Pakistan was founded on "American" ideals and freedoms: The U.S. must focus on those, and forget Musharraf, if it wants to avoid failure there.
By Akbar Ahmed
The images on TV of lawyers being thrashed in President Musharraf's Emergency are for me extremely disturbing and evidence of a serious breakdown of society. Pakistan was created by M.A. Jinnah, the quintessential lawyer. He created what in 1947 was the largest Muslim nation on earth within the confines of the law and without ever going to jail or engaging in violence of any kind. He founded the country on the basis of democracy, human rights, minority and women's rights.
So what happened? How has Pakistan degenerated from a Muslim democracy founded on women’s rights and religious freedom (Jinnah spent the last Christmas before he died with the Christian community) to a military dictatorship with (despite massive levels of U.S. military aid) some of the highest levels of anti-Americanism in the world?
Growing up in Pakistan as a young boy I looked up to America as a land of giants, standing up for freedom and liberty, a land that produced John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X. I saw many similarities in Jinnah’s and America's vision of the world. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated I mourned. For us, Kennedy was not just an American but a giant of the world who vowed to fight poverty, injustice, and send man to the moon. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s Pakistan and the U.S. were closely allied in the fight against the USSR in the Cold War. In 1962 Khrushchev drew a circle around Peshawar and threatened to nuke the city after it was discovered that the U2 spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union had originated from a U.S. airbase there. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, Muslims in Pakistan were grateful to their American friends for helping them to defend Afghanistan and bleed the "Evil Empire." (The image of Ronald Reagan at the White House hailing a ragtag group of bearded mujahideen from Afghanistan was for me one of the most enduring images of the Cold War.)
Today people in Pakistan contemptuously call Musharraf "Busharraf" because he is seen as too close to the Americans. Militancy is out of control in the tribal areas, and increasingly in settled areas like the Swat region. Churches and girls’ schools are being attacked. Earlier this year a Member of Parliament in Islamabad said that the nation should declare a jihad against U.S. forces. This was not a firebrand mullah, but a member of government. It was unprecedented.
After 9/11 the U.S. had a clear choice. Should it respond with anger or take a high moral ground and put money into health and education, addressing the root causes of the anger that had spurred 19 individuals to launch those horrific attacks. The U.S. chose to respond in anger, venting its fury first on Afghanistan, then Iraq. It supported military dictators such as those in Egypt and Uzbekistan in the hopes they would capture and kill "terrorists," a murky and undefined enemy. Pakistan was given billions of dollars for this mission; President Bush designated the country America's number one non-NATO ally. Perhaps America should have heeded Benjamin Franklin's warning: "Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
Remarks in the American media defaming Islam--popular after 9/11 as Islamophobia hit the roof in the West-- only served to make America's job more difficult. After the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson called the Prophet Muhammad a pedophile and a terrorist, mullahs in Pakistan’s Frontier Province swept the 2002 elections by claiming that America was defaming Islam. (Previously they had gotten no more than 5-10% of the vote.) Today Talibanization and anti-Americanism are rampant in the Province.
The U.S. is scoring an “own goal” in its fight against terrorism by blindly supporting Musharraf at the expense of true democracy in Pakistan and in other Muslim countries. That struggle is beamed throughout the Muslim world on satellite television and the internet. Pakistan needs more money for health and education programs and fewer guns and missiles, which Pakistanis complain are them used to kill them. It also needs a more robust American diplomacy based on notions of honor, respect, and dignity.
All we've heard recently in both the U.S. and the Muslim world are debates about water-boarding, torture, and rendition - all of which fly in the face of the American founding fathers' bold vision of a new kind of tolerant society. That old, tolerant vision is why Pakistan and other countries in the Muslim world were once staunchly pro-American. The U.S. must recapture those ideals, which match with the ideals of Islam and encourage Muslim countries like Pakistan to rediscover them in their own societies. Instead, the U.S. seems only interested in bombs and propping up corrupt and violent governments at the expense of alienating entire populations. But with 1.4 billion Muslims living in 57 states, with Pakistan nuclear and more countries on the way, with China and Russia emerging as global rivals, this is something the U.S. just can't afford to do.
These are the first and most important steps to be taken by Washington: to clearly and unambiguously move Musharraf towards unfettered democracy, a signal to all dictators everywhere. He must prepare for and ensure free and fair elections, lift the emergency, reinstate the judges he has sacked, reinstate a free media and the Constitution and take off his military uniform. A failed Pakistan will mean the collapse of America’s war on terror on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and global consequences. Failure in Pakistan is therefore not an option.
Professor Akbar Ahmed is Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University and is author of Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (Brookings, 2007).
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Comments (8)
Author has a point! Historically, Pakistan urged for an strategic relation with usa based on American ideals!
During creation of Pakistan religion was a part but being an independent society was a trigger!
June 30, 2008 1:40 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 30, 2008 01:40
Mr. Akber is totally wrong about Jinnah and Pakistan.
Pakistani ideals (if they have had one) and American ideals are diagonally opposite to each other. Pakistan was based on religion alone and Jinnah did not fool anybody when he talked about democracy, seculerism and pluralism in his famous speech in Aug. of 1947 after Pakistan was created. If he really believed in these ideals then the whole argument for the demand of Pakistan is a mute point. He wanted to break away from the secular democratic India and the message to whole world was loud and clear that he wanted a Islamic Republic, even though he did not say so in many words. So Pakistanis got the Islamic republic like Iran, and now after 60 years Pakistanis are complaining that they did not get democracy. What a Joke.
I would like to mention an other point here. The reason Pakistan happened about 60 years ago is, not because one man Jinnah wanted it, but it happened because India was coming out of 200 years of British rule and its political, judicial and other civic institutions were not strong enough at that time to handle internal strife. But, now India has built these independent institutions after working very hard and spending lot of money for the last 60 years. These institutions are the real strength of the Indian democracy and its people. Like America, India found the strength in its diversity. Pakistanis spent disproportionate money and resources on the military due to mis concieved threat perception and nothing on building the institutions. It is no surprise that military took over their country.
December 2, 2007 3:45 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 2, 2007 15:45
May we know which ideals of America and Pakistan are brought into play in Pakistan's attacks on Indians via armed Pakistani jihadis and in America's support of the Pak Army which trains and dispatches them? As an Indian, I consider America to be a state sponsor of a state sponsor of terrorism against my country.
November 27, 2007 1:17 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on November 27, 2007 01:17
"Pakistan degenerated from a Muslim democracy founded on women’s rights and religious freedom"
What is Akbar smoking? Isn't the term "Muslim democracy" an oxymoron? Is there a single Muslim-majority country that is a democracy today or in the past? Pakistan was created on the basis of a religion that preaches hatred and intolerance of non-believers. There was no religious freedom posited other than what Jinnah, a pork-eating dying atheist, had proclaimed to a vacuum. His followers soon fashioned him into a devout Muslim in their hagiography, and ignored his generally secular outlook. Women's rights? Hah! Tell that to Mukhtar Mai.
November 26, 2007 4:36 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on November 26, 2007 04:36
United States has long forgotten its ideals of liberty and freedom. It started its 'imperial expansionism' way back in 1896 when it annexed Hawaii followed by attacks on Phillipine Islands. It has continued with the same policy over the past one hundred years plus. T
The worst that the U.S. did occured in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, attacking civilians labelling them Viet Cong guerillas in Vietnam and militants, extremists and terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The U.S. history is replete with examples of its all-out support to absolute monarchs, military dictators and civilian dictators. It never tried to cultivate relations with the people of its allied countries.
The rulers in the Third World countries are 'disposal items' for the U.S. Yesterday, General Zia-ul-Haq was a great friend. Today, it is General Musharraf. Tomorrow, it would be someone else.
We should never forget history. Marcos ruled Philippines for 20 years under Martial Law and His Majesty Raza Shah Pehlvi ruled Iran for 37 years with absolute power. What happened to them eventually and what the U.S. did for them when these favorites lost their seats of power? President Musharraf's fate can't be different.
I would blame the Third World rulers more than the U.S. It is the Third World rulers who have to realize and recognize the need to be popular among their own people. Outside help is always temporary and conditional. America is nobody's friend just like Britain who ruled a great mass of earth for centuries.
It is said: 'You may call yourself a friend of the King but the King won't treat you like a friend for you are not his equal.'
November 23, 2007 7:48 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on November 23, 2007 07:48
The author of this fiction losthis credibility in the firstpara:
"He created what in 1947 was the largest Muslim nation on earth within the confines of the law and without ever going to jail or engaging in violence of any kind. He founded the country on the basis of democracy, human rights, minority and women's rights"
Is this man joking? I thought over a million people died during the partition. Over 60 years, the notion of an islamic Pakistan has crumbled against a secular India. Unless I know wrong, there are more Muslims in India than Pakistan (including 2 presidents, vice presidents, parliament speakers, armed force chiefs among others). 60 years after separation: there are no "mohajirs" in India.
Jinnah was an atheist lawyer gigantised by the imperial british (notably Mountbatten). His only claim to fame is cleaving a nation. Maybe there is a reason he never went to jail, when all those others who opposed the British, did. The same reason, I posit, why Musharraf gets his billions from the US : boot-licking pays.
I am substantially in agreement with the authors sentiments : but his facts about the notion and birth of Pakistan are jarringly wrong. Perhaps there lies the reason for the disaster that is Pakistan: first a British prop - now an American prop.
November 19, 2007 11:29 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on November 19, 2007 11:29
Akbar, you pontificate. Pakistan was not the largest Islamic country at its creation -- Indonesia was and still is!! Get your facts right as you are supposed to be an educator.
November 19, 2007 8:58 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on November 19, 2007 08:58
I do not agree with Akber about the creation of Pakistan for human rights,women freedom,installation of democratic institutions and the approval of Pakistani population to U.S.assistance against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan.The Sub-Continent got its independence of the hard struggle of Mohan Das Karam Chand,Nehru,Patel and Azad while,M.A.Jenah being a barrister,had never stood in front of a court bench to claim for Pakistan and the Land was gifted him as a Britt base against the then Soviet Union,and since the creation up to date it has not any liberal foreign policy but to serve for the security of Anglo-American interests in the region.There was not any involvement of Pakistani population against the Soviet in Afghanistan as the average of illiteracy in that country touched 99% and the masses of the people were not consulted whether under the the military or the civilian ruling setups in Islamabad.The move against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan was the decision of only the Military Dictator Zia ul Haq to get the U.S. aid fot his army Personnals financial betterment as the then General of the army were serving monthly for 5000 rs. and now they are playing with billions of American dollers, and if the war against the Soviets had the sentiment of Pakistan's Islamic population, the Military setup of Islamabad could not have moved against the Islamic warriors as it is doing now.
November 15, 2007 11:26 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on November 15, 2007 23:26