Race and sect, a nation not so united

When enemy fights along ethnic & sectarian lines, one begs our defenders forget the same differences among themselves.

“To win the people,” goes one of the less vulgar quotes that bear a Greek comic’s name, “always cook them some savoury that pleases them.” Die though he did Before Christ, last May’s election season proved his words live on. The Peoples Party suggested even greater governance. Imran Khan said he’d kick corruption in 90 days. Nawaz Sharif promised buses and bullet trains. Mr Sharif won.

The streets came alive, the country was coloured monotonous Muslim League green, and the latest One Pound Fish party tune played loud and long. Even for those that voted against, there was a trickle of hope in Mr Sharif’s win: this was the kind of leverage that merited neither midnight deals nor creepy coalition partners. It was the sunny month of May, and a strong centre had taken charge. Then the phone rang.

The MQM, chief Altaf Hussain, congratulated Mr Sharif. In words that evoked those Good Old Bad IJI Days, Mr Hussain greeted the PM-designate as a natural leader … of Punjab. He was happy, Mr Hussain said, to see the N-League’s old jingle, “Jaag Punjabi Jaag”, come of age, and urged they treat ‘the three non-Punjabi provinces’ fairly. The implication — that no national government was this — was clear.

Brushing the ticker tape off their shoulders, the PML-N hit back hard. Just 30 seconds in, national unity had flown out the window, and the ’90s had come roaring back in. Ethnic division was back in vogue, not that it had left. Ever since Gohar Ayub’s boys ran wild in Karachi, punishing whoever voted for Fatima before the field marshal, it’s been 50 years of digging ourselves in. And when well over half the country’s population belongs to Punjab, universal franchise — based sadly on ethnic lines — seems tilted towards the five rivers.

There lies perhaps the tragedy of Pakistan — what could be a multicultural democracy is instead a multi-mono-cultural one: the MQM remains restricted to Karachi, Balochistan goes to Baloch and Pashtun nationalists according to Baloch and Pashtun pockets, interior Sindh may only choose between the Sindhi feudals in the Functional League and the Sindhi feudals in the Peoples Party, and K-P is spoiled for choice between Pathan lefties in ANP, Pathan righties in PTI, and Pathan hard-righties in JUI.

And though they’ve made admirable attempts at staying non-ethnic in character (of which the PTI has succeeded the most), we’re still left with ethnic parties per province. Try as they might, the PML-N made no inroads into Sindh, like the MQM never quite made it in AJK. Five years of Sindh cards and Janubi Punjab Provinces later, the PPP too boxed itself into the interior. To talk of national unity today is to whistle in the dark. And in days like these, it may be the only thing that can pull us through.

Because even on a base as brittle as this, what divisions the people of Pakistan weren’t gifted by nature were injected in-vitro. Pakistan’s sectarian sickness, an alien germ fed on the neglect of southern Punjab for some 30 years, is branching out across the country. We now have an identity crisis that takes all comers: sect and caste and class, the result is a state getting pummelled between each.

Saturday saw bombs go off in three different directions in K-P — in Bannu, Peshawar and DI Khan. Abductions run apace along Balochistan, from cardiologists to customs officials, and as with most things Balochistan, no one cares. Further down, gangs of men, middle names in quotes — Chota, Goga, Heera — pistol-whip each other in Lyari, as the Baloch/Baba gang war rages on. Meanwhile, we are told, Karachi’s being cleaned up again, as Rangers capture killers almost as fast as the courts acquit them.

Yes, three provinces are on fire … but isn’t that business as usual? Not since last week, because Punjab might be sinking along with the other three. And the half of it that didn’t matter to the state is infecting the half that does: boring, sweltering southern Punjab, long left to the mercy of feudal thugs and sectarian charities, is going off the rails, as we all knew it would. Chishtian was handed over to the Army, Haroonabad to the Rangers. Curfew was set in Multan.

And that wasn’t the worst part. Riots hit Rawalpindi and left bodies behind them, unanimously thought a failure of administration. Curfew was imposed and extended. The powers that be responded accordingly, depending on one’s axe to grind. The PML-N whispered conspiracy, the PTI called off its supply routes sit-in, and that venerable gentleman Mufti Muneebur Rehman chided the press for slurring things ‘sectarian’.

But Mufti sahib had one intensely valid point to make: if those behind Karachi’s Ashura bombing were brought to justice in 2009, there would have been no riots in Rawalpindi in 2013. That most of us can’t even remember the tragedy — or the 43 dead — that he refers to, isn’t a failure of the administration. It’s an indictment of the value of life we assign to fellow Pakistanis.

One we can redeem, with blood and tears. Punishing militant outfits is worlds away from banning their names. Urban centres are at the highest risk of attack, and it’s the police, not the soldiers, that must be made into the first line of defence via retraining and capacity-building (and please, higher salaries). Southern Punjab requires bringing back into the rest of Punjab, which in turn should merit as much attention as the rest of Pakistan, Lyaris and Jiwanis included. And when the enemy fights along lines that are ethnic and sectarian, one begs our defenders forget the same differences among themselves, and stand together.

Alternatively, we could go all Article 6 on General Musharraf; that works too. One wonders what the Sri Lankans must be thinking — Mr Sharif will return from Colombo to try the general for treason, just as the general returned from Colombo to arrest Mr Sharif. We know the latter didn’t work.

Trying the general won’t either.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2013.

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