Catch 22 – Part 1

Pakistan is a unique country living in perpetual emergency since it birth. There is Israel and there is Northern Ireland that too share the same dilemma. Apart from the common element that their ideologies are based on faith, other dynamics are distinctly dissimilar. Pakistan’s case is by far the most complex because of a larger number of concentric circles entangled together.

Pakistan’s dilemma can best be explained through Joseph Heller’s novel Catch 22 written in 1961 and is considered one of the best 100 fictions of the century. It is a black comedy novel about death, about what people do when faced with the daily likelihood of annihilation. For the most part, what they do is try to survive in any way they can. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Second World War and relates the story of a group of soldiers entangled in fatal conflicts not only with the enemy but also with their own primal instincts that a hopeless situation creates. The novel is a brilliant allegory of the interplay between the trilogy of external adversity, individual character and communal behaviour, which all influence each other and are affected in return. Catch 22 binds them together in an intangible chord perpetually.

Much of the emotional plot of the book turns on the question of who’s crazy, and it is illuminating to look at its world in Kleinian terms. The location of the story in the inner world is the claustrum — a space inside the psychic anus, at the bottom of the psychic digestive tract, where everyone lives perpetually in projective identification, and the only value is survival. If one is expelled from the claustrum, there are only two places to go: death or psychotic breakdown. What people do in these circumstances is to erect individual and institutional defenses against the psychotic anxieties engendered by unconscious fantasies of the threat of annihilation. These defenses are extreme, utterly selfish and survivalist.

There are five clear sets of problems that generate a catch 22 syndrome in Pakistan today. Although each set has its own genealogy and dynamics, they have a synergetic co-existence and play upon one another. Herein lays the first manifestation of catch 22: Tackling all of them at once is too monumental, like performing five surgeries concurrently on a patient which warrants certain death. Yet piece-meal solutions are futile to administer since each set feeds on the others, and the time frame required stretches out indefinitely – a provision that Pakistan does not have any more. The five sets are conundrums related to defence, economy, governance, terrorism and public morality and morale.

All of the elements are entangled with one another. Starting with defense, there is primarily the relationship with India based on historical animosity and suspicion that provides justification for a disproportionately large commitment to defense structure at an unaffordable cost. Kashmir issue provides the fulcrum of conflict in a tangible mass and hence the reticence to resolve it. The inherently handicapped position vis-à-vis India necessitates nuclear option as an eventual equalizer at a heavy cost of world opinion and country image. The defense issue coordinates with other dilemmas along the following vectors.

• It places a heavy burden on the economy in terms of direct expenditure, foreign exchange drain and handicaps international trade through negative country image or sanctions.
• Governance inefficiency works as a multiplier in areas mentioned above.
• Cross border hostilities that form an integral component of the defense strategy invites corresponding terrorism within country, and this provides sustenance to terrorist elements that operate in the name of faith and idealism.
• The visible lack of success or quick victory in defense objectives demoralizes the public. Conflict per se is either for the die-hard fanatics or for mercenaries. Saner people tend to believe that good prevails over evil. When that does not happen, skepticism sets in to question the underlying beliefs, which if throttled through coercion further re-enforces disbelief. Catch 22 in action!

Since the testing of the nuclear devices by India and Pakistan in 1998, world attention is focused on the potential inflammatory situation in the subcontinent. A global pressure for disengagement is rising on both countries. India has a bigger mass in all dimensions than Pakistan, so the latter is feeling the pressure more acutely. As it happens, a military General is at the helms of affairs in Pakistan. Reconciliation would come more naturally to a politician, not a General. Events have turned around full circle! The military lead the hostile stand against India initially; politicians conformed and inflamed the tensions to a point where they collectively militarized the civilian minds to irreconcilable rigidity. Now a military General has to defuse the ticking bomb! The General has a Catch 22 on his hands – by definition and training, his job is deployment of weapons, not disengagement! Moreover, the politicians wait eagerly to castigate him if he rises to the occasion by super imposing higher national interests on his professional dictates. He is being compelled to make the fatal exit out of the claustrum to a professional betrayal (psychosis) or death while they (politicians) remain securely ensconced in the claustrum to survive and reap the fruits of his sacrifice. General Musharraf has all my sympathies. I will not blame him either way. He has two impossible choices - to either contravene omnipotent Catch 22 or preside over a national suicide.

The General’s alliance with the U.S. on Afghan policy has created controversies – it is being perceived as rational by liberals but as a blatant volte-face by the clergy and others. However, it has also created a contradiction with the Kashmir policy which has not been aligned accordingly. So while diplomatic accommodation with the U.S. is on even keel, relationship with Afghan government is getting into dire straits. Dividing the foreign policy on different principles between the eastern and western fronts is proving untenable. The global pressures to remove the plurality in foreign policy will increase rapidly now.

The burden of his Herculean assignment would be much lighter if he had the support of public opinion on resolution of Kashmir issue – or at least a faction of the public opinion. That is not to be because the historical inertia stands rigidly against any compromise on Kashmir and the public (including the intelligentsia and opinion makers) submit meekly. The threat of militant reprisal by the fanatical ‘mujahideen’ groups in the country further throttles rational sentiments. The General is alone up there faced with the ironic wrath of our past.

The Catch 22 does not end here! Kashmir is just a corner stone of the edifice of conflict with India. The foundations lie buried deeper in history. Pulling out the corner stone will demolish the walls but the edifice will remain, however weakened, with the possibility of some later adventurers rebuilding on it again. Resolution of Kashmir will ease tension between the two countries, which will logically lead to scaling down military establishment, but there is a paradoxical sting to this outcome. Rehabilitation of the militant mujahideen is a mission impossible; even the U.S. could not manage it with Vietnam veterans for decades. This mass of militant youth will turn their aggression inwards and like rogue cancer cells attack the very body that they are a part of. They will readily fit into the mold of any fanatical political faction that pours them into a ferocious street power for the party.

Therein lays the worst clause of Catch 22! The vacuum created by discredited, wounded and scattered politicians is likely to suck in the militants. If Kashmir remains unresolved, it bleeds the country; if it is resolved; mujahideen may turn inwards and devour the politics with a ‘Khomeini’ revolution. Catch 22 is a circular argument that feeds on in itself endlessly!

To be continued…………

Iqbal Mustafa
6 September 2003

1300 words