TARIQ, ali - The Duel

by Ali, Tariq

  FINALLY, AFTER TWO unanimous politburo decisions against intervention, the Soviet Union changed its mind, saying that it had “new documentation.” This is still classified, but it would not be surprising in the least if the evidence consisted of forgeries suggesting that Amin (who was educated at Columbia University in the United States) was a CIA agent. Whatever it was, the politburo, with Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB, voting against, now decided to send troops into Afghanistan. Its aim (not unlike that of the United States in 2001) was to get rid of a discredited regime and replace it with a marginally less repulsive one. The bear trap had worked. On Christmas Day in 1979, a hundred thousand Soviet troops crossed the Oxus and rumbled into Kabul. President Carter referred to the event as “the greatest threat to peace since World War Two” and warned the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, to “either withdraw or face serious consequences.”

  Given that Afghanistan, thanks to the Russians, had now become fundamental to civilization, it was crucial for it to acquire a heroic political history. This required outside help on various levels. Knights in shining armor were dispatched to the region. Washington alerted researchers and advisers from different agencies and think tanks. The Rand Corporation reacted swiftly and decided that one of its more precocious staff members, a twenty-eight-year-old Japanese-American, should be parachuted into Pakistan on a rapid reconnaissance mission.

  Francis Fukuyama spent ten days in the country from May 25 to June 5, 1980, as the guest of the director of military intelligence and was provided with access to generals and senior civil servants. Pakistan had earlier turned down a $400 million aid package offered by the White House’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on the grounds that “it was peanuts” and informed Washington that it was looking forward to subsidies that, at the least, were on a scale similar to what was being provided to Egypt and Turkey. Why should Pakistan accept anything less? It was now a frontline state, and in pleasant anticipation of what this new status entailed, a number of senior members of the elite had opened bank accounts in far-flung tax havens.

  The military top brass confided their innermost fears to Fukuyama. The Soviet Union might cross the Durand Line and detach a salient of their North-West Frontier Province. A carefully orchestrated Indo-Soviet-Afghan pincer movement with the aim of further fragmenting Pakistan “along ethnic lines” was always a possibility. The guilty conscience on Baluchistan was beginning to affect the brass.

  Fukuyama accepted much of what he was told, since it tied in neatly with U.S. interests. In any case, he knew that history is never written by any particular authors but often emerges from the periphery to surprise the center. The Vietnamese victory of 1975 still haunted U.S. policy makers. This new history being made in the awesome environment of the Hindu Kush just needed occasional help to proceed along similar lines. Muddling through was not an option. Fukuyama summed up the pros and cons of a tighter U.S.-Pakistan embrace. The advantages were obvious:

  (1) denial of Pakistani territory to the Soviet Union.

  (2) the possibility of aiding the Afghan rebels militarily so as to raise the cost of the intervention for the Soviets and divert their attention from the Persian Gulf.

  (3) the use of Pakistani facilities in connection with the planned Rapid Deployment Force.

  (4) the demonstration of American reliability, especially with respect to the People’s Republic of China.

  The obvious drawbacks were not insurmountable: “(1) Adverse effects on U.S.-Indian relations; (2) a weakening of the credibility of the U.S. nonproliferation policy; (3) high economic costs and (4) commitment to a regime of questionable staying power.”

  Shrewdly, Fukuyama noted that the Sino-Pakistani relationship offered a model equilibrium:

  The Chinese have supported civilian and military regimes indifferently and have not attempted to influence Pakistan’s internal character. As a consequence, they have never been called to account for the failures of a particular regime.... Unless the United States can emulate this behavior in some fashion, the liabilities may well exceed the benefits.*

  This advice was more or less accepted and reinforced by Brzezinski’s “realism.” General Zia-ul-Haq, the worst of Pakistan’s dictators, was about to be whitewashed and transformed into a plucky freedom fighter against the Evil Empire. The newspapers and television networks did their duty.

  From 1980 to 1989, Afghanistan became the focal point of the Cold War. Millions crossed the Durand Line and settled in camps and cities in the NWFP, the largest influx—3.5 million refugees—a direct result of the Soviet occupation. The result was to be catastrophic for both countries. Nobody benefited from the Afghan war except for a tiny layer of heroin smugglers, civilian middlemen, the top brass of the Pakistan army, and politicians allied to all three. Weapons, heroin, drug dollars, NGOs assigned to “help” the refugees, and would-be jihadi warriors from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Algeria flooded the region. Pakistan’s largest city and port became the center of the heroin trade. The poppy was cultivated in the north, transformed into powder, and packaged to Karachi, from where it was smuggled out to Europe and America. The modern city and its elite were graphically depicted in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Kartography.

  All the main Western intelligence agencies (including the Israelis) were present in Peshawar, near the Afghan frontier. It began to resemble a gold-rush town. The region would never again be the same. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the market and black-market rates for the dollar were exactly the same. Weapons, including Stinger missiles, were sold to the mujahideen and illegal-arms dealers by Pakistani officers wanting to get rich quick. At a dinner in a London restaurant in 1986, Benazir Bhutto whispered in my ear that our generous host, a certain Sindhi gentleman, waxing eloquent on matters cultural, had a day job selling Stingers and Kalashnikovs. I asked him whether I could buy a missile and how much it would set me back. He was not in the least bit curious as to why I might need such a weapon.

  “No problem at all,” he said with a smile. “Fly to Karachi. I’ll meet you at the airport. We’ll drive out of the city and you can try one. Then we’ll discuss a price.” Unlike me, he was quite serious.

  The heroin trade funded Pakistan’s thriving black economy. General Fazle Haq, Zia’s governor in the Frontier Province, publicly declared his indifference, arguing that since the heroin went abroad, Pakistanis weren’t that bothered. The number of registered addicts in Pakistan grew from a few hundred in 1977 to over 2 million in 1987.* The growth of gang warfare in Karachi is directly linked to its becoming a center of the heroin trade.

  As for Pakistan and its people, they languished. Zia wanted a total break with the past and reached out for religion, usually the first resort of a scoundrel. On December 2, 1978, the “soldier of Islam,” as he often referred to himself, had denounced politicians “who did what they pleased in the name of Islam,” then proclaimed that he was preparing to enforce true Islamic laws in the country. He announced the creation of Sharia courts, whose powers were limited but which could nonetheless pronounce whether a law was “Islamic or un-Islamic.” Disputes between theologians began immediately, and a number of courts had to be rapidly reconstituted. Two months later Zia promulgated a number of new ordinances and presidential orders. According to these, all legal punishments related to alcohol consumption, adultery, theft, and burglary were to be replaced by the religious punishments prescribed by the Koran and early Islamic jurisprudence. Any Muslim caught drinking would be subjected to eighty lashes; an unmarried couple caught fornicating would get one hundred lashes, but adultery involving married partners would lead to both being stoned to death; an offense against property would require amputation of the right hand from the wrist, and robbery would be punished by chopping off both hand and foot. These were Sunni prescriptions. The Shia theologians opposed amputating at the wrist, but were happy with removing all fingers and the thumb of the right hand. And as for the absurd demand so beloved of the Peoples Party, for food, clothes, and
shelter, all this, according to General Zia, could not be provided by the state or private businesses, but only by God: “Any increase or decrease in your sustenance comes from Him. Trust in God and He will bestow upon you an abundance of good things in life.”

  All government employees were instructed to say their prayers regularly, and the relevant authorities were instructed to make all necessary arrangements for performing prayers in government buildings, airports, railway stations, and bus stops. A special ordinance was passed insisting on total reverence for Ramadan, and cinemas were to be closed during this period for three hours after the evening prayers. Pakistan had never known anything like it, and the results were mixed. Officially encouraged religiosity now became the norm, but with a massive increase in alcohol consumption and every drunkard claiming that he was resisting the dictatorship. The figures on adultery and the observance of fasts can never be established. The Taliban did not as yet exist, but the stage was being prepared. To the credit of the medical profession, doctors refused to preside over or perform “Islamic” amputations, and these particular punishments could never be implemented. Public and prison floggings, however, occurred regularly and further brutalized the country’s fragile political culture.

  Unsurprisingly, under Zia, the Jamaat-e-Islami, which had never won more than 5 percent of the vote anywhere in the country, was patronized by the government. Its cadres were sent to fight in Afghanistan, its armed student wing was encouraged to terrorize campuses in the name of Islam, its ideologues were ever present on TV and in the print media. The Inter-Services Intelligence were now instructed by the military leadership to assist the formation of other, more extreme jihadi groups, which carried out terrorist acts at home and abroad. Religious schools began to be established in the countryside, especially in the frontier provinces. Soon Zia too needed his own political party, and the bureaucracy set one up, the Pakistan Muslim League, with Zia’s favorite protégés: the Sharif brothers and the Chaudhrys of Gujrat. Currently at each other’s throats, they at that time combined their great strengths, one of which was the use of political power to assist the primitive but rapid accumulation of capital.

  The Sharif family had become favorites of Zia’s mainly because they had suffered under Bhutto and their hatred for him was unrestrained. Blacksmiths by trade, they had left India and sought refuge in the new Muslim homeland, settling down in Lahore. Muhammad Sharif, a hardworking, semipious disciplinarian, made sure his sons, Nawaz and Shahbaz, were provided with a proper education. The family had done well, their small steel foundries prospered, and if anything they were disinterested in politics. Their refusal to pay protection money to some of the more thuggish Bhutto supporters in Lahore led to their business being targeted and nationalized in 1972. The decision was economically stupid and politically counterproductive. A family of neutral small businessmen were transformed into lifelong enemies of the Bhutto family. The day Zia ordered Bhutto’s execution, Muhammad Sharif and his sons gave thanks to Allah for responding so rapidly to their prayers. The oldest son, Nawaz, became a protégé of the general’s and was made the leader of the khaki Muslim League. Transmogrified into politicians by the military, the Sharif family were ever grateful to General Zia. Their primary loyalty, however, was to their own business interests. The foundries had been returned to them but they were no longer enough. Political power was now harnessed to make huge profits largely through securing massive bank loans that were not repaid. This process started early and acquired new momentum after General Zia’s unexpected death.

  The second family to benefit from military regimes was the Chaudhry clan based in Gujrat. This is an old Punjabi town, located near the Chenab River, built by the Mogul emperor Akbar and garrisoned by Gujjars, traditionally belonging to a seminomadic caste of cowherds and goatherds (hence the city’s name). The initial function of the town was to supply the Mogul armies with food and other necessities as they tramped through the region. The Jats, descended from migrant tribes, were farmers who acquired a taste for war and supplied soldiers to the Moguls and later, in much greater numbers, to the British and their successor armies. Some of them settled in the town as well, with constant rivalry between them and the Gujjars.

  Gujrat acquired a reputation for craftsmanship—especially pottery— of a high quality during the Mogul period. Few signs of this are left except in the craft of forging currency and especially passports. Before electronic safeguards were introduced, a particular Gujrati craftsman reputedly produced passports and U.S. visas of such high quality that his clients were rarely detected. Such were his skills that government ministers sometimes used him to help their poorer clansmen escape to friendlier climes, an interesting example of self-indictment.

  The Chaudhry clan were Jats, and especially during British rule when living standards declined, most of them were badly off and constantly in search of employment. The founding father was Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi. Most of his friends regarded him as a warmhearted and generous rogue. He belonged to Nat, a tiny village near Gujrat, dominated by criminal fraternities whose sense of solidarity left a deep mark on him. His father was much respected locally as an effective river bandit who earned his living by recycling stolen goods. Zahoor Elahi began his adult life as a police constable in British India, a background that could not have been more remote from that of the generals he would later serve.

  In 1943, Zahoor Elahi was posted to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar. His brother Manzoor Elahi accompanied him in the hope of finding employment. Zahoor was respectful and worked hard, but also had an ear on permanent alert wherever he was, just in case fate decided to help out. One day he was in the police station when he heard that a local Hindu tradesman, who had infringed some law, was about to be raided.

  Sensing an opportunity here, Zahoor Elahi visited the trader that same day and warned him. When the raid took place, the police found nothing. An investigation was launched, the treachery was discovered, and poor Zahoor was sacked from the force.

  The businessman was sufficiently grateful to give money to both brothers. Manzoor Elahi was helped to set up a tiny handloom workshop. Then came partition. The brothers returned to their village. One day Zahoor Elahi went to the Rehabilitation and Compensations office and demanded that they be recompensed for what they had lost (in reality very little). Like many others in those turbulent times, he exaggerated the claim. In those days it was thought that illegal gains should be converted into the most easily transportable commodity, which was either gold or jewelry. Zahoor Elahi displayed an unbridled passion for land and real estate, the genetic traces of which can still be seen in his progeny. He first obtained a large house in downtown Gujrat, in lieu of what was claimed to have been lost in Amritsar. He never looked back, skillfully deploying his natural gifts to gradually build up a large fortune. Once this had been achieved, to his credit he never forgot his past and maintained friendly relations with the local police and criminals, often bringing them together to explain that, despite a difference in profession, they had interests in common.

  He was not the only booty politician in the country, but he was one of the most astute. He understood that in politics as well as everyday life, any person with an ounce of sense could reach a goal that gave the lie to his beginnings. Ethics were unnecessary. As befitted a small-town notable, he joined the Muslim League and began to rise in its ranks. With the impressive growth of his property portfolio, his regular pilgrimages to Mecca were combined with duty-free shopping. He always returned with trunkloads of presents for his friends, high and low.

  He joined Field Marshal Ayub’s Muslim League, the first of the khaki (the appellation derives from the color of their military uniforms) leagues that would become a tiny but important pillar of military rule in the country. He became a party stalwart, providing funds and busing in audiences to make the general feel popular at public meetings. For a self-made man to rise so high in Pakistan was unusual at that time. Others like him found poverty vexatious, but lacked initiative and netw
orking skills. The process would become much more commonplace during the heroin bonanza some decades later, when the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chaudhrys and the Sharifs permeated the big cities and left a permanent mark on the political life of the country. It costs a great deal to become a prime minister.

  As long as Bhutto was a cabinet minister in the military regime, Elahi played the sycophant, a role in which he had trained himself since his days as a young police constable. After Bhutto was sacked by Ayub and was still sulking in his tent thinking seriously about whether to organize a new political party, Elahi turned his back on the fallen minister. He did more. He became a key defender of Ayub inside the Muslim League and cajoled and bribed those who were tempted to leave with Bhutto and managed to keep most of them in the party. Bhutto was never one to forgive a slight, real or imagined. Once in power in 1972, he made it clear that he regarded the Chaudhrys of Gujrat as thieves and pimps who should be treated as such. Attempts by the Chaudhrys to broker a deal with the new leader via intermediaries close to him came to naught. Bhutto’s hatred, once ablaze, always tended toward the indiscriminate. He had an elephant’s memory, as many a civil servant who had avoided him during his years of disgrace was to discover. Zahoor Elahi bided his time. It came sooner than expected. He welcomed Zia’s coup in 1977, developing close relations with the dictator and backing Bhutto’s execution. He ostentatiously asked General Zia to make him a present of the “sacred pen” with which he had signed Bhutto’s death warrant. The chief justice of the West Pakistan High Court, Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain, who had behaved abominably in court during Bhutto’s trial for murder, had become a close friend of Zahoor Elahi’s. In 1978, he was in Lahore lavishing his hospitality on the judge. Both men were in the car that was taking the judge back to his home in Lahore’s Model Town district. A group of al-Zulfiqar gunmen opened fire. The judge, who was the target, ducked and avoided the bullet meant for him. Chaudhry was felled. Zahoor Elahi had not been the target, but al-Zulfiqar, embarrassed at missing the judge, claimed he was also on their list, which may have been true.