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(Article Review: Stephen Cohen, "The Jihadist threat to Pakistan," The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2003, 26;3, pp.7-25.)

One of the major concerns in both India and elsewhere about Pakistan has been the increasing role played by fundamentalist forces inside the country. There are many misperceptions about the nature of Pakistani society, the remarkable success of its religious parties in the 2002 elections, and the suicide attacks launched in the post 9/11 period. Pakistani society is seen as talibanised; its army under the fundamentalist hold and its polity led by jihadi and fundamentalist forces. How far do these assumptions reflect the true nature of Pakistan? "The Jihadist threat to Pakistan" by Prof Stephen Cohen is a balanced and objective analysis of the threats posed by the jihadis to Pakistan.

Who created and who fought the Monster?

Cohen rightly asserts that "with little mass support in this deeply Islamic yet still moderate country, radical Islamists have not been able to successfully conduct an Islamic coup to seize the levers of government, and they stand little chance of doing so within the next five years." But he also cautions, "beyond (five years), Pakistan's future is uncertain."

Why have the Islamist forces failed to seize the government? In neighboring Afghanistan and Iran they had done this in the past. This is where I would disagree with Cohen. According to him, "the political dominance and institutional integrity of the Pakistani army remains the chief reason for the marginality of radical Islamic groups." Does the Pakistani military deserve this credit? This, in effect, not only undermines the democratic polity in Pakistan, but also leads to the conclusion that the Army would act as the vanguard against the fundamentalist assault.

Who created the mujahideens of the 1980s or the Taliban, Lashkars and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in the 1990s, and the Jaish in the 2000s? It was the Pakistani army – to fulfill its objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Suggesting that an institution responsible for the birth of radical Islam could prevent it from seizing power is less than convincing. Second, it was the democratic polity of Pakistan, which prevented the Islamists, moderate or radical, from seizing power. In fact, there is not much difference between radical and moderate Islam today. If the Taliban and JUI (especially the Fazlur faction) are two sides of the same coin, so are the Jamaat-e-Islami and Hizbul Mujahideen.

An analysis of Pakistani polity and society in the 1980s and 90s would prove Cohen's thesis right – that Islamic forces (both moderate and radical) failed to assume political power – but his explanation is wrong. It was not the military, but the secular democratic forces that prevented them from acquiring power by not providing them political space. In fact, there was no political space for the Islamists, radical or moderate, in Pakistan when the secular parties were allowed to function; the electoral performance of the Islamic forces from 1989 to 1999 and their growth in the post October 1999 period proves who acted as a bulwark against them, and who facilitated their growth. After 1989, their performance in Pakistan declined continuously and they never commanded more than seven percent of electoral support. The amir of Jamaat-e-Islami, the most powerful Islamic party, was defeated in all the seats that he contested in the 1995 general elections, and he dared not contest the 1997 elections. All the religious parties, together, never won more than ten seats for the National Assembly during the 1989-99 period.

In the post October 1999 period, the Musharraf regime banned the PPP and PML-N, banned its leaders from contesting the elections through dubious electoral reforms and weakened the PML-N by breaking it. This policy of undermining the secular parties created the political vacuum that was filled up by the religious parties.

Belittling the role of the democratic polity and crediting the military for opposing the Islamic forces will have negative consequences. The polity was, no doubt, partly responsible for the growth of the jihadis, but this was not by design, as is the case with the military. It was rather by default. The failure of governance, especially its failure on the education and employment front resulted in the support base for the jihadis growing. Neither the Benazir nor Sharif governments spent more than one percent of the GDP on education; as a result, the government run schools were not functioning. The middle class and the lower class cannot afford private education; hence, their children shifted to madrassas where there was meal, a stipend and some guarantee of a job as a madari.