Salman Tarik Kureshi

It is a truism that a state, if it is to remain a state, must establish an uncompromising monopoly over weaponry and the power of the gun. But, in Pakistan, there are at least four kinds of actors (other than the ‘legitimate’ state actors) who bear arms…and, all too frequently, use them

Those of my readers who have been
huntsmen will know the feeling. You raise your shotgun, sighting along the steel barrel, and press the trigger. The goose, or bustard, or pheasant seems momentarily to shudder. And then it drops, stilled forever by the awesome power the hunter holds in his barrel, the power to deal out death. And this immense surge is less than a tiny atom of the kind of power that has carved out kingdoms and built empires through the ages: military power.

For, it is military power that not only carves out states and defends them, but the control of which is basic to the very existence of a state. This was what the great Chinese poet, revolutionary, military strategist and nation-builder Mao Zedong referred to when he said, “Power grows from the barrel of a gun.” With some clandestine assistance from the US, Mao captured gun power, on behalf of the Chinese masses, first from the Japanese occupation army, and then from the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek, with considerable help from the USSR.

When Mao Zedong’s party finally came to power, his enormous country was awash with guns. Mao understood, back in 1949, that the presence of all this leftover weaponry would pose critical challenges to the Chinese state he intended to build. Therefore, he set about absorbing his own partisans, as well as the many other weapon-wielding Chinese citizens, into the Red Army.

Now, it is almost a truism that, if a state is to remain a state and not ‘fail’, if a society is to remain functional, the organs of the state — the military, paramilitaries and police — must establish and assert monopolistic control over serious weaponry. Gun power, if set loose and released from the control of the state, is a power for the anarchic destruction of the state that has unleashed it. These destructive forces were unleashed in Pakistan when that the retrograde Zia regime distributed guns across the land. That he, and the institution he commanded, did this in cahoots with the US, in order to drive those ‘dreadful’ Russian communists out of Afghanistan and establish ‘strategic depth’ in that country, is not at issue. Secretary Clinton’s mea culpas notwithstanding, the US pursued its own raisons d’état; we needed to think of our own country’s sovereignty and integrity.

For us Pakistanis, both the social order and the stable survival of the state have for some time been at risk, a risk that may have diminished of late, but remains grave.

We, too, live in a country bristling with guns and bulging with bombs. And it is the armed and trained remnants of the Afghan jihad that are responsible for the disorder and terrorism in our country. But, as we saw, the Chinese, with a many time larger problem, managed to resolve it. So did the countries of Europe, replete with former Resistance fighters after World War II. And Vietnam. And Cambodia. It seems that, where there has been even a minimal patriotic sense within the ruling groups, the urgency of sucking all surplus weaponry into governmental armouries and absorbing those trained to use it into the armed forces of the state, has been appreciated. Minimal patriotic sense and at least some honesty of purpose — qualities that seem to have been in extreme short supply in the heads and hearts of those who have held high office in this country.

It is a truism that a state, if it is to remain a state, must establish an uncompromising monopoly over weaponry and the power of the gun. But, in Pakistan, there are at least four kinds of actors (other than the ‘legitimate’ state actors) who bear arms…and, all too frequently, use them. These, in ascending order of ferocity, are: straightforward criminals; the goons who protect wealthy tribals, rural potentates and urban tycoons; the armed brigades associated with certain political parties and movements; and the insurrectionists and terrorists lumped together under the rubric of ‘Islamic militants’.

Starting with the first of these, all societies have their criminal underworlds and Pakistan too is richly endowed with such. Whether Karachi’s car and cell-phone snatchers, the dharels of interior Sindh, the badmashes of Punjab, ordinary murderers or the drug peddlers universal in our pious country, there is a colourful variety of armed law breakers in our cities and villages.

Now, every society, every country, has its dark underside. Crime pays (or not) everywhere in the world. And everywhere criminals are organised and armed — none more so, perhaps, than the US or Colombian criminal syndicates. But the US and Colombia and Italy and all the other countries with armed criminal gangs are in no way threatened with state ‘failure’ or social collapse. Does the existence of gangs of ordinary criminals, however well armed and organised, erode the foundations of a society or a state? It does not. Nor do the squads of ‘bodyguards’ that follow certain rich and powerful individuals.

But, in Pakistan, beyond these, there are much more deadly entities. I refer to the armed militias or bands maintained by certain political parties. Now, it is not my intention here to pillory any specific party, or its corresponding student’s organisation or armed phalanx, for maintaining bands of so-called bodyguards. Let us merely accept that the practice exists, that it is by no means a new practice (even in pre-partition India, consider the Calcutta Muslim League, the Hindu RSS, the Sikh Akali Dal, the Khaksar Tehrik) and that official/elite support renders the police helpless before such entities.

It is hard to carry any torch for our police force, whom Stephen Phillip Cohen has characterised as “predators, not protectors…notorious for their capricious abuse of power”. But it is at bottom the police through whom the armed strength of the state’s monopoly of firepower is exercised. It is the police that must counter both unorganised and organised crime, as well as saving the citizens from terrorists.

The job of the military is of course confined to the national borders or to counter-insurgency operations.

What could the inadequate numbers of our ill-organised, poorly trained, poorly armed police force do to stem the tide of violence perpetrated by the armed thugs of such political entities as the Mutahidda, the Haqiqi, the Jamiat-i-Tuleba, the Punjabi-Pakhtoon Ittehad, the PPP, the JSM, the BSM, and so on? These entities, sometimes exceedingly well armed, were extensions of political parties and sought to protect or further their political programmes. And, of course, they had the open backing of one or the other elite group, whether political, ethnic or religious.

Thus, as wee see, the proliferation and arming of certain political groups — most prominently in the 1980s (those dark years again!), but prevalent before and continuing thereafter — and the establishment’s failure to adequately confront them, is where the serious destabilisation of Pakistani society began. But the evil of the 80s did not end there. It was a short step from there to the creation of the large-scale militias of armed ‘Islamic’ militants, against whom the Pakistan Army is fighting today in a desperate battle for our very survival as a society and state. This step was taken by the government of the 1980s and the armed forces of the time. And this is reprehensible enough. That even our later civil and military establishments continued for a long time to turn a blind eye to the barbaric treason of the FATA insurrectionists, and that their fellow travellers elsewhere in the country remain active today, passes astonishment.

The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet