Archaic geographies and the future of conflict

Medieval geographical divisions, like Khurasan and Levant, have come to haunt the post-modernist world. At its core, a map is a fragmented piece of an idea that precedes geography. This holds true with the Islamic State (IS) and its advances from Iraq and Syria towards Turkey now. However, the edges of the map that the IS is trying to build, has now crept into Pakistan and stirred up an ideological debate of allegiances, explicitly by some militant factions and implicitly by others. There remains a body of literature that always props up at the right time to give an impression as if a certain incident has happened just for the sake for the literature to appear.

There is an irresistible urge to allude to the Map of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinean author, whose short story, “On exactitude in Science” is perhaps, the best satire that comes to mind. In Borges’ story, the map of an unknown empire stretches to the size of the territory it occupies “and coincides with it from point to point”. Later generations, who were not interested in the art of cartography, thought the map was useless and abandoned it to the “Inclemencies of Sun and Winters” but “not without impiety”. The tatters of the map are now in the “Deserts of the West … inhabited by Animals and Beggars”.

The story has been the subject of many discussions over the decades, but it makes certain points that are important: the context, the ideological concentration on cartography, the discourse it generates and the appealing claims it tends to make at one level, and also the failure to completely grasp the diversity that emerges from one generation to another and its implications.

Ironically, the metaphor of “Sun and Winters” corresponds directly to the literal meaning of the Persian ‘Khurasan’ and its French cognate ‘Levante’ meaning “Land of the Sun” or “Rising”.

In his recent statements, the chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) refers to himself as not just Mullah Fazlullah, but Fazlullah Khurasani. The pamphlets that claim responsibilities for the TTP’s actions are no longer in plain Pashto or Urdu, but also have an Arabic version, while the breakaway faction, the Jamat-ul-Ahrar, also gives out English versions. The recently distributed pamphlet, a 22-page document of the IS, that found its way into Afghan refugee camps and in parts of Khyber Agency, was in Pashto and Darri. Recently, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has claimed responsibility for several attacks on sensitive installations within Pakistan, has declared support for the IS. Khurasan traditionally consisted of northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. But tradition seems to have little importance now, with chaos and anarchy creating their own structures.

There is always some order in disorder; the schematic relevance of sectarianism is one of the first symptoms that have led to changing geographies, which have not always been physical to begin with.

But histories run deeper. “There is a thousands of kilometers of open border in Afghanistan and regions of tribes not under political influence,” wrote the Palestinian scholar Abdulla Yusuf Azzam in his famous 1979 fatwa, justifying the Afghan Jihad, and while referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), he stated: “This forms a protective shield for us.” He explained how Palestine was a much different terrain: “The borders are closed, their hands are bound, the eyes of the authorities spy from all sides for anyone who attempts to infiltrate its borders.” Azzam was the ideological force behind Osama bin Laden and was later killed in a bomb blast. He was buried in Pabbi in Nowshera district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He sounded the first echoes for the establishment of an Islamic State in Afghanistan. Later it was Ahmad Fadil Al Khalaileh — who came to be known as Musab al-Zarqawi — who landed in Peshawar in 1989 and arrived in Iraq in the early 2000s, and laid the foundations of what we now know as the ISIS.

The more geographies change, the more maps are stretched, and whether imagined or real, conflicts will intensify. In the coming months, the conflicts, it seems, will be on the borders, but their effects more pervasive.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2014.

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