Ominous declarations of imminent chaos in Pakistan abound in the United States. Cohen aims both to raise warnings and to soothe fears.We had an interesting discussion in class today about Pakistan's insecurity vis a vis the Indians and what, if anything, could be done to assuage those fears, where Professor Haqqani suggested that the root of Pakistan's problem might be that they are in effect a victim of their own strategic concept, which to the extent that it is coherently expressed might be summarized in three goals: survival, identity, and prestige. If India could some day be convinced to accept the inevitable and hand over Kashmir to the Pakistanis, would they accept it, shake hands, and initiate normal relations with each other, or would they contrive some other point of conflict to keep the tensions simmering as they always have? Pakistan has defined its identity as being something apart from and in opposition to India for so long that it's not clear to me that even a removal of the current obvious flash point of Kashmir would lead to peace, and it sounds like Cohen touches on these vested interests and entrenched attitudes in his book as well:Although he acknowledges that profound problems plague both the idea and the reality of Pakistan, he distances himself from apocalyptic "failed state" scenarios. Catastrophic failure of this nuclear-armed state is surely a possibility. But Pakistan's fate will ultimately depend on whether its leaders can find an answer to the fundamental question that has plagued their fellow citizens for more than half a century: "How can we make the idea of Pakistan actually work?"
The military is only one (albeit the most important) component of the wider "establishment" that runs Pakistan. Cohen calls this establishment a "moderate oligarchy" and defines it as "an informal political system that [ties] together the senior ranks of the military, the civil service, key members of the judiciary, and other elites." Membership in this oligarchy, Cohen contends, requires adherence to a common set of beliefs: that India must be countered at every turn; that nuclear weapons have endowed Pakistan with security and status; that the fight for Kashmir is unfinished business from the time of partition; that large-scale social reforms such as land redistribution are unacceptable; that the uneducated and illiterate masses deserve only contempt; that vociferous Muslim nationalism is desirable but true Islamism is not; and that Washington is to be despised but fully taken advantage of. Underlying these "core principles," one might add, is a willingness to serve power at any cost.It's difficult in part for me to come up with good solutions to this. (I kind of whiffed such a question in class today; I was too busy listening to other people's points, and there were some good ones, to take time to formulate some thoughts of my own at the same time... oh well.) When it comes right down to it, I'm probably one of those people who provoke fears of trying to "undo partition", because really, the whole idea of Pakistan as something separate from India doesn't make a lot of sense to me as something really all that workable; hence the identity politics, corruption, and ruling oligarchy concerned with little short of its power and continued survival.
The education problem in Pakistan appears to recieve particular focus in Cohen's the book, giving voice to some fears that have been previously expressed around here as well. Hoodbhoy concludes his review with these points:
The greatest threat to Pakistan's future may be its abysmal education system. Pakistani schools-and not just madrassas-are churning out fiery zealots, fueled with a passion for jihad and martyrdom. The obstacles to reform are great. For example, recent street rampages by Islamists forced Musharraf's former minister of education, Zubaida Jalal, to declare herself a fundamentalist and denounce as unacceptable school textbooks that do not include Quranic verses on jihad.My to-read pile is growing ever-higher as the semester goes along (I'm working my way through Gilles Keppel's Jihad: On the Trail of Political Islam and Christian Tyler's Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang at the moment, in addition to regular course readings), but this is one I'll be putting near the top as soon as it arrives.
The United States, along with the United Kingdom and the European Union, has recently poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Pakistani educational system-but with minimal effect. Usaid officials in Pakistan have shown little inclination or desire to engage with the government on the issue of eliminating jihad and militarism from school books. Indeed, rather than calling Musharraf's government on the continuing espousal of jihadist doctrine, the White House, out of either ignorance or compromise, even praised former Education Minister Jalal for her "reforms." Jalal's successor, General Javed Ashraf Qazi, is a former intelligence chief known for his ruthless tactics. It therefore appears that Musharraf's educational curriculum will go unchanged.
This difficulty, of course, reflects the underlying problems of Pakistan's government. Aware of its thin legitimacy and fearful of taking on powerful religious forces, no reigning government has made a serious attempt at curricular or educational reform, quietly allowing future minds to be molded by fanatics. But without such critical reforms, the long-term prospects for Pakistan are anything but comforting.