Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

Zafar, do you know what he’s talking about? the colonel asked me.

Because if you do, perhaps you’d care to explain it to us, said the general.

Strategic depth? I replied.

Do you really think they can conquer Afghanistan? the general asked Hassan.

Conquer, perhaps not, not in any comprehensive sense, replied Hassan. But if you think they’ll leave the country altogether, if you think for a moment they won’t maintain permanent bases, right in the thick of it, a slingshot’s distance from Central Asian oil wells, and on the border with Iran, then, my friends, you’ve been taking too much Afghani opium.

Strategic depth, said the colonel, addressing me, is the very idea of Afghanistan, in particular the border country, providing a hospitable environment for our troops should we need to regroup after an Indian military advance, so that India would never rest easy if, God forbid, it ever mounted a serious foray into Pakistan. The Indians merely knowing that we have such depth is enough.

That’s one way to describe strategic depth, said Mehrani.

What’s yours?

It’s an aspect of the lunatic obsession we have with India, he replied. India doesn’t care about us. We spend so much time talking about India. It’s the staple of our cocktail parties. But do you think for a moment they talk about us quite so much in Delhi? Their military budget is seven times ours. Are they remotely afraid of us? asked Mehrani.

You think we should spend more?

We should spend less. Look at our country. It’s a total disaster. Sixty percent of our children are born significantly stunted, physically stunted! Male illiteracy is at forty-one percent, female at seventy percent. Virtually no health care for the poor. Tax collection is at ten percent, the lowest in the subcontinent, lower than that of Bangladesh, for heaven’s sake.

Reza-bhai likes statistics. He’s a scientist, said the general.

Here’s a statistic for you, Reza-bhai, said Hassan. Come to think of it, Zafar, you’ll also like this. It’s rather mathematical. Pakistan may be what you say, but she has a very low Gini coefficient.

You have read the Dawn editorial, said the general.

Was that a slip, I asked myself, or had the ISI officer intended to unnerve me by indicating that he knew I’d studied mathematics?

The Gini coefficient is the work of no less auspicious an institution than the United Nations Development Program. It measures national income inequality, the ratio of the income of the bottom ten percent to the income of the top ten percent. Pakistan’s Gini coefficient is lower than India’s, lower than America’s, lower than Nigeria’s, lower in fact than that of forty other countries.

I haven’t heard of the Gini coefficient, so I don’t know, I said, but I think you mean the other way around.

What?

Ratio of top ten percent to bottom ten percent — if your point is that Pakistan has lower income inequality, I explained.

Each of them considered this and a few moments passed as the four men stared into space while their brains turned over. Then in unison, they said, You’re right , before breaking into laughter.

How is that possible? How can income inequality be relatively low? I asked.

Indeed, replied the ISI official. Here, he continued, we have the heart of the matter. That which is the source of so many of our woes is also the source of strengths. Kinship and patronage.

As in Bangladesh.

As in India.

But even more so here, continued Hassan. Kinship and patronage. The two work together to make this country. Westerners never tire to point to our corruption; they never tire to highlight our moral failings. We are lawless, they say, and if you listened to them you would think we haven’t a shred of integrity. But that is the opposite of the case. You see, my boy, in Pakistan there are very powerful moral obligations at work, those of kinship. Loyalties to one’s family, to one’s clan, tribe, religion, and extended kinship networks — such loyalties override anything our elites bring in the form of laws. Our laws are largely inherited from the British and are no more the expression of the people’s voice than the laws imposed by a colonial power. But the loyalties that bind people together, these flow in the blood of Pakistanis.

How the blazes does that explain a low Gini coefficient? Now that you’ve let the Gini out of the bottle, I think you should explain that, said the general, quite evidently enjoying his pun.

The looting of the state is seldom for the sole benefit of an individual. That is very rare—

As in military contracts, added Dr. Mehrani mischievously, though none of the others seemed to take the bait. He was the only civilian among them.

When a man, a politician or a bureaucrat, takes a sum, a commission, or a payment, he is taking it into trust for the benefit of a wider group. He will pay servants, gunmen, supporters, political transport for supporters, political hospitality, and then he will share the rest among his relatives. Unlike countries such as Nigeria where a few plunder the treasury, siphoning off proceeds from oil that ought to benefit the nation and stashing them in Western bank accounts, in Pakistan the moneys get spread around. Therefore, income inequality remains relatively low. As for the military, the good doctor knows very well that the military is the only island of sanity in an ocean of madness, said Hassan.

Well put, said the general.

The army is industrious, it is efficient, and it gets the job done. Why else do you think Pakistanis have turned to the army time and again? For God’s sake, even elected governments seek our help. In ’99, Sharif* put the military in charge of water and power in order to restore order and enforce fee payment. And you know what else? asked Hassan, looking at me. The military is a meritocracy, he said, as if this was the clincher. No one can deny that. Do you know who’s going to head the ISI next? The director general of military operations, General Ashfaq Kayani, the son of an NCO, a lowly sergeant. And look at Musharraf, he’s the son of a Mohajir.*

What is it Voltaire said of Frederick the Great’s Prussia? Where some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state, said Mehrani.

The Americans know nothing about the realities, the basic facts of this part of the world, the general added, ignoring Mehrani’s barbed comment.

The British are no better, said Hassan. The British are delusional. Just the other day, the British ambassador was complaining to me: If only the American soldier would behave half as well as his British counterpart. In what way? I asked him. We hand out sweets to the children, he said, we respect local customs, and we don’t go charging in all guns blazing. I almost throttled him. Respect customs at the barrel of a loaded rifle? They still regard themselves as the benevolent imperialists, but in Afghanistan the duplicitous shit heads are hated even more than the Americans. Do they think we in this part of the world don’t know history? They tried fucking us up the Khyber Pass every chance they got but still they think they’re nobility. Fuckers.

Calm down, bhai, said Mehrani.

Pour me some whisky.

The educated classes know something; give them some credit, said the colonel.

Don’t fool yourself. I was in Washington last month, said the general, with Sattar† at a meeting with Colin Powell. The chap sat opposite us and for fifteen minutes he spoke of Pakhtoon and Taliban interchangeably — he said Pashtun , of course. It became unbearable, and even Kurshid,‡ a Punjabi, was agitated enough to point out that two senior officials with him were Pakhtoons but decidedly not Taliban. I wondered to myself if Powell might even need it explained to him that there were Pakhtoons in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the very least, you would think he’d been briefed about us. One should always know whom one’s meeting.