Mind games

In 1999, I was given a cassette tape containing an audio documentary by a friend in uniform. It was called The Shadows and was a Muslim version of every anti-Masonic conspiracy theory known to us all. The purpose was to portray the West as the abode of all evil, being controlled by a shadowy cabal. The West was described as the precursor to Dajjal, the Muslim variant of the Antichrist. It did not affect me too much. However, curiosity about an incidentally adjacent secular conspiracy took me down another rabbit hole, where I would be lost for many months.

I bring this up because it happened only a few years before 9/11. It was a surreal era. Muslims everywhere were waking up to the changed realities of the post-Cold War world, and they needed an answer. Almost overnight, they had metamorphosed from willing allies to potential threats. When there is a thirst for an explanation, people who want to play mind games find an opportunity. Notice that these mind games were already knocking at the doors of our state institutions.

The emergent unipolar world witnessed two distinct efforts related to Muslims in the world. The first was to close and harden conservative Muslim minds. They were being convinced to adhere to the most conservative version of their identity. Separately, in the West, they were being framed as the Green Peril or the next great challenge to the democratic world. The game behind this priming was given away by Samuel Huntington. But his hypothesis was viewed in a positive light in this newly divided world. Suddenly, radical voices in the Muslim world were gaining traction, and Islamophobes were being mainstreamed in the Western media. Then 9/11 happened and formalised this divide.

Days kept passing by. In 2011, upon my return from my visit to India, some friends in the defence sector felt that I could do with a refresher on national interest and patriotism. I was invited to participate in a workshop run by a national security institution. I wasn't the only civilian. There were many celebrities among the participants. One prominent example was a famous singer who had recently interviewed Zaid Hamid for a major network in a series made on the thoughts of Allama Iqbal. What shocked me was the institutional patience for the conspiracy nonsense perpetuated by various participants.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can say with confidence that the same mind games were at play. These mind games confused us as a nation and weakened the resolve to permanently defeat terrorists. Following the APS Peshawar tragedy in 2014, a fleeting consensus emerged and the fight gained momentum. But the mind games soon overpowered it.

In 2013, shortly before the general elections, when Tahir ul Qadri first came to Islamabad with his supporters, most of us covering his protests focused on his actions rather than his words, owing to concerns about the potential for escalation and violence. But he kept talking. We were not his target. He was shaping the PTI's minds and sowing doubts about the electoral process. By the time he concluded his protest, he had already found his mark. Next time, he would return to Islamabad after the Model Town tragedy with the PTI in tow.

During the 2014 sit-in, as I watched him speaking on television, he did an incredible thing. After telling his followers that he was about to show something impressive, he pulled out a picture of PM Modi and President Xi sitting together in the former's family house in Gujarat. He told his supporters that a great leader ought to be like that. Obviously, he was referring to Modi. His next statement was even wilder. He told his audience that the said picture had not yet been released to the press and he was the first person to acquire it. Nobody even thought of asking him what his source was and how he was this close to the Indian government.

That sit-in, which continued for a while, delayed President Xi's visit to Pakistan and therefore the announcement of the CPEC.

You will see this pattern repeating ad nauseam in recent years. Whenever momentous events like a foreign dignitary's visit, a high-profile event or a critical decision were to materialise, mysterious things would start to happen. The agitations that would follow would be spearheaded by one right-wing outfit or another. Sometimes the PTI, at times the Jamaat-e-Islami, and then the PAT, the TLP and, why, even Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman would lead the way and make the business of the state impossible.

Let us now shift from abstract thoughts to concrete examples. Right when the country was struggling to get its name removed from the France-based FATF's grey list, the TLP launched its violent protest demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador from Pakistan. An Arab nation's leader was about to arrive in Pakistan with plans to invest in the country and suddenly Imran Khan launched his long march to Islamabad, resulting in the cancellation of the visit. Likewise, when the Indian government was trying to win in the Karnataka state elections, our May 9 violence gave their news channels something to celebrate.

Now a quick question. Could all of these elements be compromised? Or is their actual crime the proximity to certain compromised sections of the security state? We are talking about agitations spanning over a decade. That is a long period for such a compromise to exist.

When the country gained global attention after the four-day war with India, one could feel resentment building up in New Delhi. Sensing this, I put out a short video on my YouTube/TikTok channels (@fptalks) urging our political leaders to forgo their differences for a few months. And until this month, one felt an admirable restraint. But then the Saudi-Pakistani defence agreement and our PM and Army Chief's visit to the White House seem to have cracked the resolve. The elements should have also played a part, but our enemy also has a remarkable gift of division. Now open chaos has begun.

First the PPP and the PMLN began to spar. Then the PTI demolished its own government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, apparently in an attempt to cut off the nose to spite the face. And, while these lines are being written, Islamabad is on lockdown because the TLP is marching on the federal capital to protest in front of the US embassy against the Israeli war on Palestine. Why now, when the US has apparently managed to bring an end to the conflict, and why the US embassy, you ask? Because that's where the Pakistani leadership went silly.