Frontline Pakistan— The Struggle with  Militant Islam
Zahid Hussain
Penguin, pp 220, Rs 395.
After 9/11 President Pervez Musharraf had vowed— under pressure from the US— to fight religious extremism and terrorism emanating from Pakistan. Almost seven years on, the terror infrastructure remains intact and terrorist groups continue to thrive in Pakistan. Zahid Hussain’s Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam provides interesting insights into why religious extremism persists in Pakistan.
The author, a veteran journalist who has reported from Pakistan for Newsweek and Wall Street Journal for several years, provides the reader with a ringside view of the war within Pakistan. He draws on his interviews with several of the key players, including General Musharraf and leaders of jihadi outfits, and provides valuable nuggets of information about events he personally witnessed.
He provides a rivetting analysis of how external jihad against the Judeo-Christian world has coalesced with the internal jihad against those who deviate from Sunni/Wahabi teachings. His accounts of Pakistan’s sectarian violence and the military’s battle against al-Qaeda in the tribal belt are particularly interesting.
The Musharraf Government might have captured several al-Qaeda operatives and banned militant outfits but its steps to eradicate extremism have been half-hearted and lacked consistency and conviction, argues Hussain. Musharraf has backtracked on several issues. He promised regulation of madrassas, and then went easy on them to appease the Islamist parties. Islamist extremism thrives because the military is reluctant to make a clean break with its longstanding allies— the mullahs.
Survival is supreme
According to Hussain, Musharraf’s priority is the survival of his regime. To keep democratic forces under check he has been courting the religious right. While he has been ruthless in silencing the democratic opposition, he has treated religious extremists with kid gloves. In the last election, anti-military politicians were barred from contesting elections on corruption charges or disqualified on the grounds that they did not have a university degree. However, mullahs with madrassa education and sectarian extremists jailed on multiple charges of murder were allowed to contest the elections.
Given the strong mullah-military nexus, religious extremism will persist under military rule. “The war against Islamist extremism can be best fought, and won, in a liberal democracy,” Hussain argues, pointing out that neither Musharraf nor the US is interested in restoring democracy in Pakistan.
As for the future, the author says that “Pakistan may not be facing an imminent threat of an Islamic fundamentalist takeover, but there is a real danger of fragmentation with radical Islamists controlling part of the country.” He warns that “a geo-political earthquake could at some point erupt, which would make the current regional security situation look positively calm by comparison.”
What makes Frontline Pakistan a valuable addition to our understanding of religious extremism is that the author, while writing in a style that is easily understood, presents the problem in all its complexity. His analysis captures subtleties between various kinds of militancy. He does not lump the Taliban foot-soldier, who is often from a poor, rural, madrassa- educated background, in the same category as the more sophisticated, privileged, al-Qaeda operative. He is uncompromising in his opposition to religious extremism but refrains from broad-brushing them all as terrorists.