Pakistan’s Favourite Conspiracy Theories

Ghaf­far Hus­sain

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are present in all cul­tures but are more preva­lent in cul­tures in which polit­i­cal or reli­gious dog­ma guides thought and behav­iour. Pak­istan is the per­fect exam­ple.

One of the great joys, and there are many, of dis­cussing pol­i­tics with many of my fel­low Pak­istani friends and col­leagues is being exposed to a wide range of bizarre and eclec­tic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. I have come across so many clas­sics over the years that I have lost count. I have also had to mas­ter the art of con­tain­ing my laugh­ter and putting on a seri­ous face when faced with absolute­ly ludi­crous the­o­ries about why things are hap­pen­ing in the world.

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are present in all cul­tures but they are cer­tain­ly more preva­lent in cul­tures in which polit­i­cal or reli­gious dog­ma guides thought and behav­iour. In such a con­text, a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry serves to bridge the gap between dog­ma and real­i­ty. The only way one can cling to their dog­mat­ic world view, when faced with evi­dence to the con­trary, is to con­coct a fan­ci­ful and self-serv­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry.

Here is a round-up of my favourites:

1. The Tal­iban is secret­ly work­ing for the US – this the­o­ry is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing because the peo­ple that defend it also hail the Tal­iban as cham­pi­ons of Islam when they car­ry out a suc­cess­ful attack on a US tar­get. It is so fan­ci­ful and far-fetched that one can­not pos­si­bly go about dis­prov­ing it and I nor­mal­ly respond to it by say­ing, “any­way, did you see the Crick­et last week?”

2. The US is behind all ter­ror attacks in Pak­istan – this one has been doing the rounds even before the under­cov­er CIA agent Ray­mond Davies was cap­tured after shoot­ing dead two Pak­ista­nis in Lahore. But after that inci­dent the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists had a field day; they thought they had been giv­en all the evi­dence that could ever have wished for.

This one is also unique because it real­ly annoys ter­ror­ists in Pak­istan that are try­ing to claim cred­it for attacks only to have their claims tram­pled on by the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. I love it when that hap­pens.

3. The Media is con­trolled by the Jews – this one is a clas­sic and has been around for decades, per­haps orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed by fas­cists and lat­er adopt­ed by sec­tions of the far-left. Either way it is pret­ty much dog­ma amongst Pak­ista­nis and almost impos­si­ble to chal­lenge. Point­ing out that Rupert Mur­doch isn’t Jew­ish is nor­mal­ly a good start and that can be fol­lowed up with point­ing out the sig­nif­i­cant stakes Sau­di princes have in News Cor­po­ra­tion and CNN.

4. The CIA cre­at­ed bin Laden and al-Qae­da – this one is quite com­mon around the world and based on a pop­u­lar mis­un­der­stand­ing. The CIA did indeed sup­port the Afghan mujahideen effort against the Sovi­et Union in the 1980s, as did Sau­di Ara­bia, the UK and oth­er nations. But what many in the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty were sup­port­ing was a broad-based resis­tance effort that includ­ed sec­u­lar, nation­al­ist and reli­gious groups.

The funds were chan­nelled through Pak­istan’s ISI and end­ed up equip­ping main­ly Afghan nation­al­ist groups, after an ISI 10 per­cent cut no doubt. There is no evi­dence what­so­ev­er to sug­gest that the CIA ever met with, fund­ed, or trained bin Laden or oth­er indi­vid­u­als that went on to form al-Qae­da. To the con­trary, they had their own fund­ing via bin Laden’s own mon­ey.

5. 9/11 was car­ried out by Mossad – this one was spout­ed the minute the planes hit the twin tow­ers and is still rolled out, over a decade lat­er, in spite of con­fes­sions of 9/11 con­spir­a­tors, doc­u­ments that show how the attack were planned, and a video tape record­ed short­ly after 9/11 in which bin Laden gloats about the attacks and his role in them. I nor­mal­ly respond to this one with “do you know what the weath­er will be like next week?”

6. Iraq war was all about oil – anoth­er clas­sic that start­ed before the 2003 Iraq war and will nev­er go away because it is just too con­ve­nient. Let’s start by putting to one side the fact that all of Iraq’s oil could not cov­er the cost of the war and the US did­n’t need the oil since Sau­di Ara­bia had spare pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty. Oil con­tracts in Iraq have now been giv­en out and guess what? They have gone to main­ly Chi­nese and Euro­pean firms.

7. The war in Afghanistan is about a pipeline – yes the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty spends bil­lions of dol­lars and los­es thou­sands of lives for a pipeline that isn’t even entire­ly nec­es­sary. Land­locked cen­tral Asian states can either use Rus­si­a’s pipeline sys­tem or use the Baku-Ceylin pipeline which is far more effi­cient than send­ing ener­gy through Afghanistan.

There are, of course, many oth­er clas­sics too, like Malala Yuse­fzai being an under­cov­er CIA agent, and oth­ers that are just too ridicu­lous to men­tion. But I thought I’d lim­it myself to these ones for now. No doubt I’ll have more to look for­ward to after the ISAF depar­ture from Afghanistan in 2014.

Ghaf­far Hus­sain is a counter ter­ror­ism expert and Con­tribut­ing Edi­tor to The Com­men­ta­tor. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @GhaffarH

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 8)