Well, it wasn’t much of a bombshell for many in the know. In fact, anyone with a friend or contact in the foreign office, journalists included, were in on it.
The Chinese, ladies and gentlemen, aren’t exactly happy with us. This open secret wasn’t ever revealed on broadcast media but former foreign minister revealed as much on Kamran Khan’s 9th May program on Dunya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQOSsKorObM
The context of the conversation was the Iranian army chief’s recent statements regarding a possible strike deep into Pakistani territory if militant hideouts were not taken out by the Pakistani state themselves.
Threats are imagined in the Pakistani hivemind as emerging only from India. In the recent years, Afghanistan has also assumed the role, though the aforementioned hivemind attributes that to Indian influence as well. Iran was never quite in this league. Now it is. The statement didn’t come from a shoot-from-the-hip, sabre-rattling president like Ahmedinejad but the army chief. And since this is the chief of an army that knows its place, a lot of alarm bells started ringing in the media.
We are surrounded by three states that accuse us of the same thing. And the fourth neighbour, China, is also ill at ease, said Kamran Khan. Yes, and the Chinese, because they are friends, don’t say it out loud like the rest, but say this behind closed doors.
The commentariat, already having trouble dealing with the idea of tense relations with the first state to recognise us as a sovereign nation, is not yet ready to deal with the prospect of things that are “sweeter than honey” going sour.
Sweeter than honey, higher than the Himalayas. Our state-employed copywriters have used hyperbole to drill the idea of a permanent friend in China in a generation or two of Pakistani citizens. Friendship with the Chinese isn’t something that schoolkids sort of know in this neck of the woods. It. Is. A. National. Obsession.
How did things come to this pass?
Well, the answer is quite simple. As Kasuri said in the program, ever since the establishment of the modern nation-state and the Treaty of Westphalia, there is a consensus on one basic thing. That the state and state alone should have a monopoly on violence.
The monopoly of violence by the state is a fundamental qualifier of statehood. If an organised group of people can raise arms and wreak havoc, even if this group has been armed and trained by the state (or what passes for it), some political scientists do bring into question the very presence of a state.
The Pakistani deep state has been hedging its bets when it comes to militancy. In its policy of strategic depth (may the fleas of a thousand camels infest the armpits of the self-styled Von Clausewitzses who thought up this cursed strategy) the state has nursed some militant organisations to secure a pliant government in Afghanistan. By its own admission.
And then there are the organisations that are looking towards India.
The problem here is that there is fluidity at play here. If you were to rear a ragtag militia on an ideology of a hardline militant interpretation of Islam so it can go to war against rival states, these fellows will also wage war against friendly states. Like Iran and China. In fact, why go as far as Iran and China? These organisations also target the Pakistani state itself.
From here stems another viewpoint. That we should take action against the ones that are waging war on us and use safe havens in Pakistan to wage war on friendly states. But not those whom we are keeping to hedge our bets in Afghanistan or keep things cooking in India. The Good Taliban / Bad Taliban theory, basically.
Well, the problem with that can be reduced into a very simple (some would argue simplistic) sequence: the state supports the Good Taliban and the Good Taliban support the Bad Taliban.
As the ANP’s Shahi Syed – a rough-around-the-edges politician who didn’t go to finishing school as opposed to the erudite Afrasiab Khattak from the same party – summed it up more effectively than anyone at an event: “other parties say there should be no terrorism in Pakistan; we say there should be no terrorism anywhere.”
That is the end-all approach. We can’t support – in any way – terrorism anywhere in the world. Even if we were to let slide the unforgivable moral position of being okay with militants wreaking havoc in other states, it would still be a Pyrrhic “victory”, given how much we have to pay in return.
India accuses us of harbouring militants. So does Afghanistan. So does Iran. In a muted tone, so does China. As does the US. The UK. The west as a whole. Are all of them wrong?
