Pakistan (Terrorism)

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:03 pm on 16 January 2008.

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Photo of Tony Baldry Tony Baldry Conservative, Banbury 3:03, 16 January 2008

My hon. Friend Mr. Ellwood has more reason than most of us to be concerned about the impact of senseless terrorism. My comments may carry a slightly different nuance from his. There are three words for Pakistan to consider: democracy, democracy and democracy. Tragically, 60 years after partition, India and Pakistan could not be further apart. India is a vibrant democracy and will be a middle-income country by about 2015, having raised millions of people out of poverty. It should never be forgotten that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. On the other side of the border, Pakistan is a faltering state, to employ the Foreign Office's new terminology—it is something approaching a failing state, I think. It has effectively been a military dictatorship for a number of years.

I was impressed by the Secretary of State's new year message advocating a return to democracy in countries such as Pakistan and Kenya. Bronwyn Maddox, whom we all know from reading The Times, put it well a little while ago in an article, asking,

"is the pursuit of democracy compatible with stability? For eight years President Musharraf said no, justifying his status as military leader by his claim to deliver stability and help in pursuing terrorists. For most of the eight years the US bought that answer; Britain was more equivocal.

It did not take the assassination of Benazir Bhutto two weeks ago to shatter that case. The pressure put on Musharraf by the US and Britain to let her return in October signalled frustration with him. It has been clear for years that the military was a cause of serious unrest, not the solution—appropriating land and large commercial interests, and inflaming tensions between the provinces and different ethnic groups."

Rageh Omaar, whom many of us have seen on television, commented:

"Pakistan is facing a twin crisis.

The first is the fact that Pakistanis are fighting Pakistanis, due to the country's integral involvement in the "war on terror"; a campaign whose military successes are, many feel, far outweighed by its social and political failures towards people in the region.

The second is that Pakistan has still not found an alternative to military governments."

Of course, it is difficult to find an alternative to military Governments when there is a military dictatorship, not democracy.

Many of us in the House counted Benazir as a friend, and—I declare an interest—my chambers represented her for a while in legal proceedings. She moved between London and Dubai for all those years. Which of us can name any other democrats who have been able to rise up the Pakistani political system? Which of us can name more than a couple of leading members of the Pakistan Peoples Party? Of course, such people would not come forward while there was a system in which democrats were undermined and the military prevailed.

It got slightly worse than that, because there was always an incentive for the military to justify itself either in the campaigns in Kashmir or by defining Pakistan as what it was not—namely, India. If the military created enemies, it could justify its existence. William Dalrymple put it this way:

"The most pressing crisis now facing Pakistan comes in the shape of the country's many armed and dangerous jihadi groups. For 25 years the military and Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have been the paymasters of myriad mujaheddin groups intended for deployment first in Afghanistan and then Kashmir. While the military may have once believed that it could use jihadis for its own ends, the Islamists have followed their own agendas and have now brought their struggle onto Pakistani streets and into the heart of the country's politics."

I do not think that anyone who has been involved in foreign policy in the past 20 years will be unaware of the many times we have received representations from the Indian Government about armed groups from Pakistan being sent into Kashmir and elsewhere for Pakistan's own purposes. That monster has now turned on Pakistan. The only way in which we will make long-term progress in Pakistan is through a fundamental, resolute and complete return to democracy. We have tried the ends justifying the means for a decade now, and it has not worked.

I accept that other hon. Members will fundamentally disagree with my next point. I do not believe that the international community and the Government of Pakistan will win over the people of the North-West Frontier Province and tribal areas by creating the impression that those people are the enemies of civilisation. I was introduced to the North-West Frontier Province in maths lessons at the age of 11. My maths master was Brigadier Picton, whose great-grandfather had commanded the artillery at Waterloo, and Picton himself had commanded a brigade on the north-west frontier. He brought trigonometry very much to life for me by using fire plans for tribal villages, which, I suspect, were somewhere near Peshawar.

I was also taught that the British empire, at the height of its strength, had not succeeded in bringing the north-west frontier province under its control. Indeed, as hon. Members know, all that we sought to do during the whole time that we occupied India, which then included Pakistan, was to keep the road from Peshawar, through Landi Kotal and on to Kandahar, open, and we were helped in that operation by the Khyber Rifles. When one makes that journey, as I am sure that the Minister and many other hon. Members have done, one sees the signs listing the regiments that have sought to keep the road and the railway line open. To be honest, the tribal regions have managed extremely well on that basis.

Of course, I appreciate that the arrival of Taliban elements and training camps has introduced a new dimension, but giving the impression that the whole region has somehow been taken over by the Taliban and other terrorists does not help. What Pakistan needs is a war on poverty, because as India progresses, Pakistan is going backwards. Rates of illiteracy are also increasing, which means that we have the most terrifying of all faltering states—an increasingly illiterate nuclear power.

My plea this afternoon is very simple. We should do everything that we can through Parliament, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and other means to promote democracy in Pakistan. If things get difficult in Pakistan, we should not suggest to Musharraf that the army is the only body that can sort things out or that we will continue to give it support, comfort, succour and funding. The United States has pursued that practice over the past 20 years, while we have rather been sitting on our hands, but it has failed. We now need robust democracy, the rule of law and the encouragement of an independent judiciary and an independent media—the sorts of practice that other parts of the region take as the norm. Only in that way will we defeat terrorism in the longer term.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East made some perfectly good points regarding concerns about terrorism in the UK. However, we all need to reflect on the fact that some of the suicide bombers in the UK were born and brought up here—it is not simply a matter of terrorism being imported from overseas. Those who perpetrated the 9/11 atrocities were middle-class and, in particular, affluent young Saudis, so this is not just a matter of poverty. I have a not insignificant Kashmiri community in my constituency. When I visit the mosque or talk to members of that community, I find, as I am sure that other colleagues do, that they are as horrified by the practices that we are discussing as anyone else; they want a peaceful life and to bring up their children here. They also want people in the areas of Pakistan from which their fathers and grandfathers came to have a peaceful life. The issues before us are therefore quite complex.

We will not make progress in Pakistan, however, until the rule of democracy starts to prevail and we see democrats with whom we can interact and engage a dialogue, and whom we can encourage. The longer Pakistan remains a military state under the rule of the army, and the longer it is effectively controlled by the army, the ISI and other groups, the more difficult it will be to resolve the issues to which my hon. Friend has rightly drawn our attention.