A word about letters
By Kazy Javed
Letters from Italy
An international conference on inter-religious dialogue provided me with the pleasant opportunity to spend eleven days in Italy and Switzerland. Sponsored by the Konard-Adenauer Foundation, the conference was held at the Villa La Collina in Cadenabbia at the Lake Como, some ninety kilometres from Milan in Northern Italy where Konard Adenauer, German statesman and chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949-63, used to spend his holidays.

Talibanization of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11

By Amir Mir

Publisher: Pentagon Press

Pages: 422

Price: $ 39.95

American journalist George Crile's best-selling book, Charlie Wilson's War, tells the story of how the United States funded in Afghanistan the only successful "jihad" in modern history that gave the Soviet Union its Vietnam. The support which took place via a Pakistani corridor led to a later jihad against westerners, which Crile claimed to have foreseen.

No specific reference to the September 11 attacks is made in Charlie Wilson's War., Crile, however, wrote that the mujahideen's victory in Afghanistan ultimately opened a power vacuum: "By the end of 1993, in Afghanistan itself there were no roads, no schools, just a destroyed country -- and the United States was washing its hands of any responsibility. It was in this vacuum that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden would emerge as the dominant players."

Several Pakistanis back his version for there is an element of truth in it. After the ouster of the Taliban regime, this time again courtesy Pakistan, militancy and violence spilled over the border from Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban has been responsible for a wave of violence across the country. As well as numerous suicide bomb attacks against military, government and foreign targets, the Pakistani Taliban was accused of killing former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in late 2007. Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a missile fired by a US drone aircraft on August 5 and replaced by Hakimullah Mehsud who has vowed to exact revenge. Suicide bombings have made Pakistan, that would brim with life, a depressing place. But more troublesome is the way of life Pakistanis have been introduced to. It's fear all over -- capital cities or fringes, no exception. And its intensity is growing.

Blaming the US for the mayhem Pakistan is in, however, evades Pakistan's own responsibility for creating the monster of the Taliban, which is now burgeoning itself. The country was so obsessed with having a pliant, anti-Indian government in charge of Afghanistan (the policy known as "strategic depth") that it was prepared to get into bed with the Taliban.

The twisted thinking proved insane and suicidal. Frankenstein is really under threat now. This October has seen an unprecedented and dangerous escalation. The Taliban carried out four major attacks showing their growing power and ambitions. One, against Pakistan's army headquarters was staged with the help of a militant organisation from the country's ethnic Punjabi heartland highlighting that the Taliban no longer aim merely at controlling the ethnic Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan but at gaining control over the state.

Gaining and wielding power through terrorism has its roots in history. During the French Revolution, the régime de la terreur was initially viewed as a positive political system that used fear to remind citizens of the necessity of virtue. The use of violence to "educate people" about ideological issues has continued predominantly as a tactic by those who do not have the powers of state at their disposal.

Bruce Hoffman, the director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, has, in his book Inside Terrorism, listed some major historical trends in international terrorism. He makes careful distinctions between the motivations that drive political (or ethno-nationalist) terrorism and religious terrorism, and he also shows why the rise of religious terrorism, coupled with the increased availability of weapons of mass destruction, may foretell an era of even greater violence. In the past, Hoffman argues, the main goal of the terrorist was not to kill, but to attract media attention to his cause in the hope of initiating reform. "For the religious terrorist," however, "violence is first and foremost a sacramental act or divine duty executed in direct response to some theological demand or imperative. Religious terrorists see themselves not as components of a system worth preserving but as 'outsiders', seeking fundamental changes in the existing order."

Once hosted, greeted and funded by the US as mujahideen and its offshoots later tolerated by Pakistan, a raft of groups is now ganging up with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. These varied groups are ensconced not only in the unruly tribal areas, but also in the most populous province: Punjab, proliferating and operating with impunity.

Pakistani Taliban fighters virtually took over control of the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, beginning in 2007 and a push out of the valley toward Islamabad spread fear early this year. Islamabad cracked down militarily on the Pakistani Taliban only after it was clear that deal-making had failed. The army has now set its sights on South Waziristan -- 6,620 square km of area housing about 10,000 hardcore foreign and local fighters -- that has more risks than opportunities, in the hope of rooting out the most potent domestic threat to the state.

Amir Mir's book Talibanization of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11 covers all the significant facts about the rise and rise of Taliban in Pakistan and combines purposeful theoretical investigation with good use of history and empirical evidence. For its historical and political examination of Talibanization, the book is a valuable work and a "must read," at least for anyone who wants to understand how Pakistan can respond to acts of terror. Mir's strength lies in the building up of case-studies in an historical context to illustrate the dimensions of this amorphous phenomenon. Mir draws in the reader with skill rarely seen in nonfiction writing. This extremely complex issue is dealt with in a unique yet straightforward manner.

The book has the obvious authority of high quality research. It covers a variety of areas profiling terror groups, methods and mindsets. While dates and incidents are included, they serve as interesting and helpful examples of the issue. Some of Mir's conclusions are not to everybody's tastes, but it is an inherently controversial and hotly debated issue, it's the nature of the beast.

As the title suggests, Talibanization of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11 should cover the period from Sept 11 attack on the US World Trade Centre to Nov 26 Mumbai raid, but the book has up-to-date information until about two months ago. A fascinating survey of the recent history of Talibanization and all its well-documented horrors, it's gripping -- and alarming.

Pan Islamism in British India

By M. Naeem Qureshi

Publisher: Oxford

University Press, Pakistan

Pages: 571

Price: Rs 995

The first thing that comes to mind after reading Pan Islamism in British India is the great necessity the Muslim community has felt to look outside the geographical frontiers of India for support and legitimacy. Though the community has been living in India for about a thousand years, and as a minority ruled the region and the people for nearly all this time, there always has been a strong sense of insecurity about its true place and standing on the Indian soil. This may appear strange but the desire to seek support from outside of India from the larger Muslim community has been one of the constants of the Muslim political history. The harking back to the days of a unified political configuration has possibly being a wish and a dream that has not really been realised since the early days, particularly after the disintegration of the Abbasid Empire from the devastating raids of the Mongols.

But the dream had always driven the faithful to political action. Many of the historians and political analysts have been of the view that the desire to seek support from outside the frontiers had an inverse relationship with the power base at home. The years or era when the regime in India had been strong, the desire to forge direct links with the Muslim societies was at its weakest. Only tottering governments desperately sought help from outside.

The status of being a minority by the Muslims, albeit as a ruling class has been an unstated factor that has always lurked in the background of the political mindset of the people here. Whether tangible or invisible, it has been one of the barometers to gauge the level of security. As this level of insecurity rose to unprecedented level with the weakening of the Muslim rule, the total subjugation by the middle of the nineteen century, ever sharpened the need to look outside during the course of the   century as the Muslims watched anxiously the big powers weighing their policy options in the East with their support or opposition to the Ottoman and the Czarist Empires.

It was the same insecurity that had facilitated earlier the numerous raids and battles of Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah, without achieving the desired results, instead, only further weakening Muslim control. The desperate jihads of the nineteenth century too was to end in defeat and disillusionment on the borders of India and Afghanistan, and finally the end of the Ottoman Empire buried the viable option of forging a transfrontier alliance with other Muslim countries to the West of India.

It was only then that the Muslims of India started to really wake up to the eventuality of a nation state that was desperately in need of a territorial unit. Before that, the idea of nationhood was more in terms of a religious and political entity than a territorial one. At the first drop of the hat, the leaders would give the call to migrate from Darul Harb to Darul Islam. These migrations, when attempted, too ended disastrously and backfired on the Transterritorial nature of the movement or idea emphasising the bitter reality that no country was ready to accept people willingly from other lands whatever their faith.

The peoples' conversion to a territory within the subcontinent gave a real fillip to the idea of a separate homeland and it resulted in Iqbal's clearly enunciating the idea of a homeland in the Muslim majority areas by 1930, followed by a more politicised manifestation of the same in the Pakistan Resolution of 1940.

Before this idea was crystallised, it wavered between migration and a re-rolling of history by reverting to the status of pre colonial times. The final nail in the coffin to end the option of a unified community from the banks of the Nile to the dust bowl of Chinese Turkistan, now the troubled region of Xinkiang, was driven by the Turks themselves.

The book basically reveals how fervently the Muslim community was attached to the idea of Khilafat as a desirable political entity. It was only the decisive steps taken by the Turks in abolishing the Caliphate that dealt a body blow to the ambitions of forging a common market or a Union. When the Turks themselves had reconciled to the idea of a nation state it left no option with the Muslims of India but to look for political alternatives. They could no longer seek satisfaction from the conspiracy theories of the West forever weakening the power of the Muslim Community. They had underestimated the zeal of Arab Nationalism, and its leadership, not merely being a dancing tune of European imperialistic intent. This period probably was the most painful for Muslims for they were without an anchor, "rudderlessly seesawing in massive political confusion." The author Naeem Qureshi had been able to capture that period of uncertainty.

The echoes of that dream or a call are still heard in the Muslim world. The desire is still intense, and despite fifty odd independent Muslim countries, probably even more, unattainable as ever. The same wish in it skeletal form, the Organization of Islamic Unity, has often failed to act, at times even fumbling in passing a joint resolution. The nation state was a reality and still is. The ideal of the Muslim community and the limitations of the nation state are at odds with each other. The Nation state has taken precedence and left the ideal of a greater union to gather the pieces of its shattered dream.

An international conference on inter-religious dialogue provided me with the pleasant opportunity to spend eleven days in Italy and Switzerland. Sponsored by the Konard-Adenauer Foundation, the conference was held at the Villa La Collina in Cadenabbia at the Lake Como, some ninety kilometres from Milan in Northern Italy where Konard Adenauer, German statesman and chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949-63, used to spend his holidays.

Twenty scholars attended the conference. They came mostly from Southeast Asia and Africa. These are the regions where the vast majority of world's Muslims live together with a Christian presence and where the expansion in both faiths is likely to occur in the coming decades.

I was there to represent Pakistan together with Abid Hasan Minto and Fr James Channan who is an adviser to the Pope.

On reaching Cadenabbia we were pleasantly surprised to know that Prof Christian Troll, organiser of the conference, was well-versed in Urdu which he learnt during his long stay in India. Troll, a university professor in Germany, also has a good taste for Urdu poetry and remembers many couplets of Mir, Ghalib, and Faiz. Prof. Akhtarul Wasey came from India where he heads the department of Islamic Studies at the Jamia Millia of Delhi. He plays an active role in the literary and intellectual life of the Indian capital. He narrated many lines from Iftikhar Arif and Kishwar Naheed's poetry to spice up his conversion.

During the conference and the week thereafter that I spent in Geneva, Verona, Venice and Rome, many people asked me what Pakistani writers were doing to combat aggressive religious extremism in their society. Do they condemn fundamentalist trends in their writings or they support those who are out to destroy all the symbols of civilization, they enquired.

I came across a Bolivian poet at a Chinese restaurant in Vatican City who requested me to email him English or Spanish translations of poems composed against the Taliban. He also wanted to know if Pakistani writers were actively engaged in the so-called "war on terrorism."

I had no impressive answers to these questions. I did, however, assure the questioners that Pakistani writers believed in universal human values. They want peace for themselves and for others. I also told them that our men and women of letters were not lagging behind the writers of other countries in their struggle to make the world a better place to live.

After remaining off the literary scene for about two years, the poet Irfana Aziz is once again taking interest in literary activities. She used to arrange monthly mushairas and literary discussions at her Faisal Town residence in Lahore where one could find the opportunities to listen to Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Munir Niazi, Khurshid Rizvi, Aslam Kamal, Atiya Syed, Ishfaq Naqvi, Shahnaz Muzamil, Karamat Bokhari and others.

Irfana Aziz has five finely produced volumes of poetry to her name. Many of her years were spent in Canada where her late husband was a professor. There she got many opportunities to play host to Faiz, Faraz and others.

She arranged a literary sitting recently. Hamid Akhtar was there to tell us many interesting anecdotes from his past about Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi, Syed Sajjad Zaheer, Sibte Hasan and other progressive stalwarts of the 1950s and 1960s.

Afzal Tauseef who was recently honoured with Pride of Performance read out a brief paper on a recent story of Mansha Yad. Dr. Saadat Saeed and Sadia Qureshi recited their poems.

In the last years of the 20th century, the Pakistan Academy of Letters prepared a plan to publish introductory books on prominent writers belonging to all the parts of the country. The project was given the title of the "Makers of Pakistani Literature." I was associated with the academy in those days and as such I gave the proposal that the books in this series should be written in English to make them available to foreign readers. The proposal was not accepted. It was decided to publish the books in Urdu.

Books under this series began to see the light of day some ten years ago. The good thing -- despite going through many ebbs and flows -- is that the Pakistan Academy of Letters managed to work persistently on this project. The result is wonderful. More than a hundred books have now been made available to readers.

The writers on whom these books have been published belong to all the provinces of the country and write in various languages. Books have been brought out even on those writers who, by the grace of God, are still up and kicking.

The latest book in this series is on Dr Tanvir Abbasi, a noted Sindhi poet who died a few years ago. It has been written by Ayaz Gul who has a chair at the Shah Abdul Latif University at Khairpur. Three other recent books are on Fakhar Zaman, Iftikhar Arif, and Kishwar Naheed.