Salman Rushdie Says Pakistan’s Problems Due to Sexual Repression

by Christopher Hitchens

Salman Rushdie’s upsettingly brilliant psycho-profile of Pakistan, in his 1983 novel, Shame, rightly laid emphasis on the crucial part played by sexual repression in the Islamic republic.

And that was before the Talibanization of Afghanistan, and of much of Pakistan, too.

Let me try to summarize and update the situation like this: Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk.

In such an obscenely distorted context, the counterpart term to shame—which is the noble word “honor”—becomes most commonly associated with the word “killing.”

Moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter.

If the most elemental of human instincts becomes warped in this bizarre manner, other morbid symptoms will disclose themselves as well. Thus, President Zardari cringes daily in front of the forces who openly murdered his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and who then contemptuously ordered the crime scene cleansed with fire hoses, as if to spit even on the pretense of an investigation. A man so lacking in pride—indeed lacking in manliness—will seek desperately to compensate in other ways. Swelling his puny chest even more, he promises to resist the mighty United States, and to defend Pakistan’s holy “sovereignty.” This puffery and posing might perhaps possess a rag of credibility if he and his fellow middlemen were not avidly ingesting $3 billion worth of American subsidies every year.

There’s absolutely no mystery to the “Why do they hate us?” question, at least as it arises in Pakistan. They hate us because they owe us, and are dependent upon us. The two main symbols of Pakistan’s pride—its army and its nuclear program—are wholly parasitic on American indulgence and patronage. Army and those nukes are intended to be reserved for war against the neighboring democracy ofIndia. Our bought-and-paid-for pretense that they have any other true purpose has led to a rancid, resentful official hypocrisy, and to a state policy of revenge, large and petty, on the big, rich, dumb Americans who foot the bill.

There’s an old cliché in client-state relations, about the tail wagging the dog, but have we really considered what it means when we actually are the tail, and the dog is our goddam lapdog?

The lapdog’s surreptitious revenge has consisted in the provision of kennels for attack dogs.

Everybody knew that the Taliban was originally an instrument for Pakistani colonization ofAfghanistan. Everybody knew that al-Qaeda forces were being sheltered in the Pakistani frontier town ofQuetta, and that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was found hiding inRawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistani Army.

Bernard-Henri Lévy once even produced a damning time line showing that every Pakistani “capture” of a wanted jihadist had occurred the week immediately preceding a vote in Congress on subventions to the government in Islamabad. But not even I was cynical enough to believe that Osama bin Laden himself would be given a villa in a Pakistani garrison town in Abbottabad.

This is well beyond humiliation. It makes us a prisoner of the shame, and co-responsible for it. TheUnited Stateswas shamed when it became the Cold War armorer of the Ayub Khan dictatorship in the 1950s and 1960s. It was shamed even more when it supported General Yahya Khan’s mass murder inBangladeshin 1971: a Muslim-on-Muslim genocide that crashingly demonstrated the utter failure of a state based on a single religion. We were then played for suckers by yet another military boss in the form of General Zia-ul-Haq, who leveraged anti-Communism in Afghanistan into a free pass for the acquisition of nuclear weapons and the open mockery of the nonproliferation treaty. By the start of the millennium, Pakistan had become home to a Walmart of fissile material, traded as far away as Libya and North Koreaby the state-subsidized nuclear entrepreneur A. Q. Khan, the country’s nearest approach (which in itself tells you something) to a national hero. Among the scientists working on the project were three named sympathizers of the Taliban. And that gigantic betrayal, too, was uncovered only by chance.

IfPakistanwere a person, he (and it would have to be a he) would have to be completely humorless, paranoid, insecure, eager to take offense, and suffering from self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred. That last triptych of vices is intimately connected. The self-righteousness comes from the claim to represent a religion: the very name “Pakistan” is an acronym ofPunjab,Afghanistan,Kashmir, and so forth, the resulting word in the Urdu language meaning “Land of the Pure.” The self-pity derives from the sad fact that the country has almost nothing else to be proud of: virtually barren of achievements and historically based on the amputation and mutilation ofIndiain 1947 and its own self-mutilation inBangladesh. The self-hatred is the consequence of being pathetically, permanently mendicant: an abject begging-bowl country that is nonetheless run by a super-rich and hyper-corrupt Punjabi elite. As for paranoia: This not so hypothetical Pakistani would also be a hardened anti-Semite, moaning with pleasure at the butchery of Daniel Pearl and addicted to blaming his self-inflicted woes on the all-powerful Jews.

This dreary story actually does have some bearing on the “sovereignty” issue. In the beginning, all that the Muslim League demanded from the British was “a state for Muslims.”Pakistan’s founder and first president, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was a relatively secular man whose younger sister went around unveiled and whose second wife did not practice Islam at all. But there’s a world of difference between a state for Muslims and a full-on Muslim state. Under the rule of General Zia there began to be imposition of Shari’a and increased persecution of non-Muslims as well as of Muslim minorities such as the Shiites, Ismailis, and Ahmadis. In recent years these theocratic tendencies have intensified with appalling speed, to the point where the state contains not one but two secret statelets within itself: the first an impenetrable enclave of covert nuclear command and control and the second a private nexus of power at the disposal of the military intelligence services and—until recently—Osama bin Laden himself. It’s the sovereignty of these possessions that exercises General Ashfaq Kayani, head of the Pakistani Army, who five days after Abbottabad made the arrogant demand that the number of American forces in the country be reduced “to the minimum essential.” He even said that any similar American action ought to warrant a “review” of the whole relationship between the two countries. How pitiful it is that a Pakistani and not an American should have been the first (and so far the only) leader to say those necessary things.

If we ever ceased to swallow our pride, so I am incessantly told inWashington, then the Pakistani oligarchy might behave even more abysmally than it already does, and the situation deteriorate even further. This stale and superficial argument ignores the awful historical fact that, each time the Pakistani leadership did get worse, or behave worse, it was handsomely rewarded by the United States. We have been the enablers of every stage of that wretched state’s counter-evolution, to the point where it is a serious regional menace and an undisguised ally of our worst enemy, as well as the sworn enemy of some of our best allies. How could it be “worse” if we shifted our alliance and instead embracedIndia, our only rival in scale as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy, and a nation that contains nearly as many Muslims asPakistan? How could it be “worse” if we listened to the brave Afghans, like their former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, who have been telling us for years that we are fighting the war in the wrong country?

If we continue to deny or avoid this inescapable fact, then we really are dishonoring, as well as further endangering, our exemplary young volunteers. Why was the raid on Abbottabad so rightly called “daring”? Because it had to be conducted under the radar of the Pakistani Air Force, which “scrambled” its jets and would have brought the Black Hawks down if it could. That this is true is bad enough in all conscience. That we should still be submitting ourselves to lectures and admonitions from General Kayani is beyond shameful.

Harkatul Mujahedeen was Supporting Osama in Abbottabad

The cellphone of Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men inPakistan in May 2011, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset ofPakistan’s intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say.

The discovery indicates that Osama used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside the country, the officials and others said. But it also raised tantalizing questions about whether the group and others like it helped shelter and support Osama on behalf ofPakistan’s spy agency, given that it had mentored Harakat and allowed it to operate inPakistan for at least 20 years.

In tracing the calls on the cellphone, American analysts have determined that Harakat commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials, the senior American officials said. One said they had met. The officials added that the contacts were not necessarily about Osama and his protection and that there was no “smoking gun” showing thatPakistan’s spy agency had protected Osama.

But the cellphone numbers provide one of the most intriguing leads yet in the hunt for the answer to an urgent and vexing question for Washington: How was it that Osama was able to live comfortably for years in Abbottabad, a town dominated by the Pakistani military and only a three-hour drive from Islamabad, the capital?

“It’s a serious lead,” said one American official. “It’s an avenue we’re investigating.”

The revelation also provides a potentially critical piece of the puzzle about Osama’s secret odyssey after he slipped away from American forces in the Tora Bora region ofAfghanistannearly 10 years ago. It may help answer how and why Osama or his protectors chose Abbottabad.

Harakat has especially deep roots in the area around Abbottabad, and the network provided by the group would have enhanced Osama’s ability to live and function in Pakistan. Its leaders have strong ties with both Al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence, and they can roam widely because they are Pakistanis, something the foreigners who make up Al Qaeda’s ranks cannot do.

Even today, the group’s leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, long one of Osama’s closest Pakistani associates, lives unbothered by Pakistani authorities on the outskirts ofIslamabad.

The senior American officials did not name the commanders whose numbers were in the courier’s cellphone but said that the militants were inSouth Waziristan, where Al Qaeda and other groups had been based for years. Harakat’s network would have allowed Osama to pass on instructions to Qaeda members there and in other parts ofPakistan’s tribal areas, to deliver messages and money or even to take care of personnel matters.

Wielding a Militant Tool

Harakat is one of a host of militant groups set up in the 1980s and early ’90s with the approval and assistance of ISI to fight as proxies inAfghanistan, initially against the Soviets, or againstIndiain the disputedterritoryofKashmir. Like many groups, it has splintered and renamed itself over the years, and because of their overlapping nature, other groups could have been involved in supporting Osama, too. But Harakat, they said, has been a favored tool of the ISI.

Harakat “is one of the oldest and closest allies of Al Qaeda, and they are very, very close to the ISI,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and the author of “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad.”

“The question of ISI and Pakistani Army complicity in Osama’s hide-out now hangs like a dark cloud over the entire relationship” between Pakistan and the United States, Mr. Riedel added.

Indeed, suspicions abound that the ISI or parts of it sought to hide Osama, perhaps to keep him as an eventual bargaining chip, or to ensure that billions of dollars in American military aid would flow toPakistanas long as Osama was alive.

Both the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, said that they believed that some members of the ISI or the Pakistani Army, either retired or on active duty, were involved in harboring Osama.

Osama himself had a long history with the ISI, dating to the mujahedeen insurgency that the Americans and Pakistanis supported against the Soviets inAfghanistanin the 1980s.

Two former militant commanders and one senior fighter who have received support from the ISI for years said they were convinced that the ISI played a part in sheltering Osama. Because of their covert existence, they spoke on the condition that their names not be used.

In the spring of 2003, Bin Laden, accompanied by a personal guard unit of Arab and Chechen fighters, arrived unexpectedly at a gathering of 80 to 90 militants at a village in the Shawal mountain range of North Waziristan, inPakistan’s tribal areas, the former commander said. He met Bin Laden briefly inside a house; he said he knew it was him because they had met before, inAfghanistanbefore the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The encounter in North Waziristanoccurred before the American campaign of drone aircraft strikes, which began in 2004, made it unsafe for militants to gather in the area in large numbers. For about three years before the American drone campaign, Bin Laden was moving from place to place inPakistan’s mountainous tribal areas, the commander said.

TheUnited Stateshad small Special Operations units and C.I.A. operatives working with Pakistani security forces to track Qaeda members at that time. At some point Bin Laden went deeper underground. That is when the commander speculated that the Qaeda leader was moved to a safe house in a city, though he did not say he knew that Bin Laden had gone to Abbottabad.

He and the other commander, who spent 10 years with Harakat, offered no proof of their belief that Bin Laden was under Pakistani military protection. But their views were informed by their years of work with the ISI and their knowledge of how the spy agency routinely handled militant leaders it considered assets — placing them under protective custody in cities, often close to military installations.

The treatment amounts to a kind of house arrest, to ensure both the security of the asset and his low profile to avoid embarrassment to his protectors.

Art Keller, a former C.I.A. officer who worked inPakistanin 2006, said he had heard rumors after he leftPakistanin 2007 that Harakat was providing “background” assistance with logistics in moving and maintaining the Qaeda leader inPakistan. That did not necessarily mean that members of the group were aware of the role they played or knew of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, another American intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of his work.

It remains unclear how Bin Laden arrived in Abbottabad, where American officials say he and his family lived for five years, beginning in 2006. The city is home to one of the nation’s top military academies, which sits less than a mile from the compound where Bin Laden was killed.

It is also a transit point for militants moving betweenKashmirand the tribal areas. The region is the prime recruitment base of Harakat, whose training camps and other facilities still exist nearby in Mansehra.

Through the late 1990s, Harakat collaborated closely with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, sharing training camps and channeling foreign fighters to Qaeda camps inAfghanistan.

The group’s leader, Mr. Khalil, was a co-signer of Bin Laden’s 1998 edict ordering attacks againstAmerica. The group even organized press trips for journalists to see Bin Laden inAfghanistanbefore 9/11 and was used to pass messages to him, said Asad Munir, a retired brigadier and former intelligence official.

Such were the links between the groups that when theUnited Statesfired cruise missiles at Bin Laden’s camps inAfghanistan, after the 1998 American Embassy bombings inTanzaniaandKenya, 11 Harakat fighters were killed. Some of the group’s fighters were also killed in the bombings of one of Bin Laden’s bases inAfghanistanat the start of the American invasion in October 2001.

Driven Underground

Under strong American pressure, Harakat and similar groups were officially banned and driven underground by the government of Musharraf in 2002. Harakat just renamed itself and continued to run camps unencumbered by Pakistani authorities and to train militants, some of whom have been caught while fighting American and NATO forces inAfghanistan.

After 2007, many of its fighters left to join the Taliban, but its leadership and network have remained intact, if reduced, the commanders said. Indeed, Bin Laden’s courier appears to have used a camp in Mansehra that belonged to a Harakat splinter group, Jaish-e-Muhammad, as a transit stop, said an American government official familiar with the analysis of the Bin Laden material.

The Pakistani Army continued its links with the Harakat leadership, in particular Mr. Khalil, Pakistani officials and analysts said. In 2007, Mr. Khalil was used by the Musharraf government as a member of a group of clerics who tried to negotiate an end to a siege by militants at the Red Mosque inIslamabad.

“They can find him when they want him,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, the director of the Pak Institute of Peace Studies, who has written a book on militant groups.

What role if any Mr. Khalil may have played in helping Bin Laden in Abbottabad, or whether he even knew he was living there, is still not clear. It is also the case that hard-liners within the ranks of his organization may had become disillusioned with their ISI handlers over the years, broke from them and operated more independently.

Another Pakistani militant leader closely connected to Bin Laden is Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the leader of Harakat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami. Mr. Akhtar stopped in South Waziristan on the way toAfghanistanjust months ago, a militant interviewed by phone said.

The presence in Waziristan of Mr. Akhtar — who is wanted in connection with the attack that killed Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, in 2007 — demonstrated that he could still move freely without ISI interference.

A report by the Pakistani Interior Ministry said that Mr. Akhtar had visited Bin Laden in August 2009 near the border withAfghanistanto discuss jihadist operations againstPakistan, according to an account that was published in the Pakistani newspaper The Daily Times in 2010.

It is the only recorded episode showing that Bin Laden’s presence insidePakistanwas known to Pakistani intelligence, until the American raid that killed him.