[BRIEF NOTE] Geocurrents on the regionalist origins of Pakistani jihadism

[rfmcdonald]

Geocurrents is a smart blog, examining and illustrating--not only literally--different issues around the world superbly. The issue examined most recently in Pakistani support for extremist groups. In his most recent post, Martin Lewis demonstrates how strong Pakistani national identity co-exists with strong regionalist and regional nationalist identities as shown by political support. In the first post in the series, Lewis mapped support for violent groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Taliban by region and found something surprising.

The patterns revealed by the maps are consistent and unexpected. The Punjab, Pakistan’s core, is clearly revealed as its most radical province. News reports, however, more often associate extremism with Pakistan’s western periphery, especially the Pashtun northwest, which is the site of most violence. But the Pew data shows that most residents of Pashtun-majority Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa reject Jihad-oriented movements. (Attitudes in the Pashtun tribal districts along the Afghan border were not surveyed, and are probably much more extreme.) Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s rejection of radical Islamism is probably related to its constant exposure to bloodshed, which usually turns most people away from violent ideologies.

More difficult to explains is the relatively high levels of support for extremism in Punjab. Punjab dominates Pakistan, forming the demographic, cultural, and economic core of the country, with considerably higher levels of development than Sindh, Balochistan, or Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Punjab’s 34 percent support for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group that supposedly aims “to destroy the Indian republic and to annihilate Hinduism and Judaism,” does not bode well for the future of Pakistan.

Levels of human development are consistently higher in Punjab than elsewhere, so, why this support?

It comes down to Punjab's own divisions. The Punjab region has seen many divisions, being split between India and Pakistan upon independence. India's Punjab was later split between Sikh-majority Punjab and Hindu-majority Haryana, whereas Pakistan's Punjab has remained intact. However, southern Punjab is home to the Saraiki language, or what's at the very least a cluster of highly distinctive dialects of Punjabi and what is increasingly claimed by proponents of Seraiki statehood to be a language justifying the creation of a new state within Pakistan. Frustrated Seraiki identities might be expressing themselves in support for radical Islamism; compare the dissent of Kelantan from Malaysian norms I mentioned earlier today.

According to Bill Roggio, “South Punjab teems with radical mosques and madrassas, which are used to indoctrinate Pakistani youths to join the jihad. Tens of thousands of members of these terror groups who have gone through training camps are said to be active in South Punjab.” Why south Punjab would be so much more inclined to extremism than North Punjab – or any other part of Pakistan outside of the Tribal Areas – is an interesting matter. North Punjab is a more agriculturally productive and prosperous area than South Punjab, but correlations between poverty Islamic radicalism are generally weak. Deeper issues are almost certainly at play.

[. . .]

South Punjab, in other words, has long been a politically marginalized area, lacking the administrative structures of the modern state. Until recently, the region was even denied its own linguistic and cultural standing, treated merely as peripheral variant of the Punjabi norm. When the Pakistani state under the presidency of Zia began to push politicized Islam in the 1980s, the region’s antiquated political structures were unable to resist to the hard-core Islamist political networks. Dissatisfaction with the northern-dominated Punjabi provincial government and the Pakistani national government has no doubt aided the militants’ cause.

One Pakistani commentator opposed Seraiki statehood for multiple reasons. The opening it might give to terrorist groups was raised.

To add another spin to this issue, with terror networks already present in southern Punjab and trying to strengthen their grip in that area, raising such an issue at this precarious time can provide the opening which India, Israel and their allies may be looking for to build upon and create a kind of mayhem as they have created in Swat and Balochistan. This will provide them the luxury to recruit traitors at will in the name of “Islam and getting your own identity”, as they have done in Swat and Balochistan. This may very well lead to opening another alarming front of a troubling separatist movement to deal with for Pakistan army and the already crippled government of Pakistan.

Wouldn't it be a terrible irony if the reverse were true?