Vali Nasr Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Photo by Jane Scherr

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Pakistan

I want to go back to your research career and what parts of the world you have focused on. Why did you think that they were a most interesting places to explore these problems?

I focused my work, initially, on Pakistan. This was in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. The reason I did that was because I felt Pakistan provided a very good environment in which to understand some of these issues that we raised. I worked on the history of an Islamic fundamentalist movement that was first established in the 1930s, [that] openly operated in Pakistani society and politics all the way to the present time.

I felt looking at seventy years of organizational development of a fundamentalist party allows you to do real political/social analysis. Pakistan was also relatively open. It has been a relatively open Muslim society; as a result, you could see fundamentalism in operation. You could meet with fundamentalists. You could look at their platform. They participated in elections; they participated in social debates.

The Arab world has always been in a much more antagonistic situation where the fundamentalist parties, at that time, were either underground or at war with the government. There was no real track record of seeing how an organization may respond to political incentives and [may] change ideology and point of view as it moves along, so you're not able to do political analysis. So Pakistan was particularly suitable in understanding this whole trajectory of the development of fundamentalism.

Tell us about the party that you studied, and the most interesting conclusions that you reached about its evolution during this period.

The name of the party is Jamaat-e-Islami, which literally means the Islamic Party. Its founder was a gentleman by the name of Abul A'la Mawdudi. Mawdudi is one of the most influential and earliest fundamentalist thinkers, and Jamaat-e-Islami, along with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is one of the two oldest fundamentalist parties in the Muslim world. It has had an uninterrupted history, since the 1930s to the present. It has participated in general elections, has had members of Parliament; members of government have been involved in open political process and, sometimes, underground in Pakistan.

First of all, my work was to provide a rich history of evolution of the fundamentalist party. And through that, to answer some of the questions about "Why do they come about? What do they want?" and "How do their demands and worldview change in response to the political realities that they face?" Particularly, if you juxtapose Pakistan with the Arab world, you see very different conclusions -- that where you have more open and less dictatorial and harsh governments, fundamentalists tend to remain more moderate. When you keep them in the political process, they tend to respond to political interests -- opportunities as well as risks -- and revise their points of view accordingly.

Some of this, now, we see elsewhere: Turkish Islamist parties are revising their ideologies to participate in elections. But in the case of Pakistan, the general summary was that the more open the political environment -- the more inclusive it is -- the more moderate and open fundamentalist parties are likely to be, and the more they behave on the basis of real political choices as opposed to ideological behavior.

In the case of Pakistan, what explains the openness of the political system that allows this moderate evolution of the party that you were studying? Is it the colonial tradition -- the British tradition -- in India and Pakistan?

Partly. Partly, it is the colonial tradition. For instance, there is an enormous amount of respect for the judicial system in Pakistan, which is also the case in India as well. There are cases where the Supreme Court of Pakistan voted on behalf of the Jamaat-e-Islami, overriding the government, for instance, in the 1960s.

But I think the more important point is that Pakistan is generally a weak state. We don't think of it that way -- it's been ruled by military, it has nuclear weapons. But that's a paradox. It's a country that has nuclear weapons and a very proficient military, and is capable of staging coups, but the writ of the government in Pakistan does not run in large areas of the country. The penetration of power in rural areas is very minimal. It has to rely on all kinds of intermediaries in order to exert power. The government that's not able to get its way by default has to negotiate. And, you know, that's also the lesson we've learned about evolutional democracy in the West: why first in Britain, and not in Germany or Prussia?

The same idea holds there. In other words, Pakistan has had, generally, more democratic periods than have Arab countries. When it has had military dictatorships, these have been far more open and benign than the Arab ones. So periods of military brutality of the kind we saw in Latin America or we see in Egypt or Syria have been largely absent in Pakistan.

Tell us a little about Mawdudi and the evolution of his thinking with regard to this trajectory of choosing either moderation or radicalism. Did his guiding hand influence and support moderation? And what made the difference in that course? Was it this setting that you've just described?

Mawdudi's intellectual development happened during the time of partition of India. His belief was that Muslims were losing control of India because they had become too enmeshed with Hinduism and they were not practicing the proper faith. So he began to harp on a purified Islam as a way of preserving and strengthening Islam. Once this was proffered, it gradually became a force onto itself. He, generally, was more of a intellectual than a militant.

Mawdudi believed that societies would become Islamic if the elite in the society was educated in proper Islam. The dominoes would fall once you polish Islam and take away the cultural accretions to it, and find what pure Islam is -- which in and of itself was an innovative idea at that time, because we didn't think that Islam was lost and needed to be discovered. But he thought of it that way, which is very much the same as any fundamentalist argument, in any tradition. That once you discovered real Islam, and the elite in society adopted it, then the society would become Islamic. Therefore, his view of fundamentalism was very literary, because it was directed at the elite of the society. It was not based on political action; it was based on education.

Now within Pakistan itself, as the [Jamaat-e-Islami] party began to participate in politics, it began to discover political action. It began to discover the importance of organization in order to be able to bring the masses to the streets. It began to discover the importance of controlling campuses. For instance, Mawdudi and Jamaat-e-Islami gradually took over control of student unions across Pakistan in the 1970s, beating out leftist groups in elections. They learned how to control campuses, how to control students. And, gradually, they became more of a political activist organization than an intellectual one.

But Pakistan's politics never required a party to have to go underground. I mean, Jamaat leaders went to prison for a year, two years. They were treated well. They were never tortured. They came out, and they went about their business. The party was shut down; was re-opened. Courts voted against it and then voted for it. But there was never a need, as you had in Egypt, for instance, for the party to go underground and then fester and then come back as a militant force.

In fact, militancy and extremism in Pakistan were not the consequence of internal pressures; they were really the consequences of foreign policy in the region. In other words, they were the consequences of Saudi foreign policy in the Afghan war. That's what pushed Pakistani fundamentalism towards extremism, not the internal politics of Pakistan.

Before we talk about this external intervention and the impact that foreign policies -- say, the Saudi's and the U.S.'s -- have, I would like for you to make clear to us what, exactly, this particular Pakistani party and other Islamic parties want. Is it that they want to make everybody virtuous by returning to the roots of the religion? Or does the religion lead to conclusions about equity and social welfare, and, therefore, through the party they seek to change the policies of a government?

There is a combination here. First of all, you have to understand that fundamentalists claim to speak for Islam, but they have a very particular interpretation of Islam. Just like any Hindu would not subscribe to what RSS says Hinduism is, or an average Christian would not give Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell the authority to define Christianity, the same is true of Islamic fundamentalism. In other words, Mawdudi was being the Jerry Falwell or the Pat Robertson of Islam. He decided what Islam is: who is a good Muslim? He tried to propagate that view within the organization. Obviously, the aim of any such group in any religious tradition is to propagate its own view, and this view is based on certain presuppositions. Every religion believes that pious individuals provide a pious society that may or may not lead to a pious government. Fundamentalists believe that you have to have a pious government first, which then would forcibly make society religious, which then would forcibly make the individual religious. In other words, it's salvation whether you like it or not. It would be dished down by the government. This was very much was the basis of his view.

Mawdudi articulated this, put it out there, and propagated it; but like any ideology, it has a life cycle. The way fundamentalism unfolded in Pakistan is very much like Eurocommunism did in Europe. It began to water down and interact with other points of view and political views in the political process -- in order to win at elections, in order to get recruits and the like.

On many levels, what they demanded were the demands of fundamentalists or conservatives everywhere. There were moral issues, so it's like the way in which the Moral Majority thinks about forcing certain moral criteria within and on the American public, and then fighting it out through the political process. The Islamic party was very much behaving in the same way -- trying to propagate a particular view of Islam, and trying to do so through the political process, which is different from the Arab world, where all of this propagation happens outside the political process.

So down the road, they eventually ended up with two fundamental desires. One is to propagate their view of Islam and to make it universalized. Secondly, to get hold of power in order to be able to do so more efficiently. And in that, they're not very different from, say, right-wing religious groups in United States, which are simultaneously vying for position of power as well as propagating their view. Now it's a chicken and egg situation. Do they want the political power in order to propagate their religious view? Or is the political power the end, and the religious view is the means? So you do have that kind of ambiguity in Pakistan as well.

And of course, that could change in the course of exercising power or being successful politically.

Very much so. And you do so generationally, because you begin with people who are purists, for whom politics is the means and religion is the end. But as you go through the years of evolution of a movement, and the younger people are more activists with less religion, increasingly, religion is just the medium and politics is the end.

That's the benefit is of looking at a movement in long duration: if you looked at the early Jamaat leaders, they spend large amount of their time in prayer and writing, and thinking. As you go down, the second generation did a lot more stone-throwing and marches than the first one. When you come to this generation, they're pretty much politicians with offices and secretaries, and are constantly in political haggling, and they're doing things that everybody else is doing. Religion is a minimal amount of their time. So, early Jamaat leaders were, by vocation, religious, where politics was a sideshow. Jamaat leaders in Pakistan today are, by vocation, politicians. They're professional politicians who happen to be religious.

You've suggested that in places in the Arab world, this kind of historical evolution is aborted by the lack of any form of democratic system to let the evolution be, so to speak.

Absolutely. This was my idea about Pakistan, but when we now look at Turkey and Malaysia, we see the same -- that inclusion breeds more moderation. It is risky. It has to be handled properly. There are always dangers. As Albert Hirschman said, people can either voice or exit in a political environment. If people cannot voice, they will exit. And then, once they're outside the political process, there's only one avenue of expression open to them, and that's violence.

This is not a new concept to the U.S. I mean, the U.S., at some point, decided that communism was a big problem in Europe. It was not going to disappear. So you either bring it in the political process -- you make them vested in the political process; you define them, make them institutionalized -- although we would always be vigilant against them winning an election. But it worked in Spain, France, and Italy, where at one point, they won 30 percent to 40 percent of the popular vote in Italian elections. And you try to separate them from the Red Brigades of the world.

Now, the same holds true of the Muslim world. If you don't have a political environment for them to operate in, you're going to drive them underground. Don't force them into decisions that would compromise them, their ideals; force them to move in a direction of pragmatism and moderation.

In your latest book you focus on the relationship of the state to the Islam, Islamic parties, and Islam in societies. You compare Malaysia and Pakistan. Let's talk a little about Pakistan, now, and General Zia's policies, because you've set the stage for us to understand already that what was emerging within the society with regard to Islam as a presence, but also attached to a political party. What did Zia try to do, and was he successful at doing it, as he tried to relate the state to the Islamic forces in society?

In short, Zia's strategy can be called "riding the tiger." In other words, fundamentalist parties in Pakistan were unsuccessful, politically, at the polls. And that was one of the arguments for inclusion. The Jamaat has never won more than three or four members to the Parliament. They are much more successful socially in defining the framework in which political issues are discussed. That's also true of the right wing in the U.S. They may not win elections to the Congress, but they can frame key issues like busing, abortion, or appointments to the Supreme Courts, and the way in which these will get discussed. In other words, the social influence far exceeds the political influence.

By the end of 1970s, the Jamaat had been very successful in propagating its call for some kind of Islamic order. It had convinced large numbers of the population that Islam has certain answers that can deal with Pakistan's problems. And in this, they were just as successful as, say, any socialist party in Europe that has been able to convince a large majority of the population that socialism, of one form or another, holds the key. And, therefore, a socialist party in Sweden wins the vote. So it was in that nature.

The Pakistan military decided to capitalize on this. They did not want the Islamic Party to be in a position to make a better grab for power, but they understood that the society is very ripe for a government that would give them an Islamic answer. So Zia came to power ...

Zia was a general ...

Zia was a general. He was chief of staff of the military, overthrew the elected prime minister at the time, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was in trouble with the population. He took over the government. Zia had Islamic credentials, so he was a genuine article. He was known to have been a pious colonel, had been reprimanded by his superiors for distributing Korans in the military. In other words, when he began talking about Islam, it was the genuine article. But Zia and the military understood that a government that would fulfill the demands and promises that the Pakistan had spent thirty years convincing Pakistanis of, would do well.

It's just like if you have a socialist society which believes that land reform is imperative, and you have a government coming and taking that slogan and implementing it, it's going to get a great deal of benefit. So Zia began to implement a great deal of Islamic measures. Now it's very important to note that Zia didn't change anything fundamental in Pakistan. The Pakistan economy didn't change. Pakistan society didn't change. There was no land reform. There was no change in relative relationship between social classes. There was no change in Pakistan's foreign policy.

He, rather, began to implement Islam more at the superficial level. So every meeting of the government would begin with a religious invocation. People would wear "dress" -- religious dress. There would be a lot of mosques built. There would be a lot of money that would go into various Islamic causes and programs, and you revamp the curriculum of the schools and things of that nature.

So, essentially, he began to create an Islamic state from above, not from below. This is a unique case. Malaysia is similar, where you have the state proactively Islamizing, not in response to the pressure from below, but because it saw an opportunity in Islamization. Zia was an Islamically oriented person, but I think what he saw was a very interesting phenomenon that he saw in Islam, an opportunity to make the Pakistan state a more powerful state; so it's very interesting.

An Islamic state of Zia was capable of nationalizing religious endowments, which a secular government could or would not do. It was in a position of taking over large areas of religious welfare, which accounted for an enormous amount of patronage in Pakistan, and make that the government's affair. This could not or would not have been done by a secular government. So he created civility and expanded state power in the name of Islam.

The venture fell apart, for the reason that, first of all, it was hinged on the military. When Pakistan was democratized, this notion came apart. Secondly, he was assassinated, and therefore, the whole experiment was aborted. And, thirdly, Pakistan was doing this while it was in the throes of the Afghan war. Any policy of "riding the tiger" has certain dangers that is not ultimately attainable policy.

So in the post-Zia period, this project of the state to expand its powers by speaking for Islam and taking the thunder of the fundamentalists -- appropriating the thunder of the fundamentalists -- lost ground. But for the time that Zia was there, he was very successful. In fact, I remember one Islamic leader telling me, "He's saying everything we used to say, so he's basically made us redundant."

So it's something that we can understand in the United States -- co-opting the opposition of the potential opposition.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's no different from what the Republican Party may have done with the conservative Right.

Now, obviously, in all of this, before his death, a transforming event is the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American decision first under the Carter administration, then the Reagan administration, to support the rebels in Afghanistan opposing the Soviet puppet regime there, and to use Pakistan and General Zia as a funnel for American aid, which would then go to the Mujahadin, who were fighting the Soviets. That must have had a profound impact, if one is "riding the tiger," to use your metaphor; suddenly at a certain point you are feeding drugs to the tiger, I guess. But, at a certain point, you no longer control that and then the tiger will go off.

You're absolutely correct. The Afghan episode was both a threat and an opportunity to Pakistan. It was a threat because the Soviet Union, overnight, arrived at Pakistan's northern borders, and General Zia looked to Islam and fundamentalism as a way of creating a wall against communism. What they didn't want to happen was that the Soviets may sit there for the next ten years, support communist parties in Pakistan, and then pull the same stunt that they pulled in Afghanistan, in that you first create a communist nucleus that, then, can stage a coup and then bring in the Soviets.

So Islamic fundamentalism was going to be foisted as the main barrier to communism. And this was actually fortuitous, because it created a tremendous amount of common ground between Jamaat-e-Islami and the military. They all agreed that they didn't want Pakistan to be communist. This was a major threat to Pakistan's security.

On the other hand, it was an opportunity. It was an opportunity because it provided General Zia with broader powers to co-opt the fundamentalists without compromising Pakistan's foreign policy, because there was a concert between what the Saudis wanted, what the Americans wanted, what the fundamentalists wanted, and what Pakistan's military wanted, which was: "Whatever is our ultimate goals, our immediate problem is containing the Soviet threat, and pushing Afghanistan back."

Secondly, in long duration, Pakistan had always viewed Afghanistan and Afghan nationalism as a threat. Ever since the British drew their Durand line, Afghanistan had had irredentist claims to northern Pakistan, or northwestern Pakistan. The Afghan war provided an opportunity where Pakistan got the upper hand. It began to use the war against the Soviets, and the fact that the Pakistanis could use Islam to control the Mujahadin fighters, as a way of controlling Afghanistan and Afghan nationalism.

There was no other way for Pakistan to have control over the Mujahadin, unless it was done through Islam. And the only way in which it could be done through Islam was if Pakistan itself would remain Islamic. In other words, Islam became central -- not just to "riding the tiger" domestically, but also to creating Pakistan's regional geo-strategic vision.

Now also key to this vision is what Zia's regime called "strategic depth," which was the notion that Afghanistan could be used as a staging area for incursions and for training of personnel, who would later take action in Kashmir to restore or bring that region into Pakistan's orbit. Tell us a little about that and the role of the fundamentalist parties in pushing that separate agenda, which was more related to Pakistan nationalism.

Actually, there are a number of very key issues that you raised in that statement. The first is that the Afghan war happened, also, at the time of the Iranian Revolution, which meant Pakistan lost its closest ally in the region for thirty years, which was the Pahalavi regime in Iran. It felt very vulnerable on its western side as well as on its eastern side with India, and with Afghanistan, with the Soviets sitting on its border. So it used an alliance with the United States and Saudi Arabia to fight for a strategic depth in Afghanistan. Now strategic depth in Afghanistan basically meant that Pakistan would be a much wider territory and it would have nothing to worry about in Afghanistan. So the prime interest of Pakistan, all the way until September 11, 2001, was to control Afghanistan.

It could not control it directly. It had to control it through proxy. And the proxy were, first, the Mujahadin and then, later, the Taliban. Now this strategy -- the Afghan strategy -- was a successful strategy. In other words, Pakistanis understood that with the right kind of Islam and the right kind of strategic initiative, not only can you push the Soviets back, but you can actually control a territory. So why not apply it to Kashmir?

Even freedom fighters on the ground made the same conclusions. The Chechens and the Kosovars and the Kashimiris themselves for a while began saying, "Well, look, this is the only case in recent history where a superpower, particularly the Soviet Union, has been forced to leave. They couldn't do it in Hungary. The couldn't do it in Czechoslovakia. It couldn't be done in Poland. It was done in Afghanistan." Now, they didn't look at this and say "It's Zia and the CIA, and Saudi money." They looked at it and they said, "It was a jihad." So they thought that, well, if you fight in the name of jihad, the Saudis will give you money, you galvanize the population, and the occupier will fall. I mean, surely, India's no bigger a threat than Russia was. So the Pakistanis understood it this way. The militants, themselves, understood it that way. And it was almost natural for the Pakistan military to say "Okay, we are fighting this war in Afghanistan. Why not use it in Kashmir as well?"

There's another element as well, and that's that ever since late 1990s -- 1997, '98 -- Pakistan also felt the problem of how you demobilize a proxy army like the Taliban or like al Qaeda. And, actually, we see what the problem was. When the U.S. washed its hands of Pakistan, all of these highly-trained Islamic "Rambos" were left to their own devices, and they became al Qaeda. Pakistan was cognizant of this, and one of the ways in which they tried to deal with it was find them somewhere new to fight. That "somewhere new to fight" at times was maybe in Kosovo, maybe in Chechnya, but that was not in large numbers. Maybe some of the more seasoned fighters ended up in Chechnya. But you need somewhere more sustained for them, so Kashmir, also, became a way for Pakistan to avoid the headache of demobilizing thousands and tens of thousands of volunteers and fighters who were armed, who were ideologically motivated, who were coming back buoyant from a victorious jihad, back to a country which had no way of absorbing them. Therefore, they either send them to the far reaches of northern Afghanistan to fight against the Northern Alliance, or they send them to Kashmir.

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