Review: Pakistan Under Siege, Afzal, Madiha. Penguin India Press, 2018

Book Review: Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State by Madiha Afzal

The US-based scholar Madiha Afzal’s book, Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society and the State, presents an academic attempt to analyse the imperative issues from extremism and its militant dimensions which the Pakistani state faces today. The author delves into ambiguous attitudes of the ordinary Pakistanis’ towards the militant groups and their ideologies. These militant organisations include the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) —also called the Pakistan Taliban which was founded by Baitullah Mahsud in December 2007 with an aim to target the Pakistani state, the Afghan Taliban (AT) — a group which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 and it has positioned again itself for a return to power in August 2021 after the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul for nearly twenty years, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) — Pakistan-based anti-Indian militants who fight to free the ‘illegal’ occupation of Kashmir by India, Al-Qaeda — led by Osama bin Laden who was held responsible for the massive 9/11 attack in the United States on September 11, 2001 and other western targets. The author has primary consulted the Pew Research Center’s surveys to back her line of reasoning. She puts forth that Pakistanis in general disapprove of the extremist violence in every respect. However, they are ambivalence on their narratives about theses militant groups’ ideologies. They, possibly most of all, are in favour of those who fight against India (that are LeT and JeM) and the US (Al-Qaeda in specific). Equally important, the country’s security front substantially changed after the Operation Zarb-i-Azb (2014) and the Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad (2017) to curb terrorism and dismantle militant networks, Pakistan had also to shun its outdated paradigm that there will no longer be a policy of differentiating between so-called good and bad Taliban. The fact remains, extremism needs a multifaceted approach to vanquish.

Forbye, it indicates anti- Americanism among Pakistanis who accuse the US of betrayal, deception and untrustworthy such as in the cases of Raymond Davis and Aafia Siddiqui, East Pakistan’s secession in 1971, the Salala incident, the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, and the US treatment of Pakistan through the prism of Afghanistan. The book also spells out Pakistan’s narrative-obsessed policies: it’s reliance on Islam to define its national identity and Pakistan strategic depth in Afghanistan. For instance, the inception of Pakistan came into being on the basis of Islam and Pakistan’s army pitched the war in response to Indian aggression in 1965 as Jihad and portrayed it as a religious imperative. Discussing the rhetoric emerging from the country’s armed forces on its ideology, she quotes Stephen Cohen as saying:

“Islamic Nationalism of Pakistan stems from nationalist and foreign policy motives- that is, anti-India, distrustful of the USA, anti-Israel, and solidarity with Muslim countries”.

The author also writes the much-vaunted two-nation theory as a flawed concept; in the end it was politics that brought frictions among two nations “Muslims and Hindus” that drove the Muslims to the partition.

The book details the role of Pakistan’s laws and education system including Madrassa system which corroborates the structure roots of extremism in Pakistan. A thumbnail sketch of these developments as given in the book are presented below.

Pakistan’s legal Islamisation

A look at history at this point may not be out of place. The writer asserts that the Objective Resolution of 1949 paved a way to the legal Islamisation in Pakistan and later on, it became an Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the 1956 constitution. The existing constitution of 1973 added the second amendment that designated Ahmadis, other name of Qadianias, as non-Muslims on September 7, 1974. The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) and Shariat branches were constituted on the provincial levels to rule on the repugnancy of laws to the Quran and Sunnah. The draconian punishments in the case of blasphemy were instituted into Pakistan’s penal code under General Zia’s regime in the 1980’s. The author states that only 14 cases were recorded under the charges of blasphemy laws in pre-1986 but between 1986 and 2010, an estimated number of 1274 people were charged under the same laws. Basically, she maintains that the cases were drastically increased — many were deliberately accused. She has discussed the case of Asia Bibi (2010) which concluded with the assassination of the sitting Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, on January 4, 2011 by his own security guard Mumtaz Qadri. Bibi then was dramatically acquitted in 2018.

An Ideological Education

Getting down to brass tacks on how education has been used to achieve Islamisation of the state and why it is difficult to introduce any policy changes in the education sector, Afzal writes that the true potency of religion as a weapon, however, came to the fore with General Ziaul Haq in power who sought to remould the Pakistani identity in Pakistan Studies textbooks. With the wilful support of General Zia, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI)’s leader Abul Ala Maududi likely originated the term ‘Pakistan Ideology’.

The book under review blames the continuity of old narrative, which includes “historical errors, distortions and biases” in textbooks. Afzal claims that the textbooks published by private publishers were poorly written relative to those produced by the textbook boards. Even the latest textbooks do not provide an open discussion on terrorism and extremism in the country. The author points out the country’s identity based on Islam excluded non-Muslims from that identity. As it can be read while defining the Pakistan’s ideology in Pakistan Studies texts, published in the post-1977. From her standpoint, following are some of the factors within country’s education system that have been behind extremism and militancy mostly for ideological, reasons.

1. Use of term ‘Jihad’ while waging the war against hostile country i.e. India. Given that the paranoia of the Indian threat was palpable after the partition in 1947.
2. Critical thinking and and opinion-based has been given no room in the classrooms; even at a higher level, rote learning is inbuilt. The author quotes the case of IBA alumnus Saad Aziz, who killed the liberal activist Sabeen Mahmud in 2015, who could not come up with some counter arguments to the militant propaganda.
3. Little place for the role and heroes of minorities and ethnicities in the textbooks such as Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan), eras of Hindus and Buddhist.
4. Recruiting Madrassa-educated students to teach Islamiat in the schools with their fundamental mindset.
5. No teaching and learning of the world history in the schools.
6. The exclusion of social studies other than Islamiat and Pakistan Studies (and language) in the curriculum for pure science degrees.

She also mentions that Pakistan’s youngest generations are broadly more favourable toward these terrorist outfits than its older generations.

Islamists and Madrassas

The author treats the influence and narratives of the country’s Islamist parties predominant — especially on the education system, even without significant electoral power. The author further argues that the state also used Madrassas for the manpower and ideology that fueled the anti-Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Therefore, the country saw the increase in the number of Madrassas rapidly. The content taught in both registered and unregistered Madrassas also varies — having strike illustrations of intolerance, sectarianism, extremism and anti-West rhetoric in some of them, currently. The book makes it clear that madrassas’ students are more susceptible to an extremist ideology than those in mainstream education.

With cautious hope

The author conclusively counts on her point that Pakistan’s present predicaments can be clearly traced to the state-sponsored narrative and the reversal of ideologically-indoctrinated society is difficult. Afzal is of the view that the course can be changed yet; there’s way out. The following points are put forth for consideration.

1. Pakistan needs to reconsider its official line on the persisting and decades-long challenge of terrorism and extremism. As long as an extremist ideology remains intact, the militants will reincarnate with a renewed ferocity.
2. It needs to fess up about the roots of terrorism and extremism in the country and tackle the negative repercussions of Pakistan’s ideological construct.
3. It should defy its fundamental sense of insecurity from India.
4. Pakistan may impulse to the misuse of blasphemy laws and repressive nature of its commitment to religion and reassure religious minorities of their rights.
5. Democratic regimes are more stable and they can have the only opportunity to bring a change for such an ideological shift in Pakistan.
6. The government in power must also reevaluate its relationship with Islamist parties so that they may not create hindrances on reforming public school curricula and regulating madrassas.
7. Pakistan’s influential media can play a crucial role to counter extremist propaganda.
8. Pakistan has to be lucid whether the country is Islamic Republic or a Muslim democracy as mentioned in the constitution of 1973.
9. The US and Pakistan should reduce mistrust. The author urges the United States to exert its influence on the Pakistani state to encourage to take the above mentioned points in exchange for American aid and the US should also give unconditional aid to win the hearts of the Pakistani people.