In November, 1970, a mighty cyclone made landfall in the eastern half of Pakistan, in what now part of Bangladesh. Tidal waves swept across coastal areas and offshore islands, unleashing unprecedented devastation, pulverizing everything in their path. The official estimate of dead exceeded half a million. Unofficial estimates were greater.
As with the recent earthquake, Pakistan’s corrupt military regime was characteristically slow in responding. Indeed, Islamabad’s ineptness helped convince eastern Pakistan’s Bengali majority to seek a separate political arrangement. Four months later, Pakistan’s military—dominated by officers from the western part of the country—unleashed a genocidal campaign against Bengalis. Tens of thousands were killed, and nearly 10 million people fled to India. Before 1971 was over, Pakistan had broken apart.
The death and destruction wrought by this month’s earthquake offer a reminder of these events. Nature may work in unpredictable ways. But human responses are often highly predictable and go a long way toward revealing the underlying character of the afflicted society. In 1970, the callous disregard of Pakistan’s military regime for the plight of its own citizens was instrumental in the secession that followed. Thirty-five years later, a similarly cataclysmic political upheaval may be in the works.
Pakistan’s political situation is precarious. A powerful minority within the country is sympathetic to al-Qaeda and its Islamist agenda, and so there is much unease over Pervez Musharraf’s war against terrorism. Especially unpopular is Musharraf’s nominal alliance with the United States. For years, Pakistan supported the Taliban and a constellation of jihadist groups operating in South and Central Asia. Many Pakistanis learned their religion in madrassas that teach the militant, hate-filled strain of Islam exported by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis. For this radicalized segment of the population, paying lip service to the Great Satan does not sit well.
Moreover, the demonstrated incapacity of Musharraf’s regime to provide any meaningful assistance to the earthquake’s victims confirms what many already knew: The country’s corrupt military rulers are more interested in plunder than in providing security for citizens. This is a country that has spent billions developing nuclear arms, yet has remained dependent on international aid since its founding in 1947.
The northern areas of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir that were stricken by the earthquake are generally inaccessible once autumn ends and snow begins to fall. The three great mountain ranges, the Himalayas, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, converge here into what is known as the roof of the world. Some years ago, I hiked through this breathtakingly beautiful region, travelled on the Karakoram highway, which connects Pakistan to China, and discovered for myself how poor are the people who live along the route Alexander the Great took into India.
Pakistan’s military rulers do their best to keep the area isolated. Deep in the interiors of high mountain valleys, training camps run by the Pakistani affiliates of al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban have kept operating, even four years after Pakistan officially became a partner in the U.S.-led war on terror.
With tens of thousands of dead on Pakistan’s side of Kashmir, and about four million homeless, the earthquake has unleashed an enormous refugee crisis. While the scale will not rival that of 1971, it may be on a par with that created by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when Afghan refugees fleeing Soviet troops streamed into Pakistan, swelling the towns and villages along the Indus river.
The influx of international aid means the Pakistani military will no longer be able to keep northern areas behind a veil of secrecy. International media exposure will shine a light on militant training camps and the terrorist campaign their occupants wage against post-Taliban Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir. It should also awaken Pakistan’s poor Kashmiris to the brutal reality that they have been used as disposable pawns in the geopolitical game the country has pursued against its neighbours. Like the cyclone that hit 35 years ago, this earthquake may unleash political fallout that Pakistan’s government cannot control.
Given the status quo, a shake-up may be welcome. The quake victims desperately need assistance from the outside world. But as Western governments open their wallets, they should also insist that the region no longer be kept as a secluded refuge for jihadis by a cynical Pakistani government that preaches peace even as it tolerates terror. Now, more than ever, the country’s citizens deserve a government that cares about their plight more than its own self-interested and often violent machinations.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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