On one side of the dusty road leading out of Peshawar were the beards, and on the other side were the moustaches. For a former student of the later years of the British Raj, the scene had a timeless quality. There were the crowds of religious fanatics, vowing mayhem and looking much as they always have: beards, traditional clothing and all. And there were the sepoys, looking much as they did in the last three decades of the Raj-for the field dress of the Pakistani army remains essentially that of the British Indian army: khaki drills, tin hats with webbing, clipped moustaches. The uniforms are always neatly starched and pressed, which must take huge efforts in this climate.
On one side, "Allahu Akbar!" On the other, "what these bearded johnnies need is a good crack of the whip." Only older officers here still talk like this, but I've heard the phrase three times over the past week.
There was one other important difference between the two sides of the street: the military side was looking at the Islamist one along the barrels of heavy machine guns-with the result that the Islamist side was vowing mayhem with unusual calm and restraint.
In Peshawar and other big Pakistani cities the riots which were feared in early October did not occur. In fact, the only city to date where the authorities have lost control has been Quetta-and to be brutal, three deaths is not a large number by subcontinental standards. This number and more die every week in ethnic and religious clashes in Karachi, or are killed by police firing on crowds in any north Indian state.
There has been trouble in the Pashtun area of Malakand, but then the Malakand has been a source of religious revolt for 150 years or so (for an account of one such episode by a young British observer, see Winston S Churchill, Story of the Malakand Field Force). Indeed, it would be worrying if in circumstances like this there was not trouble in the Malakand-because it would suggest that something truly awful was being planned for later.
Of course, Pakistan still has to get through a general strike called by the Islamist parties, and when the mosques close after prayers on Fridays there is always the potential for violence. There will be many more Fridays before the US and British campaign in Afghanistan ends. None the less, at the time of writing in mid-October, round one has gone to General Pervaiz Musharraf and the forces of order.
Will things stay this way, and will General Musharraf survive? Here, one needs to tread a fine line between alarmism and complacency. At a dinner party last night, I listened to an argument between a young secular woman from the Shi'i minority and an elderly official. The woman's community has suffered terribly from terrorism by armed Sunni militant groups in recent years and she is understandably anxious for them to be crushed. She argued that these groups were a creation of former President Zia ul-Haq, the leadership of the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) as part of their dual strategy of prosecuting the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir and trying to turn Afghanistan into a Pakistani-dominated buffer state. Hence, all the army has to do is "turn off the tap" and the radical Islamist danger will collapse.
The official replied quietly, "I don't think it's as simple as that. These people were around long before Zia. It's true that forces in the state have encouraged them, but if so it's just the old story: they've created a Frankenstein's monster which now threatens them and they don't know what to do about it. So far, the army and police have held the line, but it would be a mistake to write these blighters off."
My sympathies are with the latter argument. Radical anti-western Islamism has a long history in the Indian subcontinent. The Taleban and most of the Pakistani radicals descend theologically from the Deoband school, named after a centre of Muslim learning which now lies in India. The Deoband school grew up as a militant reaction against British rule and westernisation. And ever since those days, radical leaders from outside have taken refuge on Afghan territory and used it as a base for jihad.
But hostility to the US/British campaign is the overwhelming emotion in the Pakistani population, even among those who have no sympathy for the Taleban. I have been shocked by the extent to which these sentiments have appeared in the English-language press, which by definition reflects the views of the English-speaking and therefore relatively westernised classes.
This does not mean that these feelings will lead to action. The strength of the active radical groups in the coming months will depend essentially on two factors: the course and impact of the campaign in Afghanistan, and the extent to which Islamist feeling now exists within the Pakistani army and, to a lesser extent, the police.
On the former issue, there are dire warnings from western aid groups that hundreds of thousands of Afghans will die this winter if they leave the cities to seek shelter in Afghanistan's freezing and barren mountains. This, they say, requires both a massive relief effort and pressure on Pakistan to open its borders and create many new camps. If such mass civilian mortality did occur as a result of the allied campaign, then the reaction in Pakistan and the Pakistani army could be very bad-especially since the costs to Pakistan of accommodating the refugees would probably exceed any short-term western aid on offer. (Pakistani officials say that they receive only about $8 a year for each refugee from the west.)
Pakistan has already absorbed about 3m refugees from Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion more than 20 years ago. Most of them have been absorbed into the general population, surviving as best they can. The refugees belong mainly to the Pashtun ethnic group which is starting to change the make-up of Pakistan; Karachi, for example, is now a predominantly Pashtun city.
Will there be a new refugee crisis? It is by no means certain. As Abdul Haq, a former mujahidin commander and leading anti-Taleban figure told me, "before the attacks started, the Taleban's people were very nervous, and their support in the population was very low. Everyone was afraid. But once the bombing started, people began to say, 'well, it's not so bad. We have known worse. We can stand it.'"
Over the past 20 years the people of Afghanistan have experienced vastly more brutal and indiscriminate bombardment than that of the present air campaign. Not just at the hands of the Soviets, but from various Afghan groups since 1992. They are a very hardened people.
There are two things that could start a serious refugee flood. First, if the bombing campaign destroys the roads into Kabul and other cities, so that the supply of food into the city is cut off. The population will then have to leave in search of food.
The second, and more likely scenario, is that the Northern Alliance forces-who are mainly Tajik-look like capturing Kabul. The population has the most bitter memories of the period when those forces ruled the city, and the Northern troops have sufferings of their own to avenge. The US officials I have met here are well aware of the dangers of ethnic conflict causing the Pashtun people to rally round the Taleban (who are mainly Pashtun). But these are not necessarily the officials with clout in Washington.
For the sake of General Musharraf, and Pakistan's support for the present US and British operation, we had better hope that neither of these things happen. Musharraf is a courageous man with great prestige in the army, and the army is a very disciplined and impressive force. But naturally it is also one rooted in Pakistani society, which in some ways has a good deal in common with the England of the 15th century. This means that if a ruler becomes surplus to military requirements, there are other ways than a military coup to get rid of him. General Zia ul-Haq's equivalent of the butt of malmsey was a poison gas capsule in a basket of mangoes. It should be noted however that for all his commitment to Islam, the general went to his own death wearing not a beard but a very British moustache. n
