Pakistan Ka Matlab Kiya?

Pakistan is the first Islamic State established after the fall of the Usmani Khilafat. It is an Islamic state in name only, but nothing sustains its national integrity except Islam.

Pakistani nationalism is a contradiction in terms – a manifestation of Sir Syed’s failed project to Westernize the Indian Muslim community. The people of the regions that became Pakistan had no commitment to Muslim nationalism for unlike the Muslims of the minority provinces they had no fear of Hindu dominance. Their ethnic commitment is to their language communities. There is not now and has never been an equivalent of a Zionist movement in Pakistan.

The Pakistan movement sought to supercede ethnic consciousness by appealing to Islam.

Weakening the state’s commitment to Islam is weakening the state itself for legitimating the state’s existence requires invoking Islamic consciousness. The state elite has since 1947 been confronted with the dilemma that while the national interest cannot be legitimately defined in a non Islamic context, there is no room within Islamic discourse for conceptualizing a specific national interest. The Prophet’s (may Allah shower His choicest blessing on our lord) Medina, the Rightly Guided Caliphate, the Mughal and Usmani empires – none of these were nation states. The Ummah is a universal ethical community and it legitimizes universal political order.

Thus while an Islamic state has geographical boundaries it is a universal state in that it is committed to the advocacy of a universal truth – “the Bosnian tragedy occurred” writes Ali Sabry Gosovic “because Pakistan was not our neighbor. The Pakistanis would never have tolerated our persecution”.

The Pakistanis cannot tolerate the persecution of the Afghanis, the Kashmiris, the Chechens, the Palestinians, the Moros because the raison d`etre of their state is its commitment to universal truth. Pakistan is merely an instrument for the service of this truth. It is nothing else. Attempts to convert Pakistan into a nation state – into Napakistan – are an attempt at undermining the popular legitimacy of the state.

Africa is a good example of what happens when attempts are made to create an artificial nationalism – a nationalism not rooted in the historical experiences of a populace. Promoting civic nationalism, on the basis of the argument that it is in the material interest of the people of Pakistan to ensure Pakistan’s survival – cannot succeed for the ideology which sustains such civic nationalism is liberalism.Today, liberalism is a spent force even in Europe and America, where electoral turnouts have been declining for half a century, political agendas have become uniform, human rights discourse is subservient to hedonist commitment and there is a wiedespread “withdrawal from citizenship “ specially among the youth. How can liberalism acquire popular support in societies lacking historical commitment to liberal values, when it is dying in its homelands?

That does not mean that Islam cannot be defeated in Pakistan. But the defeat of Islam must involve a loss of state sovereignty – the conversion of Pakistan into Napakistan. Islam’s defeat can take two forms.

Pakistan can disintegrate, and popular support can be mobilized on the basis of racial hatred of the Punjabis. An often cited CIA report foresees this outcome, with Pakistan collapsing into two regions Sindh and Punjab subservient to India, and Balochistan and NWFP subservient to Iran and Afghanistan. This must involve a loss of sovereignty.

The other form that Napakistan can take is its transformation into a new South Vietnam. South Vietnamization will involve purchasing material benefits at the cost of state sovereignty and in particular redefining national foreign policy to serve imperialist objectives. The current Islamic resistance has shown that South Vietnamization will entail political costs.

But the Islamic resistance movement does not as yet have the sort of popular support the Viet Cong enjoyed nor does Afghanistan enjoy the support of super power allies. The major political parties – the Muslim League, the PPP, the ANP, Mutahida – are imperialist sponsored. The South Vietnamization of Napakistan is therefore not inconceivable but Napakistan cannot avoid a loss of state sovereignty. South Vietnam can only survive on ever increasing imperialist support and this must involves state subservience to imperialist policy objectives.

The government has clearly rejected the disintegration option and even the imperialists are not betting on the racialist parties. The government is dithering between choosing South Vietnamization or Islam. I will now present an argument against South Vietnamization of Pakistan.

This argument is grounded on religious principles. Choosing South Vietnamization is withdrawing from the jihad against a civilization which seeks the deification of man and universalizes the social duty to accumulate capital and practise its concomitant human rights. It is our religious duty to struggle against capitalist and democratic ideology and practise.

South Vietnamization will create an unbridgeable gap between the government and the people of Pakistan. The people will resent the de-Islamization of politics and society. No popular argument has been – or indeed can be – presented in favour of South Vietnamization.

Crushing the Islamic resistance movement will become inevitable and liberalism will have to be imposed upon an apathetic and disillusioned people and no argument will be available to prioritize collective to individual interests in such a scenario.

Liberalism dissolves communities and liberal policies – specially liberal economic policies – provide no scope for nation building. Building Napakistan through South Vietnamization will lead to the growth of the rampant corruption, selfishness and cruelty which characterized the Saigon regime under Thieu.

As corruption and selfishness spread the imperialist stranglehold will strengthen. The concept of a national interest which restricts immediate access to material well being will become meaningless. If today we are willing to sacrifice our commitments to Afghanisatan for our national material well being, why not betray Kashmir tomorrow and the nuclear programme the day after? All these betrayals will become increasingly palatable to a hedonist people for each will be accompanied by greater and greater imperialist largesse.

There is simply no argument which simultaneously justifies the betrayal of Afghanistan and the defense of the neucler initiatives if the national interest is conceived of in material benefit terms. Both Afghanistan and neucler capability are sacrificable on the grounds of a higher standard of living.

Imperialist support can raise standards of living. In South Vietnam GDP growth was high during most of the 1960s. Similarly imperialism can provide substantial benefits – debt write of, access to American markets, multilateral assistance, etc. But as in the case of South Vietnam the growth made possible by imperialist support will prove unsustainable. There are three reasons for this.

First America will loose the war in Afghanistan and eventually in the Middle East. America is not in a position to fight a long drawn out guerilla campaign and the Islamic regime will not disintegrate even if there is a temporary loss of some major cities. There is a growing realization that the security threat to America is internal in nature and creation and preservation of pro American regimes, specially in regions peripheral to the interests of global capital, is somewhat irrelevant. As the impossibility of a clear cut victory in Afghanistan becomes clearer the temptation to quit Afghanistan – and reduce commitments in Pakistan – will become strong. This is what happened in Vietnam and it is improbable that the Americans will stay long in Afghanistan. The commitment to the Middle Eastern regimes is of course much more durable but Pakistan does not stand to gain much from this, since the major policy imperative of this commitment is the deneuclarization of Pakistan.

Secondly the cost of obtaining imperialist support is continuing adherence to the liberal policy agenda imposed upon us by the IMF and the World Bank.

We are forced to reduce military expenditure (already less than one fifth that of India) cut deficits, devalue, restrict the growth of high powered money and privatize in a de-globalizing world, a world in which these policies make no economic sense.

As growth rates plummet public deficits will return to America and private capital flows to all developing countries, including “emergent markets” will be reduced. Trade volumes will also fall as insurance and freight rates rise.

Moreover imperialist governments will be forced to impose capital controls – “we are all Keynesians now” says the Financial Times – for without this taxing capital and sustaining growth in public spending will rapidly become unsustainable. The defeat in Vietnam brought about a twenty year downturn, for America and Europe. The defeat in Iraq Afghanistan may impose a greater cost on capitalism for populations are falling and ageing, the debt mountains have assumed unprecedented heights, faith in the basic liberal values has been eroded and everything depends on stimulating consumer and investor “confidence”. But what is there to be confident about?

Delinking from such a system which is poised on the brink of disaster is both necessary and possible. Like India and China our international dependence is limited. Our trade / GNP ratio is below thirty percent and the net capital inflow to gross capital formation ratio is between 10 to 12 percent. We are a self reliant economy producing 80 percent of what we consume and financing 90 percent of our total investment. Rejecting the IMF imposed economic policy agenda is the only viable policy choice for us in the present circumstances.

This must involve

 Removing pro-imperialist ex-employees of the IMF, the World Bank and private international banks from positions of leadership in major policy making institutions.

 Abandoning the quest for a new IMF stabilization programme and freeing our economy from its associated conditionalities.

 Repudiating foreign debt and imposing strict capital controls on inflows and outflows. In present circumstances it is most unlikely that debt repudiation will lead to major retaliatory action.

 Nationalizing the financial system by abolishing the creation of money in the form of debt and abolishing the money market. This is the essence of Islamization of finance for the profit sharing system does not recognize debt or debt money.

 Building a war economy centered on the public financing of investment in defense related industries, specially capital goods, energy and food. The investment strategy must focus on stimulating domestic demand.

 Restructuring informal sector and bazzar transactions with the mosque as a financing node which facilitates the pooling and deployment of small savings and the development of input – output linkages between micro, small and large scale producers. Mosques can serve as bazzar based branches of national non debt financial institutions.

The introduction of these reforms will be resisted by the imperialists and their supporters. But in the present circumstances an appeal to make sacrifices for Islam can prove highly effective. An anti imperialist policy stance will bridge the gap between the government and the people and the organizational structure for popular mobilization and for institutionalizing popular support already exists in the form of thousands of mosques and madrassahs spread throughout the country.

The chances for the success of such a strategy are good but failure is also possible. We are committed to this strategy on religious not on pragmatic grounds. Pakistan is a universal not a nation state. Redefining Pakistan’s national interest in non universal terms is the conversion of Pakistan into Napakistan. This is not acceptable to the people of Pakistan.