Pakistan in Media

Daily Times, Pakistan
COMMENT: Syed Mansoor Hussain

I have often asked many of my friends that have a soft corner for the Taliban about what exactly the Taliban want within Pakistan. Other than anti-Americanism and some vague mutterings about sharia law, nobody has been able to answer my question

One of the great problems of modern times is that many of our attitudes are based not on well thought out principles but rather on a visceral response to what we see on TV. As such, to the West, Muslims are what they do and that is of course terrorism and extremism. For the Muslims, what the United States does is drone attacks and daisy-cutters, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

For most people in this part of the world, the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to be all-out wars against Muslims and thus by proxy against Islam. The reverse is that for most people in the West, Muslims represent 9/11, suicide bombings, beheadings of ‘non-believers’, and floggings of ‘errant’ women; all this being an obvious negation of what western civilisation stands for

Both sides are right and both sides are wrong. The United States justifies its actions against Muslims through national interest based on ‘homeland security’, while Muslims defend their actions based on what to them seems an unjust and excessive US response to terrorism, both perceived and real.

Soon after the fall of the USSR and the emergence of the United States as the sole superpower in what were arguably more ‘innocent’ times, Francis Fukuyama came out with his concept of ‘the end of history’ and Samuel Huntington presented his thesis about the ‘clash of civilisations’. Fukuyama felt that western-style liberal democracy had triumphed and would forever be the paradigm for governance.

Huntington argued that after the end of the Cold War, future conflicts would be civilisational and not ideological. He rather arbitrarily divided the world into different ‘civilisations’ that in his opinion would vie for dominance with each other. Much of the nineties were spent by academics and intellectuals arguing against this proposition, Edward Said and Amartya Sen prominent among them.

With the new century came two major man-made disasters, the Supreme Court-directed election of George W Bush as President of the United States, and 9/11. The confluence of these two factors brought the Bush Doctrine, which essentially accepted Fukuyama’s point about the supremacy of western democracy and made it a part of official US policy to introduce such democracy, even through the use of force if needed, in the Middle East.

Also in line with the Huntington point of view, the Bush administration embarked on a ‘war on terror’, which was a thinly disguised war against Islam and the Muslims, using at times ambiguous terms like ‘Islamo-facism’ to justify their actions. Countries like India and Israel that had long standing territorial disputes with neighbouring Muslim countries immediately jumped on this ‘war of civilisations’ bandwagon.

With the election of Barack Obama, some sense is being restored to US foreign policy but too much harm has been done. Disentanglement in Iraq and the pacification of Afghanistan are difficult end points and might preoccupy the Obama administration for some years.

Repairing relations with Muslims in general might even take longer but will eventually happen if the US follows the stated objectives of President Obama in this context. He has already debunked the war of civilisations idea and has it seems given up on imposing western-style democracy in the Middle East by force.

As a liberal I have always tried my best to understand and, if possible, even accept points of view that are contrary to my beliefs. This attitude is of course dependent on an abiding belief that most people are intrinsically good and try to do what is not only best for themselves but also for people around them. And more importantly on the idea that there is always more than one way to solve almost any problem.

However, I could not, even after trying my utmost, find any redeeming value in the policies of the Bush administration. The Bush presidency is fortunately over. Almost the entire world is now rooting for Barack Obama to succeed and undo the harm done to the US and the rest of the world by the misguided policies of the Bush-Cheney duo.

As I sit in Lahore a few days after the terrorist attacks here, in Peshawar and elsewhere, and at the same time read about the army action in Swat, many of my pre-conceived notions as a liberal are being severely put to test once again. When I came to Pakistan a few years ago I was very pleasantly surprised that I got along famously with many people that I would have thought of as religious extremists.

Frankly, if I am asked today whom would I trust more in Pakistan, a devout practicing Muslim or a westernised liberal member of our self-styled ‘civil society’, I will go with the former every time!

But what the Taliban stand for is still a mystery to me. Are they a populist movement using religion to establish control over parts of Pakistan or is it the other way around, and are they really a religious group using populist anti-imperialist rhetoric to achieve the same result?

In this connection, I have often asked many of my friends that have a soft corner for the Taliban about what exactly the Taliban want within Pakistan. Other than anti-Americanism and some vague mutterings about sharia law, nobody has been able to answer my question in a satisfactory manner. As far as the talking heads on TV are concerned, they are entirely clueless.

The Taliban do not fit into either the ideological or the civilisational paradigm of conflict and thus essentially negate both the Fukuyama and the Huntington points of view. Or perhaps they really stand for nothing and are just a ‘rabble without a cause’. That might then be why, in the crunch, most Pakistanis have come out in support of the army action against them.

Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com

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