The forces that compete to shape contemporary Pakistan were in plain sight in Karachi last Sunday. While at a posh creek-side hotel, literary glitterati from Pakistan and India and the South Asian diaspora in Britain and beyond gathered for the third annual Karachi Literature Festival, at the mausoleum of Pakistan’s founder, the symbolic centre of the city, the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), a coalition of more than 40 religious political parties and extremist groups, drew thousands to its first rally in Karachi.
The bookish and the bearded could not be further apart along the ideological spectrum. For all their differences, though, the gatherings on Sunday were most striking for what they had in common. These days, most Pakistanis, no matter how liberal or conservative, seem to have the same basic concerns about the country’s political future. It’s a growing consensus over feeling alienated from the international community; it’s the agreement of shared despair.
The literary festival revelled in taboos. The English novelist Hanif Kureishi described how he’d been fondled by gay men across South Asia. The historian Ayesha Jalal exposed the alcoholism of Manto, Pakistan’s best partition-era writer. Veiled women and intelligence agents were mocked. The sassy Indian columnist Shobhaa De pronounced Karachi and Mumbai twin cities, and then won hearts by declaring that Pakistani women were more beautiful than their Indian counterparts.
The DPC rally also raised eyebrows, but by striking a rather different tone. A tribute was paid to Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the head of one political party called for implementing a similar governing system in Pakistan. The leader of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa – a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai – threatened to make “mincemeat” of India and break the legs of the “whores” who travel to India to perform in films and on stage. One speaker said he would turn Karachi into a “media graveyard” if the DPC’s ongoing activities weren’t given full coverage.
But more striking than the differences in rhetoric and style between the two events were the participants’ shared concerns. How can Pakistan recalibrate its relationship with the United States? What role should Pakistan play in resolving the conflict in Afghanistan? Why can’t the country seem to pursue an independent foreign policy?
DPC members said they had come together to “defend” Pakistan against the threats posed by the United States and India. They were worried that American “tyranny” – shorthand for Washington’s influence over Pakistan’s foreign policy, especially regarding the war in Afghanistan – was undermining the country’s interests. At the Sunday meeting, as before, the DPC opposed reopening the NATO supply routes that run through Pakistan and were closed last November after NATO helicopters fired on a Pakistani army check post, killing 24 soldiers. It also rejected the Pakistani government’s decision to grant India the status of most favoured nation.
But sovereignty and security also cropped up at the literature festival. The audience applauded the star cast of commentators on the panel titled ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan: Conflict, extremism and the Taliban’ for calling on the rest of the world to stop demonising Pakistan. Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said she was frustrated by Washington’s unilateral policymaking, pointing out that a decade into the Afghan war, it was finally heeding Islamabad’s advice to negotiate with the Taliban. At the panel on ‘Nuclear Pakistan’, a Pakistani academic explained that nuclear weapons are necessary for Pakistan to balance India’s military might.
In short, for all their ideological diversity, the liberal left and the extremist right now agree that Pakistan needs to better protect its interests and negotiate a more equitable partnership with the United States. This consensus could be the basis for a new national discourse that engages the viewpoints of all stakeholders. After all, a shared vision for the country could help bridge its ethnic and sectarian fractures.
But as NATO supply lines reopen this week and a national security committee dithers about how to reframe the US-Pakistani relationship, coherent policymaking still seems far off. Pakistan’s leaders simply have too little interest in representing the views of their constituents, no matter how similar those are.
Huma Yusuf is a columnist for a leading Pakistani daily and was the 2010-11 Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington.