How not to follow the path of Pakistan!

Everyone wants to know what's up with Pakistan? What they really mean is what's wrong with this country that once had a shared destiny of the land of my father? So, let me start at the beginning.

Back in 1971 when I was fairly young and still trying to understand what all the shootings and killings were all about my uncle took me to the weekly bazaar near the old bridge in Sylhet that spanned the river Surma. On the way we had to go past an army checkpoint filled with soldiers wearing black shalwar-kameez and carrying antiquated Lee Enfield rifles. Later I knew them to be part of the Frontier Rangers, the same guys who claim to be fighting the Pakistani Taliban now. They did not really check the documents we proffered because they could not read them or even understand the nature of the documents. Their main method of checking for identification was to see if one was circumcised by forcing people lifting their lungis or dropping their pants. These folks said their prayers, talked about Allah and said things like "God is merciful and beneficent" and then casually killed people.

Pakistan today is on a glide path to total dysfunction and maybe a failed state. Karachi is viewed as the most dangerous big city on the planet. Not so much because of the violence (there is a lot of that) but the sheer unpredictability of the violence. Islamabad, otherwise known as Low-self-esteem-abad, is mixture of a thuggish secret service, Islamic militants and various Western undercover operatives all crawling in the hot soup of intrigue, mayhem and murderous intent. How did Pakistan which could have been a breakout success with its gateway and strategic importance become the basket case that it has become today? More importantly how do we STOP Bangladesh from following the same path?

Until the tragedy of 9/11 Bangladesh was almost drawn into a far flung Jihadist worldview which is dominated by restoration of the Khilafat and the "End of Times" war that will start in "Khurasan" (Khurasan is first mentioned by Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and recorded in the Hadith as present day Central Asia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan) and end in Jerusalem. They would have succeeded except for the 9/11 attacks brought the war home in the form of an American ultimatum and the subsequent "War on Terror" that has taxed the militant's ability and more importantly the ISI's ability to foment troubles in Bangladesh.

So, what lessons we need to learn from the Pakistani experience and how does a country like Bangladesh protect itself from the malaise of radical extremists and their handlers sitting in Rawalpindi or some such place.

Control the narrative and fight the underlying philosophy: First and foremost it is important for the Bengali intellectuals to get the narrative right and fight to win the narrative. The militants are fighting for a utopia whose only logical conclusion is destruction of everything we know and appreciate. They use such concepts as "Takfeer" to declare any Muslim they do not like as Apostate, which is tantamount to a license to kill anyone so declared in many places.

These militants are not the communication department for Allah. They are making their own reality and subjecting us all to their interpretation. They follow an obscurantist strain of Wahhabi interpretation which forms a tiny minority of a tiny minority in Islam. As soon as they invoke "Takfeer" we need to expose the people behind them and show the world for the hypocrites they are. The other tactics the militants use is "khuruj" which is the Islamic right to rebel against an unjust ruler. Well, their version of "JUST RULE" is little like Dante's Inferno.

Besides, look to the Arab spring as an inspiration for "Khuruj" and not to the mayhem that is going on in Pakistan. Fighting the militant's intellectual venom is of great importance. We as Bengalis must win the war of the narrative and not give these retrograded militants any ground.

Democracy: Functional or not the Bangladeshi democracy has produced a vibrant economy that has grown at 6+% for a number of years. The country has lifted untold number of people from abject poverty to modest living. Yes, there is a long way to go but poverty is less severe the when I used to live in Dhaka in the '70s.

In Pakistan the Islamisation of the society started under the dictator, Zia-ul-Huq. He managed to purge the military of the secular elements, install the militant bigots in the military and ISI and titled the society to a fundamentalist worldview. Well, how was all that possible? The most probable explanation is that Pakistan has never had a solid identity and after the loss of the so-called "East Pakistan", Zia capitalised on the country's severe lack of identity and direction.

He basically started a "Ghazwa-e-Hind" or a 'battle for India'. Once the many headed monster was created it took on a life of its own. This one man is probably single-handedly responsible for the downward slide of Pakistan and eventual disintegration of the sorry country.

This cannot and should not happen in Bangladesh. Based on our political development to date this possibility is remote. However, the moment we let a dictator, any dictator take over the country who can impose his/her will without any recourse we run into the possibility of a Zia-ul-Huq speaking Bangla!

Madrassas: As the recently murdered Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote, "ISI's Ghawza-e-Hind project required not only in Kashmir but whole of India and neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh. Harkat-ul Jihad-i-Islami had firmly established itself in Bangladesh through networks of Deobandi Islamic seminaries (madrassas). The purpose, however, was not to disturb the social and political structure of the country, but to facilitate the future Ghazwa-e-Hind for a steady supply line of Muslim fighters from Bangladesh once Jihadi activities has begun in India. The timeframe was closely linked to the hype on the Kashmiri separatist movement".

Well, Bangladesh was and is targeted to be used as a pawn in the great game of "End of Times" apocalypse. The first encampments of these "End of Timers" are the madrassas. There are valid reasons for madrassas and as long as religion and politics are separate then madrassas serve a purpose in terms of teaching religion. However, these places have been turned into Viper's nest by the Jihadists. To them the madrassas are no longer places of religious education but places to train and brainwash kids to become suicide bombers and foot soldiers.

Bangladesh needs to control the money flow into these madrassas and make sure that the educators in madrassas are not Jihadists in guise! There need to be a national registry of all madrassas with regular inspection of the efficacy of learning. There needs to be performance metrics and learning targets which can be measured and published annually.

Share the meagre economic bounty: The Jihadists always target people with no hope or ambition for upward mobility. The targeting is always done by the well off and the upper middle-class. The intellectual cadre is the vanguard of the recruitment drive and they use every means available. Here the politics is not so different from the Stalinist or Maoist worldview. They Marxists call their soldiers the Proletariat and the Jihadists call theirs the Umma (no, they do not use the word Umma to mean the broader Muslim society but only their version of Muslims). The tactics are similar. First there is the narrative of oppression and the Prophet's edict about Khuruj, then there is the ritual initiation (think of how many of us belonged to the so-called study cells) into a secret society, then there is violence and distribution of war booty! Sounds familiar anyone?

The way to counter these tactics is bring the disenfranchised into the mainstream. There needs to be economic programs and practical teachings in madrassas so that the kids can participate in the mainstream of the economic life. The more the disenfranchised fall back the more they may join the ranks of End Timers. As the saying goes, "the Proletariat has nothing to lose but their chains". Similarly a poor radicalised person has nothing to lose in a society that gives him nothing. A suicide vest with a promise of eternal happiness is probably tempting for someone who has not known anything resembling happiness". To be sure there are the ideologues and there I think steel must be met with steel. There is very little room to talk to the ideological End Timers.

Women: One of the hallmarks of the Jihadists is their universal contempt for women. On the one hand they want women to be "pure" even if the purity is the violent kind and acquire no tools for survival (education, skills to make a living etc.) and be hidden away from the world. On the other hand, they have fetishist's fascination with women. In parts of Pakistan the TTP (Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan) have demolished schools for girls, shut down vaccination programs and denied women basic and rudimentary healthcare.

The way for Bangladesh to counter the fetishist Jihadists is move quickly towards economic emancipation of women. I think the garments industry has become a significant antidote to the blood curdling rhetoric and actions of the "End of Timers". We need to figure out a way to make workers (who are mainly women) share more in the profitability of the garments sector, work with the US State and Commerce departments to create favourable export environments and team up with Western marketing companies to move the production up the value ladder.

In the end, Bangladeshis need to be keenly aware that Pakistan is not a role model for anything that we should aspire to. During that time the star crossed country has been dismembered once (formation of Bangladesh), fought three declared wars, many undeclared wars, killed hundreds and thousands of people, acquired nuclear weapons when its population has gone backwards in economic prosperity index. The misery continues unabated today. The people of Baluchistan are fighting the central Pakistani government to which the security forces are responding to by killing many people in an extrajudicial manner. The government's writ does not exist in vast swaths of land and the Jihadists are killing officials and politicians like Benazir Bhutto and Salman Taseer with impunity.

The place is a nightmare because it was formed on a notion of utopia that collided with the hard realities of living and thriving. Bangladesh can become the newest Asian Tiger if we can learn the lessons from the ill-fated country, our former ruler, Pakistan!

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Kayes Ahmed lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA with his three dogs. He runs a small yet global apparel and design business based in Boulder.