Express Tribune: by Khalid Ahmad: Pakistan is about to face the second ‘withdrawal’ blowback from Afghanistan. The first, after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, came under General Ziaul Haq, whose policies metamorphosed Pakistan into an adventurist, fundamentalist nation with its face turned to the past. The second is upon us now, as the US Army gets ready to withdraw. Both events will coalesce to cause severe existential disorder in Pakistan.
In General Zia’s war, the blowback for Moscow was in the shape of the break-up of the Soviet Union. The US became the sole superpower after that. The blowback for it was silently taking shape within the Islamic warriors it had mustered in Pakistan. The post-Soviet euphoria was expressed through the term ‘New World Order’. Pakistan, sunk under its own Ziaist legacy, delivered the 2001 punch to the US in the shape of the al Qaeda attack.
Iran defeated the US in Iraq, and its people are paying a price for this victory with their freedoms. Pakistan’s non-state actors (Taliban, etc.) and foreign warriors have defeated the US in Afghanistan under Pakistan’s doctrine of ‘strategic depth’ — and the people of Pakistan should get ready to pay a price for this victory too. General Zia spawned madrassas and tried to create a pattern of governance resembling the khilafat.