analysis: Zaid Hamid and strategic depth —Farhat Taj
analysis: Zaid Hamid and strategic depth —Farhat Taj
What are we first of all: Muslim or Pakistani? Is our ultimate
commitment with Pakistani citizenship or a global Muslim brotherhood?
What kind of Pakistan should we aim at: a progressive multi-ethnic
social democracy or some kind of medieval caliphate?
FATA continues to be
used
and abused as a strategic space by the security establishment of
Pakistan in violent pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan. In
short, strategic depth means Pakistan must have a pro-Pakistan
government in Afghanistan by any and all means. People of FATA have
suffered more than people in any other part of Pakistan due to this
policy. They dread and hate ‘strategic depth’.
Some people of
FATA drew my attention towards Zaid Hamid, who, they said, is a new
charm offensive of the military establishment to popularise the notion
of strategic depth among the youth from affluent families in the big
cities of Pakistan. He is frequently given air time by the electronic
media, also an evidence that the media, especially the Urdu media, is
not free and has to toe the establishment’s line in security matters.
Show biz celebrities have joined him. Those who oppose the strategic
depth, especially the Pakhtun, who are the biggest casualty of it, are
never given so much media attention.
The main concern of the
people of FATA vis-a-vis Zaid Hamid is his use of a particularly narrow
interpretation of Islam that proposes a belligerent agenda for the
Pakistan Army and drawing on controversial Islamic literature. Thus the
authenticity of the hadiths — sayings of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) — on
Ghazwa-e-Hind that he often refers to in terms of the ultimate defeat
of the Indians at the hands of the Pakistan Army is highly questionable.
Zaid
Hamid claims in his speeches to young people that God determines the
destiny of Pakistan. Pakistan will become a grand Caliphate. Pakistan
army will cut India down to the size of Sri Lanka. Pakistan will lead
the entire Muslim world and its army will be deployed in Palestine,
Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan. The corrupt judicial system,
consisting of the lawyers and the Supreme Court of Pakistan, will be
replaced by an Islamic judicial system that would ensure — Taliban
style — speedy and cheap justice. He claims that the current elected
set up in Pakistan is implanted by the CIA and prophesies that the
current rulers in Pakistan will have their dead bodies hanging on poles
in Islamabad, an indirect appreciation of what the Taliban did in
Afghanistan with the dead body of Dr Najibullah, the then Afghan
president. He openly threatens the nationalists, especially the Pakhtun
and Baloch nationalists, for their aspirations. The Taliban government
in Afghanistan, he declares, was Pakistan-friendly and condemns its
removal by the US in the post-9/11 attack on the country. He glorifies
the biggest mass murderer of the Pakhtun — General Zia, the former
dictator of Pakistan.
Judging by the obscurantist message that
he communicates, Zaid Hamid does not seem to be a new invention of the
establishment. He is an addition to the long list of people who have
been handpicked to promote an anti-people agenda in the name of
religion and hate of India, like the people from the Jamaat-e-Islami.
What seems to be new is his apparent ‘tolerance’ of the ‘un-Islamic’
lifestyle of the urban youth and in this context there are some
interesting discussions about Zaid Hamid on some blogs and mailing
lists. One blogger writes that Zaid Hamid is using a new strategy to
communicate the same old conspiracy theories to young people. The
strategy is that unlike classical Islamic scholars, joining Zaid
Hamid’s group does not necessarily require the youth to shed their
sophisticated lifestyle and adjust to hijab, a ban on music and gender
segregation. The only thing they have to do is to glorify the Pakistan
Army, including its pursuit of strategic depth, and hate Jews,
Americans and Indians.
A writer on one of the mailing lists
argues that Zaid Hamid is a Pied Piper for our youth from the
prosperous sections of Punjab who have no dreams to be proud of. Zaid
Hamid sells the dreams of conquering the world, though they are
nonsense, yet still work for the youth who are now caught up in an
identity crisis, continues the writer. The writer understands that the
fault lies with the leftist intellectuals who have lost direction by
joining NGOs and leaving the anti-imperialist struggle open for people
like Zaid Hamid or Imran Khan.
Zaid Hamid, in his show, sets a
dangerous agenda for the youth of Pakistan; the very same youth who are
living a comfortable life in poverty-stricken Pakistan. They lack any
ambitions in life to give it some purpose. This lack of goals is rooted
in the identity crisis being faced by the Pakistani youth. The crisis
is expressed in questions like these: what are we first of all: Muslim
or Pakistani? Is our ultimate commitment with Pakistani citizenship or
a global Muslim brotherhood? What kind of Pakistan should we aim at: a
progressive multi-ethnic social democracy or some kind of medieval
caliphate?
Secondly, one has to strive very hard for ideals. If
the ideal is the former (multi-ethnic social democratic Pakistan), the
youth from affluent families will have to share their riches with the
poor, downtrodden fellow citizens. This is very hard for this class of
people, otherwise I would at least have seen them working for bringing
normalcy in the shattered lives of the people of FATA, who have been
living in deplorable conditions in refugee camps for over two years
now. In the latter case (caliphate) they can placate their conscience
by attaching themselves with the higher ideal without having to give up
something from their comfortable lives. The only thing they have to do
is to support the belligerent agenda of the military establishment and
their poor fellow Pakistanis can go to hell. Zaid Hamid’s campaign is
like opium for the young that makes them run away from reality, i.e.
Pakistan is a class-based multi-ethnic society that cannot be held
together with mere Islamic rhetoric and military ambitions.
What
is even more dangerous is the fact that Zaid Hamid is glorifying the
same Taliban that the people of FATA hold responsible for their
massacre at the behest of the military establishment of Pakistan. Case
in point, Jalaluddin Haqqani who occupies North Waziristan. I would
invite the young fans of Zaid Hamid to take a tour of FATA, or at least
FATA IDP camps in various parts of the NWFP, to observe firsthand what
the Taliban and the military did to these people. I would remind the
youth that people all over FATA hold the generals of the Pakistan Army
more than the Taliban responsible for the death and destruction in
their area. They view the Taliban — all Taliban, good, bad, Afghan or
Pakistani — as a creation of the intelligence agencies of our country.
How much more do the people of FATA need to sacrifice for strategic
depth in Afghanistan? The never-ending human sufferings in the area
could transform into widespread anti-state sentiments. The youth around
Zaid Hamid must know that the current pursuit of strategic depth may
turn into — as rightly described in this paper’s editorial ‘Strategic
death’? (Daily Times, February 3, 2010) –’strategic death’ for Pakistan
rather than securing a friendly Afghanistan.
The writer is a
research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research,
University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional
Research and Advocacy. She can be reached at bergen34@yahoo.co
In : Farhat Taj
Notes