polls in 2008 were relatively free and fair, the campaigns that preceded them
were almost certainly coursing with ISI money. In one uncomfortable exchange
during a May 2010 briefing with ISI officials in Islamabad, I asked how their
organization had changed since the return of civilian-led government in Islam-
abad. An eager mid-level analyst jumped in to say, “One big shift is that we
shut down the political wing.” He might have expounded upon this issue but
his boss, one of the ISI’s most senior officers, cut him off quickly, stating, “Of
course, you must understand, there never was a political wing of the ISI.”72
The former head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Asad Durrani, later contra-
dicted both of these statements when he testified before Pakistan’s Supreme
Court in May 2012 and explained that the ISI’s political cell was still ope-
rational.73
For all its political scheming and activities throughout Pakistan’s neighbor-
hood, the ISI has earned quite a bit of attention and even more notoriety.
Pakistani journalists tend to write about the agency in euphemistic terms, cit-
ing it as a driving force in the “establishment” or the “deep state.” It is easy
to get the impression that the ISI controls practically everything that moves
in Pakistan (or for that matter, in Afghanistan). The ISI is powerful, but that
power also has limits. If Pakistan’s spies were as omnipresent and all-seeing as
the rumors suggest, the agency probably would have done a much better job
at securing the country, or at least at securing its own personnel. In combating
70 Saeed Shah, “Pakistani High Court Challenges Spy Agency over Payments,” McClatchy Newspapers, March 9, 2012, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/09/v-print/141344/pakistani-high-court-challenges.html.
71 “Reforming Pakistan’s Electoral System,” International Crisis Group Asia Report No. 203, March 30, 2011, p. 6, http://www.crisisgroup.org/˜/media/Files/asia/southasia/pakistan/203
%20Reforming%20Pakistans%20Electoral%20System.ashx.
72 Author’s conversation, Islamabad, May 2010.
73 Nasir Iqbal, “SC Asks Govt to Provide ISI Political Cell Notification,” Dawn, May 17, 2012, http://dawn.com/2012/05/18/sc-asks-govt-to-provide-isi-political-cell-notification/.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
49
the Pakistani Taliban, the ISI is said to have lost some seventy officers by the
end of 2009.74 One glance at the ISI’s fortress-like compound in Islamabad
suggests that even its own leaders doubt its omnipotence.
It is safe to conclude, however, that the ISI is one essential element in a larger
military machine that remains far and away Pakistan’s single most powerful
institution. It is possible that over time Pakistan’s civilian leaders will wrest
power from the generals, or simply chip away at it, bit by bit. But as long as the
military continues to hold a deciding influence, Pakistan’s foreign and defense
policies are more likely to be defined by continuity than by change.
terrorist incubator
Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, bequeathed his new nation a noble
motto: “unity, faith and discipline.” Jinnah’s three words may ring a bell with
anyone who has traveled to Islamabad from the airport, since they are mounted
on a hilltop – sort of like the Hollywood sign above Los Angeles – under a
huge illuminated profile of Jinnah himself. So it is noteworthy that Pakistan’s
army now fights under the Arabic banner: “Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah,”
or “Faith, Piety, Struggle in the way of Allah,” a pointedly Islamic formulation
assumed in the late 1970s during the harsh military rule of General Zia-ul-
Haq. A motto need not have grave significance, but in Pakistan’s case it lays
bare a central question of national identity: What is the role of Islam in the
state?
Debates still rage in Pakistan over how Jinnah answered this question. Lib-
istani citizens, regardless of religious creed. For instance, in 2011, Dawn, the English-language daily newspaper, ran a series of seven large advertisements
proclaiming Jinnah’s progressive views on women’s and minority rights, good
governance, and education.75 Dawn cited Jinnah’s speech of August 11, 1947,
in which he told the Pakistani constituent assembly:
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques
or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any
religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State. . . . Now I think . . . you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus
and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that
is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.76
74 Anatol Lieven, “Understanding Pakistan’s Military,” OpenDemocracy.Net, August 9, 2010, http://www.opendemocracy.net/anatol-lieven/understanding-pakistan%E2%80%99s-military.
75 See Dawn’s half-page description of this ad campaign on May 23, 2012, p. 4.
76 “Mr. Jinnah’s Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, August 11, 1947,”
Dawn, Independence Day Supplement, August 14, 1999, http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/
legislation/constituent address 11aug1947.html.
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50
No Exit from Pakistan
On the other hand, Pakistan’s Islamists point out that Jinnah founded the
state in explicit opposition to the Hindu-dominated politics of India.77 Under
those circumstances, how could Pakistan not grant the primacy of Islamic law and practice? Of greater import than Jinnah’s view is the fact that Pakistan
has evolved over time. The nation’s politics, rhetoric, and practices are more
self-consciously “Islamic” than they were in Jinnah’s day. The political and
social consequences of this shift are by no means straightforward.
Islam under Attack
The topic of blasphemy – speaking or acting in ways that are believed to defame
Islam – has stirred great passion in Pakistan. In May 2011, as I hopped out of
the car to have a quick lunch with a Pakistani colleague at an upscale market in
Islamabad, he turned to me and pointed to a spot just to our left: “That’s where
Salman Taseer was shot dead.” And so it was. Taseer, the outspoken liberal
governor of Punjab province, had been killed by one of his own bodyguards,
Mumtaz Qadri, who after firing several rounds into the back of the man he was
sworn to protect, dropped his weapon and surrendered. The assassin’s motive?
Salman Taseer had dared to question Pakistan’s law against blasphemy, which
was at the time being used to prosecute a Christian woman for her alleged use
of the prophet’s name in vain.
The Taseer murder troubled Pakistanis, but
for a range of reasons. Among
the high-living liberal elites, who commonly employ drivers, cooks, maids, and
security guards, it sent a chilling message that their families were not safe. The
political, social, or religious sympathies of their hired help could make them
dangerous. For other moderates and minorities, especially Pakistan’s Christians
and Hindus, the killing was another reminder of the difficulties of living in an
increasingly intolerant society.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the entire episode, however, was that
mainstream religious leaders sat silently or openly blamed Taseer, the victim,
for having questioned Pakistan’s blasphemy law in the first place. This was true
for leaders of Pakistan’s Barelvi school of Islam, one followed by a majority
of Pakistan’s Sunni Muslims and widely viewed as more “moderate” in its
teachings.78 The Sunni Ittehad Council, a conglomerate of Barelvi groups,
went so far as to call on Pakistan’s president to pardon Taseer’s assassin and
declared it would celebrate January 4 as Mumtaz Qadri day.79 Later, when
77 For an excellent study of Pakistan’s largest Islamist political party, see Syed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
78 Salman Siddiqui, “Hardline Stance: Religious Bloc Condones Murder,” Express Tribune, January 5, 2011, http://tribune.com.pk/story/99313/hardline-stance-religious-bloc-condones-murder/.
79 “SIC Demands Ban on Renamed Terrorist Groups,” Express Tribune, December 15, 2011, http://tribune.com.pk/story/306716/barelvi-parties-conference-sic-demands-ban-on-renamed-terrorist-groups/.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
51
Qadri showed up in court, a group of lawyers assembled in solidarity and
showered him with rose petals.80
The blasphemy issue touches a special chord for millions of Pakistanis, many
of whom believe that Islam is under attack and must be defended from abuses
of all sorts. Hamid Gul, who served as the chief of the ISI from 1987 to 1989,
is today one of Pakistan’s most vocal champions of this mind-set. Like other
retired senior officers, Gul lives in a comfortable home granted to him as part of
his retirement package. He is surrounded by family, including his son Abdullah,
who is following in his father’s footsteps to launch a national youth movement
with a revolutionary, anti-Western agenda.81
Gul was removed from his ISI job when civilians retook power in Islamabad
from the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq who died in a mysterious plane crash.
After leaving his office, the spy chief never fully abandoned the Taliban or
the other violent extremists he had done so much to nurture. He has admit-
ted to membership in a group that tried to share nuclear information with
al-Qaeda prior to 9/11.82 An unabashed critic of the United States, Gul called
the 9/11 attacks “a bloody hoax” and “an inside job.”83 He claimed that Osama
bin Laden “has sworn to me [Gul] on the Koran it was not him [responsible
for the attacks] and he is truthful to a fault.”84
What separates Gul from other garden-variety anti-Americans or Pakistani
nationalists is that he sees Pakistan’s Muslim identity as its defining feature. As
Gul explained in a 2004 interview, he has long been “a proponent of the idea
that all the Muslim countries, which are an endangered species, they must get
together and sign a defense pact. . . . Forty-five percent of the world area can
be described as Muslim land. So we have tremendous potential. But we have
to understand that we are different in the definition of a nation than the other
nations of the world. And this is called pan-Islamism. And people are afraid,
the West is afraid of this spirit of pan-Islamism.”85 To another interviewer,
80 “Lawyers Shower Roses for Governor’s Killer,” Associated Press, January 5, 2011, http://www
.dawn.com/2011/01/05/lawyers-shower-roses-for-governors-killer.html.
81 Author interview, Rawalpindi, May 16, 2012.
82 The group, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S.
government. UTN’s nuclear plotting with al-Qaeda never appears to have gotten past a very preliminary discussion, but it did worry the U.S. intelligence community. For more, see Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (New York: Crown, 2011), p. 125; David E. Sanger, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (New York: Crown, 2011), pp. 206–212.
83 Candace Rondeaux, “Former Pakistani Intelligence Official Denies Aiding Group Tied to Mumbai Seige,” Washington Post, December 9, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2008/12/08/AR2008120803612.html.
84 Arnaud de Borchgrave, “Arnaud de Borchgrave’s Exclusive September 2001 Interview with Hamid Gul,” Washington Times, July 28, 2010, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/
jul/28/deborchgrave-sept-2001-interview-hameed-gul/?page=all#pagebreak.
85 “Voices from the Whirlwind: Assessing Musharraf’s Predicament,” PBS Frontline, March 2004, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/28/deborchgrave-sept-2001-interview-hameed-gul/?page=all#pagebreak.
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52
No Exit from Pakistan
Gul argued, “The world needs a post-modern state system. . . . A global village
under divine order, or we will have global bloodshed until good triumphs over
evil.” The Taliban in Afghanistan, he observed, represented “Islam in its purest
form so far . . . they had perfect law and order with no formal police force, only
traffic cops without sidearms.”86
Armed with conspiracy theories and vitriol, Gul stands at Pakistan’s nexus
of the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Islamist political parties, international terror-
ists, and the nation’s most bloodthirsty sectarian outfits. In late 2011, they
all joined forces to launch the Defence of Pakistan Council (Difa-e-Pakistan,
or DPC). The group held rallies in each of Pakistan’s major cities and pub-
lished a polished website to proclaim its commitment to “defending Pakistan,
the only ideological nation carved in the name of Islam with our wealth and
lives.”87 Pakistan should begin, Gul believes, with a “soft revolution” that
would “return” the country to its roots in Muslim law and do away with the
current multiparty political system.88 Gul and the DPC hope to trigger that
revolution through nonviolent protests against the United States, to translate
anti-American fervor into anti-government action.
As one brave Pakistani commentator put it, “Far from this [Defence of
Pakistan] Council defending Pakistan, Pakistan needs to be defended in right
earnest from this cast of characters.”89 One of the biggest draws for DPC
events was Hafiz Saeed, the leader and principal ideologue of Jamaat-ud-Dawa
(JuD), the charitable arm of LeT. If there is any single terrorist organ
ization in
Pakistan most likely to provoke an all-out war with India, it is LeT.90
Second to Saeed was Maulana Sami ul Haq, whose ties to the Afghan Tal-
iban are legendary. His madrassa, the Darul Uloom Haqqania, is based along
the Afghan border and trained many of the region’s most notorious Taliban
leaders. The patriarch of the Haqqani network that has so threatened the
NATO mission in Afghanistan, commander Jalaluddin Haqqani derives his
name from this seminary where he studied many decades ago. The media often
calls the seminary the “university of jihad.” Over decades, it has indoctri-
nated thousands of Pakistanis, Afghans, and – before it was made illegal –
young men from all over the world in a violent, anti-Western view of the
world.
In the decade after 9/11, Pakistan’s Taliban brought insurgency, suicide ter-
rorism, and a campaign of assassinations to Pakistani soil. The attacks exposed
the vulnerabilities of Pakistan’s security forces, both along the Afghan border
86 de Borchgrave, “Arnaud de Borchgrave’s Exclusive September 2001 Interview with Hamid Gul.”
87 Difa-e-Pakistan Homepage, http://www.difaepakistan.com/vision.html.
88 Author interview, May 16, 2012.
89 Ejaz Haider, “Is This a Joke?” Express Tribune, February 14, 2012, http://tribune.com.pk/
story/336328/is-this-a-joke/.
90 For an extended discussion of LeT, see Chapter 3.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
53
and, at times, in the country’s biggest cities. That said, Pakistan’s Taliban insur-
gents have had little success in taking their violent conquests much beyond the
frontier with Afghanistan. Pakistani Taliban (TTP) atrocities and the fact that
the group is overwhelmingly Pashtun makes it foreign and deeply unappealing
to the vast majority of Pakistan’s people who hail from other ethnic groups.
A June 2012 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that only
17 percent of Pakistanis supported the Pakistani Taliban while 52 percent of