The Real Land of the Lost

Will Ferrell may be the man we think of when we picture The Land of the Lost, but here’s a multiple choice question for you. Who is running Pakistan, our “ally” in the war on terrorism, monitor of arms trafficking in the area?

a) The elected leadership in the capital of Islamabad

b) The military and the intelligence service (the ISI or Inter-Services Intelligence)

c) The Taliban

d) Al Qaeda

e) No one

If you picked a), you’d be wrong. And if you picked any of the others, you would be right to some degree or another. The New York of Pakistan, Karachi, is viewed as some the most dangerous city on earth… a mega-metropolis where bin Ladin might even hiding in plain sight. The fundamental issue with Pakistan stems from one of the biggest differentiating characteristics between Pakistan and Indian, more than the obvious distinction that Pakistan is primarily an Islamic country, and in India, Muslims only represent a minority.

The 1948 partition of India from Pakistan (there were once united under British rule) was based primarily on religious factors – Muslim vs. Hindu. Muslims fled, panicked northwards toward Pakistan, leaving possession and jobs in a migration that was often bloodied with religious hatred. The two countries fought and struggled, mostly over the future of the northern Indian border state of Kashmir, which has a large Muslim population.

The distinction I referenced above, however, is one seldom mentioned in cursory summaries of the region: de facto feudalism. While there are certainly mega-rich families in India with large landholdings, this is balanced with self-made entrepreneurs and a huge middle class. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a nation where massive land holdings and corporate control are concentrated in the hands of a very few families, who simply pass the wealth from generation to generation. Unlike India which instituted land reform early in their modern life cycle, Pakistan perpetuated effective feudalism by allowing traditional land owners to retain their massive estates. Think dukes and lords of ancient English owning their castles and all the lands around them.

If you add new militant Islamist movements to the mix, instability becomes the rule. Much like the early roots of Christianity, where brotherly love and ennoblement of the common man were basic recruiting tools for a nascent religion, Islamists in Pakistan seek to ennoble the effective peasant class as their recruitment tool, but this effort has taken on a distinctly non-“brotherly love” violent aspect.

The struggling government, with its highly suspicious intelligence service (ISI) allegedly being closely aligned with the Sunni fundamentalist Taliban, has literally ceded political and legal control of entire regions of Pakistan to regional control, from the Western Tribal District, which borders Afghanistan on the southwest, to Swat in the north. Pakistani authorities have virtually no control over what happens in these areas. Americans are concerned that strategies directed and ferreting out terrorists are constantly being compromised by leads from the ISI to those being sought. Taliban field operatives have used this feudal landholding practice in Swat, where Islamic law was recently permitted by Islamabad to apply in this state, to take over buildings and farms, arrest or slaughter the rich land barons, and effectively become heroes to the locals.

The April 23^rd The Washington Post cites Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as she addressed Congress: “The Pakistani government ‘is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists,’ Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Congress yesterday in an unusually blunt statement that reflects the unease within the Obama administration about an agreement authorized by President Asif Ali Zardari… ‘Look at why this is happening,’ Clinton said, referring to the Swat Valley agreement [to permit Islamic law to govern]. ‘If you talk to people in Pakistan, especially in the ungoverned territories, which are increasing in number, they don't believe the state has a judiciary system that works. It's corrupt. It doesn't extend its power into the countryside.’”

Our military leaders have spoken about the reality that the Afghani problem is really a regional problem that embraces stability in Pakistan as well. But it is difficult to see how a corrupt and feudalistic government, in which even those standing for elected office are the scions of the powerful families themselves, can survive and avoid an Islamist, anti-American government to take over without implements a massive change that threatens the very existence of the ruling class itself. Without ending this traditional feudalism, Pakistan’s shaky foundations are crumbling. It is equally difficult to envision a nuclear nation run by the Taliban. Pakistan is a country with many nuclear weapons, and the father of its “Islamic bomb,” Dr. A.Q. Khan (pictured above), generously jump-started the nuclear development, with design specifications and technology, in both Iran and North Korea.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’m worried too.