Allah’s Revenge on Urdu Party
by Manzoor Ahmed Manzoor
(Written before 2009, updated 13-9-2023)
At one time there was no one of Urdu Party in Pakistan who did not decorate himself with a medal or two for defeating Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They claimed that the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union was due to its defeat in Afghanistan. Therefore it was the Jihad, they supported and participated in, that disintegrated the Soviet Union, ran the argument.
And in Afghanistan the argument must not have been more articulate than that in Pakistan or the West because practically the leading ideologues of this Jihad were out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a laboratory, a battleground and an ATM for making dollars for those who were in the West and Pakistan.
The Soviet Union supported the Communists in Afghanistan who shared its ideology. But the Americans planned and got “Jihad” executed by others. Those who worked for Americans for money and the Jihadis who actually fought did not possess civilizing values. With American money and support they disintegrated Afghan society itself. American money and support and Pakistan’s role was not for Afghan people or for building their country in the first place. Therefore Afghan people have a case against America and Pakistan of destroying their country and disintegrating their society. Peoples of Pakistan have a related case against Americans for corrupting and involving their rulers in their anti-civilization enterprise due to which the peoples of the whole region are suffering even today.
It is a common perception of our people that this indirect control of Pakistan by the American-led West began in the very beginning of Pakistan. And the perception is not wrong because when the British relinquished their control of the subcontinent, one cannot detect any desire or urge in the leadership circles of the Urdu Party or the Muslim League to make their newfound country an independent state. This question never arose in them.
Independence for Urdu Party was solely their separation from Hindus. Like children, this was the end of their politics. The Muslim leadership, which was very comfortable with the British, had been tamed by them to fit in their overall policy of perpetuating their rule in India. Basing on their anti-Hindu prejudices, the colonial power which had remained in direct control of the subcontinent from about one hundred to two hundred years between 1757 to 1947, depending upon the place of reference, was successful in channeling Muslim opinion away from the occupation which was real to the specter of Hindu supremacy which was imaginary. It was a sort of veto power in their hands against the Hindus given to them by the British for a wrong which had yet to be committed.
This calculated and considered policy of the British was successful in making the Muslim elites, I named Urdu Party, totally dependent upon them. Already down and degraded, the British kept them under their wings and when left passed them over to the Americans. Since the Mughals fell, who had stood on their own in the world, the ship of the Muslims of pre-1947 India remained detained in the British imperialism’s harbor. And since 1947 the ship of Pakistan is detained by American imperialism and has not been able to set on any high sea voyage. The captains and the crews of the ship over all these years have enjoyed their long holiday and have been happy not to face the rigors of the high seas and be on their own.
The question is for what the ‘reward’ of Pakistan went to such people? Put simply, they had delayed India’s independence. But at deeper level, it is the story of weakness of humanity and civilization generally vis-à-vis their rulers, dominant classes and their ideologies and therefore not specifically our specialty. The human weakness is not going soon and today although in a different context humanity is facing similar and perhaps more complex problems. But then, Pakistan was not necessarily the ‘reward’ for them.
There can be another angle of the story for one who is not an ideologue. It could be the story of how history dealt with those Muslim elements, the Urdu Party, that had become spoiled and nasty for good society and civilization due to British support. Even the British could not have known this.
By giving Pakistan to Urdu Party, history, in fact, duped them. The new owners of the new state, recycled and refurbished, thought they had avenged and ‘defeated’ the Hindus by getting back at least some of the ‘lost power’. This was the ideology. But it was not true. This was their illusion. Neither they had defeated the Hindus nor had they got back the lost power. In fact history, which is in a way the story of human struggle for civilization, separated them, which they thought was their achievement, from the larger Indian scene where they would have remained a thorn in the side of a very large part of humanity. Allah has his own ways! And in the next step, history freed and separated more than half of Pakistan from the clutches of their ideology. And today they have practically reached their end game in the remaining Pakistan where they are in the process of being defeated. But they don’t know it. It is as if history dealt in steps in defeating them.
During all this period they never tried to come out of their degradation. What to talk of a struggle, they never aspired for a renaissance. The reverse had to happen. Hence their deterioration which never stopped and made them hardened criminals. Criminalizing Pakistan thoroughly and embracing Afghanistan at some such a stage under the supervision of American and Zionist criminals, they have made the whole region of Pakistan-Afghanistan inhospitable for humanity and civilization.
How humanity re-asserts and establishes civilization in the region will really be the ‘Great Game’ for the world to witness in the coming years and decades. Obviously, whatever the obstacles, no part of the world can remain crime infested for long. And then we are too numerous, too innovative and capable to leave our affairs in the hands of criminals.
Putting in simple words we can say that in the course of history our region met this accident. We have to understand it and salvage whatever is salvageable and build new and better than before and move forward.
A question arises here which can be of help. Could have the Urdu Party led predecessors of the present-day ruling elites of Pakistan ever avoided this fall? Was there not even the remotest possibility of that?
The answer is, no. How could they have stopped falling when the British policy had irreversibly deepened their already existing narrow-mindedness? There seems to be no possibility at all. And this disqualified them to build the new state of Pakistan on any reasonably acceptable and civilized parameters. They behaved like robbers, plunderers, thugs and what not and there was hardly any exception. They used any edifice, personality or idea, which was sacred for the masses to repeatedly cheat them. Swindling at every step and continuously squeezing the space under the feet of the people, who could have never thought of it being ever taken away from them, they have left nothing even spiritual uncorrupted which was the last refuge of the weak and the rejected.
The bewildered humanity is now adrift hoping against hope and apparently nowhere to find solace. There were obviously many fundamental and foundational defects in the ideology of those who were in the forefront in establishing the new State of Pakistan. But time was needed for their becoming visible to the masses.
The embrace of such a Pakistan has cost Afghanistan dearly. But why Afghanistan went into Pakistani embrace in the first place? Put simply, Afghanistan had its own problems, which had not been addressed in time and therefore was vulnerable.
It can be argued that Afghan rulers had remained contended to keep their population underdeveloped, although winds of change continued to blow over Afghanistan from the north as well as from the south. The attempted moves for modernization were too weak and administrative in nature to overcome the inertia of Afghan society against change. I believe the same can be said about the efforts of King Amanullah (1919-1929) which were the highest point ever reached by any Afghan ruler for modernization of his country.
Two European powers Russia and Britain remained rivals over Afghanistan for about one hundred (1813-1907) years in which the British dominated for most of the time. Even with so much contact with the British, the leading power of the modern world as their neighbor in India for about a century, the Afghan ice did not get the required heat to thaw. And then in 1917, there was perhaps the most momentous event of the twentieth century next door – the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Whatever was happening in these biggest and most advanced laboratories of human affairs of the world remained available for a very long time to Afghans to learn from. If all these changes could not move Afghan leadership to enter the modern world on their own, it proved to be a recipe for future disasters. To nobody history gives special treatment. In physics we say that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But in human affairs, we can say that even a non-action – when we fail to act in time – can have unimaginable and comparatively far bigger consequences.
Therefore the interpretation can be that the failure of Afghan leadership for a very long time in upgrading their country, socially and economically had left great voids, which others tried to fill. The present generations of Afghans are paying the price with their lives and blood for the neglect of their forefathers. And basically, Pakistan’s story, as you have read, is not dissimilar. Can anyone expect any of two individuals whose heads are not in their right places to give benefit to or get it from the other? Perhaps, therefore, Afghanistan and Pakistan were destined to damage each other. Logically, their rise must be destined to be complementary to each other.
Looking ahead, neither Taliban of Afghanistan are its future nor Urdu Party ideologues-led Pakistan is viable. And I can’t see Pakistan and Afghanistan confronting each other. Consider TTP spoiled children of the accidents of the time and deserve constant punishment. Consider Durand Line as if it doesn’t exist. Pakistan and Afghanistan have and must have a great future. The right initiative has to come from Pakistan. This is the Pakistan World Power Manifesto. ▄