Professor Alam has a piece in Counterpunch about the recent thaw in Pakistan-Israel ties. He believes that President Musharraf’s prime concern is “regime salvation,” not Pakistan’s national interest.
Only the most faithful of President Musharraf’s toadies would disagree.
But when Prof. Alam starts recounting Pakistan’s losses from its role as America’s ally in the “war on terror,” he is on less firm ground:
Pakistan surrendered its territorial sovereignty to the US, handing over Pakistan’s airspace and land bases to be used in a war against a friendly neighbor, Afghanistan. As a result, Pakistan lost the ’strategic depth’ it had created in Afghanistan though, not with the best means by handing over Afghanistan to its strategic adversaries, the Northern Alliance and India. On its eastern border, Pakistan stopped supporting the resistance in Kashmir.
Unbelievable. An enlightened academic like Professor Alam is actually legitimizing the Pakistani military’s pipe-dream of “strategic depth?” Is clamping down on ultra-rightwing terrorist outfits like LeT and HuM considered stopping support for the “resistance in Kashmir”?
Continues Prof. Alam:
This is an attempt to shift Pakistan away from its core values of Islamic governance, law, morality and justice. The primary targets of this campaign are the madaris (the Islamic schools) and the Ulama, the historical safeguards against Western imperialism and state tyranny in Islamic countries.
Is he serious? When have “Islamic governance, law, morality and justice” been core values in Pakistan? Islamic law has brought us the regressive and anti-woman concepts of Hudood and Qisas, “Islamic” morality is becoming the death of culture in places like Gujrat, and “justice” is currently a little backlogged. History is one thing: today’s Ulama, far from being safeguards against Western imperialism and state tyranny, are the most reactionary of forces.
At some point, the arguments of the radical left come frighteningly close to those of the radical right. Prof. Alam’s statement above would not be out of place if attributed to Qazi Hussain Ahmed or one of his MMA colleagues. I suspect that Prof. Alam is too enlightened to really believe the claims he’s making. But for him — and for much of the radical left — imperialism is the greatest of all evils. Even reactionary religious forces and their medieval indoctrination factories pale in comparison. In any other context, Prof. Alam will certainly be a vocal critic of Pakistan’s religious lobby, but he seems to be blind to everything next to the spectre of American imperialism.
Writes Prof. Alam:
The deluded Pakistanis who urge recognition must be told and told repeatedly that Israel has only one strategic interest in Pakistan. Israelis look upon Pakistan as a target for attack and dismemberment, and this for two reasons. As the second largest Islamic country by far the largest in West Asia it could someday challenge Israeli ambitions in West and Central Asia. More urgently, Israel views Pakistan as a potential nuclear threat.
As one of the deluded Pakistanis urging recognition of Israel, I take this personally. I’m sure some in the Israeli military and political establishments view Pakistan as a threat, just as many in Pakistan hold similar views on Israel. What does that have to do with diplomatic recognition? Pakistan “recognizes” India, the regional power with which it has fought 3 (and a half) wars. Even if this is the case (i.e. that Israel has malignant intentions towards Pakistan), how will the formality of diplomatic recognition help Israel in its “nefarious” plans?
Finally, here are the conditions Prof. Alam sets out for Israel as prerequisites for being recognized as a legitimate nation:
Israel must dismantle its apartheid structure and remove all the barriers to the return and rehabilitation of the Palestinians it has pushed out of their homes since 1948.
Of course, I agree. But again, what does this have to do with diplomatic recognition? Recognizing a country in no way implies support for its policies. Pakistan recognizes the United States yet I doubt that many Pakistanis support the occupation of Iraq. Then there is the small matter of hypocrisy. As a Pakistani, I am in no position to dictate morality to Israel. Let’s examine the two attributes of Israeli history and society that so irk Prof. Alam (and rightly so):
- Dispossession of the native population.
South Asia stands sundered today because of Partition and the horrors of its accompanying “population migration.” A substantial fraction of Karachi’s pre-Partition population was Hindu; today, the Hindu community survives at the fringes of society. The knee-jerk explanation of “but they left willingly…” is about as valid as Israeli claims of willing Palestinan exile in 1948.
The ongoing misery of the Biharis in Bangladesh — stateless Pakistani refugees that the government refuses to repatriate — is another deathblow to the self-righteous Pakistani’s insistence on the right of return for Palestinians. If Pakistan can’t accommodate a few hundred thousand of its own citizens, by what right can it ask Israel to do the same for several million Palestinians?
- Apartheid structure.
A non-Muslim cannot be the head of state or government in Pakistan. An Ahmadi can’t rise to senior ranks in the military. Until recently, non-Muslims could only vote in separate electorates. To get passports, Muslim Pakistanis have to attest that the founder of the Ahmadi movement was a bogus prophet. Who are we to lecture others on apartheid?
Prof. Alam is Left Hook’s Junaid’s father. I respect both father and son for their commitment to social justice and progressive causes. Prof. Alam is also an idealist. Of course, in an ideal world there would be no racism or oppression or injustice or war or dispossession. There would be one secular democratic Palestine for Arab and Jew alike. There would also be one India, undivided, without Sir Cyril’s line.
Prof. Alam has the luxury of the stateless intellectual’s idealism. He can lecture Pakistan and Israel equally on their offences. Ordinary Pakistanis and their government cannot accuse Israel of misdeeds without first looking into a mirror. And noticing, perhaps, that our face is as scarred as that of the Other.
