A chicken separated from nest

Pashtuns don’t divide us they are all over Pakistan and act as a great community that unites us all as Pakistanis

There is this African proverb which says, “when a chicken separates itself from the nest, a hawk will take it.” There are 26 million Pashtuns living is Pakistan which is almost 16 per cent of our population and it’s not any city in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa but Karachi that holds about 1.5 million ethnic Pashtuns making it the largest Pashtun city in the world. Pashtuns don’t divide us, they are spread out all over Pakistan and act as a great community that unites us all as Pakistanis.

The richest example of this fine merger, earnest blend and the enabling balance that they create in Pakistan’s multi-ethnic society is the Armed Forces of Pakistan. Pashtuns representation there is phenomenal and rich with history of gallantry displayed by such Pashtun sons of soil like Karnal Sher Khan, the recipient of the country’s highest gallantry award ‘Nishan-e Haider’. Pashtuns, like every one of us, have a nest to live. Our ancestors have built it with great sacrifices and all of us, including the Pashtuns, want to add ‘straw by straw’ anything to support, strengthen and reinforce it and like Karnal Sher Khan are willing to spill every drop of our blood to defend it. It is in this context that anyone who speaks against this nest defended by the sacrifices of many shuhaada becomes that ‘proverbial chicken’.

Manzoor Pashteen, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement chief, was recently arrested and sent to jail on a 14-day remand. He has been arrested on charges of sedation, hate speech, incitement against the state and criminal conspiracy. There are people who are calling Manzoor’s arrest a ‘military crackdown’ and ‘the breakdown of constitutionalism’. But is this true? Pashteen has been delivering some very venomous anti-state speeches in the past. He has acted like the proverbial chicken ready to leave the nest. Can a state allow any person or group within a society to forge relationship with outsiders? Especially, when the state is trying hard to balance against these outsiders’ bad intents as well as their capabilities pitched against it. It is for this very purpose that the state built fences on the border to keep itself separated from these outsiders until their good intent is not only clear but demonstrated? Squeezed between such two not-so-friendly countries our state has its job cut out for it.

The state neither wants to crush local dissent nor does it want any community to be converted into despots or slaves. What it wants is that no networks of ‘manipulatory forces’ are created, dictated, controlled and sustained through mischief by its enemies from abroad. Is it even surprising that any state does this?

Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679), the English philosopher considered as the father of modern political philosophy, termed ‘avoidance of anarchy as a great priority for human beings’. He was the author of his great work ‘Leviathan’ written during the English Civil War. Leviathan was a ‘giant sea monster’ but Hobbes compared it with the state and theorised that only a strong and undivided Leviathan (state) could prevent the formulation of state of anarchy and chaos. The three kinds of Hobbesian Leviathans (states) that we have today are the absent Leviathan (Afghanistan, Somalia) countries where there is less state and more statelessness; despotic Leviathan (China, Russia, India) where societies are coerced into submission; and shackled Leviathan (US and European Countries) where the states are shackled by societal mobilisation.

All the 195 countries that exist today in this world have states, constitutions, courts, governments, laws and security forces that enforce those laws on behalf of the government. These states also do everything to protect their sovereignty, territorial integrity and their independence. All these states enjoy a varying degree of relationship with the societies and those powerful states that have their systems in place, independent institutions that run their affairs, and thoroughly developed capacities to confront challenges remain restrained and accountable to their societies. Weak states that are in the process of building up their capacities are vulnerable and when negative ethnic sub-populism and sub-nationalism is utilised to confront the state through revolutionary movements, sponsored, funded and directed from abroad than these states fear the resulting state of chaos and statelessness. Thus they are within their right to resist such movements.

Pakistan is one such state that is in the process of building up its state capacity and institutions. It has given tremendous sacrifices to beat and defeat terrorism and cannot allow its gains in the war on terror to be reversed by any distraction. Its armed forces, its nuclear capability and its divergent but homogeneous populace give it a tremendous edge to stand up against an imposed warfare of any kind.

While the state got busy fighting a very challenging war on terror, a variety of garbage, rubbish and trash piled up which the state now confronts. The one piled up on the roadsides is being lifted and will be lifted in time, but it is the other kind that is stacked up in the minds that is more challenging for the state to confront. Max Weber, the German sociologist, states, “What distinguishes a modern world from the past is rationalization” and one can only hope that the state can pull together all the forces, including the academia, the media and all the sane and rational minds to help it in emptying some of these anti-state ‘garbaged minds’.

What Pashteen seeks is something that all societies eternally seek from their states i.e. justice, freedom and liberty. However, Pashteen’s manner of seeking those wants for Pashtuns as the chief of their Tahafuzz (protection) movement is repugnant, revolting and disgusting. Ideally, it is the job of the state to control violence and enforce laws, and it is the job of the citizens and society to continue to contest with the state to seek an environment where they can pursue their choices with liberty and freedom and without state interference. But state evolution is not an end but a process – a day-in and day-out mutual struggle and contestation between society and the state. A fine balance between the two can only emerge if the importance of electoral process, and democracy that ensures it, is valued, and representatives of the people raise their voices more in parliaments than out on the streets.

If treachery, state betrayal and foul rhetoric is replaced by rational thinking blended with patriotism, no sea monster (Leviathan) (despotic state) will ever endure. Absent leviathan will result. Meaning more power to the people and a more powerful state.