CIA The World Factbook

YI: Can Pakistan play a role in providing preventive measures?

Shireen Mazari: Our President did go to Iran. In fact our President has been trying to bring about an initiative to bring all Muslim states together, especially in this region, the Arab and non-Arab countries in an effort for them to act cohesively rather than having these outstanding issues and conflicts with each other. We have also been telling the Americans, do not make this mistake. But you know, there is an arrogance of power in the Americans and they do not listen. Mr. Bush didn't even listen to the Europeans when he invaded Iraq. So, one has very limited influence and if the Americans are not prepared to see the chaos that they will cause, despite what they're suffering in Iraq, they should be able to learn a lesson from that. Then I'm afraid there will be more and more chaos. But the end result will be that the US and the West will find themselves increasingly isolated in this part of the Muslim world. Because if you attack Iran, and if you destabilize this whole region, you're only giving space to the more extremist elements in Muslim societies.

     And vis a vis India, we have a dialogue process which commenced in 2004, and yes the atmospherics are wonderful, people to people relations, everyone embracing each other. But beyond that, there is no movement on conflict resolution. So a number of us are actually asking, whether you can sustain the atmospherics and the feel-good atmosphere purely on this sort of symbolism, and purely on confidence-building measures, if there is no movement forward resolving the conflicts. And herein lies the difference of approach between Pakistan and India to the dialogue process. We support conflict resolution and that is our intent for having a dialogue. The Indian seem more interested in conflict management and getting access to trade, and so on. But I think one thing is very clear: that the dialogue process can suffer hiccups but there's no going back and reneging on this process. This process is here to stay, it will continue.

YI: Who ever may be in power?

Shireen Mazari: Oh, yes, there is consensus in Pakistan, even among the religious parties. In fact, one of the first leaders who visited India after the détente started was Maulana Fazur Rahman, of one of the religious parties. So, there is a consensus in Pakistan that we should support the dialogue process. What a number of us are questioning is the manner in which the process is continuing at the moment.

YI: Pakistan is in the forefront of the war on terrorism. But as you said just now, people still question whether Pakistan is doing enough to ...safe haven. I wonder if that has something to do with internal politics. I understand there's kind a left over from the previous regime and how this is all intertwined.

Shireen Mazari: We have not had any religious regime in Pakistan after Zia Ul-Haq, the military dictator. Our successive elected governments and our caretaker governments have never belonged to religious parties. Some of the religious parties may have been allies in some of the coalition governments, but by and large the parties that have come to power have not been the religious parties. So, yes, while we can say there are leftovers of corruption, of weak institutions from previous regimes, we cannot really say that the terrorist issue is related to the leftovers of the previous regimes. Where the link exists is when Pakistan along with the US, Saudi Arabia and a number of other Muslim countries and western countries, built up and supported the so-called jihad against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Muslims were brought by the CIA to Pakistan from various countries. They were offered training here, they joined the advance in fighting the Soviets. The moments the Soviets withdrew, people forgot about these Muslim fighters. So, many of them settled in the tribal areas, married local people and now suddenly, there is a demand that we extricate them. We are trying to extricate them, but obviously if they are settled here, their families are Pakistanis, then it's difficult. The government has realized that they cannot have a purely military approach to its own people in the tribal belt. It has to adopt political incentives. Hence, we have signed a deal with the tribes to give them more responsibility for denying the terrorists space amongst them, to isolate the terrorists. That is the only way things will work out.
     And of course, we have to remember this is the second time we have become a frontline state for a US-led war. First it was against the Soviets, now it's against Al-Qaeda. And we were burnt the first time around, and we have to ensure the same thing does not happen to us again. So we have to evolve a more nationalist-centric approach to fight the terrorists that exist within us.

YI: There is some talk about parts of the military still sympathetic towards the Taliban.

Shireen Mazari: I don't think that is correct for the simple reason that the military has organizational identity which overrides everything else. There has been talk about the ISI supporting the Taliban. This is a very stupid thing to say because the ISI is not an entity that is independent of the mainstream military. The ISI is the inter-services intelligence. The officers of the ISI are not recruited independently, serving military officers, three year-terms in the ISI, including the head of ISI. So, you could have the occasional ISI chief in earlier times gaining too much power, like you had with the case of Mr. Casey of the CIA or Edgar Hoover of the FBI, becoming larger than life. Maybe we've had one or two heads of the ISI becoming like that, but by and large, the army generals who run the ISI come for three years, go back to some other command positions. So, it's not as if the ISI is independent of the military. So, you can't have the ISI conducting a policy that is different or in contradiction to what the President and the government are doing. I think it's easy to have a whipping boy of the ISI, but effectively, the ISI cannot be running policy on its own.

YI: About Islamic politics in Pakistan: is there a serious Shiite-Sunni split that could threaten the country's stability?

Shireen Mazari: We have sectarian terrorism in Pakistan, but it is restricted at the level of a few extremists on both sides. Ordinary Pakistanis are not subject to Shiite-Sunni divides. Shiite marry Sunnis, there are families which have both Shiites and Sunnis. So, there is no division in the mainstream of civil society. But yes, at the level of some extremists groups, there are targeted killings of Shiite leaders and Sunni leaders and so on. The problem is that a lot of the extremists Sunni groups have now become enmeshed with the Al-Qaeda problem. But otherwise, sectarian terror was on the wane in Pakistan post-9/11. And even now, last year saw a decrease, and this year during Muharram, we did not really see sectarian terrorism the way they used to happen in earlier years.

YI: So, it's not as serious as the case in Iraq.

Shireen Mazari: No, we don't have that divide because every time we have a Shiite and Sunni component...It's integrated.

YI: You once wrote in a commentary that 'extremism, like other evils, will thrive if the state is weak or selective in enforcing its writ.' Can you elaborate?

Shireen Mazari: I feel that the state must not be bullied by any form of extremism, and here I also include the born-again Christian extremism of President Bush. We cannot be cowed down by American threats just as we cannot be cowed down from threats from the Bin Laden society, by extremists, wielding violence and weapons, and so on. Because the moment the state is seen as being discriminatory in the application of its writ, in application of the law, enforcement of the law, then obviously people will feel that if they can gather together the forces of violence, they can challenge the state. That's what I was basically saying.