Pakistan is for Afghans

The writer is an analyst and
commentator.

Does wanton insecurity and defensiveness behove a nuclear power that claims to be the fortress of Islam? Of all the incongruences that we cultivate in the womb of Mother Pakistan, none is so wholly undignified as the Pindi-Islamabad dispensation to react to every provocation from the weak, to prove that we, guardians of the fortress, are oh-so-strong.

The latest display of this undignified insecurity has been the official and unofficial responses to Mahmood Khan Achakzai’s claim that Khyber Pakhtunwkhwa is for Afghans. The statement itself is deliberate and thoughtful. It is meant to provoke and prompt. It is meant to elicit a reaction. It is meant to expose those that would be so foolish as to react. Mission accomplished. Weak, relatively powerless Achakzai man: 1, Pakistani establishment 0. Source of disadvantage? Own goal.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa seemed to be A-OK for Afghans when General Ziaul Haq was pile-driving Pakistan into existential religio-political oblivion. It is okay when the Ministry of Safron, and the respective Afghan Refugee Commissionerates accept support from agencies like UNHCR. It is okay when Pakistan needs to use a slide to show the world that it is the global leader in hosting refugees. It is okay when Pakistanis want to remind angry young Afghans who joyously tweet in favour of India, and exude vicious contempt for Pakistan, about all the favours Pakistan has bestowed upon Afghans.

But when Mahmood Khan Achakzai says Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is for Afghans, then Armageddon has arrived? What is the source of such vile and indefensible incongruence? Why is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for Afghans when Pindi-Islamabad and the Karachi-GT Road combine say so, but not when the same is asserted by Achakzai of Balochistan? Besides, look at the evidence. Karachi is for Afghans. Islamabad is for Afghans. Peshawar is for Afghans. In every urban area of the country, Afghans occupy a range of positive (and sometimes negative) functions.

Achakzai should be chided for his remarks, but not quite in the way that we seem to have decided to chide him. It isn’t Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone that is for Afghans. It is all of Pakistan. Except that Achakzai has a specific role within the broad spectrum of Pakhtun nationalists. He is from Balochistan, not from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Sometimes, a closer look at who is saying what on whose behalf reveals more than we may bargain for. Achakzai is smarter than the folks taking umbrage at his suggestion that Pakhtuns and non-Pakhtuns have a home in the Artist Formerly Known As NWFP.

Does this mean those taking offence at his statement are stupid? Well, let’s examine. If low-quality provocations of the type employed by the Achakzais of the world are so consistently successful in eliciting exactly the reactions that are being sought, then stupid is as stupid does. Abdul Sattar Edhi just died, and Pindi-Islamabad went into overdrive trying to own the man’s legacy. But Pindi-Islamabad should ask themselves a simple question: would Edhi’s philanthropy have been as widely celebrated and supported if he made it a point to humiliate every single recipient of his generosity as they made their way out of the Edhi centres across the country?

The stupid in the fortress begins as soon as the words Durand Line are uttered. The standard operating procedure for dealing with legitimate Pakhtun grievances, and illegitimate (at least for us non-Pakhtun) expressions of such grievances are both so utterly asinine and counter-productive, it seems Pindi-Islamabad employs six-year-olds to frame and deliver its narratives. Worse still, the ever-lurking Indians lie in wait, laughing all the way to the political capital bank, as they welcome aggrieved and angry Afghans with open arms.

How do we end up not only hosting five million Afghans within our borders, but allowing our internal security to go to the dogs, and having an existential crisis thrust upon us, all for being neighbours that welcomed the Afghans, and yet it is the Indians that get the toothy smiles, the warm bear hugs, and the fawning tweets of young Afghans from Kandahar to Kabul and from Herat to Mazar? This is the price of stupid. How do we do stupid?

Easy. First, we are reminded that some Pakhtuns were against Quaid-e-Azam and for Gandhi. Then we are reminded that Afghanistan refused to support Pakistan’s entry to the UN in 1947. Then we are reminded that some woe-begotten Afghan king allowed Ajmal Khattak a residence in Kabul. Then we are reminded that five million Afghans moved to Pakistan in the 1970s, 1980s and beyond. Then, today’s Afghans, many of whom were born and raised in this country, are harassed and humiliated for being born the wrong nationality in the wrong country. And finally, we are reminded that ultimately, Pakhtuns all stand together, so there really is no difference between the ANP, Ashraf Ghani, Abdullah Abdullah, the TTP, Afghan Taliban and PKMAP.

If someone can produce a better adjective to describe this systemic and standardised response to anything untoward on or around the Durand Line than the word stupid, I am keen to learn it, and deploy it liberally.

At the Nato summit in Warsaw last week, President Ashraf Ghani reminded the world that he really had come full circle with his whole, giving Pakistan a chance thing. His speech at the summit included this direct reference to Pakistan: “Our regional initiatives with neighbours are beginning to yield significant cooperative dividends. The exception is with Pakistan – despite clear commitments to a quadrilateral peace process, their dangerous distinction between good and bad terrorists is being maintained in practice”.

He then followed up by appealing to the international community for its support to establish rules of the game.

What does he want? He wants Pakistan to shut down the Haqqanis, and any other associated groups, including the post-Omar, post-Mansour Kandahari Taliban, better known as the Quetta Shura. He wants Pakistan to treat the Afghan Taliban like they are the TTP. This isn’t a one-off Afghan thing. It is a regional and global epidemic.

The Indians want Pakistan to treat the LeT and the JeM as we treat the TTP. The Chinese want us to treat the ETIM like we treat the TTP. The Iranians want us to treat Jundullah like we treat the TTP. The Saudis want us to treat Iran like it is the TTP. And Iran wants us to treat the Saudis like they are the TTP.

Meanwhile, a new breed to super-mod-squad disco terrorist is being bred within the womb of the Ummah, manifest in attacks like the ones at Safoora Goth, at Dakha, at Orlando, and in San Bernardino. We already have some Pakistanis wanting us to treat urban discontent boys and girls with a predilection for online terrorist forums like we treat the TTP. Everyone wants Pindi-Islamabad to be consistent and unforgiving.

If it all seems a little too much, and a little unfair, it is because we have not been paying attention. Since 9/11 and really since the mid-1980s, people like Eqbal Ahmed warned us of the terrible mistakes we were making at the altar of fake religiosity and dollar-denominated honour and piety. We didn’t care then. Throughout the 1990s people like Pervez Hoodhboy warned us about the consequences of an unchallenged national discourse obsessed with an ahistoric version of national grandeur. We didn’t care then.

Dozens of activists and intellectuals have since then joined the chorus, begging the state to do exactly what Ashraf Ghani is asking us to do: stop differentiating between good bad guys and bad bad guys. Bad guys are bad guys. And anyone who wants to compromise on the state’s monopoly on violence is, no matter what fiqh they belong to, a bad guy.

Geography is cruel. Pakistan can never truly be knocked out in Afghanistan, because for every Ashraf Ghani and Mahmood Khan Achakzai, there are dozens of zealots for whom the spilling of blood in Afghanistan is some version of devotional utopia.

The best outcome from the current situation is major lesson-learning in Rawalpindi. Lessons that will help in embracing Pakhtun nationhood as an inherent Pakistani strength.

Pakistan does have a destiny that is better than its present, but it does not await pettiness and insecurity. It awaits grandness and generosity. For almost forty years this country’s people, from Khyber to Karachi, have exhibited this grandness. What word describes a state that so readily fritters away this advantage?