilities.

Everybody came down hard on Israel and urged an economic boycott and
demanded that the Jewish state respect the Geneva conventions on war
and related international laws. The Socialist Party representative termed
Western claim of superiority of its values as negative, militaristic,
and dangerous, thus provoking a clash of civilizations. One Deputy
charged that the Irish peoples abhorrence at what was happening to
Lebanon was not being reflected in the foreign policy of the Republic.
Our neutral views are being subsumed in the European debate by the
big EU members, charged another. Destruction of civilian life and
property is a war crime for which there is no statute of limitation and
that once a cease-fire was in place, Israelis should be so charged, a
Deputy shouted. If I closed my eyes, I thought, I might as well have
been sitting in a gallery of the Parliament of Pakistan. President George
Bush is at least as unpopular in Dublin as anywhere in Pakistan. The
Irish have been opposing the US led wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.
My Irish friends told me that they would not allow George Bush inside
Dublin; the few times that the American President has had to come to
Ireland in his two terms of office, he was restricted to far away country
homes.
On a bright and clear morning of 27 August 1979, Lord Louis
Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and the Republics first Governor
General, put out his boat Shadow V to sea to go fishing off the
coast of Sligo in the northeast of Ireland. The tiny coastal village of
Mullaghmore, only a few miles from the battle torn Northern Ireland,
held the ancestral holiday home of his late wife Lady Edwina which was
Dickies favourite fishing spot. Suddenly there was a massive bang. A
column of water, fragments of boat, and shattered bodies blasted into
the air. People looked up in surprise as windows shook when the shock
waves hit buildings located miles away. Those in the vicinity looked
toward the sound in time to see the splintered remains of Shadow V fall
back into the sea in a tumultuous fury of water. Louis Mountbattens
body was shredded to bits together with those of his grandson and a
local deckhand. An era came to end. The Provisional IRA had planted
50 kilograms of explosives under the boat engine which were remotely
detonated. Three persons were charged and given varying jail terms.
148
More than one taxi driver in Ireland told me that We did it for you.
Craic is a typically Irish word (more a quality of the Irish race)
whose dictionary meanings are, fun, enjoyment, abandonment, or light
hearted mischief often in the context of drinking or music. An older,
related, more widespread sense of craic is joke as in crack a joke
or wise-crack. A person who is good craic is fun to be with. That is a
typical Irishman for you. During the centuries of colonial oppression and
rampant misery, only the Irishmans tongue was never chained. Hence
they produced lot of holy men and witty writers like G.B. Shaw and
Oscar Wilde and came to be called a Nation of Saints and Scholars.
Dublin has the unique distinction of being home to four Nobel laureates
of Literature Shaw, Yeats, Beckett and Seamus Heaney. I have heard
stories of how a Pakistani somewhere in the UK is surprised when a white
man walks up to him, say in a pub or a supermarket, and asks about him.
This is common in Ireland today where there may be as many as 10,000
Pakistanis, principally medical doctors and their families, who have great
relationships of good neighbourliness and some even share great craic
with their colleagues at work. In England, for centuries Irish have been
the butt of jokes, often racial and pejorative, a little like the sardarjee
jokes in our Punjab. Irish funerals traditionally included a party called a
Wake, when the dead body was kept in the home parlour all dressed up
for burial for up to three days guarded by female relatives who keened
(wailed), while the men folk stayed in the kitchen or outdoors if the
weather was fine, with loads of drink and food and music. A famous
Wake joke runs like this: Whats the difference between an Irish wedding
and an Irish Wake? Answer: At the Wake there is one drunk less. Talking
of music, Irish musicologists have found motifs in their folk music that
are traced back through North Africa to the banks of Indus, especially
for the flute and violin music.
Pakistan-Ireland relations have always been cordial and friendly.
For the first few decades of the Kashmir conflict, Dublin was firmly
supportive of a plebiscite to determine the wishes of the Kashmiri
people as to the final disposition of the state. As member of the Security
Council, it favoured the Pakistani resolutions, so much as to earn the visit
of President Ayub Khan to Ireland in July 1964. I saw clippings of the
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Toheed Ahmad
newspaper coverage of the visit at the Irish Foreign Affairs Department,

mostly taken from Dawn where President de Valera, Prime Minister
Sean Lemass and the Foreign Minister all assured their Pakistani guests
of their continued support to our stand which was based on the principle
of self-determination which Ireland too championed. President John F.
Kennedy, whose great grandfather had escaped with his family to the
US in one of what were called the famine boats paid an emotional
visit to Ireland in June 1963. In his address to a joint session of the Irish
Parliament, he noted that on the world scene Ireland had been punching
far above its weight, expressed admiration for it and mentioned as
examples Irelands participation in UN peacekeeping operations and
their support to a peaceful settlement in Kashmir.
Late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto went to Ireland in 1994 where
she announced the establishment of a resident Pakistan Embassy in
Dublin, which was eventually opened in 2001.Unfortunately no Irish
leader has visited Pakistan, except for a brief transit of Conor Lenihan,
Minister for Development Cooperation through Islamabad in 2006 to
review Irish assistance for relief and rehabilitation of the victims of the
earthquake. Ireland has no presence in Pakistan except for an Honorary
Consulate in Karachi. Current Prime Minister Brian Cowen came to
Islamabad in 2004, when he was the Foreign Minister, at the head of
an EU Troika mission to Pakistan. Irelands great upset in beating the
Pakistan cricket team by three wickets at the World Cup in Jamaica on
17 March (its national day called the St. Patricks Day) was a shock that
Pakistanis will long remember. Ironically, after this victory, the Irish
national team, comprising mainly of amateurs, disintegrated as its best
players were lapped up by eager English Cricket League teams. While
commiserating with me, my Irish friends never tired of reminding me
of how in 1969 they beat the great Clive Loyds West Indies side by
bowling them out for a mere 25 runs. They can be as unpredictable as
us Pakistanis.
Pakistans exports to Ireland, mainly textile based items, are slowly
rising with the gradual addition of sports and surgical equipment and
food and leather items. In 2006 these were worth some $ 35 million.
With a population of less than five million, Ireland, itself a small though
150
rich market, offers a whole variety of strategic options for our companies
wishing to look at the long term in the EU and North American markets.
This portrait reveals some of the commonalities between our people
that can serve as a strong foundation for friendships and partnerships of
immense scope and mutual benefit.
151
Essays
THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN PAKISTAN:
A RAY OF HOPE
Talat Farooq*
The Aurat Foundations recent report shows a sharp increase in

violence against women in Pakistan. From April to June 2008 it was
as high as 1,705 cases as compared to 1,321 for the previous quarter.
The incidents include murder, rape, abduction, honour killing, gang
rape, custodial assault, domestic violence, burning and acid throwing.
These outrages, according to the police, were prompted by accusations
of illicit relations, domestic quarrels, blood feuds, land and property
disputes and personal enmity. However, the Aurat Foundations report
identifies deep-rooted gender bias and intolerance toward women as the
real causes. It states that suicides among women, 66 in the first quarter of
the current year, has almost double to 126 in the second. These statistics,
grim as they are, fall short in depicting the enormity of the problem as
they do not include unreported cases of violence or those pertaining to
emotional abuse.
The findings of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
are no less morbid. Since 2005, the perpetration of violence, particularly
against married women, has risen alarmingly. The HRCP studies show
that acid throwing has become the third most common method used
in these criminal acts alongside burning from stove-related incidents.
These result in grievous corporal injuries and even death.
The figures on the violence against women, so painstakingly
collated by human rights groups, affirm the truth but not the whole truth.
Statistics, by definition, are cold-blooded and can never adequately
*
Talat Farooq teaches at the Bahria University, Islamabad. She is also a poet and a social
worker.
Essay
portray the suffering and anguish inflicted on the victims. The persistent
violation of their fundamental rights is nothing short of a crime against
humanity. Mere condemnation of these infringements is not enough. It
is imperative to initiate urgent remedial measures.
The phenomenal increase in violence against females in Pakistan
is abhorrent and indicative of the degeneration of the society. However,
there could be a silver lining to this dark cloud of oppression because
it symbolises a reaction to the growing awareness of women about
their inalienable rights. Violence, it is said, is the last refuge of the
incompetent, and in the face of resistance on the part of the victim, it is
the sole recourse of the perpetrator.
The civil society in Pakistan is yet to display the missionary zeal so
desperately needed for female emancipation. It lacks a comprehensive
strategy to combat the repression of a sizeable portion of its population.
However, despite the absence of an organized movement there has been
a discernable change in as much as women are increasingly becoming
rights-conscious and have availed of empowerment opportunities
whenever these arise. They are now beginning to play a more assertive
role in such areas of national endeavour as politics, information
technology, economics and the media. This needs to be deepened and
broadened.
On a parallel track, since the 1990s there is a growing urge among
Pakistani women to acquire religious education. This is a welcome
development because men have hitherto monopolized the interpretation
of scriptural texts. Although the existing courses in academic institutions
are intellectually inadequate and do not question the narrow-minded
approach of commentators on female rights in Islam, womens
involvement in the interpretation of dogma will undoubtedly enable
them to determine the truth and form independent opinions. Their
victimization, as during the Zia-ul-Haq era, on the false pretext of
religious doctrine will no longer be possible.
Zia-ul-Haqs Hudood laws, promulgated in 1979 and enforced the
following year consisted of five criminal laws which were collectively
156
Essay
known as the Hudood Ordinances. Two of these placed women at

an enormous disadvantage. The first, was titled the Offense of Zina
Ordinance and the second the Offence of Qazf Ordinance. The
former concerned rape, abduction, adultery and fornication while the
latter with false accusation of zina which is defined as including both
adultery and fornication. Female rape victims thus became liable for
punishment under zina unless they were able to produce four first-hand
witnesses. As a consequence a large number of women languished in
prison without trial.
Furthermore, under these draconian ordinances, womens testimony
became unacceptable in cases involving the imposition of hudd i.e.,
the maximum punishment under Islamic law and consequently females
could not become judges. Yet another facet of these stern laws was
that the age of majority for females was reduced from 16 to the age of
puberty. Thus a girl child as young as between 9 and 13 became liable
to the same severe punishment awarded to adults.
So powerful was the hold of self-anointed obscurantist clerics that
virtually nothing was done to strike down the iniquities of the Hudood
Ordinances till the adoption of the Womens Protection Act in 2006
which, though deficient in many aspects, shattered the myth that the
Hudood laws are sacrosanct and immutable. This has led to the decline
in zina related cases registered against women and proved that if the
state possesses the political will to protect its citizens, it can take on the
forces of bigotry and intolerance.
Unfortunately little has changed within the basic unit of society
namely, the family. It is here that gender discrimination begins and
thrives because of the stranglehold of tradition which is rarely, if ever,
challenged by the victims. Nonetheless, minor breakthroughs have
occurred, primarily because of the increasing number of females entering
the legal profession. Even more significant is the willingness of women
to seek legal recourse and resort to litigation. This change, though yet
incipient, is important in that it signifies a departure from well-entrenched
social norms under which submission and unquestioning obedience are
expected from the woman.
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Essay
Through history women have been exploited, repressed and

relegated to pariah status. Primitive warring tribes, in the face of
recurring hostilities, excluded women from the war effort. She was to
be protected because her primary role was that of procreation. Male
offspring were required to secure the military advantage in the wars
of the future. The social implications of warfare resulted in division of
labour which gradually crystallized into womens exclusion from public
participation. As physical strength was indispensible for the tribal wars,
the males dominant role in primitive tribal society was soon established
and consolidated. Furthermore, the post-natal incapacitation of women
compelled them to depend on the male for survival. Gradually, the
helplessness of females and their subordination to male authority made
them increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Male domination of
society through the ages thus came to be viewed as natural. It is one of
the baser traits of human nature to exploit the economic needs of weaker
segments of the society. The Machiavellian scheme of manipulation
and coercion is employed by the strong to attain and maintain power.
This phenomenon holds true not only between men and women, but
also between men and men. Those who can successfully monopolize
the sources of economic empowerment invariably use the advantage for
controlling others.
The relegation of the female to the social backwaters in the earlier
societies had its impact on later times and undermined her standing
in the eyes of the religious theocracy. The male dominated priesthood
increasingly equated her biological make-up to her perceived spiritual
weakness and thereby accorded her an inferior position to males. Thus
organized religion has been instrumental in perpetuating the dynamics
of male power play and the continued subjugation of women. The Bible
establishes a womans inferior status and her subservience to man as
divinely ordained. The New Testament declares:
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I
suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over
the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed
then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman
being deceived was in transgression. 2:11-14
158
Essay
According to the 19th century feminist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the

church and Bible have proved to be the greatest stumbling blocks in
the way of womens emancipation. The western feminist activism that
focuses on gender politics and power relations is a reaction to churchsanctioned discrimination against women.
The Indian constitution gives equal rights to all citizens but femalerelated abuse, regularly reported in the newspapers, is a reflection of
continued gender bias at various levels of the society. This particular
societal attitude has its roots in Hindu religious doctrines. The oldest
Hindu religious scriptures contain discriminatory passages concerning
women. The religious doctrine outlined in the Vedas encourages female
infanticide, child marriage and the burning of the widow (sati). It
relegates them to the position of serfs who do not possess an identity
of their own and are completely dependent on the male for protection.
Females, according to Hindu sacred texts, cannot own property and are
unfit to study the Vedas. Girls can only marry within their caste, have
no right to divorce and infidelity on their part carries the death sentence.
The widow cannot enjoy life in public again nor can she remarry,
while a widower has no such restrictions. The ideal role model is Sita,
Rams wife, who proved her fidelity to her husband by passing through
flames.
Buddhism and Jainism that emerged as protests against the Hindu
Vedic system did oppose the custom of Sati. However, because they
professed asceticism, women were considered as deviant. Buddha is
said to have warned his disciples to stay away from females and to avoid
even looking at them.
While conventional Islam claims to foster an avant-garde approach
toward womens rights and their rightful place in society, Muslim women
remain among the most oppressed. This state of affairs has arisen due to a
variety of causes, the most significant of which pertains to misconstruing
Arab culture as Islamic. In Pakistan the effects of Hindu culture, based
on Hindu religious decrees, are visible in the societal attitude toward
women. Conventional Islam is interpreted by closed and conditioned
male minds that put their faith in the books of Tradition and the narrow
159
Essay
interpretations of the Quran. They maintain a stubborn belief in the

infallibility of the early compilers and writers who have, at times, mixed
Islamic thought with Judeo-Christian beliefs. Consequently, orthodox
Islam continues to preserve and nurture misconceptions pertaining to
gender parity. The female is seen as dependent on male supervision in
matters of property, marriage, divorce and sustenance. She is considered
emotionally imbalanced and deficient in rational decision making
skills.
The Quran declares in unambiguous terms that men and women
have equal rights and that men cannot own women as their property:
Oh people! Abide by your Sustainers law, who created
you from one being; from that created its partner and from
them made males and females in abundance. 4:1
to men is allotted what they earn and to women is
allotted what they earn 4:32
..It is not allowed to you (men) to inherit women against
their will. 4:19
In case of a breach between the two of them, appoint
two arbiters from his family and two arbiters from her
family 4:35
Contrary to traditional beliefs in Pakistan, both the genders are
accountable with regard to modesty. It is not the sole responsibility of
the female:
Say to the convinced men to lower their gaze and guard
their chastity. 24:30.
And say to the convinced women to lower their gaze and
guard their chastity. 24:31
The Quran does not give a separate value system for males. Both
men and women constitute human society and equally possess the
capacity to grow as balanced human beings:
Verily, (for) the Muslim men and women, the convinced
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Essay
men and women, the devoted men and women, the true men
and women, the steadfast men and women, the submissive
(to the will of God) men and women, the truthful men
and women, the self-controlling men and women, the
guarding men and women of their chastity, and those men
and women who remember God in abundance, Allah has
prepared great reward and protection. -33-35
Since men and women are equal, the Quran does not differentiate
between males and females with regard to retribution or reward:
And whoever does good deeds be it male or female
and has conviction, they will enter Paradise. 4:124
The fornicator - male as well as female flog each of
them with a hundred lashes. 24:2.
In the Arabic language the masculine plural includes the feminine as
well. Therefore, the Quranic decrees addressed to Muslims in general are
aimed at both men and women. It is their joint responsibility to establish
a just and equitable social system for collective benefit, and to utilize
their individual potential for personal growth. During the time of the
first Islamic state in Medina, women were not barred from participation
in public affairs. Some even fought in battles alongside Muslim male
soldiers. During the prophets time, women did not encounter oppression
or discrimination. It was a few generations after Mohammad that the
patriarchal societies adapted Islam to their own peculiar requirements.
According to Karen Armstrong, the women-specific discriminatory
customs were adopted by the later Muslims under the influence of the
Greek Christians of Byzantine who believed in gender segregation.
Despite clear Quranic injunctions and historical examples, however,
Muslim women remain chained in tradition and culture-based social
expectations.
The lesson of history is that the human race clings to the status quo and
vehemently opposes change. All prophets and revolutionaries alike have
encountered stern opposition because they sought the transformation of
the society in which they lived. Familiarity breeds a sense of security;
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Essay
resistance to change, therefore, is the oldest phenomenon in human

history. The Quran points out:
When it is said to them:Follow what Allah has
revealed. They say: Nay! We shall follow the ways of
our fathers.What! Even when their fathers were void of
wisdom and guidance? 2:170.
The fundamentalists of the modern era are disenchanted with
modernity and abhor change. They erroneously link the emancipation of
women to western, secular culture and insist on conformist, traditional
roles for females in clear breach of the Quranic pronouncements. The
majority of religious scholars do not openly denounce the inhumane
customary practices against women in the tribal areas of Pakistan as
well as in its settled but feudal regions. These practices include offering
young females in marriage to the enemy clan to settle family feuds
or debts. Thus, to a large extent, their hypocrisy, fear of change and
chauvinism are responsible for the misery of the Pakistani women.
Social justice is integral to good governance and a legitimate
state protects the fundamental human rights of the citizens, of which
human dignity, independent of gender, religion, caste, and colour, is
indispensible. The Constitution of Pakistan grants equal protection to all
citizens and does not allow gender discrimination. On 6 February 1996
Pakistan also became a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination
of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Article 10 0f CEDAW
specifies equal opportunity in female education. Local and foreign
surveys, however, reveal the backwardness of the educational system
of Pakistan where 42 percent of women cannot read because access
to education is denied to them. Female emancipation depends largely
on education leading to changes in attitudes and mindsets. The women
themselves need to understand the injustices inflicted on them in the
name of religion and cultural traditions. Social behaviour is dictated by
social expectations. The importance of introducing a socially intelligent
model of power sharing between genders, through enlightened, holistic
education, cannot be overemphasized. Unless myths and misconceptions
regarding women, founded largely on distortions of religion, are
eliminated it will not be possible to build a healthy society. The
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Essay
government must ensure that discriminatory material and stereotypes are

expunged from school and madrassah curricula right from the primary
level. The madrassah system must be brought under state control by
implementing the provisions of the Madrassah Ordinance.
Reports and surveys cite married women to be the most vulnerable to
physical and emotional abuse. Abuse directed at the mother is bound to
have far-reaching negative psychological consequences on her children,
the future generation of Pakistan. Conversely, there is strong evidence
that social uplift and economic empowerment of women translate into
happier families. The institution of marriage is meant to complement
the partners and help them grow into productive members of the
society. The state, with the help of non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and the medical community, should develop and facilitate
community development programs. Such programs should include
family counselling sessions for both males and females to ensure social
behavioural reforms and gender parity. Gender-related education aimed
at enlightening the females and sensitizing the male is of fundamental
importance. Governmental and private organizations working for female
emancipation should join hands to involve different sections of the civil
society and help formulate a comprehensive strategy to ensure womens
rights.
It is the duty of the Pakistan government to ensure that the complex
issue of womens rights is debated in the parliament, followed by balanced
and forward looking legislations. It is even more important that laws,
new and existing, are enforced with a focus on women protection. An
independent judiciary is vital to ensure the implementation of the policies
and curtailment of police corruption. Awareness measures, including
door to door campaigns, must be undertaken by the government and the
NGOs.
The electronic and print media, especially the vernacular press
inclusive of newspapers and periodicals, can play a pivotal role in
highlighting the plight of the downtrodden. They must focus on the
female predicament, especially in the far flung areas. The government
should facilitate their access to the tribal and feudal regions and give
them protection against reprisal. The tribal and feudal structures of
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Essay
Pakistan are relics of the past and reminders of the pre-Islam jahaliyya
period. Unless the writ of the state becomes all encompassing, these
structures cannot be dismantled. The problem is complex and multilayered and there are no easy solutions in sight. Yet, history tells us
that a strong political will has the capacity to introduce meaningful
changes. A long term strategy along with swift, surgical measures can
bear fruit if public support is gained through awareness, debates and
media campaigns. Human attitudes can change through awareness as
well as law and policy enforcement. Both must work hand in hand.
The government should take decisive measures to initiate and
facilitate the process of ijtehad to ensure that the universal principles
at the heart of Quranic laws are not compromised. Selective verses
that can be manipulated to the advantage of an unjust male member
of the society must be reviewed within contextual parameters and in
conformity with the true spirit of Islam. Many Traditions emerge from
specific historical contexts, narrated by unreliable sources that confuse
the universal values of the Book with socio-cultural and religious values
of their own time. Such time and place bound Traditions must be reevaluated to minimize prejudice and ensure justice for all.
Technological advancement has accelerated the momentum of
change resulting in renovation of social structures. The ongoing process
of globalization is a truth that cannot be wished away. The electronic
media and the internet are facilitating integration of ideas and awareness
of human rights at the grass root levels. Ideas and traditions that are
inflexible and resistant to growth eventually wither away. The Quran
is for all times to come precisely because its immeasurable potential is
conducive to multiple interpretations without distorting its permanent
value system. The early scholars of Islam were aware of the Quranic
potential and were unafraid to resort to ijtehad. It is therefore the duty
of the Pakistan government as well as all Muslim men and women to
demand a fresh review of the Traditions and the reassessment of the
Quranic injunctions pertaining to womens status in Islam. While the
permanent values of the Quran are immutable, their implementation in
the contemporary socio-economic environment must be debated and
re-examined to the benefit of the weaker segments of the society in
accordance with the Quranic vision of social justice for all mankind. The
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Essay
implementation procedures relevant to a tribal society several centuries

ago surely require unbiased and objective reviewing keeping in view the
linguistic intricacies of the Arabic language.
Theocracy has no place in Islam; legitimizing it gives privileged
status to a social class in contravention of Islamic principles. Women
themselves must be proactive and demand gender equality based on
both rights and duties. Females in the legal profession as well as women
scholars of the Quran and Islamic jurisprudence must become a viable
part of the process of ijtehad to assist female self-determination. The
government should consult the representatives of diverse sections of the
society to gain insight into the nature of the complexities involved.
Scientific progress has transformed many long held traditional
concepts including the concept of warfare. Brute male force is no
longer an indispensible social and military asset. Female soldiers, pilots
and sailors in the US military, for example, are well equipped to fight
wars by using modern weapon systems. American female pilots were
actively involved in the post-9/11 bombing missions to Afghanistan
along with their male counterpart. The knowledge revolution of the
21st century focuses on human mental and intellectual capabilities.
In an increasingly competitive world, genderless knowledge-based
services are required. In order for the human race to survive in the face
of emerging global economic realities it will be suicidal to imprison
the potential of a substantial number of human beings. The change is
bound to happen; it would be sensible to learn from history and apply
a visionary approach to resolve the issue. A well planned and state
supervised transformation in the status of Pakistani women pertaining
to their physical, psychological, emotional and economic uplift will
obviate societal turmoil that accompanies cataclysmic natural changes
in the society. By fulfilling her biological function of reproduction and
physically sharing her sustenance with her unborn child a female provides
the human race with the greatest example of sharing and responsibility.
Powerful humans must learn from her and apply this model of sacrifice
to inter-gender power sharing based on mutual respect and individual
dignity.
165
FATA AT THE CROSSROADS

Ayaz Wazir*
With a population of over seven million, the Federally Administered

Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan form a 27,220 sq. km. arch along the
countrys border with Afghanistan. The terrain is rugged and mountainous.
It is a region where empires once met and it was here that the British
played out their Great Game of the nineteenth century which sought
to contain the further expansion of imperial Russia. Afghanistan was
established as a buffer state and its rulers relied heavily on the support
of the fierce and independent Pathan tribes straddling the Pak-Afghan
border. After the ouster of king Zahir Shah in 1973, successive Afghan
republican regimes, whether secular or Islamic, had to contend with the
influence of the tribes.
The second half of the twentieth century saw the Soviet incursion
into Afghanistan. It was from the tribal areas of Pakistan that the biggest
covert war in history was launched against the occupation forces. It is
ironic that the last battle of the Cold War was fought and won for the
West largely by the same tribes whose territory, due to no fault of theirs,
has become a haven for terrorist outfits, even though terrorism is alien to
the tribal culture of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions.
The fakir of Ipi, who revolted against the British in 1936 and after
the emergence of Pakistan joined the so-called Pakhtunistan movement,
is reported to have stated in the final years of his life that his jihad against
the British was for freedom rather than for religion. This is probably
a misquotation because the tribesmen of the area have always been
motivated by religion-inspired nationalism and the thirst for freedom.
It was the same quest for freedom that motivated the tribes to fight the
British in the Afghan wars of the nineteenth century, the Soviets in the
*
Ayaz Wazir was the first ambassador of Pakistan from the Waziri tribe. His email address is waziruk@hotmail.com
Essay
twentieth and the coalition forces in Afghanistan in the twenty-first.

In pursuit of its divide and rule policy, the British Raj deliberately
kept FATA isolated from the rest of the country. The warrior tribes of the
area which include the Wazirs, Mahsuds, Afridis, Shinwaris, Mohmands
and others were segregated into seven administrative agencies, namely,
Bajaur, Khyber, Kurram, Mohmand, Orakzai, North Waziristan and
South Waziristan.
Since its independence in 1947, Pakistan thoughtlessly continued
with the British colonial policy of isolating the tribal areas. Consequently
the quarantined region remained backward. The tribesmen, along with
thousands of volunteers particularly Arabs, were trained, indoctrinated,
financed and armed primarily by the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to
fight the Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan. After the successful
culmination of the jihad which contributed to the collapse of communism,
the region was ignored and its people forgotten. What remained were
thousands of motivated fighters and the tribal areas became the epicentre
of extremist and terrorist violence.
The impact was felt in the seven tribal agencies. For instance Bajaur,
which overlooks Afghanistans Kunar province, became known in the
1980s and 1990s as the poppy kingdom. On 13 January 2006 Ayman
al-Zawahiri of the Al Qaida is reported to have survived a US attack
at Damadola, which is also considered a stronghold of the Tehreeke-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi. Bajaur provides recruits for the
Taliban. Maulvi Faqir of Bajaur, ranks after Baitullah Mehsud as the
most influential Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader.
Khyber, which links Peshawar and Kabul, is the base of the Lashkare-Islam led by Mangal Bagh. There has been fighting since 2005 between
the Lashkar and the Ansar-ul-Islam of pir Saifur Rahman. This has
been an intra-Sunni conflict between the Barelvis and Deobandis. The
forces loyal to Mangal Bagh advanced towards Peshawar in mid-2008
prompting a military response from the government.
Mountainous Kurram, the second largest agency with its headquarters
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Essay
in Parachinar, is surrounded by Afghanistan on three sides. When the

post-9/11 military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
started, Al Qaida elements were said to have first fled to the Kurram
agency although it was reported to be pro-Northern Alliance because of
its large Shia population. There has been frequent Shia-Sunni violence
in the agency.
Mohmand, sandwiched, as it is by Bajaur and Khyber, had been
relatively peaceful. However, Umer Khalid, a Safi tribesman of the
agency has emerged after recent fighting as the third most powerful
Taliban leader. He has claimed that 26,000 trained militants are under
his command.
Orakzai was considered to be one of the better governed agencies but
it has witnessed the spill-over of the sectarian conflict from Kurram.
It is North and South Waziristan that has become the centre of
Taliban activities. Combined the two agencies have an area of 5000
square miles. Waziristan is inhabited by the powerful Karlani Pathans,
the Darwesh Khel Wazirs and the Mahsuds. Although the Wazirs and
Mahsuds have ancestral links, for administrative reasons the Mahsuds
are a separate tribe. Waziristan has great strategic importance and is
located near the provinces of Khost, Paktika and Paktia in Afghanistan.
As early as 2005, some elements of the Pakistani Taliban declared North
Waziristan an Islamic state. In 2007 in South Waziristan, the Taliban
loyal to Baitullah Mahsud captured more than 300 Pakistani troops.
Had FATA not been isolated and divided it would have been able
to better withstand the fallout of the Afghan jihad. Further more, the
writ of the state would also not have been continuously eroded as is
happening now. The British motivation was understandable. They had
their own agenda and interests to pursue. A divided Pathan community
would not be able to fight against the colonial power. The continuation
of the same policies after 1947 is, however, incomprehensible. The most
obvious consequence was that the people of the tribal areas were never
provided the much needed opportunity to merge with the rest of Pakistan.
FATAs isolation was further compounded by keeping the seven tribal
168
Essay
agencies separate from each other. No roads were built to link them and
the few that existed were closed to traffic. This made travel between the
agencies, though they adjoin each other, extremely difficult. Prospective
travellers have to first proceed to a settled district and then travel back to
the neighbouring agency. This is just one of the methods of keeping the
tribes isolated. The tribesmen did not opt for isolation; it was imposed
on them and continues to date. Only locals of the area are allowed to
visit FATA without obtaining prior permission from the government.
The people of FATA are still governed through the Frontier Crimes
Regulations (FCR) imposed on them in 1901 by the British Raj. These
draconian laws should have been abolished with the emergence of
Pakistan as a sovereign nation in 1947. Unfortunately, this was not
to be. The sacrifices of the tribesmen for the country were ignored
and their fundamental right to be treated as equal citizens of Pakistan
was denied. Prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilanis recent statement that
the FCR will eventually be abolished is a welcome step in the right
direction. It is hoped that the committee constituted for this purpose
follows through and meets the expectations of the people.
Governance of these areas through the FCR has been an indirect
endorsement by the state of the pre-partition British policy of divide and
rule. It denies the tribal agencies the opportunity to unite. Furthermore,
the political agents administering them on behalf of the president have
been given powers that contradict not only the constitution of Pakistan
but also international conventions on human rights.
The political agent is empowered to:
(i) Arrest anyone under his jurisdiction for three years without
assigning any reason. The period can be extended indefinitely
and cannot be challenged in any court of law in Pakistan.
(ii) Punish the entire tribe by seizing, confiscating or demolishing
their properties. A crime committed by an individual becomes
the responsibility of the tribe. Similarly, a tribe is responsible
for its territory (landed property). It cannot be used for action
against the government, otherwise, the entire tribe will be held
169
Essay
responsible and punished.

(iii) Nominate members of the jirga (council of elders). Their
recommendations are, however, not binding on him. He has
the authority to dismiss them and constitute a new jirga. His
orders cannot be challenged in any court.
Traditionally, a jirga is constituted to resolve disputes between
individuals and tribes. The jirga system is used to address and settle all
criminal and unjust acts brought to its notice. Its members are nominated
by the concerned individuals or tribes. A persons wealth, status or
power holds no value in the pursuit of justice. The famous tradition of
nanawati (seeking help from other tribesmen) further strengthens this
system. The Pathan society in general and the tribesmen in particular
ensure, under this tradition that the aggressor agrees to face the jirga or
else earn the enmity of fellow tribesmen. This convention ensures that
all work within the system.
The FCR, however, imposed its own form of jirga on the people of
the tribal areas. Its members are nominated by the political agent. The
political agent also has the authority to annul any decision taken by this
body and replace the members of the jirga if its decision is contrary
to his wishes. This form of jirga, with its handpicked members and
pressure from the nominating authority, has maligned and corrupted the
system which is no longer trusted. The recently concluded agreements
between the government and the dissidents (Taliban) are the outcome
of yet another form of government sponsored jirga which has deviated
from established practices. This time the Maliks and other notables of
the tribes were bypassed in the decision making process thereby further
broadening the gap between contemporary practice and tradition.
If the FCR is abolished then there will be a vacuum that has to be
filled. How does the government tend to supplant a set of laws that have
been in force for over a century? The committees appointed for this task
must not disregard tribal customs and traditions in their haste to reform.
The people of FATA would want the existing laws to be replaced by the
Shariah. Other options that may be considered are as follows:
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Essay
1. Drastic amendments to the FCR should be carried out to make it

more acceptable to the people. A key ingredient in the success
of these amendments should be the curtailment of the political
agents powers. He should be made accountable under the
new system like any other officer in the settled districts of the
country.
2. A new set of rules based on tribal customs and traditions should
be formulated. Input from the various tribes of the area is
essential for the success of such an endeavour. A 14-member
subcommittee consisting of 2 representatives from each
tribal agency should be constituted in order to assist the main
committee in formulating these laws.
3. The laws of the land under which the rest of Pakistan functions
should be extended to FATA as well. The prerequisite for this
is that the concerned area is developed so that at least the basic
amenities of life are at par with the rest of the country. Keeping
ground realities of the region in mind, development projects
would require at least 3 to 5 years to reach fruition.
Regardless of the system the government will finally adopt, the
crucial part of this process will be the transitional phase. Keeping in
mind the volatile situation, particularly in Waziristan, it is essential to
avoide creating a vacuum during the process. Anything other than a
smooth transition will have disastrous consequences. The withdrawal
of FCR in Malakand without providing a substitute and the subsequent
misery that the people of the area faced is a prime example of this.
The bureaucracy in Peshawar and Islamabad - the FATA secretariat,
working under the NWFP governor, and the States and Frontier Region
Division (SAFRON) - has been instrumental in keeping the tribal
areas backward. They have justified their resistance to any form of
political and economic development through false pretexts. They have
established an understanding with a few hundred Maliks whose interests
are looked after, in return for the Maliks support of their policies. The
lack of development in infrastructure and industry in FATA and the
resultant unemployment demonstrate the bureaucracys lack of intrest
in the welfare of the people of FATA. They are the biggest hurdle in the
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Essay
way of any meaningful reforms in the tribal areas. These organizations

require overhauling and reorientation to be able to play a positive role
in the area.
Despite funds being allocated by the federal government for
development projects in FATA, the two offices mentioned above, failed
to bring about the social and economic transformation so desperately
needed for the area. Presently there is talk of establishing Reconstruction
Opportunity Zones (ROZs) in FATA. The main purpose of this scheme
is to develop the area. Although the project is yet to pass many hurdles
in Washington, efforts are already underway in Peshawar to shift
the ROZs to settled districts under the pretext of lack of security and
instability prevailing in the tribal areas. Will these projects meet the
same fate as others before them? Only time will tell.
On the other side, however, one of the few reforms truly appreciated
by the people of FATA was the introduction of adult franchise in 1997.
If the government had consulted the usual Maliks this too would have
been opposed as they prefer the old system where only they had the
right to vote.
The elections that followed proved that the decision was correct.
Tribesmen took great interest in the electoral process. People participated
in large numbers even in the problematic areas of South Waziristan.
Surprisingly women also came out and voted for the candidates of their
choice. This amazing phenomenon should have motivated bureaucrats
and policy makers to recommend and implement similar reforms such
as the extension of the Political Parties Act in FATA. After all, this is
perhaps the only area in the world where adult franchise is allowed yet
political parties are banned.
It is essential to realize the ground realities of FATA and move to
rectify and not ignore the blatant issues that need addressing. The two
offices, FATA Secretariat and SAFRON, should cater to the political
aspects of the area whereas an independent organization should be
established to oversee the economic and social needs of the people of
FATA.
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Essay
According to official statistics 60 percent of the people in FATA

are living below the poverty line. Heavy investment in industry,
infrastructure, education and healthcare is needed to bring the standard
of living in the area at par with the rest of the country. Job opportunities
will not only alleviate the misery of the poor but will also obviate
recruitment of frustrated youth by militant organizations.
The isolation of FATA must also end. People should be allowed
to travel freely within the country. The only place that is inaccessible
without prior permission from the government is the tribal belt. One
fails to understand the logic behind our governments policy of keeping
its own people isolated from the world. Technological advancement
is transforming the world into a global village. FATA, too, should be
brought out of the stone age.
The people of FATA need to interact freely with the outside world.
The isolation of the area has made it a recruiting centre for militants. The
seven tribal agencies are now dominated and controlled by the Taliban.
Taliban leaders in places like North Waziristan have gone to the extent
of declaring their area an Islamic state. Pakistan needs to reconsider its
policy towards the tribal areas if it wants to win the war against terror. It
cannot win a war against its own people. Pakistan has already lost more
soldiers in this war than the casualties it incurred in wars with India.
Reassessment of the governments policies towards FATA, innovative
solutions and rapid and efficient implementation of these measures are
required; the consequences of complacency can be disastrous for both
Pakistan and its allies.
173

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Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

Shahwar Junaid 107

Nation of Saints and Scholars:

Toheed Ahmad 130

Talat Farooq 155

The four-party ruling coalition announced on 7 August 2008 that

Under article 47 of the constitution the president can be removed

CRITERION Volume 3 No.2

people be the supreme law, Musharraf was empowered to perform, all

CRITERION Volume 3 No.2

Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday gave a three-hour interview

CRITERION Volume 3 No.3

Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

Q: The judges and the people have intermingled so much

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Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

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Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

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Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

some individual wants to make it a clash then it is his choice.

went to a certain procession or rally or why did the Maulvi participate

CRITERION Volume 3 No.3

Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

Q: Do you think the 1973 constitution answers the situation that we

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Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

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Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

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Interview with Justice Khalil-ur-Rahman Ramday

the Quran will also become doubtful. Therefore, for my faith or my

CRITERION July/September 2008

JINNAHS WORLD VIEW/OUTLOOK

Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

nationalism, which prevented their seeing any international situation for

CRITERION Volume 3 No.3

Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

Great Britain and Ireland, signed on 6 December 1921 far exceeded

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Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

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Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

inclined to use much stronger language, but I am fully aware of the

CRITERION Volume 3 No.3

Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

The cause of Palestine received support from the Congress as well

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Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

entirety or the place of Muslim minorities in India in that vision.

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Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

an interview to Norman Cliff of the News Chronicle on 12 April 1946.

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Jinnahs World View/Outlook on World Affairs

zeal. Jinnahs vision of Pakistans foreign policy had both elements

Nicolson, Harold; Diplomacy; Oxford University Press, 1969, p.24.

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THE MQM AND IDENTIY POLITIC