‘Pakistan is not a jehadi state. It has a lot of jehadis who use force to try and take over as they cannot win an election’

Thank you. I take that as a compliment.

You have had two ambassadorial postings—one to Sri Lanka and one to all-important Washington. As you know,I’ve not been travelling to Pakistan for some time. So give me a tutorial about Pakistan.

The most important thing people in India need to understand is that Pakistan is no longer a monolith. Even though some people want to present it as that,but Pakistan and its various dimensions,its pluralism is now asserting itself. Whether the outcome is good or bad,we’ll see over time,but democracy is something on which people agree. You remember the time when Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan People’s Party used to disagree,one would topple the other. Now,neither one will allow a military intervention. Everybody wants democracy to continue. Look,we’ve had five years of democratic rule and this is the first civilian government that will complete its term,hold another election and hand over power hopefully to another civilian government. But the key thing is also that this is the first civilian government in Pakistani history that has not arrested its opponents,not filed cases against them,not prosecuted or persecuted people. In fact,people who have been prosecuted have been people from within the government.

You,for instance,have had a nasty time.

Well,I’ve had a difficult time but let me just say the good news is,I’ve not been charged with anything. I’ve not been convicted of anything,no trial has taken place. What you have is judicial smoke and mirrors.

They tried to hit you with treason,which is no less.

Treason,of course,is always a matter of what people see. I think I am a better patriot than those accusing me of treason because I offer an alternative vision for Pakistan. I say Pakistan needs to go beyond its old paradigm. Instead of being an ideological state,it needs to be a state that is responsive to its people. It’s a state that needs to make peace with all its neighbours rather than try to win wars,which they have never been able to win.

Explain this formulation of an ideological state and a modern constitutional state. Explain this to an ignorant Indian like me.

First of all,I am somebody who feels that the people in Pakistan have a very negative view of India because that’s what’s being fed. People in India have a negative view of Pakistan.

Today,Pakistan is a jehadi state about to be taken over by the Taliban,unless it has already been taken over by the Taliban.

No. Pakistan is not a jehadi state. Pakistan has a lot of jehadis who use force to try and take over. The reason they use force is because they cannot win an election. It is an insecurity,the thought that somehow Pakistan is not sufficiently coherent and,therefore,we need to impose an ideology. Instead of an ideology,Pakistan needs to recognise that it is a pluralist state. The original Pakistan,as it was meant to be,would’ve had 23 per cent non-Muslim minority but it ended up having only 3 or 4 per cent because of the circumstances of Partition. Subsequently,Pakistan’s hardline clerics demanded that Ahmadis be declared non-Muslims.

And some of your great national heroes,including your most successful general in the 71 war,were Ahmadis…

Yes… yes. They were Ahmadis,so the point is,that it’s a small…

The general who led your units in the Chhamb sector…

Definitely,definitely,General Akhtar Malik…

Even your Nobel laureate… the only Nobel laureate…

Our only Nobel laureate,Dr Abdus Salam was an Ahmadi… Our first foreign minister,who got the UN resolution on Kashmir passed was an Ahmadi… The point is,if the state starts deciding who is,and who is not a Muslim,then there will be others others who will say,’Okay,ab isko bhi karo’,and it will not solve… There is a wonderful sher by a Pakistani poet,ke ‘Jaane kab kaun kise maar de kaafir kehkar,shahr ka shahr Mussalman hua firta hai…’

(Laughs) I wouldn’t even want to translate this…

(Laughs) No,no,I think people will understand,and those who don’t understand are probably not interested in poetry anyway,so unko sher sunane ka fayda nahin hai… But the important thing here is that the ideological paradigm narrows the function of the nation as a whole. Pakistan has to stop thinking in ideological terms and think in practical terms as to what is in Pakistan’s benefit. Do we need more nuclear warheads? Or do we need more children in school? Pakistan does not need to tackle terrorism for India’s sake or for America’s sake,we need to do it for Pakistan’s sake.

Explain the Lashkar phenomenon to me. Everybody explains it but let’s have a Husain Haqqani explanation.

My simple point is that there should be no Lashkar,no Sepah Sahabeh in Pakistan. Sepah Sahabeh is an extremist group that considers Shias as non-Muslim,therefore picks out Shias and kills them while they are praying in their mosques. The whole idea of Pakistan was that Muslims should have some sense of security. If Muslims cannot pray in a mosque because of the sect they belong to,then we have not achieved the purpose of Pakistan and we need to review all of that. So what we need is a practical,functional,constitutional state with,of course,Islam being the religion of the majority being respected,but not an ideological state that decides before any objective reality who is our enemy,what are our concerns. Concerns should be based on what is happening.

…and not work somehow with the presumption ki Islam khatre main hai.

Islam has not been in danger for 14 centuries and very frankly,many a state has come and many a state has gone…

And Islam has grown.

Yes,there are more Muslims in the world today.

As India embraced the new mantra of new economics,do you think Pakistan is today intellectually capable of embracing the idea of a modern constitutional state?

I don’t know if you remember,you and I both wrote essays on the 50th anniversary of our countries in The Wall Street Journal. You said Nehru’s great success was democracy,his great failure was socialism. And I wrote that Pakistan has emerged and coalesced as a nation. Most Pakistanis have a sense of nationhood and the notion that somehow Pakistan is going to break up or disappear is wrong. But Pakistan should now embrace democracy and constitutionalism. I am confident that the stage has come where that debate can take place in Pakistan,there are very good omens. Of course,we have to fight the extremist mindsets,we have to fight the jehadis and we have to get over the view that somehow our future will be shaped by the decisions of foreign powers. No foreign power can make Pakistan strong.

Put all three As—Army,Allah and America—in perspective. Each of them has its own place. For instance,America cannot deliver the goods for you and for us.

It cannot. We have to engage with America in our interest and understand that America has its own interests and work out where we have commonality of interests. We should stop thinking that somehow we can get some advantage from them.

Just as we talk of dehyphenating America’s policies in the sub-continent,Pakistan will also benefit from dehyphenating its own policies.

Pakistan will benefit by focusing inwards,strengthening itself,allowing democracy to function and have an open discourse and debate. The debate Pakistan needs is,what is Pakistan’s national interest?

Does Pakistan tolerate Lashkar-e-Toiba,are they not able to deal with Lashkar-e-Toiba or do they encourage Lashkar-e-Toiba? Or do all three apply?

Maybe all three apply in different degrees. Pakistan’s national discourse has been hijacked by extremists. So if you watch Pakistani channels,you’ll see a greater voice for extremists’ opinions than for moderate opinions. Pakistan’s national discourse enables people like A Q Khan and Hafiz Saeed to project themselves as national heroes. The truth is anybody who is considered a criminal by the rest of the world should not be deemed a national hero because that means it isolates our country. All nations have heroes that others don’t like,but you can’t have people who are deemed as international criminals as national heroes. That is something Pakistan needs to review. We cannot have the benefits of globalisation without paying the price of globalisation,which usually means some acceptance of international ideology.

Also,you cannot have benefits of globalisation if your passport is seen as a suspect.

Absolutely. Many years ago,there was a time Pakistanis could travel to many countries in the world without a visa. When I was the ambassador to Sri Lanka,you could arrive in Sri Lanka without a visa. Now in almost every country you require a visa and that is not good when more Pakistanis need to travel because of a globalised economy. Now I don’t know if you saw this opinion poll in China,which is supposed to be Pakistan’s greatest friend. Even there,a majority does not have a positive view of Pakistan. We need to change that by our PR exercise. We have to address the problem of terrorism,we have to strengthen our democracy. We have to have a freer debate. We have to recognise that people like Asma Jehangir,who is valued by the world as a human rights campaigner,(philanthropist) Abdul Sattar Edhi,they are the ones who deserve to have roads named after them,not only those whose claim to fame is to wreak havoc on somebody else.

America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan,Palestinians have a problem because Israel was set up there. Pakistan never got invaded. So how come the angriest Muslims in the world happen to be in Pakistan?

Well,it has got to do with the discourse. As early as in 1947,an American journalist who arrived in Pakistan wrote,‘This is a new country and I find more people talking about Palestine than I have met in the Arab countries’. Basically,it’s the discourse,the leaders telling people it’s important.

The favourite old joke in Lahore’s liberal circles is that when all those processions used to be taken out to supposedly liberate Palestine,Manto saheb stopped someone and asked,‘Bhai kahan jaa rahe ho?’ Usne bola,‘Palestine ko azad karne jaa rahe hain’. Toh usne kaha,‘Dekho bhai,Regal chowk se nikal jana,nazdeek padega’.

The point is,these marches do nothing. The Palestinian cause is important,the US invasion of Iraq,people have an opinion about it and they are entitled to their opinion. But no nation accomplishes greatness by focusing on the wrongs of others or the rights of others. It is important to have our own national discourse that is about our own national accomplishment and our own national threats.

…and somehow this psychology of ‘Islam ka qila’ and that you have to go all over the world to defend Islam.

First of all,to say that Islam has to be defended means that you acknowledge that Islam is under threat. Muslims can be under threat,some interpretations of Islam can be less popular at a time or another,but the notion of Islam being under threat and in danger is actually a political notion because,very frankly,Islam has survived Genghis Khan,Islam has survived toppling of empires. The end of the Abbasid empire,the end of the Ottoman empire,the end of the Mughal empire…these were not the end of Islam. The notion that somehow our faith becomes threatened as a result of political changes is flawed.

So Husain,when do we see you back in Pakistan and can you go there by the time the next election comes in?

I really look forward to returning to Pakistan because my heart has always remained in Pakistan.

Your wife is active in politics. She is the spokesperson for the the president.

She is active in politics and so am I. She has worked for the president and was in the national assembly. Both of us remain committed to doing something for our country within the political process of our country. Right now,I want to take a break where I can be sure. I’m not a rich guy in Pakistan with 20 Pajeros and 50 gunmen. This media noise,which has,of course,not resulted in any legal sentence against me,has resulted in many people being convinced that somehow something has happened. Even newspapers write that Haqqani was pronounced guilty by the committee. No. A commission of inquiry cannot pronounce anybody guilty. It can only say that they believe the facts of the matter were XYZ and then there can be a trial. So under such circumstances,when there is so much noise,I do not want threat on my life because I also have an obligation as a husband and as a father. I do not want to threaten my life by arriving at a time when somebody might say,‘gaddar ja raha hai,shoot him’. So I want the situation to become calmer on that score and then I will return to my country and I will play the role I have to play. But wherever I am—whether standing outside your Parliament in Delhi or in Washington or travelling somewhere else—I will always work for a democratic Pakistan that has full civilian authority over all aspects of policies,for a constitutional Pakistan that is not restricted by ideological constraints that have held back our nation.

Pakistan was growing much faster than India until the mid-’80s when I first came to Pakistan. I said to you that you people look so much better off than us.

I remember you and I taking a ride in a Honda Accord and you said,‘pata nahi kitne saal lagenge hamare yahaan aane main…’

Your per capita income was 65 per cent higher than ours and then it began to fall and ours began to rise and somewhere in the ’90s,the two lines crossed. Since then,you’ve conceded… Is it,as I call it,Pakistan’s terrorism punishment because the state has used terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy and Pakistan has paid for it,talent has gone away,capital has gone away. Damage has been done to Pakistan.

I think Brand Pakistan has been damaged but no nation gets completely damaged—they come back. Look at all the east European nations. Can you imagine countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia coming back after Communism? They have,so I see no reason why Pakistan can’t do this. This reversal has to be a conscious decision,a very methodical effort has to be made to change all of this. If you do a word game on Pakistan in many western countries,if you ask,‘What is the first word that comes to your mind when you hear Pakistan’,it will be bin Laden,terrorism,al-Qaeda,Afghanistan…

…Lashkar-e-Toiba,Hafiz Saeed. Unfortunately,it won’t be even Imran Khan. Also because many of us are fans of his cricket but not yet fans of his politics.

Well,I think most Pakistanis would also feel the same way (about Imran Khan).

Before I let you go,give me a few one-line descriptions of some interesting people in Pakistan such as Imran Khan,Musharraf and your president.

President Zardari is absolutely an arch politician who understands politics better than most of his rivals.

Has he learnt from his wife or did he have native smarts?

I think he learnt a lot from his wife who was a major influence in his life but he also had native smarts and also learnt a lot from being imprisoned for 11 years. He has learnt the art of patience,which I think is far superior in politics than what people actually give it credit for. General Musharraf is a news story,more in India than in Pakistan these days,but he is not a political reality in Pakistan. Military dictators don’t become popular democratic leaders just by wanting to do it. I think Imran Khan was a good cricketer,he did a good thing by building a cancer hospital. He ventured into politics as an anti-politician politician and like all anti-politician politicians,he will have problems in politics. I of course,have a bone to pick because he was one of those who ended up calling me gaddar without any evidence and that I think that attitude of calling people traitors or kafirs has harmed Pakistan more than it has benefited. So that is something he has to review. Moderation is a greatest asset in politics.

Well,on that note,thank you,Husain.

Thank you very much.

Transcribed by Jerrin Mathews