Pakistan's 'Wild West' and the British Connection: New America Media

Pakistan Link, Commentary, Mowahid Hussain Shah, Posted: Jul 13, 2009

Unrest in the tribal areas has been a part of British folklore and imagination. Even Winston Churchill made his mark at the end of the 19 th century by writing about his battle-field experiences in the North-West Frontier Province through his first-ever book, “The Story of the Malakand Field Force” published in 1898. It is to Britain what the “Wild West” is to America.

Post-Partition cinema reflected those themes with movies like “King of the Khyber Rifles” (1953), “Zarak” (1956), “The Bandit of Zhobe” (1959), and “Conduct Unbecoming” (1975), depicting British regiments preoccupied in their encounters to contain tribal insurrection. Some were lavish productions. Terence Young, who was director of “Zarak”, went on to launch the James Bond franchise by directing blockbusters like “Dr. No”, “From Russia with Love”, and “Thunderball”.

Today, the legacy of old wars is killing a new generation. When the Soviets took over Afghanistan in December 1979, an isolated Pakistan government – in the wake of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s hanging in April of that year – proved eager to associate itself with the American enterprise in Afghanistan, in which one of the key motivations was to avenge the US humiliation in Vietnam by bleeding the “Red Army” and to reassert itself in the region after the Iranian revolution which ousted the Shah in January 1979. Not enough thought was given to its domestic blow-back effects.

Slowly, but surely, the problems of Afghanistan started seeping and spilling over into Pakistan. 9/11 accelerated this process. Suicide bombings which hitherto were a cultural anathema in Pakistan have now made the country into a veritable “killing zone”.

It has been aptly observed: “Just as our present is the result of our past, so our future will be the result of our present.” Blood is on the road ahead.

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