Transcript
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First published in Gret Britain
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by Bantam Press
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Copyrigt © Imran Khan
20
Imran Khan has asserted his right under the Copyright,
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988
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Cover
About the Book
Title
Page
Dedicaton
Map
of Pakistan
Contents
Prolo
g
ue:
A Coalition o the
Crooked
November 2007
Cha
p
ter
1: Can I Still
Pla
y
Cricket in Heaven? 1947-1979
Cha
p
ter
2:
Revolution
1979-1987
Cha
p
ter
3:
Death
and Pakistan's
S
p
iritual Life
1987-1989
Cha
p
ter
4: Our Failed
Democra
1988-1993
Cha
p
ter
5:
An
g
els
in
Ds
g
uise': Buildin
g
a
Hos
p
ita
194-1995
Cha
p
ter
6:
M
y
Marria
g
e,
1995-2004
Cha
p
ter
7: The General, 1999-2001
Chapter
8: Pakistan Since 9/11
Chapter
9: The Tribal Areas: Civil War?
M
y
Soltion
Chapter
10:
Rediscoerin
g
Iqbal:
Pakistan's
S
y
mbol
and a
Template
for Our Future
E
p
ilo
g
e
Picture Section
Acknowled
g
ements
Picture
Acknowled
g
ements
Index
About the Author
C
i
g
ht
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This book is dedicated to Sulaima, Kasim,
ad the youth of Pakista.
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Proogue
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A Coaition of the Crooked, November 2007
BLANK FACES. FAES with no expressions. That's what I remember. About twenty
of them had surrounded me and a few were pushig me. I asked them, What is it you
want? o you know what you are doing?' I could see some had pistols. Beynd the
locked gates of the courtyard, people were shoving and shouting. More crowds of
students peered down at me from the windows of the oors that ran round the
quadragle as they tried to see what was happening. I was furious. My politica party,
TehreeeInsaf (Movement for Justice'), was allied to this grou, as the studets that
had surrounded me were in the Islamic JamiateTleba (, the students' wing of the
JamaateIslami, Pakistan's oldest and most organized religious party. Both Jamaate
Islami and TehreekeInsaf were part of the ll Parties Democratic Moement
campaigning for an end to General Pervez Musharraf's milita dictatorship and the
restoration of Pakistan's chief justce. Yet here these students were working for a
dictator who had issued orders to arrest me and behaving just like a gang of street thugs.
Although I had heard tales about the T, had not fully realized the kind of
people they were. Everyone on the campus of the university is scared of them. Once
known for their ideolgical views and great disciplne, they appear to have degeerated
into a kind of maa r fascist group operating insde the university, bearing guns and
beating people up. They stie debate in an educational establishment that has in its time
produced two Nobel laureates -the niversity of the Punjab was established in the late
nineteenth century by the British, in the country's second city, Lahore. No government
dares tackle them, ordinary students at the universiy are petried of them and een the
party they belong to, the Jamaat eslami, does nt seem to be able to contro them.
Much later I heard the Jamiat activists had been paid large sums of money to turn on me
-allegedly by the government.
I knew the polie would probably arrest me when I arrived at the university, so I
sneaked in the evening before and spent the night i the rooms of one of the professors.
The T had expected me to walk thrugh the main gate the following day with my party
supporters. Later on I discovered the plan had bee to beat us all up. Two things saved
me: I surprised them by appearing alone, and from inside the university; and the
international media was there with heir cameras all lined up. As soon as I apeared,
other students in the university gathered around me and hoisted me up on to their
shoulders. But then came this group of Jamiat students, about twenty or thirty o them.
They began pushing me, but they did not know what to do because they had not
expected me to come alone and thee were hundreds of them watching this spectacle.
They soved me into a quadrangle and locked the gates. That is when I kept saying,
What s it you want?' They asked hy I had come without their permission and I told
them the university did not belong to them. I asked them if they realized their party's
policy was to oppose the state of emergency Musharraf had declared and yet here they
were spporting it. Do you know wat you are doing?' I said. There was no response. I
saw the head of the T standing abut twenty yards away and speaking on his mobile.
He was looking at me and clearly talking about me. I don't think he knew what to do.
Some professors arrived and the Jamiat youths shoved them aroud too and I culd see
the proessors were scared of them.
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t this point I had been eluding arrest for almost two weeks. The country was
underging yet another period of turmoil and President Musharraf had declared a state
of emergency. On the evening of 3 November 2007, I had bee giving a talk at the
Lahore University of Management Sciences when someone passe me a note saying that
the heads of all the plitical parties opposed to Msharraf were to be put under house
arrest, including me. I had already been held under house arrest the previous year when
President Bush visited Pakistan. Tha was aimed at stopping me staging a protest against
the US president because of his hypcrisy in supprting Musharraf, a military dictator,
while ivading Iraq with the justication of installing democracy. So initially I was not
too worried. Even uner house arres, I could still manage my political party. I nished
my speech, held varius meetings and returned sme time ater midnight to myod
family ome in Lahore's Zaman Park, where my father and younger sister lived with her
family. It was only when the police barged into our house that I began to sense a
differece. Normally the police were very polite with me. This tme their maner was
more aggressive. There was no metion of house arrest, but rather of orders' for my
detention'. I insisted they show me a warrant and while they went off to get it, a
journalist called me on my mobile. Imran, I'm sitting with the superintendent of police
here,' he said. All o the other political leaders have been put under house arrest, but
you are going to jail. Your orders are for jail.'
With barely minutes to spare I asked my nephew to check utside to see whether
there was any possibility of escape He told me tat while the police had surrounded
most of the house, they had left uguarded a tefoothigh wall on the edge of our
garden I slipped out the back and sprinted for the wall, and my nephew heled me
climb ver into the garden next door. I had spent my childhood in Zaman Park and
many f my relatives still lived nearby. While the police came in and searched our
family home -even my father's bedroom, despite him being sick at the time -I made
for my grandfather's old house an from then on began moving from place to place
every ther day. Every now and then I surfaced o give a telephone interview to the
press t try and get my message ou to the people of Pakistan, and specically to my
workers. Then I moved again. Two r three times he police arrived at a house o look
for me barely fteen minutes after I had left. Late, I heard that at least ve thusand
people had been detaied. I was one of the last of the leading opposition politicias who
remained free. I had to organize my party as best
could by word of mouth, sice we
had all switched off or mobile phones and many members had gone underground.
Benazir Bhutt, the daughter of the former president ad prime minister of
Pakistan who had bee executed in 1979 (she hersef was prime minister in 1988-90 and
again i 1993-96), had recently retuned from political exile. She arrived in Laore to
organize a protest march but the polce surrounded her house and the plans zzled out.
She ws, however, prsued by the international media, and I decided I shoud take
advantge of their presence to give myself up with as much publicity as possibe. The
best place to do this was the University of the Punjab, the biggest university in the
country, where I wanted the students to moblize against Musharraf's state of
emergency. My party, TehreekeIsaf, was already popular amongst the students,
mainly because of the stand we had taken against the military dictator. The young
people of Pakistan were my main strength, and I had seen over the years how youth
across the world had played a vital role in popular campaigns, from the antiVietnam
War mvement of 1960s America to the ousting of Indonesia's President Suhart in the
1990s and, yet to cme, the Arab uprisings of 2011. I wanted the students to be
politicized, since dicttors always try to depoliticize people in order to maintain control.
They ad the international media wuld witness my arrest. I would not be taken quietly
in the ight.
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I told the students at the university I had come to give myself up and to take me
to the police. They tok me outside pushed me ito a van and drove me to the gates
where a police inspecor was waiting for me. He looked at me over and over again until
I asked what was wrng. I am so happy to see yu,' he said. What do you mean?' I
asked. He made me wait until we had reached the police station and there he tld me.
Since last night we have been in tuch with these guys and my information was that
they were going to hand you to me in such a state that I would have had to rush you to
hospital. They were going to break your bones; tat was the plan.' He had stationed
some plainclothes oicers inside the university with instructions to try to save me but
there was little else he could do. It was only then that I realized how narrowly I had
escaped.
(He was right t be concerned. A couple of ears after my unpleasant experience
with the Jamiat youths they beat up one of the university staff an enviromental
science professor called Itikhar Baloch after he tok a stand against them. I saw him
soon after the attack which almost killed the man and left him with broken boes and
covered in bruises.)
My detention was to prove a ormative experience; time spent in a Pakistani jail
only reinforced my conviction that a lack of the rule of law lay at the heart of our
troubled nation's problems. After my conversation with the police inspector I was taken
to another police statin and kept there until about midnight when they moved me again
this time to Kot Lakhpat one of the main jails in Lahore. At rst it took some ime to
register what had happened. It was a Aclass cell and I was give a room to myself so
I was able to sleep ad the next day I was allowed to sit outside. The jailers wee very
sympathetic and brought reports abot what was going on outside. They told me that the
day after my arrest there had been a huge and nprecedented demonstration at the
University of the Pujab against the Jamiat thugs. The strength of the rally and the
students' anger was sch that for the rst time in thrty years the oganization was on the
back fot although it sadly regained its inuence later on. I als learned that a mini
revoluton had taken place in Zaman Park; my eightyveyearold aunt along with my
sisters gathered all the women of Zaman Park to stage a peaceful demonstration against
my detention. It was nprecedented in my very conservative family for the women to
come ut and demostrate in public. What happened next was also unheard of in
Pakistan politics where women are always treated with great respect; their peaceful
protest was violentl disrupted b the police and in front of the national and
international media they were bundled into police vans and taken to jail before being
released later that night. This incident dented Musharraf's liberal' credentials.
I was locked i overnight. O the second night at three in the morning I was
sleeping when the cel door opened suddenly. A policeman was standing there looking
quite hstile. Pack yur things up,' he said. Get ready to leave. Then I was bundled
into the back of a truck where I wuld spend a ninehour journey lying on a wooden
bench freezing with nly a single blanket as the wind and dust f a chilly Noember
night bew in through the open slats. Three policemen were sitting in front and when we
stopped for tea early n the morning I asked them where we were going. They told me
we wee going to Dea Ghazi Khan far to the southwest in the centre of the cuntry.
DG Khan is one of the worst jails in Pakistan. If the authorities really want to break you
they'll send you there. It occurred o me that the might torture me as they had two
parliamentary colleagues Saad Rafiq and Javed Hashmi who had been jailed for years
and they had told me what had happened to them. But mostly it was the pettiness of it all
that trubled me. It was unnecessary to send me o a ninehour jurney in a truck to a
jail in DG Khan whe other political leaders were being put under house arrest. I had
been i the public eye for thirtyve years and everyone knew I was not a terrorist. Yet I
was being arrested under draconia antiterrorism' emergency laws that carred the
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possible penalty of life imprisonment or death. It felt like a deliberate attempt to
humiliate me. And since the jailers and police dealing with me were generally
sympathetic and polite I sensed the rders had come from the top
If I struggled over just eight days in prison the suffering f the many thusands
who spend years in Pakistan' s jails was innitely worse. And compared to them I was
treated like a king. The jail was dirty and crowded with ten to teen people crammed
into each cell. My own cell was in the hospital wing and had a little bed and a lthy
bathrom but I had a room of my own. During te day I was allowed to sit utside
although at sunset I was locked in my room for the night. I could hardly eat in jail since
I had no exercise and the food was terrible. After so many years of sport my body was
conditined to expect exercise. The worst of it was that time would not pass. I thought I
was ging to die of boredom. At dawn when hey woke me up and I heard the
commotion of other prisoners being let out of their cells I would try to linger i bed to
make the day shorter. I would think I had been staying hours in bed look at my watch
and realize it was still only eight o' clock. Then I would go and sit outside and in the
afternon they brought me a newspaper to read.
imagined a whole day must have
passed only to realize that about an hour to an hour and a half had gone by. But still the
day would just drag o.
I am a completely outdoor person; I always have been -even as a boy durng the
hot summer months i Lahore my mother had troble making me stay indoors. Since
2005 I ave lived in my farmhouse o a hill outside the capital city Islamabad a place I
call my paradise recreating the sense of wilderness that I love. I am surrounded by hills
and greenery with a panoramic view of Rawal Lake and the foothils of the Himaayas. I
grow my own fruit ad vegetables and keep chickens cows and water buffalos. Wild
birds ad animals surround me too -partridges porcupines snakes lizards jackals and
peacocks. And suddely I was stuck inside these for walls.
In the courtyard where I was allowed to sit during the day here was a little bit of
grass but not so much as a tree. The real problem was that I did not know how long I
would e in prison. And I could no bear the waste of time. I had set up a hospital in
Lahore offering free cancer treatment to the poor. I ran a political party and I was trying
to set p a new university in Mianwali my father's ancestral home town over two
hundred miles to the orthwest of Lahore. Normally twentyfour hours are not enough
in the day for me. And here I was removed from life watching time that did not pass.
Yet jail gave me the chance t hear rsthand about the other prisoners. A young
man frm Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the region formerly known as the NorthWest Frontier
next to the border with Afghanistan was sent to clean my room. I learned he had been
there fr six years after being arrested at the age of sixteen. He had not even been tried
for the crime for which he was arresed. He had been involved in a family feud and had
brandished a gun. That was all. If he had been convicted the maximum penalty would
have been a year. He had been in jail for six years because the family was too oor to
afford a lawyer. Whe his case came up in court te authorities did not even bther to
send him a police van to take him there. Accordng to the depty inspector f jails
Salimulah Khan wh visited me this boy's case was not an exception. Sixty per cent
of people in Pakistani jails were inncent he said. Their crime was their poverty. Later
I bega avidly reading newspaper stries about prisoners trapped in jail. In Karachi the
vibrant nancial city on the Arabia coast a man was found not guilty after spending
nine years locked up; when he was arrested at the age of twenty he had a wife and a
yearold baby. It is hard to think abut what might have happened to them in that time.
In Sindh the province of which Karachi is the captal three men were found not guilty
after twentytwo years in jail and in another case a man remained in Lahore's Kot
Lakhpat prison for fteen years because his le had got lost. That was the biggest
impact jail had on me. Seeing these people crammed in together horried me. Some of
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them had been frame. Often I heard later the head jailer made money by charging the
relatives if they wanted to see a prisner. And as was the case with the boy who cleaned
my room the police van meant to take a prisoner t court freuently failed to turn up so
they missed their court hearing. And yet many of the biggest criminals in the country
were sitting in parliament and some were even given police escorts at taxayers'
expense. The injustice and cruelty o it all stayed ith me. The sualid conditios. The
inability of the poor t get justice.
I decided to go on a hunger strike on the sixth day to put pressure on Musharraf.
But I made the mistake -if it ever happens again I would not do it the same way -of
going n a complete hunger strike rather than just having liuids.
am used to fasting at
Ramadan -it is excellent discipline and normall I carry on as usual with the same
exercise routine -but then you break your fast at snset. I had not realized how uickly
one weakened with othing to drik. I had fasted for barely over two days when I
discovered I did not have the strength to walk. Having announced the hunger strike
there was no way I was going to back down after two days. The nally at abot eight
in the evening the jailers came and said You are ree.' I walked out into what ecame
one of he most turbulent periods of akistan' s histry.
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Chapter One
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Can I Sti Pa
y
Cricket in Heaven? 1947-1979
OUTSIDE OF PAKITAN I am mainly known for my 21yearlong cricket career. But
in my home country
am the head of a party that is battling to take on a political elite
that has for more tha six decades stymied this great country depriving it of is God
given potential. Ruled alternately by milita dictators like President Musharraf or as a
efdom by families like the Bhuttos and Sharifs Pakistan has drifted far from the ideals
of its founders. Far from being the Islamic welfare state that was envisaged Pakistan is
a country where politcs is a game of loot and pluder and any challenger to the status
quo -even somebody with my kind of public prole and popularity -can be suddenly
arrested and threatened with violence. Founded as a homeland for Indian Muslims on
the priciple of the uifying qualities of Islam it remains a fractured country. Kashmir
to the ortheast has been since independence the subject of a violent dispute between
India ad Pakistan the region divided between the two. In the orthwest a civil war
betwee the army and militants plages the Pashtu heartlands of Khyber Pakhtnkhwa
and FATA (the Federally Administered Tribal Areas). Baluchistan a vast rugged
unexplored and thinly populated proince bordering Iran and Afghanistan simmers with
a separatist insurgency. To the south the Arabia Sea washes against the shores of
Baluchstan and Sindh where the provincial capital Karachi is riven with fghting
betwee various ethnic groups including Pashtun immigrants ad the descendants of
Muslims who came from the other side of the border at Partition referred to as ohajirs
or refugees. Meanwhile Punjab home to more tha half of the country's population is
resented by other proinces for monopolizing Pakistani political power and prosperity.
For me our cont's woes began soon after Pakistan was created in 1947 when
we lost our great leader Jinnah. Pakistan -which means Land of the Pure -was just ve
years old when I was born. We had such pride in our count the such optimism. We
were a new nation wrested out of he dying British Raj as a homeland for Muslims.
Gone were the insidious humiliations of colonialism and the fear of being drowned in an
overwhelming Hindu majority in an independent Idia. We were a free people free to
rediscover an Islamic culture that had once towered over the subcontinent. Free too to
implement the ideals of Islam based on equality and social and economic justice. A
democracy as Pakistan's founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah said not a theocracy.
We were to be the shining example in the Muslim world of what Islam could achieve
were it allowed to ourish. Such dreams we had. It was only much later that we
discovered how hard t would be to full these dreams even in a randnew nation like
ours uburdened by the rigidities of history. As te years went by we built or own
tormened history and drifted further and further away from the ideals that had inspired
Pakistan's creation.
Pakistan's roots lay in the nal days of the British Raj in India. Before then the
territory -roughly dened as the Punjab the NorthWest Frontier Province the
coastlie on the Araban sea of Sindh province and Baluchistan -had not been dened
as Pakistan but over the centuries became rst part of one empire and then another.
The British initially through the East India Company and later through the British
Army controlled the area from the early part of the nineteenth century onward. From
the 1880s though the aim for millions of people throughout he subcontinent who
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wanted selfdetermination was the end of British ule. The Indian National Congress
which nitially included Muslims wrked to achiee this end. The British did nt want
to reliquish control but the Second World War weakened Britain economically and
politically and by then the empire on which the sun never sets' was in its twilight
years.
he Indian National Congress negotiated with the British to bring about the end
of their rule over India and they wanted to see the whole subcontinent remin one
country. Here the hstories of the two nations starts to diverge; wary of Hindu
nationalism and mindful of the kind of violence hat took place at sporadic itervals
over the 1920s and 1930s in differen cities and provinces in India the AllIndia Muslim
League took a different view. As part of this league two men in particular were
fundamental in the fondation of Pakistan Jinnah and Allama Muhammad Iqbal.
Iqbal who died in 1938 nine years before the creatio of Pakistan is the
visionary poetphilospher considered to be the spiritual founder f Pakistan. In 930 in
an address to the AllIndia Muslim League he said I would like to see the Punjab
NorthWest Frontier Province Sindh and Baluchisan amalgamated into a single State.
Selfgovernment withn the British Empire or withut the British Empire the formation
of a cosolidated NorthWest Indian Muslim State appears to me o be the nal destiny
of Muslims at least of NorthWest India.' Believing that the Indan Muslim is entitled
to full and free develpment on the lines of his own culture an tradition in his own
Indian omelands,' Iqbal felt that this was a necessary stage for the Muslim community
to develop its collectie selood or
khudi.
Iqbal not only conceived of a selfgoverning Muslim state his passionate voice
awakeed and activated Indian Muslims motivatng them not nly to strive to free
themseves from the bondage of imperialism and colonialism but also to challenge other
forms f totalitarian control. Believing fervently in human equality and the right of
human beings to digity justice and freedom Iqbal empowered the disempowered to
stand u and be counted.
When I was older I found Iqbal's work hugely inspiratioal. He argued against
an unqestioning acceptance of Western democracy as the selfgoverning model and
instead suggested tha by following the rules of Islam a society would tend naturally
towards social justice tolerance peace and equality. Iqbal's iterpretation of Islam
differs very widely from the narrow meaning that is sometimes given to it. Fo Iqbal
Islam is not just the name for certain beliefs and forms of worship. The diference
betwee a Muslim and a nonMuslim is not merely a theological ne -it is a diference
of a fudamental attitde towards life.
Iqbal considered pride in one's lineage or caste to be one of the major reasons for
the downfall of Muslims. In his view in Islam based on the pinciples of equality
solidarity and freedom' there was no hierarchy r aristocracy and the criterion for
assessig the merit of human beings was
tqw
(righteousness). As Prophet Muhammad
(Peace Be Upon Him) said: The noblest of human eings are those who fear God most.'
In othe words those who are humae and just because when you fear God you believe
you are accountable t Him and must act accordingy.
o Iqbal the clture of Islam did not consist of the actual cultural practices of
Muslims. It was an ideal valuesystem based upo the ethical principles enshrined in
the Quan. He believed that Islam provided the gidance needed by human beings to
realize their Godgiven potential to the fullest. In his philosphy of khudi Iqbal
presented his blueprint for action that would lead to intellectually sound ethically based
and spiritually grounded developmet of individuals and communties. Iqbal and others
such as Sir Sayid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) wh urged Muslims to obtain a Western
education and established the Aligarh University for this purpose argued that this vision
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of an ideal society cold never be achieved as long as Muslims remained in a minority
in a Hidudominated India.
It was not only that India, with its caste system and socia inequalities, was the
antithesis of everythng they wanted. It was also that such a bold experiment of
recreating the ideals of Islam could ever be achieved in a country where Muslims were
in the minority. At the time, much f the Islamic world was under European colonial
rule, ad realizing the promise of Islam required country -or at least a state within
India where Muslims would have the opportunity t live according to the highest ethical
ideals nd best practices of their faith.
When Iqbal died in 1938 -my father was one of the many who attended his
funeral -it was let to the lawyerpolitician Mhammad Ali Jinnah to crete that
country.
Iqbal was an idealist but he offered concrete guidance to Muslims about how to
live a life grounded in the integrated vision of the Quran. Jinnah also combined idealism
with pragmatism. Somewhat forma and fastidious, and a little aoof and imperious of
manner, [his calm huteur masks a nave and eager humanity, an intuition quick and
tender, a humour ga and winning; the obvious sanity and serenity of his worldly
wisdom disguise a sh and splendid idealism,' wrote Sarojini Naidu, the rst woman to
become president of the Congress Party. Jinnah had originally been a member of the
Indian Congress Party and an ambassador of Hind-Muslim understanding, committed
to a uited India. Yet he had fallen out with Mohandas Gandhi; when the slamic
Caliphte nally collapsed in Turke ater the First World War, it was Gandhi who led
the protests for its restoration, seeig in this a way of challengig the British. Jinnah
opposed the movemet. He also disliked Congress eader Jawaharal Nehru, who he felt
had used his closeess to Britan's Viceroy of India, Lois Mountbatten, to
outmanoeuvre India's Muslims in their ght for political power. Mountbatten in turn
had no patience for the legal constitutional niceties ut forward by Jinnah to seek special
electorates to safeguard the interests of the Muslims. Mountbatte's wife, Edwia, was
so close to Nehru that many Pakistanis afterwards believed they hd had an affair, which
turned British policy in favour of the Hindus.
Muhammad Ai Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru Mohandas Gandhi and Cngress
member Maulana Abl Kalam Azad, a Muslim leader of the Indian National Cngress
who laer became edcation minister in India's government, were four giants of the
indepedence movement -even if they had their own idea of what freedom meant for
the people of India. Even Gandhi ad Jinnah, desite their differences, held views in
common; both believed that their new countries were not secular ones but ones i which
religio would play a important role. Gandhi said, Those who say religion has othing
to do with politics d not know what religion is,' as he thought that politics without
religio would be immoral; while Jinah, some years later in a speech to the State Bank
of Pakstan in 1948, reiterated that We must present to the world an ecnomic
system based on the true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We
will thereby be fullling our mission as Muslims.' Both Jinnah and Gandhi belieed that
it was the compassion preached by every religion that could become a counterweight to
materialism.
AntiBritish unity fractured after the Khilafat movement, ad from the late 1920s
political battles within the Congress led to unrealistic demands being made of the
Muslim organizations. This intransigence meant that Hindu revivalists were left with
the greater part of the blame for the failure to reach some form of Hindu-Muslim
agreement,' observed Professor Fracis Robinson. Jinnah no longer believed Muslims
would be safe in a united India.
At a meeting of the Muslim League in Lahre in March 1940, Jinnah added his
voice t a call for the creation of two states, one for Hindus, the other for Muslims: It is
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extremely difcult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature
of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word but are in
fact dierent and disinct social orders and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims
can ever evolve a cmmon nationality he declared. The Hindus and Muslims
belong to two differet religious phiosophies social customs littrateurs. They neither
intermrry nor interdie together and indeed they belong to two different civilizations
which are based mainy on conicting ideas and coceptions. Their aspect on life and of
life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration
from different sources of history. They have dierent epics different heroes and
differet episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and likewise their
victories and defeats overlap. To yke together two such nation under a single state
one as a numerical minority and the ther as a majority must lead to growing discontent
and nal destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a
state.' t this time democracy was still evolving in the world and people did not believe
that it could accommodate different religions and ethnic groups.
In what is known as the Lahore Resolution the meeting rejected the concept of a
united ndia on the grounds of growing intercommunal violence and demanded that
the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority as in the NorthWestern and
Eastern zones of India should be gruped to constitute independent states in which the
constitent units shall be autonomos and sovereign'. Seven years later Pakistan was
born athough it was as Jinnah complained a motheaten state' with far less territory
than its supporters had envisaged. It was created in two wings West and East Pakistan
separated by 1000 mles of Indian territory. The geat provinces of Punjab and Bengal
had been split apart and at least oe million peole died in the tide of migration as
Muslims moved into Pakistan and indus and Sikhs ed to India. I had an uncle in the
Pakistani army who was protecting the Punjab border crossing a the time. He always
said that the bloodshed he saw durig those six weeks was worse than anything he had
seen in four years of ghting against the Japanese on the Burmese Front in the Second
World War. He was appalled by the butchery from which not even women or children
were sared. Estimates of the numbers who died range from 200000 to oer one
million. More than 1 million were made homeles by the act of Partition and had to
travel lng distances to settle in new parts of the contry and vast refugee camps sprang
up as a result. Families and communities were devastated as those widowed and
orphaned in the slaughter had to take what was let of their belongings on a voyge to a
new prt of the coutry where they would be nknown and -often -unwanted.
Margaret BourkeWhite the American photogapher and the rst femae war
correspondent called Partition a massive exercise in human misey'.
he experience for individuals in the accounts I heard and read was
heartbreaking. A sixteenyearold by joined the Pakistani army and was based on the
border: There were trocities committed by all sides -Hindus Sikhs and Mulims. I
saw peple arriving on the trains that had been mtilated wome who had bee raped
and children who had been traumatized. I remember thinking at the time: "Is this what
freedom means? I had three uncles who lived in Simla at the time. Amid the chaos we
had lost contact with them. We never found them.' Amid the hrror there were often
stories of Muslims concealed from their wouldbe attackers by their Hindu neighbours
or the ame tale but told by Hindu survivors. One such from Jhang in west Punjab
rememered Mr Qureshi' who helped several Hindu families reach the border only to
be murdered as a nobeliever' by his fellowMuslims for having saved them.
he madness that took place was exactly that -a madness. No one anticipated or
dreamt that such things would happen and certaily no one expected the violence to
reach such heights. Was it a reactin to the end f British rule a release of entup
frustrations after the decades of humiliation? It suited the British for there to be division
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betwee the peoples of India and they actively fostered this as an incoming viceroy the
Earl of Elgin was iformed in 1861: We have maintained or power in Idia by
playing off one party against the other and we must continue to do so.' The haste with
which the plan for Partition was implemented certainly contributed towards the hostile
atmosphere that created such mayhem and the British were very much responsible for
setting this timetable.
However the Muslim political leaders virtually against al odds and in te face
of intense oppositio from India's dominant Congress Part had achieved the
impossible. They had created a new country. Though we were in dire straits in the early
years the revolutionary zeal that gave birth to Pakistan carried us through.
Democracy thugh never had an opportunity to ourish in Pakistan as Jinnah
died i September 1948 leaving s rudderless. In an era dominated by the great
superpwers of the USA and the Soviet Union Pakistan sided with the US but een this
was to prove troublesome. Our rst prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan died i 1951
assassiated in Rawalpindi (in the same park where many years later in 2007 former
prime minister Benazir Bhutto wold also be killed). He was killed by an Afghan
opposed to the settlement that had let Kashmir divided a man who felt Pakistan should
be ghing to take it back. Many at te time saw mre sinister sigs in his murder amid
rumours of American pressure on Pakistan in relation to the access to Soviet airspace
Pakistan could provie. The relatioship Pakistan has had with America as a nation
although not perhaps with its government since then has never been a satisfactory one
and after 9/11 it only worsened -but more of that later.
While India spent the early years of its independence with the stability provided
by its rst prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru -who remained in oice until his death in
1964 -we began a slow slide into alternating military and civilian rule which never
allowed the political institutions to mature. We had other problems too in part because
of the ivision between the Pakistani elite and the masses. The idea of Pakistan had been
conceied within a uited India and found its major intellectual wellspring in what is
today the northern Idian province of Uttar Pradesh; the epicentre of the Pakistan
movement was in areas that did not eventually become part of Pakistan. Later various
ethnic groups from the Bengalis of East Pakistan to the Baluch in the deserts running
into Iran to the Pashtn in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan would nd reasons to
rebel against the state often wit disastrous consequences. Since Pakistan and
especially its army was dominated y Punjabis these different ethnic groups felt they
were denied both their economic and democratic rights and sooner or later all took up
arms against the state. We also bega our life as a country at war ghting India ver the
territory of Kashmir i 1947-1948 and the festering dispute since then has helped give
the army (and by default the majority Punjab element within it a disproportinately
powerfl role in Pakistan. Yet in the optimism and ervour of those early years I believe
we might have overcome all those difculties had we been able to nd a political
system capable of implementing the egalitarian democratic and ethical ideals of Islam
that had inspired the creation of Pakistan.
Instead the Britishtrained bueaucrats had a low opinion of democracy -at least
as far as Pakistan was concerned. Tey had been educated in a system that had taught
them t look upon the masses with contempt and copying the former colonial rulers
had inherited a mindset that the naties were not to be trusted. Without leaders with the
vision f Iqbal or the stature of Jinah or for that matter of Nehru whose long tenure
helped bed down Indian democracy we were condemned to slide back into the kind of
discree authoritarian rule which marked the British Raj. At the rst opportunity the
militarcivilian bureaucracy stalled the democratic process. Pakstan did not cme up
with a full constitutio until 1956 because the West Pakistan rulig elite did not want to
give the Bengalis an equal share in power. Given that the population of East Pakistan
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was larger than that f West Paistan, to deprive the latter of their right to a equal
share, experiments like the one unt system' (where the whole of West Pakistan was
treated as one province) were intoduced. This helped sow he seeds of engali
resentment, and eventually led to the breakup of the country.
he 1956 constitution was arogated by the commanderinchief of the army,
General Ayub Khan, who took over the country i 1958 and anounced a presidential
form of government. He remained i power for ten years before he was forced t resign
amid ppular unrest and was replaced by another military man, General Yahya Khan.
Under Ayub Khan, Pakistan developed and changed -he introduced the Muslim Family
Laws, which modernized some aspects of laws regarding marriage -but his efforts in
agriculure and industry beneted the few, not the many. More importantly, he did not
believe in democracy so politically the country stagnated. Discontent in East Pakistan
began to grow as the Bengali peple, politically and economically excluded, had
insignicant represenation within the ruling elite. The creation of Bangladesh n 1971
was a direct consequence of this prlonged military rule, along with the reluctance of
the ruling classes of West Pakistan to treat East Pakistan as an equal. Paradoically,
economically the country passed through a golden period. Our growth rate was the
highest in our history, though the majority of the population was excluded frm the
fruits of this economic boom. Administratively the country was well run -alog with
contempt for the natves, the Britih had also bequeathed us a reasonably ecient
bureaucracy. From m vantage point as a child in Lahore, and indeed as I have been told
later by my parents, the optimism which had accompanied the birth of Pakistan srvived
and even ourished in this early perid of military rule. It helped f course that we were
living in Punjab, the most powerful province in Paistan, where we had little reason to
suspect the many dangerous undercurrents building up in our country.
Pakistan was ve years old when I was born. As a child in a comfortably off
family in Lahore, I felt only the quiet optimism of a country hopefl for its future. It was
an idyllic childhood, with the freedom of plenty of space in which to play and the
securit provided by te Pakistani extendedfamily system. In Zaman Park where I grew
up we were surrounded by ploughed elds and open spaces; there were few houes and
everyoe who lived there was famiy, so it was more like being on a farm. The rst
house in Zaman Park had been built by my maternal grandfather's brother -whose
name was Ahmad Zaman. At Partiion in 1947 my grandfathers family also moved
there. I the hot summer aternoons I would go out with my air gn to shoot pigeons or
to swim in the canal, and in the evenings play cricket with my cousins. There was no
such thing as organizing play dates.
would be out till dark -my mother did not worry,
she always knew I was with family. For fresh mil every house had a cow or a water
buffalo.
oday, Zaman Park is in the centre of Lahore, so fast has the city spread i every
directin. All that is left of those green and open elds of my childhood is a small park.
There are so many houses that people do not know each other as they once did.
Although boys still swim in the canal, it is now dirty and polluted. Lahore's water,
which used to be deicious, has become so contaminated it ha to be boiled before
drinking. I used to go to a school friend's farm tha was barely te miles out of Lahore
and there at the age of fourteen I used a shotgun fr the rst time and bagged furteen
partridges. It was the most thrilling thing I had ever done. My friend's farm is nw part
of a suburb of Lahore and has been transformed from a place of wldlife and green elds
into a concrete jungle Today in the entire province of Punjab there are probably only a
handfu of reserved areas where one gun can shoot ourteen partriges.
My mother wold make us children go to see our maternal grandmother with our
cousins every day for half an hour. These evening with her were most enjoyable. She
would know everythig that was goig on in our lives. In fact she would get involved in
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all our problems and we would tell her things that even our parents would not know.
The loe that my grandmother received from all her children ad grandchildren must
have been the reason why all her mental faculties were fully intact when she died at the
age of a hundred. She might have lived longer, but when my mther died in 1985 she
simply could not get over the loss, my mother being her yougest child. It almost
seemed as if she decided it was time for her to g. She refused to get out of bed and
three months after my mother's death she passed away.
In Pakistan, family is everything. Islam stregthens the family system by making
the role of the mother sacred. In the words of the oly Prophet (BUH), Paraise lies
under the feet of the mother.' And the greatest inuence on my life was my mother.
There were ve of us and I was the only son. She was a complete mother, happy to
sacrice all her pleasres for her family. I remember I would hide injuries from her just
so as not to pain her. Once when I was eight years old my cousins and I were raiding
someoe's mulber garden. Suddely the gardener came. While trying to jump from
the tree, I slipped and fell on a branch. The sharp stick pierced a couple of inches in my
thigh, lmost rupturing my main artery. When I was taken home I refused to show the
wound to my mother because I could not bear to see her suffer. So great was my ove for
her that I hated to do anything that would anny her. This is how love imposes
discipline. She would make me do my homework every day but I was so singleminded
about sport that I wold be uninterested in studies. It was only her efforts that kept me
going. However, apart from my homework my mother would ever push me to do
anything ifI didn't wnt to do it.
s its name suggests, there is a park in the middle of Zaman Park, where all us
cousins -ranging from children to adults in their twenties -wuld play cricket and
hockey. Matches would be played with such aggression that one year visiting ockey
teams refused to play us. My passion for cricket, along with partridge shooting,
developed thanks to my uncles and cousins. My mother's family was passionate about
cricket. I was inspired to become a test cricketer at the age of nine, when I saw my older
cousin Javed Burki score a century against England at what is now the Gadaf sadium
in Lahre. I used to treat my aunts and uncles' houses as my wn, as all social life
revolved around the family, with my grandfather's and his brother's houses as the focal
points. At family dinners everyone would be there, rom babies to the oldest members of
the family. The rules of etiquette were clearly dened. Age was to be respected. The
older the family memer, the more respect they wee accorded. When the elders spoke,
all the younger members listened attentively. n turn, the elders took personal
responsibility for all te children. Hence a member of the younger generation culd be
disciplined by any elder, not just their parents. Any rudeness to an elder meant
disapproval from all the senior members of the amily. Unfortnately, amongst the
westerized elite in Pakistan the respect for age is diminishing. Some, wo are
uncritically adopting Western culture, almost consider a lack of respect for age a sign of
progress. (I remember how odd I found it when my tutor at Oxford asked me to call him
by his irst name. It was even more awkward for me when friends' parents would also
insist that I did the same.)
Our value system was also moulded by the attitudes of the elders. The younger
members would careflly observe what was approed and what was condemned by the
seniors It was never the fear of being punished that made all of us follow family
etiquette, but the fear of everyone's disapproval. Moral standards were high because
immorlity would hae meant being ostracized. The greatest fear was to give a bad
name t the family. Eerthing depeded upon the eputation of a family, from aranged
marriages to social acceptability. Any slight by an outsider on the character of a family
member would mean an immediate closing of ranks by a united fmily front. It lso put
immense responsibiliy on family members to conform to certain moral and ethical
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standards. When I became a successful test cricketer and gave interviews to the press I
would e extremely conscious of what I was saying as I constantly worried about how
my extended family would react to my comments.
Like most Muslim children I grew up with religion. My mother used to tell us
bedtime stories each one with a moral message -about Moses and the arrogant
Pharao Joseph and his treacherous brothers and of course about the life of the Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH). We were als taught about Jesus considered in Islam o be a
messenger of God like Muhammad (PBUH). Muslims believe that God had previously
revealed His message for mankind to the Prophets of the Jews ad Christians but that
Muhammad (PBUH) perfected the religion rst revealed to braham. Muhammad
(PBUH) is seen as the seal of the prphecy' -the last in the series of Prophets God sent
to the orld. Islam recognizes the teachings of the ewish Torah and the Christian Bible
and while it teaches tat Jews and Christians have in some areas strayed from the true
path it acknowledges them as People of the Book'. Every night before going to sleep
my mother would make us say our prayers and tell me stories about the Prophet
(PBUH). There was oe particular story my mother would tell me an old Mecca came
before the Prophet (PBUH) and said to him The only reason I want to become a
Muslim is because all my clan has converted to Islam but I am oo old to chage my
habits. Tell me one thing I can do s that I can become a Muslim but keep my habits.
The Prphet (PBUH) replied Tell the truth that is the one thing you need to be a
Muslim. This story appealed to me as a boy because I too found the rituals to be
cumbersome. Besides I could never lie to my mother as she would always catch me out
simply by looking at my face.
My mother als told me how her father hmad Hasan Khan modelled himself
on the Prophet (PBUH) and would tell me stories about how whatever he did he would
always tell us This is what the Prophet (PBUH) did' -even to the point of liking honey
and dates.
he concept of heaven and hell was made clear to me ever since I can remember.
The only problem was that I could ot understand heaven. My por mother frequently
had to answer questios like -would I be able to play cricket in heaven? nd would I be
able to shoot?
When I was seen years old a
mulvi
(Islamic scholar) came to teach me and my
sisters the Quran in rabic. In school we had a religious knowledge class and or daily
assembly started with a verse of the Quran. Every Friday I went with my father to the
mosque. On Eids the two biggest festivals of the Muslim caledar all the males of
Zaman Park young ad old would go to the shrine of the great sixteenthcentury Su
saint Mian Mir Sahib. Mian Mir is also a legendary gure for Sikhs who come o pray
at his srine in Lahore. Our family gaveyard is outside the shrine -so after Eid prayers
we wold go to our relatives' graves and pray for teir departed suls. Such shries are
common in the subcotinent where Islam was spread from the ninth century onwards in
large part through the Sus. Their egalitarian message and doctrine of love peace and
compassion appealed to the poor and dispossessed. The Sus' tolerance o other
religios and cultures meant that as they made their way through what became the
Islamic world the religion they spread blended with local customs to become a kind of
populist Islam. Their followers made shrines of their graves which became places of
pilgrimage. Rich and poor alike still ock to these shrines to pra and make offerings.
Once a year usually n the anniversary of the sain's death there is an
urs
(a festival)
when prayers are accompanied by devotional dancig and singing and the distribtion of
food. This is the kind of Islam that he austere Wahhabi branch which has inenced
the Talban opposes.
My parents were both easyging Muslims ho always taught us that llah was
the mst benecent and the most merciful'. We were never forced to read our prayers
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or fast. At Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, it was we
childre who would coose to compete with each other to keep or fasts. I kept my rst
fast around the age of nine and was rewarded with presents from my father and mother.
If there was anything said against Islam, both my parents would defend it vigorosly.
My mother's extended family was originally from the Burki Pashtun tribe in
Kaniguram, the biggest town in South Waziristan, which rests in a fertile valley close to
the Afghan border in the tribal areas. She instilled in me a pride that the Pashtns had
never been subjugated and had constantly fought te British. Her family had eded up
living in twelve fortresses, known as
bsti Pthn
near the tow of Jalandhar (where
she tok much pride in saying my grandfather had hosted Jinnah), southeast of
Amritsar, only forty miles or so awa from Lahore ut in what became India. The whole
family had emigrated to Lahore at Partition, althugh none of them had been killed.
When they moved out in a convoy the Sikh gangs who were massacring the Muslims in
Punjab believed -wrngly -that they were armed, and let them lone.
My father's family were als Pashtuns (also known as Pathans), but from the
Niazi tibe, which had come to India with invading Afghan tribes around the teenth
century. Much of his family still lied in Mianwali (a town on he river Indus on the
border with Khyber akhtunkhwa, formerly known as the NorthWest Frontier) and
family ties are still very strong there. In time amongst the Burkis (my mother's tribe),
the family system will begin to weaken, and my children will only know their rst
cousins, but in Mianwali even third cousins know each other -I frequently meet Niazis
who will tell me how they are related to me through my greatgrandfather. Village
communities have strnger family systems than urban ones.
In a place like Mianwali people oten operate as part of a family group of maybe
a hunded people. There is a netwrk of siblings and rst, secnd and third cousins.
Everything is shared -salaries, responsibilities, riendships, eemies, hardshps and
successes. When people from rural areas go to look for jobs in the cities, the rst people
they contact are their relatives. If there are none, then they seek out people from their
village or tribe. Millins of people have been dispaced by ghtig or oods in recent
years, but you do not see hordes of ungry, homeless people sleeping on the streets of
Pakistani cities. Man have been absorbed by the family and tribal network -people
with little have taken in, fed, clothed and housed eople with still less than them. All
this of course helps free the countr's rulers and elite from beaing the burde of so
many isplaced people, let alone the responsibilit of paying taxes and implementing
any kid of effective welfare system. As I have so oten observed in Pakistan, the poor
have taken the blow fr the rich.
rowing up in Lahore, I became aware of two strong prejuices. One was against
colonialism. This, according to my mother and father, was the ultimate humiliatin for a
people. At bedtime, my mother would tell me stories of resistance to the British, about
heroes like Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore' , who died defending his city when he was
attacked by three armies, the British, the Nizam of Hyderabad's and the Marathas', in
1805. t the same time, she would contemptuousl relate the story of the surreder of
the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafa, who died in 1862 n captivity in Burma.
She wuld quote the Tipu Sultan's remark, The day of a lion is etter than a thousand
of a jackal. '
he general thinking in the Indian subcotinent is that the greatest damage
inicted by colonialism was materil. There is no doubt the subcontinent did sffer in
such a way. In the 1700s the DP of India was almost 25 per cent of the world's
economy. By the time the British eft it was around 2 per cent. The British lawyer
Cornelius Walford estimated in 1879 that there had been thirtyfour famines in the
previos century or so of British rule -but only seventeen n the preceding two
thousad years. M.
].
Akbar writes The Mughal response to famine had been good
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governance: embargo on food exprt antispeculation regulation tax relief ad free
kitchens. If any merchant shortchanged a peasant during a famine the punishment was
an equivalent weight in esh from his body. That kept hoarding dwn.' Millions died in
these catastrophes. materialist lbby feels that British rule gave India a strong
administrative system along with an infrastructure of roads and railways. Up to a point
this is true as well. In my opinion the greatest damage done to the people of the Indian
subconinent was in te humiliation of slavery an the consequet loss of selfesteem.
The inferiority complex that is ingraned in a conqered nation results in its imitation of
some of the worst aspects of the coquerors while at the same time neglecting ts own
great traditions. It destroys originaliy as the occupied people strive only to imiate the
occupiers. Furthermore this slavish mimicry wrecks any sense of leadership in te elite
-the people with the most expensive education in the country. One of Iqbal's great
qualities was that he rovided such new and origial thought despite having lived his
entire lfe under colonial rule. In a wellknown verse he told his son:
My way is not ne of being wealthy but of
fqiri
[spiritual poverty
Yor
khudi
[selfhod do not sell in poverty make a name
he legacy of colonialism led to our other prejudice agains India. We as a nation
felt we had been cheated out of Kashmir by the proIndian last Viceroy of India Lord
Louis Mountbatten. Hatred against our neighbou in Punjab especially reaced its
height in the 1950s and 1960s since so many Muslims had migrated from East Punjab at
Partition in 1947 and hardly a family had not lost loved ones in the bloody massacres
during the border crossing. It was oly later when I toured India playing cricket that I
realized how much we have in common and lost this prejudice.
Islam we were told was tolerant and it had spread in the sbcontinent not by the
force o arms but by the great Su saints such as Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti (known as
Gharib Nawaz· the benefactor of the poor who lived in north India in the late twelfth
and early thirteenth centuries) who won people oer with their humanitarian message.
Sus were held in such esteem that in 1303 when a Mongol army under Targhi laid
seige t Delhi Sulta lauddin Khilji appealed t the great Su saint Nazam Uddin
uliya for help. Since both my parents had Hind and Sikh friends from schol and
college before indepedence we were never taugh to hate people from other religions.
There was no militat fundamentalism in those days and those few who culd be
classied as religious bigots were not taken seriusly. We were told however that
Islam was the superor religion sice the Qura had been dictated to the rophet
(PBUH) by God himself whereas the other holy boks had been written by ma and so
human faults had slipped in. Muhammad (PBUH) was unlettered. He therefore had to
ask other people to write down the messages he ad received fom God. part from
being a book of wisdom the Quran is still considered the greatest work of rabic
literatue and the beauty of its words has converted many inclding the great caliph
Umar. One of the Meccans most opposed to the new religion being preached by
Muhammad (PBUH) Umar was at the forefront of plans to assassinate the Prophet
(PBUH). But accordig to Muslim radition whe he heard his sister recite frm the
Book his heart softened he wept and Islam entered into him. He went on to become one
of Muhammad's (PBH) main comanions inheriting leadership of the Muslims after
his deah. The only time I truly undestood what the caliph might ave experienced was
when I took my sons once to the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad for Friday praers.
visiting imam from Egypt was deliering the
khutb
the sermo. Often you st there
during he sermon an become lost i your own thoughts because you cannot understand
the rabic. But when the imam started reciting I was immediately struck by the sound
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that getly lled the whole mosque. Looking aroud I saw that as his voice resunded
through the building it was having the same effect on other worshippers. It was like
listening to a classical symphony. It gave me goose bumps. I have never heard aything
like it before or since not even in the two great msques of the hly cities of Mecca or
Medina.
Islam is not just a religion to be practised pivately by indviduals but a way of
life. The Quran lays out clear rules for how a sociey should be gverned and gidance
on how people should behave. I was taught it was also a forgiing religion that laid
special emphasis on jstice and compassion.
here were many challenges most of all the incendiary issue of Kashmir. In
1965 when I was just thirteen war broke out for the second time since indepenence. I
will never forget ths period; late one evening we started hearing the sound of
bombardment and the windows began to shake. From our rooftp we caught sight of
the ashes of explosins along the border. I remember the anxious faces of my arents
as the bombardment continued all night. The Indian army was advancing twards
Lahore There were rumours that Indian paratroopers might land in the city and
patriotic fever grippe the country. The elders of Zaman Park were called to my ncle's
house for a kind of cuncil of war. t was decided that my older cousins shoul group
together in a civil defence force to efend Zaman ark. I was itching to be part of this
force ad armed with the .22 rie tat my father had just given me for my birthday I
marched out to join them only to be sent back and told I was too young. I cursed myself
for not being old enogh to join in. long with my mother and sisters I was set away
from the city for my safety. s we approached Pindi I remember seeing ope areas
outside the city swarming with warriors from the tribal areas volnteering to assist the
army. Later I found out that my overzealous cousis almost ambshed shot and killed
two inocent people mistaking them for Indian paratroopers. Everyone in the country
was united in a desire to defeat the enemy. I don' t think Pakistan had ever winessed
such uity. The nearest thing to it was perhaps whe we won the World Cup in 1992.
s I grew up developed a passion not oly for my contry but also for the
Pakistani countryside. Every summer I would go with my parents and sisters to he hill
stations to escape the oppressive heat of Punjab. I can still remember the thrill I felt as
the car slowly ascened the mountain road and the air cooled. Only those who have
experienced the intense heat of the Punjab summer can understand such relief. There
was no air conditioning in those days. We had picnics and walks in the forest saw
monkes jackals porcupines and a huge variety of birds. Occasioally we even saw the
tracks f a leopard. Once when I was about ve years old duing a trip to the hill
station Doonga ali over two hundred miles to the northwest of Lahore a leopard
killed a donkey right utside our rest house in the middle of the ight. I can still recall
how fascinated I was by the poor dnkey's partially eaten corpse. In the winter I went
partridge shooting with my uncle and male cousins in the Salt Range a low muntain
range about two and a half hours' drive west of Lahore. Some f my best childhood
memores are of these trips. We stayed in colonial rest houses in the wilderness ate
sumptuous picnic lunches and returned in the evenig to relax arond a log re. The Salt
Range used to be teeming with wildlife: wolves leopards hyenas jackals foxes deer
and wild sheep. There are fewer animals now but the Salt Range remains my favourite
place fr shooting partridge because of its beautiful weather in the winter and hilly
terrain. My mother also loved wildlife and the moutains and she uelled my passion by
telling me stories from her childhood. Some were set in the Indian hill stations of Simla
the summer capital of the British Ra and the beauiful Himalaya station of Dahousie
where she would holiday with her parents. Like most small boys was intrigued by the
more gisly tales. I paticularly liked the one about how her dog was taken by a leopard
while her father was posted at Skaser in the Salt Range. I also loed the family legend
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on my father's side about how my great uncle from Mianwali, a policeman, had fought
with a eopard that had been terrorizng the local villagers and kiled it with the bayonet
of his gun, then spent six months in hospital from the mauling he received e was
given the highest awad the police culd bestow.
he 1965 war over Kashmir ended in seventeen days, but it let the military
dictator President Ayub Khan in a vulnerable state, allowing room for democratic
developments as his grip on power slipped, leading to the rise of a new political party -
the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) , under its leader Zulkar Ai Bhutto. Bhutto had
studied at university n California and Oxford before he became a lawyer in London,
and he represented Pakistan at the United Nations efore being appointed the cuntry's
foreign minister in 1962 when he was only thirtyfur. After the war he fell out with the
president and left government to frm the PPP. Bhutto, like s many who come to
power n Pakistan, was seen at rst as someone who could lead us back to democracy -
but later was to prove the opposite.
ere was a man who understood history, oe with an exceptional mind, highly
educated and charismatic -Bhutto could have changed Pakistan completely. He was a
true Pakistani nationalist, he formed the rst national grassroots political party in
Pakistan. However, he had a fatal aw in his character that undermined all that he could
have achieved -his feudal mindset couldn't tlerate dissent, and as a result his
government became known for its brutality in victimizing opponets.
But his ideas, which he expressed in his 1967 book
The Myth of Indeedene
carried great weight -and still do. It is a great shame that he himself could not lie up to
all of his words. He called the story of all the civlizations of the world, from ancient
Egypt to the British and French empires, the story of greed uging domination and
collidig with the struggle for eqality'. And he noted that Domination has been
justied as "the survival of the ttest; it has been given the name of the White Man's
Burde today that ancient struggle has been epitomized in the creed of democracy
against dictatorship.' And most presciently he remarked that Twenty years of
indepedence have reealed to the people of Pakistan and India the sharp differece that
really exists between independence and sovereign equality. This was the begining of
neocolonialism. It n longer became necessary to control the destinies of smaller
countries by any jurisdiction over their territories.'
(The British had developed neocolonialism in India in the previous century, in
the Pricely States -of which there were well over ve hundred -where they didn't
have to rule directly as they had pupet rulers to do their bidding. Today in Pakistan,
with drne attacks and raids in our cities, our sovereign is compromised by those who
are puppets of the US and have followed US diktats against the interests of the people of
Pakistan. It is this aspect of neoclonialism that is breeding extremism in Pakistan
today.)
Back then I was still young, a teenager, and in the late 1960s I trekked in the
Karakoram, the moutain range spanning the brders between Pakistan, India and
China. Some of my favourite holidays have been spent there. It is one of the best places
for trekking in the wrld, with the greatest number of peaks over 24,000 feet (7,300
metres) including K2, the secondhighest mountain on earth. It really is the roof of the
world; I have never seen such natural beauty anwhere in the world as in the Domel
valley at 9,000 feet, where the army holds its sking competitios in the winter. The
valley oor was covered in red and white owers and crossed by a crystalclear stream.
It seemed to be the picture of paradise and every mrning I was there I had to tell myself
I wasn't dreaming. The people in this area of Pakistan were warm and friendly,
untainted by tourism.
On one trip oe of our two jeeps broke down on the Kaakoram Highway. A
young man passing by offered to take us to his village for the night. We zigzagged up a
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dirt track for about forty minutes before ending up in a tiny villge on the edge of an
emeraldcoloured lake and surrounded by thick pine forest. The villagers served us
delicios food includng the best mshrooms I have ever tasted. There was a full moon
and we sat all night by the lake listening to the wind blowing through the pines.
Pakistan's Northern reas are almost twice the sie of Switzerland. Who knows how
many sch idyllic places still exist there? We came across similar hospitality in unza a
stunningly beautiful valley supposedly the inspiration behind he mythical land of
ShangrLa; when I st went there in 1967 locals ntouched by materialism greeted us
with apricots and peaches inviting s to stay in their houses. mongst the endangered
species to be found i the Karakoram is the secretive snow leopard with its distinctive
greygreen eyes and I remember seeing snow leopard cubs foud by a shepherd and
presented as a gift for the Mir of Nagar the ruler of what was until 1974 still a princely
state located in the noth of GilgitBltistan the most northerly pont of Pakistan.
unza used to be so remote i could only be reached via a terrifying journey up
hairpin bends overlooking thousandfoot drops in ld Willys Secnd World Wa jeeps.
Every so oten if you dared to look down you wuld see the wreckage of a jeep that
hadn't made it. Then came the Karakoram ighway sometimes known as the ninth
wonder of the world because of its elevation the highest in the world for a paved road
and because of the sheer difculty of building it. It took the Pakistanis and the Chinese
twenty years to nish and cost the lives of almost nine hundred construction workers.
The Krakoram is still by far the mst beautiful mountain wilderness in the world and
the peple are still friendly but progress' has taken its toll. Population explosion
massive deforestation by the timber maa and package tours are quietly threatenng this
paradise. Sadly the modern world as brought uwelcome chages to many parts of
Pakistan.
mong those changes is the rapid increase in the populaton which has grown
from 40 million in 1947 to 180 mllion by 2011 The beauty and wilderness of our
country is fast disappearing but it was already evident in the 1950s and 1960s tat this
is only one of the problems that would bedevil Paistan. These problems bega in the
very fabric of the state itself born out of our slaish adherence to the traditins and
institutons of the departing British. Far from shaking off colonialism our rulig elite
slipped into its shoes The more a Pakistani aped the British the higher up the social
ladder he was consiered to be. I the Gymkhaa and the Pujab Club in Lahore
Pakistanis pretended o be English. Everyone spoke English inclding the waiters; the
men dressed in suits we the members' childre watched English lms while the
grownps danced to Western music on a Saturday night. Indeed some Pakistanis even
spoke rdu with an English accent and ate curry nd chapattis with a fork rather than
with their hands. While a native ha to struggle to get membership of these clubs any
European could simply walk in -the waiters would not dare question whether he was a
member or not. The Sind Club in Karachi the ultimate refuge of the selfloathing brown
sahib did not allow itself to be contaminated with any native Pakistani symbols.
Established by the British in 1871 t resisted eve Pakistani national dress baning it
until 1974.
he small westernized elite comprised mainly of civilian bureaucrats and
military men also inerited the colnial contemp for the natives. Far from trying to
implement Iqbal's vision they took advantage of a colonial system meant to control the
people. ll the colonial institutions were let intac and as a result the only change for
ordinary Pakistanis was that they had a new set of rulers the brown sahib instead of the
gor
(white) sahib. Often these peple were eve more arrogat in dealing with the
masses than the coloialists just as slave foremen were sometimes more brutal to the
slaves han their masers were. ( practice that cntinues to this day as we'll see in
Chapte Eight with the way Pakistani security forces acted in their treatment of
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Afghas.) Almost all he bureaucrats came from the elite Englishanguage schools built
by the British and modelled on their own public schools.
When my father returned afte doing his postgraduate degree at Imperial College
Londo in 1948 he was only the second person from his home town to have become an
Englad returned' ad almost the entire town came to greet him at the railway station.
An England returned' would nd his social status rise dramatically and he coud have
his marriage arranged to a girl well above the stats of his family. Then as even now
marriage advertisements in India often state a preference for a girl with fair or
wheatish' complexio. Centuries of invasions from the northwest meant that the ruling
classes were often faier than those ruled leaving an ingrained colour consciousess on
the Indian psyche. An England retuned' would atomatically become a VIP in Zaman
Park. When any of my older cousins came back after studying at an English university
we wold bombard him with questions about life there. That knowledge aloe gave
them status.
During their time in India the British ha embedded a inferiority complex
amongst the natives with great care. Waiters and attendants were made to wear the
clothes of Mughal army ofcers and the Mughal ristocracy while the ofcers of the
symbols of British power the army the police an the civil servce wore the dress of
the colonials. The Mghal Empire which covered most of the sbcontinent from mid
way through the sixteenth century had begun its decline in the early 1700s. But when
the British East India Company started to establish its power in the subcontinent
halfway through the sixteenth centu the Mughal court still held sway culturally and
politically over much of northern India whose inhaitants -whether Hindu or Mslim -
regarded its splendour and culture with awe and its emperor as the embodiment of
political and religious power. For half a century mny of the early colonialists aped the
customs of the court. They spoke Farsi wore the clothing of the Mughal aristocracy
gave up beef and pork and married local women sometimes even taking several wives.
The British historian William Dalrymple has done much to chronicle the chnge in
attitudes as between the mideighteenth and the midnineteenth century the British took
on and defeated all their military rivals in South Asia. With the French the Siraj ud
Daula of Bengal Tipu Sultan of Mysore the Marathas and the Sikhs all vanquished the
British became more condent of their grip over the region and imperial arrogance set
in. Evangelical Christianity also plyed a major part in breeding a culture of British
superiority and a determination to unseat the Mugal emperor ad humiliate the once
great dynasty. As Dalrymple writes in
The Lst Mghl:
No longer were Indias seen
as inheitors of a body of sublime and ancient wisdom as eighteethcentury luminaries
such as Sir William Jones and Warren Hastings had once believed; but instead merely
"poor benighted heathen or even "licentious pagas who it was hoped were eagerly
awaiting conversion.'
India had a decentralized sysem of education before the arrival of the British.
Each village had its own schools supported by revenues generated locally while
colleges and
mdrsss
(religious schools) of higher education were run by educational
trusts or
wq!
boards.
(Wq!
is an Islamic term for an endowment for a charitable
purpose.) When Bengal was conquered by the East India Company in 1757 it was
discovered that 34 per cent of the and generated no taxes becuse it was owned by
various trusts giving free educatio and healthcare. According o a survey by
C.
W.
Leitner in 1850 some of these madrassas were of an extremely high standard -as good
as Oxford and Cambridge. Thanks to the properties owned by the trusts they could
afford o pay handsome salaries to attract highquality teachers. Leitner also srveyed
the Hoshiarpur district in East Punjab and found there was 84 per cent literacy in the
area -when the British let India it was down to 9 per cent. The British abolished the
trusts conscated the
wqf
enowments centralized the edcation system and set
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up elite Englishlanguage schools. Tese were meat to create a class of Indians who, in
the wods of the nineteenthcentury administrator Lord Thomas Macaulay, wuld be
Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in pinions, in mrals, in intellect to
render them by degrees t vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the
population.' Behind their backs, the British used to contemptuosly call these brown
sahibs baboons, later
bbus
-the indi word for father' , only nt so in this cotext.
he impact of he Britishimplemented education system ran far deeper tan the
use of English and a lve of cricket. Rather it had been used by the British for a century
to subjgate the local culture and create a ruling native elite. The British were to few to
dominate India themselves and reled on the acquiescence of a layer of natives to
enforce their rule -a form of collaboration which was one of the most humiliating
aspects of colonialism. I went to a school very much in the English mode, Aitchison
College, the nearest Pakistan had o Eton. Like the majority f my schoolmates, I
considered myself suerior to those students who went to the governmentru Urdu
medium schools. In the Englishmedium schools not only were all the subjects taght in
English, but everyone was required o speak in English. Boys caught speaking i Urdu
during school hours were ned, despite it being the ofcial language of Pakistan.
Our Muslim sciety with its traditions and rituals was left behind wth our
families, and felt discncertingly oldfashioned. The message of our education was that
you had to copy the ways of the superior colonialists to make progress in life. We were
to be transformed int cheap imitatins of English ublic school boys. Our role models
naturaly became Western, whether they were sportsmen, movie idols or pop stars.
Besides, we could not help but notice that the older generation was deeply impressed by
the colnials and their culture no matter how much hey disliked them. It was only much
later that I realized how much our education dislocated our sese of ourselves as a
nation. At the time, I thought more aout playing cricket on Aitchison's beautiful sports
elds. Today our Englishlanguage schools produce Desi Americans' -youg kids
who, though they have never been ot of Pakistan, have not only perfected the American
twang but all the mannerisms (including the tilt f a baseball cap) just by watching
Hollwood lms. While my generation's land of milk and honey was England, today's
youth from the Englishlanguage scools want to get to the United States and ive the
American dream.
When Pakista became independent we should have rid ourselves of these
Englishmedium schools. In other pstcolonial countries such as Singapore, India and
Malaysia they set up one core syllabus for the whole coutry. In Pakisan the
governments allowed this unjust sysem to perpetuate and Englishmedium schools still
import the British syllabus for students studyig GCSEs and Alevels. Students
educated in these schols had a huge advantage over the children f the masses since all
the best jobs, especialy in the prestgious civil service, went to those who spoke good
English. And these bown sahibs i the ruling elite were conditioned to despise their
own clture, and developed a selflathing that stemmed from a ingrained inferiority
complex. To show that one was educated, a stranger would immediately throw English
words into the conversation to establish his credentials. At Aitchison, the more
anglicied a boy was, the more he was admired. We were impressed by English history,
English lms, English teachers, Engish sports, English novels and English clothes. We
laughed at someone who could not speak English properly but it was quite cool t speak
Urdu with lots of English mixed in. We wore Western clothes an would feel awkward
in
shlwr
except on ethnic occasions like Eid.
When Ijoined the Lahore cricet team at the age of sixteen, I found that because I
came from an Englishmedium schol I could barely communicate with the majrity of
the team as they had been to Urdumedium schoos. Most of the boys would gang up
and make fun of me.
felt like an otsider, with this huge educatonal and cultural gap
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betwee us wider even than that found in the British class system. Their jokes their
humour the lms they liked their vews of the wold were all different to mine. It was
then that I began to realize how much resentment there was amogst those from Urdu
schools towards those from the English ones. I also realized why despite having the
best sports facilities at Aitchison its boys could never compete with those from poor
schools. The latter wee much tougher and had a far greater hunge to succeed. Similarly
in hockey and squash (other sports that Pakistan has excelled in iternationally) all the
stars came from the rdu schools. owever I discovered that they were quick to learn
that the way up the social ladder was to acquire Western mannerisms. So most of the
cricketers loved shopping for English clothes and learning the English laguage
preferaly with an English accent. Some of the cricketers only started drinking alcohol
(which was banned in 1977) because it was a Wesern and hence upperclass ting to
do.
ational dress was another marker of cultural identity sabotaged by coloialism.
When
was a boy I remember one of my uncles asking a cousin of mine who was
wearing shalwar kameez why he was dressed like a servant. Another time I overheard a
friend of my mother talking about someone beig an upstart because he had only
recently started wearing Weste clothes. It was decades later i the summer of 1988
when I was trekking with a couple of English frieds in the Karakoram that I ecame
conscious of being dressed as a foregner while all the locals were in Pakistani clothes.
It suddenly dawned pon me -here I was a national icon a role model who drew
crowds wherever I went -and yet I was dressed like an outsider. Years late I was
embarrassed by the Pashtun tribesmen on my rst visit to Waziristan who resolutely
insiste on speaking to me in Pashto despite the fact I did not speak much of their
language. They made a point of it to emphasize their pride in their culture; it is only in
the tribal area of Pakistan where people are ercely proud of the fact that they have
never been conquered that they feel no need to borrow from aybody else's culture.
Colonialism only works if the colonizers are covinced of their superiority and the
colonized of their inferiority.
In contrast the legacy of British colonialism is still strong amongst older or
retired army ofcers and bureaucrats the Pakistani military ad bureaucracy being
originally colonial costructs. There is an ingrained inferiority complex. I remember a
serving lieutenantgeeral saying to me: But Imran my dear chap why do you insist
on wearing shalwar kameez when you look so good in a suit?' I am sure a lot of people
who wear Western clothes in Pakistan would like to wear shalwar kameez especially in
the heat of the summer but they just do not have the condence. When I had a ofce
in the cancer hospital I founded in memory of my mother in the early 1990s I ran the
marketng departmen there. I noticed that most of the regular donors were from the
trader class who wore shalwar kameez and decided the hospital marketing team should
also wear Pakistani dress. A couple of months later a member of the team asked
permission to revert to Western sits as he felt that the traders and other people
generally did not give him the same respect if he wore Pakistani clothes. He also felt he
had less condence wearing our national clothes when he visited businessmen' s ofces.
This complex worsened and since Musharraf's regime in the early part of the twenty
rst century and its supercial drive for westernization even political candidates in
Pakistan particularly in Sindh and Punjab also felt the pressure to wear Wester dress.
Many candidates have their publicity photographs taken in jacket and tie because they
feel Western suits make them appear more sophisticated and more educated to the
voters.
Retaining the language or dress of occupiers or colonizers has not been that
unusua throughout history. For instance ater Sicily won independence from the Arabs
in the eleventh century Arabic remained the language of the island's courts for another
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fty years. Yet in Pkistan the cultural anitie of the Englishspeaking elite also
distanced us from our culture and religion. While no one ever cnsidered becoming a
Christian it was natural that most of us started conidering Islam to be backward -just
like ou culture. After all the masses were religios but poor. If any student prayed or
talked about religion or had a beard he was ridiculed as a traditinal Islamic ceric or
scholar a maulvi. Our Western education also laid emphasis on science which based
everything on the premise that what could not be proved did nt exist. This clashed
straight away with religion which wanted us to beieve in the uneen. Moreover since
in the 960s the youth in the West were in rebellion against the older generation and
against religion we too became affected by those attitudes.
By the time I nished schoo I still went for Friday and Eid prayers with my
father and fasted durig Ramadan yet for me -and indeed for mot of my friend -God
was conned to the mosque. Our young impresionable mind were convinced by
English and America lms that Western culture was superior along with its vastly
superior technology. ad we had better understanding of our cultural heritage or our
religio and its histor it might have helped us to resist the lure f the West. Nr could
our preachers counter this great onslaught of coloial culture for they had no Western
education and could ot communicate with us in the language in which we had been
taught. Our cultural separation from them reinforced in our minds the idea that Islam
was backward -I can remember students laughing at preachers with poor Englis.
Even nowaday as the ruling elite despairs of the many young men who have
turned to fundamentalist Islam few grasp how much this great educational divide
exacerbates our troubles. While the quite rightly talk about refrming the madrassas
which have sprung up in their thousands and often offer many por families their only
access to education they rarely lok at the problem from the point of view of the
masses who have little reason to feel an afnity wth an elite wh remain the ineritors
of colnialism representatives of an alien foregn culture. They have nothing in
common with these people and see them as a kind f Trojan horse for the West trying to
destroy our culture. It is through developing wrld elites that a more potent and
permanent invasion i taking place in many counries. Physical colonialism has been
replaced by cultural colonialism. Te writer Titu Burckhardt describes this kind of
dislocaion in his book
Fez ity of Ilm.
Burckhardt spent time i the Morocca city in
the 1930s; when he revisited it twentyve years later he observed:
t the time I rst knew it men who had spent their youth in an ualtered
traditional world were still the heads of families. For many of them the spirit that
had once created the Mosque f Cordova and the Alhambr was nearer and more
real than all the innovations that European ule had brought with it. Since then
however a new generation had arisen one wich from its earliest childhod must
have been blinded by the glare of European might and which in large measure
had attended European schols and henceforth bore within it the sting of an
lmost insuperable contradiction. For how could there e any reconciliation
between the inherited traditional life which despite all its frugalities carried with
it the teasure of an eternal meanig and the mdern European world whic as it
so palably demontrates is a force oriented entirely to his world twards
possesions and enjyments and in every way contemptuous of the sacred These
splendd men of the now dying generation whm I had once known had ndeed
been conquered otwardly but inwardly they remained free; the yunger
generation on the ther hand had gained an outward victory when Mrocco
gained independence some years ago and now ran the grave risk of succumbing
inwardly.
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he jolt came in 1971. In the elections of 1970, the Awami League f East
Pakistan (the party demanding autoomy there) had won a majority in parliament. Yet
Zulkar Ali Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) which had won in
West Pakistan, conniving with the military dictator General Yahya, deprived the Awami
League of East Pakistan of the chance to form a government. The people f East
Pakistan rebelled against what they saw as ther disenfranchisement by the more
powerfl West Pakistan. Yahya Kha, the presiden and army commanderinchief, sent
in the army to suppress the dissent -the same army that had held the rst free elections
on an adult franchise in the rst place. As the troops descended on East Pakistan, Bhutto
returned to Karachi frm Dhaka triumphantly proclaiming that Pakistan had bee saved.
But the result was a terrible war in which thousads of civilians died and millions of
refugees poured into India's West Bengal. I was with the West Pakistani Uder19
cricket team on the last ight out f East Pakistan before the army went in. As we
played the East Pakisan team we culd feel the hstility towards us, not just from the
crowds in Dhaka stadium but from ur sporting opponents too. Te captain of the East
Pakistan team, Ashraful Haque, wh later became a friend of mine, told me at dinner
that evening about the great antagoism felt towards West Pakistan. He told me that
many lke him would want to be part of Pakistan were they to be given their due rights
but as hings stood there was a strong movement for independece. I was shocked to
hear this because we had no idea about the feeligs of the people of East Pakistan,
thanks o total media censorship in West Pakistan. However, it ha never occurred to me
or many others that there was any chance of the country breaking apart. West Pakistan
made a series of bluders which allowed India to subsequently exploit the situation.
India, then led by Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi, invaded East Pakistan in support of
the Begali insurgency. Unlike the 1965 war with India, this tme we were quickly
defeated. Our army signed a humiliating surrender in Dhaka and the Indians took 90,000
prisoners of war. Our country was split in two ad East Pakistan became the newly
created Bangladesh. Idira Gandhi had achieved fa more than her father had ever done
in destroying Jinnah's idea of Pakistan. It was meant to be a homeland for the Muslims
of the subcontinent; nw after a bitter civil war and a crushing defeat, which still haunts
our army, it had become a homeland only for West Pakistanis.
A few years later, in 1974, I met up with Ashraful Haque again, an I was
shocked at the number of Bengali civilians he told me had been killed in the military
action. The gures listed by both sides are hard to erify but it is ossible that hndreds
of thousands of civilians died in the civil war that lasted several months, and millions
more ed into India seeking safety. I had previosly argued wih English and Indian
contemporaries that tis was all prpaganda agaist the Pakistai army and Pakistan.
After hearing Haques side of the story, I vowed I would never again accept our
government's propaganda at face value or ever back a military operation against our
own people.
My career in cicket had just started -I played my rst iternational match for
Pakistan in England i the summer f 1971 -and away from the censored newspapers
and the government TV channel I was exposed to the internatioal media. Seeing our
surrender was only made worse when the massacres attributed t us were shown. The
shock was greater because the government, and the milita, kept telling the people that
they would ght to the end'. Only twentyfour ours before te surrender, General
Niazi fom my tribe, the commander of the forces in East Pakistan, had deantly given
an interview on the BBC where he declared the army would ght to the last man. The
surrender caused mass depression ad a loss of faith in our county. Like everyne else
in Pakistan, I had believed the propaganda of our state television who had labelled the
Bengali ghters as terrorists, militats, insurgents r Indianbacked ghters -the same
terminlogy that is sed today about those ghting in Pakistan's tribal areas and
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Baluchistan. Then as now we fought the symptms rather than addressing the root
cause f the violence -our failure to address the legitimate aspirations of Pakistan' s
many ethnic groups. I also had the pportunity to see for myself how my country was
perceived abroad. I had a rude awakening for without the protection of my family I
suddenly felt lonely ad insecure. Fr the rst time I had to make an effort with people
and fond it quite diicult. After the tour I stayed back to nish my educatio at the
Royal Grammar School in Worceste. I found it almost impossible to make friends with
the British. My friendships with my cousins and a few school frieds were informal and
deep; we would drop in at each other's houses at al hours and since we had grown up
together our bonds were strong and could withstad ghting and jealousy. Now I was
faced with a situation where I did not know anyone nor did I understand British culture
which was very different to the joint family system in which I had grown p. The
friendsips that I had in England were never as meaningful as thse I had in Pakistan -
until mch later.
Following the completion of my Alevels in 1972 I began my studies at Oxford. It
was a huge culture shck. The youth rebellion was in full swing ad the English culture
we knew through or English schoolmasters boks stories and anecdotes of my
parents' generation had disappeared under a blitz of sex drugs and rock ad roll.
Traditinal British values -which stemmed from the Victorians' ideas on morality and
had so impressed the older generation in Pakista -were being rapidly discarded in
Britain itself dismissed as hypocritical. Films and pop stars were advocating free sex
drugs and bad mannes; it was fashionable to swer and prudishess was dismissed as
boring. The biggest attack was on religion and on God. In Pakistan the English
speakig elite considered the mullh backward but even they never dared publicly
attack him. Most of them would follow Islamic rituals and cnsidered themselves
religios. However in Britain religion became a source of ridicule lampooned in
Monty Python's Flying irus
and i the lm
The ife of
Brin
in the 1970s as well as
in television skits by Benny Hill portraying priests and nuns as sexual perverts. Our role
models were Mick Jagger and David Bowie while our intellectual thinking was dened
by the hen popular arxist rejectio of religion. From Darwin's theory of evoltion to
Nietzsche proclaiming the death of God we were encouraged to believe religion
belonged to a prelogical' stage of human develpment. Freud thought God was an
illusio created by man to full his own needs; Jng termed religion an alternative to
neurosis. If there was any spirituality at university it was that of the hippies. The only
problem was it was usually drugindced and included free sex.
What little belief I had in God took a real beating in this atmosphere. At best I
clung t my Muslim identi though this had little o do with submitting to the tenets of
Islam.
never drank alcohol but that was because my boyhood hero and rst cousin
Majid Khan later to be captain of the national cricket team was a teetotaller and I
wanted to emulate hm. The best way to describe my faith ws no acceptace no
rejection'. My Islam was reduced to rituals like attending mosque and that to only
when I was in Lahoe. Similarly fasting was also something I did if at the time I
happened to be home. If there was a God then he had nothing to do with my life outside
the mosque. My mother who by this time had becme deeply spiritual was alarmed at
my lack of faith and would constantly ask me to read the Quran in the hope that it would
guide me. Out of love for her several times I tried to read it and each time gave up. It
was ony much later that I discovered why it made o sense to me.
My rst winter at Oxford made me miserable. The bleak cld and wet dll days
really made me miss home and the weather in Lahre. There is n climate in the world
better tan the winter of Punjab -warm sunny days and cold nights just right for sitting
by a log re. I would never tell my mother I was nhappy but nevertheless in one of
my letters she must have sensed I was homesick. Immediately she wrote asking me to
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come back. She told me I could always return to Egland at some other time to esume
my studies and if I did not want to study any more it did not matter anway. It was this
love and support that made me grow up with such a complete sense of security. er total
belief in me gave me selfesteem, a vital characteristic for success. This was i sharp
contrast to the British students, wo were under great pressure to nd jobs after
university. Most of them had already moved out of their parents' homes. For me, as for
any Pakistani, the cocept of moving out was completely alien. It was unthinkable for
the eldest or only sn to ever leave his parents' house, as is parents were his
responsibility for the rest of their lives. Perhaps it is no surprise hat my best friend at
Oxford was an India, Vikram Mehta, who came from a similar family structure to
mine, and had like me been to a private, Englishlaguage school. At that time, Benazir
Bhutto, the daughter of Zulkar Ali Bhutto, Vikram and I became good friends; not
only because we were from similar subcontinental backgrounds, but because we were
taking he same subjects -politics and economics. Vikram and I would visit Benazir's
lodgings in Lady Magaret Hall every Sunday, wen she would have an open house
serving cheese and snacks all aternon as part of her lobbying t become president of
the Oxord Union. Vkram and I had little interest in the union, but we would show
support for Benazir. A friend of mie who played cricket for Oxord, Dave Fursdon, I
discovered was the atmate of one Tony Blair, who later became Britain's prime
minister.
After leaving university, I wuld spend the winter in Pakistan and the smmer
playing professional cricket in England. In Pakista I kept meeting people with a strong
faith in God. The common people led their lives with God. Eve though they did not
always obey God's commands all the time, he featred prominently in their lives. They
would sin but they wuld know they were doing wong and beg fr forgiveness. Often,
they had a fatalistic attitude to life whereby they accepted any disaster as the will of
God. I considered this to t in with Marx's idea of the opium of the masses'. In contrast
to the ubiquity of religion and mysticism in Pakistan, the only spiritual people I
remember meeting in England were Andrew WingfieldDigby, a theology student who
played with me at Oxford and was later to become a vicar, and, some years laer, the
English wicketkeeper Alan Knott.
(There was one incident involving Knott that struck me i particular, when we
were part of a world eleven playing in Kerry Packe's world series in Australia i 1978.
The team was discussing what to do with the prie money -whether to divide it up
amongst the twelve o us who were sitting there or to also share it with the six others
who were not present because they were playing elsewhere but were part of the squad of
eighteen. We all decied that we should exclude the six, justiing it to ourselves on the
grounds that only those who had performed should be rewarded. Knott was shocked by
our greed and immediately condemed us, saying we were being unfair to the others.
Such was his moral authority that we all felt embarrassed and meekly conseted to
sharing the prize money with the entre squad.)
While I was adjusting to life n England, my country too was changing. Despite
his ow contribution o the disaster n East Pakistan, Bhutto became president i 1971,
and used all of his abndant charisma to restore some of our batteed national pride. For
the rs time in our cuntry's history, he told the masses that they mattered. Unlike the
civilia and military elite, with their English coldess, he was a popular and populist
leader. As a young Pakistani at the time I could not help but be prud when he made his
famous speech over Kashmir to the N Security Council in 1965, threatening t wage
war for a thousand years', before stoming out. His standing up to the West like that just
as the country was emerging from colonialism boosted our selfesteem. Yet Bhutto's
great intellect and charisma could not translae into success for Pakistan. His
misdirected nationaliation choked he economy and the feudal mindset that tlerated
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neither criticism nor opposition further damaged Pakistan's democracy But perhaps the
greates disaster of Bhutto's years was the nationalization of the school system i 1972,
an act which led to the departure of many qualied teachers without adequate teacher
training programmes being put in place beforehand. From then onwards our state school
structure declined and generations of Pakistanis have suffered because of his policy.
In the end it ws apparent tha Bhutto was jst using the Pkistan People's Party
(PPP) to further his personal ambitins, his promie of power to the people forgotten.
Opposition to him grew, and in 197 he was accused by political opponents of igging
the elections in the PPP's favour. Protests againt the results f the elections were
brutally crushed and i a last attempt to regain ground and shore u support amogst the
Islamic parties Bhutt banned alcohol, nightclubs and gambling. As protests escalated
into riots, the army were called out to control the streets. Martial law was declared and
the cont was to remain under it for eleven years. General Zia ulHaq overthrew
Bhutto, appointed himself president in 1978, and the following year had Bhutto anged
in a jail in Rawalpindi. I was playing cricket in Sri Lanka when I heard the news and felt
an incredible sense of sadness. Even though I knew he had done wrong, I did not expect
him to be executed. More upheaval was to come. The year 1979 was to prove a urning
point fr our country. In neighbouring Iran, the Shah's westernized regime wa swept
aside by Imam Khomeini's Islamic revolution. Later that year, the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan and Pakitan became a frontline state i the Cold War.
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Chapter Two
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Revoution, 1979-1987
TO TELL THE truth I had no inteest in politics in the 1970s r much of the 1980s.
From te time I had et university in 1975 until 983 I had been so singlemindedly
and obsessively involed in international cricket that I had no time to think abot much
else. Anyone who has played professional sport would understand how it completely
takes over one' s life. One lives and breathes the sprt so intense is the competition and
hence the focus. Over the years I came to the conclusion that genius' is being obsessed
with what you are ding. So I was too absorbed o worry about the consequeces of
Zia's military regime his slow reversal of Bhutto's nationalizatin programme or the
turmoil in neighbourig Iran and Afghanistan. Life continued as nrmal for most people
-the only ones who really felt Zia' s rule were his opponents. As the captain of the
Pakistan cricket team I had a good relationship with Zia. He used to call me personally
when we won matches and when in 1987 he asked me on live television to come back
out ofretirement for te sake of the country I agreed. Only ater his regime ended did I
realize his devastating legacy and that like so many of Pakisan' s leaders e was
motivaed purely by his desire to stay in power and was oblivious to the country's
decline or the longterm consequences of his policies.
Amidst the steady erosion f the country's political ad social fabric the
Pakistani people drew solace from its success in cricket. During the 1970s an 1980s
our team started growing in strength to the poit that we could match our former
colonial masters. For teams like Paistan India ad the West Idies a battle o right
colonial wrongs and assert our equality was played out on the cricket eld every time
we took on England. My friends and two of my greatest opponets on the cricket eld
Sir Vivian Richards from the West Indies and Sunil Gavaskar from India were both
examples of sportsmen who wanted to assert their equality on the cricket eld against
their former colonial masters. I know that the motivation of the great teams prodced by
the West Indies in the 1970s and 1980s was to beat the English. For Viv in particular it
was about selfesteem and selfrespect the two things that colnialism deprives the
colonized of.
Sport was not the only way o demonstrate post
colonial independence. I little
realized how far the slamic Revoltion in Iran i 1979 would ransform the Muslim
world. However it was a watershed moment in the way the West would vew the
Muslim world. Whe the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan later that year putting
Pakistan in the frontline of the Col War few of s fully grasped the extent t which
that to would affect Muslim thiking -in the world in geeral and Pakistan in
particuar. I had visited Iran in 1974 when I went to stay with a school friend from my
time at the Royal Grammar School Worcester in England. Seeng the economic and
cultura divide of Iranian society ad women in miniskirts in the bazaars of Tehran
surprised me. In today's Lahore ad Karachi I have seen a similar disparity -rich
women going to glity parties in Western clothes chauffeured by men with entirely
differet customs and values. But at the time I had never seen people behave in such a
westerized way in a Muslim country and was shocked by their disregard for the
cultura mores of the masses. I remember the look n the faces of the stallholders in the
bazaars as these women in short skits sashayed past. The Irania Islamic Revoution a
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few years later was to draw heavily on the support of the bazaaris, who formed the
backbone of a traditional devout middleclass in Iran that felt threatened by the Shah's
attempts to impose an alien culture upon them and enraged by his role as a puppet of the
West. n Pakistan, however westerized people like me were, when we visited our
ancestral villages or went into rural areas -or eve the old city of Lahore -we had to
respect local customs and sensitivities. The women in our family would wear the
hdor
(a cloth covering the head and shoulders, leaving oly the face exposed), or the
brk
(a
long garment covering the whole body). Even in Lahore my mother always coveed her
hair when she went shopping in the bazaar. To this day most women in Pakistan wear
the traditional shalwar kameez wih
du
(headscar. Only very recently have
younger urban wome started to wear jeans.
he Iranian Revolution was a reaction i part to rapid westernization and
secularization campaigns in Iran by Reza Shah (the ruler of Iran from 1925 until he was
forced to abdicate by the Allied powers in 1941) and then his son Muhammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi. The later was a brutal autocrat seen to be beholde to the United States
ater he was restored to power following a 193 CIAbacked coup to overthrow
nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh had had the temerity to
stand up for the righs of the Iranian people and seize the coutry's oil production,
which had hitherto been controlle by the British government's AngloIranian Oil
Company. Muhammad Reza Shah's sweeping social and economic changes alenated
the poor, the religious and the traditional merchant class who grew resentful of an elite
enriched by the 1970s oil boom. Meanwhile, there was a growig class of rural poor
who had moved to te cities in the hope of beneting from the petrodollarfuelled
economic growth but found themselves unemployed, consigned to the slums and
increasngly under pressure from ination as the economy overheated.
he revolution led by Khomeini promised to return power to the people and
restore religious purity to Iran. The events of 1979 in Tehran and te establishmet of an
Islamic state highlighted to the world the revolutioary potential of Islam and its power
to threaten the established order in he Muslim world. The overthrow of a tyrant was
welcomed jubilantly by ordinary people in Islamic countries, most of whom were also
sufferig under the anti democratic rule of leaders they viewe as Western stooges
disconected from the economic realities and religious faith of their people. As with the
Middle East revolts i 2011, a sense of euphoria rippled across the region. The broad
base ad strength of a movement that had toppled such a powerful USbacked regime
was also inspiring to people long resentful of colonial interference and Western
hegemony. And it had been achieved through reatively peaceful means, with mass
demonstrations and stikes.
In Pakistan there was tremedous excitement, and I could sense this when I
returned from playing cricket in Engand in the summer months. Since independence we
had already been governed by four different constitutions. We had run trough
parliamentary democracy, Ayub Khan's presidential democracy', which was effectively
a military dictatorship, economic liberalization and martial law. Yet here was Khomeini
standing up to the West with a new system that was both Islamic and antiimperialist.
The political Islam of the Iranian Revolution lle the void left by the failure of Arab
nationalism in the Mslim world. Socialism had been discredited and communism had
never really taken off in a culture where religious faith is such a intrinsic part of life.
As the Iranian slogan went: Neither East nor West'; Khomeini had forged a new path
that owed little to eiter the Western powers or communist Russia. And he explicitly
presented his ideology as an exportable political solution to the enire Islamic world.
Consequently, the West was terried the Muslim worl had reached a new
turning point. At stake were Western puppet regimes in oilproducing countres like
Saudi Arabia -whose royal family Khomeini openly criticized. In the same way that the
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West trned a blind eye to corrupt regimes that claimed to safeguard the free world from
the evils of communism, from then on, autocratic rlers could maipulate Western fears
in order to clamp down on any political opposition in the name of ghting slamic
fundamentalism. (The 9/11 attacks on the Unted States further reinforced this
tendency.) It was als at this point that the West started sending NGOs into Muslim
countries to encourage secularizatio -often in the name of liberating our women or
promoting human rights. Whenever there is unrest in an Islamic country, the old fears
about Iranization' or Islamization' of the country in question are raised by the West.
Only recently, in early 2011, this appened whe the people f Egypt and Tunisia
toppled their dictators. Other countries, too, faced iternal dissent but dealt harshly with
it; however, in Yemen and Bahrai, the actions that in Libya would lead to NATO
intervetion were allowed to continue as the regimes were deemed proWestern.
Zia, keen to legitimize his uconstitutional takeover of Pakistan, felt the mood
created by the Iranian Revolution and responde accordingly. His predecessor, the
Oxfordand Berkeleyeducated Zulfikar Ali Bhuto, had used religion to couter his
Wester secular image by pandering to the religious parties. Bhuto's 1973 consitution
conrmed Pakistan's identity as an Islamic Republic, the teaching of Islam was made
compulsory in schoos and a Council of Islamic Ideology was set up to adise on
Islamic legislation. He had declared the Ahmedi sect nonMuslims. His critics, though,
only hardened their demands, campaigning for the introduction f more Islamic laws.
Zia cashed in on the opposition to Bhutto from the religious parties, which equated
secularsm with antiIslamism. He was prepared to go much further than Bhutto,
pledging on coming t power in 1977 to make Pakstan an Islamic state. His version of
the
NimeMusth
(the System of the Prophet) aimed to verhaul penal codes
inherited from the Brtish by bringig them into lie with Sharia law. Emboldened by
events in Iran, from 1979 he introdced still more reforms, Islamizing' the economy
and edcation system. He tried to intoduce interestfree banking, mposed the automatic
deduction of
zkt
(a proportion of ne's wealth wich every Muslim has to cotribute
annualy) from bank accounts and invested in madrassas. The Hudood Ordinance
imposed strict punishments for crimes, including adultery, and its abuse by a corrupt
police and judicial system undermined the legal staus of women, especially in the lower
strata f society. Zia revamped so many laws, but failed to introdce true Islamic social
justice; in fact his regime actually promoted inequality and corruption. His political use
of Islam was aimed more at capturing the mood of the time.
Zia also enforced Islamic rituals and promoted traditional dress codes in a bid to
Islamize' the country; many years later Musharraf attempted to verhaul Pakisan and
turn it into a moder, liberal secular state by ecouraging the use of English and
Western dress, which he thought would westernize Pakistan. Zia's Islamizatin' and
Musharaf's Enlightened Moderatin' failed in their aims, as in such situations people
follow the latest diktats, but inwardly carry on as before. Both Zia and Musharraf failed
to understand that imosing outwar observances ill neither instil a sense of religious
faith nr propel a coutry into the twentyrst centry.
General Zia's Islamization' programme received another boost with the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. Practically overnight he ecame a key Cold War ally of the
Americans, who now forgot their qualms about backing a military dictator (perhaps this
was the origin of the saying that you need the supprt of the three As to lead Pakistan -
Allah, he army and merica). It was another example of the US's ability to pick and
choose when to object to evil despos, or not, while lecturing the developing wrld on
the uniersal importace of democracy and human ights. Fearful hat the Soviets might
push through Afghanistan to reach the Arabian Sea in the Gulf and choke off vital oil
supplies, the CIA, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states -through Pakistan's Inter
Services Intelligence, the SI -funded, trained and armed thousands of militants to ght
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them. Many of these jihadis stayed n in Pakistan ter the war uwanted by their own
governments. (Having created these foot soldiers to do jihad aginst communism the
United States and its llies hunted them down as alQaeda members andjihadis a decade
after the Soviet withdrawal.) At the tme there was a general feelig in Pakistan that the
war against the Soviet occupiers was a just war and people made tremendous sacrices.
With my journalist friend Haroon Rashid I met so many young men in Peshawar who
had doe time in Afghanistan; guerrillas' they might be calle now but they were
heroes fighting against occupation a romantic cause that drew idealists from across the
Muslim world in the way the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War had attracted
thousads of nonSpanish volunteers in the 1930s They became rapidly disillsioned
with the way the grous changed at te end of the war. However nlike Musharraf after
9/11 Zia never allowed the CIA to spread its network within Pakistan. It was the SI
who trained the militant groups funed by the CIA
Jihad is a vital concept in Islam; indeed it is the most impotant concept i terms
of an Islamic society. Jihad is about standing up to injustice and it keeps a society alive
and vibrant. In Islam there are three types of jihad: the rst is the individual struggle to
purify one' s soul of evil inuences the second is to strive for justice through non
violent means and the third is the use of physical orce in defence of Muslims against
oppression or foreign occupation. A Muslim must stand up for jstice for any human
being's rights regardless of their religion. When a society does not stand for justice it
dies. Two million people marched against the Iraq war because tey felt it was unjust;
were they Muslims hey would have called this protest jihad. After all the Quran
repeatedly points out that God loves not aggressors'. And if everyone in a society
stands p for justice then their rulers have to listen. In the 1980s the concept of jihad
became glamorous because of the ght against the Soviets; now it is a word assciated
with terorism. There remains nothig wrong with the concept o jihad a struggle for
doing the good and forbidding the evil'; but like all noble concets it can be misused.
For many men drawn to Afghanista this was a clearcut case of helping the Afghans
ghting foreign occupation. The tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan faced for
the rst time in their history an inux of foreign ghters gathered from the Muslim
world o ght the Russians. Thousands of Saudis Yemenis Egyptians Algerians
Tunisians and Iraqis ocked to Afghanistan oten assing throug Pakistan trained by
the SI and funded by the CIA. A Sadi billionaire who had sacriced a life of luxury to
ght for the Afghan people was one who drew particular admiratin. He was Osama bin
Laden; my friend the lawyer Akram Sheikh remembers seeing him at a receptio at the
American embassy in Islamabad in 1987.
I went to a fudraising ball for the mujahideen in 1983 at the Caf Royal a
bastion of London's wealthy elite nce frequented by Winston Churchill and Oscar
Wilde. It was a very fashionable cause to support with campaignes in the UK including
Lord Cranborne an ld Etonian Cnservative MP and in the nited States Joanne
Herring the Texan socialite portrayed in the book and lm
hre Wilson's Wr.
The
legendry Pashtun pride courage ad lack of selfpity inspired their backers. I 1985
Ronald Reagan famusly introduced members of the mujahdeen as the moral
equivalent of America's founding fathers' during their visit to the White House.
Amongst them was Gulbuddin Hematyar leader of the HezbeIslami politicl party
and paramilitary group. A key gure in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets and the
main recipient of foregn funding for the cause he is now waging ajihad against NATO
forces n Afghanistan who as far as he is concered are foreign occupiers just as the
Russias were. He is ow wanted by the United States for participating in terrorism with
alQaeda and the Taliban and termed by the State Department a Specially Desgnated
Global Terrorist'.
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Pakistani Pashtns living along the Durand Line, which (when it was drawn up in
1893 by the British to mark the border between Afghanistan and what was then British
India) had split the tribes, have alwas felt the repercussions of the tumultuous events in
Afghanistan. About 100,000 people a month cross to and fro, the border meaningless to
them. People in the tribal areas therefore felt it their duty both as Muslims and Pshtuns
to join their brethren in the ght against the communist indels. There was a ood of
weapos into northwest Pakistan. Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of what was
then the NorthWest Frontier Province (NWFP), decribed the Pastun in the tribal areas
as natral warriors with every man armed. Now the tribes had access to more
sophistcated weapon. As arms wen one way, heroin owed the other. On their journey
from the port of Karachi to Afghanistan, many of the weapons dispatched by the CIA
disappeared into the local markets. Karachi ended p becoming oe of the most violent
cities i the world while Kalashniko culture hit Paistan in general and the tribl areas
in particular. The trucks which were used to carr the weapons were then lled with
heroin extracted from poppies cultiated in Afghaistan and the Pakistani border area
and set back to Karachi. Pakistan became the world's largest conduit of heroin and the
number of heroin addicts in the country rocketed.
By 1982 the Afghan jihad was receiving anual aid of $600 million from the
United States and anoher $600 million from the Glf states. The Saudis' funding for the
Afghan jihad allowed them to promote Wahhabism, the doctrine of the dominant
Islamic sect in Saudi Arabia. Over time its puritanical beliefs have inuenced the tribal
areas' longstanding Pashtun traditios. The growig number of madrassas or religious
schools also affected local religious culture. According to a report by the Interational
Crisis Group, between 1982 and 1988 more than 1,000 new madrassas were set up,
many by radical Suni parties -sponsored by various Arab contries -which were
involved in the Afghan jihad or were political parters of Zia. Even US aid money was
used to promote jihadi culture. Textbooks were published in local languages by the
Univerity of Nebraska at Omaha in the United States to help indoctrinate young minds
in the madrassas and refugee camps in the ways of holy wr' and hatred of the
Russias. The Pakistan government hould never have allowed these outside inuences
in to establish these goups in the country; Shia-Snni violence epecially can be dated
from this point and grew dramatically in Pakistan. This sectrianism did a lot to
undermine the position of the jihadi groups at the end of the Soviet occupation. Three
million Afghan refugees ooded into Pakistan, a country still illequipped to look after
even its own people. Local living standards dropped as these uge communities of
refugees competed for jobs and resources. Unlike Iran, where they were restricted to
refugee camps, in Pakistan the refugees were allowed to move anywhere. I have to say
though that the way ordinary Pakistani people sholdered the burden of such a inux
of people puts to shame European countries for the fuss they make over accepting
refugees. The Afghas themselves did their best to retain order in the camps through
their powerful tribal sructure.
Zia's elevenyear rule was a time of great prosperity but not because of any
governent policy; Pakistan averaged 6 per cent growth a year in the 1980s as the
Afgha war brought ollars both in aid and easy credit. Moreove the remittances from
hardworking Pakistais abroad shot up during thi period. It is estimated that between
1975 ad 1990 some US$40 billion came into Pakistan. Had this money been ivested
in health and education rather than in useless consumption and extravagance, the
countr would not e in its preent situation, but under Zia corruption passed
manageable proportions. He used the money ooding in for the war to buy off political
opponents and to fud new political cronies who would support his rule. Through
complete control of iformation, the grat within the military hierarchy was hidden. But
Zia's worst legacy was that in trying to keep Bhutto' s PPP out of power he
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manufactured alternative political frces, strengthening both extremist groups nd the
military at the expense of democracy. In doing so he also allowed his own cronies to
make money through corruption.
his was the period when Nawaz Sharif, twice prime minister of Pakistan (1991-
93 and then 1997-99, ater which he was forced into exile for some years), was literally
manufactured as a leader. First the iron foundry his family had started and which was
lost to nationalizatio under Bhutt was returned to his father by Zia, then he was
allowed to build his business empie by using his position as unjab's minister for
nance. When he was elected Punjab's chief minister he did the same. Working from
the priciple that every politician has a price, he dished out state resources to buy
politicians and become head of a political party, Pakistan Muslim League, and later the
Islamic Democratic Alliance, which had been cobbled together by Zia's SI. According
to an adavit to the Supreme Court by the head f SI at the time, General Durrani,
Nawaz Sharif (amongst other politicians) received 3.5 million rupees from them.
he general's 1985 nonparty elections propelled corruption to heights then
unknown in Pakistan. Since candidates were not afliated to parties, they had to be lured
into Zia's King's party through material incentives, like plots of state land, loas from
nationalized banks, permits and lucrative goverment contracts. The polls were a
disaster for Pakistan, creating a culture of corruption and sowing the seeds for much
trouble to come.
I might have been more focused on my career at the time, but it pained me to
watch the steady decline of my coutry from the 1970s. Spending my summers in the
UK plying professinal cricket enabled me constantly to compare Pakistan with a
developed nation, and it was demralizing. Whilst in the UK the institutions were
stronger than the idividual in akistan powerful individuls abused the state
infrastructure for their own ends. I kow it hurt them to admit it, but often I would hear
the elders in my family saying how things had wored better under the British. Rule of
law, meritocracy, the bureaucracy -all were more ecient under the British, who on
the whle had kept a tight rein on coruption. My parents' generation felt so let dwn by
their ruling elite. They had had such hope and pride in Pakistan at its creation bt each
year their frustration nd disappointment grew. Some of the rst generation of Pkistani
politicians, like Sherbaz Khan Mazari, the son of a ribal chief from Baluchistan, and M.
Asghar Khan, the rst head of the Pakistan air force, campaigned for years to keep the
ame f Jinnah and Ibal's dream alive. Both spent time in prison or under house arrest
after opposing Zia and Bhutto and bth have writte about their bitter disappointment in
the direction the counry took.
Like many others from my background I wuld complain about the state of the
country but would not lit a nger to do anything about it. I was from that privileged
class that was not affected by the general deteriortion in the contry. The schols we
went to had an imported syllabus, s if education fr the masses stagnated we were not
touched by it. We did not have to worry if the hospitals were going downhill because we
could always afford t go abroad for treatment. Ad if there were power breakdowns,
we could buy generators. (By 2011, most of Pakistan would go without electricity for
twelve hours a day.) If the government departmets were corrut, then it was all the
easier for us to bribe them and have anything illegal we wanted done. In any case we
were always likely to have the necessary govement connections to remove any
stumbling blocks. If the general public suffered, well it was bad luck for them. I was
even more fortunate than the privileged class, as being a cricket star in a cricketmad
country, all doors were open to me. So I did not have to struggle for anything and life
for me could not have been easier.
Although I too pride in my Muslim identity, Islamization' in Pakistan did not
bring me closer to my religion. In act it had the opposite effect. By nature I always
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hated being forced to do anything so Zia' s impositin ofIslamic ijunctions upo us just
made me want to rebel. When I saw Islam being used for poliical purposes it only
deepened my disillsionment. Fo someone like me who did not have much
understanding about Islam, whenever the country' corrupt leadership professed to be
devout Muslims, I felt it was Islam tat was at fault, rather than the leadership. You see
something similar hapening nowadays where hardliners believe that only a radical
form o Islam will sae the country, arguing wrongly that we need to change the way
religio is practised, rather than the way our country is run. Morever, in the late 1970s
and 1980s the government controlled television channel contantly had socalled
religios scholars talking about Islam. Most young people would simply switch it off.
But it was the hypocrisy that put mot of the educated youth off Ilam. People expected
an Islamic state to have high moral sandards.
Events in Afghanistan and Iran dampened ay hopes for a Islamic solution for
Muslim countries still nding their way in the post
colonial world. In Afghanistan,
inghting between the warlords amidst the mayhem left in the wake of the Soviet
withdrawal in 1989 came as a bitter disappointment. The Afghan jihad leaders, gloried
as religious warriors, ow behaved lke criminals -resorting to extortion and mrder in
their battle for personal power. So many had died, so many ordiary foot soldiers had
made great sacrices, but their leaders betrayed them. The Taliban, which as a group
rst ralied in order to rid the people of the chaoic tyranny of the warlords, initially
gave a semblance f rule of law to the warravaged coutry. But wit their
unenlightened versio of Islam, their inability to uderstand the esence of the religion,
combied with aspects of the harsh rural Pashtun culture, they began to look
increasingly oppressie. They refused to tolerate any other viewpints. Somebody could
be decared unIslamc and punished for somethig as trivial a not having a beard.
Meanwhile, the sorry descent of the Pakistani jihadi groups after the end of the war in
Afghaistan into sectarianism and religious bigotry also took the shine off the religious
idealism of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Durig the Soviet-Afghan war, both the
Saudis and the Iranias had supported sectarian miitant groups in Pakistan. In its wake
these groups turned n each other, unleashing Sunni versus Shia violence. For most
people this was completely against Ilam, which preaches tolerance towards othe creeds
and faiths. Even Ira, which had aroused such expectations i the Muslim world,
disillusioned those loking to Tehran for a lead on democracy Muslimstyle. In
particuar, people were nervous abot the power of Iran's Guardian Council of ruling
religios leaders -which had the power of veto over democratic decisions. Again, this
was completely contrary to the democratic message inherent in te Prophet's (PBUH)
teachings.
Democratic priciples were a inherent part of Islamic society during the golden
age of Islam, from the passing of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and under the rst four
caliphs But after the fourth caliph -Hazrat Ali, the fourth successor to Muhammad's
(PBUH) leadership, who ruled ove his vast empire, from Egyt in the west to the
Iranian highlands in the east -democracy disappeared from the Muslim world.
Hereditary kingship replaced the budding democracy of the Medina State and nly in
the twentieth century did it make a reappearance in the Muslim wrld. (In the eighteenth
century, Shah Waliulah attributed the decline of the Mughal empire in particular and
Muslims in general o the instituton of monarchy, which, according to him, was
degeneative and boud to decay.) Today in the majority of the Ilamic world there are
sham democracies which have not given freedom to the people, hence the urgecy and
anger of the revolutiona movemets spreading across the Middle East in earl 2011.
An Islamic state has to be a democracy and a meritocracy. In an ideal Islamic society
there sould be no hurdles in the way of a man achieving his Godgiven ptential.
Islamic legal discourse covers both spiritual matters and the rights of an individual in
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everyday life. On the one hand it deals with prayer worship fastig and pilgrimge. On
the other it protects the most basic human needs ad rights expected under civil law in
the West -the rights to life religion family freedom of thought and wealth. An Islamic
state also guards against the executive accumulatig too much power by emphasizing
that even a ruler is not above the law. Of the rst four great caliphs ater Muhammad
(PBUH) two ended p in front of a judge in a cort of law. Harat Ali himself lost a
case against a Jewish citizen because the judge refused to accept the testimony of Hazrat
Ali's son. In Islam since all sovereignty belongs to Allah both the executive and the
people have to stay wthin the limits of His Laws. The founding fathers of the American
constittion also strove to do the same by maing the constitution supreme. This is why
when Jinnah was asked in 1947 about the constiution of Pakistan he said its basis
would be the Quran.
Justice compassion welfare nd equality along with democracy are at the heart
of Islam yet we saw onIslamic Western states haing greater ethical and moral norms.
When I arrived in the UK in the 1970s it was the rst time I had seen a proper welfare
state. Coming from Ayub Khan's Paistan I was amazed by the level of social security.
I felt lie the Islamic scholar Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) who said on his return
from a trip to Europe o his home in Egypt: I saw o Muslims in Europe but I saw a lot
of Islam' and of his homeland There are a lot of Muslims here but no Islam.' This
quotation is perhaps even more relevant today as the spirit of saria (Islamic law) is
more visible in Weste countries than in the Muslim world. Until I started edcating
myself about it like the majority of Westerneducated people in Pakistan I too believed
sharia to be some medieval set of laws irrelevant to our times. It conjured up images of
fanaticism women in veils terrorism intolerance ad the abuse of human rights. Part of
this stems from the prejudice in the Western media about Islam a prejudice tht dates
back to the Crusades. Unfortunately it must lso be blamed on the extremely
unenlightened interpretation of Islam by certain Muslim regimes and groups.
In theory the Islamic state should be a welfare state. That is why I nd it strange
that in akistan people who stand up for Islamic values are called rightist. Islamic values
actuall have more i common with letist ideologies in terms of social equalty and
welfare. Hazrat Umar the second caiph of Islam who ruled from 634 until his death in
644 set up the rst true welfare state in the history of mankind even introducing
pensios. Widows the handicapped orphans and the unemployed were registered and
paid from the state treasu. Moreoer the Quranic injunction of zakat which exhorts
Muslims to give 2.5 per cent of their wealth to the poor and to charity meant that it was
compulsory for citizens of an Islamic state to look ater the vulnerable. The dea of
setting up waqf (welfre trusts) that ran orphanages hospitals madrassas and
siris
(free
accommodation for travellers) long preceded the concept of trusts in Europe. Yet today
Europe has the best social security system particularly in the Scandinavian contries
and even the United States spends billions of dollars a year on the welfare of its people.
Sadly te vast majority of Muslim countries have o welfare system at all. The poor in
Pakistan have no safety net other than their own fmilies or tribes. They cannot afford
education health or ustice. According to the UDP (United ations Development
Programme) 54 per cent of Pakistanis face multidimensional deprivation' meaning
they lack access to proper education and health facilities and a decent standard of living.
Almost twothirds of the country lives on less than US$2 a day and about 40 per cent of
Pakistani children suer from chronic malnutrition. How can Pakistan be called an
Islamic society?
Returning in the winter to Paistan ater playing cricket i England throgh the
summer I watched the changes in my country with the nagging anxiety of someone who
saw it deteriorating each time I came home. Yet I never thought of leaving
could
never imagine another home but Pakistan. Nor did it even enter my mind at this stage to
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enter plitics. In fact I could not think of anything worse. By the early 1980s, like most
of the privileged clas, I was coming to the conclusion that, since Pakistan's prblems
were s many and s insolvable, the best thing t do was to jst look after myself.
Beside, what could plitics possibly give me? I had the life that many young peple, in
Pakistan and elsewhere, dreamt abut -I was a ich and glamrous cricket star, jet
setting all over the wrld. Politics was considered a dirty busines for those wh could
not do anything else. ost of the stdents from my school who went into politics were
hopeles at both academic subjects and sports. Usually they belonged to feudal families
with plitical ties. No one thought of politicians as seless people who wanted t make
Pakistan a better place to live in. Neither did I tke much interest in social work or
charity. Sure, I attended fundraisig dinners every now and ten, but hardly ever
because I was touched by the cause of a particular charity; more because of the social
occasion. I hardly eve gave zakat, feeling I had doe my duty to society once I had paid
my taxes.
Despite this, it was around this time I began to contemplate that there could be a
God. It had nothing to do with Pakistan's Islamization' but it omething to do with
cricket. By 1982 I wa close to my peak as a cricketer; I had been laying all year round
for almost seven year. During this time I began to observe a phenomenon that layers
called luck. There wee times when I would be in great form yet would not have much
success, whereas at oher times I wuld be feeling lousy and yet do well. I also found
that in closely fought contests there was usually oe point that wuld tilt the cotest in
favour of one team. Sometimes this would have nothing to do with playing ability. For
instance, many times during my cricketing career an umpiring mitake or bias had cost
one team the match -even the series
here were other times when a contest was being won by a team and some non
cricketing phenomenon like rain wold tilt the game in the other team's favour. The toss
of a cin also sometimes made the difference between winning and losing. And a
peculiar phenomenon which only pace bowlers wuld appreciate is that sometimes a
ball just does not do aything, no matter how helpfl the conditios, while at other times
a ball will swing in unhelpful conditions. This wa because of the way it was titched
together. Then of course a ball could become soft o out of shape nd would not respond
to the most skilful bwler, again iuencing the outcome of the match. On several
occasions I would also observe that a batsman wold playas if he had a charmed life
and was destined to core runs on that particular ccasion. He would make mstakes,
take unnecessary risk, invite catche, look as if he was about to be got out any econd,
but end up making rus and being sccessful. I began to realize that in sports no matter
how god I was or hw hard I trie, success was never guaranteed. It is impotant to
stress, owever, that players who had ability, gut, diligence and determination were
consistently successfl but there seemed to be a zone beyond which players were
helples, and it was called luck. Over the years I began to ask myself the question -
could what we call luck actually be te will of God
he other thing that made me feel there could be a God was the vulnerability
every sportsman feels regarding injries. A sportsman can train or months to repare
himself for a big evet, yet a slight muscle tear can result in all the hard work going
down the drain. As a fast bowler I hd to be in perfect muscle condition before a match.
Several times I playe with half injuries, not sure whether they wuld worsen duing the
match r gradually improve. This again was an area out of my cotrol. In 1982 I was at
my absolute peak as a fast bowler in terms of physical strength, experience and sill and
was posed to go for the world record for the highet number of tet wickets. I was so t
and strng that I felt othing could stop me. This was a point in my life when I used to
wonder how people could get old.
just could not imagine that I could ever lose my
tness and strength to age. I felt invincible. In ne year I ha got over ninety test
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wickets in just thirteen tests -almost a world record. I had got there throug sheer
passio and hard work and never relied on anyone but mysel I I had injuries rarely
would I go to a physiotherapist reying instead on exercise to help me recover. The
Pakistan cricket team was rapidly becoming a force in international cricket. We had just
thrashed Australia and India compreensively. Just at that point I got a stress fracture in
my shibone and could not bowl for the next two nd a half years. During this time the
majority of the doctors I saw felt tha I would never bowl again.
My whole word came crashig down. Only an athlete can understand the shock
of a potentially careerending injry. It was the most devasating thing that had
happened to me in my life so far. I also lost the confidence acquired through my success
in cricket. Success always creates jealousies in certain quarters and all this came out
now. Tere was a spae of nasty articles against me. A couple of players who would not
have dared to cross me when I was t took the opportunity to pt the knife in feeling
that I was nished ad it was safe to vent their animosity. I used to deal wih such
people by performing on the eld and shutting them up. Now I felt defenceless and had
no clue how to deal with the situatio. I became a recluse and in my mind made it into a
huge crisis. But with indsight it was a storm in a teacup. Much ater I read a book by
the eminent cricket writer and historian David Frith about how many cricketers had
committed suicide once they could no longer play cricket. Whilst I was never in danger
of that I understood their torment; ot knowing wether I would bowl again made me
feel extremely unsure and insecure aout my future
In such a state of mind I saw an astrologer and a couple of clairvoyants. Until
then I had never believed anyone who claimed to be able to tell the future and frankly I
had never needed to. I had so much selfbelief that I felt I could achieve aything
through my own talet and hard wok. I was never one of those sportsmen with trivial
supersttions about objects or habits that would bring me luck in a match. My experience
with both the astrologer and the clairvoyants was highly unsatisfactory; most of what
they said was wrong. I vowed that I would not bother with them again. In my state of
uncertainty and vulnerability despie all my doubts I would turn to God especially
when on the long ad painful roa to recovery
would start feeling twinges in my
shinboe. Twice I had bowled too soon without waiting for the bone to heal properly
and boh times the crack reappeared. The third time I was carefl but whenever I felt
pain I was never sure whether I woud make it or not.
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Chapter Three
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Death, and Pakistan's Spiritua Life, 1987-989
PAKISTAN CAME NTO existence as a country because of Islam and the Islamic
beliefs of its founders and citizens. Through circumstances I came to understand Islam
better than I had done in my youth which led me to understand Pakistan to appreciate
its histry and the corse it was takig. As I learned more about Islam and abot being
a Muslm it became clear to me that I was on a pah one that would lead me to greater
engagement with the political life of my coutry. A spirital person takes on
responsibility for society whereas a materialist only takes responsbility for himself.
In Pakistan I often came across people who had some sort f spiritual experience
or were deeply religious. This was especially true o the elders in ur family. My mother
started to become more spiritual when I was about ten years old. Se and her sister met a
female Su from Sahiwal a district south of Lahore and used to tavel to visit her quite
regulary. Spiritual gides or
irs
are quite common in Pakista. Millions of people
particuarly in rural aeas of the contry follow them consulting them on everything
from religious matters to sickness and family prblems. My mther always tried to
encourage me to follow my religion but it was hard for her to relate to me in the way
that I can relate to my children as she had no way of really comprehending the impact
of the ompeting culural forces in my life. With my sons I can understand what it
means o grow up a uslim in today's Western society. Meanwhie my father was also
religios but in a different way. Whle he had immense respect for the great Su saints
of the subcontinent he believed in a direct relatinship with Gd and didn't feel he
needed a spiritual intermediary or a guide as my mther and her sister did.
I had my rst spiritual experience when I was nearly fourteen and already quite
sceptical about religion and God. My mother was s excited because her spiritual guide
Pir Gi came to visit us in Lahore for the rst and last time. She introduced me to Pir Gi
hoping she would pray for me and ffer me guidance. The woman was sitting on the
oor with three or four of her disciples her head covered by a chador. She never looked
up at me and I never saw her face. She did not say anything for a few minutes ad then
suddeny said I had nt nished the Quran. I was uterly shocked. Only the maulvi who
came t teach me the Quran knew that I had not nshed it. My Qran lessons used to be
after school and the last thing I wated to do at the time was to read the Qura. All I
wanted to do was to go and play with my cousins i Zaman Park. After a year the poor
maulvi accepted that I was a hopeless case and one day we bot schemed to ell my
parents that I had nally nished the Quran. My mother looked a me and immediately
knew from my shocked face that her spiritual guide was spot on. Pir Gi told my mother
not to worry that I was a decent sol and would trn out all righ. I saw the relef pass
across my mother's face. Pir Gi wet on to say tht I would be very famous and make
my moher a househod name. When my mother died twentyone years later of cancer I
built a ospital in her name and today the Shaukat Khanum Memrial Hospital (SKMH)
is renowned across Pakistan.
he sense of achievement I was to feel whe this hospital pened was far greater
than aything I had achieved in cricket. It gave me a surge of pure happiness. The
overhal of my lifestyle from tha of a sports star to a humanitarian worker and
politician initially met with some scepticism. Bu as I began my spiritual jorney I
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started to discover happiness comes from all those things that are considered to be
boring by the mass media and the culture of selfindulgence it promotes: giving harity,
helping others, family life and achieving seless goals. My mother's long and painful
death i 1985 was the catalyst for this change in me, a turning pint in my life, forcing
me to face up to my uter helplessnes as I tried to ease her sufferig.
I rst heard the news of my mother's cancer when my sister Aleema called me in
the summer of 1984 What had been initially diagnosed in Pakistan as a stomach
infectin had turned out to be cacer of the colon. I was in England at the time
recovering from the sress fracture i my shinbone I brought my mother to the UK for
treatment but by the time we took her back home i September the cancer had spread to
her liver. Her last six weeks were very painful and even today I have to block from my
mind the memories of this time. Out of sheer desperation and helplessness I would beg
the Almighty for help All my famil prayed for he too. So vulnerable was I that I even
brough home a faith ealer, who turned out to be a complete quack -there was I soon
realized, a whole industry existing in Pakistan of quacks, faith healers ad fake
spiritualists who prey on vulnerable eople.
For a few monhs after my mother's death I completely removed from my mind
the idea of God. However, my internal debate about whether He existed or not later
resumed. I had become embittered twards God. If he did exist, how could he have put
my mother through s much pain? She was very religious and had been such a seless
mother The experience of my mother's death coupled with my stress fracture had made
me realize how vulneable I was. The complete faith I had had in my own strength and
capabilities was no loger there. It was almost as if someone had put me in my place by
making me aware of my many limitations. I again started saying my prayer every
morning. This was really like an isurance policy -a sort of safety net in case God
really did exist. It is possible that many Muslims uffer from thi dilemma. They pray
not because they know that there is a God, but because they cannt be certain that there
is no God. By this point, my leg had healed and I threw myself back into cricket with all
my storedup enthusiasm. Soon I started having the same degree of success as when I
had lef off. In fact the long, hard rad back to tess had toughened me up mentally
and what I had lost physically during the two and a half years I had been out as a bowler
because of my injury I now made up for with much greater mental strength. Jus as the
body gets stronger by exercise, so does the mind when it encountes resistance.
By this time I had come to te realization that the hedonistic lifestyle that had
seemed so appealing from the outside was a mirage. The hurt I cased and the feeling of
emptiness I experiened in transitry relationships far outweighed the moments of
pleasure. Most of the jet set I knew and socialize with in the 1980s could not face a
party uless they had enough alcoho or drugs in their system. It was a world completely
cut off from the rest of humanity. I also began to question the things I had always
assumed were great fn. The people I was hanging out with had been conditioned by
Hollwoodled trend and peer pressure to believe nightclubs, beach and yachting
holidays, expensive restaurants and designer clothes made you happy. But parties and
nightclbs began to bre me, as did eating out, which had once seemed so much fun. I
began to crave home cooking, while years of cricet tours made me hate the ight of
hotels. Once I began to change my lifestyle I realized there was a world of difference
betwee happiness and pleasureseeking. I had mitaken pleasure for happiness but the
former does not last long and the activities that gie it have dimnishing return. Over
the years I had seen s many destroy their lives thrugh hedonism Alcoholism ad drug
addictin have ruined the potential of so many pop, lm and sports stars. I could easily
have slid down that lippery slope, entering that world as I did as an impressionable
eighteenyearold just as the sex, dugs and rock and roll revoltion was at its peak.
What saved me from disaster was cricket. I had to e t to perform at the highet level
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and therefore never indulged too deely in that lifestyle. I also had too much selfrespect
to allow myself to be humiliated on the cricket eld due to overindulgence elsewhere.
My strng family roots, and above all my mother's powerful inuence and the fear of
humiliating both my immediate and extended family, helped me eercise selfcotrol.
I discovered that it is the enironment we grow up in that inuences what we
enjoy i life and I began to rediscover how much I loved trekking in Pakistan's nrthern
mountains in the summer and partridge shooting in the Salt ange in the winter.
Similarly, after all the fancy restaurats I have eate in, what I realy enjoy is the food in
the cheap truck drivers' cafs on the intercity highways in Pakistan. This is where the
men wo drive the famously colourful Pakistani trucks stop to sit on
hroys
bed
frames strung with rope, and eat spicy food with mgs of hot, sweet chai. The dishes are
simple -daal mutton or chicken cooked in
dei ghee
(claried butter). They are
typically all made from local ingredents and freshly cooked, which is why they are so
good. Even better is the food I have eaten in the old city of Lahore. No food in the entire
Indian subcontinent can match that.
Perhaps it's no surprise, then, given my love for it, that it was while I was in the
Pakistani countryside that I met the rst of the men who would become my spiritual
guides. The rst man I met was not exactly a guide but the encounter, and what he told
me, so astonished me that it led to my next enconter as I became more ope to the
ideas these extraordinary men introuced me to. Te spiritual joey I embarked on I
regard as intrinsic to my history of Pakistan because it was only when I understod fully
the spiitual inheritance of the natin, from the pinciples of Islam expounde by its
foundes, that I was able to see and comprehend the nature of the history unfolding in
front of me, and my place in it.
In 1987, the year I had announced my initial retirement frm cricket, I was on a
shooting trip with a cuple of friends some 100 miles north of Lahore. Ater the shoot,
our host suggested that I meet a spiritual man wh lived in a village on the way back
home.
saw no point in it but at the others' insistence I agreed to see him. The man,
whose name was Baba Chala, lived in a little village just a few miles from the Indian
border. He was short with piercing ees and a happ face. He did ot know who I was as
nobody in the village had a television and, besides, he did not look like the type of
person who would be into cricket. He certainly ad not heard about my retirement
despite it having been headline news. My host asked him what I should do after cricket.
The man looked at me and said I had not left my pofession. We all told him that I had
retired and had no intention of playig again. The man said, It is the will of Allah; you
are stil in the game.' Next he told me how many sisters I had and what their names
were. He then turned to one of my friends, Mohammed Siddique and told him that he
would be doublecrossed in a business deal and that he should immediately take his
money out of the project, but that things would evetually be resoved. He shocked him
further by telling him the actual amont of money ivolved. We left his place perplexed.
What was the trick? On the way back we discussed how he could have known the names
of our family members. What we fond most difclt to comprehend was how he knew
the exact amount of money involved in Siddique's project. Three months laer at a
dinner given for the cricket team in Islamabad, General Zia asked me to take back my
decisio to retire for te sake of the country, and again captain Pakistan. Within weeks I
was leading the national team on a tour of the West Indies, and my friend's business
dealings unfolded as Baba Chala had predicted. How could that man in the village have
known, I kept thinking? My mind also went back to my mother's spiritual guide, who
had been able to tell that I had not ished the Quran.
ust over a year after that I came across someone who wold become the single
most pwerful spiritual inuence on me and completely change my direction in life. A
friend n Lahore had invited me fo lunch. The only other guest was a frailloking,
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cleansaven man in his sixties by the name of Mian Bashir. he lines on his face
showed that he had seen a lot of suering. He was a retired junir civil servant who I
was told was strugglig to make ends meet on his meagre pensio. The man sat quietly
throughout lunch with a disinterested look on his face. After lunch he politely asked me
if I constantly read a certain verse frm the Quran. I told him I hadn't even heard of the
verse. His face went into a deep frwn. He closed his eyes, took on an expression of
concenration and the said: Sorry, it was your mther who wold read that verse for
your protection.' With astonishment, I realized that he was absolutely right. Whe I was
a child before I went to sleep, my mother would epeat a verse from the Qura three
times and blow on me. He went on t say that I was protected becuse of it. Then he told
me a cuple of incidents about my family, about which no one else could have known
and to personal to relate here. I asked him how he acquired this skill. It is the will of
Allah, at times He shows me somethng even withot my asking fr it. Other times I beg
him for knowledge about some subject and He refuses me,' he replied. I was really
curious. I wanted to know more.
Mian Bashir's father had died when he was barely two years old. His mother
really struggled to lok after him as the father's share of the family property was
fraudulently acquired by his uncles. From the age of about seven Mian Bashir would
occasinally see visins, which he ould not interpret properly. He met a man at this
juncture who told him to read the Quran and spend more time praying and meditating
about llah. There are no coincidences in life, that man was meat to guide me towards
Allah,' he told me. By the time he was twelve, even the schoolteachers were overawed
by his power to see what others cold not. He drpped out of school and for the next
few years made it his mission to expose professional pirs who, like the commercial
Indian gurus, make money off insecure and vulnerable people. He would put out
newspaper adverts issuing a challenge to match their spiritual powers with his and
expose these frauds who thrive on the poor villagers of Punjab and Sindh.
Over the next year or so, I met Mian Bashir a few times; he fascinated me. Like
my mother's guide, he was an unassuming and unrepossessing erson, who wore his
wisdom lightly. He was extremely hmble and wold take great pains to tell me that he
had no such art of looking into the future or the past. Instead, he said that when he
meditated and begged Allah to help him, He would occasionally lit the veil', but it was
always to help people in distress. Nthing,' he said, can happen without Allah's will.'
Each meeting with him would leave me more coninced about the existence of God. I
had been so angry since my mother's death, and here was a man helping to answer many
of the questions that had been tortring me. Over a period of two or three years he
resolved many of the issues which for me had been an impediment to faith. The
differece between the way I learned about Islam from him and the way I had been
taught at school or by the maulvis who used to come and teach me the Quran at home,
was that he never insisted on any religious rituals. He never told me to pray ve imes a
day or to fast at Ramadan, never insisted I read the Quran. Instead he explained what lay
behind the rites. He kew that one cannot force external demonstrations of religisity as
otherwse they are just empty rituals. The internal change must come rst. And he let
me develop my faith in my own time. Sometimes it took six months for me to truly
understand something he had said, bt he never huried me.
What appealed to me about im was that he had no ulterior motive; the only
reason he was leadig me towards spirituality was for my own good. Rather than
making himself indispensable to me, as some fake religious gurus do, he told me that he
could only help me so far. I would ask him to pray for me and he would insist that I pray
myself, or I would ask his advice ad rather than giving it to me he would tel me to
pray to God for direcion. He never asked for a thing and would say that any religious
person who charged people money was a quack. Jst as somebody who is blessed with
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wealth is morally oblged to share it with others, Mian Bashir believed that somebody
with hi kind of blessing was oblige to use it to help people.
Mian Bashir, who died in 205, also had a ery poor opinion of those preachers
who, by laying so muh emphasis o rituals, woul completely miss out on the essence
of religion. Some, according to him, had made religion into a profession and were there
not to guide people bt to prot from them. He also felt that they condemned peple too
quickly and actually made them scared of religion. The Quran,' he said, was supposed
to be a blessing for mankind. It wa not to make life more difult. You cannot drill
people to have faith; heir hearts and minds have t be penetrated. Faith is the greatest
gift of Allah.' He als taught me that any belief system that failed to instil comassion
was no real religion r had failed to touch the person internally. So much harm is done
in the world by people who treat religions as competing ideologies, yet all religious
messages teach humanity, selessness and justice. People who kill in the name of
religio are no different from the materialists wh ght in the ame of communism,
national socialism or capitalism.
So now I had come to the realization that there was a God, but I had to do the
reading, to understad the religio that had been sidelined n my Westernstyle
education. Mian Bashr had never ished school so other than the Quran, he was not in
a position to advise me on what to read to deepen my knowledge. My need to explore
the religion was spurred on by the frore in 1988 ad 1989 over Salman Rushdie'
s
The
Stni Verses.
Muslims understandably found the book deeply offensive in its satirical
portrayal of the Prophet Muhamma (PBUH). It hrt even more because Rushie was
from a Muslim India family and must have known the outrage it would cause. You
cannot hide behind freedom of speech to humiliate an entire religin and cause s much
hurt. Most Muslims felt insulted and responded by refusing to read the book bt there
was always going to be an extreme reaction from certain quarters. Every society is made
up maily of moderates but has its extremists and the extremist elements of the Islamic
world erupted. Only a minuscule poportion of the internationa Muslim community
reacted with violence but all 1.3 billion Muslims were tarnished. Translators of the book
were klled or attacked in Japan, Italy and Norway. In Pakista, several people died
when Islamists attacked the American Cultural Center in Islamabad. In Bradford,
Muslim immigrants, many of them British Pakistanis, burned copies of the book. British
Muslim groups campaigned unsuccessfully to have the book baned in the UK as the
country's blasphemy law protected only Christian beliefs. Most famously, Iran's
Khomeini declared a
ftw
or religious ruling, cndemning Rushdie and the book's
publishers to death and calling on Mslims to execute them immediately wherever they
might be'. An Islamic charity in Tehan put up a bounty for Rushdie's head. Khomeini's
fatwa was condemne by a variety f religious scholars, leaders and groups, inluding
the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the intergovernmental body that represents
Muslim countries. While blasphemy according to ome interpretations of the Qran, is
punishable by death, the fatwa violated various laws in Islamic jurisprudence, which
states the need for a fair trial to allow the accused t defend themselves and repet.
he Western public was puzled by such fry, being abslutely clueles about
how mch love, respect and reverence Muslims hae for the Prophet (PBUH). Our faith
depends on his credibility because he is the witness to the Quran. If his credibility is
questioned then so i the Quran. Most Muslims live by this book of guidance so
therefoe take any criticism of it as an attack on their whole way of life. I blame the
intelligentsia and leaders of the Muslim world for not making clear to Western cuntries
how hrtful the
Stni Verses
affair was. The OIC (Organiation of the Islamic
Conference), an association of Mulim states, should have set a delegation to the
European Union and S Congress t explain to them the offence caused by sladering
the Prphet (PBUH). Otherwise, how could the West understand, when i many
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Wester countries peple are allowed to make fn of religious gures? The Jewish
leadersip has been very effective in making it clear that the Holocaust which
understandably causes them so much pain cannot be ridiculed. The Muslim elite should
have followed their example.
here was nobody to defend the religion though and Islam was under attack
with people in the West drawing comparisons with he bookbuig of Nazi Germany. I
didn't have the depth f knowledge to defend it either. While leadng Pakistan o a tour
of New Zealand at the time I was constantly being asked about whether Islam was a
violent religion. So I started reading books about Islam and foud that my mid was
more stimulated than it had ever been. I was inspired by the writings of great scholars
like Iqbal the poetphilosopher integral to the founding of Pakista and Ali Shariati an
Iranian writer and sciologist wh regarded himself as a disciple of Iqbal. Both
believed in Islam's potential for creating ajust society as had been seen during what is
known as the Golden Age of Islam in the rst ve hundred years after the Prphet's
(PBUH) death. The more I read the better I could understand the Quran whch has
many layers of meanng. The more devoted and learned the interpreter the more the
meaning of each passage expands. I was also dran to the writig of Charles Le Gai
Eaton a British convert. A former iplomat write and broadcaster Eaton was one of
the formost Muslim intellectuals f the West. His writing di much to emphasize
Islam's spirituality and undermine the religious argments of ideoogues and extremists
and together with the example of his own life story provided a brdge between East and
West ad demonstrated how Islam culd contribute positively to British society. As his
obituary in the
Gurdin
put it: Refusing to conform to the dicates of any etnic or
cultura model imported from abroad this impeccable Englishman showed far more
effectively than any amount of theory that Islamic aith is fully cmpatible with British
identity .
Because my rots were Islamic but my education was Western what appealed to
me about Eaton was his experience f and views on Islam as a Westerner. A convert's
experience of Islam is purely spiritual rather than cultural. A ot of scholars in the
Islamic world labour nder the burden of culture ad history and can be too inenced
by both. As Eaton himself says in his introduction o his book
Islm nd the Detiny of
Mn:
One who enters the community of Islam by choice rather than by birth sinks roots
into the ground of the religion the Qran and the traditions of the rophet; but th habits
and customs of the Muslim peoples are not his. He lacks their strengths and is immune
from their weaknesses; immune abve all from the psychologicl "complexes which
are the result of their recent history.' Besides Eaton another convert who fascinated me
was Mhammad Asad who was bor an Austrian Jw under the name Leopold Weiss in
1900. Asad was a schlar and diplomat who was gien Pakistani citizenship and advised
on the drafting of Pakstan' s rst costitution.
My greatest inuence at this ime though was Iqbal a philosophical descendant
of the Eastern sage umi the renwned mystic and poetphilsopher of thiteenth
century Persia. One of the greatest thinkers of mode Islamic history Iqbal had studied
in both East and West and inspired in a generation of Indian Muslims an ardent desire
for change. Central to his vision is his philosophy of
khudi
(ego or selood·).
Accoring to this philosophy the development of khudi comes about through self
relianc selfrespect selfcondenc selfpreservtion and selfassertion when such a
thing is necessary in the interests of life and the ower to stick to the cause of truth
justice duty'. Iqbal adently believed that human beings were the makers of their own
destiny and that the key to destiny lay in one' s character. His philosophy was essentially
a philosophy of actio and it was cocerned primarily with motivating human beings to
strive to realize their Godgiven potential to the fllest degree. This he likened to the
eagle the
shheen
an emblem of roalty which deoted a kind of heroic idealism based
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on darig pride and honour. It is the king of the birds precisely because it disdains any
form of safety or ease He reminds the younger generation:
Tu shheen hy rwz hy km tyr
Tery sminn smn u bhi hin
You are a
shhen
your work is to y
here are other skies in front f you
and:
Nheen tyr nshymn QsreSultni ky gumbd ur
Tu shheen hy bsyr kur hron ki httnoon min
Your abode is ot on the dome of the palace of kings
You are a
shhen
live on the mountainclifs
he second major theme of Iqbal's philosophy that appealed to me -chld of a
post
colonial world as I was -was his strong afrmation of freedom and justice.
Throughout his life Iqbal identied imself with the oppressed people of the wold and
urged his fellow Muslims to rebel against all forms of tyranny -be it religious plitical
cultura intellectual economic or any other. For Iqal Islam -whose very name means
the submission or surrender of oneself to God -implied that Muslims shold not
surrender their freedom to anything except God. He believed a large part of the Quran' s
teachings were aimed at freeing human beings from the chains that bound them:
traditionalism authoritarianism (religious political or economic) tribalism racism
classism caste and save. This cncern is reected in much f Iqbal's writing. He
believed passionately in freedom which he considered to be the very breath f vital
living'. In his eyes a lave nation had no future. I Servitude it i reduced to an almost
waterless stream but in Freedom Life is a boundless ocean' he wrote. Each country
had to chart its own path.
On 1 January 1938 amid the buildup to the Second World War Iqbal made a
passionate condemnation of imperialism in aNew Year message broadcast on AllIndia
Radio. It was just a few months befoe his death.
he tyranny o Imperialism struts abroad covering its ace in the masks of
Democracy Nationalism Communism Facism and heaen knows what else
besides. Under these masks i every corner f the earth the spirit of freedom and
the dignity of man are being trampled underfoot The ocalled statesmen to
whom government and leaderhip of man were entrusted have proved demons of
bloodshed tyranny and oppression. The rulers whose duty it was to protect and
cherish those ideals which go to form a igher humanity to prevent man's
ppression of man and to elevate the moral intellectual level of mankind ave in
their hunger for dominion and imperial possession shed the blood of millins and
reduced millions to ervitude simply in order to pander to the greed and avarice of
their own particular groups. After subjugating and establishing their dominion
over weaker people they have robbed them of their religions their morals of
their cltural traditins and their literatures. Then they sowed divisions among
them that they should shed one aother's blood and go to sleep under the opiate
of serfdom so that the leech of imperialism might go on ucking their blood
without interruption. This message is even more relevant today.
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eading and uderstanding all this was an exciting time of discovery for me but
others were rather perplexed. My sisters and particlarly my father were amused as they
looked upon me as smeone who was totally immune to religion. As for my friends,
both in Pakistan and England, they started wondering if I had goe a little crazy. They
could ot understand what had come over me. I didn't fall out with people ove it, but
after to many passionate argumets I became rustrated, and decided I cold not
explain faith to people who believe that if somethig cannot be eplained scientcally,
then it cannot exist. Faith is somethng you feel you cannot expain it. Many assumed
my trasformation was a result of te trauma of reaching the end of my longrunning
career. My friends knew me to be a rational and completely nonsperstitious person, so
this passionate belief n the unseen was a mystery for them, as was my complete change
of lifestyle. One of my closest friends, Yousaf Salahuddin, grandson of the great Iqbal
though I had become a fundamentalist. Amongst sections of the westernized elite in
Pakistan, if you start to talk about religion you re automaticaly branded a mullah.
Years later I was speking to Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens) and he told me how
difcut it was for him when he discovered God. He cut himself off from his past life,
stopped singing, dumed his old friends and changed his clothes. It took him a while to
come t terms with the change in his thinking and to reconcile it with his environment.
t was hard enugh for the people who knew me intimatey -for the ones who
only kew me as a sorts star with a playboy reputation, the reaction was even more
extreme. I was accused of being a hypocrite or of suffering from a midlife crisis or a
nervous breakdown. I remember an article in an Eglishlanguage Pakistani newspaper
that compared me with another Pakistani cricketer, Fazal Mahmod. He was the pinup
sportsman of his time, and led a glamorous life until his retirement, when he turned to
God. I suppose people thought that sometimes a prfessional sportsman needs to replace
one passion in his life with another and often religion can ll that void. (My nternal
journey had started before I left cricket.) I too used to think Mahmood had become a bit
weird. Now I realized that, like me, he saw throgh the glamor of the fast life and
began to search elsewhere to satisfy is soul.
here is a section of Pakistan's westernized class that is not just secular, but
actually antiIslamic, and they use the gure of he mullah or the fundamentalist to
attack Islam. Former Turkish prime minister Necmettin Erbakan talked about a similar
attitude amongst the antiIslamic elite in Turkey. I an interview he once described how
they started booing and thumping their desks whenever the Prophet (PBUH) was
mentioed in parliament. This part o Pakistani socety and its media really went for me,
accusig me of being a bornagain' Muslim. Yet no spiritual transformation happens
overnight or comes ot of nowhere. It is an inner journey that takes time and is shaped
by various events in your life. Neither is it a straightforward journey and there were
times when I relapsed or had doubts. The Quran warns the believer that their faith will
be tested by crises.
My mother always knew that one of the thigs I hated most was being frced to
do something. The more somebody tried to make me a better Muslim through fear or
pressure, the more I would resist. The Quran specically states: There is no coercion in
religio.' You can't frce somebody to have faith because it is ultimately a battle for the
heart ad mind. So if I became a practising Muslim, it was because it was a decision I
came t by myself, after much thought and reection. I believe that people only really
change when their belief system changes. I don't believe that people change because
they ever have enough of a pleasureseeking life. People said that having satiated myself
with the life of fun, I had now tured religious. I disagree. In my experience people
never have enough of a fun life, they just get more and more debauched in search of
pleasure. Besides, these accusations implied that humans cannot eolve and reform. It is
only the strengthening of the will trough faith that enables a person to condct the
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struggle against earthly desires; what the Prophet (BUH) called the greater jihad. This
struggle continues all one' s life. This is one of the mistakes atheists make; they think
that a religious perso should be immune to tempation that the moment he claims to
have faith he should tansform into an angel but actually the battle has only just begun.
It is the beginning of the battle for the soul. When a Muslim prays ve times a day he is
making a constant plea to God to help him stick to the right path. For saint or sinner the
prayer is the same call ve times a day day ater day year ater year for ongoing
guidance. Guide us the straight way -the way of tose upon whom Thou has bestowed
Thy blessings not of those who have been condemned (by Thee) nor of those who go
astray' (Quran 1: 6). It is a constant reformation of one' s character.
I have rarely seen people be changed by seeing psychiatrists. According to
Charles Le Gai Eaton Psychiatry is the study of the soul by those people who have no
understanding of the soul.' Most drug addicts an alcoholics struggle to control their
habits despite repeated visits to rehab clinics. My friend Prince Jagat Singh of Jaipur
died in his forties ater struggling with alcoholism and going in and out of such
expensve facilities. His problem was that he had a directionless and meaningless life
and a dissatised soul. No rehab clinic is going to help with that. But I have met a lot of
people who have chaged completely when their souls have been touched by faith. I
beneted hugely from the direction of Mian Bashir during this journey of mine. Faith
without direction and especially wisom can produce fanatics selfrighteous bores even
ascetics. Guidance from a proper scholar is most important hence the tremendous
respect given to scholars in Islam. Taimur o Tamburlaine the TurcoMongol
conqueror who was oe of the greatest butchers in the history of mankind would ensure
that all the scholars were protected efore massacring a ci's population. Throughout
Muslim history scholars could travel to any part of the Islamic world and be received
with great respect wherever they wet.
Mian Bashir used to laugh at me and say: Think how long t took you to believe.
You want others to uderstand you i a few minutes.' He would urge me to recal these
words from the Quran: Say: I worship not that which you worship. Nor will you
worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion and unto me my religion' (Quran
109: 1-6). He explained to me that the basic requirements of the Quran are that a human
believes in One God the day of Judgement the hereafter and does good deeds to help
others. Several times the Quran refers to Muslims as those who believe and do good
deeds'. Following religious rituals without doing good deeds makes them meanngless.
Inspired by this idea after my nal retirement from cricket I began to work on building
the hospital in my mother's name in earnest. However my wa of life was still not
exactly Islamic. Mian Bashir despite being well aware of this never told me to change
my was. Not once did he give me a sermon about praying readig the Quran or living
a pious life. All he would say was that nothing would please Allah more than the
hospital I was building for the poor. When he sed to see me worrying about the
projects many obstacles he would reassure me by saying Alah would sove my
problems and that He always rewarded good intentions backed by effort. He also
reassured me when every now and then my faith wavered. Even te Prophet had doubts
in the beginning. It was his wife Khadija who assured him that his meeting with the
angel Gabriel was rea and that he was not going mad' he told me
Mian Bashir may have had an ability to see into the future but it was his wisdom
and absolute belief in the existence of God that had a real impact on me. He also helped
in removing one of the biggest impediments to my having faith i God. I simpl could
not picure Him. As a child I would imagine a grad old man with a huge white beard.
As I grew older it became much harer to believe that anyone could be so powerful as to
create he entire universe and control everything that happened with His will. Mian
Bashir simply quoted the Quran: Fa Exalted is He above all that you attribute to Him'
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and told me that the hman mind is ot capable of comprehending Allah so it ws futile
to try t picture Him; instead one shuld try to understand Him through the ninetynine
names given to him i the Quran describing His qualities. He tod me that it was also
impossble to imagine the angels Hell or Heaven.
I also discusse with Mian Bshir an issue that had bothered me for a long time;
it was about the immral believer ad the moral atheist. I had met so many moral and
principed people in the West who did not believe i God -and in Pakistan there was no
dearth of believers who prayed ve times a day and yet indulged in every immoral
activity. His answer was that when prayers become a mechanical ritual and fail t touch
the soul a man can struggle to resist his material and animal desires. A lot of people
who are religious are ot actually covinced that there is a God. As for those wh do not
believe in God and yet are moral -he felt that mrals are engrained into a person by
their parents school or even society but that ultimately all morality originates from
religio. According to him there is no such thing as moral atheism. Once people are cut
off from religious vales a society's morals will eventually degenerate.
I asked Mian Bashir how he could tell which verse of the Quran my mother
would read to me when I was a child. He stressed over and over again that he cold only
see what Allah allowed him to see. He told me there were times he would meditate and
beg Allah for some kowledge to guide someone bt it would be denied to him. When I
asked him about how he acquired these powers he simply said: Through devtion to
Allah.' He would go on to explain that since He has all knowledge when a man gets
close t him He allows him to see what others canot (Quran 3: 179 and 72: 26-27). He
said not everyone can acquire this kowledge though. Some can try as hard as they can
and still not get anwhere. Others such as Gd's Prophets can be shown this
knowledge without much effort. For ordinary mortals this knowledge can be acquired
through isolation and ascetic discipline. Reading the biography f the twelthcentury
Andalusian mystic uhammad Ibn Arabi helped me understad Mian Bashir's gift
better. Ibn Arabi referred to those that see with two eyes'. He believed that after a
process of spiritual discipline somebody could reach a state during meditation i which
they received direct kowledge from Allah.
I also started t read about Ssm and discovered there was a whole world of
spirituality about which I was completely clueless. Susm is too big a subject t delve
into in this book but these beautiful lines from the mystic poet Rumi reect what he
calls the inner jouey of man and the ascent of the human sol. People wh know
about mysticism will nderstand about the journey f the soul towards God.
Low in the earth
I lived in realms of ore and stne;
And then I smied in manytinted owers;
hen roving with the wild and wondering hours
O'
er earth and air and ocean' s zone
In a new birth
I dived and ew
And crept and ra
And ll the secrets of my essence drew
Within a form that brought tem all to view -
And
a Man!
And then my gol.
Beyod the clouds beyond the sky
In realms where one may cange or die -
In angel form; ad then away
Beyod the bounds of night and day
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nd Life and Death, unseen o seen,
here all that is hath ever been,
s One and hole.
Mian Bashir taght me to deal with aspects f Susm that I couldn't understand
by accepting that we re not allknowing, that we need to have humility. The arrgance
that we are meant t know everything only demonstrates the superciality of our
knowledge. Throughout the history f mankind, people have claimed absolute tuths -
things later proved to be wrong. There is a dimension that is beyond science, logic and
moder education, and we should not assume that what cannot be roved does not exist.
The more knowledge you have the more you should realize how little you know. I nd
that peple who are deeply knowledgeable, like Mian Bashir, are eeply humble. For me
the internal conict was over from this point onwads. Now there was just this burning
desire to understand God. I asked Mian Bashir where I should start. Read the Quran,'
he said hy did you not ask me to do so before?' I asked. You were not ready,' came
the reply. The Qura only makes sense to those who are searching for the Trth; not
those cynics who read it to disprove it.' For someoe who believes in reason and logic it
is difult to blindly believe that the Quran is the word of God. It was simultaeously
reading the Quran and the fascinatig life of the Prophet (PBUH) that convined me
about its divine origin.
henever I did not understnd anything i the Quran I would ask for Mian
Bashir's guidance. He would explin complex issues in very simple terms. Over a
period f time he answered most of the questions tat had been bthering me about the
existene of God. One of these was why, if there is a God, was there so much sffering
in the world? The aswer came, when you have faith there is a hereafter which is
eternal; God is not here to save us from difculties but to give us the stregth to
overcome them. (Yeas later, my so Sulaiman, when aged about twelve, asked me the
same qestion.) This ife is just a test for that herefter. Other questions that I hd were
answered by reading the Quran. The book that had seemed so diicult to get interested
in now offered jewels of wisdom on every page. Having said this, I admit in all humility
that I o not have answers to all the questions ad I would like to think that, as the
Prophe (PBUH) stated, I
wl
keep learning from the cradle to the grave.
either do I claim to be an Islamic scholar, but I would like to use the example of
my spiritual journey to put right some of the myths and misconceptions about Islam in
the est. A great religion has been maligned thanks not just to igorance in the estern
world, but also ignorance amongst Muslims abot Islam's true essence. There is so
much debate about mderate and radical Islam but there is only ne Islam. Peole can
be moerates, radicals or liberals i any human community but all the world's great
religios have at their heart a message of compassion. Fath should be about
encouraging all that is noble in a hman being. It should enhance both the individual
and the community, and is not to be used as a political tool by thse greedy for power,
as it hs been in Pakistan and other Muslim countries, or in medieval Europe I also
want to show that terrorism has nothing to do with religion and certainly nothing to do
with the true teachings of Islam. How can mindless butchery and killing be attributed to
faith? Islam, like many religions, and for that matter political idelogies like soialism
or communism, has been misused by humans for personal and political gain.
For a start, as my faith grew my entire outlook on life changed and I began to
reform my character. Those who believe that they will be judged by their conduct on
this earth in the hereafter will lead their lives differently to those who only believe in the
present life. Had this inner transformation not taken place I would have continued to live
a pleasureseeking existence. I had everything I needed and with a few moths of
cricketrelated work like commentary or journalism I could earn eough money t live a
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life of complete leisure for the rest o the year. I had always led a selfcentred life. I had
a handful of friends in Pakistan and England and made no effort to meet new people and
enlarge the circle of people I mixed with. Being shy I found it diicult to open p with
those I did not know very well. My bachelor life sited me well as not only did it give
me a selfcontained way of life withut any responsibilities but it also tted in well with
my hedonistic philosophy. I had no desire to have children as they did not t in with the
way I wanted to live. Most of my married friends had struggled with their marriages not
spent enough time with their childen and had ended up going through really ugly
divorces. My future plans had always been based around how I could maximize this
existene: winter moths to be spen in Pakistan with family and friends and partridge
shooting; the months f June and July in London for the hectic peak of the social season
as well as Lord's tes matches and Wimbledon. hen in August I would be back in
Pakistan for travelling in the Karakoram. However as my faith grew stronger I began to
feel that I had a respnsibility to the society I was living in. I found that there were
greater goals in life than material and sensual pleasures. I also started to become aware
of the fact that the Almighty had been extremely kind to me. I used to always tink of
all those things that I did not have but now I realized I had been blessed with s much
and needed to give something back.
I was heavily inuenced by the Quranic injunction Keep the money you need
and give the rest away.' It took me qite a long time to understand this yet withi it lies
the key to human contentment. Most people cannot distinguish between wants and needs
because wants can be limitless. I would see cricketers I had played with -sme of
whom came from ve humble backgrounds -striing to make more and more money
even ater they let the sport. I realized that it was ut of insecurity. For a sportsman in
particuar there is usually only a limited time in which one can make a lot of money.
These people were caght in a neverending race where no amout of money was ever
going t be enough. I is the same with Pakistan' s ruling elite. Sme of our polticians
are dollar billionaires yet there is still no end to their greed. What I realized whilst
raising funds for the hospital was that the unhappiest people are those whose goals are
entirely material. The people who had donated the most were also the ones who were
spiritual and seemed most content. n the same vein the greates scenes of happiness
and cotentment I had ever seen were in the villages and homes of rural communities of
Pakistan. I have long since believed that the people who are richest are the people who
cannot be bought for any price.
he forefathers of many Pakistanis in Sindh and Punjab were Hindus and before
Partition the area that is now Pakistan was a more religiously diverse societ with
communities of Muslims Sikhs Christians and Hndus living side by side. Now it is
about 95-97 per cent Muslim. But there is an especially strong Hindu inuence in
Sindh still home to the majority of akistan' s Hindus. There is an acceptance of life' s
lot as a part of the jouney in Hinduism as part of karma so in Sindh a peasant typically
accepts this despite being treated almost as a slave by some Sindhi landlords. In arts of
Pakistan especially Sindh a sense of Hindu fatalism lingers amongst the peasants.
Contrary to the impression some Westerners form from the frequent use of the word
inshh
(by the will of God) in the Muslim word fatalism is ot part of Islam. You
learn to accept what is past but you retain control of your future. Iqbal ardently believed
that human beings were the makers f their own destiny and that the key to destiny lay
in one's character. Your
Khudi
elevate to such a height that ere each Judgment / God
Himself asks of His creature "What is your desire? he wrote in ne of his bestknown
couplets:
Khudi ko kr bulnd itn, ky hur tqeer sy ehly,
/
Khud bndy sy
khud ohy but tree rz ky hy?
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In other words we are masters of our own destiny. The goal of Iqbal's philosophy
was nt only persoal but also social transfomation inspired by the Quranic
proclamation Toward God is your limit' (Surah 53:
AnNjm:
42.
Like many peple I used to torment myself with regrets obsessing abut my
mistakes in cricket racking my brain about what I could have done differently. With
faith I learned to let g of what had already happened something I've been able to do at
two different and very painful times in my life after the death of my mother ad then
again fllowing my divorce. The Qran states that those who believe in God will be
blessed and protected by God: Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and
the Christians and the Sabians whever believes in Allah and te Last day and does
good tey shall have their reward from their Lord and
there is no fer for them, nor
shll they grieve .
nd indeed the greatest blessing faith gave me was that it liberated me frm my
fears: fear of failure fear of death fear of losing my livelihood fear of being humiliated
by others. Don't ght destiny becase Destiny is God,' said the Prophet (PBUH). This
text means the past is only to learn from and not t live in and that the future s to be
looked forward to ad not feared. You try your best in the given circumstances;
whatever happens after that you accept as the will f God and come to terms with it.
Because my prfession rathe like that of actors and models depended s much
upon my youth I used to worry about both ageing and dying. Wat was I going to do
after cricket? But I came to realize that your livelihod your health and the time of your
death were in God's hands. This was all of great help to me during the last two years of
my sprts career. It is very difcut to play professional cricket well if you are not
playing all the time. I was only partiipating in international cricket by that time to help
raise fnds for the hospital. So it was hard to keep my skills honed and I was past my
prime. And yet I had more acknowedgement and respect in the last two years of my
career than before. I only managed t overcome injury and play i the 1992 World Cup
because I had lost my fear of failure and leaving cricket in humiliation. In the past I
would ever have risked playing in such a highprole tournament so injured and so out
of form. As the Qura says If anyone puts his trust in Allah sucient is He for him.'
Within me grew the innate condece of knowing that respect and humiliation are in
God's hands. I used t be so sensitive to criticism; I'd ght with people ifI thought they
were rde to me I'd ever speak to a journalist again if they wrote something negative
about me -a couple of times I'd eve slapped one when they were rude to me in public.
I masked my shyness with aggression. But my belief in God made me become immune
to ridicule. According to the Qura no human being can humiliate another decent
human being. The Greek scholar Socrates when he was sentenced to death said more or
less the same thing o evil can hapen to a good man neither in life nor after death.'
I was always a risktaker and aith enhanced that. Fear is the biggest impediment
to a human being achieving their potential and dreams. During my cricketing career a lot
of taleted cricketers never realized their potential because of the fear of failure. Less
talented players got far better results simply because of a positive attitude. Some hugely
talented batsmen could not do justice to themselves because they were physically scared
of getting hit by fast bowlers. In fact in all aspects of life fearlessness is an essential
quality for success. A soldier who is scared of dying is unlikely to win any medals. A
businessman who does not take risks is unlikely to succeed. A leader who lacks courage
can neer command respect and hece never inspire his team. Most crucially leader
needs courage to take the big decisions and big decisions always carry big riss. The
differece between a good leader and a bad one is tat the former takes huge risks while
fully grasping the cosequences of failure while the latter takes isks without a proper
assessment of the pitfalls. Successful people never make decsions based n fear.
Leaders of a country shaping policies out of fear of losing power have always proved to
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be disatrous. Great leaders always have the ability to resist pressre and make policies
according to their vision rather than fear. As Iqbal aid the punishment for the crime of
cowardice is death:
Tqdeer ky qzee k yeh ftw hyzl s
/
Hy jurmez
eefee k sz murgemfjt.·
Once you learn to overcome your fears your life transform because fearlessness
breeds idealism. On the other hand so often have
seen materialism forcing people to
be more pragmatic. I am not of course saying that people should not be aware of their
limitations. In cricket the rst thing I feared was that one could not be successful unless
one played within one' s limitations at a given point in time but one should always strive
to overome them. I have always been something of an idealist never content to accept
my apparent limits. When I was just tarting out at international leel at cricket I was so
inspired in 1972 by watching a fast owler for the rst time -Dennis Lillee -tat my
ambition became to emulate him. The senior players and my coach at Worcestershire
insiste I had neither the physique nor the bowling action to become a fast bower and
that if
tried to change I could rui my career. It was idealism that dared me to take
risks. Not only did I ompletely remodel my bowing action to become a fast bowler
but my body also became stronger for me to bowl fast. (No one i international cricket
has completely changed their bowling action as I did.) As Iqbal says Gabriel told me at
the beginning of time Do not accept the heart that is enslaved by reason.' Had Sir
Edmund Hillary been a slave to reason he would never have climbed Mount Everest.
Lastly faith helps you to control your material desires and steels your will. This
is part of the inner jihad -the battle between soul ad body. I used to consider fating to
be a rital that was inconvenient and a hindrance to my routine. I would not fast f I was
in training as I would be worried about getting dehydrated. After retiring from cricket I
decide to try and stick to my daily routine (including exercisin during Ramadan. By
the end of the month of fasting I felt I had much more endurance and stamina and felt
physically cleansed. Much more sigicantly it made me realize ust how poweful the
human will really is. The more you exercise it the sronger it gets. Fasting if done in the
right sirit can be of immense alue. There are a lot of Muslims who destroy
Ramadan's value by leeping during the day and staying up eating all night. During the
long dfcult years I was building the cancer hospital praying beame to me more than
a meaningless ritual. I found that prayers were the best way to relieve stress -povided
one prayed with the knowledge that there was a God and He wa listening. Previously
the only way I would ght stress was by exercising. I remember o many times oming
out of the hospital's board meetings weighed dow by some new crisis we were facing.
Since te entire burden of fund collection was on y shoulders I would alway assure
the senior staff at the ospital not to worry as I did not want to deoralize them. Then I
would ead straight to the beautiful mosque in our hospital and pray for help. I always
felt relaxed afterward. Soon praying ve times a day became a need rather than a duty.
I never took fo granted the kowledge I'd gained from beng placed on the path
by Mian Bahir as I know from my own experience that it can be argued that just
because someone has an extra sense or an ability to predict the fture it doesn' t prove
that there is a God. Ater all some psychics and clairvoyants can get quite a few things
right about the future But never in the almost twenty years that I knew Mian Bashir
were oe of his prophecies ever wrong. Like most people brought up in the West my
exwife Jemima was also quite sceptical about this talent. Whe she rst met him he
asked her to write down three things she wanted more than anything in her life. He left
her completely awestruck when without even lookig at the piece of paper (he could not
read Eglish in any case) he told her exactly what her three wishe were.
All the truly great people in history -Jinnah Gandhi Mother Teresa Nelson
Mandea -have had a vision and ambition beyond themselves oten achieving more
than others not becase of more talent but because they had bigger ambitions and
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seless dreams. The idea of constantly striving towards ever higher goals struck a chord
with me, dovetailing with my own philosophy that I had developed through sport -the
more you challenge yourself, the mre you discover greater reserves of strength within
you. The moment yo relax and stop pushing yourself is the mment you start going
downhill. I rst stroe to play cricket for Pakistan, then my gal became to be my
country's best allrouder, then the best fast bowler. From there I wanted to become the
best allrounder and the best fast bwler in the world. When I was made captain the
ambitin became turing the team into the best in the world. And once the cancer
hospital I founded in emory of my mother became a success I set about building two
more hospitals, one i Karachi and one in Peshawar. Now my challenge in life is to
bring about a socioeonomic revoltion in Pakistan. I am also building a knowledge
city on the pattern of Oxford University in Mianwali, the rst privatesector university
in the rral areas of Pakistan. After one goal has been achieved, there are always ore to
conquer. As Iqbal says: Other worlds exist beyond the Stars / More tests of love are still
to come.'
My exwife Jeima used to ask me how lng I would keep pursuing politics
without succeeding, at what point would I decide it was futile. But I couldn't answer,
simply because a dream has no time frame. It does not matter wat your education or
social background is, you can only full your human potential if you never give up on
the pursuit of your dreams. Human contentment is connected to kowing the purpose of
one's existence. Whe one is pursuing one's dreams, even when one is going trough
outer trbulence, there is always iner peace. During the last decade I went trough
some f the most painful and diffcult phases i my life, but I always slept well,
condent within myself that the resistance I was faing was to strengthen me to achieve
my goals.
Faith answered two of the mst important uestions, which had always agged
me. Questions that science could never answer. What is the purpose of existence? What
happens to us ater we die?
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Chapter Four
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Our Faied Democrac
y
, 1988-1993
AS THE COUNTRY continued its downward trajectory in the 1980s and 1990s,
crippled by its own leadership regardless of dictatrship or demcracy, about te only
thing we still did well was play crcket, hockey and squash. My one contribtion to
restorig some of our battered natioal selfesteem was to lead or team in wining the
World Cup in 1992. While I think te lowest poin for the county's morale was when
we los East Pakistan the highest was winning the World Cup. It was perhaps the last
time Pakistan was uited as everyone joined together to celebrate. When we arrived
back i Lahore with he trophy, peple lined the streets for mile. Watching the sheer
joy on their faces gave me a tremendous feeling of satisfaction I led the country to
victory on the cricket eld, but had yet to feel the need to miror that leaderhip in
politic.
n July 1988 while I was playing for Susex and living in London, I got an
unusual call from Pakistan. It was my friend Ashraf Nawabi, who was close to Zia. He
asked if I would become a minister in the general' cabinet. Zia had just dismised the
elected government f Muhammad Khan Junejo, who was probably the most decent
prime minister Pakistan had ever had. Junejo was from Sindh province, and Zia had
assumed that he would be very pliabe and docile. But Junejo made the mistake of trying
to asset himself, inclding on the isue of Zia' s refusal to sign the Geneva Accords that
would end the Soviet war in Afganistan. He also tried to itroduce an asterity
campaign. Unlike may of Pakistan' rulers, who seem to want to live in the gradeur of
Mugha emperors, Jnejo led by example, drivig a Pakistanmade Suzuki in an
attempt to encourage cabinet members and the military to ditch their luxury imported
cars. Nawabi's offer tok me completely by surprise. I declined it politely, saying that I
was not qualied for the job. A day later Dr Anwar ulHaq, Zia's younger son, called
me up and urged me to join the government for the sake of the country. He said his
father as sick of corupt politicians who were only in politics to further their personal
interests. People of integrity like me were needed in the cabinet, he said. This eemed
rather ironic given that Zia had done so much damage to democracy and rule of law in
Pakistan, particularly with his nonpartybased elections. I was attered bu again
declined.
Shortly ater that phone call, Zia died, killed, along with the top ranks of his army
and the serving Amercan ambassadr to Pakistan, in a mysteriou plane crash. I was in
the south of France o holiday whe I heard. It was quite a shoc. Almost as much as
with Bhutto. The case of the accident remains a mystery but there are plenty of
conspiracy theories. I Pakistan there was a suspicion that the CIA had a hand in it, that
Zia was bumped off the moment he moved away from Washigton's script and no
longer erved its purpse. After his death there was the same feelig as, years later, after
Musharraf let -euphria that we wuld be free again from dictatrship, corrupton and
media uppression to resume our journey towards true democracy. The election three
months later of Zulkar Ali Bhutto' daughter Benazir as prime minister, the rst open
electios in a decade, ushered in a new period. Like all Pakistanis I had great
expectations of her. With her understanding of Western democratic societies and her
education at Oxford and Harvard, she was ideally placed to bring in a new era for our
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country. She was wel off and didn' need the money that came with power -o so we
though. She had everything going for her. She was popular in Pakistan and one of the
bestknown Muslim faces in the West. In fact the Western media was totally enamoured
of her -the glamorus daughter of a charismatic democratic eader who had been
hanged by a military dictator, and, to top it all, the rst female prime minister of a
Muslim state. In front of the Wester media, Benazir played the rle of being the exotic
daugher of the East' to perfection.
Of course there was an early warning sign even before she came to power. Her
greates betrayal was of the thousands of people who worked for the party fouded by
her father, the PPP, who had endured years in jail striving for democracy during Zia's
martial law, in completely abandoning the missio statement of he People's Party, of
having a just and egalitarian society and having social justice' -all that was cast off.
She further made a mckery of demcracy by cometing with Nawaz Sharif, then chief
minister of the Punjab and later t be her successor as prime minister, to buy off
indepedent MPs. I the absence of ideology, politicians were auctioned and
indepedents were bmbarded with lucrative offers for them ad their families. The
term Changa Manga politics or culture in Pakistan stems from Sharif paying off and
then literally locking p a group of provincial MPs in an isolated rest house in the forest
of Chaga Manga outside Lahore so that the PPP culd not make hem a counteroffer.
It was not long before all o us were disappointed by Benazir. She began to
behave more like an empress than a democratically elected prime minister. After her
death William Dalrymple described nding her majestic, even imperal' on
interviewing her whe she was prime minister. She walked and talked in a deliberately
measured and regal manner and frequently used the royal "we,' he noted. I have to say
that these imperial traits were already evident whe she was young. The rst time I met
her she was tearing a man to shreds or daring to qestion her socialist credentials. As a
student at Oxford I shared a house with Zia Malik, the brother of the actor Art Malik.
One day I came home and could hear a woman's voice arguing as I locked up my bike
outside the house. Zia had invited some of the other Pakistanis at Oxford round to meet
Benazi. However, he had managed to enrage the guest of honour by complainng that
effective land reforms had not been implemented i Sindh. It was obviously a sensitive
topic fr Benazir, as her father had made a token attempt to undermine the power of the
feudal landlords with some limited land reform in 1972. I tried to calm Benazir down
and after that initial meeting we became good friends. She had a reputation for being
polite to the English and imperious with fellow Pakistanis. I remember seeing er at a
receptin in 1974 held by the Pakistani embassy in the Netherlands in honour of the
visiting Pakistan cricket team. Aged only abut twenty, she was ordering the
ambassador around as if he was her ersonal servat. To the bemsement of me and the
rest of he team, the por man was scurrying round moving chairs and tables for er.
It was also quite obvious that Benazir was ambitious frm a young age. She
stayed on at Oxford fr an extra year after I let ad I always presumed it was because
she was so determined to become president of the Oxford Union. Benazir's poblem,
though, was that her rst ever job was being prime minister. nd she only became
prime minister because she was her father's daughter ust as her son Bilawal became
chairman of the PPP at the age of nieteen because he is his mother's son). Benazir had
struggled, spending six months in jail and several years in and ot of house arrest, but
she ha not had to ght her way to the top of her party, nor spend years in the political
frontline, ghting her party's cause. That is not to underestimate the suffering that years
of connement must have caused such a young woman, but it s not preparation for
leading a country. How on earth can you run a coutry when your rst job is to be prime
minister? She had not been tested by the rigours of the journey towards leadership, nor
developed a vision or ideology, nor leaed about management r institution bilding.
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To becme a general in the army r a chief executive of a company there is a long
process of acquiring skills and accumulating responsibilities. Family dynasties in
politics inevitably lead to incompetet leadership ad decay. Thei dominance of South
Asian politics is precisely why true democracy has foundered in the regon. A
meritocratic system is vital for demoracy. In some ways dynastic politics is eve worse
than a monarchical system. At least with a monarchy a prince r princess is given a
groundng in the art of leadership. Bilawal Bhutto a young man ho has spent half his
life outside Pakistan is far less equipped to lead than for example the UK' s Prince
Charle.
If Benazir was woefully inexperienced for th job she was also unfortunat in her
choice f husband Asif Ali Zardari. The son of a feudal family he had achieved little in
life off the polo eld. In her defence Benazir's poition did not make it easy for her to
nd a ecent husband. By the time se came to marry at the age f thirtyfour she was
already considered old by Pakistani bride standards Besides her family was houded by
the Zia regime so people were terried of associatig with them. It is very dangerous to
be on the wrong side of politics in Pakistan. It was therefore difcult for her to meet
normal people. I introduced her to a ousin Qamar Khan at one point and they thought
about marriage but thn AlZulqar the organization set up by her brothers to avenge
their faher's executio hijacked a Pakistan Internaional Airlines ight in 1981 and she
was thrown back in jail. By the time she emerged Qamar Kha had married a wife
chosen by his family. So she ended up with Zardari whom she lved so much tat she
gave him free rein to use his position to amass as much power ad money as pssible.
He treated Pakistan as his personal estate and cosidered it his feudal right t abuse
power and take commissions on government contracts (with estates in France and -
though now sold -in Surrey it wa clear where te money was going). Soon he was
known as Mr Ten Percent although from my one and only meetig with him I can say
his price was double tat.
he construction of the hospital about which more later gave me an insight into
the way he worked. In 1989 I went to Benazir's home Bilawal Huse in Karachi to ask
for assistance in raising funds for the hospital. Since I was trying t help compenate for
the lack of social services provided by the government I thought I would get elp in
kickstarting the project. She was busy so we were given an adience with Zardari.
Since I had been friendly with Benair at Oxford I expected a sympathetic hearing. He
was charming and exremely attering towards me. However he offered no help and
instead spent most of he time talking to my friend ariq Sha. Taiq comes from one of
Pakistan's most poweful textileindstrialist families and Zardari asked him to set up a
couple of factories i Sindh PP' stronghold aying he needed to provide some
employment in the province. He sggested that f 20 per cent of the shares in the
business were given t him he would remove all bureaucratic hudles' and help obtain
loans fom the nationalized banks. Needless to say no help on he hospital was ever
forthcoming either frm Benazir or her husband.
So imagine my surprise ve years later when a week before the opening of the
hospital I had an unexpected visit frm an old fried called Navad Malik whom I had
not seen for years. Bhutto was at that point in her second term of ofce after being
dismised in 1990 on harges of corruption and incmpetence and then voted in again in
1993. Navaid brought a message from her and Zardari saying they wanted to honour our
hospital by cutting the ribbon. Although the hospital had already started operatig on a
small sale we had set the ofcial oening date for 29 December 1994 and had decided
that the ribbon would be cut by our rst cancer paient a tenyearold girl from a poor
family called Sumera Y
ousaf. Ordiarily it would be attering for any instittion to
have the prime minister opening it but of course I refused. I was later to learn the cost
of snubbing the royal couple's request. Benazir ha become quite unpopular because of
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corruption scandals srrounding her husband and had presumably wanted to cash in on
the euphoria in the country surrounding the opening of the hospital. Besides, my recent
sixweek campaign around Pakistan to raise money for the project had been seen by her
and Zadari as politically threatening. The trip had in fact been a little like an election
campaign, with thousands of ordinary Pakistanis tuning out on to the streets to give me
money. Some of them asked me to come into politics as they made their donations; and
for the first time the media started taking about my entering the plitical fray.
In between Beazir's two terms in oce, awaz Sharif had come into power.
Ater two years of her and Zardari, people thought he could onl be an improement.
However, rather than building up the country, he expanded his own industrial empire. It
grew a a phenomenal rate under gvernment patronage -a staggering 4,000 per cent
from 1985 to 1992. He was just as crrupt as Benazir and Zardari; he simply wet about
it in a different way. He perfected the art of buying politicians. When I rst met Sharif
in the ate 1970s at cricket club, he seemed like a regular guy with little drive or
ambitin, more intereted in cricket than politics. I think his real dream would have been
to be cptain of the Pakistani cricket team. He just loved the glamur of the sport
An incident happened in autmn 1987 which illustrates Sharif's mindset. Just
before the World Cup in October 1987, when I was captaining Pakistan, we played a
warmp match agaist the West Idies at the Gdda stadium in Lahore. Mments
before he match, the secretary of the cricket boar, Shahid Ra, informed me that the
Chief Minister of Punjab, Nawaz Sharif, was going to captain the team that day. I was
taken aback but then assumed that he would have a nonplaying role and wated to
watch the match from the dressingrom. Therefore I was shocked to see him walk out
to toss the coin with Viv Richards, the West Indian captain, ressed in his cricket
whites; but there was a bigger shock to come. He won the toss, and returned to the
dressingroom and started putting o his pads. None of the team could believe what we
were seeing; he was going to open he innings with Mudassar Nazar against the West
Indies, one of the greatest fast
bowing attacks in cricket history. Nazar wore batting
pads, a thigh pad, chet pad, an arm guard, a helmet and reinforced batting glove, while
Sharif imply had his batting pads, a oppy hat -ad a smile.
For those who are not conversant with cricket history, it is important to know that
this wa a fast
bowling attack not seen before or sice in the cricketing world, sch was
the West Indies' blistering pace, wih four bowler bowling aboe 90 mph. It was the
sort of attack that had destroyed the careers of many a talented batsman; interational
batsme, professional cricketers, who would have leepless night when they were due
to face the West Indies. And here was Nawaz Sharf, who had no experience of laying
at this level of cricke, walking out, unprotected, t face this deadly attack. Clearly he
would ot have the reexes to defed himself if a short ball was aimed at his bdy, so
there was a risk of a serious injury. I quickly inquired if there was an ambulance eady.
As we watche the rst ball -by a 6ft 6 inh West India fast bowler -hit the
wicketkeeper's glove even before Sharif could lif his bat, the team sighed with relief
that it wasn't straight. Mercifully for Sharif, the seond ball was traight at the tumps,
and before he could move his stump lay shattered.
For those who don't undersand cricket, Sharif was trying the equivalent in
academic terms of a hild, having just nished primary school attempting to write a
PhD thesis. When I was a schoolboy I indulged in a daydream; that I would be t a test
match, the team would discover the were a player short, I would put up my hand and
be brought on to suddenly become a hero. This seemed to be Sharif's dream too, as if he
could bypass the whle process of working your way up the ladder and become a hero.
It was nly when I started growing up, as a teenage, that I learned there are no shortcuts
to achieving big dreams, there is a whole struggle a person has t go through t reach
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the top in any profesion. Here we are talking abut the chief minister of the iggest
province of Pakistan having such fantasies.
Sharif had been forced into politics by his father who wanted to protect his
business interests. Shrif had a similar handicap to Benazir in that he was given power
without ever having earned it the hard way. hrough his complete loyaly and
subservience to Zia rather than experience he proeeded quickly through the ranks of
the Pujab governmet progressing from nance minister to chief minister i 1985.
Military dictators always look for pliable politicians and he tted the bill pefectly.
Sharif appeared to view public ofce not as a responsibility but s a means to get rich
and one he became rime minister in 1990 many of the family assets were acquired
through loans from nationalized banks that have neer been paid off. The Pakistai press
soon started to print allegations that senior politicans were trying to bully banks into
giving hem multimilliondollar loas. Under Sharif's government the culture of lifafa
journalism' also sprag up -a
f
is a packet r bribe. Journalists were bought off
with cash while politicians were bribed with plots of governmetowned land. Sharif
like Zrdari is rumored to be one of the richest men in Pakistan. He was dismissed
amid carges of corruption after three years only t be replaced by Bhutto in her second
term. He returned to power for his second term in 1997 after Bhuto was again forced to
step down -the merrygoround of corrupt government was as dizzying to the pblic as
to the politicians themselves. Zardari's political life is an indicaton of how Pakistan' s
political system worked; when Benazir's government was dismised in 1990 he went
straigh from the PM's house to jail. When she came back into pwer in 1993 he went
straigh from jail to the prime minister's house; and in 1996 he went from there ack to
jail. The moment he came back into power all charges were dropped; our justice system
could nly act agains those out of power. In power the justice system became part of
the executive.
Every time Beazir or Sharif came back one hoped that maybe they migt have
learne something in pposition or i exile but to o avail. Like most people I watched
the descent of our contry into corruption and lawlessness with dismay. It wa in the
1990s that Pakistanis really started to lose hope i the country and there was a great
brain dain as the coutry plunged into semianarchy. More or les every institution was
destroyed. Corruption permeated down from the prime minister to government ministers
to members of parliament the bureaucracy the judiciary and the police int every
stratum of society. Wen the Punjab inspector general of police Abbas Khan wa asked
by the Lahore High Court in the 1990s why the city's police were so corrpt he
reported that 25000 policemen had
ot
been recruited on merit ad amongst them were
known criminals. He blamed the siuation on Nawaz Sharif's Pnjab government. In
Sindh the PPP an MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement the United ational
Movement) governments had done exactly the same lling the police up with their
party cadres even thugh some of them had a criminal past. This destruction of our
police ystem was done at the cost of law and orer in Pakistan and it was deiberate
because the police typically play a major role in manipulatig the elections and
intimidating the oppoition. The whle moral fabric of the count began to fall apart. In
1996 Transparency Iternational (a NO that rates political corruption in an annual
index) rated Pakistan to be the second most corrupt count ot of ftyeight. The
economy fared no better. Unemployment coupled with ination (due mainly to indirect
taxes) forced people to tu to crime. The drug maa boomed. During the 1990s
economic growth exports revenues and development spending lipped while poverty
levels ose. Economic sanctions slapped on the country following Pakistan' s rst
nuclear test in 1998 oly added to our woes.
What pained me in particular was the enviromental and cultural destruction. For
me the beauty of Pakistan was neer in our cities it was in the mountains and the
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wilderess. In the UK the environmental movemen had got into fll swing by the 1980s
while i Pakistan we were destroying everything worth preserving without any concern
for futre generations. I could not bear watching our forests decimated, our rivers
polluted, historical mnuments destroyed and aboe all our wildife disappearig. Our
tree cover suffered more under democratic governments, becuse members of the
timber maa' would ght elections with money made from cuttig forests. One of the
most pwerful and ruthless organiztions within Pakistan, the timber maa engages in
illegal logging, estimated to be worth billions of upees each year,' wrote the British
newspaper the
Gurdin.
In the summer of 1993 I was driving along the Karakoram
Highway and saw timber -the remains of conifes hundreds of years old -lying on
either side of the road for around fty miles. I was so upset abut it I wrote an open
letter t the caretaker prime minister at the time, Moeen Qureshi, who had taken over
ater N
awaz Sharif resigned from his rst term in fce as prime minister. He id take
measures to crack don on illegal logging but they didn't last long. The problem is that
Pakistan hasn't changed the law since the days of the British -the ne is a few hundred
rupees. Pakistan has one of the lowest percentages f forest cover in the world -2.5 per
cent according to a 2009 study by the UN's Food and Agricultre Organization. The
deforestation rate stands at 2.1 per cent a year, the highest in Asia. Already limited by an
arid or semiarid climate in parts of the country, our forest has been further decimated
by largescale deforesation and degradation. Not srprisingly oods are now a poblem
in many areas as a result. Successive governments have allowed Pakistan to squander
both its forests and its water supplies as a growing population competes for dwindling
resources. But politicians in Pakista have no sense of the environment or of aeshetics;
most o them are only interested in making a quick buck. They have houses i fancy
foreign locations, their wealth is stashed abroad, they educate ther children in the UK,
Canada or the United States -they have no stake i the nation's future. Every time the
government changes in Pakistan there is an exodus of crooked politicians who scuttle
away t their safe havens abroad. There they bide their time till the new government has
been dscredited and then come back to start their looting and plunder again. or do
they hve any knowledge of the Pakistani countryside, rarely enturing beynd the
cities. hey are ignornt of Pakistan's natural treasres, and yet Islam instructs Muslims
to care for the enviroment.
Amidst the destruction being wrought by or politicians, Pakistan's World Cup
win was a muchneeded boost for national morae. The irony was that I ha never
planned to stay in cricket into the 1990s. I had already retired follwing the 1987 World
Cup but a year later General Zia reqested my return to the sport n national television.
At a diner organized for the team he took me into another room and warned me about
what he was going to do. Don't humiliate me by sying no,' he sid. I am going to ask
you to come back for the sake of your country.' Tuched by the appeal to my sense of
patriotism, I of course had to say yes. The other reason for my retrn, though, was that I
still had an unfullled longing to have a last bash at the West Indies. This was one of
my great cricketing ambitions -along with wining the World Cup, and eating
England and India on their home turf. I wanted to leave on a high and the chance to have
another crack at the West Indians came up because Australia cancelled their tour of the
West Idies in 1988 ad Pakistan was invited insted. The main aim when playing them
was to lose with digity; winning was not even considered an option such as the
destructive power of he West Indies juggernaut. But we were the rst team in teen
years t play them o their home trf (with home umpires) an come back with the
honours -getting the better of a oneall draw. By the following year, however, I began
to cut down on my cricket commitments and seriously concetrate on the hospital
project Then in 1990 Pakistan toured Australia and it was now that I noticed that
running around for the hospital and ot playing any rst class criket had taken its toll
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on my game. I could not perform at the level that was expected f me, especialy as a
bowler. Yet if I opped it would have disastrous consequences for my recently begun
fundraising campaign The problem was compounded by the weak team I was leading.
A couple of top playes had retired ad the new ones were not up to the mark. Although
we lost the series, I personally had a successful tour and went on t win Cricketer of the
Year' i Australia as batsman.
I learned a lot, as the leader of the team. Cricket is the only sport where yu need
leadersip on the pitch; no other sport gives so much of a role to the captai as in
cricket, in all other sprts it is the coach who is cruial. A leader on the cricket eld can
raise the performance of an ordinary team, whereas a poor captain can prevent a talented
team from fullling its potential. A cricket captain, to be leader, has to lead by example
-he has to show courage if he wants his team to ght. He has to be seless if he wants
his plaers to play fo the team. He has to have itegrity if he wants to command the
respect of the team. bove all, in times of crisis, he must have he ability to take the
pressure -that's whe a team needs the leader mos.
People come nder pressure when they fear failure, but it is all in the mind.
Striding out to the crease, when you can be out rst ball
especially when your team is
in deep trouble
, if yu allow yourself to feel fear you will freee. The fear of failure
clogs the mind with egative thoughts. Even before I walked out, I would be prepared
for a crisis so I would not be taken by surprise. I cncentrated only on how I was going
to build my innings, I would block out any thought of failure. I kew that someone who
was afraid would nd their hands tesing up, so I would relax my hands, keep my focus
on how to organize my innings, and consciously ignore any hit of fear. When as a
bowler I was at my fstest, I would watch the body language of an incoming batsman,
especially the eyes, as they would reveal any traces of fear. Vey rarely did tey not
succumb. From the middle of my career I became an expert at dealing with pressure.
When I became captain, the great players had left and I had to lead a very
inexperienced team; before entering a match, I knew that if I did not perform, the team
would not win. It idn't mean I always ensured the team won, but it meant I
automatically put myself under pressure. If a captain shows any weakness or uckles
under pressure, the team collapses, and I knew that without my performance the team
would't succeed. I discovered that the most crucial time for a leader is when there's a
crisis, nd by constantly playing under pressure, I learned to cope with crises. The West
Indies f the 1980s wuld always target the opposig captain, knowing that the moment
the captain collapsed, so would the eam. I feel m greatest achievement in my cricket
career was that I was the only captain in the 1980s who played tree series against the
far superior West Indians and who dd not lose. Every other team was crushed by them.
When I got back from Australia in 1990 I decided I would give up the sport. I
though it best to leave on a high and I wanted to oncentrate on the hospital. I simply
could ot risk another series and wanted to leave n my own ters rather than putting
myself at the mercy of the selectors. Hardly ayone in international cricket, and
particuarly Pakistani cricket, leaves with dignity Without ofially announcing my
retirement, I stopped playing, and spent the next six months woring on the hosptal and
doing te things I ha missed most while being on the cricket circuit -trekking in the
mountains and shootig partridge. Hwever, when
returned and told the hospital board
members about my retirement plan, hey were horred. They all felt there was o way
we wold be able to cllect signicat funds for log once I was ut of cricket. None of
them had any idea abut the game; al they noticed was the publicity in the press. I knew
nothing would give more pleasure t the cricketmad Pakistani nation than winning the
1992 World Cup held in Australia, which was at that point more tan two years away. I
also relized that in order to collect the vast sums of money required by the hospital my
only chance lay in ding something dramatic like winning cricket's most highprole
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tournament. So I started preparing a year in advance -meticulousy planning the team I
would eed to execute my strategy. Knowing that it would be the ast time I would play
international cricket
put everything into getting as t as I could despite being thirty
nine and way past my physical prime.
Since I knew that the hospital's future depended upon our World Cup win before
leaving for Australia I told the hospital marketing team to prepae a strategy for fund
collection in case we came home wit the trophy. This was my th World Cup and my
third a captain. It ws the only time I told the press that we would return victorious.
Unfortnately my pla started going wrong the moment we landed in Australia. Our star
oneda batsman Saeed Anwar and our fast bowler Waqar Younus both key players in
my strategy both mathwinners go injured and were ruled out. (A good team i lucky
to have four matchwinners.) Then two days before the World Cup was to begin I
ruptured a cartilage in my shoulder. It was only when a Melbourne specialist examined
me tha I realized the true extent of the injury. He said I had to rest it for at least six
weeks. I was shattered. It was a disaster on so many levels. Only a sportsman can
understand the utter disappointment and demoralization of getting an injury after all the
hard work and training that goes into preparing for a major tournament. I also realized
that m not being able to play would have a devastating impact on the morale of my
young eam. What's more I had staked the hospital on winning. The manager Itikhab
Alam and I decided to keep my injury a secret from the team.
My worst fears were realized when the team did disastrously without me in the
two opening matches against the West Indies and England. Although over the years I
had become mentally strong by takig on challenges especially my comeback from the
stress facture in my shinbone I wold never normally have played with such a injury
-mainy because I would have been too scared to fail. I would certainly not have played
if the team was good enough to win without me. So I began to play by taking cortisone
injections to the shouder as well as oral painkiller. Never had I played in my 21year
career in such a bad way. So serious was my injury that ater the tournament it was fully
six moths before I could lift a glass with my right hand without feeling a shootig pain
from my right shoulder to my neck.
hose who remember that World Cup will recollect that midway throgh the
competition we were third from the bottom; the bookies rated our chances ftytoone.
My cosin Javed Burki who was the chairman of the selection committee as well as my
childhood hero called me up regarding the issue of sending a replacement for another
injured player. He seemed to have gven up on us from the tone of his voice. I told him
we wold win. There was silence at the other end. Later he told my sisters that he was
convinced I had naly ipped. My closest English friend Jonathan Mermagen called
me to cheer me up -as a true friend would do in bad times. It was he who broke it to me
about te ftytoone odds. I begged him to put money on us. He did not share my faith
and regrets it to this day. One of my oldest friends Mobi advised me not to come back
to Pakistan afterwards telling me to take a holiday in Europe or a while to let the
country cool down; such was the growing hostiliy against me. I'm afraid eve top
sportsman has to accept this -the greater the publi expectations the greater the public
disappointment. In the beginning when I failed to perform to the crowd's expectations I
would eel selfpity ad hurt when I was criticized but with time I became resigned to
the rollercoaster that i sporting fame.
In Perth the Pakistani ambassador had a dinner for the team. It was more like a
funeral wake. I gave a speech and told them that I had no doubt we would win. I can still
picture the look of complete bewilderment and bemusement on people' s faces a I said
it. I cocluded by saying that hopelesness was a si in Islam because it meant one had
no fait in Allah. This was widely reported in the Pakistani press and ridiculed.
Meanwhile I received bad news from my sister Aleema who was managing the
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hospital's marketing campaign. Fudraising had virtually collapsed because of the
team's poor performace and the press had made me the scapegoat. Nevertheles I told
her to prepare for a reewed campaign once we came home with te cup. Unfortnately
she did not take this sggestion seriosly either and nothing had been prepared wen we
returned to Pakistan victorious. My complete belief that we wuld win boosed the
team's condence and helped prevet it from fallig apart. At times of crisis the entire
team will look to the captain, but they do not so muh pay attentio to what he says as to
whether he believes in what he is saying. They watch his body language rather than
listen t his speeches. My conviction gave me the right body language. It helped too that
in the revious three years we had won many times from impssible situations.
In
1989, we had won the Nehru Cup in India, ater being on the brik of eliminatin mid
way through the competition. We wn the nal in Calcutta in front of 100,000 ndians
who were egging on he West Indians to win.
We were also lucky in the World Cup
when on two occasios rain was forecast while we were batting econd. It only had to
rain on one of those ocasions for te minutes and it would have been allover for us. In
that tournament the laws were such tat a team battng second had no chance of winning
if the match was interupted by rain. In the semial in Auckland, the clouds came but
it did ot rain. From the midway point we came from behind and went on o win.
Twenty minutes after the match nihed it started to rain, and it ained for the ext 24
hours.
My love affair with cricket had been over sice 1987; after that I had played only
for the hospital. So happy was I for tis dream of mine that at the presentation ceemony
after the game, I forgt to thank the team for their brilliant performance. I was criticized
for it ad I must confess the speech was terrible; thinking about it still makes me cringe.
But quite frankly I had other things n my mind than making a speech. It also has to be
said that I was the kid of person who had trouble speaking to a small room of people
and suddenly a microhone was thrst in my face without warnig and I was epected
to address a crowd of 90,000 people and hundreds of millions of television iewers
around the world.
However, something bizarre happened after the World Cup. For some reason
several players in my team began t think that the money the ectatic Pakistan public
would hower on them for winning the tournamen would somehow be diverted by me
to the cancer hospital. I am still puzled about how they came to his conclusion. When
we stopped in Singapore on the way home from Australia, the Pakistani ambassador
presented me with some money for the hospital. I guess that might have sparked off this
idea, ad that the team might have hought this mney should g to them. Then when
we retrned to Pakistan, the traders of Lahore threw a function in the city's Salimar
Gardens in our honour. In the beautiful setting f the formal gardens, built by the
Mughal emperor in the midseventeenth century, they announced they too had raised
some contributions for the hospital. To my amazement the rest of the team waled out
of the party in protet. I had had everal great socks in my life by that point: my
mother's death; hearing about the massacres in East Pakistan from Ashraful Haque;
breakig my leg at the peak of my career. But leaning that players I had handpicked
and nurtured could thnk I would divert their winnings took me b complete surprise. It
disappinted me intensely. Awards were always diided up evenly. If you were Man of
the Match', the winnings were shared amongst the team -for ten or eleven years I had
been Man of the Series' almost every series and I had always shared everything. Most
of the team were later to apologize fr their behaviur; a few of them said they had been
misled and they all blamed each other. I can't help feeling that the seeds of greed were
sown after the 1992 World Cup. Altgether the winings were 90,000 pounds each. No
Pakistani cricketers had ever made s much money The team that I let in 1992 was the
best team in world criket and should have dominaed the sport for the next decade, and
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they were the favourites to win the next two World Cups of 1996 and 1999 but that team
never lved up to its potential. From 1993 this great team was dogged by matchxing
allegations culminatig in the ultimate disgrace of portxing in 2010.
he three tours where I was tested the most as a captain were India in 1987 the
West Idies in 1988 and the 1992 World Cup. Idia was hard because the tour was
played there with Indian umpires with a Pakistan eam on paper inferior to the ndians
especially under home conditions; losing to India as far as the people of Pakistan were
concered was not an option. When the two play it ceases to be a game and turn into a
highly ressurized cotest putting the sort of pressre on players that they don' t feel in
any other series. Whe we had lost in India in 1979 our captain was a broken man and
retired from cricket. n the West Idies in 1988 we were facing one of the greatest
teams in history; one sign of weakess and we would have collapsed. To go to their
home ground to play against them with home umpires and to come away with a draw
was m greatest triumph. No team had achieved that in the past decade. And the 1992
World Cup matches were completely about holdig your nere. Captaining the team
developed in me the ability to take pressure to hold my nerve in a crisis and nwhere
could I have had such training as on the cricke eld. It was to prove immensely
valuable to me later i my life.
(It was the same when I set u the political arty or took n building the cancer
hospital; they needed leadership the hospital project lurched from crisis to criis and
the pary has been in pposition for fifteen years -no other Pakisani party has done so
and survived.)
I was under pressure from the British Pakistani community to tour England a
month ater the Worl Cup and they were promising to raise huge funds for the hospital.
I was onsidering it even though by this stage I had played twentyone years of
internaional cricket and was desperate to move on. Mercifully the players' walkout in
Shalimar Gardens made it easier for me to make the decision and I nally cut my links
with the sport closing that chapter of my life. I moed on quickly plunging myself into
my next great challenge. The hospital now needed all my time. I dnated my entire prize
money to the project and the win gave the fundraisig efforts a huge boost. I was able to
collect 140 million rupees during the six weeks after the World Cp whereas in the rst
one and a half years of campaigning we had collected only 10 milion rupees. It was not
till 1994 that I had to worry about cah ow for the project again.
My cricket career might have been over but politics was till beckoning In the
summer of 1993 I was asked to be a cabinet minster in the caretaker government of
Moeen Qureshi that had been formed following the dismissal of Nawaz Sharif's
government by President Ghulam shaq Khan. Qureshi himsel called me. Again I
declined. However by now I was thinking about how I could make some kind of
political contribution. At this point most Pakistani were pretty concerned at the rapid
downward slide of the count caued by the avarice and sheer incompetence of our
politicians. Both Bhutto and Sharif had been in power once each and it had become
blatantly obvious that their predominant interest was in amassing personal wealth and
holding on to ofce by stiing oppsition through any means. Neither had any vision
for the country as clearly manifeste by their total ack of interest in investing in human
capital. In real terms spending on education and health nosedived during their eleven
years of government despite the fact that as the Asian Tiger ecnomies have proved
both sectors always go hand in hand with development. At this stage howeve I felt
that poitics was not sited to either my introverted temperament or my very private way
of life. Therefore rather than think f coming into politics mysef I began to lok for
people I could support who would be an alternative to Sharif an Benazir. During this
period I also started meeting a lo of politically minded people and held endless
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discussions on the state of the natio. This was the rst time in y life that I had met
people outside my small circle of friends and cricketing circles.
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Chapter Five
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Anges in Disguise' Buiding a Hospita, 1984-
1995
SPORT IS RUTHLESS. before my mother's death, I was never a compassionate person.
In cricket, if you do ot crush your pponent, he will crush you. I gave no quarter and
asked for none. You cannot become one of the top sportsmen in your country without
having a ruthless killer instinct. I had the same mindset when I dealt with the
underprivileged in our society. Rather than having my pity, they had my contempt. They
were por because they were indolent and unwillng to work hard. Most of or elite
classes have this attitde towards the poor, and Western governments have this attitude
toward the developig world. My experience founding a hospital overturned these
views, eaching me a great deal about both my fellow countrymen and myself. I aw the
true potential of ordiary Pakistani people and overcame not just my own prejudices,
but als some of my own insecuritie. With this, I was drawing clser still to the idea of
trying to help Pakista politically. Besides, in chalenging the status quo, and trying to
ll a social security void let by a succession o Pakistani leaders, I found myself
dragged into politics whether I liked it or not.
When, in 1984, my mother was suffering during the last few weeks of her life, I
went to see a doctor i Lahore's Mayo hospital (where I was bor) to seek his advice. I
was sitting in his waiting room whe an old man walked in with a desperate expression
on his ace. It was etched with pain that I immediately recognized as my own, and had
seen o the faces of my father and my sisters for past few months. He was hlding a
piece of paper in one hand and some medicines i the other. Beng unable to read, he
gave it to the doctor' assistant and asked him if he had bought all the medicaton that
was needed. The assistant told him there was one missing. How much will i cost?'
asked the old man. When the assitant quoted the gure a depairing and hopeless
expression spread acoss the man' face, and without another word, he tured and
walked out. I asked the assistant what the problem was. He told me that this old Pashtun
from Nowshera, a town in Khyber akhtunkhwa, had brought i his brother who was
dying f cancer. Becase there was o bed for the sick man he wa lying in the crridor.
This man would labor all day on a construction site nearby and look after his brother
for the rest of the time. Although the governmentun Mayo hospital is supposed to be
free, patients have to buy their own medicines.
Having taken my mother for cancer treatment in London, I fully realized how
expensve cancer drugs were. Even he cost of the morphinebased painkillers -if they
were aailable at all -was exorbitat. Moreover, ancer treatment could last aything
betwee six months t two years. Nw it is possible to die of cancer painfree, bt at the
time there was no concept of pain management in Pakistan. Here was I with all my
resources and inuence, yet I and my family were in such a desperate state -what must
this poor man have been going thrugh? I pondered over this during the rest of my
mother's illness, and hat old Pashtun's despairing face kept appearing before my eyes.
One of the rst thing that had struk me when I took my mother for medical care in
England was that she was suffering rom what shold have been a curable cancer -if it
had been diagnosed ad treated early enough. It pained me too that we had had to take
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her out of the country for treatment. Anyone who has been through this experiece will
understand what an odeal this is for patients and their loved ones, irrespective f their
wealth. Being abroad and far from your family support system -sometimes for months
at a time -makes a hard situation harder still. It was then that I resolved to build a
cancer hospital where anyone could walk in withot having to worry about the cost of
treatment and with the rich not having to seek treatment abroad.
However, at this stage I had no idea what it took to build a specialist cancer
hospital let alone in an underdeveloped country. As I began to make enquiries, I
discovered that the gvernment of Punjab had tried to build a cancer hospital in the
1980s. Despite all the money that was allocated to it, the plan was eventually abandoned
because it was deemed un feasible -too expensive to build and een more expesive to
run. Besides, there were only two to three oncologists in the etire country ad they
would e reluctant to accept paltry government salaries. A cance hospital also needed
the most expensive euipment. Pakistan did not have enough qualied engineers to x
this eqipment if anyting went wrog.
For a while I was too busy with my cricket to give the idea any more attention.
However, after 1987,
again began t ponder how to go about getting the project off the
ground The more people -especially doctors -that I spoke to, the more they
discouraged me. I was having serious doubts at this stage and it is possible that I would
have kept postponing the project, when in 1988 a cousin of mine, Qamar Khan,
organized a fundraisig dinner while I was playing a cricket tourament in Dubi. This
was ou rst one and we collected about $20,000. fter that there was no turning back.
When I returned to Pakistan I gathered a few people together an formed a trust and a
board f governors. Parvez Hassan, a lawyer with a strong background in working for
charities, and entrepreneur Razzak Dawood joined the initiative and were to become
completely involved. My friends Ashiq Qureshi ad Azmat Ali Khan (who tragically
later pssed away from cancer in the hospital) als came on board. Babar Ali, a well
known businessman fom an old Lahore family, let his name to he project, as did the
future nance minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Tarin. My father became chairma of the
board.
hen we organized a meeting with twenty of the top doctrs in Lahore t guide
the bord of governors of this trust on how to proceed further. All bar one of these
doctors said the project was simply not feasible i Pakistan. One said that it was, but
there was no way we would be able to treat the poo for free, the average cost of reating
a cancer patient was too high. We were totally demoralized after the meeting. I had no
idea how to deal with the situation. I could not get out of the prject because not only
had I pblicly announced it but muc more signicantly I had already started to collect
money. My cousin, the cricketer Javed Burki, suggested I just build a big dispesary in
my mother's name ad give up on the hospital ideal. My sisters, who were worried
about me, suggested I should drop the plan or I wold lose all the espect and credibility
I had gained from my cricketing career. But it was too late. Even if I wanted to I could
not. Hw could I return people's donations? Jst as I was getting desperate, an
encouraging meeting with the Pakistani Associatio of North American doctors spurred
me on. Their promise of help encouraged me to ct down on my cricket commitments
so I cold concentrate on the project. I set up an ofice given to me for free by a friend,
Omar Farooq, and hired our rst employee.
Initially I did not work on the hospital out of the kind of passion I had oce had
for cricket. I had decided to build it for the poor, but my motivation was not out of any
great feeling of respnsibility towards society. I felt more like an obligatin or a
missio and stemmed from immense personal pai and the memory of that vulnerable
momet seeing the old Pashtun in the doctor's waiting room. I was motivated to by the
feeling that had there been a speciaized cancer hspital in Pakistan, my mother could
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have been saved. My sense of charity was still limited though. My mother used t take a
percentage of my cricket earnings eah year to give zakat to the poor but after she died
stopped. had lost a lot of money after putting all my savings in shares just befre the
world stock markets crashed in 1987. By this stage my spiritual journey had started and
could not help wodering if had been punished in some way because had not
cleansed my money by giving zakat still did not give out of conviction, though; that
was to come later, after saw the generosity of the common ma in Pakistan nd my
faith hd developed t the point where realized charity is not an option, it is a duty.
The mre people ridiuled the hospital project and told me it could never be done, the
more determined was to prove them wrong. This was one of the characteristics that had
helped me in cricket. (I was dropped after my rst test for Pakistan, and most of the
players ridiculed my cricket, saying that had made my rst and last appearance for my
country.) But it was a huge burden. was told the hospital would be a white elephant.
Others said should focus on building a facility for primary care, saying a cancer
hospital was too ambitious. But was doing this ecause of the death of my mother,
which had made me realize there was no cancer hospital in Pakistan. What will happen
to poor people with cncer?' would ask. They wil die anway,' was their repl.
One day, someody from my social circle accused me in frnt of some friends of
doing it all for publicity, just as celebrities endorse charities to get their names in the
papers. nearly hit him. His sneering was typical of certain sectins of Pakistans elite.
They ae completely decadent and utterly cynical. Desperately evious of anyoe who
has succeeded in the West, they are keen to drag yu down to their level if you s much
as aspie to help the country. The nly other time truly lost my cool in the face of
detractrs was in England. met with a group of British Pakistani doctors at Shazan
restaurant in Knightsbridge and they started to ask me a lot of technical questions about
how the hospital would work. One of them in particular ridiculed the whole pan. He
badgered me on techical points, as if to taunt me with my lack of medical knowledge.
He told me this was ot my eld, that would fail and ruin the great reputatio had
made from my cricketing career. almost left the dnner, so furios was I. The poblem
was that was conslting all these doctors, but doctors, like most technocrts, are
enslaved by logic. They are concerned with practiclities, whilst was always a dreamer
and my struggle in crcket had taught me to believe that nothing was impossible if one
never gave up. They were realists whereas was and always have been an idealist.
However, the concept of the ospital was still not clear at this stage. We had a
volunteer doctor who was helping us but unfortunately she did not have the experience
to undertake such a hge project. Ou big break was still to come.
was in New York for
a festival cricket match when happened to meet a Pakistani cancer specialist caled Dr
Tausee Ahmed at a dinner party. told him of the project's difulties. He responded
by saying that there was only one Pakistani doctor he knew who had the capability of
handling such a massve undertaking. The man in question happened to be none other
than my rst cousin Dr Nausherwan Burki -my mother's favourite nephew. It was
Nausherwan who took on the entire medical side of the project, while began to
concenrate on the fudraising. A huge burden was lifted from my shoulders. Athough
there were a lot of people who played a heroic role in building the hospital, have no
doubt that Nausherwan was the most crucial. Had not met him at that point in time,
would still be groping in the dark. At his rst presentation to the board we all heaved a
huge sigh of relief -here nally was somebody who really knew what they were doing.
He gave us the condence that this dream could oe day become a reality. Nausherwan
was no ordinary doctr. Not only is he an outstading pulmonologist but his brilliant
mind was always curious about every aspect of the health system. This was the perfect
challenge for him. From the United States, whee he was a professor at Kentucky
University hospital, he planned ee aspect of the project -from selectng the
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architects hiring the medical staff ad (using his cntacts in Kentcky) getting the best
quality equipment at te best prices.
lthough my quest for God had begun ater my mother passed away I was still
leading a selfcentred way of life. However my faith and the hspital grew together.
The hospital tested my belief in God to the limit and all the time kept strengthenig it. In
turn my growing faith helped the hspital. It was a symbiotic relationship. The project
removed all doubts within me that were it not for the will of God it would have failed
due to the many blunders made by me and my wellmeaning but iexperienced team. So
many times the situation appeared hpeless yet somehow things would work out When
the hospital opened after a record construction time of three and a quarter years rather
than feel arrogant and brag about it I felt totally humble.
nother great lesson in building the hosptal was overcming my pride and
bringing my ego under control. Ever since I can remember I have always wanted to be
selfcotained and hated to ask anyne for anything. I would feel a loss of digniy even
asking my father for money (wheeas Pakistanis often have o problem accepting
money from their parents). When I announced the hospital proect and the expected
funds id not come I was left with o option but to go out and ask for money. This was
harder than anything
had ever done. I just cannot express how hmiliating I found it to
be kep waiting by certain businessmen who knew I had come t ask for funds There
were some who delierately wanted to put me i my place as they thought I was
arrogat. As a sougt
after cricke star I woul pick and chose from the many
invitations I received. I often turned down those from people who had made a lot of
money and wanted t use their newfound wealth to rub shoulders with the famous.
Now I had to turn to these people for donations. The media also tred to settle old scores.
As a cricketer the press had needed me and I had been able to be selective about which
journalists I talked to. If one wrote anything nasty about me I would simply ct them
off. Nw I had to court them so that they would highlight my project and help me raise
funds. One bad article could mean he loss of huge amounts of donations. So
badly
needed their goodwill. For the sake of the cause I really had to grovel to certain
journalists and I found it simply excruciating.
also changed towards children. Ever since I became a successful crickeer my
biggest followers were kids. There was however one problem -I just did not know
how to behave with them. I was one of those adults who felt totally ill at ease with them.
Whenever I was at home in Lahore eople would bring their children to meet me. Most
of the time I would be so awkward about having to face yet another horde of them that I
would tell my sisters to say I was not at home. My poor mother (who loved children)
would be furious and force me to see them. All this changed. After one and a half years
of funraising I ran out of steam in 1990. What I have learned from running a charity is
that if you have to raise a hundred rupees the rst ten are the hardest and the last ten are
the easiest. I had kept going back to the same people for funds ad they simply did not
want t hear any more about the hospital. There was terrible donor fatigue and it seemed
that I had reached a dead end. We could not start the construction f the hospital without
substatial funds. At this juncture a friend suggested that since children were my
greates fans I should go to the schools and ask them to collect funds for me which
horried me. However my sister Aleema who had joined me in my mission caght on
to the idea. Within a month she had designed a wole fundraisig campaign based on
the chidren of Pakistan. It meant me going to schols all over the country addressing
them ad inviting them to be in my fundraising team which we amed Imran's Tigers.
Only those who were close to me would know how totally opposed to my natre this
was. I worried that I would make a fool of myself and the children would make fun of
me.
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I can never forget my rst day addressing a school assembly in Lahore. Tense
when I set out I almst came to blws with another driver in my worst case f road
rage. Drenched in sweat I was so shy and awkward that a lot of the children began to
giggle. We started campaigning at private schools but soon the state schools were also
clamouring to join in. For two moths I went to etween ve and six schools a day
addressing their assemblies and explaining to them why it was important to have a
cancer hospital in Pakistan. Each time before facing an assembly I had to muster all my
courage to speak to tem. Initially it was more terrifying than facing fast bowlers in
front of a packed stadium. However what happened as a result of my campaig was a
sort of a minirevoluton in the coutry. The scholchildren created history neer had
there been such a sccessful fundraising campaign in the histry of Pakistan. The
childre pestered thei parents uncles and aunts for money. They stopped motorists at
trafc ights and colected funds from door to dor. Any child that collected over a
certain amount of mney would win a cricket bat signed by me. In a society like
Pakistan where the family system is strong and children are adored I found we had hit
upon the best possible way to collect money. I would be eating in a restaurant and the
momet children spotted me they would ask their parents for money and then hand me
their donations. Unlike in the UK or the United States in Pakistan chilren go
everwhere -restaurants functions marriages -ecause all life revolves arond the
family. Not only was a huge amount of money collected but more signicatly the
childre themselves made everyone in the country aware of the fact that in a population
of what was then 140 million people there was no cancer hospital. The campaign
succeeded beyond my wildest imagiation and enaled us to start construction. Today I
meet Pakistani professionals all ver the world who proudy tell me that they
participated in my school fundraising campaign.
At the end o the campaign my inhibitions in dealing with children had
disappeared and I felt really privileged that they looked up to me. Moreover I began to
give more and more of what I had to the hosital. I had not been raise to be
extravagant. My parets were always careful with their money and had brought me and
my sisters up with an awareness that since there was so much poverty around we should
never be wasteful and should give any extra money or food to the poor. My fater had
founded a charity called the Pakista Educational Society which funded the university
education of underpriileged but talented children. He made me a member of the board
when I was twentytwo. However while previously I found it had to give and when I
did give I felt I was ding the recipient a huge favour now I gave out of a sense of duty
and would feel satisfaction aterwards. From then on I would identify my needs work
out exactly what my expenses were or the year and whatever I made in excess f that I
would give to the hospital. (Now I also donate to the universty I have fouded in
Mianwali.) I began to realize that oce this exercise is done it becomes fairly easy to
start giving. Life became simpler ad I ceased wrrying about my earnings. I would
never run out of moey as an opportunity would always come p and I would make
enough to keep me going. By the time the hospital opened in December 199 I had
given almost half of what I owned to the hospital.
he project lurched from one crisis to anther. We had found a 20acre plot
outside Lahore and ground was broken in April 1991. With barely 10 million rpees in
the bank we were emarking on a 70millionrupee project. No wonder everyne was
sceptical. You could ever start a cmmercial proect with that kind of nancig. The
problems were neverending -hiring people constuction delays equipment isses and
a constant struggle t meet costs. Every time we feared we would have to halt the
project because of a ack of funds somebody wold always appear at the last minute
with a donation. Even our rst chief executive an American by the name of David
Wood said our goal t provide 75-80 per cent free or nancially assisted treatment was
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impossible. Backing p his argument with a Powerpoint presentaion he told the board
that if we treated more than 5 per cent of the patients for free the hospital would close
down within a few mnths. No other private cancer hospital in the world had managed
what we were trying o achieve. But I had specially promised people free treatment
for the poor. And this was something many of our more impoverished donors held me
to. Will it really be free for the poor?' they would ask wary after a lifetime of being let
down by the rulers and elite of Pakistan. The board and I refused to compromise on our
objectie. Not only was the hospital going to provide the proposed amount of free
treatment it had to be state of the art and it had to be a research centre. I had no idea at
this stage how to nace the free treatment. We overruled Wood.
he surge in donations and goodwill duing the postWorld Cup ephoria
sustained us for a while but by 1994 the situation was coming t a head. It was a real
uphill battle because we kept running out of funds and I had to constantly travel to tap
overses Pakistanis fr help. In 1994 I toured New Zealand Australia Singapre the
UK Norway Germany Denmark Holland the United States Canada the UAE
Bahrai and Saudi Arabia. Wherever in the world there was a Pakistani commnity I
was there asking them for money. By the summer f that year door fatigue ha got to
the poit where rich onors would hide if they saw me. This was when the real money
was needed; construction had to be completed staff had to be hired downpayments for
equipment had to be ade. To make matters worse I got unnecessarily involved in a
balltampering contrversy in June 1994 which made fund collection eve more
difcult. The two great Pakistani fast bowlers Wasim Akram an Wakar Younis who
had been nurtured and groomed by me and whose success I tok great pride n had
decimated England back in 1992. Sadly some English cricketers and British tabloids
blamed their supreme ability in revese swinging o ball tamperig. I could not bear to
see such unfair treatment of two great fast bowlers. I gave an interview to a biographer
about reverse swing ad ball tampering and got sucked into a controversy that ended up
with me being taken to court a couple of years later by former Eglish captain and all
rounde Ian Botham and batsman Allan Lamb. The controversy and the furre that
followed inevitably hrt the fundraising campaign.
We had aimed to open in the summer of 994 but by the spring the building
contractor said we' d have to wait another year. The opening could be no later than
Decemer. It really had to open then because in 995 Ramadan was in February and
March; Ramadan is when Muslims make their biggest donations to charity and we
needed that money in order to offer free treatment once the hospital opened. Not only
that bt if we had to wait another year till Ramadan 1996 we would have had to bear
the cost of a medical and administative staff all of which wold have been on our
payroll by then for over fourteen months. Relief arived in yet anther minor miracle: a
new building contractr. T.M. Khan was an extraordinary man. He asked to have all the
powers he needed and to be left alone to do the job. He succeeded against all ods.
But by October we still needed 4 million dollars to open the hospital and ad run
out of steam again. We were brainstorming one day when I pointed out that many
ordinary Pakistanis often came up t me to give me small donatins of 1000 rupees or
so. The will to give was there but hw could we harness it? Our dviser and my friend
Tahir Ali Khan Pakistan' s most brilliant marketing expert suggested I should simply
go roud Pakistan with a donation box appealig to the public for funds. Despite
scepticsm amongst the marketing team he came up with a plan for a nationwide
fundraising trip. First of all we had a trial run. O 5 October we set off with n open
truck ad a collecting box to the town of Daska i central Punja. We had put posters
up arond the town t advertise my arrival and within a couple f hours had cllected
about 00000 rupees. On the back of that we prepared a whle campaign tour of
twentynine cities lage and small running from midNovember to 28 December. I
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would address school assemblies frm seven in the morning up ntil about lunchtime,
when I would hit the streets. Meanwhile, an advance team would go out and speak to the
traders' organizations groups that were to become my biggest fndraisers alog with
the schol kids.
What followed was not just a eyeopener for me but a revelation to the people of
Pakistan of their own potential. It ws during this campaign that I started thinking more
about going into politics. I was absolutely stuned by the generosity of odinary
Pakistanis. We did nt have to provide entertainment for them as we did with ur big
fundraising dinners for the rich, but whatever people had, they gave me. Donors ooded
to the pen jeep where I sat next to the collection box, giving so generously that it left
me bewildered. Men would hand ver their watches and women throw down their
necklaces and earrings from the windows of their ouses. I would get back to where I
was stying around midnight -usually after a fudraising dinner. At the hotel there
would be more people waiting to had me donations. Sometimes illages would all me
urging me to come and collect the mney they had aised. Before embarking on the tour,
I had met the editors of all the main newspapers to tell them about the project and
request their support. Bar one Englshlanguage daily, I must say all the papers were
extremely cooperative, turning it int a competition by publicizing how much each town
raised. After an exhusting six weeks we had cllected 5 million dollars frm the
ordinary people of Pakistan.
I was quite perplexed to see poor people doating such a high proportion f their
income to the project -especially given that it was a cancer hospital and was not going
to be i their town. S I would ask tem why they were giving. It was always the same
reply, I am not doing you a favour. I am doing it t invest in my Hereater.' This had a
profoud effect on me. I developed love and respect for the people that I must onfess
I did nt have before. One incident in particular ouched and ispired me. I had just
arrived home in Lahore, my whole body aching from a twelvehour day of colecting
cash, when some people arrived at the door. They said they had raised some money for
the hospital and wanted me to come and collect it. I could see that they were por and
told them not to worry, that we could manage without their contributions. Bt they
insiste and refused o leave, begging me to go with them. So I climbed into their
Toyota so battered it was barely capable of making the short jourey to Shao ki Garhi, a
neighburhood near Zaman Park. There they led me down streets that reeked with the
smell f open sewers, me cursing them under my breath, until we reached small
mosque. To my annoyance the money had not eve been collected yet. A man used the
mosque loudspeaker t announce my arrival and urged people to cme and donate. I was
so tire and angry I almost hit one of the men who had taken me there, but before I
could sorm off the locals started to come. The mosque was suddely lled with eople,
the porest of the por, each offerig me ve rupees, ten rupees, fteen rupees. My
anger left me, I was genuinely moved and had to hold back my tears. I said I did't want
to take their money bt they insiste, maintaining hey had a right to participate in the
campaign and saying they were doig it for the afterlife. Many tld me their stries of
pain and loss, of loved ones who had suffered and died for lack of medical hep. One
woman recounted how her son had passed away i a hospital waiting room. Te only
promise I had to make before I left was that hospital treament would be free for the
poor.
It proved to me that generosity has a lot to do with faith ad nothing at all to do
with oe's bank balace. There is all this debate amongst the media, the politicians and
the intelligentsia in Pakistan about the extent to which the state should be based on
Islam. And yet the cmmon man i Pakistan lives by his religin, day in day out. It
doesn't make him a sint but it prodces certain qualities, one of which is a belief in the
need to give now in rder to receive in the afterlife. I started thiking that such people
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were capable of great sacrices. Could these people not be mobilized to ght to save our
everdeteriorating contry? Surely if there was a sincere goverment that geuinely
wanted to eradicate pverty and injustice in our society, people would mobilize behind
it -Pakistan would nt then have to grovel in front of other counries and the IMF and
World ank for loans and alms every few months.
When I discussed this with the late Dr Ashfaq Ahmed, one of Pakistan's leading
intellectuals, he told me about a meeting he once had with Chairman Mao in the 1960s.
When Mao heard that Dr Ashfaq was from Pakistan, he said, Your people have
tremendous potential.' Mao had been impressed by a story told to him by a Chinese
ambassador to Pakistan. The diplomat had been playing chess wih his Pakistani chess
partner who was fasting in the blistering heat of a Karachi summer. The poor Pakistani
was suffering badly, and every few minutes he would pour some water on his head
before making his mve on the chessboard. When the Chinese ambassador asked him
why he didn't just hae a sip of water in private, his friend was indignant and replied,
How can you fool Gd?' From that Mao decided hat any people capable of such will
power and selfcontrl must be capable of great things -it was just that the nation
hadn't apped that strength yet.
It was in building this hospital that, as well as discovering the generosity of the
man in the street, I dscovered how hard it was to achieve anything in Pakista while
also battling bureaucracy and corruption. The night before the ocial opening of the
Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre on 29 Decembe 1994,
ty thusand people came out in the cold to celebrate in Lahore's Fortress Stadium.
The next day tenyearold cancer patient Sumera cut the ribbon n what was the most
fulllig moment of my life. enazir and Zardari had not forgien me, howeer, for
snubbig their offer t do the honous. The statecntrolled television and radio that up
till the had given good support to the project sudenly blanked out both me and the
hospital making it harder to collect donations. Raising the 22 million dollars it ook to
build the hospital was the rst hurdle, but we now needed additional funds for free
treatment. The govermentpaid jounalists launched a vicious campaign against me in
the papers. Worse, barely a month after the hospital opened, I was hauled up in Lahore
High Court and accused of embezzling people's donations. It was no coincidece that
the court case coincided with the zakat campaign launched during the month of fasting
to raise funds. The plan was quite obvious. If we treated the poor or free before we had
enough money then the hospital wuld go bankrpt. If we did not do so then quite
rightly I would be exposed by the gvernment media as a fraud. In a country where the
people have been taken for a ride so many times and are so cynical about everyoe, they
would have believed the worst about me.
Luckily, the case against me collapsed immediately. Our hospital had watertight
nancial controls and total transparency; our acconts were audited by one of the most
prestigious rms in the country. Mreover, I happened to be the biggest donor to the
hospital at the time. enazir's government had not realized that. Also, fortunaely for
me, the people did ot trust the gvernment. They were aware that because it felt
threateed by me it was trying to victimize me. enazir's govement was extremely
unpopular by that poit and lacked cedibility. So here I was already in politics, without
actuall being in poliics. I began t be treated as a political opponent, and a political
opponent in Pakistan -whether in a democracy or military dictatorship -gets a rough
deal. Te entire state machine turs against you. And in Pakistan, like in mos of the
developing world, the state is everwhere. My phoes were tapped and wherever I went
I was fllowed by a car. Everyone in the governmet was petried to befriend me out of
fear of losing their jbs. And since we have a big government, one has to deal with
government ofcials all the time.
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I was left with two choices: eiher Ijoined Nawaz Sharif and got the protection of
his party or I had to g to Benazir's royal court in Ilamabad and beg forgiveness for not
inviting her to the hospital opening and convince her that I was nt setting mysef up as
a politial rival. My friend Y
ousaf Salahuddin, who was close to Benazir and Zardari,
advised me to follow the latter course He warned that otherwise Zardari would destroy
the hospital. He offered to mediate While Yousafs suggestion was logical, it had the
opposite effect. I wet on an allou attack in the press with both guns blazing at the
governng couple's crruption. This had a far greater impact on te public than attacks
from Sharif's party. Snce Sharif wa considered equally corrupt, his accusations against
Benazir and her husband rang hollow. Especially since Benazir would immediately list
the corruption charge against Sharif and his famil. Now, for the rst time, corruption
became the numberoe issue on the national agenda.
Despite the setbacks, we managed to treat 90 per cent of our patients for fee that
rst year. We became pioneers in inventing and innovating fndraising techniques;
today many charities have been inspired by and follow our fundraising model. There
were other challenge to come though. Equipment would get tuck at customs, we
would refuse to pay he bribes necessary to get i released and I would have to pull
strings. The World Bnk awarded u a $1 million grant for a wasedisposal incnerator
but then withdrew the offer becase Nawaz Sharif's government, which fllowed
Benazi's, insisted it went to another hospital. A charity headed by the Argentinian
president Carlos Menem offered to give the hospital a shipment of cancer drugs for free
-all we needed was a letter from Rafik Tarar, Sharif's puppet preident. He refued and
the hospital lost the dnation. Most hocking of all though, was the bomb attack on the
hospital in 1996, just a few week ater I started to talk publicly about forming a
political movement. Seven people died, including two child patients, thirtye were
injured and millions f rupees of damage caused. The device, planted under a chair in
the wating hall, destoyed the outpatient and endoscopy departments. If the building
had not had such large windows the whole roof wuld have come down. I should have
been there at the time to show the businessma Nasim Saigol around but he had
cancelled just as I wa about to leave home. I don't think I was the target of the bomb,
but the innocent lives lost and the destruction caused both saddened and made me even
more determined to scceed in my ew endeavour. The pressure this incident brought
was something I could deal with;
repeated the system that had worked for me in
cricket, I blocked out thoughts of failure, and instead focused o what I had t do to
succeed.
With so many obstacles, if it had been a commercial enterprise it would have
closed down, but intead it went from strength to strength to become the biggest
charitable institution in Pakistan. In the end, te hospital's uccess was its best
protecton. Its work has garnered so much goodwill. It continues o treat a minimum of
65 per ent of patient for free with another 10 per cent paying a raction of their costs.
And it was still the only cancer hosptal in the country -for rich o poor. Sooner or later
even the opinionmakers would end up there, some for treatment, others to visit friends
or relatives. So it becme harder and harder for any propaganda against the instittion to
succeed. Everybody is treated equally, so that even the doctrs do not know the
differece between pying and nonaying patient. Rich and por wait side by side in
the waiting room and lie side by side in their sick beds. There is n special treatment, no
queue barging, no takng precedence. All of this is rare in a county like Pakista where
the rich and powerfu are accustomed to VIP treatment. Today he hospital generates
enough money to mre than cover its annual operating budget of 3.6 billion rupees.
Over half its revenues are now earned through the ale of hospital services with the rest
coming from donatins from all over the world. Visits by international celebrities
ranging from Bollwood heartthrb Aamir Khan to Princess Diana and Elizabeth
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Hurley have helped raise money too. In 2006 the hospital wn the World Health
Organization's UAE Foundation Prize for Outstanding work in health development'. It
has treated more than 84,000 people, including myself. I had an emergency operation
there i 2009 and my father spent he last two ad a half months of his life there in
2008. Similar hospitals are planned for Karachi and Peshawar and we are already
running outreach cancerscreening cinics in those two cities. Revenues from diagnostic
centres in Lahore and Karachi and sixtyseven pathology colletion centres all over
Pakistan are helping the trust increae its selfsufciency. As for the little girl who cut
the opening ribbon back in 1994, Smera is now ne of the hosital's 1,500 staff and
runs the gift
shop. Suh is the reputation of the hopital today that politicians opposing
me are petried to attack it.
On a personal level, the hosital has taught me so much. Most importantly, I
learned how to build and run an institution; crucially, if the leadership follow the rules,
so does everyone else I had learned this as a cricket captain; to dscipline the team all I
had to do was to enure that the senior players didn't break the rules -the juniors
automatically fell into line. Secondly, more important than the competence of the CEO
was his integrity and passion. Integrity was indispensable, as no matter how competent,
a dishonest person cold destroy the institution; I' seen in cricket how passion lifted a
lesstalented player's game so that he could contribute more than a passionless talented
one.
I am proud to ay that today he hospital is a model instittion for the whole of
Pakistan. Doctors and nurses come rom hospitals all over the cuntry to see how our
system work. Along with the Aga Khan hospital in Karachi, it has raised medical
standards across the bard in Pakistan.
I have also come to understand better the ordinary people o Pakistan, through the
small miracles, the bigger tragedies and the simple faith of those
met in the hospital's
wards. There I have seen how they deal with death, accepting it as the will of God. Most
moving of all was a young boy from Swat I spotted one day when I was visiting the
intensie care unit. He was covered in tubes but his face radiated eance. Impressed by
his ght to stay alive, I became caught up in hi case, meeting with his father and
regulary checking wih the doctors n his progress. By that time my son Sulaiman had
been brn and becoming a father wrought the bggest change on me in my life. It
suddeny made me uderstand how vulnerable we are as parent. So I could feel the
tormen this man wa going through seeing his sn ght this life and death struggle.
Then oe day I went to check up on the boy and was told he had died. I sought out the
father, expecting to d him a broke man. Instead he was resigned to his loss, saying it
was the will of Allah. I was amazed at how quicly he had come to terms wth it. I
myself was overwhelmed by the boy's death and couldn't face work that day. I went
home.
Mian Bashir became a regular visitor to my project ofce while we were building
the hosital as it was ear his house. He was a great source of help and encouragement -
partially through his ability to occasonally foresee some pitfalls but mainly because of
his great wisdom that never ceased to amaze me. One day we wee having lunch in my
ofce. I was feeling a little upset that the construction committee had not awarded the
airconditioning contract to the lowest bidder, who happened to be a friend of mine,
Irshad Khan. During lunch Irshad called up furios, saying that there was something
shy ging on as the contract had been awarded to a company that had left two projects
unnised and had a poor reputatio in the industry. It made me feel even worse. Since
he was my friend thogh I could not push his case as it would have been a coict of
interest. Without me telling him anything about the situation, Mia Bashir suddely told
me tha the person who had been awarded the contract was in cahoots with one of the
members of our constuction committee and was nt competent eough to nish the job.
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I was very concerned but Mian Bashir told me not o worry and that things would work
out. Sue enough a cuple of month later that company was in ancial trouble and the
contract had to be reawarded. It went to a highly competent competitor which
thankflly nished the job on time.
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Chapter Six
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M
y
Marriage, 1995-2004
WHEN I WAS leaving for England for the rst time at the age of eighteen, my mother's
last words to me were, Don't bring back an Engish wife.' She believed it wuld be
impossible for a Western girl to adjust to our eligion and culture. However, the
decisios in my life have rarely been made through rationality and logic, more by
impulse, to chase my dreams and my desires and passions. In bth marriage, and my
postcrcket career, I made somewat unconventonal choices for somebody of my
backgrund. Combinig the outcome of those two decisions was t prove more ifcult
still. If marriage made me realize the happiness that comes from fatherhood and family
life, plitics taught me the price of taking on the status qo in Pakista. This
establishment is so venal that, unable to wield the usual weapon of corruption charges
against me, they instead attacked me through my personal life, most particularly my
wife. The thing to understand about Pakistani politics is that may politicians have so
much t lose they will stop at nothing to gain or hod on to power. In terms of quality of
life, political success is of no benet to me, but for the likes f Zardari and Sharif,
losing power might mean losing everything -their wealth, their homes, their status,
their privileges and ptentially their liberty -since many of them deserve to be in jail.
Jemima and I were to discover how icious this political maa cold be.
It was many years after my mther's warning before I even started to contemplate
marriage. At a certain point, my deeening spiritual belief made me realize that I could
not reconcile the life I had been leding as a bachelor with Islam. This was the most
difcult part; everything else -fastig, praying, giing zakat -was relatively easy. The
reason it was so diffcult was becase I had lost faith in the institution of marriage.
Growig up in Zama Park I used to think getting married was the most natural thing in
the world and assumed that, like my sisters and cousins, I would one day have an
arranged marriage. Bt the older I grew, the more disillusioned I became. Mos of the
cricketers who played with me in English county cricket and n the Pakistai team
found it difcult to make a success of their married lives. For mst of them it seemed
like a burden. Quite few of them found the temptations that existed in the life of an
internaional sportsmn irresistible. esides, most married men used to look at my life
with eny. So it was hardly surprising that I was disillusioned.
he only marriages I saw working were those of my sisters and cousins from my
large extended family. Three of my four sisters were married and all had arranged
marriages from withi the large exteded family. Tis was always the case with Pashtun
tribes tat had settled in Punjab or oher parts of India. All three t varying degrees had
their ups and downs with their usbands -especially in te early days when
readjustment naturally takes place Couples in arranged marriages face the same
problems as those who have chosen their own partners, althugh expectatons in
arranged marriages ted to be somewhat lower. The crucial difference is that since it is a
coming together of families, separation becomes difcult and divorce rare. The
respectve families -mainly the parents -act as marriage counsellors during the bad
times. t is considered a good deed in Islam if someone can help a couple to sort out
their trubled marriage.
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In Pakistan most marriages are arranged. Parents choosing a husband for their
daughter will look at the candidate's nancial stability, his family's reputation and
compatibility in terms of personality. In most cases a son or daughter can declie their
parents' suggestions but it varies from region to region and class to class. In the north
and northwest of Pakistan young people are not gven a lot of choice, especially girls,
whilst the children of he urban elite playa bigger role in choosing their own partners. In
villages girls and boys grow up together and oten know each other, so most of the
matches are easy for parents to arrange. Problems arise when there is no eligible boy or
girl in the village. Ten a spouse will be found from further aeld and it is quite
possible that the couple will meet for the rst time on their wedding day. Traditional
families will most likely know a groom's entire background. Parents would no allow
their dughters to mary someone who could not be pressurized through his family to
keep the marriage goig during rough patches. Mariage not only knits families together
but the entire social life revolves around the extended family structure. The more
powerfl the family is, the harder it is to divorce a person belonging to that family.
Some of the worst problems in arranged marriages arise where parents marry their
childre off to a certin family becuse of their ancial status, regardless of whether
the couple is compatible or not.
Whatever the problems, the underlying idea behind arraged marriage is that
sacrices must be made for the sake of the childre. Over the years I have seen a lot of
unhappy arranged marriages where couples have stuck it out for the sake of their
offsprig and their respective families. Women, who can be more vulnerable in our
society sometimes put up with mistreatment from their husbands just for the secrity of
their children. However, there are of course lots of cases of men having to put p with
difcult marriages too. Mian Bashir looked after hs wife, who hd ts of madness, for
fourtee years. Doctors advised him to put her in an asylum but given the state of our
mental health institutions he could not bear to do so. When she had her ts, she could be
violent and his face bore the scars of that violence.
Whatever the ups and downs of their marriages, I could see that my sisters took
great joy in their chilren. There was a time when they and their families lived with my
father and me. Instead of being an imposition, it was wonderful -especially for my
father. All their children grew up like one family in the same house and the three sisters
treated all of them as if they were their own offspring. It was this that began to change
my mid about marriage. I used to otice how their husbands wold literally rush back
home to be with their children. Even I began to sped more time at home so I cold play
with them. When any of my nephews and nieces dd well at school, all of us, including
the other children, cosidered it a family triumph. When two of my sisters moved into
their own homes, the house felt empty. Fortunately they only moved a few hundred
yards away and most evenings their children would still come roud.
Making the decision to get married was one thing, but nding a Pakistani wife
was another. I had already passed my midthirties but most eligible girls were married
off in their early twenties. In Pakstan unmarried girls often live quite a sheltered
existence. A woman under twentyve would be too young for me, with too little
experience of life. I also had to bear in mind that my extended family was quite
conservative about the way to go about nding a wife. I had to make a choice after
meeting the girl and her parents over a couple of brief meetings. Usually what happens
is that he mothers, along with the sisters, survey their social scee and, ater a careful
process of eliminatio, pick a few eligible candidates. Then durig marriage festivities
amongst the commuity the potential spouse is pointed out. I the boy and girl in
question are both interested then more intimate meetings, like a tea appointment, are
organized. As for most Pakistani fmilies, our weddings were segregated. It was too
awkwad for me, in my position and at my age, to go to the women's section to look at
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eligible girls. This wold have been quite acceptable if I were in my midtwentie but in
my midthirties it was a terrifying prospect. At one point my father got fed up (like the
rest of my family) and decided to take matters into his own hands. He arranged ea at a
friend' house so that I could meet his friend' s daughter. I tried everything to get out of
it but i the end out f respect for my father and ot wanting to embarrass him with a
lastmiute cancellatin I went along. The whole situation was horribly awkwar for all
concered. When the girl came into the room I was so embarrased I could nt even
look at her. Meanwhle her mother treated me as if I was a 25yearold rather than
someoe who was approaching midle age. I was even asked abot my universiy days
-agai a question more apt for someone in thei early to midtwenties. The agony
nally ended when my father and I begged to leave. On the way back he did nt even
bother to ask me what I thought of the girl. He realized how ridiculous the whole
situation was -all he said was that since my moter had passed away he had simply
tried to do his duty. We both laughed and I politely requested him not to make ay more
attempts to nd me a ride.
I was still so bsy playing crcket during this period that I was never in Lahore
long enough to make a concerted attempt to nd a wife. However once I retired I made
more of an effort. The girls I tended to meet were the westernized ones but I could not
see them tting into my conservative family. My ssters had strong characters ad were
not likely to be very tlerant of someone who auted family tradition. The last thing I
wanted was that my marriage should isolate me from my family As for the ones who
would have been compatible with my background educated girls from conservative
familie it was too mch of a lottery. How could I at my age marry someone after a few
converations? The iea of going to more tea appintments like the one I had een to
with my father simply terried me. In the end I had to accept the fact that I was too old
for an arranged marriage.
I was still intet on marrying a Pakistani girl when by chance I met Jemima in
Londo at a dinner rganized by my Persian friend Sharia. I immediately fond her
attractie and intelligent and was particularly impressed by her strong value system and
the fac that despite her young age she already had a spiritual curiosity. While I had
previosly met Jemima' s siblings and cousins I did not meet her arents till just before
we got married. I had worried that it would be impossible to conince them -nt only
because of our age difference but alo because of Jemima having to live in Pakistan. I
was amazed at how firmly both Lady Annabel and Jimmy Goldsmith stood behind
Jemima's decision. Of course there were warnigs about the problems of a cross
cultura marriage -bt neither was at all against Jemima' s conversion to Islam. I was
amaze at their tolerance especially given the prejudice againt Islam in the West.
When the news of our marriage broke in midMay 995 the media in both Pakistan and
the UK went berserk particularly over Jemima's cnversion. There was no shortage of
advice for her in the English media about how dreadful life would be in Pakistan. The
tabloid' prejudices about Islam and Pakistan were fully apparent. Jemima was tld she
would ot be allowed to drive a car and would be veiled from hea to toe.
he only positive aspect of this perplexing media coverage was that otraged
Muslims put forward the Islamic pont of view something that was not often viible in
the Western media. The gist of the advice given to her in the UK was that she was too
young and innocent t realize that she was being lured away by an older man because of
her wealth to a country where wome were enslaved. I was not surprised that my motive
for marriage was thought to be her money (that very accusation was put to Jinna when
he married his bride twentyfour years younger than himself ad a Parsi covert to
Islam). After all peole with a materialistic mind set would think that. I felt this was
extremely unfair to Jemima and failed to do justice to her intelligence and her atractive
personality. It took great strength f character t cope with sch unfriendly media
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exposue, all the more so because until then she had been almost entirely protected from
this kind of intrusion. It was really tugh on her and she coped mst admirably. Though
I did help Jemima by recommending books on Islam, I never tried to force my vews on
her. I remembered hw hard my mother had tried to make me a practising Muslim;
despite my great love for her, she had failed to convince me. It had been Mian Bashir
who wn me over with his gentle way of never asking me to do anything and alowing
me to discover the truh myself.
In Pakistan Jemima received a warm and gracious welcme. As long as they
adapt their behaviour to local customs, foreigners have always been received wih great
hospitality in Pakistan. It is only since 9/11 and the CIA drone attacks in Khyber
Pakhtukhwa that antagonism towards Americans -and inevitably other Westerners -
has crept in. There was an initial frostiness amongst certain sectins of the westernized
elite bt once they got to know Jemima they were friendly. This wariness would have
been because Jemima, as a Westerner, made some of them feel nsecure because their
sense f superiority in Pakistan stemmed from their considering themselves to be
westerized. However, what was hardest for Jemima were the politically inspired media
attacks on her. Even though I was nt yet in politics, I was already regarded as a threat
by the politicians beause of great public appreciation for the cancer hospital. The
government
sponsored media portraed my marriage as an intricae plot by the Zionists
to take over Pakistan through Jemima. It did not seem to matter that she was not actually
Jewish. In fact she was baptized and conrmed as a Protestat. Her father Jimmy
Goldsmith's father was Jewish and his mother was a French Cathlic but he grew up in
an atheist household. This campaign intensied when I announced my political party a
year after our marriage.
When I married Jemima I had no intention f setting up my own political party.
The contry's rapid decline was alaming me, thogh, and I was already mullig over
the idea of getting inolved with some kind of political movemet. I had been hoping
that certain people I knew would fom a political party I could spport, but in the end
they had neither the nancial means nor the nationwide support to challenge the two
established parties, the PPP (Pakistan People's Paty) and the PML akistan Muslim
League). So that optin was not available to me. I had also explred the possibility of
supporting one of the religious partes. I had assumed that their people must have the
same uderstanding of faith that I did. Sadly I gradually realized that while some of the
members of these parties had genuine faith, plety of others had only a supercial
understanding of Islam. Most of them were only usng religion, as others used the ethnic
or reginal card, as a vehicle to get into power. They turned out t be just as corrupt as
other pliticians too. he more my uderstanding of political parties and specically the
religios parties deepened, the more I realized that aith without wisdom and knowledge
could produce bigots completely lacking in compassion and toleance. No wonder the
Prophe (PBUH) considered the ink of a scholar to be holier than the blood of a martyr.
No woder either that the public usally rejects the religious parties at the polls. At no
point i time have they garnered more than 19 per cent of the seats in the ational
assembly and their share of the vote is lower still. Hence the apparent paradox to the
outsider, that while people in Pakistan will sacrifce their lives for Islam, the don't
want religious parties running the contry.
When the dust had settled ater the furore over my mariage, I again started
meeting politically minded people ad having endless discussions about how to put up a
challenge to the political maa in Pakistan. I say maa, because democracy is just a
cover fr the two parties that take turns in plunderig our country. I was appalled at how
the ruling class had squandered Pakstan's talent ad resources, there seemed t be no
limit to their greed. A the same time, I was struck by the generosiy and fortitude of the
Pakistani people that I had seen becase of my work with the hospital and the raw talent
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and resurcefulness o the Pakistani verseas community. So man of them, whe given
a level playing eld, had succeeded in their chsen spheres. What, I asked could
Pakistan achieve if we had a system that actuall rewarded rather than discouraged
merit?
I came to the conclusion that the only way to change the system was t enter
politics myself. However, whenever I thought abot forming my own political party I
could not work out how I would nace it. The reason why politics in Pakistan had been
concenrated within a few families was because the vast majority of people had neither
the time nor money to have the luxuy of participating. True, Zulkar Ali Bhutt in the
1970 elections create a movement tat captured the masses' imagination so completely
that he was able to defeat the established political houses with political nonentities.
However, Bhutto was fortunate that money did not playas big a part in politics as it did
after Za's 1985 nonparty elections. Bhutto also had three other advantages. One, he
had been a cabinet minister for eight years in Aub Khan's mlitary dictatorship so
already knew the poitical scene from within. Secondly, there was a huge plitical
vacuum in Pakistan after A
yub Kha because he had crushed all the political parties in
West Pakistan. Thirdy, in the Cold War politics of left and right, the entire highly
organized let supported Bhutto. My dilemma was how to form a party of clean' people
who had the time and money to work in politics.
I also had anoter issue to think of. I was a married man ow and Jemima was
trying to adjust to a cmpletely alien environment and culture. If all my time was spent
on poliics and keeping the hospital going, how would I do justice to my marriage? We
discussed the issue endlessly. It was clear by now tat there was simply no way eft but
for decent Pakistanis to get involved in politics. Otherwise the country would be sunk by
our politicians. Since Jinnah the quality of our leaders had been steadily deterirating.
All over the world career politicians are disliked, bt in Pakistan, s in many developing
countries, they are seen as crooks -and with a gret deal of justification. What mazed
me was that while almost every dinnertable conversation in the cuntry condemed the
politicians for destroying Pakistan's otential no oe was prepared to do anything about
it. The auent classes' response to the country's dwnward spiral was to get Cnadian
passports or US green cards. They jst did not have the guts or the will to give p their
comfortable lives and take on the corrupt political class. In Isamabad it was quite
common to see members of the elite, who deigrated the politicians in private,
grovellng at their feet at public funcions.
When I announced my party, TehreekeInsaf (Movement fr Justice) on 25 April
1996, I had lost all fear of dying. This meant I knew exactly why I was goig into
politics, which was to take on the plitical maa i Pakistan; they had always worked
on the premise that ayone who threatened them should either be bought or eliminated.
The other founding members and I presented it as broadbased movement for change
whose mission is to create a free society based on jstice, with an independent judiciary
as its bedrock'. At a ews conference in Islamabad somebody asked me about my lack
of experience in politics and I had o acknowledge that I had nne. But then neither
have I any experience in looting and plunder I aded. I had big ideals but it was true
that I was illequipped. My entry into this world was a bit like when I rst saw people
swimming. One summer holiday my cousins took me to the pool at Aitchison Cllege. I
was for years old and it was the rst time I had ever seen a swimming pool. I culd see
that peple seemed t be moving around near the surface of the water so I deided it
must be quite shallow and promptly threw off my clothes and jumped straight in. I
immedately sank to the bottom. Ater swallowing a lot of wate, I was taught by my
cousins to swim witin a few days. Politics was a similar eperience, thogh the
learning process was much longer. I had nobody to teach me, o mentors and made
many mistakes.
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Neither Jemima nor I fully understood what I had got s into. Nor had we
anticipated despite all our discussins how much strain it would put on our private
lives. here was simply no time for family life; for the next month and a half I had to
meet a endless stream of people at all hours and then I had to make frequent rips to
the provinces to appont party ofce bearers. We had a tremendou response but no idea
how to deal with it. y fellow founing members ere as inexperienced in the political
eld a I was. Frankly even if we hd had some idea of what to d we were simly not
equipped to cope with it. We could ot answer the mail or give prper attention t all of
those ho came to or Lahore ofce. One of the main problems I had was learing to
judge people. So many people were oming to me keen to get involved but I cold not
tell if they were genuine or not. My sisters consider it one of my principal aw that I
always trust people to much. I wold welcome vlunteers on bard only to then nd
out hors weeks or smetimes months later that they were just opportunists and did not
share my ideals at all. The political world was full of con men whose only aim was to
obtain power for their selfinterest It would take me almost a decade of meeting
thousads and thousnds of people before I could acquire the ability to distnguish
betwee genuine and honey people within minute. There is no shortcut to learning this
skill.
o make mattes worse the gvernmentsposored propagnda that I was part of
a Jewish plot to take ver Pakistan meant that we had a lot of people wanting to join us
thinking they could make money ot of the party They reasoned that the Jews must
have given us million of dollars. After all during the Cold War ocialist organizations
in Pakitan received money from the Soviet embassy. So we had fnny situation where
people came looking for easy moey and were shocked whe we asked them for
donations instead. One day I found hundreds of cars parked outside my ofce. I had to
ght through crowds f people to get into the ofce itself. It turned out that some local
rag had written that Bll Clinton had given me the goahead. From that these people had
surmised that the Americans had decided to install me in power. Meanwhile I had
terrible relations with the Pakistani press. As a sprtsman I had ever felt the eed to
court jurnalists -as far as I was concerned my performance said it all. But politics was
differet; in this arena the media could make or break you jut like in the hospital
fundraiing.
t the height of the chaos I had to go to Egland to defed myself in the libel
case brught against me by Allan Lamb and Ian Boham. This stemmed from comments
I had made about the issue of ball tampering back n 1994. The last thing I wanted was
to waste my time with a court cae but I was let with no choice. My formidable
barrister George Carman QC felt the chances of winning in front of an Englih jury
were minuscule (about 10 per cent) because Botham was a national hero. He advsed me
to settle out of court a the nancial costs of losing were astronomical. At the start of the
trial I felt fairly condent since I knew I was inocent and that I had not made the
alleged comments. Bt as it wore n proceeding seemed to be going agains me. I
started to worry. A loss would have meant bankrutcy and I was worried about how I
would upport my family if I lost. There was nothig more humilating than the idea of
living ff my wife or having to borrow money. Worse still would ave been the blow to
my twmonthold political party. I the middle of the case I called up Mian Bshir to
ask him to pray for me. He sounded pessimistic and said The judge is against you.'
Sure eough after the judge had doe his summing up George Carman asked te jury
to leave and told the jdge that for the rst time in his fortyyear career he had to make a
complaint that the summing up was biased against his client. Despite the many stressful
situations I had been in during my cricket career the greatest tesion I have eer felt
was duing the six hours or so while the jury deliberated. George Carman was already
preparig me for defeat and writing his appeal. As I was waiting I got a message from
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a friend saying that Mian Bashir wated to speak t me. I phoned him and found him in
a cheerful mood. Allah is changig the jury's mind!' he said. It returned a 10-2
majority verdict in my favour.
When I got home a couple o months later, the fervour oer my new party had
subsided. Now at least we had a period of calm and could organize ourselves. I started
touring various cities and towns to gather support and form our party's organization.
The cam did not last long. On 5 Nvember 1996, President Faroq Leghari dissolved
Benazi Bhutto's government and anounced elecions in three months' time. When I
met with Leghari, he told me that Sharif and Beazir had each siphoned off S$1.5
billion from the country and pledged to hold them accountable. My party was nly six
months old by then and I had lost two months i the K becase of the court case.
Nonetheless we decided to participae in the electin campaign. We felt it would be the
perfect opportunity to organize ourselves as a natinal party. Plus I felt it was an ideal
way to really get the issue of corrution debated publicly in the runup to the polls. I
realized that there was no way we could make muh of an impact as far as votes were
concered as we had no organizatin at the grassroots level. S it was already quite
clear i my mind that we would campaign all over Pakistan and hen withdraw a week
before he polls. Whe I started our campaign everyone was amazed at the huge crowds
that came to my rallies. The youth especially came to listen to me in droves, as this was
the section of the ppulation most hungry for change. When the TehreekeInsaf's
rallies, which were bigger than those for Sharif or Benazir, were shown on television,
there was a rush of candidates keen to stand on our party ticket. We formed a board to
select ur prospective candidates. I our zeal to make sure that nobody who had any
blemish on their character was given our party ticket, a lot of good people were lost.
Anyone who had a political backgrond was given extra vetting.
Seeing the potency of my attack, Sharif started making overtures to me. irst he
offered me the most senior position in his party afer him, then he offered my party an
electoral alliance with twenty seats in the national assembly. Everyone knew at this
stage that Sharif was going to win the elections simply because there was n other
national party apart from Benazir's now discredited PPP. Fr us it was a huge
compliment that a party that was just a few months old should be considered enugh of
a threa to be made such an offer. However, I had no hesitation in rejecting him as I
considered him just as corrupt as Benazir. An alliance with Sharif would have
comprmised my principles. I had only come ito politics to oppose unscrpulous
politicians like him s how could I align myself with his party? While I believe we all
have to make compromises in life, they should be made to attain your vision, not on the
vision tself. I was also fortunate in that, unlike prfessional poliicians, I did nt need
power for its perks ad privileges.
was very clear about the fact that unless I could
implement my agenda of reform, there was no need to be in politics, as I already had
everything I could pssibly desire in life. I felt it would be muh better to be in the
opposition and be a check on the gvernment tha be part of the power structre and
have my hands tied. Joining Sharif would not ony have meant I became part of the
status uo, but I would have also lost all my credibility.
he next develpment was that Benazir turned on Leghari, accusing him of being
a traito to the PPP. Te ferocity of her attacks clealy rattled him and he threw his lot in
with Sharif, forgetting his pledge to try him and Benazir for corrption before alowing
them t contest electons. A month before the polls it became clear to everyone that
Leghari's caretaker gvernment had entered into a agreement with Sharif's PML (N),
comprmising what should have been a neutral administration. The entire establishment
from then on began to bat for Sharif. Administrative ofcers chosen by him were posted
in crucal positions in his political stronghold of Pujab.
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It is almost impossible to beat whichever paty is backed by the establishment in
Pakistan. Once the establishment makes its party f choice clear the powerful district
administration comes into action and the local power brokers fall into line. Everyone
wants to be on the wining side, because only the winner can gain the inuence ver the
powerfl bureaucracy needed to dole out patronage to his cronies.
Keen to align themselves wit those looking most likely t take power, various
other frces began to ostle for position: the big feudal families and the criminal world -
the smugglers and the drug baros. In every district in the country there is an
underworld element that controls anything from 500 to 2,000 votes. The criminal maa
has to be with the winning party as it needs its protection to perate. Even for the
common man -be he bureaucrat, shopkeeper, plice ofcer or cab driver -getting
ahead in Pakistan revlves around his links with the incumbent rlers. I wrote an open
letter exposing the pints of the agreement between Leghari and Sharif. I decided the
best thing to do next would be to pull out of the elections, as we had achieed the
objecties we had set ourselves. However, by criticizing Leghari's government and
calling him to accoun on his broken promises I had now opened yself up to attack on
a third front.
A week before the polls I called a meeting of our senior party members and
updated them on the situation. I told them that the maximum number of seats we might
win was three but most likely we were not going to win any. I felt that our party was too
young to take such a crushing defeat and that donations would dry up if we lost. How
would we then nance the party? Moreover we simply did not have the resorces or
organizational capaciy to participae. In Pakistan a political party needs to organize
buses t take people t the polling stations and people to staff the, with polling agents
for both men and women. It is a huge organizational and logistical undertaking. But the
majority of our party hierarchy waned to ght on; some had allwed themselves to be
convinced by the size of the crowds at our rallies that we would win a lot of seats. This
made me realize how people in politics delude themselves. They always under estimate
the opposition's strength and exaggerate their own. In cricket it used to be the opposite.
I had t constantly stress to my team not to overestimate the opposition's strength and
be oveawed. There were those in he party who felt that we would lose face if we
backed out now. Anoher argument was that all the money spent by our candidates on
electios would have been wasted. he person wh swayed me in the end was Hamid
Khan, a senior and mch respected awyer in our party. He felt that the experiece we
would gain from contesting the elections would be invaluable; haing learned frm our
defeat we would be well prepared next time round, which is when our real chance would
come.
In taking part in the elections we took the most difcult path. It really was the
Charge of the Light Brigade but wihout the horses and without the arms. No arty -
however popular -ca win an electin without a grassroots politcal organizatin. Our
minuscule nancial resources were othing compaed to those of the two main arties,
both of whom had aleady made plenty of money from their time in power. We had
major issues with meia coverage to. At the time there was only ne television channel
and it was governmetcontrolled. During the whle ninetyday campaign each party
was ony given a halfhour slot. This clearly did no give us enough airtime to mobilize
and mtivate people about our agenda and encourage them to ge out there and vote. I
had also had a problem getting my message across because of my inexperiece and
inability to deal with the press. I found my statements would come out completely
distorted. I later discovered that there were journalists on politicias' payrolls who were
experts at killing or dstorting opposition statements. I came to realize that the feedom
of the press was really a myth; the newspaper owners pursued their own agendas
through their publicatons. The freedom of the press only stood as long as their iterests
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were not threatened. In another indiation of my iexperience I made a media blunder
just a few days before the elections.
ng
Pakista's biggestcirculation paper quoted
me saying that while we hoped for the best it was possible that we might not get even
one seat. Of course no political leader should ever say that kind of thing whether it is
correct or not because it completely demoralizes your workers.
ompounding our difculties the media campaign against us by the PML (N)
had been highly effecive. We were simply defenceess in the face of its onslaught. Their
attack was focused etirely on my personal life. They even stooped so low as to keep
calling up a female frend of mine Sita White and publishing lurid interviews wth her.
More damaging still was the conspiracy theory about a Zionst plot to take over
Pakistan. They went o the extent o getting a newspaper to publish a photograph of a
cheque for 40 million pounds supposedly given to me by Jemima's father for my
electio campaign. Then statements from politica and religious gures were rinted
saying hey would not allow the Jews to take over Pakistan. After he elections the paper
involved printed a few lines on the inside pages admitting that the cheque was a
forgery. But the damage was done ad it was too close to the electons for our strggling
media ofce to change public perceptions.
Given our various weaknesses we had only one hope and that was for a heay
turnout. Unfortunately on Election Day the polling booths were deserted especially in
the cities. Most Pakistanis obviously felt that voting would not change their lives for the
better anway. It was clear that Sharif would win and Benazir would be wiped out but
no one had anticipated the margin of his victory. He ended up with a twothirds majority
in parliament although everyone looked at the number of votes cast with great suspicion.
The president had anounced a turnout of 25 per cent by the evenng of the polls while
the BB put it at less than 18 per cet. By the following morning the nation was old the
turnout was 38 per cet.
It was only after Sharif's government was dismissed i 1999 that a senior
member of the election commissio explained to me how the polls had been rigged.
ertain constituencies were selected for manipulation. Within those constituencies
polling stations where rigging was easily possible were earmarked as red polling
booths'. The electios were held during Ramadan so the moment the votig had
nished at these booths the election agents were taen to break their fast some distance
away; in certain cases reluctant pollig agents were ordered to go by the army pesonnel
guardig the election stations. They were then kept away for fortyve minutes to an
hour. I the meantime a couple of members of the election commission stued the
ballot boxes with votes for the PM (N) candidate. In order to avoid detectio they
cleverly raised the amount of votes of the numbertwo candidate so that the gap between
the winning candidate and the rest was not too glaring. There was however a hge gap
betwee the top two candidates ad everybody else. I have to say I felt sorry for
Benazir despite havig been her biggest critic; all the cards were stacked agaist her.
With the caretaker goernment and all its power rmly behind Sharif it was obvious that
she did not stand a chance in hell. As expected she was completely routed. As for
Tehreek
eInsaf we failed to win a single seat.
(Following the 2008 elections the Electoral ommission found that 37 million of
the 80 million voters registered were bogus' -that is duplicated multiple or bogus
entries. In June 2011 on my petitio to the Supreme ourt the 37 million bogus votes
were anulled and the court ordered 35 million yoth votes to be egistered.)
Luckily over my twentyone years of international cricket -which had icluded
many a drubbing -I had developed a defence mechanism to protect myself and manage
the moe painful aspects of failure. One of my worst memories was losing to India in
India o our 1979/80 tour. We had to sneak back ito Pakistan in the dead of night and
unannounced so scaed were we of being humiliated by the outraged publc. The
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customs staff conscted almost everything they possibly could ff us searchig even
our pockets and keeping us at the airport for tw hours. For days afterwards we all
avoided going out in ublic to escape the inevitable backlash. Yet seven years later we
arrived at the same Lahore airport after beating India. We never even made it to
customs. The airport staff carried us on their shoulders from the tarmac to the crowd of
tens of thousands wh had ooded the airport. For ve miles from the airport into the
city cetre there were people lining the roads cheering us. The nly other time I saw
such jubilation and ephoria was wen we landed in Lahore after winning the World
Cup in 1992. So by the end of my career I had a pretty good idea about the dynamics of
victory and defeat. I had learned not to lose my head when we wo and to come to terms
with and deal with the bad times when you became the object of te general public's ire
and even your close friends changed towards you.
he rst thing to understand with failure s that there is no point in making
excuses -there are no listeners. As tey say failure is an orphan and you're aloe. It is
best to accept it graciusly and congatulate the winer. Then you must have the ability
to analse where you went wrong; this is the hallmrk of successfl people that they are
their own best critic. One of the reasns I succeeded in cricket when compared to more
talented cricketers than me was because I could aalyse my weaknesses accuraely. In
October 1984 when I started to bowl again after twoyear layoff following a stress
fracture in my left shin I discovered I had developed a aw in my bowling actin. For
three months I experimented and tried everything to remove the aw but othing
worked. Such was my concentration that I dreamed and saw myself bowling and worked
out how to remove the aw all in m sleep. The next morning in the nets I corrected my
action. Some cricketers' careers hae been nished by analysing things wrongly as
there is a great dange that -demoralized by failure -you can actually make a wrong
analysis and compound the failure. The best naturally gifted timer of the ball I eer saw
was Zaheer Abbas: in 1978 he completely annihilated the touring Indian bowling attack
in Pakistan. A year later when we toured India thee was massive public expecttion of
him. I ould see him crumbling under this weight but rather tha blocking the fear of
failure and concentrating on managng his innings he started loking elsewhere. First
he started ddling wih his technique; one which
reminded him had enabled him to
break records less than a year ago. A few days later he had his eyes tested was there
something wrong there? Two weeks after that he was in such a state that he felt
someoe had cast a black magic spel on him and e ended up being dropped from the
team. Over the years I found a lot of people being defeated by failure because f their
inability to analyse their mistakes prperly.
fter the electin disaster I wanted to seek solitude and make my own analysis
of our disaster. Another part of my strategy is that it is useless reaing any newspapers -
why torture yourself by reading gloating articles by critics who were just waiting for you
to fail? I cut down o public engagements too because the more people you meet the
more sggestions yo receive abou where you went wrong. Suggestions being free
they are never in shor supply and all they end up oing is prolonging the bitter taste of
failure. So I would always hunker down and keep myself to myself while I mde my
own aalysis and preared my strategy for how t bounce back. After the elections I
grabbed the opportunity to have some time off and escaped to the Salt Range with my
family where we spet a blissful few days. I had hardly seen Jemima and Sulaiman for
the previous few moths. For all te pain of the political loss the happiness I got
spendig precious time with my rstborn more than compensated.
In fact this was the easiest defeat for me to accept as I had already known that the
best we could hope for was a mere three seats. We certainly were not ready and did not
have the team to form a governmet and implement my vision I felt too that these
electios had at least been useful in providing us wth an opportuity to put forward the
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issues f corruption ad accountabiliy. In addition the campaign had helped us build up
a natioal network. However our lss had a devatating effect not only on my young
party but also on Jemima my sisters and close friends. They had absolutely o idea
how to handle the taunts and ridicule they faced when they went out in public r read
the newspapers. Poor Jemima as well as putting up with the whle Zionist plo story
had to ee endless artiles criticizing mocking and idiculing her husband. And I have to
say I was roasted by the media. I was attacked by the right the left and the pwerful
lobby f crooked politicians. The latter were particularly vindictie as I had advocated
capital punishment for those whose corruption ws proved beyond a certain amount.
Since 983 when I ad broken my leg and had a bad year I had had a series of
successes -with both cricket and the hospital. Te election deeat was the rst big
opportnity for those envious of that success and keen to see me fail. People love to see
an icon fall -it is part of human nature. And we had been completely wiped out; it
wasn'tjust a defeat it was a decimtion. It became clear to me that we could not beat
the staus quo politiians on their pitch; we cold only win if we could create a
movement like the 1970 Bhutto moement where people vote fo the party rather than
the candidate.
A few weeks after the elections Mian Bashir dropped in to commiserate. emima
told him that she wished I had never gone into politics. She told him how much respect
there was for me in Pakistan becaue of my cricket and the cancer hospital and that
now I had become a gure of ridicule and the butt f jokes my private life raked over in
the media. She told him that she hd always felt n her heart that I should ony have
done hmanitarian wrk and stayed out of any controversy. He listened to her with a
quiet smile before responding that the object of this life was not to be popular and that
those who made that their purpose were condemned to live by ckle public opinion.
Then he told her the tory of this hghly respectable and succesful businessman who
was happily married and leading a cntented life. At the age of foty he was inspired by
the Almighty to tell the people of hi town that there was only one God. When he tried
to convey this message though they became upset because it wa against the beliefs of
their forefathers who worshipped many idols as gods. Besides every year lots of people
from all over the regin visited the twn to worship the idols and the townsfolk made a
lot of money from these pilgrims. S their nancial interests were also being threatened
by the ew message. When this man persisted he was subjected to all sorts of abse and
ridicule. Being honouable and sensitive he was deeply hurt by people' s attitudes. One
day his uncle mocke and ridiculed him so much that he came home and cried in his
wife's arms. Because his wife knew him so well se knew he ws telling the trth and
totally elieved in him. She stood b him and urged him on with his calling. That man
was the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and he eventually succeeded in founding one of
the greatest civilizatins in human history. This i just a passing phase' Mian Bashir
said. Besides if decet people do nt come into politics the country will contine to be
plundered by crooked politicians an soon become unlivable in.' Jemima began to relax
after that though she would insist that I organized myself better so that I gave my
family its fair share of time. I began to manage my time more efciently ut my
trouble were only just beginning.
he party was in severe nancial difculty. A lot of money had been wasted in
the thick of the electin campaign and we had incurred loans that had to be paid ff. But
who was going to fund a party that had suffered such a crushing loss? Whe I was
captain if we suffered a defeat I would avoid team meetings for a couple f days
because they were conterproductive and would invariably turn ito a blamegame that
left the team divided and demoralized. The difference was that a cricket team had to
rally itelf for the net match which gave them something to lok forward to In the
case of my party the next elections were ve yeas away. Who was going to face the
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ruthless Sharif brothers all that time? N
awaz' s brother Shahbaz ws also a politician and
the tw of them were masters at vctimizing thei opponents. Jst like a vanuished
cricket team, my party started searching for scapegoats. Members who had urged us to
contest the polls were crucied by the ones who hd agreed with me that it was best to
pull ou. Others simply lost faith in my leadership. hey had known me as someone who
was successful in whatever eld I entered. This political rut had shake their
condence in me. These people did ot realize that when I rst played cricket I was not
successful at all. In fact I was dropped after my rs test match and it took me ve years
before I consolidated my position o the team; after my rst tour a lot of newspapers
called me Imran Khan't'. The hospital project to had plenty of early hiccups; the
general opinion amongst our educated classes had iitially been that it was a nonstarter,
and even once it was built, some sceptics never thoght we would be able to run t.
Other differences between members of our party's central executive committee
that had been simmering for a while now came ot into the ope. Some of my senior
party members went ito depression. A few just left the party, usually the ones who had
felt tha allying with me would provde a shortcut to power. Then there were those who
could ot think of hanging around till the next polls or were scared of political
victimization. It is customary for the victor in Pakistani politics to use the police and
bureaucracy to victimize his opponets. For example, incometax ofcers can sddenly
target your business r thugs will turn up on your doorstep to beat you up. My cousin
Asad Jehangir joined the police force after graduating from Oxford in 1969. e once
told me about an incident after the 1977 elections when he was posted to Sindh as a
young and idealistic police ofcer. One of the local landlords came to see him after he
had been elected. After exchanging formalities he politely reqested the bewildered
Asad t send a coupe of policemen to his political opponent's house to give him a
sound thrashing. In or feudal culture, it was almost as if it was the winner's prerogative
to further humiliate the loser. The judiciary gives no protection to the oppositio either,
having always been subordinate to he executive. ecause of this total lack of rule of
law, some Pakistanis will vote for someone despite knowing he is totally crooked out of
fear of retribution or the lure of patronage. Landless peasants are especially vulerable
because their landlor can threaten o turf them ot of their homes or beat them up if
they don't vote for him or whichever party or candidate he is supprting.
Losing the elections not only made collecting money for the party difcult but it
hit the cancer hospital. Each year it had a huge decit because of treating the majrity of
its patients for free. A this point it oly generated 30 per cent of its revenues and for the
rest we relied on donations. During te elections my powerful political opponents had -
as well as targeting my personal life -made allegations about the hospital in the press,
claiming that it was not in fact treating the poor fo free and that donations were being
used o my election campaign. This inevitably cused some donors to doubt us and
fundraising stalled. The two most important board members of the hospital, azaak
Dawood and Dr Parvez Hasan, asked me to give up politics as they feared it would
destroy the great project. They told me to be realistic and that I had no chance of
succeeding in our corrupt political clture. All my lfe I have been told to be pragmatic -
I heard this again and again during the course of my cricket career and all throgh the
early years of the hospital. ut I resolutely remain an idealist. For me, pragmatism today
in Pakistan means accepting a corrupt and oppressive status quo At times like this in
my life when things seem hopeless, I always look back to similar occasions -in cricket
or in the hospital -when persistence eventually led to success.
onetheless, even my idealism was tested in 1997, which was to prve an
extremely difcult year. Aside frm my political woes and the hospital funding
problem, I had a persnal nancial cisis. The court case in Englad against otham and
Lamb ad drained me nancially, and since they had appealed against the verdict
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against them, I could not get my costs back. Had the case gone to appeal there was no
way I could have fought it as I had spent so much money during the elections. To top it
all Jemima's father, Jimmy Goldsmith, was dying from cancer and she was totally
distraught. He passed away in July 1997, leaving is family and friends bereft. A few
weeks ater Princess Diana died. Her visit to the hospital earlier i the year had brought
fresh donations, givig us enough breathing space for me to organize some more
fundraisers and stop it going under. She had offered to attend a fundraiser i Saudi
Arabia later in the year to help further. Her death capped what was the worst twelve
months of my life since 1985 when
lost my mother. Looking back, the only thng that
made me happy that ear was watching my son Slaiman grow p. For me, nothing in
my life gave me more joy than having children. Had I known hw happy they would
make me I would have got married when I was younger.
Aside from my faith and my family, what helped me during this period of my life
were the lessons I had learned in crcket. They told me that there were no shortcuts in
life. If you wanted smething you had to work for it. And that hard work was never
wasted. If one had a passion for what one wanted to achieve then hard work ceased to be
drudgery. You only lse when you give up in your mind. In additon, I had leared that
circumstances never remain the same; but never must one give p if one feels one is
heading towards defeat. I used to nd that at the start of a veday test match one could
never predict how the ve days would pan out, as it was dependet on so many actors.
The pessimists in the team would smetimes concude after the rst day that we were
going t lose and more or less accept defeat. Being an optimist I always used to look at
it differently. I found nexpected sitations would suddenly give ou the opportnity to
make a comeback in the game. For instance, the weather would change, or the ay the
pitch was playing. Or the other team could just make a mistake you could capitaize on.
If you hadn't already given up you could make the most of these variables. I hae kept
this attitude in life. Besides, hopelessness is faithlessness. There were people within my
party, as well as plety of political commentators, who started predicting that after
Sharif's heay mandate no one would be able to dislodge him for the next decade. At
this pont my party was completely written off by everyone. Sharif's party itself was
already planning for the next twenty years so caried away was it by its twthirds
majority. I thought differently and was to be prved right. Wth my usual dogged
optimism, I set about dealing with the various issues on my plate. irst was the hspital.
On the back of Princess Diana's visit we had started a campaig to invite all opinion
makers, journalists, clumnists and newspaper editors to the hospital to visit. By the
beginning of 1998, all these efforts combined to lit the hospital's nances out of
danger. By 1999 donations had goe back to the preelection level. Meanwhile, my
personal nancial problems started easing up too.
began to write and commentate on
cricket just enough t make my cotributions to the party and pay the bills. I 1999
Botham and Lamb drpped their appeal so I did not have to thin of additional funds.
With better organizatin I also began to have more ime to enjoy family life. My greatest
sacrice for being in politics was ot always beig able to sped as much time as I
wanted to with my family. In April 999, the Almighty blessed us with our second son,
Kasim.
Politics, however, was still a problem. I ha managed to settle the party's debts
within the year but rasing money was almost impssible. Our oice holders never had
sufcient funds to do fulltime politics. As the country's economic situation worsened,
some of our ofce bearers went bakrupt; others had to work dubly hard to earn the
same amount of income. A lot of my time was spent in settling isputes, usually when
the workers of a particular area wuld refuse to acknowledge a senior ofce bearer
because he was not giving enough time to the party. If the head of a district did not
work, the whole district would become inactive. We were p against the feudal
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landlords and career politicians, peole who had often inherited a constituency nd had
the infrastructure and resources to do politics fulltime. I also ad difculty finding
leadersip for my party. This is i fact a general problem in Pakistan. Durng my
cricketing career I always used to wonder why there was so muh intrigue within the
Pakistan cricket team. I played cricket in England fr several rst class teams -Oxford,
Worcester and Sussex. I also playe for New Souh Wales in the Australian Shefeld
Shield competition. I never saw ay intrigue against captains in rst class teams I
played for in England or Australia, even though some were pretty poor. Yet in Pakistan
there were always groups within the team that were ready to undermine the captain
wheneer they lost. I was made capain in 1982 wen the team rebelled and refused to
play under the incumbent skipper. After I retired in 1992 there wee multiple changes in
the captaincy. Pakistan made close o thirty changes between 1992 and 2010 while in
that same period Australia had only four different captains. I also had a problem of
frequet inghting within the fundraising committees for the hospital that I had set up in
various cities abroad After a lot f research I realized that the reason for ack of
leadersip in Pakista is partly because of our school system. lmost all of ur test
cricketers and political workers are stateschool edcated but sadly the public edcation
system has deteriorated dramatically in the past frty years. Most schools just do not
groom students in the art of ledership, failig to teach tem how to handle
responsibility. It was different at Aitchison, where there was a system of prefects, head
boys ad team captais. On top of that we had miltary training s that we were taught
about teamwork and he qualities a leader needed to command respect. Unfortnately
the vast majority of ur private schools and almst all the government schoos have
neither any sports facilities nor any extracurricular activities. Students therefore do not
have the opportunity to learn that authority brings with it responsibility and abusing that
positio loses one the respect of one's subordinates
Despite my strggle to nd the right people to work with and the sheer drudgery
of the endless travellig, my crisscrssing of the cuntry was higly educationa and at
times ispiring. This was especially so when I me people who, with no resoures but
lots of passion, were doing everything they could for Pakistan. I found the iggest
hurdle n my way was cynicism. Peple had been led up the garden path so many times
that they were sceptial about everyone. How cold they be sure I was not like the
previos politician oering change The period f about four years after our failed
electio bid was one of great learning. Meeting s many people was an eduction in
itself. I learned to judge people more effectively and gradually began to be able t make
up my mind very quckly about the mindset of those I was dealing with. Sharif had
corrupted politics so much that most people were looking to make money out of it. I
found dealing with such types the worst aspect of olitics. I leared to get to the point
quickly. This ability t distinguish between the important and the trivial allowed me to
manage my time better. Also, after dealing with or devastating electoral loss, and the
subseqent stream of rises within the party, I had good understanding of my team and
knew which members I could depend on. I had discovered in cricket that you only know
the real worth of your players when they are put under pressure.
s I had predicted, Sharif was not to last long. Between his ecnomic
mismaagement and growing disregard for the institutions of a modern state,
antagoism towards him mounted. n September 1999 virtually the entire opposition
formed the Grand Democratic Alliace (GDA) on a onepoint agenda to campaign for
his removal. That year he had railroaded the 15th Amendment -which would have
given him dictatorial powers as the
mir ulmomineen
or leder of the faihful -
through parliament with his brute majority. He was already behaving like a Mughal
emperor after pushing through the 13th Amendment (which made the presidency
impotet) and the 14th Amendment (which made the parliament a rubberstampig body
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and meant that no member of his party could disobey the chairman or they wold lose
their seat). After the 15th Amendment there would have been n check to his already
unprecedented powers. We feared that once the senate election took place in March
2000, Sharif would then command a majority there too, enabling him to make the 15th
Amendment law. Sharif and his party had already done something that remains one of
the most disgraceful events in our cuntry's history: senior members of his party, along
with party workers, physically attacked the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1997, and the
chief jstice -who had dared to start contempt proceedings against Sharif -had to ee
from the court.
he Grand Democratic Alliace held rallies in all the major cities. It was clear
that public opinion had tued agaist Sharif; thogh the ordinary people of Pakistan
were nt concerned about the 15th Amendment, tey were being crushed by growing
unemployment and a faltering economy on one sid and constant price rises (especially
utility bills) on the other.
Further weakeing Sharif's position was growing tension with the army chief,
General Musharraf, after the illconcived and disastrous Kargil operation. In May 1999,
New Delhi discovered that Pakistani soldiers ad Kashmiri freedom ghters had
occupied the Kargil heights, in Indiaoccupied Kashmir. Ironicaly this came just three
months after Sharif had hosted the Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on his
historic peacemaking visit to Lahore -the rst time, since the Indian involvement in
the coict in East Pakistan that had led to the establishment of Bangladesh, that the
two heads of government had met formally and issued a declaration and a
memorandum of undrstanding whch committed both parties to peace) as a result.
According to Sharif's version of events, the the commandernchief of the army,
Musharraf, had launched the operaion without cnsulting him; however, Musharraf
insiste that the prim minister had been on board. Whatever the truth of the matter,
Sharif found himself in a difcult siuation. Pakistan was slammed by the international
community and the Indians retaliated. Seeing the Pakistani position was untnable,
Sharif was forced to beg Bill Clinton for help in brokering a peace deal with New Delhi.
Sharif rdered the trops to withdraw, confusing a umiliated Pakistani public who had
been fed the ocial line that only Kashmiri freedm ghters had occupied the Kargil
heights and that Pakistan had no cntrol over them. There then followed a cld war
betwee Musharraf ad Sharif. Any genuine leader would have haled the army chief in
front of him and courtmartialled him for what turned out to be one of Pakistan's biggest
debacles -not just in terms of lives, money and international reputation but also damage
to the Kashmiri cause. Instead Sharif dithered for months before ventually attempting
to remve Musharraf n the most bizarre way. On 12 October 1999, the army chef was
midair on his way home from a trip to Sri Lanka when Sharif sacked him and appointed
Ziauddn Butt as his replacement. He diverted Musharraf's plane i order to buy imself
more time and a chatic few hours ensued before army ofcias loyal to Musharraf
rebelled and launched a fullscale military takeover. The victorious Musharraf had the
prime minister and his cronies arrested. Military rule was back.
he amazing ting was that the same GD members who had been vrtually
pleading with the army to remove Sharif (there was no constitutinal way of getting rid
of him) were later o club together with him and form anther alliance against
Musharraf. Benazir's PPP began to make overtures to Sharif when she realized that the
army was not going t ask her to joi the government and was instead bent on pursuing
corruption charges against her. When I found out I could not believe what cntempt
these pportunistic politicians had for the peope of Pakistan. Just a few months
previosly they were telling the public that Sharif was the greatest threat to democracy
in the country and ow they had to ally with him in order to save Pakistan's
democracy'. Benazir and Sharif had been trying to xpose each oter's corruption to the
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public or eleven years. Indeed the Sharif government had spent a fortune in taxpayers'
money trying to get Benazir convicted of graft and had put Zardari injail; yet when they
realized that Musharrfwas intent o charging them both, they clung to each other. That
sums up Pakistan's plitics from 1988 to 1999. N wonder that according to a Gallup
survey, 80 per cent of the populatio supported the military takeover. As for Sharif, he
was later tried and cnvicted on charges of hijacing and terroism. He took a plea
bargain to avoid life imprisonment ad was exiled t Saudi Arabia in 2000.
While I welcomed what seemed like an ed to the Benazir-Sharif merrygo
round, I was also thankful for Musharraf's coup for personal reasons. Sine our
marriage Jemima had been doing her best to get ivolved in life in Pakistan. Nt only
had she converted to Islam and adapted to Pakistani culture, but she had learned to speak
Urdu qite well. In the elections she had campaigned for me, givng speeches i Urdu.
She had also helped me with the hspital fundraising. We could sell our fund
raising
dinners much better if she was guaranteed to be there. She also started a cothing
business, having clothes embroidered in Pakistan and selling them in the West. All the
prots went to the hospital and her business gave employment to undreds of wmen. I
was particularly prou of her when se decided to help Afghan refugees in Jalozi camp
living in subhuman conditions. She had read an article about hw some children had
died of cold at the camp, home to thousands of refugees since the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Being a mother herself, this affecte her deeply ad so she lauched a
charity and raised millions of rupees for tents, prvisions and medical clinics for the
refugees.
However, just as we were working to make our crosscultral marriage scceed,
external forces were attempting to sabotage our fmily life. We discovered how truly
vicious the political maa in Pakista could be. In December 1998, just to embarrass me
politically, an antiqesmuggling accusation was slapped on Jemima by Sharif's
government. It alleged that tiles Jemima had sent to her mother as a Christmas present
were atique, despite he fact that they were bought from a shop that never even claimed
they were of historical interest. Pakistan's laws are very strict about the exporting of
antiques. Ater the case was registered, Jemima had one of the ties examined by three
museums in England and had a thermoluminescene test done to date it. All cormed
the tiles were moder. So keen was the government to implicate Jemima in the case,
though that it did not even follow the customs department's own laws. A ninemember
commiee comprisig members f the archaeological department, the customs
department and the person accused have to deliberate before an object is declared an
antique. Instead, one government employee in the archaeologica department declared
them t be antique. The case should have immediately been thrown out of court but was
pending for months ad the judge kept giving the government time to improve its case.
Since smuggling is a onbailable offence in Pakistan and potentially carried a sentence
of up t seven years i jail, I decided that Jemima should stay in England until te case
was over. This again meant a disruption to our family life. Neither of us could take a
risk wih a governmetcontrolled judiciary, especially with a twyearold and another
baby o the way. Afer the militar coup, the case against Jemima was immediately
thrown out, but she hd been forced o stay out of the country for eleven months in total.
Sadly, even ater this major respite, politics was to cause further disruptio to our
family life. If the 1997 elections had been hard o our marriage, the 2002 polls were
even tougher. At least in 1997 Jemima had been abe to participate in my campaign; this
time she had to stay out. Instead of being able to be the asset she should have been, my
political opponents hd turned her ito a liability. ecause they couldn't hurl the usual
accusations of sleaze at me, they attcked me through her. It was especially hard for her
not to be actively invlved because she is basicall a very political person. This was a
great blow for our marriage. A crosscultural mariage can work if your passins and
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objecties are the same but Jemima had to be sidelined. And een then she was not
spared; spurious stories about her continued to emerge in the Pakistani press. A
comment about having read a book by Salman Rushdie for her university dissertation on
post
colonial literature turned into a story saying she had chosen him as her guide. There
were demonstrations calling for her citizenship to be revoked. Hard for anyone this kind
of treatment was particularly distressing for somebdy like Jemima who was naturally
shy and sensitive. Cmpounding our difculties during the campaign I was away
touring the country fr about ve months. I was campaigning almost singlehadedly
my bes candidate having withdrawn. I barely saw my wife and children. In the end the
party won one seat -my own in Mianwali which given the lack of freedm the
electios were conducted under wit the whole state machinery helping my opponent
was a great achievement.
It came at a heay personal cost. When I returned home to Islamabad I found
Jemima demoralized and for the rst time realized that she was losing the battle and
giving up. I had already started to harbour guilt about her being so unhappy. She had
tried incredibly hard but my political career and the constant attacks on her were very
difcult. I felt guilty because as te older partner I was more responsible for our
marriage. She was so young when we married and when we made the decision to launch
my party -how coul she have known what such a life would entail in a foreig land?
But I should have thoght about all te possible cosequences. Fo the rst time I began
to think that maybe I had been irresponsible; just because I was battlehardened after
years of struggle did ot mean that my wife should have been thrown at such a tender
age int the turbulent world of Pakistani politics. Adapting to a completely alien culture
was already challenge enough. Personal attacks on people' s families especialy their
wives are rare in Pakistani culture. It had never ocurred to me that people could stoop
so low as to attack a young foreign woman because of her husband'
s political work.
So when Jemima said she wanted to return to England to study for a oeyear
masters degree in Modern Trends in Islam at London' s School of Oriental and African
Studies and take the boys with her as devastating as the news was I didn't resist. As
always I believed that somehow ircumstances might change. I hoped that if the
political climate imprved I could lure her back or that she would come to realize that
the life we had created together in akistan was worth staying for. But in my heart I
knew i was the beginning of the end. Above all a marriage cannot work with two
people living on different continents. Within a year I could see tha she was absorbed by
her life back in London with her family and friends and was happy there. The six
months leading up to our divorce and the six monts ater made p the hardest year of
my life. The children' s obvious distress exacerbated the misery they are always the
ones wo suffer the most in divorce Sulaiman being older felt it more and seeing his
pain doubled my pain. I missed them terribly. Nothing lled the vid. I loved fatherhood
more than anything I had ever experenced in life. Having had children after my cricket
career I had been at hme to watch every phase of their growing up and was a handson
parent an experience so many fathers miss out on because of their work. My life had
been work and family; I hardly ever saw my friends or went to dinner parties. Now not
having them around was the hardest thing to come to terms with. For the rst time I
began to understand how people coud lose the will to live. Usually someone wh wakes
up every morning with optimism and joy at facing a new day I suddenly found it hard
to get out of bed.
Once again faith got me throgh these difult times. Once I had come t terms
with the divorce I picked myself up and threw myself back into pursuing my political
and humanitarian work. The optimist in me cannot help but see the brighter side of a
situation and I felt that in many ways I was luckier than most in my divorce. There was
no acrimony none of the bitterness aused when oe partner has been unfaithful to the
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other, o nancial disutes and no lawyers involved. Jemima is very generous in giving
me time with the boys. They come o stay with me during their chool holiday and I
then devote myself entirely to them. Whenever I'm in England, I stay with my ex
motherinlaw, Lady Annabel who still treats me as part of the amily. Her sos Ben
and Za are like younger brothers to me. The rest f the time I am free to focus on my
work. Moreover, the burden of Jemima's unhappiness was lifted from me and if there's
one thig worse than eeing a loved one leave, it's seeing a loved one unhappy. As the
Quran ays: After every hardship there is ease' (Qran 65: 7 and 7: 42); and I cnsoled
myself with the Quraic verse that smetimes Allah doesn't answer our prayers because
he knows what's best for us.
It is hard to say that with hindsight I would have done things differently away.
My married friends aways envied me my life when I was a bachelor but the greatest
happiness and contentment in my life came from my marriage. I always was a ristaker
so I ws willing to tae the lows with the highs. Whenever I looked back and thought
about what else I cold have done I felt that, given the circumtances, I had worked
harder at making my marriage work than at anything else in my life. So there were no
regrets. If anything could have prevented me from maring Jemima, it was the
realization that she ws maybe too yung and inexperienced to be presented with such a
challenge. It pained me that she had to endure all te suffering that divorce entals. She
gained two beautiful ons, though, ad a second hoe in Pakistan where she was much
loved. She is still very attached to the country and always the rt to rally round when
disaster befalls us -be it oods or earthquakes. Peple oten ask e why I didn't go to
Londo to save our relationship but t was never an option. I could never imagine living
in London, just makig a living out f cricket jouralism. For me that would hae been
a purpseless existene. I cannot een imagine life without a passion and a prpose;
once I had cricket, now I have my plitical struggle -which was t become all the more
urgent after the turmil in Pakistan unleashed by he 9/11 attacks. And Jemima knew
that. She did not marry a lounge lizard; my drive was one of the things that had attracted
her to me. I think I would have been diminished in her eyes if I had lost that drive.
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Chapter Seven
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The Genera, 1999-2001
AFTE MUSHAAF HAD come to power in a ilitary coup i 1999, many f us in
Pakistan hoped he mght bring a new lease of life to our country, following years of
unstable and corrupt civilian govenments. Nawaz Sharif's plans to award imself
dictatoial powers under the 15th Amendment were a genuine hreat to any hope of
establishing a proper democracy in Pakistan. Thank God we are saved, I thought at the
time, as Musharraf promised to hol fresh elections, introduce genuine democracy and
clean up corruption. Iitially sincerity oozed out of him.
Yet even at my rst encounter with him, in a secret meetig a few months after
the cop, the alarm bells should have rung. I should have realized hen and there hat the
genera had no vision and no understanding of the iportance of the rule of law. He had
already issued his rst Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) and thrown a few judges
out but he had left tw of the most corrupt judges in place. So I tok the opportnity to
ask him why he had't cleaned up the judiciary roperly: surely, I said, if his main
concer was good goernance and curbing corrupton this was the rst thing he had to
do because only a strng, independet judicial system can act as a check and balance on
an executive. All of the worst instances of corruptin in developing countries come from
politicians having to much power. The reason they get away with it is becase the
judiciay is always subservient to the executive, or is in fact an extension of the
executive. Imran,' Musharraf said, if we touch the judiciary well become parahs for
the international comunity.' Of curse he'd already done this himself; as it was, he
should have worried about xing Pakistan rst, ad then worried about the rest of the
world. If the people of Pakistan had been behind him, he could have handled the world.
As he was to nd out seven years later, when he did remove the chief justice, even the
backing of the world's only superpower could not keep him in pwer when the people
of Pakistan turned against him. The same thing happened to the Shah of Iran (ad more
recentl Hosni Mubarak in Egypt ad Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia); when the
Iranian people turned against him tere was nothng the Americans could do to save
him.
At rst, many f us overlooked Musharraf's early errors, thinking he was being
badly advised, or that he did not understand politics. And we had been so disillsioned
by the corrupt governments of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto that had ruled Pakistan
for the previous eleven years that we were full of hope. In the end, though, it ecame
apparet that his only vision was how to keep himself in power. Every compromise he
made was to strengthen his own position. Just as an earlier dictator, General Zia lHaq,
had seized on the Sovet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to make himself indispensable
to the Americans, s too did Musharraf use the 9/11 attacks on New Yok and
Washigton to bolster his position.
On 11 September 2001, I was speaking at a political rally near Peshawar, the
capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wen I heard about the attacks on New York and
Washigton. As we watched the secnd plane y into the tower lie on televisio I felt a
sense of foreboding. Like many, I was shocked and appalled by the sight of peple so
desperate to escape the inferno inside that they thew themselves out of the bilding.
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Never ad I seen such a horric tragedy live on television. It had a huge impact on
everyoe I knew. My first thought was to hope the hijackers were't Muslim, my second
was to hope they weren't Pakistan. When it emerged they were Arab I knew that
nothing would ever be the same for the Muslim orld again. As far as Pakistan was
concered, though, the fact that one of its ntionals were involved made little
differece. A media ircus descended on Islamabad within a week and we suddenly
found urselves on the frontline of the war on teror'. Musharraf, previously iewed
with sspicion by the Americans, suddenly became a key US partner. When US
president Bill Clinton had come to Pakistan in 2000 he had refused to have a photograph
taken f them shakig hands, so wary was he of being seen to endorse a military
dictator. But all concern for Pakistani democracy evaporated ater 9/11, as Musharraf
became Washington's greatest ally against Islamic extremism'.
S dollars poured into the country, just as tey had in Zia's time, as Musharraf
helped the Americans against Pakistan's former Afghan Taliba allies. Ater 9/11 he
rounded up hundreds of people ad handed them over to Washington for ounty;
according to the charity Reprieve, 95 per cent of the people haded over by Pakistan
were inocent. In his memoir Musharraf declared that he had transferred over seven
hundred alQaeda suspects to the Uited States, yet in doing so he had violated article
4A of the constitutio, which states that any persn on Pakistani soil cannot be given
over to another authrity unless he is taken to a court of law nd provided with the
chance to prove his inocence. Musharraf violated the law of the land to prove to the
Americans that he was a bulwark against Islamic extremism, just as many Arab
dictators have done over the years. The United States in tur used Musharraf; its
commiment to demcracy, so loudly proclaimed during its later invasion f Iraq,
abandoned in favour f the war on terror'. It cared only that the Pakistan army should
be used as cheap mercenaries in America's war. Just as the Americans had doe with
Zia, they preferred one strong military ruler to a chaotic and demanding democracy.
General Ehtisham Zamir headed the political wing f the InterServices
Intelligence (SI) agecy, and was tasked with briging together General Musharraf's
coalitin of reform'. He was lookig for my party's support for the General o give
him the strength to take on the crooked politicias'. After the referendum, in spring
2002, designed to give legitimacy to Musharraf's presidency, we met again and he told
me of the Grand Naional Alliance', and that's when the alarm bells started ringing.
Zamir gave me the SI's assessmet of how many seats each party could get in the
autumn elections; I ased about the plans to get rid f the corrupt politicians, and he told
me abut the reality -that it was unfortunate bt the people f Pakistan voed for
crooks. I realized we'd been led up he garden path and, for shor term gains, the long
term interests of Pakistan were goig to be crucied. Sadly this has been a legacy of
intelligence agencies in Pakistan wh, without a prper broadbased analysis, have made
decisios which have proved disastous for our cuntry. (Other secret agencies have
done tremendous harm in the world, especially the CIA, which fo shortterm goals has
created so much chaos in so many countries.) This was my rst experience of dealing
with the SI. Ater that, I resolved never to let the agencies iuence our decision
making in the future.
I met Musharraf for the th and nal time n 23 July 2002, when he invited me
to President House in Islamabad; I was hoping to change his mind about making this
coalition of crooks. It was then I realized how much those of us who had supported him
initially had been fooed by his promises to clean p the political system. Also resent
were Musharraf's spokesman and ntional security adviser, along with the head of the
SI and Zamir. The meeting was friendly enough at the start, as e told me he wanted
me to jin his coalitio. He claimed that he had always thought tht I was the only clean
politician in the country. When he tld me who the politicians were in his coalition of
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reform', I was shocked. Some of these politicias were considered the epitme of
corruption in the country, and I told Musharraf tat joining them would lose me all
credibility, since my main platform was anticorruption. Musharraf said that if
didn't
join him I would lose. I told him I would rather lose than discredt myself. Benzir and
Sharif had been persnal friends before they joined politics; the nly reason I opposed
them was because o their corrupton. They did at least have a vote bank, hough,
whereas some of the politicians in Musharraf's socalled coaliton of reform that he
wanted me to join were both crooked and without a vote bank. I warned him that if he
insisted on associating himself with these corrupt politicians then Benazir and Sharif
would benet. People by this point were sick of their corruption ut if Musharraf went
ahead with his coalitin of the crooked the voters would reason that all the main parties
were crrupt anway levelling the field again for Benazir and Sharif. Unfortnately,
people in Pakistan vote for crooks,' he said, repeating the phrase I'd heard before,
telling me that I was to idealistic and to be pragmtic.
I told him that he should hae put in place a strong judiciary, an independent
electio commission, a credible natonal accountability bureau and then held fee and
fair polls. If you had done all that,' I said, you'd be the biggest ame in Pakistan after
Jinnah.' He said there was a risk invlved. It was then that it occurred to me he meant a
risk for himself, as opposed to for Pakistan. He could not comprehend the ptential
damage to the countr from his allince with corrpt politicians. It dawned on me that
he had a naive belief that as long as he was in power he could cotrol anything. He had
no idea about the mess he was creatig. Up till then I had assumed Musharraf was being
misadvised by his close aide Tariq Aziz, but now I realized that rther than helping him
form sme kind of plitical vision, advisers like Aziz were simpy counselling him on
how to stay in power. That was my last meeting with Musharraf and from then onwards
our pats diverged.
By not joining Musharraf my party fell between two stols. Because we had
previosly been seen to be close to him we were not considered a opposition paty. But
now we were rmly out of the establishmentbacked coalition. Consequently a lot of
potentially good canddates abandoned us. The ones that were let were turned o by the
SI; its agents either treatened the TehreekeInsaf candidates or cajoled or lured them
into Msharraf's PML (Q) (the Pakstan Muslim League -a breakaway from Sharif's
party, istinguished by the Q' for
Quid
short for
QuideAzm
or Great Leader, the
title gien to Jinnah). Some candidates gave up altogether, tellig me they cold not
ght the SI. They said they would be wasting their money. Cash is essential for
political candidates in Pakistan, who can spend a minimum of 10 million rupees in rural
constitencies. No politician in the country's histry up till the had ever beaten the
establishment.
From October 002 onwards, my party went through the most difcult period of
its existence. Although following te 1997 election rout things had been extremely
tough, it was ater the elections in 2002 that we went through our toughest phase.
Having just one seat and with the entire party i disarray, it became a question of
survival, just keeping our heads above water. I have no doubt that had I not won my seat
-against all odds, because the entire government machinery was working against me -
it would have been al over for my party. won with a 5,000voe margin, a record to
that pont for the constituency.) Having that one seat meant I could just keep the party
alive; but it was hard, as barely twety of the top leadership were active, and even they
were dfcult to keep motivated. Oters either left the party or became dorman. One
positive of this difcult period was that I realized who were my real team -it's oly in a
crisis that you know te worth of thse around you. The one man who resolutel stood
beside me through thick and thin was Saifullah Niai. The other wo was a great support
through these tough times was Rashid Khan.
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It took me a year to clear the debts the party ad incurred dring the electins; we
moved out of our big central ofce in Islamabad and shifted the ofce ito my
parliamentary lodge, given to me as member of parliament. I cleared our last remaining
debts i an unusual way; I was with my family in England, and my brotherinlaw, Ben
Goldsmith, kept asking me about what would happen in an England versus South Africa
test match. I discovered his interest came from is spreadbetting' on the game. I
decided to watch the match, and leared he'd already lost about £10,000 on the game, so
I told him that in order to give him tips I would have to watch the match, and that every
pound e made ater recovering the £10,000 he'd lost would go towards clearng my
party's debt. I have never gambled in my life and ave never understood its attraction,
but now for the sake f clearing my arty's debts I watched the test match with Ben for
the next two days, teling him what to do and whe. Not only did he clear his debt, but
we made enough money to clear my party's debt as well. At one pint the bookie asked,
Mr Goldsmith, you dn't happen to be sitting with your brotherilaw, do you?
For the next few months, the arty had to be run on a shoestring budget; no one
donates to losers. For the next three and a half years, the party fught for its lie. The
one thig that saved us was independent television; from 2004 onwards, I had access to
the TV current affairs programmes, and I took clear stands on varius issues -especially
on the war on terror' which I alwas felt was a disaster for Pakistan while it eriched
the elite; and from March 2007 onwards, standing with the chief justice in his sruggle
against the president.
In my view, Msharraf really started to go downhill ater te 2002 electins. He
had tried to split the opposition to guarantee victory for his own party, the PML Q), by
encouraging the Muttahida MajliseAmal (MMA) a coalition of religious parties. But
his plas backred wen almost the entire Pashtu belt voted for the MMA in protest
against the US bombardment of Afghanistan. Since I had been canvassing in two
constitencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, I knew that all the Pashtn would vote for the
MMA n sympathy for the Taliban, who were now considered felow Pashtuns ghting
the American Goliath on the other side of the border. But the intelligence agencies, who
were orchestrating the elections for Musharraf from behind the scenes, had never
expected them to do s well, and the MMA's success upset his carefully laid plas to rig
the outcome. Ater the polls Musharraf struggled t pull together enough politicians to
obtain a clear majority. Despite his commitment t ght corruption, he was forced to
bribe and blackmail some corrupt politicians, who accepted promises of posts as
ministers in return for cases against them being droped.
But even dictators have limits on their authority and in Musharraf's case the
challenge came from the judiciary -the very jdiciary whose importance he had
overloked when he rst came to pwer. In late 206, Chief Justice Itikhar Chaudhry
had embarrassed the government by reversing a highprole decision to pivatize
Pakistan Steel Mills and Musharraf began to think he was becoming too independent.
The chief justice had also initiated investigations into the forced disappearances' of
people believed to hae been detained without due rocess by the Pakistani military and
intelligence services as part of their contribution o the war on terror'. Worried that
Chaudhry would refuse to allow him to out the cnstitution by contesting presidential
electios due that yea while remainng head of the army, Musharraf suspended im on
9 March 2007 on allegations of abse of ofce ad nepotism. He had not, however,
anticipated the strength of the popular reaction. A move that might have been caried out
quietly in Zia's day, when the only TV channel was the governmentowned oe, was
now loudly broadcast by the independent televisin media. Ironcally, Musharraf had
during is regime encuraged the bom in commerial television channels. And initially
he was the chief beneciary as he came across well on television compared to the
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discredited politicians. A more active media was nt to his advanage, though, once his
popularity started to wane.
Developing contries persist because the goernments are ot held to accunt by
a judical system -crrupt politicias cannot afford to allow an independent judiciary.
In Pakistan, every military dictator has subjugated the judiciary. Sadly, een the
democratic governmets have never allowed an independent judiciary to ourish -from
Bhutto, through his daughter Benazir, to Sharif whose senior party members phsically
attacked the Supreme Court. (There are currently fteen injunctins from the Spreme
Court, ncluding those dealing with corruption, beig deed by Zardari's government.)
Musharraf now tried to crack down on the judiciary as protests against his
treatment of Chaudhr spread like wildre. The chef justice refused to stand down and
the media and opposition parties, my party being in the forefront, leapt to his defence as
our contry's lawyers took to the streets for the rst time. A constitutional crisis
threateed as the wave of public sympathy for the lawyers' movement stoked calls for
an end to Musharraf's sevenandahalfyear militay rule. This was a dening moment.
The chef justice was supposed to uphold not only the rights of inividual Pakistnis but
also thse of the coutry's institutions and the costitution. If the state could nt even
protect his rights, how could it protect the rights of the most ulnerable sections of
society?
he lawyers' movement was a signicant development or Pakistan, ffering
hope of a plank of civil society activsm that did not represent any particular religious or
political group. The way in which the surge in independent media had shrpened
political consciousness in Pakistan was consistently underestimated by Musharraf, and
later by Sharif and Benazir. After years of only stte television, PTV, there was now a
plethora of current affairs programmes and chat shows to fuel debate about the state of
the nation. My party was the greatest beneciary, enjoying an psurge in popularity
thanks to the greater visibility the media provided and the way in which it was
highlighting some of he issues we stood for. One of my party's main demands when I
had fonded it in 1996 was for an independent judiial system, and for years ours was a
cry in the wilderness. Finally it was an idea whose time had come.
he one most powerful name behind the enire lawyers' movement backing the
chief jstice was a founder member of TehreekeInsaf, Hamid Khan. While he
controled the lawyers' movement fom behind the scenes, I was able to mobilize my
party ad the politicians behind the chief justice. The rst press cnference was held in
conjunction with Qazi Hussain Ahmad, then the head of JamaateIslami.
Chaudhry set o on a tour of courts and lawyers' associations around the country,
drawing huge crowds of people wh tossed rose petals at his cavalcade and called out
antiMsharraf slogas. On 8 May along with my party members, I spent a night
outside Lahore's Data Darbar shrine, built in the eeventh century, waiting to welcome
Chaudhry to the city. He was supposed to have arrived by early evening but hd been
waylaid on the Grand Trunk Road frm Islamabad by crowds of wellwishers waiting at
the roadside to greet him. So he did not make it to Lahore till about 7 a.m. Al night
streams of people from Lahore's Ol City kept coming up to me to talk about what was
happening. It was then that I realized something quite incredible was taking place in
Pakistan. There was a general awakening of the ublic for the rst time since I had
entered politics. As the sun came up a man shouted from the distance, Imran, Sahib, a
new dawn is rising.' Ill never forget that. Pakistan had changed.
he strength of support for Chaudhry paniced Musharraf which showed a few
days later in his hanling of the chief justice's trip to Karachi. Chaudhry was due to
address the lawyers o the Sindh High Court Bar Association, bu his visit turned ugly.
At least thirtynine eople died ad more than a hundred were injured after the
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) , allies of Musharraf, attacked Chadhry's
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supporters. The MQM, initially fouded to represet the interests of the descenants of
the Mohajirs, immigrants who came from India in the bloody tumult of Partition, now
essentially operates like a terrorist organization. Karachi is their stronghold. MQM
gunme red straigh into a procession of political parties heading to the airport to
receive the chief justie. At the time, I was participating in a live television programme
called
Citl Tlk.
I the studio we watched realtime footage of people bearing MQM
ags ad ring into te crowds with Kalashnikovs. But the television anchors were so
petried of stating the obvious -tat these were MQM suppoters -that they kept
referrig to them as militants'. The secretary general of my party, Arif Alvi, caled me
on my mobile to tel me that he and other party members -who were there to
demonstrate in support of Chaudhry -were under ttack by the MQM gunmen. He said
the polce and the paramilitary Pakisan Rangers just stood by and watched the mayhem.
Amongst those injured were ten of my party members. Luckily all survived. While once
upon a time in Pakistan the public would have been shielded frm an event like this,
now it was all broadcast on televisin. Human Rights Watch slammed the government
for arresting oppositin activists in the runup to Chaudhry's visit. It suggested it had
delibeately sought to foment violence in Karaci' and failed to rein in the unrest,
whether through incompetence or complicity. Musharraf's liberal credentials were in
tatters. Furious, I decided to try ad get the MQM leader Altaf Hussain charged in
Londo, where he has lived in selfimposed exile since 1992 beause of assassination
threats. It was impossible to have hm tried in Pakistan; people are too terried of the
party t testify. Whe there was a hearing into the violence in Karachi, proceedings
were disrupted by crowds of MQM supporters and it was postponed indenitely. I gave
Scotlad Yard a le on Hussain but witnesses were too cowed to come forward even in
Londo. Then Musharraf, and later his successor Asif Ali Zardari, denied the British
police permission to come to Pakistan to interview witnesses.
By 16 July, Msharraf was frced by public pressure to reinstate Chaudhry. But
the geeral was now badly weakened. He tried to recover some ground by reahing a
deal-brokered by George W. Bush's administration -with Benazir Bhutto. Havng ed
the country in 1999 to avoid corruption charges she was allowed t return to Pakstan to
contest elections. In return for her agreeing to share power with Musharraf -with her as
prime minister and him as president -he introduced the National Reconciliation
Ordinace (NRO). This meant all corruption cases against her and her husband, Asif Ali
Zardari, were dropped. This was made out to be something like South Africa's Truth
and Reconciliation iitiative, but i was in a cmpletely different context to post
apartheid South Afria, where it had been a question of bringng two communities
together. More importantly, there ws no Truth. Nne of those people ever admtted to
corruption, including Zardari. They tought by using the word reconciliation' they'd be
exonerated, as if this was all abot political vitimization. All the billions lost to
corruption were waved aside by this ordinance -which later was annulled by the
Supreme Court as beig against the law of the land. This ordinance would come to have
disastrus consequences for Pakista; now we have many criminals sitting in many key
positios today. Corrption would trn to plunder. Yet still Musharraf remained weak;
and still he remained hreatened by the judiciary, who could potetially wreck his plans
to get himself reelected as president. The deal siged with Benazir -at the time one of
the country's most ppular politicias -gave him the political space to make his next
move. In October he won the presidential polls bt controversy over his eligibility to
stand rmbled on. O 3 November he sacked the chief justice, purged the Spreme
Court, declared a state of emergency and muzzled the media. That's when m arrest
warrans were issued.
As I warned in an article I wote for the Paistani newspaper
The News
while I
was in prison, Musharraf was in the process of implementing the rst phase of his plan
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to gai power for aother ve years with a massive crackdown on the genuine
opposition lawyers human rights activists and the civil society. He is hoping that the
police brutality will iduce enough fear in the people for him to crush all dissent within
a coupe of weeks before he takes the next step of getting himself endorsed by his
pocket judges.' He ws already planing to hold parliamentary and provincial elections
on 8 Jnuary 2008. I was worried te issue of the judiciary would soon be forgotten.
Even the other politicians did not really want an independent justice system at that point
-they changed their tne later when they realized i was a popular issue. Musharraf had
hoped to use the cover of the US war on terror' to justify the need for extreme measures
to crack down on domestic dissent. Sure enough a few weeks after the declaration of
the state of emergency the new judges he put in plce removed the nal legal challenge
to his reelection clearing the way fr him to resign as army chief as he had prmised
and be sworn in as a civilian president. As it trned out thogh the general had
overreahed himself and in the end een the Amerians could not sve him.
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Chapter Eght
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Pakistan Since 9/11
TEN EARS AFTER alQaeda's attack on the united states killed almost three
thousad people, the Muslim world s still paying the price The S response has led to
death and destruction on a far greater scale than anything seen in Washington ad New
York. he vast majorty of those who have died as a result of the war on terro' were
innocet and had absolutely nothing to do with 9/1. Estimates for the number killed in
the invasion and occupation of Iraq range from arond 100,000 t over a millio. Tens
of thousands of innocent Afghan civlians have likewise lost their lives -80 per cent of
Afghanis had not even heard of 9/11, yet they hae been in the middle of death and
destruction for the last ten years. In Pakistan the aalyst Farrukh Saleem estimates that
33,467 Pakistanis die in terrorismrelated violence between 2003 and 2010. How many
more Muslims will have to pay the price? The insae war on terrr' has decimatd two
countris, Iraq and Afghanistan, and brought a third one, Pakistan, almost to the verge of
collaps. The three cuntries, despite all the US aid pumped ito them, were all in
Foreig Poliy
magazine's list of tpten failed states for 2010. Nor has the war on
terror' done the United States public any favours. Apart from actually making them less
safe by increasing extremists' antagnism towards America, it has helped contribute to
their economic downturn. Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda]. Bilmes in 2008 put the total
cost to the United States of the Iraq war alone at $3 trillion, although by 2010 they were
saying his had proved to be conservative. The camaign against terrorism has also done
tremendous damage t the reputatio of the worlds only superpwer. A measure of a
country's civilization is how it responds to pressre. When tested, the United States
failed t rise to the occasion, trampling on its own rinciples and standards -principles
and standards that hd once inspired generations across the wrld, who saw in US
history an example o the triumph f freedom and equality over colonial rule. I, like
many i the developig world, grew up impressed by the United States and its ieals of
democracy and huma rights. Yet we saw them all violated in the name of the war on
terror' .
For me, the high point of US moral authority was after the Second World War,
when the Nazis, who were responsible for the deaths of over 30 million, were given a
fair trial. Churchill wnted them summarily executed but Roosevet insisted on a trial. In
the wrds of Justice Robert Jackson, the chief United States prosecutor at the
Nuremberg Trials: If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes
whether the United Sates does them or whether Germany does hem, and we are not
prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be
willing to have invked against s.' This was a show of clemency and moral
universalism not accorded Muslims since 9/1. Trying terrorism suspecs like
conventional criminals, rather tha classifying them as enemy combatants' and
throwig them in Guantanamo, would have given the United Sttes a moral authority
that would have helped win hearts ad minds in the Muslim world at this vital jncture
in history.
Instead, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the drone attacks in Pakistan's north
west, Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, the use of torture -
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as well as terms like enemy noncombatants' and collateral damage' -have blackened
America's name. Mslims were appalled by the hypocrisy and dishonesty when
America attempted to hide its imperialist designs on Iraq behind the smokesceen of
allegations of weapons of mass destruction and a spurious lnk between Saddam
Hussei's government and alQaeda. Saddam's secular Iraq had nothing to o with
Osama bin Laden and his fundametalist version f Islam. Besides, the Unite States
had previously backe Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war. Nor did it escape people's atention
that while it proclaimed its desire fr democracy in Iraq, Washigton had for decades
backed authoritarian strongmen in the Middle East in order to prtect its own interests.
During the Cold War, the threat of cmmunism was the excuse for supporting atocrats
in the third world; now the bogeyma is radical Islam.
fter 9/11, governments from Russia to Israel and India hae stepped up brutality
against insurgents in heir own coutries under the cover of the war on terror'. Their
vicious suppression of any kind of dissent has further fuelled extremism. With revolt
spreading across the Arab world in early 2011, the have been wrngfooted, caght on
the wrng side of history. For yeas dictators like Mubarak have used the threat of
Islamism to keep the nited States on their side -jst as Musharraf did. Even during his
last das in power Mbarak tried to spook the Americans into saving him by claiming
radical Islamists would take over Egypt. At the same time, Muammar Gadda was also
blaming Libya's uprising on extremists, most notably alQaeda. But now the ordinary
people of countries lie Egypt and Tunisia have been revealed t desire nothing more
sinister than democracy, rule of law, freedom, jobs and equality. The myth that the
Muslim world is made up of a smal section of westernized moerates' and a mass of
ignorat conservatives ripe for exploitation by radical Islam has been fully exposed. The
USbacked dictators and monarchs do not represet the aspiratios of the peope, who
simply want the same rights taken for granted in the West.
he irony is that these dictators or puppet rulers, as illusrated by the Shah of
Iran, Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai ad our own Musharraf and Zardari, can achieve very
little for the United States. The poliy is usually counterproductive in the end because
by toeig Washingto's line the ruler loses all creibility and the respect of his people.
As Michael Scheuer says about American foreign policy in his book
Imeril Hubris
particuarly in regards to Afghanistan and Pakista: The lesson is not only tha others
will not do our dirty work, but that others will stp us from doing our dirty work as
completely as possible. So committed are we to nding others to do hard and bloody
things for us that we misread reality and enlist allies who cannot or will not do the job.'
In Muslim contries there is immense suspicion about certain lobbies taking
advantage of the attacks on Washington and New York to pursue their interests. In the
forefrot was the loby described by President Dwight D. Eisehower in 1961 as the
industralmilitary complex, along with the neocons and their Project for the New
American Centu', a Washington tinktank aimed at promoting American prnciples
around the world. The 9/11 attacks provided the eocons with the perfect excuse to
overthrow Saddam Hssein since they had been pshing for the idea of regime change
in Iraq since 1997. (The United States' own inquires subsequenty found there was no
connecion between raq and 9/11.) Aligned wit them were the Israelis, who felt
threateed by Iraq, and of course the oil industry. Ismael HosseinZadeh, an ecoomics
teacher at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and author of
The Politil Eonomy
of US Militrism
goes so far as to sggest that the nited States has been taken ver by
a militaryindustrialsecuritynancial cabal' aimig for fullspectrum dominace' of
the world. By dividing the globe into friends' and foes', powerfl beneciaries of war
and miitarism compel both groups o embark on a path of militarization, whic leads
inevitably to militarism and authoritarian rule'. The war proeers behind tis US
militarization of the world, apart from draining natinal resources and adding to ational
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debt in the various cuntries affected, also stoke fear and suspicon amongst different
peoples and therefore provoke more onicts.
Much of Washngton's reactin to 9/11, however, has bee selfdefeating and it
has made many mistakes. A major oe was failing to distinguish between the Taliban, a
medieval militia focused on domesti power, and alQaeda, an international orgaization
aiming to attack American interests across the globe. The Talian were part of the
mujahideen forces that fought the Sviets. They only took power because of the failure
of the post
Soviet governments to mpose law ad order and sart rehabilitating the
devastated country. Mullah Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, describes
in his ook
Living With the Tlibn
the chaotic conditions that prevailed when the
warlors ran Afghanistan. It was those conditions that led to the Taliban taking over. In
over 1,400 years of Isamic history, i was the only time there had een any Talibantype
theocracy; Zaeef says that Taliban leader Mullah Omar asked him for help as they had
no idea how to run a state -these were boys wh'd grown up n war, they'd known
nothing else for sixteen years. Afghanistan had descended into chaos, with mujahideen
leaders carving out their own territories. Zaeef was asked to take n different ministries
because they could hardly nd ay educated aliban who knew anything about
statecraft. The United States accused the Taliban of harbourig alQaeda, but the
Taliba inherited Osama bin Laden and his organization, which was already in
Afghaistan when they took over. Furthermore, several times the Taliban offered the
Americans compromses that they declined. According to Mulah Zaeef, when the
Americans were pushing for Afghanistan to hand bin Laden over ater the bombings of
US emassies in Kenya and Tanzaia in 1998, the Afghans offered to have him tried
either in the Supreme Court of Afghanistan or in a court formed and chaired by three
Islamic countries and held in a fourth Islamic country. Washington refused, demanding
that he be handed ove unconditionally. He claims they would not even consider dealing
with bin Laden in The Hague. He also says Mullah Omar made te Americans another
offer a few days after the 9/11 attacks, agreeing to have bin Laden tried by an Islamic
court -if not in Afghanistan then in another Muslim country. The Taliban leader
stressed the need for the United States to produce evidence of his involvemen in the
attacks as for any trial. To me this seems like a perfectly reasonable condition When
the Russians tried to extradite Chechen rebel commander Akhmed Zakayev from the
UK on terrorism charges in 2003, London insisted that Moscow prove their case in a
court o law. A British court then rejected the request because of lack of evidence. Bush
was deermined to inade Afghanistan, though, and war, instead of being a last resort,
became the rst option ater 9/11. Right from the start, Washington showed it was not
prepared to use due process in dealing with whoever it considered as terrorists.
his disregard for various iternational conventions meant the United States
failed to mobilize support from the Muslim world -which would have been more than
willing to help bring all those involved in the 9/1 attacks to justice. I can say that in
Pakistan at the time I heard nothing ut deep sympathy for the United States because of
those terrible images f innocent peple jumping t their deaths fom the burning Twin
Towers. Instead Bush declared a war against terrorism as if the United States was
ghting a conventioal army. Most signicantly, rather than simply treating those
terrorists as criminals, war was declared against radical Islam. It was as if this was
another ideological eemy for the West to rally against after fascism and communism.
Lies and distortions by the United Sates and varios European gvernments hae been
used to get the Western public behind the wars in bth Iraq and Aghanistan.
Inevitably, this fanned the perception that all Muslims were on trial. The rst
phone call I received from a journalist after 9/11 was from ITN's Martin Bashi. As a
Muslim, aren't you embarrassed by the attacks?' was his immediate question. I was
shocked, then realized this was what others would be thinking too. Implying all the
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world's 1.3 billion Mslims should feel in some way responsible or an act of a handful
of criminals is a bit lke asking a Christian to feel responsible fr Hitler or Stalin and
their atrocities, or asking a Catholic in Rome if they supported the IRA blowing up
childre and tourists in Omagh in 998. By puttig a whole religion in the dck the
United States and its allies alienated many normal' Muslims. Bush's response also
served to further the terrorists' cause. They were elevated from mere criminals to holy
warriors acting in the name of Islam This meant that there was obviously going to be a
minority of Muslims who viewed them as martyrs and approved f what they did. This
was oly to get worse over the course of the decade. The death of many inocent
Muslim civilians serves as a rallying call for alQaeda in its recruiment drive. This war
on terrr' actually manufactures terrorists. Even i they are not prepared to g to the
extremes of the late bn Laden and his cohorts, the resentments bin Laden listed are felt
by many Muslims. The war on terror' simply added to the list of grievances by causing
the death of more inocent Muslim civilians. May more terrorist attacks since 9/11,
includig the 7/7 bombings in London, the failed imes Square bombing, and recently
the shooting of two merican soldiers by a Muslim at Frankfurt airport in Germany,
were all in reaction to the wars in Afghanistan and raq.
I was dismaye by the West's refusal to try and understand the root causes of the
religios fanaticism tat had been growing for years in the Muslim world, fuelled by
injustices against Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, Palestine and other places.
The 9/11 attacks were undoubtedly acts of terrorism, but much of the ghting ging on
in many of these places is a questio of ordina Muslims reacting to what is perceived
as foregn invasion o occupation. When a Muslim insurgent ghts he does s in the
name of Islam because to ght against injustice is jhad. Moreove, people signig up to
ght aongside their Muslim brothers from other countries is simply like British or
American Jews wanting to do natioal service in srael. It is a question of idetifying
with the struggle of your coreligionists. To the Islamic world, it seems that the
internaional community is always ready to leap to the defence of Christians but that it
turns a blind eye whe it comes to Muslims' right to selfdetermiation. The UN agreed
to a referendum on Christianmajoriy East Timor's independence from Indonesia but a
UN resolution to hold a referendum n Kashmiri independence was never implemented,
nor were various UN esolutions against Israel.
here are many conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, bt for me the biggest
conspiracy of all was the way in which genuine political concerns in the Muslim world
over the Palestinian-Israeli issue were portrayed as religious warmongering. When
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bi Abdul Aziz Saud suggested that US plicy in
the Middle East, and on the Palestie question in particular, migt have contributed to
the 9/11 attacks, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani promptly rejected the prince's
offer of 10 million dllars for the Twin Towers Fund. I am telling Americas what
America is beginning to know already,' the prince told the
New York mes
at the time.
America has to understand that if it wants to extract the roots of this ridiculus and
terrible act, this issue [of the Palestiians has to be solved.'
Bush claimed alQaeda hate our freedoms -our freeom of religion, our
freedom of speech, our freedom to vte and assemble and disagree with each other'. Yet
the British journalist Robert Fisk, one of the few Westerners to hae interviewed sama
bin Laen, has written that the alQaeda leader listed three main reasons for his hatred of
the United States: its support for Israel against the Palestinians, its support of the Saudi
monarchy and the presence of US troops in Muslm lands. This is backed up by bin
Laden's twelvepage treatise Declaration of War Against the nited States', which
states his intention to fight the United States and las out his politcal reasons for doing
so. Again, his grievaces involve S backing for Arab police states and Israel, US
presence on the Arabian Peninsula, S troops being stationed in Islamic nations and US
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support for other countries that oppress Muslims, especially Russia, China and India. He
made no mention of hating the West's way of life o democracy.
Instead of addressing the Musim world's primary source of grievance against the
United States -the Israel-Palestine situation -Washington blamed rising slamic
extremsm. Bush's sggestion that there was some kind of cultural battle going on
betwee the West and Islam risks ecoming a selffullling prphecy. The Western
media ten portrays slam as being incompatible with Western values, in the way that
communism and fascism were. But if you are going to make one religion your foe, how
do you dene that religion? Islam is different in every country -it varies acrss the
world. Moroccan Islam is different to Indonesian Islam which is different to Pakistani
Islam. Even within the four provinces of Pakistan there are diffeences in the way the
religio is practised. Within every religious community there are a variety of cultures
and views and every human commuity and every religion has a minority of radials. To
many Muslims, US iterference in internal politics, its disregard for other contries'
sovereignty, its backing of corrupt dictators, and most of all its invasion of Iraq and
Afghaistan are just the latest examles of colonial injustices in a long list that started
with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt n 1798. Young Muslims today are horried to see
the independence ther forefathers battled so hard for compromsed by corrup rulers
who have bartered the freedom and sovereignty of their country to get US backing. Of
course, the white Western man has been imposing his version of events on the wrld for
centuries. When I was growing up we used to read comic boks in which te Red
Indians were the baddies and the cowboys the godies. When I got older I discovered
that actually the Red Indians were decimated, wiped off their own land, lke the
Aborigines in Australa. Then we had decades of gvernments -and with them popular
culture -invoking fear over the threat of communism. Now when I watch lms with my
sons, the baddies are ten Muslims.
I expected a acklash after 9/11, but had not anticipated its ferocity. The
campaign to instil fear amongst Western populations about the threat from what has at
times een hysterically referred to as Islamoascism' has given way to rising
Islamophobia. The ascent of rightwing, antiimmigration parties in Euroe, the
misleading and sometimes downright sensationalist reporting against Muslims in the
rightwing Western media, France's ban on the brka, Switzerland's ban on minarets
and the furore over the Muslim community centre near New Yor's Ground Zeo have
helped the radicals' cause and alienated ordinary Muslims. Bush's attitude of you are
either with us or agaist us' has hardened attitudes towards the nited States -and by
extensin the West. Bush and Blair claimed this was a war aganst radical Islam; but
how was the man in the street, in the West, going to differentiate between a moderate
and a radical Muslim I saw these developments frm both sides, as I was in the unique
positio of knowing how the people in the West viewed this whole war on terrr' and,
at the same time, as a politician in Pakistan I saw how the man in the Pakistan street'
perceived this as a war against Islam. And I watched helplessly as ignorance played a
big part in this war o terror' , exacerbating the divide with the Mslim world.
Yet while the war on teror' perpetrated the myths equating Islam with
radicalism and violece, a Gallup survey publised in 2008 revealed that the vast
majority of Muslims worldwide codemned the 9/11 attacks. It seemed that actually
most of them aspired to the West's standards on freedom of speech and politics, fair
judicial systems and democracy. Like most nonMuslims, their priorities and dreams
involved better jobs and security, nt holy war or bloodshed. The survey's ndings are
clearly borne out by the 2011 uprisigs in the Middle East. According to the poll only 7
per cet of respondens around the world thought that the 9/11 attacks were completely'
justied and viewed the United States unfavourably. But they were motivated more by
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fears of US occupatin and domination, rather than cultural differences. What most
Muslims surveyed ad most admired about the West was its technology and its
democracy -the same two answers given by Americans when asked the same question.
Furthermore, research by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape
dispels many of the misconceptions surrounding suicide bombing and Islamic
fundamentalism. Afte studying every suicide terroist attack in the world from 1980 till
2003 he concluded that the world's leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are Sri
Lanka's Tamil Tigers -a secular, MarxistLeninist group of Hind background. He also
found hat 95 per cent of suicide terrorist attacks are part of coherent campaigns
organized by large militant organizations and have secular an political rather than
religios goals. They are in response to military occupation of territory considered by
the terrorists to be their homeland. It's also worth oting that the study revealed suicide
bombers are often well educated, middleclass and politically motivated, not the poor
and uneducated or religious fanatics which our dolaraddicted ruling elite woud have
the West believe.
errorism has othing to do with Islam, an everything to do with politics. But
many Muslim leaders, eager to ingraiate themselves with the United States, had neither
the guts, nor frankly the understanding, to explain this to the West. So instead of
underliing the urgency of dealing with the reasos behind the jihadis' rage, the vast
majority of Muslim leaders, petried of US power and desperate for its support, all
presented themselves as moderate' Muslims and staunch allies against extremism. I
blame he westernized elite of the Muslim world oo. They also hid behind mderate
Islam, perpetuating the idea that an ideology, not political njustice, lay behind
terrorism. This idea that one has to dstinguish between a moderate and a radical Muslim
is extremely dangerus. The 9/11 attackers did not look or behave like bearded
fundamentalists, nor did Faisal Shahzad, the Pakisanborn US citizen convicted of an
attempted carbomb atack in New York's Times Square in 2010. The collective failure
of the Muslim worlds elite to ght back was a sorry indictment of our intellectual
repower. Anyone who tried to point out the causes behind terrorism or suggest
political rather than military solutions was ridiculed or labelled a sympathizer, and oten
reference to Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler was made. All debate was stied.
This was reminiscent of the kind of propaganda used by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis'
minister of propaganda, who manipulated the masses by scaring them with ptential
threats, and if anybody objected, accusing them of being unpatritic, even treasonous.
Meanwhile, Western ntellectuals just did not have the knowledge of Islam to counter
the risig tide of Islamophobia. Our best defence came from the leftwing medi in the
UK, such as the
Gurdin
and the
Ideendent.
Ulike real liberls such as the British
Pakistani journalist Triq Ali, the lef
wing media and intelligentsia in Pakistan failed to
take a stand against the many human rights abuses of the war on terror'. The main
reason behind this was that they geninely believed there was a threat of Talibanization
of Pakistan, and they elt this perceied threat was greater than the human rights abuses
caused by the drone attacks and operations by Pakistani forces in the tribal areas.
Journalists and columnists who had reviously presented themseles as antiimperialist
liberals suddenly backed our surrender to the US war on terror' , and their silence on the
threat t Pakistani sovereignty and to their countrymen being bombarded was deafening.
Most shockingly, some of those wh call themselves liberals have backed the bmbing
of villages, whether by drones, the Pakistan air force helicopter guships or artillery, and
have accepted the deaths of innocent civilians, women and children, as collateral
damage'. The NGOs did nothing, s most were funded by Western donors, and the
mainstream parties were likewise silent because they were so scared of losing
Washigton's backing. That let only my party and the religious parties to take a stand.
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Much of my plitics since 9/11 has been baed around opposing corruption and
Washigton's war o terror', and highlighting the many devatating and logterm
conseqences both have had for Pakistan and for the West. Because of this I have been
accused by the socaled liberals in akistan's Englishlanguage press of being a right
wing hardliner and even proTaliban I always maitained there was never going to be a
military solution, either in Afghanistan or in Pakistan's tribal areas. In fact, the war has
led to a growing radicalization of our society and the creation of terrorists. According to
the WiiLeaks cables released in 210, the forme US ambassaor to Pakistan, Anne
Pattersn, also considered the drone attacks and military operation counterprodctive'.
For someone who grew up being tld by my parents how lucky I was to live in an
indepedent country after centuries of colonial rue, I found Musharraf and Zrdari's
total subjugation of Pkistan's sovereignty to the US as the ultimate humiliation.
First to go in Musharraf's string of abandoned principles was our relationship
with Afghanistan. Soon after the 911 attacks, Washington gave him a list of seven
demands. These invlved clamping down on alQaeda operatins on the Pkistani
border, handing over intelligence information, grating US acces to Pakistan' naval
and air bases, breaking off diplomatc relations wit the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
and cutting off their fel supply. Muharraf immediately agreed to all seven demands. A
good relationship with Afghanistan had been key to Pakistan's strategy of strategic
depth' owards India. That meant ensuring a proIslamabad regime in Kabul to counter
any potential aggressin from the eat. Pakistan had recognized the Taliban regime since
1996; the alacrity with which Musharraf capiulated amazed even Washington,
dismayed the Pakistai military and shocked the public. He took us into the war on
terror' when no Pakitani had been involved in the 9/11 attacks and alQaeda was a
CIAtrined militant group based in Afghanistan, and there were o militant Taliban in
Pakistan. He also gave US intelligece agencies a free hand to pick up any Pkistani
citizen or foreigner suspected of terrrism. After being strongarmed by the Americans,
Pakistan's political elite shamefully accepted dollars in exchange or turning on ts own
people.
he problem with Musharraf was that he had no road map and therefore o idea
about when to compromise and when not to. Thee was no parliament or cabinet for
importnt decisions to be debated, and therefore they were mde out of shortterm
expediency and opportunism. Of course he should have offered to help the United States
apprehend the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. Ater all, he was n a prime postion to
explain to the Americans the best way of dealing with alQaeda But as the leader of
Pakistan he should also have made sure that Pakistanis' interests were protected. He
tried to rally public opinion behind him by using exactly the same weapon that Bsh and
Blair sed to galvaize their public -fear. He maintained tat cooperation with
Washigton was vital for safeguarding Pakistan's nuclear assets and its policy on
Kashmr. In an allparty conference ot long after 9/11 he told us that the Unite States
was like a wounded bear', lashing out all over the place. We ad to go alog with
whatever it wanted otherwise we could be destroyed -General Musharraf wrote later
that the US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, told his intelligence director
that we had to help the US or Pakistan will be bombed back to te stone age'. e told
us India was willing to take our place as the US's ally against the Taliban and that the
United States could ue India to desroy us just as they had used the Northern Alliance
in Afghanistan to destroy the Taliba.
I have never seen Pakistanis s petried of S anger as during this period. This is
a typical example of how fear can be used as a weapon by the ruling elite to make the
people fall in line; at he same time, it shows that policies based n fear always end up
in disater. (A decade later, Pakista would realize the full impact of these feabased
policie, when its very existence wold be at stake.
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Yet by continually capitulating to Washingtn's demands, akistan is in a worse
situation than it was before 9/11. Cotrary to Musharraf's line that Pakistan had t stand
alongside Bush in the campaign against terrrism or India's hand wold be
strengthened, the invasion of Afghanistan succeeded in replacing a proIslamabad
regime with a proew Delhi goernment in Kabul. Pakista's main geopolitical
concer has always been -and still is -India. It now feels encircled, with India building
up its iuence across Afghanistan i the form of ad, consulates, trade and even the soft
power f Indian cultue through teleision and lms. Nor have our efforts given us any
kind of special status n Washington. Despite all our sacrices, if any attack was to take
place against the United States by a erson with any links to Pakistan, we could still be
bombed by our socalled allies. Accrding to the eminent journalist Bob Woodward in
his book
Obm's Wrs
if Faisal Shahzad's attempt to detonate a bomb in New York
had succeeded, the Uited States wuld have bombed up to 15 known terrorst safe
havens in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, as has been made evident i the material made available by
WikiLeaks, the US embassy in Pakistan operates mre or less like the viceroy's ofce in
the days of the British Raj. And t would brook no criticism. While the Pakistan
government was treated as an ally, the people of Pakistan were treated as ptential
enemies. There were so many examples of Pakistanis being maltreated in Euroe and
the US. In Macedonia, six Pakistais were shot dead as terrorists; only later did it
emerge that they were businessmen. In Greece, ve Pakistani busnessmen were jailed,
interrogated and tortured -only they were innocent. In Britain, there were many cases of
Pakistanis being picked up by the security services; the worst case was one where seven
Pakistani students were suspected of terrorism and locked up for six months i high
security jails before being found inncent and then deported. Tw of them came to see
me at my ofce in Islmabad; they were boys from ordinary families, whose parents had
sacriced so much to send them to England for their education and here they were
deported when it was clear they were innocent ad had their careers ruined. I met a
couple of Pakistanis on a plane who told me horrendous tales of their being picked up in
the US, maltreated in ail and then deported.
Because of my frequent and ocal objections to the war on terror', many of its
victims have come to me for help over the years. Following 9/11, nonPakistani
Muslims, particularly Arabs, were ery vulnerable in Pakistan. The disgracefl way
Muslim foreigners were treated durig this period is a shameful part of our history. They
all became potential errorists and many were deied any oppotunity to prove their
innocece. People were picked up ad just disappeared. Some were killed withut any
indepedent investigaion into whether they were gilty or not. This is where, in seeking
to protect its own against terrorism, Washington contributed to the abuse of human
rights in other countres. In the UK when London's Metropolita Police shot dead an
innocet Brazilian man after the 7/7 attacks there was national outrage, leadig to a
proper inquiry and compensation for the family. But in Pakistan it was -and still is -as
if humn life is worthess. I started t receive a succession of visits or calls to my ofce
from people whose lved ones had disappeared, picked up by the Pakistani army or
intelligence agencies. They wanted t know what their husbands or sons or nephews had
been accused of and where they were. But nobody would help them, such was the fear
of associating with ayone even lined to accusatons of terrorism. In 2003, I led the
rst demonstrations with the families of the missing persons outside Parliament. A year
earlier, in 2002, Dr Amir Aziz was picked up and disappeared'. He was an orthpaedic
surgeo who would take a team of octors to Afghanistan every summer for voluntary
medical work. I knew Dr Aziz as he had also done volunteer work in my cancer
hospital. According t news reports at the time, Aziz was picked up by police working
with FBI agents and accused of suplying anthrax to alQaeda ad Taliban militants. I
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called p a few opposition politicias and one of the religious parties, suggesting we
organize a press conference to highlght the doctors arrest. They were all too scared to
do anything so I did the press conference alone. Soon the Pakistani Medical Association
in Lahore protested against his detention. Then the other political parties started o raise
objections. The man was released without charge ater being kept in the American
embassy for a month. He told me he believed that were it not for he public protests, he
would have ended up in Guantanamo Bay.
he family of Dr Aaa Siddiqui also came o me. The Americans have claimed
the Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three was an alQaeda member, althogh she
has never been charged with terrorismrelated offences. Her famil believe that Siddiqui
disappeared in 2003 for ve years because she was imprisoned and tortured by the
Americans. Washington denies this. However, a audiotape released by Siddiqui's
lawyers in February 2011 appeared to back up the family's story, containing an apparent
conrmation by a man named Imra Shaukat, idetied as a seior Pakistani counter
terrorism ofcial that the Pakistani olice arrested her in 2003 ad handed her over to
the SI. British journalist Yvonne Ridley believes Siddiqui was the mysterious prisoner
650, the woman whose screams and crying tormeted her fellow prisoners at Bagram
airbase in Afghanista. When Siddiqui rst disappeared her uncle rang me and told me
that the last her family had heard from her she was about to take a train from Karachi to
Islamabad with her three young children and that she had been too scared to travel by
plane because she had heard she was on some FBI list. Aaa' s mother then called me
asking for help. I agreed to do a press conference with her. But the following ay she
backed out after receiving a phone call from one of the Pakistani intelligence agencies
warning her that if she went ahead with the press onference she would never see her
daughter or three grandchildren agai. Initially, the PPP and PML (N) did not dare touch
Siddiqi's case. Man Westernnaced NGOs swallowed their supposed concern for
human rights and also steered clear of it. In 2008 I agreed to hold a press conference
with Yvonne Ridley in Islamabad calling for Siddiqui's release. While previously the
press had avoided the story, now it got extensive coverage. Siddqui was to become a
national cause clbre. Soon ater the press conference, she was apparently arrested by
the Americans in Afghanistan. They claimed that while in custody she grabbe a gun
and red on US arm ofcers and FBI agents, wthout hitting any of them. Se was
whisked to New York, charged with attempted murder and in 2010 handed dow an 86
year jail term. Siddiqui's conviction had an inammatory reaction over US double
standards and set off rallies in the streets of Pakistani cities; US soldiers implicated in
the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are unlikely to ever receie such
a sentence, and whe CIA operatie Raymond Davis coldbloodedly murdered two
teenagers he was whisked out of Pakistan by the US in early 2011.
In 2008, a member of my party from Waziristan who lived in Karachi, Jeanzeb
Burki, suddenly disappeared. He had been picked up by soldiers of the frontier force,
and taken to the Baa Hisar fort in Peshawar. My party staged demonstrations in
Karachi, and I spoke to the senior police ofcal demanding to know what had
happened to him. He was released a few days later, and told me he'd been interogated
not jus by ofcers o the frontier force but also by some Americans. They wanted to
know why he had given 500,000 rupees to the Taliban when he was visiting his home in
Waziristan. Jehanzeb admitted to giing the Taliba the money, but added, Wold you
have saved me if I'd refused the Talban?' According to him, others in his situation had
not been that lucky; had there not been demonstrations for him in Karachi, this could
have been a death setence. Jehanzeb's story types what is happening in the tribal
areas, squeezed between the Taliban on one side ad the security forces on the other; as
there is no law there, summary exections on both sides take place all the time.
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One of the most shameful events in our history took place in Quetta oly this
year 211: ve unarmed Chechens three women and two men were gunned down at a
securit checkpoint by the police. The police claimed they were terrorists but a
photogaph was released of one of the women who it turned ot was seven months
pregnat showing her putting her hand up to beg for mercy -r pointing to God. I
found that so awful. God knows how many such incidents have taken place that have not
been caught on camera.
Another scandal illustrating the Musharraf gvernment's appalling record on due
process was the treatment of Mullah Zaeef. The Taliban government's ambassador to
Pakistan was -with ttal disregard for diplomatic immunity as otlined by the Geneva
Convetion -seized by the Pakistani authorities a fw months ater the 9/11 attacks and
handed over to the Americans. I had met Zaeef in 2000 while he was working in
Islamabad to talk abot the buildup in tension at th time between Iran and Afghanistan
and found him to be a very civilized cultured and sotly spoken gentleman. In hs book
MyLe with the Tlibn
he describes what happeed when the Pakistanis handed him
over to the Americans:
hey ripped the black cloth frm my face and for the rst tme I could see where
I was. Pakistan and America soldiers stood around me The Pakistani soldiers
were all staring as the Americans hit me and tore the remaning clothes off from
my body. Evetually I was completely nakd and the Pakistani soldiers -the
defenders of the Holy Quran -shamelessl watched me with smiles on their
faces saluting this disgracefl action of the Americans. They held a handover
ceremony with the Americans right in front of my eyes. That moment is written
in my memory like a stain on my soul. Even if Pakistan was unable to stand up to
the godless Americans I would at least have expected them to insist that treatment
like this woul never take place under their eyes or on their own soereign
territory.
here were so many cases like this. Anyone having anything to do with the
Taliba was considered a terrorist. Yet up till 9/11 Pakistan had been one of only three
countris to recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates were the others) so of course there were people with links to insttutions
and peple there. In Pakistan the Taliban were onsidered fudamentalists ut not
terrorists. As for alQaeda few Pakistanis had ever heard of thm. If they had they
considered them to be like the Afghan mujahiden a jihadi rganization that had
originally been formed to ght the Sviets.
egardless of what any of these terrorism suspects are believed to have dne the
most important point s that due process should have been followed. That is the mark of
a civilied country. Pakistan' s fragile democratic istitutions were under attack though
as Musharraf's goverment chipped away at rule f law across the board. The general
had to take increasingly unconstitutinal steps to shore up his power as his alliane with
the United States dented his popularty. One compromise followed another. On coming
to power he made an immediate show of cracking down on graft. Zardari had been jailed
for corruption while Benazir had already left the country to escape charges levelled at
her under Sharif's regime. Sharif himself was sentenced to life imprisonment on
hijackig and terrorism charges the year ater the coup bu in another ne of
Musharraf's compromises he was soon pardoned ad went into exile in Saudi Arabia.
I was still holding out hope for Musharraf in 2002 when he annouced a
referendum to extend his term as president. His assumption of power had been
challenged by several court petitions so he had introduced the Oath of Judges Order in
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early 2000, which required judges t take a fresh oath of ofce, swearing allegiance to
military rule. A few refused and resigned in prtest and others were dismissed by
Musharraf. The Supreme Court was insisting that he hold national elections by 12
October 2002. So he eeded a referedum to bolster his legitimacy as president after the
return to democracy. My party's central executive debated for a day and a half whether
to support this highly unconstitutioal proposal. After all, the general had promised a
return to democracy within three years of his coup. In the end, we could not decide, so I
rang Musharraf, who invited us all t go and discuss it with him in person. He pesuaded
us that he needed the guarantee of aother ve years in ofce in order to implement his
anticorruption campaign. He succeeded in charming everyone, even the few sceptics on
our cetral executive committee. He succeeded because we were still wa of Benazir
and Sharrif making a comeback, amid memories of their incompetence and corrution.
onetheless, the referendum turned out to be a disaster, drawing widespread
allegations of ballot rigging. Mushrraf claimed 50 per cent of he voting population
turned out, and that 98 per cent voted yes' to ve more yers of him. It was so
obviously not true it was a national embarrassmet. The govement had been able to
deploy all its resources to encourage turnout while banning olitical parties from
holding rallies against the referedum. My party was deeply embarrasse about
supporting this fraudlent referendm, and I had to go on television eventually and
apologize to the natin for supporting it. This mde my party nd me realize that in
future ever again would we support anything unconstitutional.
he United States conveniently turned a blid eye. I am not going to inulge in
the specic dynamics of politics in Pakistan,' Deputy Assistant Secretary f State
Donald Camp told the
New York mes
when asked about the pcoming referendum.
Washigton's indifference to the state of internal Pakistai politics continued
throughout most of the decade, even as Musharraf's government became mired in
corruption. Having llowed the cuntry's crooked political maa to inltrate his
government, Musharraf became increasingly compromised. At oe point he had about
eighty federal ministers -most of the positions doled out as political bribes. The
National Accountability Bureau became simply a eapon with which to intimidate the
opposition. With each desperate effot to retain power, Musharraf succeeded in taking us
back to the old days of Benazir and Sharif -exactly the kind of climate of sleaze he had
rst pledged to eradicate.
Musharraf's al and greatest compromise was the National Reconciliation
Ordinace (NRO) , a powersharing deal he concocted in 2007 to enable him to run for
reelection as president and bring back Benazir Bhutto as prime minister. Under the
agreement brokered by the Americas and the British -despite the implications for the
country's governance -more than 8,000 bureaucrats, government ofcials, bankers and
politicians charged with corruption offences between 1986 and 1999 were given an
amnesty, including Benazir and Zardari. According to documents given by the National
Accoutability Burea to the Supreme Court, these people were suspected of robbing
Pakistan of 1,060 billon rupees, with Benazir and Zardari together accounting for 140
billion of that total. Add to that the 2 billion rupees of Pakistni taxpayers' money
previosly spent pursing corruption cases against Benazir and Zrdari in Swiss courts.
The NRO also annulled thousands of cases of murder and assassination believed o have
been cmmitted by the MQM. This as something neither the Americans nor the British
would ever have alloed in their own countries, but of course the priority was the war
on terrr', and the US needed a puppet govemen in Islamabad which had no qualms
about the bombing of villages in our tribal areas, and wasn't squeamish about collateral
damage'. As Hilary Synnott, British High Commssioner to Islamabad from 2001 to
2003, put it in his boo
Trnsforming Pkistn Wys out of Instilit
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he dilemma for the Bush administration was that it judged that, despite his
doubledealing over militant groups, Musharraf's leadershp was needed to help
in the ght against terrorism. At the same time, it also advocated electins and
progress towards democracy Yet the outcome of truly open and democratic
elections seemed unlikely t deliver an effective system of governace for
Pakistan or to provide sufcient support for the US military campaign. The only
answer seemed to be for some kind of deal to be made between Musharraf and a
potential elected leadership, the outcome of which, it was hoped, would do the
least damage, either to Pakistan or to US interests.
Of course it has damaged both -but most of all Pakistan.
In brokering the NRO and giving Pakistanis the impression that Benazir Bhutto
was beng rehabilitated in order to o Washingtons bidding, the Americans had given
her the kiss of death. Much later, WikiLeaks revealed Asif Zardari had told the US
Ambassador that Benazir was only returning to Pakistan after geting a green light from
the Americans'. A few weeks before Benazir's death, I was at a cnference in Delhi and
talking to Mehbooba Mufti, the Kashmiri politician, when Jeb Bush -Geoge W.
Bush's brother -joined us. He asked me, were people excited about Benazir coming
back? She is a dead woman walking, I said; a target to the militants on one side, because
she ha adopted Wasington's policies on alQaea and the Taliban, and on the other
side a target to politicians threatene by her, scare they would lose power. They could
have her assassinated and blame the Taliban.
Poor Benazir idn't have a chance. She might have escaped when Musharraf
declared a state of emergency on 3 ovember 2007; she boycotte the election ad ew
to Dubai. She had seen the low turnut at her rallies; her popularity had plunge as she
was peceived as a US stooge and had aligned herself with Musharraf. Sadly for her,
Washigton forced her to change her decision and within fortyeight hours she was back
in Pakistan.
Musharraf, after nally resiging from his army post, succeeded in his plan of
being sworn in for a second term as president, but poor Benazir was assassinated in a
suicide bombing at an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi in December. Zardari has
vowed to hunt dow those resposible but thee has been little progress in the
investigation and her death remains one of the most speculated upon mysteries in
Pakistani history. The government spokesman immediately blamed Taliban leader
Baitullah Mehsud. It was the reactio of the Peoples Party that was hard to undestand;
after making various accusations, at the establishment, at the Taliban, and at the Q
league, they called fr a UN inquiry. People ased, why would a party sitting in
government ask the N to conduct an inquiry when all the intelligence agencies were
controled by that pary now in power? The UN inquiry took three years and, i April
2010, dismissed allegations against Zardari, blamed Musharraf for failing to protect
Bhutto and accused police and intelligence ofcials of hindering the probe ito her
death. Everyone knew it was a coverup and whoever had with undue haste hose down
the crime scene did irreparable damage' to investigations. We didn't need three ears of
UN inquiry to tell us this obvious fact. In February 2011 an arrest warrant was issued for
Musharraf in connection with Bhutto' s assassinatio.
When I came ot of jail in 2007, I felt there was so much opposition to Musharraf
he was unlikely to win even if he rigged the polls, and felt the APDM (All Parties
Democratic Movemet) should contest the elections. However, oter opposition parties
and members of the layers' movement were less condent. Musharraf had onl given
us ve weeks' notice for the elections. Emergency rule was still in place, there was a
clampdown on the media and Musharraf controlled the caretaker government, the local
administration, the itelligence agecies, the election commission and the Spreme
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Court. They felt it was impossible t have free and fair elections. If he won he would
declare the polls a reerendum agaist the chief justice, and the puppet judges he had
already started to ll the judiciary with would be legitimized. That would put a end to
any hope of having a independent udicial system for Pakistan. The Americans didn't
seem t care. The Sate Departmet kept talking about free and fair elections and
reversig the state of emergency, but failed to mention the reinstatement of the jdges -
especially the chief justice of the Supreme Court (WikiLeaks, in 2011, would reveal that
US ambassador Anne Patterson was not in favour of having the chief justice reinstated).
If the judges were nt reinstalled, how could there be free and fair elections? Was
Musharraf going to be left to decide what was free and fair?
So the APDM, the alliance of parties opposed to Musharraf, announced an
electio boycott on 24 November. Then things started happening fast. Nawaz Sharif was
suddeny and mysteriusly allowed o return to Paistan despite a tenyear ban on him
reenteing politics, raising suspicions of foreign forces behind the scenes. There was
considerable pressure from the Americans and the British for everyone to ru in the
electios and legitimize the anticipated win for the socalled liberal alliance'. Having
led the move to boycott the elections, Sharif then started to waver before nally
betrayig us all by succumbing t a combinatin of American, British and Saudi
pressure. I remembe him disappearing for abot forty minutes during an APDM
meeting to take a phoe call from then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Most
of the rest of the APDM, a combination of religious, regional and secular parties as well
as my own, went ahead with the bycott. Later, we discovered that Asfandyar Wali,
leader f the Awami ational Party (ANP) , the main Pashtun party, had been somehow
lured ito also runnig during a trip to Washington. The 2008 elections were never
meant o bring democracy to Pakistan, which the lawyers' movement, along with my
party ad backed by he civil society groups, had struggled so hard to get. Instead we
were betrayed by selfserving politicians in cahoots with the Bush administratio.
By 2004 anger had been growing over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rampant
human rights abuses and Pakistan's loss of sovereignty. For the Muslim masses, and
especially the jihadi groups, the inasion of Iraq was the last straw, conrmig their
belief that the United States was at war against Islam. Their anger at Pakistan's alliance
with Washington deepened. As we'll see later, the crucial turing point was when
Musharaf launched military operations in Waziristan -sparking a revolt aganst the
army by tribal Pashtns. It was also the year that the CIA als launched its highly
controersial covert campaign to target militants wth drone attacks in the tribal areas. It
was also the time when the jihadi grups that had been nurtured by both the SI and the
CIA during the Soviet war in Afghanistan turned against the Pakistan army. The
ideological element within these groups went and joined what became the Pakistani
Taliba. One of them was Ilyas Kashmiri, a former decorated asset' of the SI who had
joined ajihadi group to ght in Kashmir. After 2004 he turned against the army and was
responsible for many daring attacks until he was killed by a drone attack in Waziristan
in June 2011.
Attacks against security forces, particularly the army and the police, shot p after
2004; there were assaults on ofes belonging to the SI and FA, the ederal
Investigation Agency, as well as against Pakistan air force employees. Msharraf
himself became a target with at least four attempts on his life. In 2009 six soldiers died
in an adacious assau on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Another decisie factor in this growing hostility towards the security forces was
the Lal Masjid affair n 2007 when the army stormed Islamabad's Red Mosque, killing
scores f religious students holed up inside the mosque and its madrassa compound. For
several months beforehand tension had been rising between the mosque's students and
the authorities but Msharraf failed to take any effective action over what should have
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been simply a police matter. The mosque students were fundametalists, not terrorists,
and should just have been punished for the specic crimes they had committe. They
were stoking opposition to him and making vigilatestyle attemts to curb what they
saw as immoral activities in Islamabad -threatenig DVD shops and even kidnapping
some Chinese wome alleged to be working as prostitutes. They were infuriated by
Musharraf's campaign of reform or madrassas, his demolition of mosques built
illegally on state grond and his attempts to impose westernization as part of his so
called Enlightened Moderation'. In their eyes, he was a Western stooge out to destroy
true Islam. (This is a example of how Western puppets actually fuel extremism in the
Muslim world.) Musharraf came under increasing pressure from the westernized elite to
crack down on them. His popularity, already on the wane since 204, had taken a further
hit with the lawyers' movement that year. Seeing a opportunity to prove himself to his
Wester backers too, Musharraf took a typically heayhanded approach. He coud have
turned off the utility supplies and waited for the stdents to cave in (it was summer and
they would not have lasted long without water and electricity). nstead he sen in the
army, despite the fact that there were also women and childre within the complex.
There are various versions of what exactly happened. A delegation of religious leaders
had tried to negotiate a peaceful solution and -according to the newspapers -the
students had been prepared to surreder if certain conditions were met. One of the two
Ghazi brothers who ran the mosque told the media before the army launched its nal
fullscale assault that there were only fourteen guns in the mosque complex at the time.
Chaudhary Shujaat, head of the PML (Q) party, was the last to go inside te Red
Mosque before the operation started. According to him, he had managed to work out a
deal with those let inside the mosque, which mean they would lay down their arms and
come out. When he found out that Musharraf refused to accept any compromise he was
appalled and called Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, only to nd he was out eating ice
cream with his family. Even now Chaudha becomes emotiona because he can still
see the faces of the students who were incinerated inside. Nobody really knows how
many died in the carage that followed. The government claimed at least a hundred
militans and students were killed bu Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of the religios party
JamaateIslami, has ut the numbe at over seve hundred. There has never been an
investigation. The site was sealed up and the bodies removed, to be throw in an
unmarked grave. This whole debacle coincided with the APDM's rst conference,
which took place in London, convenently wiping the massacre off the news.
However, Musarraf's zeal was counterproductive. First of all, the Lal Masjid
assault turned the Pakistani masses against him. They saw it as a issue of class rather
than reigion. They fet that the authorities dealt with the matter so violently because the
madrassa students wee from poor families, and that therefore they could get away with
it. Had the students come from Englishmedium schools, would tey have been treated
like that? One of the biggest reasons Musharraf was to do so badly in the 2008 elections
was resentment over Lal Masjid. Even one of his strongest candidates, Sheikh Rasheed,
afterwards blamed the affair for his own defeat. It also had tremendous repercussons for
national security. May of the mosqe students were from Khyber Pakhtunkhwas Swat
area ad militants there launched a campaign of retribution, attacking convoys and
police stations and setting off bombs throughout the valley. Lal Masjid basically reated
the Swat Taliban, as it threw up Maulana Fazlullah, who became known as the Radio
Mullah'; more on him later.
Musharraf was just as heayhanded in his dealings with an insurgency in the
province of Baluchistan. Since Pakistan's creaion, the Balchis have waged a
succession of revolts to demand greater autonomy and a greater share of the prots from
the province's rich supply of natura resources. Almost half Baluchistan's ve million
people live below the poverty line. When insurgents escalated their attacks on the army
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in 200, Musharraf retaliated with a major offensive. The killig of the 79yearold
rebel tribal leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti provked violent unrest in Baluchistan. It
cemented Baluchi hated of the arm and turned wat had been a rights movement into
an armed struggle fr liberation from Pakistan. This gave India the opportunity to
exploit the situation, just as Pakistan had exploited the grievaces of the peple of
Kashmir after the rigged elections in the valley y the Indian government i 1989.
Today the unrest in Baluchistan is costing the contry a fortune in security t try to
prevent regular terrorist assaults and sabotage attacks on gas ppelines. NonBaluchi
settlers particularly professionals like teachers an doctors, are being assassinaed and
hounded out of the prvince. Over 10,000 settlers have been forced out.
he February 2008 elections were a disaster for Musharraf. Benazir's return to
Pakistan was not warmly received, and, by associating herself with Musharraf through
the NO deal she had damaged er reputation. However, her tragic assassination
sparked anger against Musharraf; it became the last straw and set off a wave of
sympathy for the PPP which gained the most seats, but no clear majority. Sharifs PML
(N) did surprisingly well given their lack of preparation, cashing in on the popularity of
the lawers' movemet. The two main opposition parties formed a coalition. It was the
rst time in our history that a proestablishment party had lost the polls.
Musharraf had made many mistakes in the runup to the elections, mistakes that
were both military and cultural. His campaign f Enlightene Moderation' helped
further alienate sections of Pakistani society, making them more likely to sympathize
with extremists. According to an artcle he wrote fr the
Wshington Post
in 204, this
twoprnged strategy of his urged the Muslim world to shun militancy and extemism
and adpt the path of socioeconomic uplift' while calling for the West, and the United
States in particular, t seek to resole all political disputes with jstice and to aid in the
socioeconomic betterment of the deprived Muslim world'. Wha this probably would
have meant was Muslms giving up their armed strggles against what they perceived to
be foreign occupatio, without any guarantee that the West woud resolve conicts in
places like Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya or withdraw from raq and Afghanistan.
Musharaf modelled himself on two other military men -Iran's eza Shah and Turkey's
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. They too believed that by mposing the otward manifestations
of westernization they could catapul their countries forward by decades. For Musharraf
westerization was modernization, but he used westernization selectively. The West's
success lay in genuine democrac, strong institutions, education, an independent
judiciay, a free media and free speech, whereas Msharrafwas ding the opposie. This
is the solution for the Muslim world: a genuine democracy, freedom of speech that
allows open debate, an evolution of our culture, and above all rule of law. What it does
not need is pseudowesternization with Muslim westernized elites aping supercial
aspects of the Western society, in reaction to which we have seen the growth of
fundamentalism, which in turn stunts the growth of our culture.
Musharraf took the Pakistani elite's obsessin with being Western clones to new
heights. There were fashion shows put on for foreign dignitaries in the houses of the
president and the prime minister. (I can remember a politician's wife complaining to me
about how embarrassng she always found this.) Female televisin presenters o some
channels were told to wear Western dress. The use of English in the media was
encouraged. Musharraf often spoke in English himself at press coferences and Shaukat
Aziz, then nance miister, delivered the national budget in English, a language spoken
by only a tiny minority of the country. On TV, programmes like the Pakistani version of
Blind Dte
started appearing; in the past they would never have been seen on our
screens due to the sensitivities of the culture of the masses. For ordinary Pakistais, this
came across as Western vulgarity and bred fear and resentment. In my constituency,
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Mianwali, locals told me about their dislike of it, complaining that it had become
difcult for families t watch television together.
And so, thanks to Musharraf and America's war on terror, Pakistan nds itself
in its sorry predicament today. We now have or worst ever government -that of
Zardari. A man perceived by most Pakistanis to be our most corrpt politician iherited
the leadership of the PPP party following Benazr's death and became president by
producng a piece of aper that he said willed the arty to him ad his son -which no
one has been able to authenticate. O the basis of that, he has becme our president. My
party was the only one to protest, organizing a demonstration on Islamabad's
Constitutional Avenue, where we declared we wee protesting t let later generations
know we were not part of this crime -where someone with a riminal record could
become our president The other parties were too afraid of Zardari, knowing he ad the
ability to ruthlessly exploit any weakness in a corrupt politician. The most bizarre
behaviur came from Sharif. Not only had he jailed Zardari for corruption durig both
his terms as prime miister, but he had spent millions of rupees of taxpayers' mney on
pursuing cases against him. Now he became Zardari's biggest supporter and in the
presidential election did not even challenge his nomination papers. Of course the reason
was no that Sharif suddenly had a change of heart; through Zardai he wanted to get rid
of Musharraf, and he was scared that Zardari as president would open up corruption
cases against him. However, one god thing that came out of the elections was that there
was a lll in terrorism, as both the PPP and the PML (N) had spoen out in favur of a
political solution to te war on terror' and said they were against military action in
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The lull lasted till May 208 when, under pressure frm the
Americans, Zardari launched a miltary operation in Bajaur, in the tribal areas. The
bombig of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in 208, when over fty people died, was
widely believed to be in response to he Bajaur operation.
ot only has terrorism broken all records under Zardari, but so has corruption. In
2010 Transparency International ranked Pakistan the thirtyfourth most corrupt country
in the world with abot 70 per cent of respondents perceiving Zadari's government to
be more corrupt than that of Musharraf. And grat, together with incompetence,
cronyism and tax evasion, is destroying the country's economy. Major state corprations
such as the railways, Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan Steel Mills and the Water
and Power Development Authority have become bloated white elephants, costing the
national exchequer a total of 250 billion rupees a year. These organizatins are
plundered -only for te taxpayer to pick up the bil for the losses due to corruption and
ineciencies. Most cntroversially, Pakistan has one of the lowest tax collection rates
in the world with a txtoDP rati of about 9 per cent -only about 2.5 million are
registered to pay tax, representing less than 2 per cent of the population. The country
relies istead on sales tax, which of course everybdy pays at the same rate, regardless
of income. The poor effectively subsidize the rich, and the powerful do everythig they
can to maintain this ijustice. Our politicians are some of the worst culprits. A survey
found 61 per cent of Pakistani pariamentarians pay no tax at all. According to his
2009/210 tax returns, the billionaie Nawaz Sharif paid income tax of 5,000 rupees
(about US$60), while Zardari paid othing at all. Rich landowners also participate in
this ruhless exploitation of the por; agriculture is untaxed, despite the idustry
employing almost half the population. Five per cet of the farmers own 37 per cent of
the land, yet they pay no income tax.
So the United States, by givng the Pakistani government aid in return for its
contribtion to the war on terror', is simply propping up this appalling system. Why
should the Pakistani rich bother to pay taxes when foreign loas and aid moey are
always there to cover up their incompetence and corruption and pay for their lavish
lifestyle? And why should politicans bother to x the economy when they can
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articilly maintain it with American dollars? This also beg the questio -do
American taxpayers really want to be subsidizing Pakistan's elite at a time of dmestic
economic woes and rsing unemployment? Pakistan's economy i sinking fast; it is ill
equipped to deal with the enormou cost of bearing the brunt f America's war on
terror'. Zardari, speaking recently i Turkey, put the cumulative cost of the war on
terror' or Pakistan in the nine years since 9/11 at S$68 billion while the total aid that
has come to Pakistan is U$20 billion. US aid moey for the military doesn't help the
economy and nonmilitary aid seems to disappear ito the bank acounts of the political
leadersip and their cronies.
nother crutch holding up ou ailing economy, and therefore the government, is
World ank and IMF loans that everybody knows akistan will never be able to repay.
These loans, along wth US and Euopean aid money, are like bribes to the Pakistani
political elite to keep ghting Ameria's war for them. This was painfully evident when
in October 2010 Pakitan's foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the Eropean
parliament: If you wnt to help us ght extremism and terrorism, one way of dong that
is making Pakistan economically stable.' Pakistan' ruling elite threatens the West with
fears about Islamic mlitancy to extract more money out of them. Even more blatant is a
quote from Zardari in Bob Woodward's
Obm's Wrs.
He told the American: You
know tis country is awash with aniAmericanism, and they are going to hate me for
being an American stoge. You have to give me economic resources so that I can win
over the people, so that there's something in it for hem.' Meanwhile, the inefciencies
and distortions in the economy mea higher prices for ordinary people, who are already
strugglng under unpecedented ination. That i turn fuels corruption amongst the
police and governmet ocials.
In return for total subserviece to the United States, the ordinary peple of
Pakistan have suffered immensely. The corrupt politicians have dug in deeper, te elite
have gt richer and the militants are more numerou and more determined. The ordinary
people of this country are facing economic hardship and bloodshed in the streets. Every
day the newspapers ae lled with reports of people killing themselves and sometimes
their families because of desperation over how to make ends meet Thirtyfour thousand
innocet people have been killed sice 2003, millions have been displaced by ghting
and we are facing civil war in the tribal areas and a rising insurgency in Baluchistan.
The cuntry today faces unprecedented unemployment, ination, breakdowns in
infrastructure, shortages of gas and power, and lawessness. The war has been a disaster
for the people but mde the powerfl richer. Our capital is like a city under siege, its
people subject to routine security checks as if every Pakistani is a potential terrorist, a
situation the police often make use of to extract bribes. Capital is pouring out of the
country. A fortune is spent on the security of politcians, to the detriment of the rest of
the population. In Pujab, almost hlf of a 900strng elite police force is deplyed to
protect the Sharif family, while 64 per cent of all plice in the captal are on VIP duty.
Cleverly, Zardari has made ure to coopt the oppositio by giving the main
parties a stake to uphold this corrupt system. The PPP controls the centre and Sindh.
Sharif, meant to be the main opposition leader, had his party in a shaky alliance with the
PPP in the Punjab untl recently. The MQM has Kaachi, and the ANP (Awami National
Party) has Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Even the MMA (Muttahid MajliseAmal, the
religios coalition) leader Maulana Fazl urRahmn, who is perceived to be very pro
Taliba, became part of his cabinet at one point. As a result of the NRO, men with
criminl records are ccupying key ministries in the governmet and corruption has
turned nto plunder. With so many vested interests een to maintan the status quo, how
are we to transform or country?
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Chapter Nine
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The Tribal Areas: Civi War?
My
Souion
Wo frebkhurd shheen,
jo ull ho krgusson mein
Ussy kiy khubbr ky kiy hey, ruhorusmebdshi
That befuddled facon, who was raised amog vultures
Wha does he know about the ways of his kid?
Allama Muhammad Iqbal
IN 190 I toured Waziristan, the tribal areas f Pakistan alng the border with
Afghanistan, for the rst time, on the invitation of he Burki tribe to which my mother
belonged (both my mother and fater were from Pashtun tribes, the Niazi and the
Burki). This was the only regio in Pakistan that had remained untouched by
colonialism, its people proud warrior folk who have never been subdued by any invader
despite the long list o legendary coquerors and adventurers wh have passed trough
their lands -including Alexander the Great (356-323 B), Mahmud of Ghazni (971-
1030), Tamburlaine 1336-1405), the Mughal Emperor Barbar (1483-1531), Nadir
Shah, te Persian Napoleon (1698-1747), and the more recent superpowers, the British
and the Russians. According to Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of what was
then the NorthWest Frontier Province (NWFP), in his book on the Pashtuns, The lands
which are now Afghaistan and the NorthWest Frontier of Pakisan have seen perhaps
more ivasions in the course of hisory than any ther country in Asia, or indeed the
world.' As early as 1898, Winston Churchill -then a war correspndent -reported back
from the NorthWest rontier, The frontier tribes ill never accept foreign occupation.'
I had initially een reluctant to make my rst visit to the tribal areas, but was
persuaded by my cousin Sohail Kha, who was in the Frontier Force (originally formed
from regiments withi the British Idian Army, ad selected puely from the Pashtun
tribes). We went to Kaniguram, in South Wazristan, where my mother's family
originally hailed from. The Burki tribe still lives here and gave me a royal welcome
with drumming and ancing and a ail of re int the air from anti
aircraft gns and
Kalashikovs -the sound was deafeing.
hese people fascinated me; it was like goig back in time to the Wild West, an
uncultiated terrain of desolate moutain ranges were every ma openly carried a gun
and was a warrior, making it the most unique place in the world. If the young men saw
me, they would come up and challenge me to a shoting contest, targets would be set up
and I would have to prove myself against them. Een the very yung boys had heard I
was a good shot and wanted to test themselves against me. It seemed everyone knew
how to re a weapon.
Despite this erceness, one of the tenets of the Pashtun code is
melmsti
(hospitality). It is not just a matter o giving the guest the very best your househld can
provide, it also exteds to defendig your guest's safety with our life -
nnwti.
Bdl
(avenging blod) is the bedock of the Pshtun code of honour. One of the
theories about my mother's branch f the Burki tribe was that they broke away nearly
three hndred and fty years ago and settled in J alandhar in India o escape a blood feud
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(Pashtuns either escaing vendettas or searching fr an easier living made settlements
all the way to Delhi ad beyond). The Pashtuns are known for being ercely prtective
of their women. However Pashtun women in the tribal areas are not kept in as strict
purdah as they are in the cities. In the countryside i FAT A (the Federally Admiistered
Tribal Areas) you ca see women working in the elds. But whe they move to a town
or city they wear the burka outside te home or are conned within four walls by their
male relatives for fear that they will come into contact with men from outside the
family.
he Pashtuns maintain this extremely strong family system in some form r other
even amongst their communities that have migrated to other areas. The Pashtun
homeland stretches from Afghanistan where they are the larges ethnic group across
Pakistan's tribal areas and the provice of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but the largest Pashtun
city is Karachi in Sindh province. Waves of Pashtun migratin to the commercial
capital of Pakistan since the 1950s mean that it is now home to several million of them.
Dr Akhtar Hameed Kan the founder of the Orangi Pilot Project a social initiatve in a
squatte quarter in Kaachi found that because of their powerful family system the tribal
Pashtus always forged ahead of the other two ethnic communities living in Oragi.
he social structure of the trial areas that I observed an their culture is very
differet to that in the rest of Pakistan. Far from being the lawless savages of popular
myth the people have lived by an ancient democatic system which allowed them to
carry themselves with selfrespect and dignity. The concept of hnour in South Asian
culture has received a bad press because of the deely offensive honour killings but by
upholdng one's honour impoverished people living hard lives can maintain a sense of
dignity and command respect. In he tribal area this highly ecentralized frm of
democracy is based o the
rg
system -local councils of village elders simila to the
Athenian democracy f the citystates of ancient Greece. Every household has a oice in
the running of their lives and every man is considered an equal. Because peope fully
participate in decisionmaking it has created selfgverning communities of responsible
individals with no bureaucracy and no centralized government. In terms of dealing
with crme the Pashtn jirga system acts as a jury that dispenses free and quick justice.
A culprit will usually be known to eeryone in the illage and wil be hauled in front of
the jury; there is no uestion of false witnesses as everybody knws everybody else's
credibiity. So successful is the system that the tribal areas -unti the upheavals of the
past few years -have typically been almost crimefree compared to the rest of Pakistan
and this despite every man being armed. The right t carry arms is for them a garantee
of freedom just as early American jurists allowed their citizens this right. As I
mentioed earlier revenge is part of their code of honour; when smeone in a family is
killed the whole family are bound to seek revenge. This code of hnour is simple and it
predates Islam -it is embedded i their genes. In 1872 a Pashtun Sher Ali Afridi
imprisned on the Andaman Islans where he was serving his sentence kiled the
visiting viceroy Lord Mayo. He felt his imprisonment was an affront to his code of
honour and had thus vowed to kill a leading British ofcial. (When someone attacks
them either the US with drone aircraft bombing villages or the Pakistani amy on
operatins both of these are doing more than causing casualties; they are also creating
enemies.) Caroe wrote that in the 1930s there was as much crime n a week in Peshawar
as there was in a year in the whole of the tribal area. This system of equality and justice
was a big contrast to what I had see growing up i Punjab where might was right and
landlords could get away with all kids of abuses twards poor people.
he British created the NorthWest Frontier Province in 1901 and divided the
region into settled and tribal areas. In terms of the Great Game (the phrase coined to
describe British -Russian rivalry i the region) the province was a vital buffer zone
betwee the British Raj and Russia expansionism in Central Asa. But the British had
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struggled to impose direct rule on the tribal area eventually coming up with the solution
of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) in the 180s. Based on tribal law this system
still aplies in F
AT A. It seeks to apease the aggrieved party rather than punish the
guilty. The government representative known as he political agent handles disputes
but has to accept the verdict and punshment decided by the jirga. Tribes are encouraged
to keep the peace though subsidies. Most contrversially the FCR also imposes a
system of collective pnishment on te entire tribe for crimes. At independence i 1947
the NWFP voted to join Pakistan bu its tribal areas became a part of the new ntion in
1948 oly on conditin that they be allowed to cotinue to live by their own laws. So
while Khyber Pakhtukhwa is a fully integrated province of Pakistan FATA is semi
autonomous and still ruled by the colonialera system; the Pakistai government governs
through a combinatio of political agents who are federal civil bureaucrats and tribal
elders with only fortyfour of Pakistan's laws agreed to prevail there leaving their way
of life intact. There is no Pakistani police or judiciary in the tribal areas althogh the
roads are subject to federal law. I was particularly lucky to have been able t travel
within FAT A because you need special permission and an armed escort frm the
government to visit.
hese tribal people are in many ways inspiring; the Powidahs were especially
fascinaing to me. These are the Pashtun nomad tries who for ceturies have migrated
betwee the highlands of Wazirista and Afghanistan in the summer and the plains of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab in the winter. O our way to Kaniguram we saw the
Powinahs on the moe. Once abou half an hour before sunset we came across a small
encampment by the side of a stream. One of the beautiful sheedogs the Powindahs
keep known as Kuchi or adi stood guard. I deserately wanted to buy one of these
animals; my parents always kept Kuchi and they make intelligent watchdogs. So I
approached the tents and a young man came up and greeted me. He recognized me
saying he had seen me on televisio playing cricket once during a trip to Dera Ismail
Khan town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He invited me to where his father and uncle were
sitting and introduced me. Unfortuntely they did not have any pups but we got talking.
As we sat there I became aware of tis incredible scene all around me. The Powindahs
had pithed their tents just a short while before after a long day's walk. The children
were playing amongst the dogs sheep and goats. A grandmoher was chasng the
smaller kids some wmen were preparing food a father was washing his children in the
stream. There was laghter and complete harmony all around me. Here were people
living the toughest life imaginable with virtually no material possessions and yet I
never heard one complaint during my conversation. For these resilient people the
existene of od an life after death were as obious as the sn and the moon. On
another trip I came acoss a different group of Powindahs and I met a tribal elder whose
son had recently bee killed ghting the Soviets in Afghanistan. The son' s phto had
been garlanded with owers and deicted a young strapping hadsome man. He had
the Powindahs told me been the life and soul of their community. I'm sorry,' I said to
the father. He simply looked at me and said You should congraulate me my son has
embraced martyrdom for a higher cause.'
One of the main things that struck me durig a series of tips to the tribal areas
that I ndertook between 1990 and 1992 to research my book about the Pshtuns
Wrrior Re
was the total lack of education. So ercely did they defend their culture
that the tribesmen never allowed the British to build schools durig the Raj. Yet when I
visited them I found tey craved education. Everwhere I went they wanted schols but
successive Pakistani governments have given them precious few educational facilities.
Without education te tribal areas' culture canot evolve. This is particularly sad
because it is a society that would resond well to education.
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he Pashtuns have clung ercely to their way of life throughout the ceturies.
They have no fear of authority, ulike people in the rest of Pakistan, especially in
Punjab and Sindh, where centuries of feudalism have made the masses bow before
power. It is the condence derived from their democratic system that has enabled the
tribal people to become great generals, ofcers and even rulers all over India for
centuries. Unlike the poor living nder the feudal system, who do not asire to
leadersip, the tribal Pashtuns are brought up as natural leaders. t is this difference in
mentality that made the Pashtun aeas harder to conquer than much of the Indian
subconinent. Throughout history even warring Pashtun tribes will cast aside their
differeces and stand up to an invader. This is how, in going after a few hundred al
Qaeda ghters for America's war on terror', the government has raised a rebellion
amongt tribes with the potential ghting power of a million armed men. In succmbing
to Washington's presure to send the Pakistani army into the trbal areas, we have a
conict that could lead to the collapse of the Pakistani state.
In addition, the people of the tribal areas remain marginalized from maistream
politics. Pakistan only gave them the right to vote n 1997 (previusly only the
mliks
or tribal leaders, could vote or contest elections). Most of the contry's main political
parties have chapters and representatives in FAT , but candidates can particiate in
polls only on a nonparty basis. I also remains the most underdeveloped area of
Pakistan, neglected by the state and isolated by its mountainous terrain, which makes the
delivery of services ad infrastructure challenging. About 60 per cent of the population
lives below the national poverty line and per capita income is half the national aerage.
Per capita public development expediture is said to be a third of the national aerage.
Eking a living out of he land in may areas is tough, and opportnities to earn a wage
limited The Commuity Appraisal and Motivation Programme (CAMP), an NO that
operates in FAT A, ha conducted a eries of surveys in the area. When asked to ame a
living ational politician they admired, 50 per cet or more of respondents sad they
could not name one o did not admire any of them. In the 2010 survey I got the ighest
rating at 13.1 per cent; Zardari was the nearest contender at 4.4 per cent. Similarly, a
2010 pll in FATA by the New America Foundatin and Terror Free Tomorrow found
that TereekeInsaf was the most ppular party with just over 28 per cent of the vote.
The net most popula was PML (N) with 10 per cent.
In neighbouring Baluchistan the tribes are also known for their ferocty and
strength. However, thanks to a succession of rulers, from the ritish to the current
Pakistani government, using the Baluchi
srdrs
(leaders) to cntrol the people, the
system of leadership has degenerated from an egalitarian one into an almost feudallike
subservience, as aptly described in his book,
A Jouey to Disillusionment
by the
Baluch sardar Sherbaz Khan Mazari. In contras, the Pashtun have often rebelled
against any malik see as an agent fr the British o the central government. Because of
the jirga system, they are also used to a tradition f debate and are more receptive to
intellectual discussion. The university I have built in Mianwali, which is on the edge of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has drawn great interest, not just from locals but also from people
from Waziristan looking to educate both sons and daughters. Female literacy in the
tribal aeas is woefully low, estimated at 3 per cent compared with a national average for
women of almost a thrd (male literay in FAT A is 29.5 per cent). In conservative areas
of Pakistan it is not tat people are against female education per se, they just want to
know teir womenfol will not have to travel far and that they will be safe. They are
also supicious of edcation for women being use by foreigners to chip away at their
traditions. One of their greatest fears is that a westernized educatin will detach women
from their religion and their culture, hence the suspicion of foreigners and westernized
Pakistanis in parts of the countryside. At Namal University we have made sure that
cultura norms are resected. It help too that people there know and trust me. We have
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actually managed to egineer a minirevolution with conservative families sendig their
daughters to study alongside men.
It cannot be emphasized enough how isolated some of these communities are. In
parts o the tribal areas some of the villages have been left aloe for years. I these
border areas with Afghanistan where the Pashtuns move freely from one side to the
other they remain unouched by any form of authrity. On the Afghan side it is much
the same.
Ignorant of the history and character of these people ad red by imperial
hubris' in October 2001 the United States and its allies invaded fghanistan execting
to succeed where the British in the nineteenth centry and the Russians in the twentieth
century had failed. This war was illfated from the start. A military campaign dened as
a battle against Islamic extremism soon became n Afghanistan a liberation struggle
against foreign invaers. And the battle of Afghanistan' s 15 million Pashtuns has
incensed Pakistan's 25 million Pashtuns. In a repeat of what hapened with Vietnam
and Cambodia the Americans have allowed the wa to spill into a neighbouring country.
Musharraf and then Zardari have forced the Pakistai army to launch military operations
in the tribal areas but since our soldiers are seen as proxies for the Americans they have
run int erce resistace as the militants have declared jihad against them. We nw nd
ourselves ghting what has become an undeclared and bloody civil war.
he Americans complain that Pakistan whether ocially or unocially helps
insurgents ghting the allied forces in Afghanistan. But they have failed to understand
the Pashtun mentality (as sadly did Musharra. Many Pakistais -in the army the
government and the general public -were against the invasion of Afghanistan from the
start. But for the Pashun their loyalty is clearcut. Anyone with een a basic knowledge
of the history of the region knows that for reasns of religious cultural and social
afnity the Pashtuns feel a deeproted duty to help their brethre on either side of the
Durand Line. For them the international frontier is irrelevant So no government
Pakistani or foreign will ever be entirely successful in stopping them crossing over the
1500mile border to support their people or feeling obliged to offer them shelter if they
venture into their territory.
Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan the Americans bmbed the Tora Bora
cave cmplex in the White Mountais believed to be Osama bin Laden's headqarters.
A few hundred alQaeda militants crossed the border into Pakistan's tribal areas; they
were pobably initially welcomed as guests by the Pashtun tribes in accordance with
their acient traditios. The Amerians claim that these militats set up bases from
which to wage battle against US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
In addition the Americans beieved that alQaeda's leaders including Osama bin
Laden and Ayman alZawahiri were hiding in the region. Washington failing to
understand that the Pakistani government only has indirect control over the tribal areas
threateed to use force if Islamabad did not prevent the tribes from harbouring militants.
Those who knew the region warned the governmet against provoking an uprising but
Musharraf was unable to stand up to Washington and in March 204 the Pakistan army
launched its rst majr operation to root out alQaeda -sending helicopter gunships and
thousads of troops ito South Wazristan. According to Lieutenant General Arakzai
suspicins that recen assassination attempts agaist Musharraf had been planed in
South Waziristan also spurred him into sending in the troops. At this point Musharraf
put the number of foreign militants i the province at ve to six hndred. Yet according
to Lieuenant General Aurakzai when he took the army into the tribal areas and worked
with the tribes the tribes handed ver around 250 alQaeda militants to the army.
Thanks to pressure from Washingtn Pashtun ofcers in the army were weeded out
before he operation and Aurakzai himself who hails from the Orakzai Agency (an area
of FAT
A) was forced into retiring ne month eary. Major General Safdar Hussain a
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Punjab, replaced him The operatio was a disaster, with many casualties on both sides.
After several weeks of ghting, the operation ended in the Shakai agreement, i which
the tribesmen agreed to encourage foreign militants to register with the authorities in
exchange for a kind of amnesty. The accord soo broke down when the Americans
killed ek Muhammad in June 2004 through a droe attack.
his pattern of milita operations in Waziristan followed by truces continued for
the next couple of years. American pressure mounted convinced that the area was a safe
haven for militants. Aurakzai, who was governor of Khyber Pakhtnkhwa between 2006
and 208, told me that most of these agreements fell apart under S pressure ad were
never broken by the militants, including the Mirashah accord he negotiated i North
Waziristan in September 2006. Some analysts and media commentators have
complained that this agreement was instrumental in allowing the militants to icrease
their pwer and infrastructure and combine the various local militant groups and
factions into a cohesive Pakistani Taliban -the TehrikeTaliban (TP). Hwever,
Aurakzai says the army's actions i the tribal areas were counterproductive, because
collateral damage' through bombing villages added to the ranks of the mlitants,
unifying opposition and intensifying hatred towards the Pakistai government and its
American backers. I advocated using good intelligence then targeted operations against
the miltants that did ot hurt local people. If the locals side with te Taliban, thee is no
way yu can catch smeone in the tribal areas,' he told me. Once he was trying to
explain to a US army delegation the advantages of having a peace agreement with the
Taliba: we were taking too many casualties, he said, and military operations cause
collateral damage which in tu increases militacy. One of the Americans bluntly
replied We are payig you to ght, not to draw up peace agreements.'
Hence the US pressure for Pakistan to do more' in the tribal area had a very
heay price for Pakistan. Our subservient leaders kept bucking under American
pressure, engaging in military operations, bombing villages in the tribal areas, leading to
a backlash of terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities. We Pakistanis became used to this
wheneer a highpowered delegation came from Washington; either the tribal areas
would be bombed, or some highvale alQaeda member would be picked up to coincide
with the visit. Once a government minister told me on the eve of Condoleezza Rice's
visit to Pakistan that the next day she would receive ve presents; sure enough, the
following morning it was reported tat ve alQaeda had been killed in a shotout',
conveniently hitting te headlines the day she arrived. When George W. Bush visited
Pakistan, the headlines read: 40 foreign militants killed in North Waziristan.' Later the
truth emerged; family and friends in Saidgai village in North Waziristan had gathered to
welcome a businessman returning frm the Gulf, ad it was these innocent civilians who
had been bombed.
(Sir Olaf Caroe also documented the timehonoured pattern of Pashtun vegeance
-every time the British launched an operation agaist the tribes these would retreat into
the montains; there would be a lull in violence and then the insurgents would regroup
and return, numbers boosted by the relatives of the dead now dutybound t exact
retribution. As a result, before bombing a village, the British would drop leaets in the
area so the people wold leave and the attack woul cause only material damage.)
I have heard so many stories of innocen people suffering because of this
campaign, including from one of my own party wrkers. Khalil ur Rehman, Tehreeke
Insaf district party head in Bajaur, was travelling in the tribal areas with his family when
a Pakisani army helicopter appeared overhead. As er the army's instructions for locals
in FAT A they got out of the car and put their hands up. But the helicopter red on them
anway. Khalil's sixearold son lost his legs and his brother and nephew both died. I
took Khalil to tell his story on one of Pakistan's most watched talk shows,
Citl Tlk.
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We wuld die for Pakistan but ater this how can I stop members of my family joining
the Talban?' Khalil tld the interviewer.
Another side effect of the army's action is that it has stoked rivalries and created
frictions between tribes. One has tured against the other as some side with the aliban
and others side with the army. The gvernment encuraged tribes willing to help to form
lshkrs
(informal militias) to ght the insurgency but they were just decimated by the
militans, who viewed them as American lackeys. Even once there is peace these
vendettas will continue to take their toll for years t come as famlies try to avege the
death of loved ones. A Waziri tribal elder and former senator I kew, Faridullah Khan,
was killed in 2005 because he was considered to be progovernment. This is exactly
what used to happen nder the British; any malik perceived to be collaborating with the
colonial rulers was killed, particularly in Wazirista, which is known as the wildest part
of the tribal areas. I have a picture of Faridullah standing with Jimmy Goldsmith
emima's father) from when we visited the tribal elt in 1995. The death of respected
elders like him has had serious repercussions for FAT A, undermining the tribal structure
and creating a power vacuum -a vacuum that has been in part lled by the Pakistani
Taliba. For the sake f ushing out what they said were a few hudred foreign ghters,
Islamabad effectively created thousands of proTaliban ghters and killed many
innocet civilians. But it was too embarrassing for the governmet to admit tha it had
set the army on its own people; twetysix Pakistai journalists have been killed so far
in FAT A, and there is a strong suspicion that they were targeted because the government
didn't want independent reporting of the situation there. As happened with East
Pakistan, propaganda, lies and deception have been used to try to shield the publc from
what was really happening.
Still more damaging than these army operations has been the covert use by the
CIA of unmanned drone aircrat in the tribal bel. Shamefully this is done with the
connivance of the Islamabad government. As Zahid Hussai points out n
The
Sorin Til
it is te rst time in history that a intelligence gency of one country
has been using robots to target individuals for killing in another country with which it is
not ofcially at war'.
When the issue of military operations was debated in the National Assembly in
2004, I was one of the few voices speaking out for people 'd travelled amongst. Almost
all of the parliamentarians were ignrant of the tribal areas and were clueless about the
mess that was being created. I said, if you had read the history of the area, you would
not have found yourself in this quicsand; I was attacked for romanticizing them, and
later accused of being a Taliban sympathizer. It was obvious to anyone who understood
the region that this attack on the people in the tribal areas will be a disaster for Pakistan;
and sure enough, in two drone attacks on consecutive days in Suth Wazirista, over
100 people were killed in September 2004, which sparked off the beginning of the
Masud tribe's rebellion against the gvernment. To make matters worse, the government
tried to claim that those being killed in these attacks were all foreign militants', a lie
designed to make peple swallow the awful truth -that in retur for dollars we were
bombig our own peple. It's sad that the goverment are repeating the actions that
befell the country during the 1971 East Pakistan crisis, using prpaganda to cover the
fact they were ghtig their own people: for foreign militants' now, it was Indian
backed then.
Numbers of casualties are hard to verify, given the vastly different accouts that
come from the army and the Taliban Reporters are not allowed into the tribal areas and
media reports often cite locals as saing the corpses of those killed are burned beyond
recognition, making it even harder to establish who has been slain Ater a drone attack,
no one dares go to help the wounded as there is always a fear hat the site culd be
bombed again. So for hours people can hear the cies of the wonded. MajorGeneral
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Ghayur Mehmood claimed in early 2011 that almost all those killed in drone strikes
were terrorists, showig how low our government had sunk, blatantly lying to cver up
these immoral drone strikes. At a Pakistani ExServicemen Association meeting I
attended, a tribal elde from North Waziristan, Khlabat Khan, challenged this, arguing
that if an attack killed twenty people then at least eighteen of them were civilians. He
questioned how the gvernment could verify the identity of the dead when drone attacks
are typically in areas where the Pkistani military does not operate. Based n their
drones database, Peer Bergen ad Katherine Tiedemann a the New America
Foundation estimate tat between 1,92 and 2,328 people have died in 244 drone strikes
betwee 2004 and ay 2011. They put the civilian fatality rate over this period at
approxmately 20 per cent. However, analysis by Pakistani newspaper
The New
found
that in 2010 about 5 per cent of those killed wee civilians. Frthermore,
The News
estimates that -despite this appalling record -the attacks only killed a fth of the
hundredplus highvaue targets on the CIA's hit lst in 2010. This campaign, iitiated
by Bus, has been ramped up under bama' s remit.
The News
estimates that unmanned
aircrat strikes hit an nnual record of 124 in 2010, more than doubling from 209. One
also hs to imagine the number f innocent people maimed and injured i these
incidents. This campaign of terror from the skies has provoke immense anger and
outrage in Pakistan. Kareem Khan from North Wziristan tried to sue the head of the
CIA (who was whisked away from Pakistan) for te death of his son and brother in a
drone strike in Waziristan, seeking S$500 million in compensatin.
o justify this rampant violation of Pakistani sovereignty the Americas have
run a consistent campaign of demonization against our country. A succession of US
ocials and analysts have branded Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world
for everyone' and a nucleararmed crucible of jihadi culture, exporting terrorists and
destabiizing its neighbours', accused us of hosting the most dangerous compoent' of
alQaeda, being the most antiUS country in the world' and the most likely source of
the next terrorist attac against America. Everybody from Senator Bob Graham t Bruce
Riedel former national security adviser to Presidet Clinton, as well as Vice President
Joe Biden, has particpated in this chorus of condemnation. What Washington fails to
understand is that the existence of a small minority of hard coe militants in certain
areas of the country does not mea Pakistan is on the verge of being taken ver by
religios fundamentalists. The war on terror' is certainly pushing people towards
extremes of opinion, but those who know Pakistan know tha there will never be
Talibaization in Paistan. In Afghnistan, the Taiban succeeded not because of their
ideology but because they promised people rule of law after years of war and the
atrocities and corruption of the warlrds. There is some misconception in the West that
the Afghan Taliban replaced a secular government. In fact, they tok over from warring
mujahideen that included people like Gulbuddin ekmatyar, initially supported by the
CIA when he fought the Soviets, and who was considered a religious fanatic by the
Russias.
In every country where Islam has spread, the character of the people has shaped
the religion. Oten, the underlying clture remains with only those customs repugnant to
Islam ltered out. Because of the hostility of their territory, the Pashtun cultre has
always been austere and conservative. Islam is an intrinsic part of life for Pashtuns, as
for most Pakistanis. If there is suppot for sharia law it is because they believe it ffers a
fairer system of justie and a more equal society han the Pakisani state has hitherto
given them. They are also strongly against the way the United States has handled
Islamic terrorism since 9/11 and see the ghting in Afghanistan as a battle for freedom
against foreign occupiers; thirty years before, the men ghting i Afghanistan against
foreign occupation were hailed by US President Roald Reagan as the moral eqivalent
of America's foundig fathers'. I the 2002 elections there was a sweepig and
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unprecedented victory for the Muttahida MajliseAmal (MMA) -mainly heade by the
two religious parties Jamiat UlemaeIslam UI) and JamaateIslami I) -because of
their opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan. But that does nt mean there s wide
support for the Taliban ideology. The militants' attacks on girls' schools nd the
desecration of saints shrines are articularly resented. In its 2009 Undersanding
FATA' poll, the NO CAMP ound that respondents ranked democracy, the
indepedence of the judiciary and women's rights as the biggest human rights issues in
Pakistan.
Besides, as the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) concluded in a reort on
attitudes towards militancy and extremism, local culture has proed resilient. Even in
the areas where culture or traditins had been subdued by radicalization,' as the
militans tried to impse their versin of Islam on local people, the culture reasserted
itself oce this militat inuence faded.' It uses the example of Swat, where follwing a
major military operaion to oust the Taliban in 2009, local traditions and customs
resumed. Even in the nineteenth century during the twilight days of India's Mughal
Empire, when Syed Ahmed Barelvi founded a revolutionary Islamic movement i failed
to take hold. Barelvi preached jihad against nonMslim inuences and tried to rally the
Pashtu tribes to his cause but they disliked his rigid brand of Islam and abandoned him,
leaving him to be slai by the Sikhs who had at that time conquered the settled Pashtun
areas. There is a strong Su inuence in Pakistan, which will always be at odds with the
strict literal Islam of Wahhabi idelogy that inuences many militant groups. This
tension is represented by the two main schools of thought fr Sunni Muslims in
Pakistan. Barelvis typically lean towards South Asia's traditional brand of Su Islam
with its saints and shrines and messge of tolerance. Deobandis, n the other hand, are
more ieologically aligned with the Wahhabis and re therefore mre sympatheti to the
Taliba's version ofsam.
Pakistan could have suggested far more effective methods of rooting out al
Qaeda. To those of us who know the tribes, the obvious solution was to work wit them,
to cajole them and to encourage them to collaborate. After all, they have been own to
contribute to Pakista's national interests in the past. The tribl Pashtuns set their
lashkars to ght in Kashmir in 1948 and supplied volunteers to the Pakistan army in the
1965 war. But one government after the other has failed to defend Pakistan's own
interests. Bob Woodward's
Obm' Wrs
cites Zrdari, in a discussion with then CIA
director Mike Hayden about drone attacks, sayng the chillig words: Collateral
damage worries you Americans. It des not worry me.' He might as well have said that,
to him, US dollars are worth more than Pakistani lves. The WikiLeaks cables exposed
the tre extent of the Pakistani government's collaboratio in these ulawful
extrajudicial killings. One quoted Prime Minister Yousaf Raza ilani as saying about
the drone strikes: I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll
protest in the National Assembly ad then ignore it.' But of course the strikes oten
don '
get the right people. How can n exploding bmb in villages differentiate between
innocet civilians and militants? The cables also reealed that small teams of US special
forces soldiers have been secretly deployed alongside Pakistani military forces in the
tribal aeas, helping to track down mlitants and cordinate drone strikes, something that
Islamabad has never publicly acnowledged. Furthermore, the cbles record Pakistani
ofcials telling US counterparts that locals don't mnd the attacks, belying the suvey by
the New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow that fund more tha three
quarters of FAT A resdents opposed them. In fact, it revealed only 16 per cent thought
these strikes accurately targeted militants. It also showed tha, with thousands of
mercenaries from companies like Blckwater inside our borders, sch is the suspicion of
these agents who live in highwalled villas in the cities, and trael in convoy in their
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fourbyfours with tinted glass, that he majority of Pakistanis believe these contractors
are themselves involved in terrorism -especially after the Raymod Davis affair.
Within Pakista, both Musharaf and Zardari have found willing support from the
country's elite, ever fearful of the supposed advance of Talibanization. Thee is a
Chinese saying that ne should knw one's enemy, but Bob Woodward's
Obm's
Wrs
demonstrates the Americans' rightening ignorance of the Pashtun character and
its emphasis on hospitality and revenge. They think Islamabad has control over the tribal
areas, but not only does the federal government have little sway over them, most
shockigly the ruling elite is as clueless as the Americans about this area. That is why I
have told visiting US politicians again and again that Washington must seek alternative
points f views about what is happening in the tribal areas. I hae recommended they
speak to people who come from the region and have rsthand knowledge of what is
really going on there. As revelations from WikiLeaks show, it is becoming clear that our
dollaraddicted elite has a vested interest in prolonging this war t keep US aid owing
in.
he US puppets have tried to use the same sare tactics on Pakistanis in a effort
to rally public opinin around their policies. Most Pakistanis have seen throgh the
propaganda, and insisted it was not Pakistan's war and that we were killing our own
people for American dollars. When a young charismatic cleric by the name of Maulana
Fazlullah sprang into prominence in Khyber Paktunkhwa's Swat valley, fomenting
unrest ollowing the Red Mosque affair, the goverment took the opportunity to terrify
Pakistanis with the idea that the Taliban had their sights on Islamabad. Now many
people -particularly ur country's opinionmakers, who know nothing of rural Pakistan
-do nt understand he difference between Swat and the tribal areas. They think all
Pashtus are the same. But Swat is very differet to the triba areas -in terms of
politics, histo and geography. Where much of the tribal areas are made up of
inhospitable mountai terrain, Swat is a green and fertile valle, once known as the
Switzerland of the East. It was a pricely state untl 1969, run like a personal estate by
the Wali of Swat with a combinatin of tribal customs and shaia law. It had a rich
Buddhist history, one of the highest literacy rates in Pakistan and was relatively crime
free, safe enough to daw hippies in the 1970s looking for a chilledout haven in which
to smoke pot. Until 207 it was still a popular ski resort and weekend getaway for the
elite of Islamabad. Ulike in the tribal areas, where only fortyfor federal laws apply,
Swat, like the rest of the settled areas, is legally and politicall run like the rest of
Pakistan. And unlike the tribal areas, it shares no brder with Afghanistan.
here had, thugh, since Zlkar Ali Bhtto ousted the Wali in 1969 and
incorprated Swat ito the civil administratio of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa been
discontent. Political interference and manipulatio by various Pakistani goverments
along with the corrption of government ofcials had corroded traditional tribal
democracy and over the years crime rates had rise. According t my cousin Jamshed
Burki, who used to be commissioner of Malakand, the administrative divisio Swat
comes under, when Pakistan's justice system was established in Swat the murer rate
shot up from ten a year in 1974 o seven hundred a year in 1977. Conseuently,
resentment against the Pakistani government system of justice -which was seen as
corrupt, expensive ad inecient -had been simmering, evetually feeding into a
movement calling for sharia law. Kown as TehreekeNafazeShariateMohammadi
(Movement for the Enforcement f Islamic Law), this was ounded by Maulana
Fazlullah's fatherinlaw, Maulana Su Muhammad, an Afghan jihad veteran. When
Muhammad was imprisoned in 2002, the more radical Fazlullah assumed leadership of
the movement. Fazlullah earned the nickname Radio Mullah' after setting up a radio
station to propagate is movement. He was almst like a teleangelist, and drew a
strong female following, who would donate their jewellery to hs cause. Fired by the
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bloodshed of the Ll Masjid affair he urged is followers to rebel agaist the
government and its seuri forces. e appealed to the poorest strata of society claiming
Musharraf's government was a stooge of the US and out to destroy Islam. e also
tapped into resentment against local andowners some of whom had unfairly taken over
common land when Swat joined Pakistan. Militants targeted certain big landowners and
in some areas distribued the prots from their crops amongst landless peasants.
Worried by Fazlullah's growing band of followers ad their lawlessness
Musharraf sent the army into Swat i the autumn of 2007 to crush the militants. But in
early 208 the PPPled coalition took power and initiated peace talks which took a long
time. S Muhamma was released from prison and brokered a deal that saw sharia law
imposed on the Swat valley in return for the Taliban layig down their arms.
Westerized Pakistanis saw the implementation of sharia as a backward step but all Su
Muhammad was doing was tapping nto a longstanding desire amongst ordinary Swatis
for accessible justice. Sher Khan a ormer union council
nzim
(ocal mayor) who had
stood as a candidate for my party in the provincial assembly elecions was involved in
these egotiations. e told me that as part of the accord about 1500 militants
surrendered themselves to the army only to be brutally tortured in custody. This
treatment only served to radicalize the young men and most of them later became
fanatics. Sher Khan who had helped bring about this peace deal in good faih was
appalled. Once again strongarm tactics by the establishment backred. When the army
withdrew from Swat and released the detained insrgents many of these men hungry
for revenge against the security forces rushed into the power vacuum. According to
Sher Kan some of the greatest atroities committed at this time were by those who had
been brutalized while in army detention.
Fazlullah's forces had been further bolstered by a ragtag collection of jihadi and
sectarin groups common criminals sharia law supporters and angry peasants. Locals
began to turn against the Taliban as they imposed their brutal rule with a campaign of
violence beheading anyone who oposed them or whom they suspected of being a
government spy kidapping burnig down schools and attacking DVD shops and
barbers. The Pakistani government was able to use this total breakdown of law ad order
to convince their pubic both that this was an extesion of what was happening in the
tribal aeas and that the Taliban were set to march on the capital. Again the media were
manipulated to rally support for army intervention. A journalist i Swat told me at the
time that intelligence agencies had told him to put out more stories on Taliban atrocities.
e also said the agencies were trying to sideline the Deobandis the ideological bethren
of the Taliban stoking Barelvi concerns about Deobandi and Taliban desecration of Su
shrines and tombs in order to rally opposition to the militants.
I am cynical aout how the government hndled the whole operation. Zardari
dithered for two monhs before endorsing the terms of the Febrary 2009 peace deal
waiting till April to sign the law introducing Islamic sharia law as demanded by the
militans. While he dithered Swat further descended into chaos. Within a few weeks a
couple of jeeploads of Taliban were spotted in the district south of Swat Buner. This
unleashed a wave of panic with newspaper headlines waing that the Taliban had
advanced to within sity miles of Islamabad. The amy operation was timed to coincide
with Zardari landing n Washington and it was no surprise that he was praised for the
Swat operation and used that to pitch for more aid. We are ghtig to save the world
he told a meeting of the Friends of Pakistan in Japan a couple of weeks later as if a few
thousad Taliban in Pakistan were going to destroy the halfamillionstrong army and
threate global security. Yet what was going on i Swat was a shambolic and mainly
criminl revolt that did not even have the popular spport of the locals. The government
should have implemeted a focused commando operation to take out the movement's
top leadership. Instead the army's fullscale assault meant more than two millio people
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were dsplaced, many innocent lives were lost an the local ecoomy was devastated.
Alarmed at the situation, I went to Swat just as people were streaming out of the area.
Locals told me that they had been given an hour to leave before the military
bombardment started. A young boy told me he had seen dead bodies -civilians killed in
army bombing. There is no doubt people hated wat the Taliba were doing but they
were agry about the army's heayhandedness. Despite the intervention, Fazlullah and
his main accomplices got away, and are believed to have ed to Afghanistan. Anyone
who opposed the government's strategy -including me -was branded a Taliban
sympathizer. A friend of mine, Nadeem Iqbal spet three months working in camps for
people displaced by the ghting in Swat and after many conversations with the camp
inhabitants and army fcers he came to the same conclusions -the Swat operaton was
done because the government wanted more aid money from Washington for services
rendered, and that a more focused commando operation would have done the trick.
Nadeem said it was he only time he had wanted to give up on Pakistan and get a
Canadian passport.
his American manipulation f Pakistani plitics has only served to undermine
its puppet rulers. When people see hw dependent ur already unpopular leaders are on
Washigton it erodes their authority even more. Paistanis are understandably icensed
that the government clearly allows American intelligence agents o operate unimpeded
within heir country, a fact revealed by the case of Raymond Dais, the CIA operative
who shot two people dead in Lahore in January 2011. Another man died whe a car
from the American cnsulate knocked down a passing pedestrian in its rush t assist
Davis. efying Islamabad's demands for those in the car to be handed over, Wasington
has allwed them to ee the county. Davis was promptly arrested, though, nd the
Americans have tried to claim diplomatic blanket mmunity from prosecution fr him,
saying he killed the men in selfdefence during an attempted robbery. Hwever,
newspapers have reprted that he shot them repeatedly in the bck, undermining that
story. American ocials have admtted to the press that Davis was part of a covert,
CIAled intelligence team surveying militant grops. One of the dead men's wives,
nineteenyearold Shmaila Kanwal committed suicide by swallowing rat poison in
despair of ever getting justice for her husband. In a scene that was played over ad over
again on Pakistani news channels, she told reportes at her hospital bedside just before
her death that she wated blood for blood'. She told them she was committing suicide
because I will not get justice'. The Davis case riggered demnstrations acrss the
country, created a diplomatic restom and inamed antiAmerican feelings more than
ever.
Shumaila Kanwal's distraught words illustrate the kind of anger and despair that
in the ribal areas leads people to blow themselves up to avenge the death f their
relatives, whether frm drone attacks or military operations. As David Kilcllen, a
counterinsurgency exert and former adviser to General David Petraeus, and Andrew
Exum, a fellow at thiktank the Ceter for a New American Security, wrote in te
New
York mes:
every dead civilian killed in a drone strike represents an alienated family, a
new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown
exponentially even as drone strikes have increased' . Sure enough, as military operations
by the Pakistani army and drone strikes have itensied, so have terrorist attacks.
According to Farruk Saleem at Pakistani thinktank the Centre for Research and
Security Studies, thee were only 189 terrorismrelated deaths in 2003 but he toll
peaked at 11,585 in 209 -when army interventio was at its height. Civilians bore the
brunt of this as the terorists shited their attention from security forces to increasingly
soft targets, such as the campus of Islamabad's Iternational Islamic University, and
markets in Lahore and Peshawar. One glaring example of the way in which the
governent's policy simply escalated the violence was the 2006 airstrike on a madrassa
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said to harbour militats in Bajaur, the smallest of te FAT
A territories, near the Afghan
border. At least eighty people died and news reprts cited locals saying sixtytwo of
them were children nder the age of eighteen. Militants vowed revenge and it was
switly followed by a suicide bombing attack on a military garrison, killing fotytwo
army recruits. The man who carried out the assaul was said to have been a relative of
one of the children killed in the Bajaur madrassa. Still worse was the cackhanded
coverp of America involvement in the madrassa bombing. The Pakistani military
claimed responsibility for it, but locals and opposition politicians aid that the strke was
conducted by an American drone aircraft. Accordig to the
New York mes
residents
said Pakistani army helicopter gnships appeared ring rockets after the initial
explosions. The Pakisani governmet denied the claim, although Christina Lamb of the
Sundy mes
later reported that a ey aide to Msharraf had admitted that they had
thought it would be less damaging i we said we did it rather than the US'.
Nor has US foeign policy or military strategy fared any etter in Afghanistan.
Hamid Karzai' s regme is undermined by the weakness of Afghanistan's state
institutons, allegatios of vote rigging and its inability to cntrol either rampant
government corruption or the diabolical security ituation. US and NATO forces are
resented for their intrsiveness, for the bombing of fields, orchard and houses, but most
of all for blunders that have led to civilian deaths. There is also immense suspicion
about where most o the US$56 billion development budget approved by he US
Congress for Afghanitan has gone. Only a fth of this money wa at the disposal of the
Afgha government; the rest was to be used by the US Sate Department, the
Department of Defese and USAID. This all of course plays into the hands of the
Taliba, who can arge that their regime provided, if not freedom, then more ecurity
than Karzai's USbacked administration. They are further prooting what state
infrastructure exists by setting up their own shadow government i parts of the country.
The Uited States and its allies have at times tried to justify the invasion of Afghanistan
by claiming they wated to protect Afghan wome's rights, but the Afghan politician
and wmen's rights activist Malalai Joya has highlighted the fact that many of the
warlors returned to power with Karzai's government have just a unpleasant views on
women as the Taliban. Dust has een thrown ito the eyes f the world by your
governments,' she told the
Indeendnt.
You have not been told te truth. The situation
now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Yur governments have
replaced the fundamentalist rule of he Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of
warlors.' Joya herself has received intimidation and death threats from Afghan MPs
after slamming the Afghan government for including notorious warlords in power.
he question I am surprised no one asks i about men who fought the Soviet
invaders of their land, and in the process lost one million men, but won; why wold they
not ght the Americans? The US gvernment might have conviced their own public
they were the good guys while the Soviets were the bad guys, but the peple of
Afghanistan saw them both as invaders.
Bob Woodward has revealed how Obama -while debating whether to send more
troops o Afghanistan or not after coming to power -always asked the right questions:
what ae we ghting for, what will we achieve and what constitutes victory? The
generals resort to their usual policy of fearmongering and claim that if they don' win in
Afghanistan then they will have to ght Islamic militants on the streets of New York.
Part of the distortion f the truth is that the US are ot ghting freedom ghters but the
Taliban ideology'. These words are very similar to those spoken by the men who
promoted the Vietnam War, talking about the domino effect' -that if they didn't ght
in Vietam, other contries would fall to the communists till they were on America's
doorstep; and later, when Vietnam fell to the communists, 3 millon people had died -
and there was no domino effect.
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he parallels with Vietnam g deeper. The failure of the war in Afghanistan has
led to Pakistan becoming a punchbag for the US, just as Cambdia became oe over
Vietnam. In the socalled safe have' in North Waziristan, the Haqqani Taliban group
viewed by the US as ne of its deadliest threats in te area -elds a maximum of 5,000
men, although the number is probably less than that. Is it plausible that the US, with all
its military might, is losing in Afghanistan thanks to these 5,? Senior US ofcials
push the Pakistan army to do more, blaming Pakistan for their failres in Afghanstan on
the Haqani. It is very important Pakistan doesn't sare Cambodia's fate. If the Pakistan
army ges into North Waziristan, afer the 5,000 militants, what is going to be the fate
of the 350,000 inhabitants of the area? Will they beome collateral damage'?
CIA director Leon Panetta, according to Bob Woodward, also piled the pressure
on Obama, advising him that no democratic president can go against military advice.
Sadly Obama -going against all his better insticts -heeds him rather tha Colin
Powell, who tries to tell him he doesn't always have to listen to the generals. What
makes me feel sorry for Obama is that during this whole debate here was no credible
government in Pakistan to advise him. A sovereig and credible Pakistani govenment
could have helped him nd an exit strategy for Afghanistan, culd have pleged to
prevent alQaeda ghers from using Pakistani soil to launch attacks on the West, could
have facilitated talks, could have payed a major role in bringig the various parties
together. Pakistan, after Afghanistan had the most to lose from a troop surge, yet when
this vital debate was taking place, there was no iput from the akistan government.
Instead, all Zardari was interested i doing was giing Obama whatever advice would
lead to Washington pumping more money into Pakistan to prop up his orrupt
government. The supreme irony was that it was the US who was responsile for
engineering the 2008 elections to get a corrupt and pliant govement to do its bidding.
he current strate can only ncrease radicalization -a dagerous prospet given
that Paistan is a coutry with a fast
growing poplation, a youth bulge and high rates
of unemployment. Now there will be a generation born of anger, an army of youg men
who lost relatives to S drones or Pakistani military operations. And that radicaization
will no just be limited to the poor ad dispossessed. Even for the youth of the rich elite,
Pakistan's abdication of responsibility for its own sovereignty is a searing humiliation.
A CNN poll has revealed that 80 per cent of Pakistanis now view the United Staes as a
bigger security threat to the country than India -no mean achievement by the US,
bearing in mind Pakistan has fought three wars with India. Anger against America's
political coercion and imperial desigs blends with resentment against the breakdown of
traditional societies by Weste cltural forces nto a combustible mix. Fo some
Pakistanis, as with ther Muslims, westernizatin is seen as a destructive force,
provokng a retreat to the security ad certainty of religious codes and traditional ways
of life.
he tragic shoting of the gvernor of Pujab, Salman aseer, in early 2011
showe only too clearly the growng polarization of Pakistani society. Taseer had
attempted to defend a Christian woman sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy
law, and spoke out against it being used to persecute innocent people, both Muslims and
minorities. As a result he was shot dead in broad daylight outside a fashionable caf in
Islamabad by one of is own guards. The war on terror' has divided the country into
those who are proAmerican and antiIslam, and those who are atiAmerican and pro
Islam. efore 9/11 Taseer's remarks recommending a change to he blasphemy law in
order t prevent its misuse might not even have got a mention in the newspapers. At the
worst tey might have roused a few statements by clerics wanting to mobilize support
amongst their constitencies, but in the current polarized climate everyone and anyone
is at risk if they happen to be on he wrong side of the divide. The Taliban labels
anybody who opposes them as proAmerican. Imams of mosques who have condemned
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suicide attacks as beig antiIslamic have been accsed of being American collaborators
and sht or blown p by suicide bombers. Members of the proAmerican Awami
National Party (ANP) that governs Khyber Pakhtukhwa have been repeatedly targeted
by the Taliban for the party's stane against the militants, wh also see Christians,
Shias, Ahmedis (regarded as nonuslims' in Pakistan) and their places of worship as
fair game. On the other side, those f us who have objected to te military operations
and excessive collabration with the United State are labelled Taliban sympathizers.
This means that a meaningful debate on this whole issue of war n terror' will become
more ad more difclt. People are petried of being caught on the wrong side of the
argument.
he other thing Taseer's death has revealed is the erosion f the writ of the state.
His murderer was lioized and showered with rose petals by lawyers when he appeared
in cour. No action was taken against religious leaders who in moques, at rallies and on
television arguably inited murder dring the period of fevered national debate hat led
up to the shooting. Zardari, a close riend of Taseer's, did not even attend his funeral.
Two months later, the minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti was killed by a gunman
outside his mother's house in Islamabad. As the state gets weaker and weaker, different
power layers are jostling to assert themselves, jut as during the decline of the great
Mugha Empire varios warlords and goveors started forming teir own independent
power bases. As the politicians barricade themselves in with ever greater security
details, diverting scarce resources frm the streets f Pakistan, daiy murders in Karachi
and Baluchistan go uchecked, a civil war rages along most of or western border and
crime and corruption surge higher and higher. America frequently invokes fear of the
state cllapsing and Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands, but its
tactics are fuelling polarization, radicalization and chaos, which could lead to exactly the
kind of destabilizatio that it most fears. The weaker the Pakistani state gets, the less it
will be able to contrl extremism. When in 2010 news reports said that senior US
commanders in Afghanistan were pshing to expand Special Operations ground raids
into Paistan's tribal areas to seek ot Afghan Taliban, Anatol Lieven, professor in the
War Studies Department of King's College Londn and a senir fellow of the New
America Foundation in Washington, described it as a lunatic idea'. He wrote in an
article widely reprinted in Pakistan that the one thing that would certainly lead to the
collapse of the Pakistani state and a immense surge in extremist and terrorist srength
would e if the Pakistani Army were to split and parts of it were to mutiny against the
alliance with America'. He goes on to explain that various Pakistani army ofces have
warned him that the entry of US ground forces ino Pakistan in ursuit of the aliban
and alQaeda is by far the most dangerous scenari for both Pakitan-US relatins and
the unity of the Pakistani Army. As ne retired general explained, drone attacks, though
ordinary ofcers and oldiers nd them humiliating, are not a critical issue becase the
Pakistani military cannot do anything about them.' It's also worth bearing in mind that
assassiation attempts against Msharraf and an attack on the Pakistani army
headquarters in Rawalpindi by militants were both inside jobs, whle Taseer's mrder by
one of his own guard sparked fears about possible radicalizatio within the contry's
elite seurity forces.
he discovery f Osama bin Laden's hiding place on 2 May was humiliating for
every Pakistani, but his death was evastating for the Pakistani armed forces. For the
rst time, people opely criticized the army in the media, asking repeatedly: how can we
spend uch a large part of our budget on the army, and yet it ould not protect our
sovereignty? How cold the army nt respond to helicopters yig about, to the sound
of explsions and gunfire going on fr nearly threequarters of an hour, so close o their
academy? No one knew the buildig under attack was Osama bin Laden's then -it
could have been anyoe's -so where was the army? Why was it not at least making the
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effort to protect its citizens, before the true identity of the inhbitant was reealed?
There was a tremendus amount of anger, and my biggest worry remains that if things
continue as they are we could face a rebellion wthin the armys ranks, the ultimate
nightmare situation for Pakistan.
side from the tremendous losses to Pakistan and Afghanistan caued by
Washigton's callous and misguide policies, these cause huge detriment to America's
own interests. This ha been reveale again and again. Most infamously, Faisal Shahzad,
the PakistaniAmerican sentenced for the botche Times Square bombing, cited US
foreign policy as justication during his trial. I want to plead guilty, and I'm going to
plead guilty 100 times over,' he said, because until the hour the US pulls its forces from
Iraq ad Afghanista, and stops te drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in
Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim land, and stops kiling the Muslims, and
stops reporting the Mslims to its government, we will be attackig the US, and I plead
guilty to that.' When asked by the judge about the children he might have killed had his
attack in New York been successful he pointed out that drones in Afghanistan and Iraq
don't see children; hey don't see anybody. They kill wome, children. They kill
everybdy.' Personally, I think the radicalization o Muslims in the West as they watch
the bloodshed and chaos spread by Washington's policies -not just in Pakistan and
Afghaistan, but also in countries like Somalia and Yemen -is a far greater threat to
Wester security.
Most of the struggles against colonialism i the twentieth centu were led by
people who had studied in the West Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru all had the opprtunity
to see Western democratic societie in action and were inspire to campaign for the
same rights for their countrymen. My own awareness of democracy, the rule of law and
the wefare state was awakened when I rst went to England to study. Muslims who
have grown up and been educated in the West will ave a greater awareness of the ways
in which human right laws are broken in the name of the war o terror' than many of
those living in Muslm countries. They will be aware that no civilized law allows
anyone to be judge, jry and executioner, as the CIA is when it res on people with its
drones, eliminating suspects along with their wves, children and neighbous. The
Americans may beliee that terror plots originate i Pakistan, but o blow up civilians in
the Unted States and Europe terrorists need Wesernbased Mulims to carry out the
attacks Unfortunately, the next Faisal Shahzad may succeed.
Pakistan should have remaied neutral. We could have offered to asist the
Americans, but not let our army act as mercenaries. The carnage now going on is
because the army is seen as agents of America, ad they are being squeezed -by the
antiUS forces who see them as puppets of the Americans on one side, and on the other
by the Americans themselves -to carry out more operations against their own people.
With jihad declared against it by the militants, there have been forty major attacks on
army istallations.
he rst thing Washington has to accept is that it must withdraw from
Afghaistan as soon as possible. Wih the death of Osama bin Laden, this is the perfect
time for President Obama to announce victory, and move out, an give peace a chance.
After al, it was only or Osama that the American rst arrived i Afghanistan. This is
the single most impotant step it can take in orde to quell Muslim anger arond the
world, and give the Afghan people a chance of peace and selfgoernment. This would
prevent Pakistan from descending into more violence, but thi has to be managed
properly so as to prevent a bloodbath along the lines of the post
Soviet Afghan chaos.
Obama's bid to turn aound the war with 30,000 additional troops has failed. He allowed
himself to be swayed by generals whose understading of strate is conned to the
battleelds and who cannot fathom Afghanistan. he deadly combination of a war of
resistace against foreign occupation and the religious injunction to protect one's
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freedom means the Americans will ever win. There will never be a shortage of recruits
and peple willing to die for their country. This wa is not about numerical or armament
might. In the words o Pakistani journalist Mir Adan Aziz, Afganistan is a lost duel.
History, geography and culture mae the area a nightmare for any foreign presence
attempting to impose ts will on the ation.'
he urgent need to seek some kind of deal with the Taliban in Afghanisan was
gaining currency in 210 and early 011. There were reports that the United States had
begun direct, secret talks with senor Afghan Taliban leaders n nding a political
settlement; US ally the UK also seems to have bee pushing for a peaceful solution; and
the head of its armed forces, General Sir David Richards, said a defeat of Islamist
militancy in the sense of a clearcut victory' is unecessary and nachievable, and that
it can nly be contaied. Meanwhile, a British parliamentary report warned in March
2011 that the window of opportuniy for talks was closing. The Taliban, for all their
faults, are an Afghan not an international group. Afghans have nt risen up and joined
the international jihad espoused by alQaeda. Aghans have not been found to be
involved in terror attacks or plots in he United States or Europe. hey are also unlikely
to allow a new Taliba regime to operate as it did before or permit alQaeda to exert so
much nuence over their government again. This is backed up by a report by
Kandaharbased reseachers Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn saying Afghan
Taliba leaders would be willing o make a break with alQaeda in order to end
hostilites and could e persuaded to ensure Afghanistan was nt used as a base for
terrorism. The Taliban, therefore, need to be deat with through an Afghan political
system with peace talks and the establishment of a new government of cosensus
negotiated with the assistance of Ira, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia They should also be
given some kind of icentive to isolate alQaeda. At the moment, the US has a totally
confused policy of a ght and talk approach. They want to open dialogue, bt keep
bombig at the same time. Tragically, their approach is never going to work, when so
many civilians are beng treated as aliban ghters by the Americans
-
80 per cent of
those taken as Taliban' are released within two weeks because they are civilians. And
in July 2011 the UN has said there has been the largest number of civilian casualties
since the surge.
Pakistan's posiion is made wrse by its geographical situation: hemmed in from
the souh and east by an unfriendly Idia, bordering an Iran that fears being sandwiched
betwee a proUS Ira and a proUS Afghanistan, and not far from a Russia that doesn't
want the Muslim repblics to feed ff the strife in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The US
will always be worried about a hostie alQaeda. Al the players have a stake there, and
peace will only come when all the players are at the table. And as for what govenment
there should be in Afghanistan? The people of Afghanistan will have to nd a slution
for themselves without outside interference.
Withdrawal frm Afghanistan is essentia for defeating the insurgecy in
Pakistan. As Graham uller, former CIA station chief in Kabul and author of
The Future
of Potil Islm
wrote in the
Hngton Post
in 2009: Only the withdrawal of
American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the rocess of nearfrantic
emotios to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. Pakistan is
experienced in goverance and is well able to deal with its own Islamists and tribalists
under ormal circumstances; until recently, Pakistani Islamists had one of the lowest
rates of electoral success in the Muslim world. But U.S. policies have now driven local
nationalism, xenophbia and Islamism to combined fever ptch. As Washington
demands that Pakista redeem failed American poicies in Afghanistan, Islamabad can
no longer manage its domestic crisis.' Having talked to people lke General Arakzai,
Rustam Shah and Ayaz Wazir (two former Pakistai ambassadors from FATA) , as well
as former political agents for the trial area, my personal estimate is that about 90 per
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cent of the militants in the tribal areas are neither religious extemists nor terrorists.
They ae simply our own tribal people ghting because of army interventions drone
attacks (and their colateral damage') and anger over the US occupation of Afghanistan.
We only need to deal with the remaining 10 per cent. Some of these will be men who
were part of the original jihadi organizations tha once fought the Soviets ad now
consider themselves Taliban. Othes will be members of alQaeda. Some will be
hardcore ideologues who believe in an Islamic emirate and some will be people driven
to extremism because of injustices lie the Lal Masjid bloodbath. The solution des not
lie in more military action, it lies in isolating that 10 per cent. But it can only happen if
the United States withdraws from Afghanistan, o Pakistan pulls out of the war on
terror' and the army withdraws from tribal areas. I have spoken t General Pasha, head
of the SI about this, and he too believes that if we disengage from the US war, start a
dialogue with the tribs, and withdrw troops from the tribal areas, we could eliminate
this 10 per cent in inety days. The moment the US leaves Afghanistan the anti
American feelings that feed into slamic radicaism will disspate. That will free
Pakistan up to be abl to deal with terrorism on its own terms and focus on binging
stakehlders together to agree on hw to bring peace and recociliation to the tribal
areas. But only a credible Pakistani government tht is not perceied to be a US stooge
will be able to conduct a meaningfl dialogue wih insurgents and placate the tribes,
who should be coopted into helping the government tackle the real terrorists. As the
situation changes in Afghanistan, we also have an pportunity now to decide what kind
of coutry we want Pkistan to become.
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Chapter Ten
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Rediscovering Iqba Pakistan's S
y
mbo and a
Tempate for Our Future
ALLAMA IQBAL'S WORDS were a powerful sorce of guidance when Pakistan came
into existence in 1947 and during its early years. Every moning Radio Pakistan
broadcast his prayer fr children tha began: My wish comes to my lips as supplication
-May my life be like a lighted candle,
God!' Iqal's words lef a permanent mprint
on the minds of the children who heard it. Howeve, over time, this prayer ceased to be
broadcast, and today tere are very few children who are familiar with it.
hough Iqbal lved in a historical context that was different from ours in several
ways, what he said remains profoundly relevant to us and to our times. In fact, Iqbal's
message is more relevant and imporant today than that of any other Muslim thiker of
the pas and present nt only because he faced the challenges of bth traditionalism and
moderity fearlessly, but also -and more importantly -because he had a profound
understanding of the integrated vision of the Quran which he made the basis of his
philosophy. This phiosophy provides a comprehensive blueprint for how Muslims
should live in accordance with the highest ideals and best practices of Islam. Its aim is to
change ground realities in the light of the ethical principles of slam. These realities
change with time but the framework remains constant and continues to be a central point
of reference and a guidepost for future generations.
The plce that Iqbal occupies in the earts and minds of Pakistanis is unparalleled, as is
his poetry, even though few people appreciate the range and depth of his knowledge and
creativity, or his philosophical system. Such are the power and charisma of his
imagination and his pen that he is loved by millions who might kow only a few of his
verses but are inspired and moved y them. Without doubt, Iqbal is the most quoted
gure n Pakistan, ad his popular verses and faourite symbols, such as that of the
shahee, are known even to semiliterate Pakistanis. However, his philsophy,
articulated through bth poetry and rose, which sould be taught in every educational
instituton in Pakista, has been virtually eliminated from the crriculum, and only a
small number of students in specialized disciplines have the opportunity to study it.
While some faous verses from Iqbal's poems are oten cited in isolation, the
core message of his poetry, reectig his revolutinary spirit, his intrepid imagination
and his passionate commitment to justice and the dignity of selood, has been excluded
from pblic discourse
Iqbal constantly referred to the Quranic verse, Verily God will not chage the
conditin of a people till they change what is in themselves' (Quran 13: 12). He was
fully aware of the despair and despndency of Mslims who fel powerless to change
their averse circumstances and turned to prayer fo an improvement in their lives. Iqbal
had wrtten much abot the value of prayer but he believed that the way to change one's
destiny was through te developmet of khudi. Iqbal's philosoph, rich as it is in ideas
and cocepts, is fundamentally actonoriented ad its goal was personal and social
transfomation inspired by the Quranic vision embodied in the proclamation, oward
God is your limit' (Qran 53: 42).
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oday when Pakistani youth are living in a society in which there is a gaping
ethical vacuum they are in critical eed of a deep and comprehesive educatio based
upon Iqbal's multifaceted philosohy. Iqbal's work can be a source of profound
guidance to help youg Pakistanis as they seek to understand the nature of their own
identity and their own religion. His powerful words challenge them to become a
shahee which hunts for its food rather than a vulture which pres on the dead:
he ight of bth birds is in the same atmosphere
But the world of the vulture is dierent from the world of the shaheen
o comprehend why Iqbal ha suffered such amazing neglect by the country that
at the ame time hail him as its spiritual' founder one has to nderstand the moral
intellectual social ad political degeneration that has sadly characterized most of
Pakistan's history. Lagely dominated by feudal and other powerfl persons and groups
with vested interests Pakistani society has had very limited opportunity to think or act
freely. Subjected to lng periods of authoritarian rle its spirit has languished and has
lost the will to resist coercion and supression.
Iqbal the undanted thinker who urged the oppressed masses to revolt against all
forms f totalitarianim -religious political culural intellectal economic or any
other -was the vital frce that was needed to free the Indian Muslms from their internal
shackles and external bondage. But his words his voice his message constiuted a
grave threat to those powerwielders in Pakista who wanted to keep the people
subservient so that they would not challenge them or claim their wn rights. To ensure
the fullment of their purposes the had to silence Iqbal's anti authoritarian vice as
much as possible. The relegation f Iqbal's vision and message to obscurity was
therefoe not by accient but by design.
Orphaned by it two founding fathers -Iqbal and Jinnah -at such an early age
and neglected or plundered by succesive leaders Pakistan must trn to Iqbal's writings
to recnstruct its intellectual and ethical foundatin such as hi advice to the youth
about the qualities needed to become a leader:
ead anew the lesson of Truthfulness Justice and Bravery -
To you will be given the task f leading the world
quote this verse to the youth of TehreekeInsaf because truth bravery and
justice are among the most highly valued attributes of a human being.
We need to understand Iqbal's commitment to social justice and the pain he felt
when he looked at the plight of the world's indigent workers. His memorable verse
addresed to God in which he point out the discrepancy between the justice of God and
the unjust plight of those who laboued hard for a meagre living s meant in fact to jolt
the coscience of thoe rich people who exploit the ones who labour for them:
You are Almighy ad Just, but i your world,
Itesely bitter s the life of the poor labourers
It is diicult to nd a poet or thinker ofIqbal's calibre who has championed the cause of
justice for the oppressed and wrnged people of the world as passionatey and
consistently as he di. If we follow Iqbal's teachig we can reverse the growig gap
between the westernized rich and traditional poor that helps fuel fndamentalism.
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The best weapon agaist fundamentalism is enlightened Islam. Faatics on both sides of
the argment need to e told about Islamic history how other religions and other points
of view were tolerated by Islam in the days whe Europe was ruled by bigot and
ignorace. During what was known as the Golden Age of Islam from around the mid
eighth to the midthirteenth century the Muslim wrld which stretched from Iberia and
North Africa across to southwest and central Asia was knwn for its spirit of
intellectual discovery and religious tolerance. Islam never knew the savage of the
Inquisition. The set of legal principles stated or implied in the Quran has a great capacity
for expansion and development as frequently pointed out by Iqbal.
As early as the ninth century AD Muslim scholars were debating the rights of the
child. The sophistication of this debate was such that a scholar before putting frth his
point of view would start by saying It is possible that I may be wrong.' This spirit of
openness was to be expected since freedom of thought is guaranteed by Islam. The
Prophe's (PBUH) coict with the Meccans was ver the right t express his opinion.
When the state of Medina was frmed freedom of speech was considere every
citizen's right. The Prophet (PBUH) once said hat a difference of opinion in his
community was a sig of Allah's grace. It was this freedom of thught and the spirit of
inquiry which created the intellectal atmosphere that led to the blossoming of the
Muslim civilization. For hundreds o years all top scientists were Muslims dominating
the elds of logic metaphysics chemistry algebra astronomy ad medicine. Until the
advent of Islam scientic knowledge amongst the Arabs had been stagnant for
centuries. By the eighth century medical and philosophical texts were translated into
Arabic allowing the Arabs to build on the wisdm of the past and make vast leaps
forward in science. Islamic scholars had a profound effect n European thought
centuries later. By the tenth century everything wrth translating from Ancient Greek
works was available in Arabic. It was also during his period of ultural owering that
Muslim merchants developed modern commercial instruments such as cheques letters
of credt and joint stock companies.
Ibn Sina (980-1027) Ibn Rashid (1126-98) and Al Ghazali (died 1111) were
amongst the Islamic philosophers wo had a huge impact on Eurpean thought. Roger
Bacon one of the greatest names in Western sciece considere Ibn Sina the prince
and leader of philosophy'. Bacon leaned from Arab thinkers about experimental science
and Aristotelian philosophy. He was also a great transmitter of Arab knowledge into the
mainstream of European thought. By the end of the eleventh centry Latin translations
of Arabic works on science began to lter into Eurpe mainly from Muslim Span Iraq
and Siily. Among he centres of European learning that helped diffuse slamic
knowledge throughou the European world was the Arabist schoo at Montpellie in the
south of France. From Montpellier scholars spread in all directios across Europe. The
philosopher Al Ghazali's work had great inuece on both Islamic and European
scholars. His development of Greek philosophies especially Aristotle·s inenced
European philosophers like Thomas Aquinas and S Francis of Assisi. In turn it was the
work of Aquinas that helped spark ff the spirit o inquiry in Europe that woud later
lead to the Reformatin.
According to the historian W. Montgomery Watt:
When one becomes aware of the full extent of Arab experimenting Arab tinking
and Arab writing one sees that without the Arabs European sciene and
philosophy wold not have developed whe they did. The Arabs were no mere
transmitters of Greek thought but genuine bearers who both kept alve the
disciplines they had been taught and extended their range. When about the year
1100 Europeans became seriusly interested in the science and philosophy of
their Saracen eemies these disciplines were at their zenith; and the Europeans
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had to learn al they could frm the Arabs before they themselves could make
further advances.
he quest for knowledge was reected in the libraries that existed in the slamic
cities f Baghdad Damascus and Cordoba. In 1171 when the legendary warrior
Salahuddin entered Baghdad the public library had 150000 volmes. In Cordba Al
Hakim's library had between 40000 and 60000 volumes. At his period in history
the universities in Erope had hardly any access to books. In his book
The Rise of
Humnism in lssil Islm nd th hristin West
the Arabist and Islamicist George
Makdisi traces the origins of humanism the modern system of kowledge imparted in
Wester universities to the early Islamic era. He writes about how from the eighth
century onwards there was an environment of learning in Arab colleges madrassas and
the courts of Iraq Sicily Egypt and Andalusia where disputation dissent and argument
were the order of the day. By the ed of the eleventh century mst Muslim cites had
universities.
The deay and declie in Islamic itellectual thoght according to Iqbal set in ve
hundred years ago when the doors t
hd
a scholarly debate n our religion and its
traditions were closed. The Quraic principles -which for Muslims are eternal
principes -needed constantly to be reinterpreted in light of new knowledge. In his
Lectures on the Recostruction of Religious Thought in Islam Iqbal cites three reasons
for this stagnation. Fist around the tenth century there was conroversy between two
schools of thought -one rationalist and one conservative -about issues such as the
eternity of the Quran. The ruling Islamic dynasty of the time the Abbasids threw their
weight behind the conservatives fearing that unrestrained adherence to a particular type
of rationalism could edanger the stability of Islam as a social polity.
he second reason was the rise of ascetic Susm which grew partly in reaction to
the increasing conservatism of the Islamic establishment. The Sus the mystics of
Sunni Islam wanted t focus more on inner spirituality rather tha a rigidly guarded set
of rules. But according to Iqbal their concentration on otherworldliness ignored Islam's
role as a means of organizing sociey and politics. He complained that ascetic Susm
ended p attracting and nally absoring the best minds in Islam. The Muslim state was
thus let generally in the hands of intellectual medicrities and of the unthinking masses
of Islam who found heir security nly in blindly following the schools' of the great
Islamic jurists such as Abu Hanifa ad Malik Abn nas. Iqbal-pointing to the Quran's
emphasis on deed' -believed it was contrary to he true spirit f Islam to tur away
from the real world as some Sus did. He felt that becoming a hermit or ascetic meant
avoiding the joy and struggle of real life. To those who taught Isla he said:
o teach religin in the world -if this be yor aim
Do ot teach your nation that it should withdraw from the world
he third and probably most decisive factr was the Mngols' destruction in
1258 of Baghdad -the centre of Muslim intellectal life. Had the Mongol hordes not
taken ver swathes o the Muslim world our history might have been very different.
This legendary tribe from Mongolia laid waste to cities and decimated poplations
across Central Asia South Asia and the Middle East. Their merciless sacking of
Baghdad which had at one point been the centre f wealth commerce and learning of
the Islamic world has historically been seen as the death blow fr the Golden Age of
Islam. With the destrction of its faous libraries centuries of learning were lst and
this huge cultural trama inevitably led to greater conservatism as Muslims feared the
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eradication of their civilization. Although the Mongols had by the early forteenth
century converted to Islam their autocratic rule camped down n the capacity of the
ulem
(Muslim legal scholars) for independent jdgement. The gates to ijtihad were
declared closed. Uniy became key dissension discouraged ad foreigners ecame
suspect.
In the eighteenth and ineteenth century when Indian Muslims like us were confronted
with serious external and internal impediments the rallying ry of the mdernist
reformers from Sayid Ahmad Khan to Iqbal was Back to the Quran Forward with
Ijtihad·. Back to the Quran' meant the rediscovery of the fundamental teachigs and
principles of the Quran and Forward with Ijtihad' meant the mental effort made to
form a independent judgement on a legal point so that normative Islamic prnciples
could be applied in modern times. Iqbal was acutely conscious of the stagnaton and
decadece that had sapped the creative energy of Muslim societies. Therefore while
strongly advocating a return to the Quran which he regarded as undamental to Islam
Iqbal aso sought to reinfuse the dyamism of original Islam thrugh ijtihad wich he
regarded as The Priniple of Movement in the Structure of Islam' .
According to Iqbal such was the fear about the futue of Islam that the
conservative thinkers of Islam focused on preserving a uniform social life for the
people by a jealous exclusion of all innovation in the laws of Sharia as expouded by
the early doctors of slam'. He beleved that the ultimate fate of a people des not
depend so much on rganization as on the worth and power of ndividual me. In an
overorganized society the individual is altogether crushed out of existence'. Iqbal felt
that a man lost his sol under the weight of such conformism and that a false reerence
for pas history and its articial resrrection' was no remedy for a people' s decay. He
maintained that the only power that counteracts the forces of decay was freedom of
though the inner impulse' ofIslam and that the only alternative given to us is to tear
off from Islam the hard crust that has immobilized an essentially dynamic outlook on
life and to rediscover the original verities of freedom equality and solidarity with a
view to rebuild our moral social and political ideas out of their riginal simplicity and
universality' .
In the context f ijtihad Iqbal pointed out in his sixth lectue -of his outstanding
Lectures on the Recnstruction of Religious Thought in Islam -that in the modern
period things had chaged and the world of Islam is today confronted and affected by
new forces set free by the extraordinary develoment of human thought in all its
directins'. He went n to make a satement that has an extraordnary signicace and
relevance for us: The claim of the present generaton of Muslim liberals to reiterpret
the fondational legal principles in the light of their own eperience and altered
conditins of moder life is in my opinion perfectly justied The teaching of the
Quran that life is a process of progressive creatin necessitates that each generation
guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors should be permitted to solve its
own prblems.'
Iqbal once wrote that all seach for knowledge is essentially a form of prayer'.
Far from dismissing Western scientic advances he believed we should study them and
incorprate their postive content i our paradigm for a new country that wuld be
informed by Islamic ideals as well as modern knoledge. Instead we allowed Pakistan
to stagate virtually since its inception. The westernized elite who took over from the
departig British coloial rulers had little interest i seeking this fsion of Islami ideals
and scientic progress. Rather they adopted a sysem that allowed them to perpetuate
themselves in power never allowng true demcracy to ouish. Our reactionary
mullahs promoted a medieval attitude to religion that grew ever more distorted as Islam
was hijacked as a political tool.
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Iqbal had stressed the need to use ijtihad with a view to rebuild the law of Sharia
in the light of modern thought and experience'. e had pointed out that just as the
European Renaissance and Reformaion were inspired by the acquisition of knowledge
from the Muslim universities of Spain and the Middle East during the Crusades,
contemporary Muslims should use Western knowledge in their reconstruction f their
own reigious thought.
Like Iqbal, the nineteenthcentury Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdh also
identied excessive conformism' (which sadly exists in the majority of the Muslim
world today) as one of the causes of the decline of the Muslims. He felt that excessive
adherece to the outward aspects of aw led to a hbit of blind imitation
(tq
which
was far from the freedom of true Islam'. And he linked the spread of taqlid to the rise of
Turkish power. The Turks encouraged a slaish acceptance of authority, and
discouraged the free exercise of reason among thse they ruled. Knowledge was their
enemy for it would each their sujects how bad the rulers' conduct was, so they
introdued their supporters into the ranks of the Ulema, to teach the faithful a dull
stagnaton in matters of belief and the acceptance of political autocracy.' It was a
succession of Turkish invaders from the northwes -the Ghaznavids, the Ghorids, the
Timurids and then the Mughals -wo consolidated Islam in South Asia from the mid
tenth century on.
fter the Turks came the British, whose rule also contributed to the spread of
fundamentalism, stoking fears that Western culture was in danger of overwhelming the
Islamic way of life, just as a thousand years ago the Europeans wee similarly thratened
by the rise of Islam Fundamentalism at its outset was a reation to colonialism,
particuarly among the Muslims for whom religion and culture are intertwined. Muslim
reactio to the competition posed by Western powr -often seen as synonymos with
the fores of modernity -has usually followed two patterns. One school of thought
decides the Islamic world must beat the West at its own game, using Western tools to
solve Eastern problems and connng Islam to the private sphere. Hence the Arab
world's various stabs at nationalism and socialism i the twentieth century in reaction to
the spread of nineteenthcentury Eurpean colonialism. The other school recoils, calling
for a rtreat to timehonoured tradtions, a retur to the simplicities of the original
Muslim lifestyle in the desert and an older, purer' form of Islam stripped of the arious
cultura inuences it has acquired in its disseminatin.
In British India these two competing responses emerged afer the 1857 Urising
against British rule and the humiliatin of the last Mughal emperor, whom they dposed
and exiled to Burma. William Dalrymple's
The Ls Mughl
ends with the foundation of
two very different educational establishments. ne is Aligarh Mohamedan Anglo
Oriental College, a bid by the Anglophile Sir Sayid Ahmad Khan to revive the frtunes
of Muslim Indians thrugh Westernstyle education. The other is a madrassa in Deoband
that wnt on to prpagate a narrow version of Islam that rejects all forms of
westerization and still to this day cmpetes in South Asia with the Barelvi movement,
whose eachings are more in line with Su Islam. Dalrymple points out that the Taliban
emerged out of Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan ad Afghanistan As we have seen in
our own time, nothing threatens the liberal and moderate aspect of Islam so much as
aggressive Western intrusion and interference in the East, just as nothing so dramatically
radicalizes the ordinary Muslim and feeds the power of the extremists: the histries of
Islamic fundamentalism and Wester imperialism have, after all, often been closely, and
dangerusly intertwind.'
oday, we nee to reclaim the vision and wisdom of the modernist reformers who
paved the way for the creation of Pakistan. We need to do this because we badly need a
cultura, intellectual nd moral renissance in Pakistan so that we are able to create
societies and commuities that are educated and enlightened, just and compassionate,
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forwardlooking and lifearming. We need to utilize our rational faculties and engage
in scholarly discussio and reectio to nd a soltion to contemporary issues such as
the bleding of the positive aspects f Western culture with Islam. The new renaissance
must also offer an alternative to the Western materialism and consmerism that has been
totally mbibed by our ruling classes and which our country canno afford.
Iqbal and other modernist reformist thinkers had been deeply concerned abut the
reluctace of many uslims to respnd positively to Western cuure in particlar the
rigidity of the mullas whose mindset had been fossilized in medieval times. The
combination of ruling oligarchies and a rigid religius mindset had stopped the forward
movement of rationa academic ad scientic iteraction with the changing world
which would have led to a dynamc Islamic culture. Unfortunately this is why the
concep of ijtihad is so absent not ust in Pakista but in the uslim world a large.
Democracy and freedm of speech have been stied for decades. Moreover edcation
researc and the quest for knowledge are simply nt priorities. That is why the greatest
hope fr a true Islamic renaissance ies with Islamic scholars in the Western countries
who are neither afraid of oppressive Muslim regimes nor of the religious bigots who
claim a monopoly o Islam. While Western coutries forge ahead in every eld of
knowledge the Muslim world seems to have given up and relies on being sponfed
whatever knowledge is passed on by the West.
Iqbal called for Muslims to keep their minds open to reinterpretation of the Quran
and Islamic law so that they remained relevant in a fastchanging world. He was also
strong in his condemation of the mythmaking mullahs' who were not equipped to
answer the questions of the modern Muslims on contemporary issues. e was
apprehensive of their bigotry and inolerance agaist science arts and original thought
and wated to set up a university for ulema and religious scholars o equip them with the
moder tools of knowledge. Iqbal believed that rather than spurning the discoveries of
the modern world as unIslamic' the Muslim world should use the technologial and
scientic discoveries of the West without subordnating itself t Western vales and
culture In one of his erses he also rged Indian Muslims not to imitate the West but to
be creative while using their own resources:
Do ot be beholde to Wester glassmakers -
With the earth ofIdia, make a goblet ad
cup
o revisit what is of enduring value in Iqbal's thinking we need fresh and
original minds capable of combining the aspects of Western democracy that suit us with
our indigenous system of local govenance. For hudreds of years villages in the Indian
subconinent were selfcontained rnning their own schools and councils their health
centre and their system of
justice a system known as
nhyt.
o a certain extent this
still exsts in Pakistan in the tribal areas' jirga system. We need to revive
nhyt
and
jirga systems to liberate our rural areas from the opressive feudal culture and empower
people at the grass rots.
Surely there is much to learn from Western culture most of all its strong
institutions its constant quest for knowledge and the erce potection accorded to
freedom of expressio. This has in urn led to creativity and dynamism. I also eel we
can learn from the way democracy has given freedom to most of the Western world in
sharp contrast to the sham democracies we have exerienced in Pakistan and other parts
of the Muslim world. People are fully aware of ther rights and there is public otcry as
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soon a anyone of them is violated At times, however, the right of an individual can
take precedence over the larger interest of the community, unlike in Eastern scieties
where he community's interest is paramount. However, the foudations of a just and
equitable Islamic society are only to be found in the Quran.
Sadly, more than sixty year ater its birth, neither Iqbal nor Jinnah would
recognize the country Pakistan ha become. Ecnomically ruied by a rulig elite
hungry for money and power, it has become the only nucleararmed Islamic coutry, yet
cannot protect its peole from near daily bombings and is one of only four coutries in
the world that have ever beaten polio. A succesion of military rulers and corrupt
civilian governments has been unable to deliver even the mot basic serices like
healthcare and educaton to the ordiary people in whose name the country was reated.
Although never quite a failed state, Pakistan has become a failing tate.
The Qran asks Muslims to follow the Middle Way', the narrow path that lies between
all posible extremes. Only an informed public is capable of makng informed choices,
and an informed public needs an iformed ulem. In the 1960 a brilliant Pkistani
scholar, Dr Fazlur Rhman, who taught in the US at the University of Chicago, was
invited by President Ayub Khan to et up the Central Institute of Islamic Reseach. Dr
Rahma aimed to recruit the best mids in the country and get them to undertake a study
of the Quran in its hisorical context so that certain verses could nt be misused. He felt
people were being misled by the preachers who wanted a selective Islam to suit their
own inerests and quted isolated verses of the Quran out of conext. Sadly, hi views
clashed with those of the religious traditionalists and not only was he hounded out of
Pakistan but was one f the causes fr the downfall of Ayub Khan
he main difference Islamic sharia has from Western secular society is in the
realm f public morality. This protects our family system, one f Pakistan's greatest
strengths. Indelity is strongly condemned and considered one of the greatest sis, as it
is in all great religions. People who believe in God know that while they can deceive
their spouse, they canot deceive the Almighty. An Islamic society tries to proect the
sanctity of marriage y creating an environment hat affords the least temptation for
people to commit indelity. Secondly, it tries to protect impressionable young people
from public immorality, the same cncept behind the adults only' lm classifcation.
Furthermore, Islam pts huge emphasis on responsibility to the family. According to the
Prophe (PBUH): The best of you is he who is best to his family, and I am the best
among you towards my family.' Today millions of Pakistani men and women are toiling
away at great personal cost to simply feed their family. This is what binds our ociety.
Despite the grinding poverty and injustice that beset many Pakistanis, it is the structure
of the family that proides the net that keeps the social fabric intat. I know of s many
people whose extended family members are all pooling resources o feed other relatives.
With asolutely no scial securi net whatsoever, were it not fo our powerful family
system the country would have descended into blodshed long ago.
So apart from tese vital provisions aimed at protecting the family, a true Islamic
society would be no different from the democrati welfare states of Europe. Human
rights are, ater all, at the centre of the Quran. The right to life, justice, respect, freedom
of speeh and movement, privacy, protection from lander and ridicule, a secure place of
residene and a meas of living are all enshrined in the Quran. Islam gives all the
freedom of a secular society -yet an Islamic state cannot be secular. To understand
secularsm as it exists in the West tday, it is imprtant to remember the evoluion of
Christianity within the Roman Empie. When the Roman Empire became Christian, the
State ad Church had their distinct bundaries. Ove the centuries any other inuences
have shaped modernday secularism But the separation of Churc and State cold not
happen in Islam as it has no concept f a Church.
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s Iqbal stated: Islam was from the very beginning a civil society having
received from the Quran a set of simple legal princples, which like the twelve tables of
the Rmans, carried, as experience subsequently proved, geat potentialities of
expanson and development by interpretation.' Elaborating his pint, Iqbal said, This
dualism (separation o State and Chrch) does not exist in Islam.' He went on to warn
that when a state is gveed withot the moral values that are roted in religin then
naked materialism is likely to replae it -exactly the observatio made by Mohandas
Gandhi when he remarked, Those who say religion has nothing to do with poltics do
not know what religion is.' The two greatest institutional tyrannies of all times, the Nazi
Reich and the Soviet nion, were Gdless constructs.
Islamic culture is rooted in spirituality, while capitalist culture is roted in
materialism. This is ot to say that spirituality in Islam is to the exclusion of wealth
accumlation. On the contrary, it is even encouraged, but it is not an end in itself as it is
in capitalism. For example, it would be necessary fr a humane and truly Islamic society
to sacrice economic growth in order to protect the environment. The welfare f both
the curent and future generations would take precedence over greater material wealth.
True sirituality will always supprt any movement that is struggling to save our
enviroment from human greed. One of the names of the Quran is
i
Furqn
(the
Criterin) precisely because it was meant to enable humanity to make this distinction.
The number of religious fanatics is growing by the day thanks to the war on terror'. As
we saw with the insugency in Swat, the dispossessed with no stake in the system can
become vulnerable to crime and miitant Islam. It is not hard to see why the idealistic
and romantic are drien to take up arms. There are, of course, religious zealots who
through sheer ignorace have decided to enforce their uninformed version o Islam
through the barrel of the gun. They have done tremendous damage to Islam, failing to
understand that the reigion is a battle for conquerig hearts and minds. There are others
who have killed fellow Muslims in the name of their sect. These fndamentalists are not
only atiWest but also virulently against the westernized Pakisani elite, whom they
contemptuously see as toadies to the West. While the masses in Pakistan are imressed
by the remendous technological prgress of the Western world, their understanding of
the Western moral value system maily comes from watching television and they do not
respect what they see. Therefore they are deeply suspicious of any attempt towards
westerization -particularly women's liberation. They don't regard this as women
having the right to fll their potetial but rather as women having the right to be
sexually permissive. Therefore westernized Pakistanis are considered to have loose
morals too. One of the many derogatory things ordinary people say about westernized
couples is that he des not get angry and she has no shame'. It is because of this
attitude that sometimes modernization is resisted because it is perceived to be
westerization. People are also therefore wary of foreign NGOs dealing with women.
he gulf between the different strata of Pakistani society is so great nw that
those a the other end of the extreme are called the liberal fanatics'. To liberal fanatics
moderization means westernizatio and Islam can only impede Pakistan's progress.
Lacking a proper understanding of Islam they see the religion throgh Western ees and
are convinced that it is a retrogressive, primitive creed of ancient desert folk. Sadly, they
are not equipped to hold any dialoge with the religious fanatics because they are not
armed with sufcient knowledge f Islam. For them every slution to Pakistan's
problems is imported. Hence liberal fanatics hae variously advocated Maism, a
radical version of wmen's liberatin, market ecnomics and other Western eliefs.
These people only hae to study the colonial history of the past two centuries to realize
that wherever an alien culture was imposed on a indigenous people it caused mass
upheaval disruption and destruction to their way of life. From the Aborignes of
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Australia to the Indians of the Americas and mst of Africa, the local people fell
betwee two stools in the name of mdernization.
he societies that have been success stories, such as Japa and China, have all
used Western knowledge but deveoped it in the context of their own culture and
enviroment. Pakistani liberal faatics preach secularism, yet they don' fully
understand the evolution of secularism in Europe. Martin Luther's movement was aimed
at freeing religion frm the strangehold of the Catholic Churh, not at abolishing
religio altogether. Ufortunately or liberal fanatcs are bent upon imposing Western
secular values on a country where the vast majority's entire way of life is inueced by
religio. The liberal fanatics have oly one solutin, Hitler's nal solution; they want
the Pakistani army to exterminate the religious fundamentalists. Tey only have to look
at the istory of Iran, Algeria and Egypt to know that whenever fundamentalism is
suppressed it gets vioent. These tw sections of Pakistani socie have become further
polarized with the war on terror' and each tends to dehumanize the other.
If our westernized class started to study Islam, not only wold it be able to project
the dyamic spirit of slam but also help our society ght sectarianism and extremism.
They would be able to help the Western world by articulatng Islamic cncepts
correcty. How can the group that is in the best position to project Islam do so when it
sees Islam through Western eyes? The most damaging aspect of the gulf between the
two sections of our society is that it has stopped the evolution of both religin and
culture in Pakistan. The elite that cosumes most of the country's educational resources
is incapable of providing the intelletual leadership needed to mve forward either the
religio or the culture. Western education simply des not equip them to do so.
here is no cofusion about the role of Islam in Pakistan among ordinary people
who are comfortable with their Islamic heritage and live by their faith. Only in the
minds f the westernized Englishspeaking elite, the inheritors of British colonial rule, is
there a confusion of identity. The seularists in Pakistan, with their scant knowledge of
Islam, believe that an Islamic state persecutes religous minorities They quote the lines
on freedom of worship from Jinnah's famous speech to the Costituent Assembly in
1947 t justify their claim that Pakistan was meant to be a secular state that gave equal
rights to the minorities. Jinnah, however, was simply highlighting the tolerance that
exists i Islam towards nonMuslims when he said You are free you are free t go to
your temples, you are free to go to yur mosques or to any other pace of worship in this
state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, r caste or creed -that has nothing to
do with the business of the State.'
While Islam ad the TwoNation Theory -the ideology on which the split
betwee Pakistan and India was based -remain the bedrock of Pakistan's foundations, it
is clear that religious dogma should not be used to spread prejdice, intolerance and
sectarianism. Unfortuately, though, one of the worst aspects of Muslim religious bigots
is that they preach hatred towards minorities or other Islamic sects, taking Quranic
verses ut of context o justify their actions. They ignore -or are ignorant of the fact -
that the Prophet's (PBUH) life has many examples of tolerance twards other religious
groups. There were icidences of bth Jewish and Christian delegations being allowed
to pray in his mosque.
he Prophet's (PBUH) last sermon encapsulates his visio of universal human
rights.
ll of you come from Adam, and Adam s of dust. Indeed, the Arab is not
superior to the onArab, and the nonArab is not superior to the Arab. Nor is the
fairskinned superior to the darkskinned nor the darkskinned superior to the fair
skinned; superiority comes from piety and the noblest among you is the most
pious Know that all Muslims are brothers unto one another. You are one
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brotherhood And your slaes! See that yu feed them ith such food as you
eat yourselves and clothe them with the stuff that you wear. If they commi a fault
which you are not inclined o forgive, then part with them, for they are the
servants of the ord and are nt to be harshly treated.
It is evident that discrimination on the grounds of religion, race or class is
prohibited by the Quran, which also stresses, There is no compulson in
religio' (Quran 2: 256).
In fact, Islam goes further than many relgions, actually acknowledging the
legitimacy of other faiths. As the religious scholar Karen Armstrog has pointed ut, the
Quran s almost unique in its positie view of other peoples, other religious traditions.
There is nothing like Quranic pluralism in either the Torah or the Gospel The Quran
declares that every peple on the face of the earth has received a divine revelation.' She
has slammed the West's medieval conviction' abut the inherent intolerance of Islam,
arguing that extremism today stems rom intractable political prolems -oil, Palestine,
the occupation of Muslim lands, the prevalence of authoritarian regimes in the Middle
East, ad the West's perceived "doble standards -and not to an ingrained religious
imperaive' .
hrough hundreds of years of Islamic history, nonMuslims played a sigicant
role in Muslim communities: the Rajputs in Mughal India, Christians and Jews in
Muslim Spain and the Greek Orthodox and Jews i the Ottoman Empire. The tolerance
shown to nonMuslims was unknow to religious minorities in the Europe of the Middle
Ages. Yet in the West, Islam is perceived as a religion that encourages aggression
towards others. Even if some try t use Islam to justify violence, the Quran and the
hdith
or sayings, of the Prophet (PUH) do not sanction this behaviour. The Quran -
in no ncertain terms -prohibits te desecration of houses of worship, suicide and
murder. According to journalist an historian Paul Johnson, 15 million peope were
killed by state violence in the twenteth century. uslim countries had an insigicant
share i this slaughter, never witnessed before i the history of humanity. Te two
greates butchers of te twentieth century were brn Christians; Hitler was brn and
brough up a Roman Catholic and Stalin was once a Russian Orthdox apprentice monk.
It is as ridiculous to blame Christiaity for their deeds as it is to blame Islam or any
inhuman behaviour by a Muslim.
Jinnah's speech to the count's economists at the State ank on 1 July 1948
underlied the fact that Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were
1,300 ears ago. He said: Islam ad its idealism have taught emocracy, Islam has
taught equality, justice and fair play to everybody. What reason s there for anone to
fear democracy, equality, freedom on the highest sandard of integrity and on the basis
of fair play and justice for everybody?' This would be in line with Iqbal's siritual
democracy' where peple would be free from oppression and where no policies could be
made that did not make people the main focus. This is what is meant when Allah says in
the Quran to hold on to the rope of the people'. I am convinced that Pakistan has lost its
way because there has been no serios attempt to translate this vision into practice.
The Quran lays great emphasis on both justice and education, yet in both these
areas te Islamic Republic of Pakistan has sorely failed. Our failure in each f these
areas has fed into the other. Our edcation system breeds injustice. Our unjust society
neglects education for the masses. At the core of an Islamic state is the principle of
justice. That is why I named my party
TehreekeIns
Movement for Justice. The
Quran says,
'
ye who believe, stand out rmly for justice, as witesses to God, even as
against yourselves o your parents, or your kin and whether it be against rich or
poor' (Quran 2: 135). eing fair and just was considered one of the greatest vitues in
the religion. Every human being was supposed to be equal in frot of the law. Tis was
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a revoltionary concet in the Prophet's (PBUH) day because the administration oflaws
withou discriminatio on grounds f race, colour and language was not known before
the advent of Islam.
Initially envisaged by Iqbal ad Jinnah as a emocratic coutry in which people -
regardless of race, trie, religion or sect -would live in peace ad harmony free from
exploitation and disrimination, Pakistan is nw a deeply divided natio. The
concenration of power at the centre has negated the spirit of federalism with Pashtuns,
Baluchis, Sindhis, Kashmiris and Mohajirs resentful of Punjabi hegemony. A sense of
deprivation and marginalization right from the country's beginning led to the loss of
East Pakistan and prevented the formation of a national identity strong enough to bind
our new nation togeher. Meanwhile, the elite has looted the country's riches and
squandered its resources and the poor have lived in deprivatin and hardship. The
majority of the country is deprived of access to education, healhcare and a free and
efciet judicial system.
Two of the most corrupt gvernment departments are the police and lower
judiciay. The tile case against Jemima was an example of how our judiciary is uable to
protect citizens from state tyranny. nd as my time in detention taught me, mos of the
inmates of our dirty, vercrowded, nderfunded jails are poor peple who did nt have
the means to buy themselves a fair trial et there was no concept of detentio in the
Islamic justice system except in rare cases). The rich can buy temselves out of any
legal trouble. In the rural areas poor people are harassed in every way. Therefore the
poor vte not for the man who is clean and honest, ut for the one who can protet them
from the powerful. Te party in power has the entire state machinery at its disposal to
try and eliminate the pposition. Hece without an independent jdiciary we will never
have real democracy. The great idea where safeguards in the law were meant to protect
the inocent has bee perverted in Pakistan to prtect powerful criminals. Whenever
there is talk of reform, we are told that the government has no money either o give
adequate salaries or modernize the wo departments. We do not have the resources to
pay the judges adequately or build more courts to cater for our expanding population. I
feel that, in rural areas at least, one thing that would help would be a return of the village
councils (panchayats and jirgas) that dispensed justice so successfully to the peple of
the subontinent for centuries. Let the village elders (selected throgh village consensus)
adjudicate petty crime and land disputes and award punishments in the traditional way,
with the victim compensated, rather than the culprit jailed.
Pakistan's feudal system has cursed us with a grossly unfair social system in parts
of the country. There are horrendous stories of exploitation, especially of women. In the
feudal areas the poweful treat the wmen from por families as their property ad their
menfol are too powerless to do anthing about it During the 210 oods there were
reports that big landlords in south Punjab and Sindh diverted the ood waters and
breached embankments in order to save their ow land, immune to the damage and
sufferig this caused many ordinay people. The attitude of he feudal an other
powerful groups that they are above the law fuels corruption. This is one of the reasons
Pakistan has such an enormous rich-poor divide.
While our elite have private jets, security cavalcades and numerous apartments
and mansions in swaky locations around the globe, more than half the country suffers
from what the UNP (United Nations Development Programme) calls multi
dimensional deprivation' -lack of access to proper education, health facilities and a
decent standard of living. Instead of ollowing the example of the Holy Prophet (BUH)
and his initial successors, all of whom lived with simplicity, Pakstani politicias have
always wanted to set themselves up like Mughal emperors. In cntrast, in the K the
tone is set by the simplicity of the prime minister's Downing Street residence. Why
should Pakistan's politicians be alowed to stash so many of their assets abroad?
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Especilly when they have no know source of income outside the country. What kind
of leader needs an insurance policy like that? I am the only politcal leader to have all
my assets declared i my own name, and all of them in Pakistan; and most of my
earnings came from playing professional cricket aroad. People will pay taxes if they
felt their hardearned money was not being wasted on the samelessly luurious
lifestyles of our rules or siphoned off out of the country. Croks like this across
developing countries loot and plunder while in power and prepare for their retirement in
Wester cities and resorts with bulging Swiss bak accounts. There should n bank
secrecy laws for thse thirdworld politicians, ureaucrats ad generals who are
prosected on corrupion charges. And they shoud be immediately extradited to the
country they have pundered. This would be the greatest gift of the West to the
developing world; thi would help the impoverished masses much more than either aid
or loan.
Our economy is lled with ijustices too. First, our ruling elite has been totally
inhuman and immoral in colluding with the IMF, crushing the por to service our debts.
In each budget the voiceless majorit is burdened with indirect taxes, which hit te poor
disproportionately. Of course it woud be far too mch to ask the rich to pay diret taxes
so instead we penalize the poor. When there is no reaction from them, emboldeed, the
government increases their load each year. The peple were neither consulted when the
loans were taken nor do they know ow the loans were spent. There has never been an
audit o where the lons disappeared to. Between 2008 and 2011 our debt has doubled
from 5 trillion rupees to 10 trillion from US$59 billion to US$120 billion). About 65
per cent of all tax collected goes int debt repayment. Pakistan spends more tha 60 per
cent of its national budget each year on defence and servicing its debt while 1.5 per cent
goes o education, ad only 0.5 per cent on health. In addition, the country has lost
about 256 billion rupees in loans to the rich and powerful that have been written off.
Meanwhile, crippling ination -aggravated by Islmabad's habit of borrowing from its
own State Bank -ad rising utility and fuel bill have meant hat the salaried class
cannot survive withot taking bribes. As corruptio in the bureauracy rises, the life of
the citizens becomes more and moe unbearable. And policy implementation by the
government becomes yet more difcult with such a corrupt civil service.
his is not jus about economics, but about the nation's elfesteem. Hw can
Pakistanis ever be encouraged to achieve their potetial while we remain a cowed nation
that canot operate without international aid? In cricket I discoered a team tat has
selfesteem and belief in itself will play way beyond its capabilities and can eve thrash
a more talented team. The tragedy f Pakistan is that we have become accustomed to
these crutches from the US and multilateral and bilateral lenders. Not only has it
destroyed our selfbelief but we hae never learned to live withn our means nd our
corrupt and incompetent ruling elite are bailed out time and time again. Pakistans $167
billion economy was hit badly by the 2010 oods the worst in its history. The Asian
Development Bank ad World Bank put the damage at about $10 billion. As usual
rather than relying on the skills and esilience of it own people, the government -as it
did after the 2005 earthquake -immediately turned to the rest of the world with its
begging bowl. The fact that the interational commnity was reluctant to donate to ood
relief in 2010 but that somehow the country has soldiered n demonstrates that
Pakistan's recovery was in the end mainly due to the hard work, perseverance and
generoity of the Pakstani people. For example, i 2010 I headed a campaign to raise
funds for the ood vctims, and in one month colected 2 billion rupees. Everyone I
knew cntributed for the ood victims, such was the spirit amongst the people.
By restoring the trust of the eople in public institutions, we can harnes their
potential and mobilize them for a better tomorrow. n the meantime, our rich agriultural
land, or enormous mineral wealth (onsisting of billions of dollars of copper ad gold
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reserves, ten different types of marble, highest quality granite, and emerald deposits in
Swat), newfound gas reserves in Kohat, our six million overseas community (whose
annual income is equal to that of 18 million Pakisanis, a huge resource for investment
if we tapped into it) and our huge youthful population go to waste. One of the often
mentioed ironies of Pakistan is that it was founded as a homeland for the
subconinent's Muslims, yet every ear thousands of Pakistanis go abroad in a bid to
build a better life. The greatest asset of a nation is its people but here the rich get US
green cards or Canadian passports and the poor g to the Gulf to toil on construction
sites. Every year my cancer hospital loses about a third of its nurses to the Gulf
countries. We cannot ope to compee with the salaries they are oered there.
Yet how can we harness our ountry's potetial when we ave one of the worst
education systems in the world? The sad thing is the British, when they departed, had
left behind quality unversities; whe I was growing up, students rom the Midde East,
and mch further aeld, used to come and study at our universities. Princes from
Malaysia would come and study alongside us a Aitchison Cllege. Unfortnately,
successive governmets have allowed our educatin system to decline. Many analysts
point to the potentally destabilizing factor of millions of young, uneducated,
unemployable people in a country of everdecreasing resources. Half of Pakistan is
under twenty and twothirds of its ppulation is beow the age of thirty. The population
has trebled in less than half a centry. It is forecast to grow by around 85 million in
twenty years, which -as a report on the youth of Pakistan commissioned by the British
Council points out -is roughly the equivalent of e cities the size of Karachi. We have
a small window of time to turn what could be Pakistan's downfall into its redemption.
An army of disenfranhised and angry people cometing for dwidling resources could
instead be an energetic labour force and a strong domestic market of ptential
consumers. But Pakistan has spent less of its resources on its education tha many
poorer countries. Only half of its children go to primary school while a quarter attend
secondary school and a mere 5 per cent receive higher education.
Not only has Pakistan consisently failed to invest enough money in edcation,
but it failed right at the outset by not integrating the education system after
indepedence. There are effectively three types o education in our country -private
Englishmedium, Urdumedium schools and madrassas. Each of these operates in
entirely different ways and produces an entirely different student. While the tplevel
Englishmedium schols are maintaining their standards by lining their syllabus to
English or American curricula, the rdumedium schooling system has collapsed after
decades of being starved of government attention and funds. N longer can the Urdu
schools produce students that can cmpete with thse from the English ones. (Our best
intellectuals until the seventies came from the government schoos.) Then there are the
madrassas; some of these, it has t be said, do provide a quality education and get
excellet results, drawing children from the middle classes whse parents want their
childre to have a solid religious base. However, they mainly prduce students trained
to work in madrassas or mosques bt ignorant of te modern world, sidelined from the
mainstream econom and susceptible to the kind of idelo that promotes
sectarianism. Poor parents often send their children to madrassas because not only is the
education free, but often board and ldging are proided.
With the collapse of the state education system, private schools have become a
boomig business. Al the country's rich and powerful send their children to private
Englishmedium schools, but even n rural areas, poor families are dedicating a large
portion of their income to educating their children. This demonstrates that many parents
-whatever their economic background -fully understand the importance of edcation.
Despite various repots and white papers over the years whic have recommended
implementing one scool system throughout the country, this was never allowed to
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happen partly becaue the elite wated to maintain the privileged position in society
that this unfair system gave them. The nationalization of the education sector in the
1970s is also partly t blame for the dire situation. Even Prime Minister Y ousaf Raza
Gilani as admitted that the state seizure of Pakistan's schools by Zulkar Ali Bhutto's
PPP government in 172 was wrong Making teachers public serants allowed plitics
and the corruption that inevitably seems to go wth it in Pakistan -to seep into the
teaching profession. Teachers no lnger needed to be loyal to a school because the
school itself no longer had the power to re and hire staff. Teachers with political
connecions could get themselves transferred to a better postig if they wated to.
Placing teachers became a system f patronage with politicians rewarding supporters
with teaching jobs regardless of their qualications
All over Pakistan there is the phenomeno of ghost schools' where teachers
collect their wages but fail to turn up. Sabiha Mansoor dean of Pkistan's Beaconhouse
National University and a former fellow at the Woodrow Wilso International Center
for Scholars in Washington DC has written abot how it all went wrong: Bhutto's
nationalization of schools created a bureaucratic behemoth. The lumbering giat grew
larger and presented more opportuities for corrption in the decades that followed.
Today Pakistan has one of the highest public secto nonteachingtoteaching sta ratios
in the world. State control also meant that the chaacter of schols would change with
the character of the regime in power.
his educational crisis is one of the reasns I founded Namal Univesity in
Mianwali. It is Pakistan' s only privatesector university in a rural area. I rst ad the
idea fo it because I was dismayed t the effects of unemploymet in my constituency.
Some illages had a real problem because jobless young men had turned to drgs and
crime. So I decided I would set up a technical college. About the same time the UK's
Univerity of Bradford offered me the position of chancellor so I thought thi was a
great oportunity to leverage that ad collaborate with them on a Pakistani university.
When
met the local to discuss the idea they wee so generous in offering their land
that my plans expanded. Why just have one small college? I wated a green ad self
sustainable knowledge city a series f academic intitutions an Oxford of Pakistan. The
rst construction phae is complete and the rst batch of students started in 2007 and
will be graduating with a University of Bradford degree in 2012. There is such a skills
shortage in the area they
wl
be immediately empoyable. Eventally at this beautiful
site next to Namal Lake I envisage a technology park and commercial areas. In the
mountains behind the college there i a resort built by the British where I would love to
build a summer retreat for the students. The only people to have opposed the project
were the local politicians who tried to create as many hurdles as possible. As soon as I
presented the plan te governmen started building a college 10 kilometres away.
Despite spending three times more n it than I have on Namal niversity it i still a
shell.
he political elite have no interest in proiding educatin for the mases or
changig the status quo. Yet this threetier system has had farreaching repercussons for
our society widening the gap between the small but auent weternized elite and the
masses and feeding fundamentalim. If anyone read the English newspapers and
compared the content with those of the mass Urdu newspapers it would seem that they
belonged to two different countries. Every day there is some article in an Englis paper
ridiculing or criticizig some local custom yet it makes no difference to the masses
because only a small percentage of the population reads them. Mot of the studets from
the top Englishmedim schools become aliens i their own country and struggle to
communicate with the Pakistani mases. When we hired graduates from the top business
college in Lahore for the cancer hspital's marketing department I found they had
problems dealing with our main doors the tradig communi in Lahore. While the
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traders could barely speak Urdu ther native tongue being Punjabi our marketing team
would onverse with them in broke Urdu with plenty of Englis words throw in. It
really as a pathetic sight because or top business school had prepared these graduates
for jobs either in multinationals or broad. On the other hand stdents coming out of
Urdumedium schools and madrassas have little uderstanding of Western cultre and
resent the elite. Some have been educated to cndemn everything Western as un
Islamic.
As much of the Mddle East strggles to nd its way in the next chapter of
decoloialization breaking free from the dictators that have held power since
indepedence Pakistan too stands poised for change. Like the Middle East it lies
betwee the status qu -a small elite hogging the resources -and the antistatus quo a
younger generation that desires a paticipatory democracy. In may ways Pakisan has
many advantages. While it has suffered more than three decades f dictatorship it also
has experience dealig with the grwing pains of a newly democratic nation. It has
political parties with decades of experience a lagely free media and the space for
dissent that was long denied many other Muslim cuntries. The people's creativity and
initiatie have not been suppressed by a police state or the personality cult of any
omniptent dictator. There is still a healthy irreverence towards the powerful. Hwever
Pakistan does have to make sense of the many and sometimes conicting ideologies that
have been thrown at it. It does have to make peace with the complexities of its ethnic
mix and the tensions inherent in its geographical ad cultural loction at the crossroads
betwee South and Central Asia and the Middle East. That locatin should of course be
an ecoomic advantage rather than source of neverending geopolitical troubles. I can
see tha young people are civicminded if deeply disillusioned ith Pakistani politics
and national institutions like the police. The participation of thousands of young people
in the lawyers' movement that resored the chief justice of Pakistan in the face of
formidable oppositio in 2010 preceded the rights movement in the Middle East.
Though the antistatusquo wave known as the lawyers' mvement for genuine
democracy was hijacked it remains simmering beeath the surface; I am convinced the
momet the next elections are anounced a sft revolution' will explode on our
political horizon and sweep away the corrupt status quo from Pakistan once and or all.
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Epiogue
Ay t 'irelhooti uss rizq sy mt hhi
is riz sy ti ho rwz min kothi
o
heaenly bird, death is better than those meas of livelihood,
Which make you sluggish in your soaring ight
Allama Muhammad Iqbal
ON 2 MAY, travelling to Sukkur frm Karachi early in the mornng, I heard the news:
US na commandos had killed Osama bin Laden n a helicopter raid in Abbottabad. It
was bad enough that the world's mot wanted man was not found in some cave but in a
city ony 50 kilometres from Islamabad, and a mile from Pakistan's Military Academy.
What made it worse as that the news was broken to us Pakistanis, and the rest of the
world, y President Oama.
It was several hours later when a statement came from our govenment
congratulating the US and taking credit for providing the US wih all the information
about Osama's location. This begged the obvious qestion for all Pakistanis: if we knew
about his whereabout, then why did we not capture him ourselve? The media i India
and the rest of the wrld went wild, blaming Pakistan's SI (in other words, the army)
for haing kept Osama in a safe house for the past six years. The foreign media
managed to nd me i Sindh; I had o clue what to say, hoping that the civilian and the
military leadership wuld provide us with answers. But rather tha provide any aswers,
our leaders added to our embarrassment by constantly changing their statements.
hree days later, the army chief denied all knowledge of the operatin and
announced that any sch violation of our sovereigty would not be tolerated again. A
week later the PM only added to the confusion when he nally gave a statement,
suggesting a matching response' to any attack aganst Pakistan' strategic assets'. For
Pakistanis, especially those living abroad, this was one of the most humiliatig and
painful times. The CI chief Panetta further rubbed salt in our wonds by bluntly saying
that the Pakistan government was eiter incompetet or complicit.
Ours is a country that has fought the US's ar for the last eight years when we
had nohing to do with 9/11. Pakistan has over 34,000 people ead (including 6,000
soldier), has lost $68 billion (while the total aid cming into the country amounted to
$20 bilion) and has oer half a millin people from our tribal areas internally displaced,
and wih 50 per cent facing unprecedented poverty (while 140,00 Pakistani soldiers
were deployed all alog our border). It is probably the only time i history that a ountry
has kept getting bombed, through drne attacks, by its ally. A US oldier in Afghanistan
costs the US $1 millin per year whilst a Pakistani soldier costs a mere $900 to the US.
Yet here we were, emarrassed and humiliated.
Now there was a sense of foreboding that the US wuld push its puppet
government in Islamaad to do more', i.e. conduc more operatins in our triba areas,
and specically in Nrth Waziristan. All Pakistani knew that the backlash from these
operatins would be felt in our urban centres with more suicide attacks; alQaeda and
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the Taliban had already announced that they woul attack our goernment and army to
avenge Osama because they had collaborated in his killing.
And sure enough the month of May saw a series of suicide attacks aganst the
Pakistan security forces the worst being on the naval headquarters in Karachi and on an
army camp in Khyber Pakhtunkha where a hundred soldiers died. We ae in a
nutcracker situation with extremists attacking s from withi while the US puts
pressure on the army to conduct more operations. Worse -if any international terrorism
takes pace especially in the US Pakistan could be in real danger of being bombed.
I feel that 2 May could be a historical crossroads for Pakistan. Everone is
beginning to think that unless we change the way our country has been run so far -we
are doomed.
he ruling elite has been completely expose. General Ziauddin Butt who served
as the head of the SI under Musharraf stated on 30 May that General Musharraf had
kept Osama in the safe house in Abbottabad to mil the US for dollars. Even if this is a
false allegation one thing is for certain: our ruling elite took us ino this war with a web
of lies and deceit for only one reaso -US dollars. And whilst this aid' has broght the
country to its knees the ruling elite has never had it so good. Neither the people of
Pakistan nor the rest of the world trusts this elite any more. The US openly accuses
Pakistan of playing a double game' .
he greatest danger we face today is that if e keep pursuig the current strategy
of takig aid from the US and bombing our own people we coul be pushing or army
towards rebellion. After 2 May the army faced unprecedented criticism from within the
country as well as from the West. Polls show that 80 per cent of Pakistan's people
consider the US to be an enemy (because they believe that the US is not ghting a war
against terror but against Islam). The same spread of opinion must exist witin the
Pakistan armed forces -the fact that only a few instances of terrorism have come from
within he army so far is due to the excellent discipine that exists in the institution.
here is a feeling of humiliation within the army similar to that felt ater the
surrender of 90000 soldiers in East Pakistan in 1971. The policy of making our army
kill its own people while the ruling elite rake in dollars is no longer feasible. It is only a
matter of time before serious unrest within the army could throw the country ino total
chaos. The regular reelations in the WikiLeaks cables showing the ruling elite to be
twofaced and totall subservient to the US embassy in Islamabad have further
accelerated the movement for change.
A country that begs and borrows for its survival had to face such humiliation
sooner or later. The way forward has to be for this puppet government to resign as it has
failed on every front. Then under the auspices of the Supreme Court free and fair
electios should be held. Only free and fair electios will bring i a credible soereign
government that represents the aspirations of the people of Pakistan.
Pakistan should disengage from this insane and immoral war. It should
immedately open a ialogue with te various militant groups as the US has done in
Afghanistan and set a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops fom the tribal areas. A
credible Pakistan government can play a role in helping the US make an ext from
Afghanistan. The key to winning against terrorism is winning the hearts and minds of
the people; if the communi from which the terrorist is operating onsiders the militants
terrorists the war is going to be won. If they consider them freedom ghters history
tells us it cannot be won.
his new govenment should immediately thank the US for all the aid gven so
far and say No more.' It should also say goodbye to the IMF oce and for all as the
IMF's conditionality enriches the rich and impoverishes the poor Without foreign aid
the goernment will e forced to balance its reveues and expediture which would
lead to the long overue reforms that our country so desperately needs to survie. The
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government will have to lead by example; the prime minister, the cabinet and the entire
parliament should delare their incomes and assets, and bring -for the rst time -the
rich ad powerful under the tax et. (It is worth noting that, before the French
Revolution, the French nobility was exempt from taxes.) A massive austerity campaign
would build the taxpayers' condece by reassurng them that the governmet cares
about their taxes and is accountable to them. Pakstan is a country which, per capita,
gives the highest amont in charity (I am one of the biggest collectors of donations) and
paradoically pays the least amount in taxes. Our tax revenue is 9 per cent of our DP,
amongst the lowest i the world. The reason is tha not only do the ruling elite ot pay
taxes, but a large part of the people's taxes disappears through corruption, while the
people see no returns for this taxation. Hard wor and honesty need to be rewarded
rather than penalized.
We need surgical reforms in our governance system to tacke corruption, improve
the polce and lower jdiciary, develp an effective local government system an create
an environment which would invite investment from overseas Pakistanis -our iggest
asset. We face an emergency in our education system; not only must it be radically
reformed but funding must be increased threefold.
We need to hae a new relatinship with our tribal areas, where the lives of six
million proud and honourable people have been devastated. There will have to be a
South fricanstyle truth and recociliation' process, involving not only people from
within ur tribal areas who had take up arms against our army, bt also the old militant
groups created during the days whe our ruling elie were making dollars from he US
sponsored jihad. All militant groups within the country, including the private guards of
politicians, should be disbanded, and the country deweaponized.
Our foreign policy has to be sovereign and needs to be reviewed with all our
neighburs -especialy India. All ur disputes with India should be settled trough
political dialogue, and the activities of the intelligence agencies -of both coutries -
must be curtailed. Ony a credible ad sovereign gvernment can guarantee the S that
there will be no terrorism in the future from Pakistan's soil. The S should be made to
understand that it is n their interests to back a sovereign demcratic govement in
Pakistan. The policy f planting pliat puppets has failed in Pakisan, just as it is failing
across the entire Middle East, as shown by the Arab Spring'. To persist with this policy
will ony increase antiAmericanism which would elp the terrorists. Had Obama stood
with Hsni Mubarak, the Egyptians in the street wuld now be chanting antiAmerican
slogans (as happened when the USbacked the Shah of Iran ad opposed a popular
democratic movement).
he threat to the universe is not from Islam or any great religion but from naked
materialism. In the ame of protecting our interests', the pwerful have always
plundered the resources of the weak. The hope of saving our planet lies in collabration,
rather than competitin, amongst al the great religions of the world -along with the
enviromental movements that ae ghting against limitless consumptin and
enviromental degradation. Islam urges its followers to take care f the environment, to
step lightly on this earth'. As Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said: ive in the world as if
you are living for a thousand years, and live for the next world as if you will die
tomorrw.'
Finally, only a redible goverment can save and strengthe the Pakistan army by
making sure that it remains within is constitutional role. According to WikiLeaks, our
former nance minister, Shaukat Tarin, asked the S ambassado Anne Pattersn how
much aid was being given to the Pakistan army. Never again shold such a situation be
allowed to arise. Neither should our army chief ever be allowed to talk directly to the
US or any other government. The example for Pakistan is that of Turkey, where the
Army -which kept destabilizing democratic goverments -had a constitutional role to
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uphold its secular idelogy. It took a credible leader of the stature of Erdogan whose
dynamic leadership ad great moral authority has put the army in its rightful plae and
taken urkey towards a genuine democracy. The reason Erdogan could do this was
because of his brilliant performance in tripling Turkey's per capita income to $10000 a
year and registering the secondhighest growth rate ater China.
We have no other choice: in oder to survive we have to make Pakistan a genuine
democracy as envisaged by our great leader Muhammad Ali Jinna.
Some seven years ago when my party was down in the dumps and had hit rock
bottom myod and most loyal friend Goldie (Omar Farooq) and I called o Mian
Bashir who was not feeling well. The party was ging through its most difcult phase;
we wee barely able to keep our heads above water and ghting for our srvival.
Uncharacteristically oldie was beginning to lose hope and he asked Mian Bashir:
When will our party ome into power?' Mian Bashir closed his eyes and meditated for
about ve minutes then opened them and looked a me as he said when I was ready to
take o the responsibility. When he said that it ccurred to me that I wasn't ready.
Fiteen years after forming the party I feel that m party and I are not only ready but
that mie is the only party that can get Pakistan out of its current desperate crisis. After
fourtee years of the most difcult struggle in my life my party is nally taking off
spreading like wildre across the country so that oday it is the first choice of 70 per
cent of Pakistanis under the age of thirty. This is backed up in two recent polls. YouGov
recorded 61 per cent f respondents favouring my party and another poll conducted by
the US Pew Research Centre had my party rated by 68 per cet as favourable' an
increase of over 16 per cent since last year. For the rst time I feel TehreekeInsaf is
the idea whose time has come.
Islamabad, une
2011
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A momet offamily pride: my gadfather, Ahmad Hasa Kha
secnd fm
right
hostig Jiah i Juluder, Idia, 1946.
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With my gradmother, who lived to be oe hudred, Lahore, 1982.
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With my mother ad father i Lahoe.
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With
my
sister Rubia, aged oe ad a half, Lahore, 1958.
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With
my
sisters Noree ad Rubia, Lahore.
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My family home i Zama Park, Lahoe.
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A drawig of Allama Muhammad Iqbal whose words costatly ispre me.
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Nehru
Jef
ad Jiah
righ
sit o either side of Lord Moutbatte ad his
coucillor Lord Ismay, discussig the British exit from Idia ad the partitio of
the subcotiet ito two separate atios.
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Partitio was a massive exercise huma misey', with thousads dyig o both
sides. Here packed trais are trasportig Muslims orth to Pakista.
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Durig my youth the smoulderig tesio with Idia over Kashmir occasioally
burst to ope war This Idiajeep was recovered just outsde Lahore after I'd
bee eacuated from the city eve though -aged thirtee -I'd bee ready to ght.
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Pakista's leaders: Presidet Ayub Kha (1958-69)
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Pakista's leaders: Presidet Yahya Kha (1969-1)
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Pakista's leaders: Presidet Zia (198-88), who had overthrow the civilia
leadership of Zulkar Ali Bhutto.
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Pakista's leaders: Presidet Zulkar Ali Bhutto (1971-3)
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Afgha refugees escapig the ghig i their coutry i 1983, durig the years of
occupatio by Soviet forces. Pakista provided a home for them.
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With Sir Jimmy Goldsmith ad my fried ad host Fareedulah Kha, former
seator, who was the Malik of his Waziri cla i South Wazirista. He was
assassiated by the Taliba i 2005.
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The Huza valley, a stuigly beautiful place far to the orth of the coutry. I
always felt at peace i the moutais.
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The tribal areas o Pakista's orther border are places where I always felt
welcomed. Everyoe was armed -eve the youg boys.
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AHSON OEG (L) CRIKT
T
Aitchiso College cricket team i 1964. I'm seated secod from the le.
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Playig cricket for Pakista at Lord's i 1971; I am itroduced to Her Maes the
Quee.
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Captai of the team i Oxord i 194.
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Bowlig for Pakista agaist Eglad Edgbasto 1982.
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At Lord's i 198 for a Rest of the World XI agaist Eglad.
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Aer some testig games, durig which eve Pakistais doubted we could wi,
Pakista triumphed at the 1992 World Cup i Australia. I played the whole
touramet with a ruptured cartiage i my shoulder.
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Aer some testig games, durig which eve Pakistais doubted we could wi,
Pakista triumphed at the 1992 World Cup i Australia. I played the whole
touramet with a ruptured cartilage i my shoulder.
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Aer some testig games, during which eve Pakistais doubted we could wi,
Pakista triumphed at the 1992 World Cup i Australia. I played the whole
touramet with a ruptured cartilage i my shoulder.
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Nawaz Sharif, twice prime miiser of Pakista, pictured here i he 1990 electio
campaig, which he wo.
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Beazir Bhutto, also twice prime miister of Pakista. She retured to the coutry,
assured of her safety, but was assassiated i 2007. I'd kow her sice we were
together at Oxford Uiversity.
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Wit Presidet Pervez Musarraf i 2002 we e visited te Saukat Kaum
Memorial Hospita before our partig of te ways.
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Aer Friday prayers at the Badshah Mosque, Lahore, 2003.
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Prayig i the mosque at the Cacer Hospital built i my mother's ame, Lahore,
1994.
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Campaigig i the electios i 996 ad 199 as my party gets o the groud.
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Campaigig i the electios i 996 ad 199 as my party gets o the groud.
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Addressig a electio rally i 2002. Over the years my party has grow i
Pakista.
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I 2009 a rally was held whe I was baed from yig ito Karachi from Lahore.
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I Eglad my wife Jemima ad her mother Lady Aabel Goldsmith, alog with
my so Kasim, had campaiged for my release.
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Release fromjail i 200.
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Press coferece aer comig out of
ail i 2007.
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My party was at the forefrot of the movemet o restore the Chief Justice, who
was saked by Presidet Musharraf o 9 March 2.
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I Eglad I led protesters to Number 10, Dowig Street, opposig Musharras
visit to Britai i 2008.
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Later that yea my party was part of the All Parties Democratic Movemet
(APDM) of whch exprime miister awaz Sharis party was also a member.
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The Shaukat Khaum Memorial Hospital ad Research Cetre i Lahore, fouded
o 29 December 1994, amed aer my mother. The hospital provids free
treatmet to those who ca't pay, ad rstclass facilities to everyoe.
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The hospital was bombed 1996. Jemima ad I ispect the damage.
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Pricess Diaa's visit to the hospital i 1997 helped eoously with our
fudraisig campaig. Her heartfelt sympathy for the patiets has ever bee
forgotte.
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Fudraisig for the hospital took me all over Pakista, to mosques ad schools
a
well as to busiesses ad homes. housads of people made doatios ad their
geerosity overwhelmed me.
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Fudraisig for the hospital took me all over Pakista, to moques ad schools as
well as to busiesse ad homes. housads of people made doatios ad their
geeroity ovehelmed me.
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Fudraisig for the hospital took me all over Pakista, to mosques ad schools
a
well as to busiesses ad homes. housads of people made doatios ad their
geerosity overwhelmed me.
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At StJoseph's School, Karachi, fudraisig i 1994.
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Namal Uiversity i Miawali. Iaugurated i 2008, it awards degrees from the
Uiversity of Bradford i Eglad, where I am Chacellor.
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Jemima ad I married i Jue 1995 i Eglad.
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Here, Jemima is ith my sisters Rai ad Uzma i Zama Park, Lahore.
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Jemima with our rstbor so Sulaima, i 1996.
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My home i the hills aboe Islamabad.
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Arrivig with Jemima at the High Court i Eglad i 1996, where I am beig
sued for libel by Ia Botham ad Alla Lamb.
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Holdig the award for Sportsma of the Millenium at the Pakista TV awards of
April 2000.
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I do't play cricket ay more but I love to watch it: with Shae Ware ad my
brotherlaw Zac Goldsmith at a charity match i 200.
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I do' play cricket ay more bu I love to wach it: with Sulaima ad Kasim
watchig the test match betwee Pakista ad Eglad i Rawalpidi i 2005.
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My party's ame meas Movemet for Justice' ad here we are campaigig
agais corruptio i 2010.
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Campaigig agaist the droe attacks i the tribal areas i May 2011.
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In July 2011 I addressed a public rally i Faisalabad
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Later, I addressed he Faisalabad lawyers at the District Bar Associatio. I ruly
feel my party's time hs come.
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Acknowedgements
owe a debt of gratitude to an exceptional scholar and friend Dr Riffat Hassn. This
book would not have een possible ithout the assistance of Saifllah Niazi.
One book in particular was ver useul to me in m researches:
M. ].
Akbar
nderbox
The Pst nd Future f Pkistn
(HarperCollins New Delhi 201).
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Pcture Acknowledgements
All photos not credited below have been kindly supplied by the author and his family.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders; those who have not been credited
are invted to get in touch with the pblishers.
Portrait of Muhmmad Iqbal: © INTERFOTO/
Alamy
Second IndoPakistani War, 7 September 1965: GammaKeystone via Getty Images
Ayub Khan: Popperfoto/Getty Images
Yahya Khan: Topham PicturepointTopFoto.co.uk
Zia UlHaq: AP/Press Association Images
Zulkar Ali Bhutto: AFP/Getty Images
Muslim refugees ee India, 15 October 1947: AFPGetty Images
Partition conference, New Delhi, 3 Jne 1947: GammaKeystone ia Getty Imags
View of Hunza Valle: © Sarah Murray
Refuge camp, Nasar Bagh, June 1983: AP/Press Association Image
IK feasting with Afridis at a village in the Khyber Pass: from
Wrrior Re
by Imran
Khan, photo by Pervez A. Khan.
IK bowling during rst Test Match against England, Birmingham, July 1982 Getty
Images
IK bowling for the Rest of the Worl XI against the MCC at Lord, August 1987: Getty
Images
Last man Illingworth s out, IK (cente) and Moin Khan (kneeling) celebrate, World Cup
nal Melbourne, March 1992: © Patrick Eagar
IK and teammates celebrate World Cup win, Melbourne, March 992: AP Photo/Steve
Holland
IK lits World Cup, Melbourne, March 1992: Getty Images
IK and Queen Elizabeth, Lords, 14 May 1971: Press Association Images/ S&G and
Barratt/EMPICS Sport
Mian Nawaz Sharif, 1 October 1990: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Benazir Bhutto casts her vote, 16 November 1988: Zahid HusseinAP/Press Association
Images
Pervez Musharraf and IK, 19 February 2002: Reuters
IK, Badshahi mosque, 2003: Stuart Freedman/PANOS
IK at prayer, 2003: Start FreedmanPANOS
IK, election campaign, 1 September 1996: © Patric Durand/Sygma/Corbis
IK, election rally, Lahore, 29 January 1997: Khalid Chaudary/AP/Press Association
Images
IK, election rally, Karachi, 11 Augut 2002: Saeed Khan/Rex Features
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Protest march Karachi 3 May 2009 © Rehan Khan/Corbis
IK at potest rally Laore 24 February 2008: AFPGetty Images
IK Downing Street London 28 Janary 2008: Getty Images
IK and Nawaz Sharif at a news conference London 9 June 2008: efteris
Pitarakis AP
Press Association Images
Jemima Khan Qasim Khan Annabel Goldsmith London 18 November 2007: Eddie
Mulholland/Rex Featres
IK and students Lahore 14 November 2007: Reuters
All phtos courtesy Saukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Cetre
IK and Jemima Khan Richmond Registry Ofce 20 June 1995: AFP/Getty Images
Jemima Khan and IK's family Lahore 1995: Rex Features
IK and Jemima Khan High Court London 18 July 1996: AFP/Getty Images
Jemima Khan and IK at the Sportsman of the Millennium award ceremony Lahore 29
April 2000: K. M. Chauda/AP/Press Association Images
IK Shane Warne and Zac Goldsmith charity criket match Ham Common 14 July
2007: Getty Images
IK with Qasim and Suleiman oneday cricket match between Pakistan and England
Rawalpindi 19 December 2005: Getty Images
Jemima Khan holds Suleiman 21 Nvember 1996: Reuters/Kiera Doherty
IK waves to supporters Lahore 26 ovember 2010: AFP/Get Images
IK at atidrone rally Karachi 21 May 2011: EPARehan Khan
IK at a rally Faisalabad 24 July 2011: photo Abdul Majid Faisalabad
IK addesses Faisalabad District Bar 25 July 2011: photo Abdul Majid Faisalabad
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Index
The page references in this index correspond to he printed edtion from which this
ebook was created. To nd a specic word or phrase from the index please use the
search feature of your ebook reader.
AbbasZaheer97-8
Abbasid dynasty 326-7
Abbottabad helicopter raid 312-13 357-9
Abduh Muhammad 80 330-1
Abidie Ben Ali Zine E 220
Abn Anas Malik 327
Abu Ghraib prison 237
Afghan jihad leaders 78
Afgha Taliban 295-7 306-8 312 315-18 332
Afghaistan
anti Soviet jihad 0-4 78
bin Laden trial oer 240-1
Inda and 251-2
Pakistan and US demands 287-318 357-62
pos
Soviet conict 78 240
refgees 74 212
Soviet Union and 62-4 69-74 78 124212 221240258265278283286
295307318
tribal areas and 72-3 277-307
US invasion 286-318
war on terror' 227-8235237-8240-525-8265
Afridi Sher Ali 281
Aga Khan hospital Karachi 171
Ahmad Qazi Hussain 230 268
Ahmed Ashfaq 166
Ahmed Tauseef 155
Ahmedi sect 68
Aitchison College 47-9186207350
Akbar M.]. 34-5
Akram Wasim 162
Al Ghazali 324-5
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a�Qaeda70, 72, 222, 235, 237-8, 240-2, 244, 250-61, 254, 258, 262, 284, 287-90,
294,297,309,312,316-17,318
suspects
Muharraf and 221-2
treatment 252-8, 290-5
ASaud, Alwaleed bin Talal bin Adul Aziz 243-4
alZawahiri, Ayman 288
AZulfiqar 128
Alam, Intikhab 140
Alexader the Great 277
Algeria 340
Ali, Babar 152
Aligarh Mohamedan AngloOriental College 332
Aligarh University 1, 332
AllIndia Muslim League 15-16, 20
AllIndia Radio 103
All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) 1,263-5,268
Alvi, Arif 231
America
see
United States
Americans, native 245
Amritsar 32
Andaman Islands 281
antiVietnam war moement 5
Anwar, Saeed 140
Aquinas, Thomas 325
Arab Sring 5, 66, 79, 247, 355-6, 362-3
Aristote 325
Armitage, Richard 251
Armstong, Karen 42-3
Asad, Muhammad (Leopold Weiss) 101
Asian Development Bank 349
Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal 270
Auliya, Nazam Uddin 36
Aurakzai, Lt General 288-90, 317
Australia, cricket 6, 84,137,139-40,144,26,207
Australians, native 245, 340
Awami League 53
Awami National Party (ANP) 265,276,310
Azad, Maulana Abl Kalam 19
Aziz, Amir 254
Aziz, Mir Adnan 315
Aziz, Shaukat 267,271
Aziz, Tariq 224
Baba Chala 93-
Baco, Roger 324-5
Baghdad 326-8
Bagram airbase 255
Bahadur Shah Zafa 34
Bahrain 68, 161
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Bajaur massacre 272 305-6
Bala Hisar fort 256
ball tampering case 162 188-9203-4205
Baloch Iftikhar 6
Baluch people 24 268-9 285
Baluchistan 14-16 56 268-9 275 285 311 345
Bangladesh history ee East Pakisan
Barbar Mughal Emperor 277-8
Barelv Syed Ahmed 296-7
Barelvs 296-7 302 332
Bashir Martin 242
Bashir Mian 94-7107-11120172-3178182189199-21364
Beacohouse National University 352
Bengal 21 24-5 46 54-6
Bergen Peter 294
Bhatti Shahbaz 311
Bhutto Benazir 559125-30132-3 146-7 166-9 189-91 195-621122223-
4228-9258-9260-3269271
assssination 23 262-3
political corruption 129-30 168 189-91211232-3258-9261
Bhutto Bilawa127-8
Bhutto Zulkar Ali 5 40-1 53- 60-2 63 68 75-6 124 185 199 228 300
352-3
The Myth of
Indeendene
40
Bhutto clan 13
Biden Joe 295
Bilmes Linda]. 236
bin Laden Osama 71 237 240-2 244 287-8 312-13 315 357-9
Blair Tony 59246251
Bosnia 243
Botham Ian 162 188 203-4 205
BourkeWhite Margaret 21
Bowie David 57
Bradford University 353-4
Britain
and Afghanistan 286
Pakistani suspects' mistreated 253
preombing leaeting 290
Talian political settlement moves 315-16
see lso
England; Idia British India
British Empire and Islm 331-3
British Pakistani communi 98 154-248
and cricket 145-6
Burckhardt Titus
Fe, ity of
Islm
53-4
Burki amshed 300
Burki aved 28-9141153
Burki ehanzeb 256
Burki Nausherwan 155-6
Burki Pashtun people 32 33 277-81
Bush GeorgeW. 3232241-2244 246251252261-2265290294
Bush Jeb 262
Butt Zauddin 210 359
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Cambdia, parallels with 287, 308
Camp, Donald 260
cancer hospital
see
Shaukat Khnum Memorial Cancer Hspital
cancerscreening clinics 170-1
Citl Tlk
291
capitaist materialism 338
Carmn, George 188-9
Caroe, Sir Olaf 72-3,278,281,290-1
caste system, irrelevant to Islam 17-18, 102, 342
Center for New American Security 305
Centre for Research and Security Studies 30
Chamberlain, Neville, appeasement 248
Changa Manga 126
Charles Prince of
Wles 128
Chaudhry, Itikhar Chief Justice 227-32
Chechens, gunned dwn 257
Chechya 241, 243, 270
China, and Western knowledge 340
Churchill, Winston 72, 236, 278
CIA
and Afghanistanjihadis 70-1, 73, 250, 256, 265, 295
and Iran 66
and Pakistan 70,125,182,292,294-5,297,304-5,308,31,317,358
and Zia 124-5
shotterm goaldriven 223
Clinto, Bill 188, 210, 221, 295
collateral damage/ casualties 237, 249, 261, 289-94, 297-8, 304-6, 308, 13-14,
316-17
Community Apprasal and Motivation Programme (CAMP) 285
constitution, Sharif and 208-9
Cordoa, Al Hakim's library 326
Council of Islamic Ideology 68
countryside 92-3, 282
Kaakoram montains 41-3,50,114,135
Pujab 27, 38-9, 58-9, 282
Salt Range mountains 39,92, 198
timber maa 42, 135-6
Cranbrne, Lord 72
cricke
family 28
Lahore cricket team 49
lessons for politics 196-8, 201, 204-7, 348-9
Nehru Cup win 42-3
proessional career 29-30,56,60,62,76,77,82-6,92-4, 114, 116-19, 120-1,
123,136-46,149 196-7,206-
and religious development 83-6, 116-19
West Pakistani Uder19 cricket team 54
World Cup 1992 38,117,123136-7,140-6,96-7
see lso
specic ations & playrs
crusades 81, 330
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Dalhousie
39
Dalrymple William
The Lst Mugh45 46 26332
Damascus
326
Darwi Charles
57-8
Daska
63
Data Darbar shrine ahore
230
Davis Raymond
256 298 304-5
Dawood Razzak
52 203
Deobadi madrassas
332
Deobadis
297 302
Dera Ghazi Khan prison
7-8
Dera Imail Khan
282
Desi Americans
48
Dhaka
54 55
Diana Princess of Wales
70 204 205
Domel alley
4
Doonga Gali
38
dress
and olonialism
43 45 49-5 69 27
women and
65
drone atacks
4082237249-50265289293-4297305327358
Durand Line
72 287
earthquake relief
2005 349
East India Company
5 45-6
East Paistan
2 24 2 54-6 602344209292-3345360
East Punjab
46
Eaton Charles Le Ga
00- 06
economy
74-534272-5346-5035836-2
see lso
taxation
education system
76 84759-60206-733434345350-5362
Bhutto's schools nationalization
6 352-3
British India legacy
45-95-29700332
Englishmedium shools
44 46-9 57 59 268 350-2 355
ghst schools'
352
Iqbal on
320-3
Pashtuns
283-6
Urdumedium schols
47 49 350-2
women in tribal areas
286
Zia's Islamization
69
Egypt
36 40 68 7980220238245326340363
Eisenhower Dwigh D.
239
elections
89-95 263-5 269
208
boycott
264-5
pollrigging
95-6 259-60
see lso
Tehreek eInsaf
Elgin Earl of
22
elite ad taxation
347-8 36
embezzlement accuation
67
Englad cricket
5659-6064678237445-66-288-926226
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Englishmedium schools 44 46-9 57 59 268 350-2 354 354-5 355
Englishspeaking elite 43-5 46-9 51-2 57 61 6910412249270-1354-5
and Islam 51-3 7-8 339-41
Enlightened Moderation campaig 270-1
enviroment see contside
Erbakn Necmettin 105
Erdogn Recep Taip 363-4
European Union 99 274
Exum Andrew 305
Faisal Mosque Islamabad 37
Faroo Omar 153 364
Fazlullah Maulana (The Radio Mullah) 268 299-303
Federa Investigation Agency 265 266
Federaly Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) 14 279 281-2 284-6 289 291-2
296298305317
Fisk Robert 244
ood relief 349-50 2010
Franci of Assisi 325
Frankfrt airport attak 242-3
Freud Sigmund 58
Friend of Pakistan 303
Frith David 85
Frontier Crimes Reglation (FCR) 281-2
Frontier Force 256 278
Fuller Graham
The Future of Poliil Islm
31
fundamentalism 35 52-3 104-5 237 247-8 258 266-7 270 307 323 331-2
336338-9341354
Fursdon Dave 59
Gadda Muammar 238
Gadda stadium Lahore 131
Gallup survey of Mulims 246-7
Gandh Indira 55
Gandh Mohandas 18 19 12031338
Gavaskar Sunil 64
Gharib Nawaz 36
Ghazi brothers 267
Ghaznavids 331
Ghorids 331
Gilani YousafRaza 297-8 352
GilgitBaltistan 42
Giuliani Rudolph W. 244
Goebbels Joseph 248
Golde Age of Islam 323-8
Goldsmith Ben 226
Goldsmith Jimmy 181 194204292
Goldsmith Lady Annabel 181 216
Graham Bob 295
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Grand emocratic Alliance (G
D A)
208-
Grand National Alliace
222-3
Great Game
28
Greece, Pakistani supects' mistreated
253
Groun Zero
246
Guantanamo Bay
237 254
Gurdin 00 35248
Gymkhana Club
43
hadith
344
Hanifa, Abu
327
Haque, Ashraful
54- 44
Hasan, Parvez
20
Hashmi, Javed, tortured
8
Hassan, Parvez
52
Hastigs, Warren
46
Hazrat Ali caliph
9 80
Hazrat Umar caliph
8
Hekmatyar, Gulbddin
72 29
heroi
73
Herrig, Joanne
72
HezbeIslami
72
hill stations
38-9
Hillary, Sir Edmud
9
Hindu people
4 5 7 8-2236455247
Hitler Adolf
248 343
hocke
2849 23
Hoshiarpur
46
hospital
see
Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital
HosseinZadeh, Ismael
The Politil Eonomy f US Militrism 239
Hudood Ordinance
69
Hungton Post 37
Huma Rights Watc
23
hunger strike
Hunza valley
42-3
Hurley, Elizabeth
70
Hussain, Altaf
23-2
Hussain, Safdar
288
Hussain, Zahid,
The Sorion's Til 292
Hyderabad, Nizam of
34
Ibn Arabi, Muhammad
0
Ibn Rahid
324-5
Ibn Sia
324-5
ijtihad
326-30 329-30 333-8
Imperial College Lodon
44
Indeendent 248 307
India
and East Pakista (now Bangladesh)
54-6 29 293
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
and war on terror' repression 237-8
British India 22, 34-6, 41, 44-8, 49-53, 332-6
partition 13-14, 21-2, 35-6, 341
united India concept 18, 20-1, 23-4
India
(cant.)
cricket 84,137,142-3,145,196-8
eduation system 48
Kargil operation 209-10
Kashmir conict with 13, 23, 24, 35, 37-9, 60-1, 209-10 243, 251, 269, 270,
297,345
modern relations with 250-2, 269, 309-10, 317, 362
Indian Congress Party 18, 23
Indian National Congress 15, 19
Indonesia 5
InterServices Intelligence (SI) 70-1,75,222-5,255,265-6,318,358,359
International Crisis Group 73
International Monetay Fund loans 166,274,348,361
Iqbal, llama Muhammad 24, 35, 43, 76, 99-104,115,118-21,277,319-31,333-5,
337-8,345,357
coneption of Muslim state 16-18, 336-9, 342-6
Iqbal, Nadeem 303-4
an 14,24,61,63,64-5,79,98,238,257,270,317
revlution 62, 65-9, 74, 78-9, 220, 340, 363
Iran-Iraq war 237
Iraq 239, 317, 325-6
invasion/ war in 235-7
IraIraq war 237
US invasion 222
war in 3, 71, 239, 242-3, 245, 256, 265, 270, 313, 317
Islam
British empire an 331-3
converts 100-1
and environment 135-6, 363
equality and justice 14, 16,24,37,79-81,344-5
excessive conformism' 330-1
and family life 27-8, 30-3, 176-80
Golden Age 323-8
Iqbal on 17-18, 39-31
Jinah on 20
misse for gain 112-13
and modern world 336-41
as perceived by 6s youth 51-3,57-8
pracce 30-7, 57-8, 163-6
prejudce against 181-2, 237, 241-9
radical fundamentaist 35,52-3, 104-5,237,247-8,258,266-7,270,307,323,
331-2,336,338-9,341,354
renaissance 328-33
revoluionary potential 66-72, 78-9
and stte 13, 16-18,87,165,344-7
tolerace 35-7, 341-5
unifyig qualities 13,87
welfare system 81-2
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
and West 333-6
westernized elite and 339-41
see lso
Quran
Islamabad 9, 37, 71, 94, 98, 168, 186,214,221, 223, 226, 230, 253, 255, 257, 261,
271-3,288,292,299,303,305,310-11,357,360
Marriott Hotel bobing 272
Re Mosque masacre 266-8
Islamic Democratic Alliance 75
Islamic fundamentalism, West and 67
Islamic J
amiat eTuleba (T) 1-3, -6
Islamic State 16-18, 66,68-9,77-81,336-9,341-6
Islamization 68-70, 7-9, 183-4
Islamohobia 245-6
Israel 237, 239, 243-4
an war on terrr' repression 237-8
Jackson, Justice Roert 236-7
Jagat Singh Prince f Jaipur 106
Jagger, Mick 57
Jalandhar 32, 279
Jaloza refugee camp 212
JamaaeIslami
I,
2, 230, 268, 296
Jamiat UlemaeIslm 296
Jng
(ewspaper) 194
Japan, and Western knowledge 340
Jehangir, Asad 202
jihad concept 70-1, 243
innr/greater 106, 119
jihad groups 247-8, 258, 265, 287, 294, 296, 302 314, 316
antSoviet 70-4, 318,362
Jinnah Muhammad Ali 14, 16, 18-21,23,24,32,55,76,80, 120, 182, 185,224-5,
280,314,322,335,341,344-5,364
jirga sstem 280-2, 285, 334, 346
Johnson, Paul 343
Jones, Sir William 46
journaists, killed in FAT
A 292
Joya, Malalai 307
judiciary
indpendence 186,224,227-33259,270,296,345-6,362
lawyers' movement 229-80,356
subordination/ coruption 6, 9-1, 134, 202-, 213, 219-20, 233-4, 263-4, 345-
6
Supreme Court 75,209,228, 232-3, 240, 259-60, 263-4, 360
Junejo, Muhamma Khan 124
Jung, C. ]. 58
Kabul 250,252,317
Kanigram 32, 278-82
Kanwal, Shumaila 304-5
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
Karachi 10, 14,43-4,54,65,73, 120, 129, 166, 170-1,230-9,255,256,276,279,
311,351,357,359
caner hospital 121, 171
Karakram Highway 42-3,135
Karakram mountains 41-3,50,114,135
Kargil operation 209-10
Karzai, Hamid 238, 06-7
Kashmir 13,23,24,35,37-8,39,60-1,209,243251,269,27, 29
7,345
Kargil operation 209-10
Kashmiri, Ilyas 265-6
Kentucky University Hospital 156
Khadija 108
Khan, Aamir 170
Khan, Abbas 134
Khan, Ahmad Hasa 31
Khan, Akhtar Hameed 279-80
Khan, Aleema 89, 142, 158
Khan, Ayub 25, 39-40, 67, 80,185,336
Khan, Azmat Ali 152
Khan, Faridullah 291-2
Khan, Ghulam Isha 146
Khan, Hamid 193, 230
Khan, Imran
and religion 51-2, 83-6
Muslim identity 87,92-7,99-121,176-80
Quan, studying 31, 36, 58-9, 88-9, 94-7,100,105-12,14-17
rejectsjetset lifetyle 91-2,113-14
cricket
see
cricket
detention/ house arrest 3-11, 263
education
Aitchison College 47-9,186,207
Oxford University 57-60
Royal Grammar School Worcester 56-7,6
family life 3-4, 7, 26-39, 58-9 113, 159-6, 176-80
father
see
Khan Niazi, Ikramullah
grandfather 4, 26, 28, 32, 33
grandmother 27
marrige
see
Khan, Jemima
mother
see
Khanum, Shaukat
sisters 4, 7, 31, 38, 89,103,141,150,153,157,159,176,178-80,187,199
politics
decisin to enter 183-6
see lso
Tehreek eInsaf
Wrrior Re
283
Khan, Irshad 172-3, 173
Khan, Jemima (ne Gldsmith) 120, 121
antiuesmuggling allegation 212-13, 345
charity work 211-12
mariage with 181-2, 185, 187, 199-201,204-6,211-17
poliical attacks on 176, 183,212-15
retun to England 215-16
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
UK media and 181-2
Zionist plot accusatin 183 187-8 94 199
Khan Kareem 294
Khan Kasim (son ofIK) 206215-16
Khan Khulabat 293-4
Khan Liaquat Ali 23
Khan M. Asghar 76
Khan Majid 58
Khan Qamar 152
Khan Rashid 226
Khan Salimullah 10
Khan Sher 301-2
Khan Sir Sayid Ahmad 17 328 332
Khan Sohail 278
Khan Sulaiman (son ofIK) 11212198204215-16
Khan Tahir Ali 163
Khan T. M. 162
Khan Yahya 25 54
Khan Bugti Nawab Akbar 269
Khan family women demonstrate
Khan iazi Ikramullah (IK's father) 4 9 18 31-2 34 37 39 44 52 88 103-4
150156170-1178
and Pakistan Educational Society 160
and prospective bide for IK 179-80
charman of Shauat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital board 152
Khanum
Shaukat (IK's mother) 9 26-8 30-4 37-9 51 58-9 6587-909294-6
105116150-1153-7175-6180182277-9
Khilji Sultan Alaudin 36
Khomeini Imam 6166-798
khudi (selood) 16-1735101 15321
Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti 35 36
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (NorthWest Frontier) 9 14 33 150 182 221 227 268-9
272276279282-3285-6286289299-304310-11359
prisoner from 9-10
Kilcullen David 305
Knott Alan 60
Kot Lakhpat prison 6 10
Kuchi dogs 282-3
Kuehn Felix 316
Lahore 2-6 9-10 26-7 31-2 34 37 39 43 58-9 65 88 92-4 126 134 144
150152157-8160164166171180 187 196209230304-5355
diagnostic centre 171
Uniersity of the Pnjab 2 6-7
Lahore Resolution 20-1
Lal Majid affair 266-8299301318
Lamb Allan 162 188 203-4 205
Lamb Christina 306
Lawyers' movement 229-80356
leadership 117-18
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www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
Leghari Farooq 189 191 192
Leitner G. W. 46
libraris Golden Age of Islam 326
Libya 68 238
Lieve Anatol 312
Lillee Dennis 118
London
7/7 bombings 242
social season 113-14
Luther Martin 340-1
Macalay Thomas Lord 46-7
Macedonia Pakistani suspects' killed 252-3
madrasas46 52 69 73-481266-8305-6326332351355
Mahmood Fazal 14-5
Mahmud of Ghazni 277
Makdisi George
The se of Humnism
326
Malayia educatio system 48
Malik Art 126
Malik Navaid 129-30
Malik Wazir 293-
Malik Zia 126
Mandela Nelson 120
Mansoor Sabiha 352-3
Mao Zedong 166
Marathas 34 45
Marritt Hotel Islamabad bombig 272
Marxim and religon 57-8 60
Masu tribe rebellin 293
Mayo Lord 281
Mayo hospital 150
Mazari Sherbaz Khan 76
Joey to Disiusionent
285
Mecca 37
Meccans 30 36 324
medicne Golden Age of Islam 323-6
Medina 37 79 324
Mehboba Muti 262
Mehmood Ghayur 293
Mehsd Baitullah 263
Mehta Vikram 59
Menem Carlos 169
Mermagen Jonathan 141
Metroplitan Police Brazilian shot 253
Mian Mir Sahib shrines 31-2
Mianwali 33 39 214 271
Namal University 9121160285-6353-4
Middle East 328331343
2011 uprisings 5 66 79 247 355-6 362-3
US and 237 243-4
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www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
Middle Way, Quran o 335-6
Milibad, David 265
Military Academy 357
Miranshah accord 289
Mobi141-2
Mohajirs (partition refgees) 14,55
Mongos, and Baghda 327-8
Montpellier school 325
Mossadegh, Mohammed 66
Mountbatten, Edwina 9
Mountbatten, Louis, Earl 18-19, 35
Mubarak, Hosni 220, 238, 362-3
Mughal Empire 34-5, 45-6, 79,124,44,277-8,296,311,331-2,343,347
Muhammad, Prophet see Prophet Muhammad (PBH)
Muhammad, Maulana Su 300
Muhammad, Nek 289
mujahideen 71-2, 24, 258, 295-6
Musharaf, General Pervez 1-6, 11, 13,51,69,70,125,209-11,219-33,238,250-
2,257-72,287-8,298,301,312,359
attack on judiciary 227-33
coaition proposals 222-4
Enlghtened Moderation campaign 270-1
referendum 259-60
Muslim identity 87, 92-7, 99-121, 176-80
Muslim people
and Western knowledge 330, 331-2
Gallup survey 246-7
nonPakistani, maltreatment post-9/11 253-4
see also Islam
Muttahida MajliseAmal (MMA) 227,276,296
Muttahida Qaumi (nited National) Movement (MQM) 134,230-2,261,275-6
Mysor 34, 45
Nadir Shah 278
Nagar, Mir of 42
Naidu, Sarojini 18
Namal University 9 121, 160,285-6,353-4
Napoleon Buonaparte 245
National Accountability Bureau 260
National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) 232-3,260-71,276
Native Americans 340
NATO forces, Afganistan 72, 288, 306, 31
Nawabi, Ashraf 123-4
Nazar, Mudassar 131
NebraskaOmaha niversity, jihad textbooks 73-4
Nehru, Jawaharlal18-19, 23, 24, 55, 314
New America Foudation 285, 294, 298, 312
New South Wales cricket team 206
New York mes
24, 260
New Zealand, cricket 99
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www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
News, The
(newspaper)
233 294
Niazi, General
55 56
N
iazi, Saifullah
226
Niazi Pashtun tribe
33 277
Nietzsche, Friedrich
57-8
North aziristan
289-94 308 359
Northen Alliance
251
nuclear arms
34 25 294 3 335
Nuremerg Trials
23-7
Oath of Judges Order
259
Obama, Barak
29437-935357362-3
Omagh bombing
242
Omar, Mullah
240-5
Orakzai Agency
288
Orangi Pilot Project
279-80
Organisation of the Islmic Conferenc
98 99
Ottoma Empire
343
Oxford cricket team
206
Oxford Union
59
Pak Insitute for Peace Studies (PIPS)
296
Pakista
and USA
see
United States
and war on terror'
287-38
see lo
United States, war on teror'
corruption see political corruptio
drone attacks
402237249-50265289293-4297353237358
economy
74-534272-5347-5035836-2
see lo
taxation
education
see
education system
founding
3-26
East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
242554-660- 23 44 209 293 345
360
est Pakistan
25 54-5 85
jihadi groups
78-9
judiciry
see
judiciary
military
and Abottabad rai
32-3
Pashtun ofcers purge
288
mismaagement of aQaeda pursut
290-5
natural resources
349-50
people
see
Englishspeaking elite; poor/ ordinary people
police
see
police
populaion problems
42-3
sovereign foreign poicy
362-3
dialoge with militats
360-
state of emergency
207 -
Taliba
see
TehrikeTaliban (TP)
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
welfare system 13,33,69,81-2,314,337,338
Pakistan cricket team 56, 63, 84, 99,127,136-46,140-6,206-
matchxing allegations 145
Pakistan International Airlines 272-3
Pakistan Muslim League 183
PML
(
N
)
191,194,195,255,269,272,285
PML (Q) 75,225,227,267
Pakistan People's Party
PP
)
39,54,61,75,125-7,129,134,183,190-1,211,255,
269,271-2,275,301,352
Pakistan Rangers 231
Pakistan Steel Mills 227-8, 273
Pakistani Associatio of North Amrican Doctor 153
Pakistani people
deahs, terrorismrelated violence 235
maltreatment post
9/11 252-8, 290-5
Pakistani ExServiceen Association 293
Palestie 243-4, 270 343
panchayat334,346
Panetta, Leon 308, 38
Pape, Robert 247
Pasha, General 318
Pashtu ofcers purge, Pakistan army 288
Pashtu people
(
Pathans
)
14,24,32-3,50,72,78,150-1,153,176-7,227,264-5,
277-91,295,297-9,345
Pashtuwali 280-1
patholgy collection centres 171
Pattersn, Anne 249-50, 264, 363
Peshawar 70, 120, 170,221,256,281,305
caner hospital 121, 171
Petraes, David 305
Pew Research Centre poll 364
philosphy, Golden ge of Islam 323-6
Pir Gi 87-9,94
pirs 88-9, 95
police
attacks on 265, 268
corruption interference with 1, 69, 134, 192, 202-3, 231-2, 233, 254-6, 263,
266,274-5,282,346,356,362
political corruption 166, 183, 186, 190, 198-9, 202-3, 228, 249, 311, 335, 346-9,
352-3,356,361-2
Afghanistan 295, 306
Beazir & Zardari 129-30,168, 189-91,211,232-3,258,261
Brish rule 76
Msharraf 219-22,222-4,227,232-3,259-61
Sharif 133-4,168,190-1,208
Swat 300
USA and 67-8,245,273-5,309,349
Zadari
(
postBenazir
)
272-6,309
Zia 69, 74-7,124-5
politicians, assets abroad 347
politics
see
Tehreek
eInsaf
pollrigging 195-6, 259-60
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
poor/ ordinary people
9- 5-249352
cancer treatment
150-667-72202
ecoomic hardship
275
exploitation
33-4 66 95 202-3 272-3 28 30 323 34-6 345-8 348 349
36
generosity
33-4 63-6
Islam and
3 35 8-259-60345
Powell, Colin
308-9
Powindahs
282-3
prisons, conditions
6-0
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
72830-36-7687997-00 05 06 08
-2684200324336342344-5347363
Punjab
62738-9465759576
cancer hospital
se
Shaukat
Khnum Memoril Cancer
Hospital
coutryside
27 38-9 58-9 282
government
75 26 3 32 34 5 92752828430345347
and partition
2-2 32 35-65
University of
2-3 5
Punjab Club
43
Punjabi domination
4 24 26
Quetta
257
Quran
7-8336-758780-94-0205-226257 39-2 323 342-
5
ijtihad
326-30 329-30 333-8
on Middle Way
335-6
precepts
7-8 37 7 98-9024-726326-9
principles, discusson
326-30 333-8
state and
80-39-2323334-934-5
studying
3 36 58 88-9 94-70005-2
see lso
Islam
Qureshi, Ashiq
52
Qureshi, Moeen
35 46
Qureshi, Shah Mehmod
274
Ra, Sahid
3
Raq, Saad
8
Rahma, Fazlur
336
railways
272
Ramadan
32 52 96 9 62 66 95
Rasheed, Sheikh
268
Rashid, Haroon
70
Rawalpindi
23 62 263 266 32
Reagan, Ronald
72 296
Red Msque massacre
266-82993038
religio, and seventies Britain
57-8
Repriee (charity)
222
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www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
Reza Shah Muhammad Pahlav (son)
66 220 238
Reza Shah Pahlavi (father)
65-6 270
Rice Condoleezza
290
Richards Sir David
36
Richards Sir Vivian
64 3
Ridley Yvonne
255
Riedel Bruce
295
Robinson Francis
20
Roma Empire
33
Roosevelt Frankli D.
236
Royal Grammar School Worcester
56-765
Rumi (philosopher
0 0-
Rushdie Salman
98 24-5
The Stni Veses 97-9
Russia
p-97)
and Afghanistan
28
Russia Federation
23-8 24 244 37
see lso
Soviet Union
Saddam Hussein
237 239
Saidgai village bombig
290
Saigol Nasim
69
Salahuddin Yousaf
0468
Salahuddin (warrior)
326
Saleem Farrukh
235 305
Salt Rage mountains
39 92 98
Saudi Arabia
67 70 7362042243-425926436
Saudi ghters and Afghan jihad
7 73 78
Scheue Michael
Imril Hubris 238
schools
see
education
science Golden Age of Islam
323-6
Sha Tariq
29
Shah Rustam
37
Shaheen
0-2277 32032
Shahzad Faisal
248 252 33
Shakai agreement
289
Shalimar Gardens
44 46
Shao k Garhi
64-5
sharia law
68-9 80- 295 299-302 329 330 336-7
Shariati Ali
99-00
Sharif Nawaz
75 25-6 30-5 46-7 68-9 76 89-92 95-620205208-
29-20223-4228-9258-926026426927-3275
and criket
30-2
Sharif Shahbaz
20
Sharif clan
3
Shaukat Imran
255
Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital
bomb attack
69
founding
9 50- 8907-89-202 29-30 40 42-4 49-5
fundraising
4 3743-61525457-6063-920-2203272
opening
29-30 66-7
Sheikhz Akram
7
Shia Muslims
74 78 30
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
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Shujaat Chaudhary 267
Siddiqe Mohammed 93-4
Siddiqi Aaa imprionment 254-6
Sikh people 21 22 31 36 45115297
Simla 22 39
Sind Club 43-4
Sindh 10 14-165195 124 126 129 134202230275279347358
and partition 115
Sindh High Court Bar Association 230
Sindhieople95 115284345
Singapre education ystem 48
Siraj uDaula 45
Skaser 39
Socrates 11 7
Somalia 313-14
South Africa
cricket 226
Truth and Reconciliation initiative 232 362
South Waziristan 32 278-86 288 293
Soviet Union 67 338
and Afghanistan 62-4 69-74 78 124212 221 240 258 265 278 283 286
295307318
and Pakistan 23 188
Spanish Civil War 7
Sri Laka 210 247
cricket 62
Stalin Josef 343
Stiglitz Joseph E. 236
Susm 31-2 3688 110-11297300-232732
suicide terrorism 247
Sunni Muslims 73-478297327
Supreme Court of Paistan 75 209 228 232-3 240 259-60 263 360
Sussex cricket team 206
Swat Taliban 268 301-4
Swat Valley operatio 299-304339350
Swati people 171-2 268 296 299 301
Swiss bank accounts 347
Synnott Hilary
Trsforming Pkistn
...
261-2
Taimur (Tamburlaine) 107 277
Taliba32 72 78 221-2 227 24-51 249-51 254 256-8 262-3 276 293 301-
4
and madrassas 332
Wet political settlement moves 315-16
Talibaization 249 295 298-9
Tamil Tigers 247
taqlid 31
Tarar Rak 169
Tarin Shaukat 152 363
Tariq Ali 248
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
Taseer Salman
30- 32
taxatio
82202347-8
elite and evasion
34 272-3 348 36
historic
34 46
indirect, poor people and
34 273 348
TehreekeInsaf (Movement for Jstice)
I,
5 9 86 90 96 225 229-30 285
29344364
and
997
elections
89-98
ater
997
defeat
98-203 205 206-0
and
2002
elections
23-4 225-6
and
2008
election boycott
264-5
and Musharraf coalition proposals
222-5
and Musharraf's referendum
259-60
formation
86-9
protest against Zardari
27-2
and young people
5
youth
322
TehrikeTaliban (TP)
265265-6289-9230-359
Terror Free Tomorro
285 298
Theresa, Mother
20
Tiedemann, Katherine
294
timber maa
42 35-6
Times Square bomber
24224825233
Timurids
33
Tipu Sltan
34 45
Tora Bra cave bombing
287-8
Transparency International
34 272
Travanore army uprising
34
tribal people
and collaborators
29-2 30
collateral damage casualties
289-94 298 304-6 308 33-4 36
truth and reconciliation' proces
362
Tunisi
68 220 238
Turkey
8 05 270 273 363-4
Turkish inuence
33
ulHaq, Dr Anwar
24
ulema
328 33 334 336
Umar, Hazrat
8
Umar Caliph
36-7
UN enquiry, Benazir Bhutto assassination
263
United Nations Development Programme
834
United States
9/1
attacks on
22
and Afghan bin Laden trial offer
240-
and Musharraf
22-2
and political corrption
67-8 245 273-5 309 349
and Vietnam/ Cambodia
287 38
CIA
and Afghanistanjihadis
70- 73 250 256 265 295
www.p oo sree. ogspot.com
www.pdfbooksfree.blogspot.com
and Iran
66
and Pakistan
702582292294-5297304-53083437358
and Zia
24-5
shortterm goaldriven
223
drone attacks
40-82237249-50265289293-4297305323358
Pakistan demonization campaign
294-5
Pakistani suspects' mistreated
253
pressue Pakistan cncessions to
4 250-2 264 272-5 288-99 304-6 358-60
relatios with
2382309-032-3
Taliba political settlement moves
35-6
war o terror'
2367-870822722-2235-75295-630358
Afghaistan invasio
287-38
Afghaistan development budget'
306-7
coss
274306-
dialogue
360
ur Rehman Khalil
29
urRahman Maulaa Fazl
276
Urdumedium schools
47 48-9 350-2 354-5 355
USAID
306
Uttar Pradesh
24
Vajpayee Atal Behari
209
van Linschoten Alex Strick
36
Vietnam parallels with
287 308
Wahhabism
32 73 297
Walford Cornelius
34
Wali Asfandyar
265
Waliullah Shah
79
waqf
468
Wshigton Post 270
Water and Power Development Authority
273
Watt W. Montgomery
325
Wazir Ayaz
37
Waziristan
50 256 265 277-86 286 289 29
see lso
North Waziristan; Soth Wazirista
welfare system
3 33 69 80-2 34 337 338
West state violence
343-4
West Bengal (India)
54-6
West Indies cricket
64 943-23739445
Western culture
29 52 56-8 333-5 355
perceived vulgarity
27
raicals and
339-40
Western knowledge
and local culture
340-
Mslims and
330 33-2
Western media and Islam
245
Western Muslims radicalization response
33-4
westernized elites see Englishspeaking elite
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White, Sita
94
White Mountains
287
Wikileaks
249-50 22 262 264 297 299 360 363
Wilde, Oscar
72
WingeldDigby, Andrew
60
wome's rights
339 340
Afghanistan
307
Wood, David
60-
Woodard, Bob,
Obm's Wrs 252 274 297-8 307-8
Worceter cricket tea
8 206
World Bank
6669274349
World Health Organization, UAE Foundation Prize
70
Yeme
68 33-4
YouGv poll
364
Youni, Waqar
40 62
Yousaf, Sumera
30667
YusufIslam (Cat Stevens)
04
Zaeef, Mullah,
MyLewith the Tlibn 240-5257-8
zakat giving
69 8 82536776
Zakayev, Akhmed
2
Zaman, Ahmad
26
Zaman Park
3-47262833845886476
Zamir, Ehtisham
222-3
Zardar, Asif Ali
2-30 33 66 68 762228232238250258 260-3
27-6285287297-8302-33093
Zia ulHaq, General
62 63-4 68-0 73-77 94 23-6 28 32 36 85 220-2
228
Zionist plot accusatin
83 87-8 94 99
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About the Author
Imran Khan was bor in
952
and grew up playing cricket in Lahore Pakistan. He
played his rst international match fr his country in
97.
In
972
he began his studies
at Oxfrd University where he was a contemporary of Benazir Bhutto. He wet on to
play crcket for Pakistan until
992
and was captain of the team from
982.
In
994
he
established a hospital in Pakistan offering free cancer treatment to the poor and i in the
process of setting up a second. He also founded Namal College
(2007)
the only private
sector university outide the cities In April
996
Imran Kha established his own
political party the TehreekeInsaf which aims t bring good goveance and social
justice to the people of Pakistan and make Pakista a just and humane society.
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