26 April,2009 06:42 AM IST | | Aakar Patel
How real is the Taliban threat to India?
THE Taliban are Pashtun, or Pathan, and comprise 20 per cent of Pakistan's population.
Last week, Pakistan's National Assembly passed a law surrendering the district of Swat, a beautiful place of mountains and lakes, to a group called Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi. The name means the movement to enforce Muhammad's laws. On Monday, Pakistan's politicians told the world that the surrender of Swat, where Shariah law is now in force, would end the Taliban's demands.
On Tuesday, the Taliban rolled into Buner, the next district, 100 kms from Islamabad. The world holds its breath: could the Talibs take over Pakistan?
They already have.
Pakistani Taliban members at Buner, northwestern Pakistan, on Fridayu00a0AP Photo/Naveed Ali
Exhibit A is Dr Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood.
Trained in Manchester, he worked for 35 years at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.
Dr Mahmood has a solution to Pakistan's energy crisis: trapping Djinns.
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No, really.
He believes that ghosts can be captured and be a limitless source of energy. Dr Mahmood bases his theory on the Qur'an, which mentions the existence of Djinns.
He has also done research on sun-spots. Not their radiation, but how their magic influenced the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution.
In 2001, Dr Mahmood went to Afghanistan where he met Osama and al-Zawahiri. He discussed plans of making an atomic bomb for them, and the level of his kookiness would have taken even Osama aback.
Dr Mahmood has received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan's third highest honour.
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Exhibit B is all the President's men.
Without his three most trusted generals, Pervez Musharraf would not have become president. While he was sacked and kept in the air on the flight from Colombo, Mahmud Ahmed, Muzaffar Hussain Usmani and Mohd Aziz Khan mounted a coup against prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
After taking power in an Islamised army, a scared Musharraf got rid of all three men when he realised how deranged they were.
He sent ISI chief Mahmud Ahmed to Kandahar to tell Mullah Omar that Pakistan was withdrawing diplomatic recognition to Afghanistan and he should help America with the 9/11 investigation. Gen Ahmed instead told Mullah Omar to fight on. Ahmed is now with the Tablighi Jamaat, a group that spread the message of conservative Islam.
Pakistani journalist Amir Mir reported in his book this year that Gen Ahmed arranged for the transfer of 1 lakh dollars to Mohd Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks. Gen Ahmed has received the Hilal-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan's second-highest honour.
Muzaffar Hussain Usmani (Hilal-e-Imtiaz) led Karachi's V Corps during the coup. Usmani voted to fight America after Colin Powell famously asked Musharraf if Pakistan was "with us or against us". Mohd Aziz Khan was the man who thought up and executed Kargil. He planned the infiltration without thinking of what would happen once India discovered the soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry had crossed into its territory. More than a thousand Pakistan soldiers (along with over 400 Indian jawans) died in a most thoughtless war. Aziz is now also with the Tablighi Jamaat.
He got the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan's highest honour, the equivalent of Bharat Ratna.
Another general who was fired for being unhinged was Javed Nasir, in May 1993. Bill Clinton forced Pakistan's caretaker government of Balkh Sher Mazari to sack Nasir after he organised the insane attack in Bombay that Dawood and Tiger Memon carried out.
Nasir, who got the Hilal-e-Imtiaz, joined the Tablighi Jamaat.
The man Musharraf replaced as President of Pakistan, Rafiq Tarar, is also Tablighi. Tarar, who is a former Supreme Court judge, turned his face away from a TV set during Ramzan because he might accidentally see a woman, and be tempted.
Pakistan is a society gone into pious insanity.
The Islamisation of Pakistan is believed to be a throwback to the years of Gen Zia-ul-Haq (died 1988), who brought in the punishments known as Hadd.
The Taliban are actually on the right side of the Pakistan constitution. The Hadd laws on Pakistan's books call for flogging, amputation and stoning to death. These punishments are not handed out because the politicians are scared of what the world will think.
In that sense, the Taliban are only demanding the implementation of the law.
Pakistan's liberals have scorn for overly pious Muslims, calling them 'fundos', and cursing Zia. But the liberals will now have to go underground as Islam takes full charge in Pakistan.
Even the Pakistan cricket team is becoming Taliban.
Yousuf Yohana converted from Christianity to Islam, changed his name to Mohd Yousuf and grew a flowing beard. Before him, Inzamam ul Haq, off spinner Saqlain Mushtaq and leg spinner Mushtaq Ahmed began to look and sound like mullahs, after they joined the Tablighi Jamaat.
The first Tablighi in the team was Saeed Anwar, the left-handed opener. One by one, as they found the population receptive to their piousness, the cricketers became more Muslim. They started saying 'Bismillah al Rehman al Rahim' before speaking on television.
This has even touched the modern Imran Khan, who left his Jewish wife Jemima, and now sides with the two mullah political parties, the conservative Jamiat-ul Ulema e Islam and the radical Jamaat-e-Islami. Both these draw their cadre from the Tablighi Jamaat.
By itself, the Tablighi Jamaat does not propagate war or Jihad.
But it obliterates the act of thinking among Muslims. It tells them the solution to everything is in the Qur'an.
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And it produces men like our scientist Bashiruddin Mahmood.
It's not a bunch of bearded villagers that the world, and India, should be afraid of. It's a group of modern men, speaking English and armed with nuclear missiles, who have lost the capacity for rational thought.
But if Pashtuns are only 20 per cent of Pakistan, how can they be so dominant?
Because the Punjabi, who is more than 50 per cent, is soft and admires the Pashtun for his independence. Most of the mosques in Punjab are actually run by fiery Pashtun clerics.
The Pakistani state helped in this by stamping out culture, which it thought as being Hindu, and replacing it with religion.
Only one Pakistani had the intellect, and the desire, to oppose the Taliban, and, importantly, could have carried the people. That was Benazir. As her name suggested, she was truly peerless, and the Taliban knew that she was the one person they would need to neutralize, and they did.
Asif Zardari, a Sindhi, cannot pull Punjab out of the abyss it is aching to jump into.
Nawaz Sharif is no intellectual. Like Advani and Vajpayee, he is a mediocre mind. He is also an opportunist and will turn with the wind. His father, who died a couple of years ago, was a great follower of the Tablighi Jamaat.
Pakistan has become a social experiment of scary proportions.
It would benefit from a period of America colonisation, to exorcise it of excess Islam, but this is not possible any longer.
Vajpayee and Advani took India nuclear in 1998 without knowing what would happen next. Pakistan's generals weaponised their nuclear program weeks later and now Pakistan is invulnerable to foreign attack.
Those who believe Zia is the root of the trouble are wrong. The one actually responsible for the state of Pakistan is their Quaid e Azam, the man Advani knows as secular: Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
Jinnah told India's Muslims they were unique because of their religion. Islam was more than a religion, more than private practice: it was a way of life, which they would unfold in their new and pristine state ('Pak' means pure). And now, Pakistanis are being taught by the Taliban exactly what that pure way of life is.
Having driven its minorities away, Pakistan is today 96 per cent Muslim, and unable to think secularly.
It will go through a process of Talibanisation before it is fully internalised, and only then will the ghost be expelled.
India and the world must wait for Pakistan to complete this process: there is no other way. We can only hope that during the period of its insanity, Pakistan does not take the world down with it.
