Physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy on Pakistan after Osama

JUN 27, 2011

Is it true that science-mindedness, a scientific outlook, can contribute wisdom to politics? The polymath Pakistani nuclear physicist and political observer Pervez Hoodbhoy teaches in Islamabad and Lahore -- and writes and publishes fearlessly inside that region’s churning turmoil.

DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0289

Steven T. Corneliussen

This venue’s most recent media report on Hoodbhoy appeared a few weeks ago. Readers of Physics Today might also remember his August 2007 article “Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement ”

Now Hoodbhoy has published the outspoken “Pakistan after Osama ” in Himal, which calls itself “the only monthly review magazine that covers Southasia.” The stand-first summary says:

The killing of Osama bin Laden could provide Pakistan an opportunity to reverse its downward slide, though changing course will not be easy. The country must decide whether to decisively confront Islamist violence, or continue with the military’s current policy of supporting jihadi militants with one hand even as it slaps them with the other.

The article’s ending paragraph says more about reversing that “downward slide":

Where does Pakistan go from here as a country? With bin Laden gone, the military has two remaining major strategic assets: America’s weakness in Afghanistan, and Pakistani nuclear weapons. It will surely move these chess pieces around adroitly to extract the maximum advantage. But this will not assure the peace and prosperity that Pakistanis so desperately crave. These will not give security to Pakistan, solve the country’s mounting electricity and water crises, move its citizens out of dire economic straits, give them justice and opportunity, or protect them from suicide bombers. Until the military sorts out its own internal matters, and the conviction comes about that Pakistan will deal with terrorists as terrorists should be dealt with, the country will not be at peace with itself or with the world.

The best way to report further on this latest in Hoodbhoy’s outspoken public analyses might be simply to offer this sampling of excerpts from the rest of his 5500 words:

To the relief of many around the world, the man who had attacked and physically eliminated all he perceived as enemies of Islam—Soviets and Americans, Iraqis and Pakistanis—was dispatched to his watery grave.

For multiple reasons, bin Laden’s killing has become a bone stuck in the throat of Pakistan’s establishment, which despises the Americans but is formally aligned with them. This bone can neither be swallowed nor spat out. To approve of the Abbottabad operation would infuriate the Islamists, who are already fighting the state. To protest too loudly, however, would suggest that Pakistan had willingly hosted the king of terrorists.

One clear consequence of the US operation was to put into stark relief the humble subservience of Pakistan’s civilians to their military masters.

Servitude to power runs thick in the blood of Islamabad’s politicians, which is why they wrote, some decades ago, into the Pakistan Constitution that it is a crime to criticise the armed forces of Pakistan or to bring them into disaffection.

Though the incompetence of the civilian government is legendary, the responsibility for the present debacle lies squarely with the military.

Bin Laden’s killing presented a rare opportunity for Pakistan to reclaim some of the powers snatched by its army.

Members of ‘the establishment’ must believe that India has to be countered at every turn; that nuclear weapons have endowed Pakistan with security and status; that the fight for Kashmir is the unfinished business of Partition; that large-scale social reforms, such as land redistribution, are unacceptable; that the uneducated and illiterate masses deserve only contempt; that vociferous Muslim nationalism is desirable but the Sharia is not; and that Washington is to be despised but fully taken advantage of.

Gradually, Pakistan morphed into Jihadistan, attracting a multitude of Islamists from Europe to West and Central Asia to Indonesia. But Jihadistan is a messy place these days, a far cry from the simple bastion of anti-communism in the 1980s. Today the military must kill some of its former protégés and some radicals even as it secretly supports others.

A generation of poisoned minds that holds the external world responsible for all the country’s ills has led the country into collective xenophobia and psychosis. Signs suggest that a fascist religious state may be just around the corner.

A necessary condition for fascism—a sense of victimhood, mass delusions and a disconnection with reality—has now been met. A majority of all Pakistanis believe that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy, think the dynamiting of schools and suicide attacks on shrines are the work of Blackwater (the US defence contractor now called Xe), see India’s hand behind Pakistan’s deepening instability and, refuse to accept Pakistan’s responsibility in the Mumbai attacks of November 2008.

Those holding such distorted views of the world greeted the news of bin Laden’s killing with outright disbelief and denial. Pakistan’s capacity for self-deception should not be underestimated. An online survey conducted two days after the operation by a global opinion pollster revealed that a staggering 66 percent of Pakistanis thought the person who was killed by US Navy SEALs was not bin Laden.

Over decades, Pakistan has adapted to its changing strategic circumstances by renting itself out to powerful states. Territory and men are part of the services provided. Payment comes not just from the US, but Arab countries as well. For fear of public criticism, the arrangements have been kept hidden. Pakistan’s supposedly vibrant press has chosen to steer off such controversial issues. But post bin-Laden, the clatter of skeletons tumbling out of Pakistan’s strategic closet is forcing some secrets out into the open.

The army’s indignation over the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the bin Laden operation is phony; it is a dispute over the amount of rent, not over principle. ... Even the ferocious General Hamid Gul (retired), a self-proclaimed jihadi who advocates war on America, did not buy the army’s denial, remarking that bin Laden being in Abbottabad unknown to authorities ‘is a bit amazing’.

[According to one line of thought] bin Laden was the army’s golden goose—the ultimate trophy to be traded in at the right time for the right price, whether in dollars or political concessions. ... At some point, the army started seeing him as their cash cow.

While Pakistan’s military rulers are said to have some attraction to wads of money, those who are out to kill Pakistani soldiers and generals in the name of religion appear to have no less. This is suggested by the bizarre absence of jihadist reaction to bin Laden’s killing. ... The un-mourned passing of Osama bin Laden has merely confirmed the old adage: He who pays the piper calls the tune. Saudi money has weaned support away from al-Qaeda ... .

Pakistan’s generals will remain in thrall of their own irrational logic of selectively encouraging militancy.

US military and economic aid to Pakistan will continue. .... Pakistan will ... keep running with jihadi hares while hunting with the American hounds.

Pakistan-China relations will grow warmer.

[T]he bin Laden episode is sure to harden Pakistan’s nuclear stance. For the world, the fact that its most-wanted fugitive was hidden in an army town puts the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons into doubt.