And this was viewed by the United States, the CIA, and the government as a great victory at the time?
This was regarded by the United States as a tremendous victory because empires historically tend to be very short-term in their thinking. They rarely think ahead strategically.
If they’re willing to dispense with Sukarno, who is a major non-aligned leader, why weren’t they willing to go after Nehru in India?
They were not prepared to go after Jawaharlal Nehru in India because India was a country that commanded a lot of respect in those days, particularly throughout the Western world and especially by the Europeans. Nehru was seen as a sort of social-democratic leader. He was elected, there was an opposition, and the Indian army was independent. It would have been very difficult for the United States to manipulate the Indian army. So they couldn’t do anything about India, but what they could do was transform Pakistan into a US base in October 1958, by organizing a coup d’état and making the Pakistani military heavily dependant on them. Links between the Pakistani military and the Pentagon date back to the 1950s, to the Cold War period, when the ruling elites used the military to prevent a general election from taking place that they were fearful might produce a government that would take Pakistan out of all the US security pacts. The United States knew they couldn’t do much about India, so they concentrated on Pakistan.
Pakistan becomes a key component in our Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
Yes, and the Pakistani military henceforth becomes a very valued asset of the United States, with direct links to the Pentagon. Large numbers of Pakistani officers are sent for training to Fort Bragg and other American military academies. And links are established between the Pakistani military in the United States to create a special commando unit inside the Pakistani army for emergency actions. And the Indians know all this.
Who was a political threat in Pakistan at this point?
There was no immediate individual leader as a threat, but you had political parties in both West Pakistan and East Pakistan whose manifesto said we will take Pakistan out of the US security pacts if we win the election scheduled for April 1959. We should be a non-aligned country like India. And that was the fear. A totally crazy fear in many ways, but it was the fear.
Your own life was marked by coup in 1958, was it not? You were fifteen then. Were you still in Pakistan at the time?
Yes.
Your life could not be the same again.
It wasn’t the same again. It was changed. We were very angry. And I was very active against the military leadership. We were organizing study circles and cells on campuses. I also organized the first demonstration of the time. When the military takes over, all political parties and trade unions are banned, all public demonstrations, all public gatherings of more than four people are not allowed. And once news came through to us, I think it was 1961, that Patrice Lumumba, the leader of Congo, had been killed—by the Belgians, or by the United States, or by both, we didn’t know—Nehru in India said this is the biggest crime of all, the West will pay for this crime, having killed an independence leader. But our government remained silent. So at my university I said we have to have a meeting on the campus to defend Lumumba and demand something. So we put our little leaflets all over the campuses saying Patrice Lumumba is dead. Half the students didn’t know who he was, but we explained it to them, and we had about five hundred students who assembled in this big hall. I spoke and said, look, Congo has produced its first independent leader, and they’ve killed him because they found him a threat. We can’t sit still, so let’s go out onto the streets. So they said, let’s. And so we marched, we just marched out of the university to the US consulate general and said, you know, who killed Lumumba? We want answers. “Long live Lumumba!” The police were totally taken by surprise. This was the first public demonstration, defying all the military law. And then, on the way back from the US consulate in Lahore, as we approached our college, the first slogans we chanted were “death to the military dictatorship, down with the military”—and nothing happened to us. So Lumumba’s assassination was one of the things that then triggered a big student movement in the country.
When did you leave Pakistan? You’re now basically in exile?
I live in London. I came to study at Oxford in 1963, and then I wasn’t allowed back by two different Pakistani dictators. I became an exile.
So 1958 to 1965 is a defining period if your life, and you’re cut off from your roots.
I was nineteen when I came to study at Oxford.
I was around sixteen when Kennedy was killed in the same year, 1963. I think that was a turning point for me, too, because I don’t think I would’ve gone to Vietnam if Kennedy had been in office.
Well, that war might not have developed to that extent.
I don’t think it’s possible.
These things are formative.
And in the same sense I don’t think that Roosevelt would have dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that’s speculation. Certainly Wallace would not have.
Wallace certainly wouldn’t have dropped the atomic bomb. So, these events which happen do change people’s lives. They’ve changed our lives, and they’ve changed the lives of millions.
I was on the colonialist side of the picture. I was in New York City. I didn’t have any concept of what we were doing around the world in your country, in Pakistan. We were interfering in all these countries, and your life—it’s your life—would be different now. Perhaps it’s been improved by the turbulence and exile, and the social movement was created. But if you had been born in Indonesia, you would’ve had the same issue. Your life would’ve been like an earthquake.
Well, if I’d been born in Indonesia, and I had the same political views, I’d be dead.
An entire generation of people were shaken by US policy.
Including American citizens. Let’s go back to the Vietnam War. That was probably the most formative event for an entire generation. It changed people, even people who supported the war, and many who fought in it, it changed them forever. They couldn’t be the same again. I mean, it made them think. And it brought about this shift that the United States would never be able to fight a conscript war again, because if you conscript people, it affects the whole country. So the war in Iraq is a war is later fought largely by a voluntary army and mercenaries recruited from abroad.
It’s ironic. The British Empire has been perhaps the most influential in terms of culture in Pakistan. You speak with an English accent. But, in reality, the American Empire is the one that changed your life by trying to determine politics in your country.
It’s absolutely true. I find it difficult to imagine what life would have been like in Pakistan had there not been a military coup, had that first general election taken place. Would Pakistan have split up in 1971? It’s one of those interesting counterfactuals that will remain with us forever. I mean, you know, these counterfactuals sort of intrigue me more and more. The older you become, the more you think of how these moments in history have changed your life and those of others.