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The Pakistani people are constantly confused about why surrounding nations are annoyed with their country and military. No one here has sufficiently laid out the problem for them; so let us do so.
1) Why do Afghan and Pashtun intelligentsia in general hate Pakistan and its army?
Everyone from the liberal marxist left (Wali Khan) to the farthest right wing (Abdus-Salaam Zaeef) is united on this narrative: Pakistan does things that it claims are for its national security benefit (e.g. strategic depth and attacking FATA) but at the same time a number of its actions in tandem go against that excuse and are examples of the lowest sort of boot-licking we have witnessed in the modern era.
There are two schools of thought in Pakistan that have developed regarding how it should act toward neighbors. The elite who used to cheer on the ISI and other forces involved in the 1980s war in Afghanistan decided that the Zia era was a step back. But WHY they decided this is an important question.
They initially viewed their support for aggressive southern groups in Afghanistan as a proper counterbalance to the Iran, India, and Russian funded groups in other areas of the country.
Historical whims made it so that they alienated factions of the Afghan elite and parceled out funding and weapons to their selected people. Some of these very same people performed poorly on the battle-field.
Once NATOs war began though, they thought that they could have their cake and eat it too at the expense of the Pashtun lives they have perpetually squandered in other areas of the world (e.g. Kashmir). This meant that they would live up to their NATO obligations and permit supply lines through the nation, yet at the same time border fighters with religious zeal would not be too closely monitored as they went back and forth across the durand line.
Every so often the Pakistani military and elite would offer up a sacrificial lamb to the funders of the Pakistani military and economy and continue to look the other way at the border. This means that now and then they would kill a faction leader or leak his coordinates with the background knowledge that these groups often have a heirarchy in place to deal with these losses.
The problem in the modern era versus the 1980s is that news is everywhere at the click of a button. This meant that people in other parts of the country were making it apparent that Pakistan was permitting NATO supply routes and making a pretty penny off this. The fighters then initially started to attack these supply routes and perhaps expected the Pakistani Army to once again look the other way. Instead, Pakistan decided to escalate face saving operations into random areas of FATA and Swat under the guise of battling the militants.
At this juncture, anyone with a brain who was involved with TTP or its umbrella groups probably asked themselves: What a strange situation - a supposed nuclear power permits cross border operations by non-uniformed irregulars but still supplies the adversary of the militants with killing machines, arms, and fuel while laying claims to Islamic precepts for its stances?
Surely this flew in the face of the grand posturing of an independent nuclear power.... why after all, Turkey had no qualms about refusing a major role in the Iraq War:
So then, these groups decided to turn their anger against Islamabad. After all, even if Richard Armitage had threatened sending Pakistan back to the stone age in 2001, what excuses were there in 2006 and beyond as the war began to go badly for NATO?
The issue was that the common man with common sense began to understand that there are TWO Pakistans - the Pakistan of the wealthy feudal elite and the Pakistan of the masses and that the two were on separate trajectories.
Over time the Army had to deal with a determined foe hell bent on exposing Pakistan, its elite, and its Army for what it was.
2) The propaganda operations.
I knew something was amiss when I met a man from Peshawar in New York who was obviously uneducated, but a generally good hearted person nonetheless.
He proceeded to praise both Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf in the same breath. He discussed how religious Bhutto was and how Musharraf had saved the nation from disintegration.
This sort of random trusting beyond the local feudal elite was not something I had witnessed amongst Afghan Pashtuns. Afghan Pashtuns had the smart sense to either trust no one, or perhaps trust a local Malik that they had ties to. This is a generalization, but it was something I witnessed again and again.
I would subsequently read about the great difficulty David Petreus had in Afghanistan with propaganda ops in the south. The issue was that every house in Afghanistan at that point may not have had a TV so he had to rely on random AM radio stations to broadcast US centric views.
Pakistan was different in the sense that its media was developed, and as we see from the GEO and governmental clash, it was willing to use jingoistic programming to affect the views of the populace regarding the will of the Pakistani government and military.
This meant that Afghan refugees, FATA tribals, various political players were operating at the behest of RAW, NDS, and any bogy man Pakistan could invent to rally its jingoistic population to the cause.
This would then permit the backing of massacres in FATA, Balochistan, Swat and other areas under the guise of defending the homeland.
Suddenly, the terminologies they used for the 1980s anti Kabul alliance as a whole were reapplied to their own military men (known for their hell weeks as they called them and their downing of whiskey like water), such as holy warrior, etc.
Despite the instability, and the locating of people like Ghani Baradar in Karachi, not a single aggressive campaign was to take place in other provinces that were closer to the Panjab, but rather the Pashtun people were to suffer the brunt of the double speak.
Orwell would have been fascinated by Pakistan's application of his concept of double speak and thought them the inventors of the language.
3) In nearly a decade now Pakistan has learned nothing about self sufficiency and history.
What we see is Pakistani elites out of touch with the rural mass talking about opening up channels with Israel etc primarily because their chosen lifestyle and view benefits from this.
There are leaders and there are followers. The Pakistani elite and military fancy themselves leaders yet in all things productive they have been followers and consumers instead of producers and providers.
They talk about secular democracy yet it is obvious to the world that what is in place is a military autocracy on the level of Egypt.
When the history of Bengladesh is bought up to them and the fact that they subverted democracy for pride you will witness a zealot quasi religious response from Pakistani Patriots regarding the wrongs inflicted by Pakistan.
4) In double speak, a loss becomes a win... the nation suffers a hit at some location remote from where they are operating and instead of admitting that this was a loss they decide to utilize their air and video waves to further instill false pride in the populace:
Take for instance Jon Stewart lampooning the idiotic statement of Mohiuddin Wani of the Pakistani Government regarding the Karachi Airport incident as a "win" in the Pakistani Army's bracket.
Watch the interview from BBC here at 12 minutes:
The BBC announcer is incredulous at this moron's responses.
5) The elite's sudden vision of Pakistan where they constantly furbish the notion that Pakistan was built to be a "secular" haven for the Muslims continues to be a thorn in the side of the narrative that is Pakistan.
Their reasoning here is that they feel their world order has been destabilized. A number of militants across the country have been taking a sort of marxist stance against local and national fuedals and hitting them hard.
What they do not realize when they advance this narrative is that the sub groups that comprise Pakistan see clearly that the predominant benefit of this sort of Pakistan arrives at the feet of the Panjab. So then they naturally wonder why their ethnic group ought to suffer under the yolk for the comfort of another?
Others look to their religious brethren in India, and despite the advance of Indian Nationalists, they see Muslims doing reasonably well in India and they question this new national narrative that relies on Jinnah's secularist jargon (despite his abundance of religious jingo jargon)- This also blows a hole in the picture that they are painting for the masses.
6) If there was a national symbol or animal for Pakistan it ought to be the cockroach because, like the cockroach, it has lead its masses to believe that its sole perpetual cause is simply to survive in turbid waters.
A simple example of an independent nation versus one in perpetual servitude is obvious for all to see:
The case of how aggressively India supported its diplomat:
Versus how quickly Pakistanis have used distortions of their own penal codes to turn over people who have killed their own citizens without any view of justice for the wronged. There are far too many examples of the latter to show to even cite one.
7) Pakistan has used its nuclear arsenal as an anchor baby.
Pakistan claims its arms are a deterrent, but rather its feudal elite and military know full well that no western power will permit its central government to fold even if it were to fall to people power.
It knows that it can utilize non native economic resources to survive on life support based on the argument that the instability of a nuclear Pakistan is a problem for all the world.
It then uses this arsenal as a black mail tactic to continue its policies vis a vis its neighbors.
8) All of the above are in place because in Pakistan, like in Egypt, the military controls all. A position in that military is the elite job that folks are propagandized to pursue. They brag perpetually about houses and servants that the military bestows on its officers. What they forget is that a military not under civilian control in any fashion is bound to end up in autocracy, which is what they have over there today.
1) Why do Afghan and Pashtun intelligentsia in general hate Pakistan and its army?
Everyone from the liberal marxist left (Wali Khan) to the farthest right wing (Abdus-Salaam Zaeef) is united on this narrative: Pakistan does things that it claims are for its national security benefit (e.g. strategic depth and attacking FATA) but at the same time a number of its actions in tandem go against that excuse and are examples of the lowest sort of boot-licking we have witnessed in the modern era.
There are two schools of thought in Pakistan that have developed regarding how it should act toward neighbors. The elite who used to cheer on the ISI and other forces involved in the 1980s war in Afghanistan decided that the Zia era was a step back. But WHY they decided this is an important question.
They initially viewed their support for aggressive southern groups in Afghanistan as a proper counterbalance to the Iran, India, and Russian funded groups in other areas of the country.
Historical whims made it so that they alienated factions of the Afghan elite and parceled out funding and weapons to their selected people. Some of these very same people performed poorly on the battle-field.
Once NATOs war began though, they thought that they could have their cake and eat it too at the expense of the Pashtun lives they have perpetually squandered in other areas of the world (e.g. Kashmir). This meant that they would live up to their NATO obligations and permit supply lines through the nation, yet at the same time border fighters with religious zeal would not be too closely monitored as they went back and forth across the durand line.
Every so often the Pakistani military and elite would offer up a sacrificial lamb to the funders of the Pakistani military and economy and continue to look the other way at the border. This means that now and then they would kill a faction leader or leak his coordinates with the background knowledge that these groups often have a heirarchy in place to deal with these losses.
The problem in the modern era versus the 1980s is that news is everywhere at the click of a button. This meant that people in other parts of the country were making it apparent that Pakistan was permitting NATO supply routes and making a pretty penny off this. The fighters then initially started to attack these supply routes and perhaps expected the Pakistani Army to once again look the other way. Instead, Pakistan decided to escalate face saving operations into random areas of FATA and Swat under the guise of battling the militants.
At this juncture, anyone with a brain who was involved with TTP or its umbrella groups probably asked themselves: What a strange situation - a supposed nuclear power permits cross border operations by non-uniformed irregulars but still supplies the adversary of the militants with killing machines, arms, and fuel while laying claims to Islamic precepts for its stances?
Surely this flew in the face of the grand posturing of an independent nuclear power.... why after all, Turkey had no qualms about refusing a major role in the Iraq War:
So then, these groups decided to turn their anger against Islamabad. After all, even if Richard Armitage had threatened sending Pakistan back to the stone age in 2001, what excuses were there in 2006 and beyond as the war began to go badly for NATO?
The issue was that the common man with common sense began to understand that there are TWO Pakistans - the Pakistan of the wealthy feudal elite and the Pakistan of the masses and that the two were on separate trajectories.
Over time the Army had to deal with a determined foe hell bent on exposing Pakistan, its elite, and its Army for what it was.
2) The propaganda operations.
I knew something was amiss when I met a man from Peshawar in New York who was obviously uneducated, but a generally good hearted person nonetheless.
He proceeded to praise both Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf in the same breath. He discussed how religious Bhutto was and how Musharraf had saved the nation from disintegration.
This sort of random trusting beyond the local feudal elite was not something I had witnessed amongst Afghan Pashtuns. Afghan Pashtuns had the smart sense to either trust no one, or perhaps trust a local Malik that they had ties to. This is a generalization, but it was something I witnessed again and again.
I would subsequently read about the great difficulty David Petreus had in Afghanistan with propaganda ops in the south. The issue was that every house in Afghanistan at that point may not have had a TV so he had to rely on random AM radio stations to broadcast US centric views.
Pakistan was different in the sense that its media was developed, and as we see from the GEO and governmental clash, it was willing to use jingoistic programming to affect the views of the populace regarding the will of the Pakistani government and military.
This meant that Afghan refugees, FATA tribals, various political players were operating at the behest of RAW, NDS, and any bogy man Pakistan could invent to rally its jingoistic population to the cause.
This would then permit the backing of massacres in FATA, Balochistan, Swat and other areas under the guise of defending the homeland.
Suddenly, the terminologies they used for the 1980s anti Kabul alliance as a whole were reapplied to their own military men (known for their hell weeks as they called them and their downing of whiskey like water), such as holy warrior, etc.
Despite the instability, and the locating of people like Ghani Baradar in Karachi, not a single aggressive campaign was to take place in other provinces that were closer to the Panjab, but rather the Pashtun people were to suffer the brunt of the double speak.
Orwell would have been fascinated by Pakistan's application of his concept of double speak and thought them the inventors of the language.
3) In nearly a decade now Pakistan has learned nothing about self sufficiency and history.
What we see is Pakistani elites out of touch with the rural mass talking about opening up channels with Israel etc primarily because their chosen lifestyle and view benefits from this.
There are leaders and there are followers. The Pakistani elite and military fancy themselves leaders yet in all things productive they have been followers and consumers instead of producers and providers.
They talk about secular democracy yet it is obvious to the world that what is in place is a military autocracy on the level of Egypt.
When the history of Bengladesh is bought up to them and the fact that they subverted democracy for pride you will witness a zealot quasi religious response from Pakistani Patriots regarding the wrongs inflicted by Pakistan.
4) In double speak, a loss becomes a win... the nation suffers a hit at some location remote from where they are operating and instead of admitting that this was a loss they decide to utilize their air and video waves to further instill false pride in the populace:
Take for instance Jon Stewart lampooning the idiotic statement of Mohiuddin Wani of the Pakistani Government regarding the Karachi Airport incident as a "win" in the Pakistani Army's bracket.
Watch the interview from BBC here at 12 minutes:
The BBC announcer is incredulous at this moron's responses.
5) The elite's sudden vision of Pakistan where they constantly furbish the notion that Pakistan was built to be a "secular" haven for the Muslims continues to be a thorn in the side of the narrative that is Pakistan.
Their reasoning here is that they feel their world order has been destabilized. A number of militants across the country have been taking a sort of marxist stance against local and national fuedals and hitting them hard.
What they do not realize when they advance this narrative is that the sub groups that comprise Pakistan see clearly that the predominant benefit of this sort of Pakistan arrives at the feet of the Panjab. So then they naturally wonder why their ethnic group ought to suffer under the yolk for the comfort of another?
Others look to their religious brethren in India, and despite the advance of Indian Nationalists, they see Muslims doing reasonably well in India and they question this new national narrative that relies on Jinnah's secularist jargon (despite his abundance of religious jingo jargon)- This also blows a hole in the picture that they are painting for the masses.
6) If there was a national symbol or animal for Pakistan it ought to be the cockroach because, like the cockroach, it has lead its masses to believe that its sole perpetual cause is simply to survive in turbid waters.
A simple example of an independent nation versus one in perpetual servitude is obvious for all to see:
The case of how aggressively India supported its diplomat:
Versus how quickly Pakistanis have used distortions of their own penal codes to turn over people who have killed their own citizens without any view of justice for the wronged. There are far too many examples of the latter to show to even cite one.
7) Pakistan has used its nuclear arsenal as an anchor baby.
Pakistan claims its arms are a deterrent, but rather its feudal elite and military know full well that no western power will permit its central government to fold even if it were to fall to people power.
It knows that it can utilize non native economic resources to survive on life support based on the argument that the instability of a nuclear Pakistan is a problem for all the world.
It then uses this arsenal as a black mail tactic to continue its policies vis a vis its neighbors.
8) All of the above are in place because in Pakistan, like in Egypt, the military controls all. A position in that military is the elite job that folks are propagandized to pursue. They brag perpetually about houses and servants that the military bestows on its officers. What they forget is that a military not under civilian control in any fashion is bound to end up in autocracy, which is what they have over there today.
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