Pakistan is besieged

Earlier this month, I travelled to Pakistan. It was my second visit to the country, and my second in six months. On both occasions, I combined professional commitments in Islamabad — most recently a lecture titled “Modi’s India: The Implications for Pakistan” at the Jinnah Institute — with personal detours. Six months ago, I had travelled to Rawalpindi, visiting my late father’s ancestral neighbourhood (but failing to identify his house) and, separately, managed to locate my late mother’s family home. More recently, I drove down to Lahore from Islamabad and was received warmly at my father’s alma mater, Forman Christian College.

Travel is always educative. The visit to and conversations with the faculty and officials at Forman Christian College, for instance, provided insights into the evolution of Pakistan over the past six decades. This is a 150-yearold institution that was set up by the American Presbyterian Church and, in fact, had a number of American professors in the pre-1947 period — including my father’s guru in the department of chemistry, Professor Carter Speers, a legend at the college to this day. It had a strong contingent of female students as far back at the early 20th century.

In the Zulfiqar Bhutto years, the high noon of Islamic socialism in Pakistan, Forman Christian College was nationalised and mutilated. It was left decrepit, standards fell and some of its property was usurped by politicians. In the early 2000s, Pervez Musharraf, an alumnus of the college, became the President of Pakistan. The then chief minister of Punjab, a few key civil servants and some others with influence in the Musharraf dispensation were all Forman alumni

The stars were aligned appropriately and it was decided to privatise the college. As the land on which Forman Christian College stood still belonged to the American Presbyterian Church, it was given the right of first refusal. The Presbyterians accepted and within a decade the college has regained its prominence. New buildings have been built, the campus is sparkling and an attempt to repair old networks and records with a strengthened alumni relations office has begun.

Strolling around Forman Christian College and seeing young men and women mingling together and walking to class — as they do on campuses anywhere in the world — was a pleasure. The college also has an intermediate section (Classes 11 and 12), which is all-boys. This is because the regulations of the Pakistani government prevent co-education till Class 12 while permitting it at the college level. The rule left me scratching my head. Presumably the interaction of opposite sexes is fraught with greater risk — if that be the word — in the undergraduate years, than in the primary school years.

While the visit to the college was a happy experience, the security at the gates was sobering. No doubt the guards were polite, but the arrangements did seem excessive. When I left the college, I drove past a prominent school. The school day was coming to an end and parents — many getting out of cars — were preparing to pick up their children. They too were negotiating barriers and security paraphernalia. Here, as at Forman Christian College, I asked the same question: “Why is an educational institution so heavily guarded?” I got the same answer: “Peshawar”.

The attack on

the Army school in Peshawar occurred between my two visits to Pakistan. Clearly it has enhanced the sense of fear, foreboding and insecurity among Pakistanis, especially in the bigger cities. Islamabad, like many capitals, is no stranger to heavy security. Yet, even here, presence of police forces and an intangible but not entirely imperceptible tension seemed to have heightened in the past six months.

This has tended to affect people in different ways. At Islamabad airport, an airport employee who was trying to help me got into an unrelated argument with another passenger (also a Pakistani). The employee was a big, burly man. He stood a good foot above the person who was shouting at him, but he refused to argue back, smiled weakly and tried to end the squabble even though he wasn’t really at fault. When it ended, with me a little bewildered, the airport employee explained, “Sir, I used to argue back and get aggressive. But after 2007, when things changed so much in Pakistan, and after Peshawar, I just want to go back to my children. I try and avoid arguments with strangers… Who knows …”

For the Islamabad elite, the insecurity has come very close to home. The American Embassy School in Islamabad is much sought after, like many of its peers in other countries. However, standards have dropped here in recent years because the American embassy has declared Islamabad a nonfamily station. Consequently, American teachers are not available, and the school has to make do with Pakistanis who happen to have American passports or connections but may not be accomplished or trained teachers. Many pupils are children of the rich and famous in Islamabad, rather than of foreign diplomats.

All this has made the school a target for terrorists, with very specific threats. This was not so even in 2001, when the Afghan war had begun. Islamabad was a sanctuary then; today it perceives itself as being at the frontline.

Talking to the strategic community in Islamabad, retired diplomats, former generals and so on, one could not escape the feeling that the braggadocio and cocky optimism of the past had gone. There is a palpable deflation in the mood. What is not helping is that there is no obvious solution. Hope is drying up.

The war against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in Waziristan is resisting a definite conclusion. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is desperate to avoid a situation where TTP militants, pushed out of Waziristan, can make the heartland of Punjab, and the city of Lahore, a war zone. TTP cells in Karachi, along with criminal and religio-militant syndicates, have converted that city into a lawless frontier that even Pakistanis warn you against visiting.

Neither is there any stomach to take on the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) or its godfather, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). There are two reasons for this. First, the LeT/JuD, unlike the TTP, remain broadly loyal to the Pakistani state and to the strategic goals (hostility to India) of the Army. Second, as governance has withered away in Pakistan, the JuD has grown and become very powerful in rural Punjab as a social and “welfare” body, with terrorism as collateral activity. It is now too influential for the Pakistani authorities to curb or fight, if they want to in the first place. The pussyfooting on Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the LeT mastermind of the Mumbai terror attack of 2008, has to be seen in this light.

The attack on the Army school in Peshawar

has clearly enhanced the sense of fear, foreboding and insecurity among

Pakistanis, especially in the bigger cities

The writer can be

contacted at malikashok@gmail.com