Why MMA needn’t spell trouble

The MMA includes the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) faction led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maulana Samiul Haq, which has strong influence among the Taliban as many of them were trained in JUP-run madrassas. The Jamaat-i-Islami party (JI), one of the biggest MMA constituent groups, was the flag carrier of the Afghan mujahideen in the ’80s and early ’90s. Its leader, Qazi Hussein Ahmad, was the patron of mujahideen leaders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The MMA secured 53 seats in the parliament, a controlling representation in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Assembly, and the largest single party status in the Balochistan Assembly, both of which provinces lie in Pakistan’s volatile Pashtun tribal area on the border with Afghanistan. The MMA garnered the third largest number of federal parliament seats—after the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam (PML-QA) with 73 and the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians with 63.

In the days following the polls, Qazi Hussein Ahmad clarified that the MMA’s stated opposition to the presence of American troops on Pakistani soil itself was ‘‘negotiable’’. He had spoken with strident anti-American rhetoric to his local audience, but he has assumed a voice of moderation now that the hurly-burly of the elections is done.

The Islamic parties’ doublespeak on issues of Pakistan’s foreign and security policy is not new. Given the traditionally anti-American public mood in Pakistan and the constant compulsion to project themselves as political forces, parties such as the JI and JUI resort to public rhetoric of an inflammatory kind, while they have shown time and again that they are capable of pragmatism bordering on political cynicism in coming to terms with the realities of Pakistan’s national life and the raison d-etre of Pakistan’s geopolitics.

Most of the MMA leaders are experienced in the ground rules of Pakistan’s parliamentary politics, and the culture of popular governance. And all of them at one time or the other have been fellow travellers of the establishment. In the present context, most important of all, they will now be ‘‘stakeholders’’ of the system, rather than embittered outsiders intriguing to destabilise it.

But what is often forgotten is that the Islamic parties of Pakistan are extremely well known to the Americans historically. These parties were pillars of the political establishment under successive dictatorships in Pakistan during the Cold War era. They may be parochial in their world views, but their leaders have worked particularly closely with the Americans over decades.

For example, Fazlur Rehman, as chairman of the foreign relations committee of the Pakistan National Assembly in 1993-94, was even received in US State Department, espousing the Taliban cause. Thus, the Pakistani security establishment’s traditional armlock on outfits such as the JI and JUI should come in very handy for the US at this juncture in stabilising the Afghan situation.

Pakistani political observers have commented that the MMA’s electoral success in Pakistan’s border provinces has not come as a surprise to the Americans. The official American reaction, indeed, has eschewed any note of alarm over the MMA’s rise.

Significantly, the political alignments within Afghanistan are themselves changing, which would mesh with the changes in Pakistan. The ground is being prepared to ensure the preeminence of President Hamid Karzai within the transitional government in Kabul. This is a pressing prerequisite for the advancement of Afghan reconstruction, especially for the proposed Trans-Afghan oil and gas pipeline project. Accordingly, the Northern Alliance groups are being downsized. These groups are no longer indispensable to the war, which has a manifestly wider agenda today; they may even be standing in the way.

The perceived preponderant influence of Tajiks (and of external powers supporting them) in the post-Taliban setup in Kabul has been a sticking point for Pakistan. But by realigning the power structure, the Americans are fulfilling an important pre-condition for Pakistani cooperation. This is particularly so in the south and southeastern regions of Afghanistan. It is here in the Pashtun provinces (contiguous to Pakistan’s NWFP and Balochistan) that the war is showing mixed results.

Pakistan wields deep influence among the Ghilzay confederation of Pashtun tribes and among the disorganised eastern Pashtun tribes. These tribes were deliberately favoured by for General Zia ul-Haq during the Afghan jihad in the ’80s as a state policy of whittling down the dominance of the Durrani confederation of Pashtuns, who had formed the mainstay of the Afghan monarchy from 1774 onwards, and who were the fountainhead of Pashtun nationalism. The American dependence on Pakistan is particularly acute since the southeastern tribes lack in unified leadership.

In the initial stages of the operation to overthrow the Taliban regime, the Americans had counted on the prominent figure from the southeastern region, Abdul Haq, (Karzai’s name came up later) to lead the setup in Kabul. He would have been a solid choice given his correct jihadi pedigree and bazaari instincts. The swiftness with which the Taliban murdered him shows that Mullah Omar acted with foresight. The same fate awaited Haji Abdul Qadir, whose credentials were comparable to Haq’s.

These murders have left the eastern tribes bereft of any recognisable leader. Karzai’s leadership has not gained acceptability among the southeastern Pashtuns. Equally, the restiveness among these tribes provides fertile ground for Taliban sympathisers, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is opposing the US presence in Afghanistan, and the two might join forces.

Pakistan can lend a big hand in incrementally isolating these forces of militancy and in harnessing a support base for Karzai. Within this context, the Islamic parties in Pakistan are useful conduits. They can be expected to act in concert by finessing the forces of resurgent Pashtun ethnicity and tribalism (and Islamist fervour) in directions that become reconcilable with overall American geopolitical interests. They are in a position to act as a bridge between the Americans and the ‘‘acceptable faces’’ of the erstwhile Taliban leadership.

An orthodox Islamist state with Wahhabi leaning, indeed, was established in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1996. But it did not live up to expectations and instead got drawn towards pan-Islamic radicalism, like a moth to a flame, and perished. A new social contract for sustaining a ‘‘variation on the old establishment’’ is called for. And one is in the making—built around Afghan bazaari interests, supported by the forces of globalisation, with a residual Pashtun tribal network and ulema, diaspora of technocrats and royalists, and an anointed king of an earlier era lending legitimacy whenever occasions arise—which can, hopefully, consign the mujahideen and their guns to history.

(The writer was India’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey)