Dikgaj’s Weblog

TalebPak : towards the new Caliphate

Posted on October 17, 2009. Filed under: Afghanistan, China, Hindu, India, Islam, Islamic propaganda, Muslims, Pakistan, Taleban, terrorism, USA |

The new leadership of the Taleban have openly laid out their formal objectives. Once they establish “purer” Islamism on Pakistan they are going to target India. This was stated in an interview broadcast by the Sky. This fits perfectly the scenario that I have been promoting as possible- perhaps for many, a bit too paranoid.

There can be all sorts of explanations and possibilities of deception to explain this away. One of the most plausible ones will be that of the need in some school of opinion within the USA to create the impression that India should contribute towards US plans as India is also “threatened” – or that if the collapse of Pak is not staved off with Indian contribution also, India will “suffer”. UK’s inner strategy or secret services may also be interested in maintaining their own strategic asset which they had created by the Partition on the subcontinent – Pakistan. China has contributed its own towards this “save Pakistan” bandwagon by raising the spectre of a “threat” in Arunachal Pradesh. At the same time Naxals have been activated inside India.

This means that all of the non-Indian parties involved in this merry game think that for one reason or the other, the time for loss of direct handle on the Pakistani Jihadi state is imminent. The Jihadis have organized and overcome their factional divisions, to further the overall aims with which the Islamists joined the British project of creating Pakistan. This overall aim on the part of the Islamists, was a revival of the legendary and mythical Caliphate that sat astride the main economic exchange route between the main production centres of the world – East and the West. The Islamists’ extremely low intellectual and educational level, combined with the aridity and nonproductivity of the lands they occupied, implied they could only live off the produce of others. Once oil runs out or is replaced by alternatives, the temporary productivity in economic terms that allowed them to flourish – will be lost. Then they will need to go back to the Caliphate model – which was essentially a way of justifying the basically looting economy of Islam – to extract surplus from allowing trade between the east and west.

Islamists cannot allow modern educational pursuits that could have allowed them to try and climb back on to the current knowledge based economy. Modern education is typically based on open exploration and unrestricted questioning. This is dangerous for Islam – as learning to question in one direction can spill over on to questioning the very claims based on which theologians and Islamic social system imposes itself on human society. So the Islamists’ very own obsessive search for permanent and absolute power, limits their educational, research and knowledge-base improvement. This leaves them only with the old Caliphate model to extract a peace-tax on global trade between the two main regions of innovation and productivity.

The Islamists have seen their chance now. USA the main thorn in their side (as the controller and chief patron – although supportive but still restraining beyond a certain limit) has been weakened. China has come up as a competitor economy to the USA, and is willing to take up the role of the patron. Also because of the competition, China will be more lenient than the USA in allowing the Jihadis greater freedom in their murderous objectives as long as such objectives do not directly infringe on China’s own imperialist designs.

Contrary to popular speculation I  had tried to emphasize that Pakistan will not implode on its own. Instead, the basic Jihadi core behind Pakistan’s state will activate its programme of Jihadi expansion in both directions – Afghanistan and India. This is part of recreating the only economic model they can understand and which they feel will still allow them to maintain their lifestyle and power structures – that of the mythical Caliphate (in historical reality a very short period of success).

The conflict we see now is a superficial one – maintained only because of external interest and pressure. This does not mean that every part of the state machinery of Pakistan is insincere in its formal confrontation. But only those parts which are vulnerable to western pressure or believe in a middle road between the Jihadis and the west are participating actively. This is a minority in Pakistan. Over the years, Arab patronization of Wahabi radicalization through education and other sociopolitical means have practically erased all resistance to the core Jihadi ideology within Pakistan. The society itself has no firm ideological and cultural basis to resist the Jihadis.

Sooner or later, India will have to face the Jihadis. It cannot do so by imagining and trying to convince the Indian people – that Islamic ideology is completely detached from what Islamists are practising. It cannot pretend that preserving the roots and basis of Islamic culture on the subcontinent will allow peaceful coexistence of Pakistan and India. By doing any such pretension, any Indian regime betrays its people – for it creates the false impression and expectations of inherent “benevolence” that is the source of confusion in being ruthless towards Jihadis.

There is only one solution for this whole problem – dissolution of Pakistan as a state, and complete dismantling of Islamic educational system, complete deactivation of those theologians already brought up in the Wahabi tradition. These in turn can only be done if the current populations under Pakistan comes under direct  control of  a secular regime that is also firmly anti-Islamist.

One way of course is the reunification of the people and land currently under the control of Islamophile and Jihad-tolerating-supporting regime in Pakistan, with that of a firm and no-nonsense secular power based in India. That will be the opening of untold opportunities for the people now living in Pakistan in terms of health, education and an open society where voices of dissent and protest against arbitrariness cannot be silenced by fatwas and fanatical Islamist zealots. Freedom from the terror of violent and personal-greed-hiding imposition of Sharia – is something which these people have even forgotten to dream about. The Indian ruling elite has proved its secular credentials by being more ruthless on what it dubs “Hindu right wing fascism” than it ever showed the teeth against Islamic Jihad. The “Muslims” of Pakistan will actually be treated more fairly than the “native” Hindus under such Indian regimes.

Those who will oppose this objective will do so from a variety of covert and overt interests and positions. This will include excuses of humanitarian values, claims of inherent benevolence of the ideology and all blames only on “misinterpretation”, supposed positive and inseparable cultural contributions, as well as claimed inherent superiority of the ideology compared to all other pre-existing ones on the subcontinent in terms “equality/fraternity” etc. with attendant suppression of real historical experience.

Covert interests will primarily be external – with strategic interests of  continued energy, economic and territorial imperialism. These can also be tackled, if India shows the will and determination to do so.

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