SLEEPWALKING TO SURRENDER: DEALING WITH TERRORISM IN PAKISTANBy Khaled Ahmed, Viking, Rs 699
In 2009, the Pakistani army announced the withdrawal of its troops from the Malakand division in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. In spite of the announcement, a major general, a lieutenant colonel and four soldiers were killed by the Taliban, which has a strong presence in the area. Khaled Ahmed's book, Sleepwalking to Surrender, not only focuses on the terror groups and their activities in Pakistan, but also takes into account the nation's relationship with its neighbours, as well as the role played by religious ideology in shaping domestic laws and society. Ahmed writes that in 2013, the Council of Islamic Ideology, which was constitutionally mandated to "guide" the legislature, held that DNA test results could be used as secondary and not primary evidence to convict a rapist.
But the author leaves out a crucial incident that took place in 2009 - an event that shook the collective conscience of the nation. In April that year, a video clip had surfaced in which a 17-year-old girl, Chand Bibi, was seen being whipped 37 times. She was punished in accordance with Sharia for going out with a man, who was not her father or brother. It was a preview of the future of the Islamic republic.
Pakistan's Parliament endorsed the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, which established Sharia in the Malakand division in the same year. The Taliban was in control of the territory. A young Pakistani girl wrote in the Dawn: "Today we legislated that a group of criminals would be in charge of governing and dispensing justice in a part of Pakistan... They have declared that the rulings of their courts will be supreme and no other court in the land can challenge them... Today, we handed over a part of the country to them. I wonder how much longer before we surrender it all." Given Ahmed's distinguished career in journalism, the fact that he misses out on such a telling example is baffling.
Ahmed's brave commentary on Muslims is commendable. His statements, such as "[m]uslims produce their best men when they are not ruling the state they live in", or "[w]hen Muslims acquire a state they go into a kind of recidivist trance", or "[i]f you want to educate yourself, never ask a Muslim what to do", are backed by cogent reasoning. According to the author, Muslims deny the presence of a clergy in Islam, but their society is "crawling with clergy... they slavishly follow their frozen-in-time medieval doctrines". They accept the discipline of economics but reject the concepts of banking and savings.
The author skilfully uses anecdotes to expose the tacit understanding between State and non-State actors. For instance, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi (picture), the chief of operations of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, was allowed to marry again while in prison. After regular cohabitation, he even fathered a child.
Interestingly, the book also includes a chapter on Narendra Modi and his rise to power. Ahmed speculates on the nature of the bilateral relations that the countries would enjoy in future. He is spot on when he claims, "Modi will have zero tolerance for any future attempt at cross-border terrorism by Pakistan's non-state actors." Recent incidents at the international border justify his claims.
Ahmed mocks and criticizes the roles played by clerics and the intelligentsia. Pakistan's most-gifted nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, believed in the existence of jinns. The scientist even read out a paper to General Zia-ul-Haq stating that he could "produce electricity for all of Pakistan from one 'tamed' jinn."
While commenting on incidents and events, the author provides the relevant history and then talks of the contemporary situation. His prose style is lucid. Ahmed's experience and extensive research make the book an authoritative account of Pakistan.
