Conspiracy Theories, Patriotism and Religion

The Muslim world in general and the Pakistan’s educated public in particular, truly excel in the art of coming up with amazingly complex conspiracy theories. According to these conspiracy theories everything in Pakistan, particularly disruptive things, are planned in Washington and with active consultation of Israel and India.

These theories display amazing combination of permanence and progressiveness. Permanence is shown in the eventual blame which remains constantly on USA and progressiveness is in the interpretation of changing facts and ground realities where it is amended in fantastic ways to reach the same conclusion.

Consider this: In 1990s a large portion of public and media was praising Taliban. When Clinton attacked Osama’s bases through cruise missiles in late 1990s, Nawaz Sharif almost lost his government and had to bring "shariah" laws to survive. At that point Taliban were heroes and robin hoods which had defied the "imperialist" USA. Then 9/11 happened. All the media was busy absolving Osama of terrorism and I remember the title of an English weekly magazine:"Guilty unless proved Innocent". Then Osama on video accepted responsibility and suddenly the very same media started branding him an agent of USA.

After 9/11 whatever happened whether in Pakistan (multiple suicide attacks and Benazir’s assassination), India (Mumbai bomb blasts and attacks in November 2008) and UK (7/7 attacks), was interpreted as US conspiracy to blame Taliban and Pakistan with the eventual aim to take control of nuclear arsenal. Media and our public was so fixated that ALL Taliban atrocities which were being reported were dismissed as merely USA funded propaganda. Eventually when the Nizam e Adl happened and Sufi Muhammad finally spoke on national TV and live, our media finally realized what was in store for the nation.

Unfortunately, instead of learning, the media has taken a U turn and now Taliban themselves are being labeled as USA agents. Once again a spin is given to ensure that blame falls entirely on USA alone. Now according to the brigade of conspiracy theorists Bait Ullah Masud is an American agent who with collaboration of some “bad” Taliban is trying to destabilize Pakistan. Some theorists are now trying to interpret him a “strategic” asset of USA who will never be caught thus giving the excuse to USA to stay in the region.

Well my point of view is not to absolve the USA of its crimes but to introspect on this mindset where we fail to even acknowledge our own role in this extremism. Terrorism is a multiple factor phenomenon and all the factors have played their respective roles. Moreover at times these factors have been interconnected and reciprocal in nature.

It is true that USA is not an angel and has imperial designs. Its policies have fueled extremism and Iraq war showed that they try to conjure reasons for aggressive actions even when the ground facts are different. But to attribute everything to USA manipulation through twisting facts and changing the spin to make sure that only USA is held responsible for everything in Pakistan has become a hallmark of Pakistani media.

The issue for me is this: We keep on changing interpretations of all the events to keep the ALL the blame on USA fixed. Moreover instead of multiple factor approach of analysis, ours is a singular approach where everything is either a reaction or is a grand conspiracy of USA, India and Israel nexus. This particular mindset creates various problems, the chief being our inability of look into other factors and genuine issues which may have originated because of our faults.

An obvious case is of Baluchistan, where problems may have been occurring due to years of our neglect of the resource rich but still the poorest province. In our single minded conspiracy theory mindset all the turmoil there is attributed to Indian as well US involvement. This mindset prevalent in the dominant sections of media makes it difficult for any serious and objective intellectual discourse into the problems of that province. Obviously if the problems are solely due to US conspiracy, then automatically the grievances will be interpreted as mere propaganda or something merely instilled by foreign powers to destabilize Pakistan.

Moreover, this attitude has often prevented formation of consensus to take decisive action at the right time. Our media virtually allowed extremism to take complete foothold in NWFP by consistently either calling problems as US instigated or through outright denial of any atrocities by Taliban. The political will which is crucial for military action could never develop and on the contrary despite horrible suicide attacks which were openly claimed by Taliban, the media successfully painted it as merely US war.

But the problem goes beyond even this. Lately this conspiracy theory mindset is being projected as “proof” of patriotism and any alternate paradigm of analysis is actually labeled as blind endorsement of West or unpatriotic behavior. A few months ago, I remember when a prominent journalist, Fasi Zaka, disagreed with fantastic theories of conspiracy theory superstar Zaid Hamid, he was actually proclaimed as a Zionist agent by Mr Zaid Hamid! Most of the people who posted their comments on web, sided with Zaid Hamid calling his analysis as “enlightening” and knowledge as “awesome”. Zaki at best was categorized as “misguided” whereas a large number of comments simply endorsed Mr Zaid Hamid’s views that he was an agent planted by Zionists. This mindset has become so entrenched in our society that any one even suggesting that we may also be partly responsible for the mess, automatically becomes a “baigharat” liberal or complete sellout or if he is lucky he will be labeled as misguided English speaking pro West elitist.

So what may be the reason for this? The reasons in my opinion are manifold and some are imbeded in our cognitive framework while rest are the outcome of international events and the actual behavior of foreign players.

First of all, conspiracy theories appeal to our fundamental and deeply held conviction that a Muslim cannot do anything which would bring a bad name to Islam and lead to adverse consequences to the Muslim community. Moreover, apparently the more fundamentalist you are in your appearance, harder it is for the public to actually believe that you are capable of these actions. This may explain why it was difficult for the public to believe that Taliban were behind anything and all was US propaganda. It also makes sense as to why they are now interpreted as “agents” or bifurcated between “good” and “bad” Taliban to explain once it has become clear that in Swat militants were indeed behind atrocities. Now the Swati Taliban, according to Mr. Zaid Hamid are the bad Taliban and in some way which only he and his brigade can understand, very different from “good” Taliban such as Mullah Omar.

Secondly, we always link consequences with origination. Since terrorism “benefits” West because it defames Islam and gives them a justification to retaliate, therefore in our logic it must have been solely planned by them. In our country, the nuclear issue is extremely sensitive and somehow or the other assumed a central place due to our inherent insecurities and also crisis of identity. Moreover, the nuclear arsenal is perhaps the only thing which actually elevates Pakistan to at least a factor to reckon with at the global stage.

It’s no wonder that every terrorist activity is then conveniently linked with the global conspiracy to destabilize Pakistan with the ultimate objective of taking hold of nuclear arsenal. Now there is merit in this thought that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would always be giving the US and the West sleepless nights but to give these amazing spins that al-Qaeda is planted by USA and suicide attacks are planned and carried by USA alone is really mind boggling and moreover self contradictory. If Al-Qaeda and Taliban are indeed planted then military action in FATA would actually eliminate these agents and deprive the US of the justification to take military action to neutralize the nuclear assets.

It somehow escapes otherwise rich imagination of the conspiracy theorists that it becomes extremely difficult to take action against even the identified militants due to our deeply held unquestionable and contradictory convictions. If the US goal is to destabilize Pakistan through suicide bombings and at the same time the identified militants are absolved of their crimes and labeled as victims of mere American propaganda, then we are willingly letting the US agents go unpunished! We, due to our mindset, actually allow the terrorism (whether it’s due to home grown militancy or US conspiracy) to take roots and flourish. When suicide attacks were taking place, we were pressurizing the government not to take action in the troubled areas of NWFP by claiming that it was mere US propaganda and war would be a US war. Now assuming that those militants were indeed US agents (which they have suddenly become according to conspiracy theorists after Nazam-i-Adl), we have actually been preventing action against the US agents ourselves.

Thirdly, the conspiracy theories also owe their existence (though not the extent of their weirdness) to foreign powers’ actual way of dealing which has always been oppressive and suspicious. The flimsy case of war in Iraq has merely strengthened and provided some legitimacy to the conspiracy theorists. As a result contradictory theories which brand militants as US agents and yet resist government crackdown by labeling it as US war, find acceptability in the public.

Any society has to indulge into an honest intellectual discourse at the time of crisis. Unfortunately, we as a nation not only resist it, but are completely blind to our own faults. Blaming each and everything to grand conspiracies and branding those who demand that we introspect as “traitors” or “baighairats” is not going to lead us anywhere but more deeply into this bottomless pit.