Iran comes in from the cold and our opportunity

Islamabad diary
Israeli anger is easily understood. Anything that makes life easier for Iran is anathema to Israel. The nuclear deal which puts a cap on Iran’s nuclear programme for the next 15 years in return for the lifting of sanctions allows Iran to break out of its international isolation.
We should be clear about the basics. For Israel the mortal enemy is not the world of Islam. This is a fairy tale whose time has gone. With its Arab neighbours, except for Shiite dominated Syria, Israel happily coexists. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Sheikhdoms have no problem with Israel and Israel none with them.
The mortal enemy is Shiite Iran, and Shiite Hezbollah and Alawite Syria (the only Sunni entity hostile to Israel is Hamas). So how can Israel like an agreement which brings Iran out of the wilderness in which it has existed since its 1979 revolution?
But the Saudi ruling family too is upset because old certainties stand destroyed and that comfortable world in which Iran was always the outsider has been upended.
The spread of Iranian influence across the region – Iran with a foot in Syria, Iran backing Hezbollah, Iran helping defend the beleaguered Baghdad regime against the advancing Daesh or the Islamic state – was already proving too much for the Saudis. And now Iran acquires international respectability. Able to resume oil exports in full it will have more money in its coffers. Our Saudi friends merit sympathy. Living in another world they have yet to figure out how to respond to this challenge.
The Republican Party doesn’t like this deal. Friends of Israel don’t like it. But they can only fume and fret. President Obama has invested too much in it. This is something which, despite the histrionics, is not going to go away. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and our Saudi friends will have to provide what solace they can to each other.
Libya was the last frontier, the last country that the west and ‘conservative’ Islam were able to jointly destroy. (What good its destruction did them is not easy to understand.) Their next target was Syria. Death and destruction have been visited on that country but Bashar al-Assad, tougher than anyone had imagined he could be, has stood his ground. One of the indirect consequences of the Iran deal is that it will be all the harder to bring al-Assad down.
Our Arab friends are not getting it. Threatening them is not Bashar al-Assad. It is not Hezbollah. It is not even Iran. What threatens them is the rise of the Islamic State, which is setting itself up as the champion of Sunni Islam. The Saudis therefore are grappling with the wrong ghosts. They are the custodians of the Two Holy Mosques. May the Mosques bring them greater wisdom.
For Pakistan this is not a moment of danger but one of immense possibilities. For the first time in 30 or 35 years Pakistan is engaged in no external adventure. It is caught up in no external ‘jihad’. It lived through the fever of religious extremism and is now in the process of getting this fever out of its system.
The love affair with Wahhabi Islam has abated. Please don’t get me wrong. The paraphernalia of bigotry and extremism is in place – our madressahs still unique settings for the acquisition of a narrow-minded view of the world. But with the army in the throes of a mental turnaround Wahhabi or Salafist Islam, which fuelled and sustained extremism, has lost its exalted status.
The godfather of all these perverse doctrines – doctrines that we embraced from our first involvement in Afghanistan beginning with that commander of the faithful, Gen Ziaul Haq – was the army. With the army executing an about-turn, ‘jihadist’ Islam in Pakistan has lost its protective cover. The military-mullah nexus which caused the country such harm stands finally broken.
The various maulanas of this or that school are still around. But they are losing their bite and relevance. This is also true of such officially-anointed soldiers of ‘jihad’ as Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. He is slowly being allowed to turn into an item in a museum. Who can stop him from holding rallies in defence of Kashmir or Saudi Arabia? Such stirring events add colour to our politics.
Just a year ago – if we only care to remember – it was the national fashion to appease the Taliban and to portray them as supreme messengers of peace, even when they were bombing churches and mosques and slitting the throats of our soldiers. But only because the army decided to go after the Taliban, the change in national fashion has been dramatic, former appeasers-in-chief casting aside their robes and clambering aboard the war chariot.
Don’t expect the Pakistani liberati to show much sympathy for these mental adjustments. For historical reasons – Pakistan’s frequent descents into martial law – one of the central tenets of Pakistani liberalism was army-bashing…taking on the ‘national security state’. It has taken a long time for the army to get over its love affair with Wahhabi Islam. It will take some time for the liberati to look at the ‘national security state’ with anything approaching a normal frame of mind.
Experiencing the fever of extremism and then surviving it, means that we are now inoculated. Our body is tougher. Libya is no longer a functioning state. There is war in Iraq, civil war in Syria. And Afghanistan remains in turmoil. Our troubles once upon a time looked greater. We could very well have gone the way of Syria and Iraq…and no one would have come to our rescue, and our nukes would have been of no help. But we have come through those storms. Our ship could have been wrecked but it survives.
Pakistan is stronger as a result of these trials. The army is battle-hardened, its ongoing war against extremism a more toughening experience than all the wars with India.
The virus of the Islamic State can affect Afghanistan. It cannot gain a foothold in Pakistan because the Pakistani state is no longer as vulnerable, as prone to infection, as it was before the onset of hostilities against the Taliban.
The situation in Afghanistan is also looking up for us. Daesh is registering its entry in Afghanistan which in a way is good news – the Taliban and Daesh deserve each other. Hopefully we should have the sense not to get involved…which throat is cut and which is not should be none of our business.
The rise of Hindu chauvinism or Hindutva is also something good for us. We have lived through our fever of various stupidities. Let Shining India now live through its share of stupidities.
But to make the most of these opportunities, to come finally round to putting our house in order and becoming an oasis of calm and stability in a region racked with turmoil and instability, we need bold and imaginative leadership…surer hands on the tiller and eyes that can see through the fog.
Let the liberati not take fright, or reach for its alarm bells. Since when was calling for better leadership an attack on the constitution? The present stability Pakistan enjoys comes from the forward policy of the army. But what happens if this posture changes?
It is our good luck that one set of plunderers and incompetents – aka the PPP – finds itself exhausted…undone by its own excesses, and on the verge of being consigned to the dustbin of history. How many more incompetents and plunderers can our political system filter out? The next two years are thus crucial. Will our luck hold? Will Pakistan be handsome and rich? We’ll have to go up to the mountains to seek some holy man to give us the answers.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com