Schrödinger's vassal: Pakistan's contradictory stance w/ Aman Ullah Tariq

Sina: Aman Allah, welcome to the podcast. It's good to have you on. I saw your episode with friend of the show Navid on his Colony Archive a few months back. And at that time, I said to myself, like, oh, I need to do an episode about Pakistan, like what's going on. It's been a long time. So we're here today to talk about Pakistan and Southeast— South Asia and what's been going on. There's been a lot going on. And so, but before we do that, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and we'll take it from there.

Aman Ullah Tariq: All right. First of all, thank you for having me on, Sina. As you know, we're good friends with Navid, and Navid is good friends with you. And because we both have curly hair, which I have appropriately tied behind my head right now, and Navid is borderline on the spectrum, so he just assumed that we're the same person. Even though we look nothing alike. But fair enough. And I know that's a real thing for Iranians, especially Persians in the diaspora, that they are white. And then being compared to a Pakistani guy. So, and I think Navid as an Azeri did that on purpose because he just wants to just, you know, it's a punk on real true Persians, real Persians. He wants to punk on them.

Sina: Yes.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Because he'll never be a carpet salesman. Anyways, we're going to start with the solemn pledge of Pakistan that we start any August forum with, which is I pledge that I will sacrifice my life for Pakistan. When I will grow up, I will be army and save Pakistan and destroy India.

Sina: Strong army! Whoa, great!

Aman Ullah Tariq: Have you ever seen those?

Sina: Those wait, like the video, the video of the kid. Great.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Every single. And I would appreciate if you would rise for the national anthem. But anyways, I am my name is my name is Amanullah Tariq. I I am around. I'm 30. I grew up in Pakistan all my life in Lahore, which is the cultural capital of Punjab, which is the most populous province in Pakistan. Half of the Punjab, well, one-third of the Punjab is in India. It's a shared culture. We have a language. We have different dialects of the language. You might have seen us at the local gas station or delivering your food services or just managing general logistics and trucking. Some of us wear funny colored turbans. Those are our Sikh brothers.

Sina: Wow.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Who are more from the eastern side of Punjab in India. And others you will see just generally scowling with beards and mustaches. Those are us. Those are the western side of the Punjab, the Muslim sort of side of Punjab. We have a huge diaspora. So historically in the spectrum of when we was Kangs, Punjab was Kangs very recently. So because of which, and this is our Kang moment right now because the western part of Punjab, which which is part of Pakistan, has stumbled into a nuclear arsenal and a decent air force and a certain amount of regional strength and legitimacy. So because this is our Kang's moment—

Sina: You could even call it hegemony.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, hegemony. Because of our Kang's moment right now, we are— we have a huge diaspora in the Western world, obviously seeking out nature's bounty in hard labor and And the service sector. The hotels, that's not us. That's Gujaratis. That's way in the east of India. That's not us. We don't, we don't, you know, we don't cheap you out on towels and small shampoo bottles. That's the other Indians. And we don't like their kind over here, even though they look a lot like us. Anyways, that's my thing. I worked for a decade in real estate in Pakistan, which is a big industry. Because we don't have a real industrial base. But somehow Pakistan managed somehow to skip the industrial phase of modern society. We went from agrarian society straight to financialized society. And I suspect that our military services internationally as well as domestically helped us bridge that gap and never really develop a serious industrial base. So in a civilized country, I would have done some sort of production line management or something, but I studied economics and then I went into real estate. Which subsequently the industry went past.

Sina: But this is what civilized countries are now. I'm sorry, you actually follow— this is— you're doing the Western thing. Financialization is— that's it. That's all they have here. And extractivism. It's just Pakistan doesn't have extractivism. Like, they—

Aman Ullah Tariq: No, it does. It does now. It does now.

Sina: What, people? Extracting human labor?

Aman Ullah Tariq: So instead of, instead of, instead of, you know, sort of going out and forming colonies, We have a big 250 million population base that we can just export as labor and then exploit them for remittances. So we've done reverse colonization. We've sent the worst of our people out so that they can send the best of you back in. It's like a reverse kind of—

Sina: I like this race-based sociology we're doing. This is fun.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sina: We're going to get our calipers out soon and start measuring skin color at the same time. And then we'll see what happens. You see it.

Aman Ullah Tariq: It's the regal forehead. You see this? The forehead— the forehead— you see, like, see, I'm an Indo-Aryan. See my nose? It's not like the Indian. I'm Indo-Aryan. I'm a steppe people. We made wheels and shit. We was going—

Sina: Okay. We have to be serious. No wonder Navid says you're my doppelgänger. You're equally— you derail the conversation in the same way I do. Keep throwing random knuckleballs, and they'll be like, "What's he saying now?" No, this is great. I love this. This is this is exactly the show I want to have. So we do have to get to something that we do have to talk about serious things because as fun as it as fun as it is to make fun of yourself and your country, Pakistan is in a strange historical, and I guess it has been for a long time. But can I guess in a nutshell, to my mind, Pakistan looks. And smells like a lot of— looks and behaves in a way most of the time that is very abnormal for what, at least for what it is on paper, which is an American vassal state. That it looks, that it is like a, that it's under, or at least vassal, I guess there is degrees of vassalage, and that's what we're here to figure out. Because at the same time, Pakistan also has a remarkably independent foreign policy, at least to a point.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Right.

Sina: Whereas, at least from my perspective, you have this strange thing where the US seems to control an immense amount of Pakistani domestic political life, that its agenda and its priorities and the people it likes and the people it doesn't like seem to be in power. At least the people it doesn't like seem to be out of power, and then the people get put in that seems to be like the US people like. And yet Pakistan does have, as you said, a formidable— Yeah. Air Force. It is a formidable— it has— it is also a nuclear power, uh, which is something of an asterisk, of a very important asterisk to add to its— to add to its identity. Because when you have nukes, you are sovereign. Like, that is a kind of sovereignty, at least in a way. But at the same time, in the same breath, Pakistan is also like a keystone member of the U.S. kind of Whatever, whatever it's doing in the region, Pakistan is a keystone member of that. So really recently, the prime minister was caught—you know, caught—I mean proudly. He did it proudly, just licking the boots of the worst monster in the world—one of them at least—and and it's also it's also baffling. What Pakistan is a land of contradictions, Amanullah. Please, please, please explain it to me. And look at the camera.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Right. This feels like a visa interview. I think I should be eligible for an H-1B sometime soon. Here's the thing. The quasi-vassalage of Pakistan is something that you hit it on the head. It's a strange kind of autonomy where Pakistan clearly pursues foreign policy agendas that are completely its own. as well as domestic ones. And at the same time is such a keystone member of the non-NATO allegiance, which I think sort of peaked in and around the war on terror when Pakistan was designated as one of the most important non-NATO allies. Again, square that circle how you will. What is a non-NATO ally and how does it distinguish itself from not NATO? Is it just that they're not white? What is it? Is it just like a Europeanism? Because Turkey, you know, smuggled their way into it, and they're they're they're not white; they're just Greeks. But um um Pakistan, all the gray the gray wolves fascist Turks who listen to this are going to be very upset with me. Abey abey we are original Turk abey abey we are Turk we are not Greek we are not a Greek.

Sina: Amanullah is trying to offend as many audiences of this podcast as possible. You're doing great, brother.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Don't force me. I'll make the dog. I'll make the dog. I'll make the wolfman. Anyway, so the thing with Pakistan is that you're right. It's a very strange sort of relationship that has enjoyed a lot of historical, retroactive historical analysis. Critiques Pakistan's existence, if we start off from the beginning, that Pakistan is a British project. That is one opinion for very serious historians hold this opinion. I'm not fully convinced by their lines of argumentation, but I can understand where the argumentation is coming from in that in order to break up the potential threat of a unified Indian economy and polity, you sort of— and because the British did play the divide and conquer policy in India, where you had a semi-foreign and largely domestic and native Muslim population, very well integrated with the majorities of the Hindus, as well as a minority of Sikhs and Christians and Jains and Buddhists and a lot of other local animist religions in India and the subcontinent. And you had it across. So Indian Muslimhood is also not a monolithic behavior because the Islam in the subcontinent comes in from all different directions. And in the northwest of India, which is now Pakistan, Islam mostly comes as a Mawarān Nahār sort of Central Asian or Persian influence, and it has those influences. But on the eastern coast of India, you get a lot of other influences, a lot of Arab influence as well from coastal trade from back in the day, even in South India. So the hodgepodge of sort of Indian Islam, although it is presented as a monolith, and it has become so over time because, you know, the internet and trade agreements and in the sort of the post-World War II world, you've had so many cross-pollination in all these cultures, but it still isn't fully a monolith. Pakistan, however, is sort of a demand. So if you look at Pakistan, for example, the demand for Pakistan starts to come out not of the western provinces of India where Pakistan is now, it comes out of the eastern provinces of India. It comes out of the UP. The Uttar Pradesh. It comes out of the Gujarat. It comes out of Bihar. It comes out of Bengal. So those places right now are either part of India or a part of Bangladesh, the country of Bangladesh. So the demand for Pakistan comes from over there. And Pakistan today still hosts a majority, a large sizable majority of that population in their country as the muhajireen or the muhajirun or the immigrants. And they live mostly in different metropolitan cities in Pakistan. They are into trade and arts and craft and business. And media and literature because they were sort of the Urdu-educated Muslim community, usually came from there. Here we spoke colloquial local languages. We weren't very well-versed with the high Muslim culture of India, which is the Urdu culture. You had Punjabi in Punjab, Sindhi in Sindh, Pashtun in the northwestern provinces, and Balochi in the desert provinces next to Iran, where you have your Sistan and Balochistan as well. Um, So somehow that narrative that comes out of these people authentically demanding a separate Muslim, Indian Muslim homeland, and it gets sort of transmuted into what is Pakistan today. And we have sort of a mythological sort of understanding of where it comes from. We have historical figures like Iqbal Lahori enjoyed by Persians alike, the Persian and Urdu poet that was based out of the Punjab. And you have these kinds of intellectual sort of legacies that combine and get together and sort of dilute into what is Pakistan today. But that sort of political agenda of playing the majority communities, Muslims and Hindus, against each other in India is notwithstanding. It's a real phenomenon of the British doing divide and conquer and then that translating eventually into a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. Which is Pakistan. And Pakistan, because of that, has gone through many phases of identity in that they tried to make more like a warrior identity where we are— because a lot of the populations of Pakistan are invading communities from Afghanistan or Central Asia or Persia. And a lot of ethnic groups still associate with them and have their tribal names from back in the day. Some of them still speak those languages. Persian, although it has died down, but Pashto and Balochi and other languages are still alive. Which would have come from farther outside of the conventional India. That sort of narrative was developed and the idea was presented that the first Pakistani was Muhammad bin Qasim al-Thaqafi, who is a 7th century Umayyad conqueror who came from Taif, from Arabia, and he conquered the Sindh, the coastal areas of Pakistan. He is considered in the '70s and '80s Islamic Revolution— we had a similar sort of Islamic reformation movement, but it was not a popular revolution, but through a dictator called Zia-ul-Haq, a military dictator who eventually also developed the nukes, by the way, uh, and called them the Islamic bomb. I'm not kidding, by the way. Uh, he developed this idea and notion that Muhammad bin Qasim was the first Pakistani, because when Islam came here violently through a military conquest, that is when Islam entered the region. And, uh, and, and this is why we have a stake or a claim to the land, and so on and so forth. Although indigenous Islamic movements and Sufi proselytization and conversions were also rampant and across the board in different parts of India and Pakistan, but those identities were sort of pushed to a wayside and this sort of imperial military identity was adopted primarily. Then Pakistan was also seen historically as a sort of experimental ground. The Qaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, he described it as a laboratory. For Islamic political thought, post-colonial reality. And he wanted it to be some sort of, you know, excite and invite all sorts of Muslims from around the world. And we did. You know, for example, our national monument that is the Minar-e-Pakistan, it's like 30 minutes from me right now, was made by a Tartar Russian architect who came to Pakistan with the idea that, you know, so it was made by a Russian. A lot of our religious— so the first committee that we had on reformation religious Reformation was headed by Asad Leopold, a Jewish convert from Europe who wrote a big exegesis on tafsir on the Quran. So we had a lot of people coming in and you had people from Rangoon and Indonesia and these parts of the Muslim world which are often ignored coming into Pakistan. It was viewed as this sort of this new— I wouldn't describe it as a new caliphate because we don't have the historical legacy, but the new Islamic Republic. That was the initial idea. It transformed into something else. Then in the '90s, we claimed indigenous nature of Pakistan, that there are these peoples of these territories. And so Pakistan is always viewed as a second Medina, by the way. It's always described as a second Medina, which is that since the Medina state of the Prophet and the companions of the Prophet, the early Islamic caliphate, this is the second time that different ethnic and racial groups have gotten together and have hosted immigrants. To make a nation that is purely built on the understanding of Islam. So that idea of an Islamic Medina, or it's never described as a caliphate. Pakistan never described itself as a caliphate, but always as this sort of this Muslim republic or this Islamic democracy or as the new Medina. And that is the Pakistani exceptionalism, that we're the only country that is made on the ideas of No ethnic nationalism, but a religious identity. Now, that keeps getting challenged with our allegiance with America, by the way. And it's not something that happened recently. It's been happening since the 1940s and '50s. In the late '40s and '50s, our then leader, Liaquat Ali Khan, was brought into America for a few months for like an official visit.

Sina: Right.

Aman Ullah Tariq: And he toured Canada as well. And it was sort of seen as this is our guy in the region now because they wanted to challenge a more Eastern allied or non-aligned, more Soviet inclined India, which had a protectionist economy and Pakistan had a more liberalized economy. And we were importing and we still are a net importer of all sorts of luxury and consumption goods. That project didn't work out. Then they had to do a military coup when in the '60s you had the trouble with Mossadegh in Iran. You had a military dictator to stabilize the Balochistan side. Again, a very American-approved military dictator called Ayub Khan, who was invited to America for a very big gala event. And he was invited to London as well by all the Western powers. And he was entertained and he was seen as this sort of, you know, this civilized dictator in a sea of savagery. You know, the typical sort of imagery that you have with Western-aligned dictatorships. And, you know, Pakistan flourished, the economy liberalized, we made dams, we made—

Sina: Yeah.

Aman Ullah Tariq: A significantly industrialized backbone for our military economy. And the Americans helped us with the— so the farmer revolution, the agri-revolution that happened in America in the '50s and '60s happened in Pakistan as well. So many of the seeds for citrus fruits, for crops, we got them from the Americans, the GMO production, and so on and so forth. A lot of our industrial base was set up at that time by the Americans. Although the Soviets tried, for example, in Karachi, in our major port city, they did build a steelmaking plant which is still active today, by the way. But Soviet, uh, Soviet interest in the region was always thwarted by Pakistan because of the Soviet threat. Because at the end of the day, the Soviets were viewed as a threat because they were allied more deeply with the Indians and they were going to come down because there was always the czarist sort of fear that the Soviet Empire would expand into Central Asia and South Asia, and it did. Eventually did come to a crashing point in the '70s and '80s, which culminated in the Afghan Jihad or the Afghan War, where Pakistan played a central role. That is where Pakistan really begins to shine as a Western vassal. But again, which is a mischaracterization because Pakistan had its own self-interest to fight the Soviets. And it is in fact the other way around that it wasn't the Americans who approached us. It was Zia-ul-Haq, our military dictator, who approached the CIA and said, and I quote, that we need to keep the pot boiling in Afghanistan but not to boil over. That was the exact description he described it as. And after the initial payment by the Americans for weapons and training, he said, this is peanuts. Again, another quote, is an official quote. He said, this is peanuts and I need more. And he was able to negotiate our self-interest, which is billions and billions of dollars coming into Pakistan and us being allowed internationally to import fighters, jihadis from Bosnia, Chechnya, from the Caucasus, from Saudi Arabia, from Iraq, from wherever. And we became a big hub for international jihadism, which was at its peak in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Again, I don't respect the critique that a lot of the left makes that none of the jihadis and Pakistan had no agency and Like you said in the beginning, Pakistan clearly has agency. You know, it's not like a complete automaton which is obeying Western agendas. Pakistan and the jihadis have an interest and have, you know, transcendental ideals and goals about a pan-Islamic, you know, caliphate or some vagaries about that and the idea of Muslim sovereignty and homeland in Central Asia and South Asia. So those ideas motivated, animated us, but obviously it aligned with the American imperial agenda at that time. So we're like sort of the bad guys of the '80s and '90s for at least the left globally. And we fight that war. We host people like Osama, people like Abdullah Azzam, who was the famous Palestinian preacher who sort of galvanized the Arab world into fighting the Soviet war, anti-Soviet war. And we hosted not hundreds, not thousands, tens of thousands of fighters from all over the world. We trained them. We participated with them. We fought shoulder to shoulder. Rambo was there. Sylvester Stallone taught us a lot about the Philadelphia culture and about how growing up in— he had all these troubles and we became great friends. Listen, Rocky IV was on repeat in Pakistan back in my childhood. That was like, I mean, we weren't as bad as Bosnia is today. Thank you, USA. You are. Ah, that's Albania.

Sina: I think that's Albania.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, we're not like in Albania. Even even like a like a Bosnia or an Albania. Pakistan is not that bad. But we had but we had this very schizophrenic attitude, by the way, that on the domestic front, America was always described as the enemy. America, Israel. हमारे दुश्मन. They are our enemies. दुश्मन. And we I don't know how we squared that circle culturally. But we always understood that they're our enemy, but we're working with them because we have to beat the Soviets, who are a godless industrial machine that's going to gobble up all of South and Central Asia. And they did. They did denature Central Asia.

Sina: Okay. So before we got interrupted, we were talking about the role that Pakistan plays, because at least geostrategically, because this contradictory thing of You know, death to America, death to Israel, but they're still our partners because that other guy— and this used to be the Soviet Union as this boogeyman— played this role. And I mean, for instance, I like the— you know, the people, part of our audience will sort of look at that and say like, oh, you know, that's really bad and whatever. And obviously that government in Afghanistan was a communist government. I mean, self-named, it was USSR-aligned. And so from here, from all looks, It looks like, oh, look, Pakistan supplies the Contras necessary to overthrow and, as you said, keep the pot boiling, right?

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yes.

Sina: I mean, this is what— and they achieve that. And so, I guess, in some ways, the main sort of thrust of this conversation, or at least the thing that sort of got me to get this conversation organized, is that this recent, you know, not insignificant, let's say, skirmish— I mean, I guess it's too small to call it a war, but there were a considerable number of casualties. Yes. This is not some— this is not China and India fighting at— is it China and Pakistan? Who are the people who fight at the border with sticks? Is it China and India? China and India. Yeah, it's China and India. And they have sticks and stuff. There's something performative to that because they have like rules about not carrying stuff or something. But yeah, they have that. What we saw Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially towards that last day in Kabul, there were significant explosions in Kabul. This was not— and so I was thinking maybe you can— because this is a good case study in Pakistan's foreign policy. Because if we can try to make sense of it, why is this happening? It didn't— isn't Pakistan the incubator of what became the Taliban? Isn't this like— isn't this an uncle-nephew relationship?

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, that's a very good analogy. But here's the thing, man. Energy can neither be created nor dispersed or, you know, destroyed. This idea that you can create the Taliban or the Mujahideen out of a vacuum is absurd. There was a sincere, deep-rooted— and I'm going to take it to the historical, and then I'm going to come into the present. There was a deep-rooted historical hatred of everyone outside of Kabul, of the Kabul regime, of Najibullah government, and of the communist, sort of so-called communist government. It was very similar to a Ba'athist-style Arab dictatorship, which was somewhat ethnic nationalist and somewhat socialist in their ideals and posturing. And it was sort of this brutal kind of social liberalization that people just couldn't accept in Afghanistan as well as— so Afghanistan, the majority population is Pashtun, which is an ethnic Indo-Irani ethnic group. And a majority of those people don't live in Afghanistan. They live in Pakistan. And they are Pashto speakers and they're very fiercely and staunchly religious and they have an ethnic cultural tribal code known as the Pashtunwali Code. Which is a sort of, um, yeah, like a tribal code about honor and dignity and rules of engagement and hosting guests and different kind of tribal relations. It's very similar to the Mongol sort of codes that they had back in the day, like Genghis Khan law, but it's a more Iranian sort of Persian sort of cultural. It has Islamic values sort of intertwined into it. They didn't like the Najibullah government, the ethnic people of Afghanistan didn't like it. They were sick of it. And there was a serious and sincere organic movement internationally as well as domestically against that government. The Soviet expansion was clearly seen as a threat by the Afghan people as well as by Pakistan. And purely in self-interest, Pakistan pursued a policy of engagement with the Soviet Union, but indirect engagement, because obviously the Soviet machinery was much more overwhelming compared to Pakistan, especially at that stage. Pakistan couldn't take the Soviet Union head-on in the '80s. So Pakistan devised this international jihadism scheme with the Americans. That energy was real. It was there. It was a post-colonial, post-World War II phenomenon all across the Muslim Sunni world especially. But that energy was just redirected, harnessed. It cannot be created out of thin air. Similarly, Pakistan pursues a policy when coming to the present, Pakistan pursues a policy of Which is a very typical sort of very Pakistan's very real politic, very Henry Kissinger coded in that there are no permanent enemies, there are no permanent fair friends. You know, Pakistan has that kind of a foreign policy. It seems very schizophrenic. Any within one decade you will have 180 degrees of opposite enemies and friends. Like you mentioned earlier, you know, death to America, death to Israel or whatever. But there are friends with Israel. That's never been the case historically. Pakistan has the only passport in the world which says officially that this. Passport is unusable for the entity known as Israel.

Sina: Iranians have that. Excuse me, occupied Palestine. We have that.

Aman Ullah Tariq: I mean, you guys, you know, we did it first. So anyways, you guys had to go through a whole revolution to figure that out.

Sina: Yeah, but the thing is, like, this is a strange dance that a lot of governments do, which is, oh, we're not with the entity. We're just with the Americans, who are the entity also.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Who are also the entity.

Sina: The bigger, more powerful entity.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Who the entity is an extension of. It's an extension of, yeah, is a sick sort of tumor hanging off of its ballsack or whatever. In the case of the United States and with Israel, Pakistan has had sincere exchanges with them, like military, where we've militarily, as well as on the diplomatic front, where we've genuinely pissed them off. With Israel, we've had multiple air battles. During the Arab wars with Israel, where we're the only air force that has taken down Israeli jets multiple times in Syria as well as in Iraq. And Pakistan's nuclear assets have always been eyed by Israel. Israel had a very big sort of covert operation where they wanted to fly out of India. They were stationed in India to fly under the radar of the British Airways airliner that used to come in from London every morning. And to fly in under the radar and take out our first sort of you know nuclear power plant in Kahuta, and that was always thwarted off. We were you know, so it was a very delicate sort of relationship. Yani a lot of the financing again you know in the later Afghan in the American war, a lot of the financing and organization that Pakistan was doing was anti-America, even though we were a non-NATO ally. So it's a very careful sort of song and dance. Something if I had to explain to your Iranian audience. Something similar to what Iran did in Iraq. Something similar. I wouldn't describe it as exactly the same, but something similar. And Afghanistan has been— Afghan regimes, Kabul regimes basically have always been sort of semi-hostile to Pakistan because we have a disputed border and there are certain territories within Pakistan that historical Afghan identity claim. It's a weak claim historically and politically, but there is a lot of rhetoric that goes around. When it comes to civil rights, that for Pashtuns in the Khyber of Pakistan will extend all the way to some sort of international Afghan nationalism or something. Like, oh, they have a slogan as well, which is Greater Afghanistan that includes parts of Pakistan. So that posturing always remained, but never really translated into real policy, like skirmishes and pathetic attempts at the UN to outvote Pakistan, that kind of stuff. Pakistan did want a Kabul or a Kandahar regime that was more Pakistan-friendly. And when the Mujahideen became successful there after the Soviets, there was an era of disputing warlords in the north and south and east and west of Afghanistan. Pakistan put its money behind the Taliban, which was the proto earlier form of the Taliban, and it fought off the more popular Tajik leader Ahmad Shah Massoud and other types. Although Pakistan had a decent relationship with these warlords before, but they soured when Pakistan realized that their best bet was these particular groups, which were Sunni Hanafi Deobandi, which is a specific religious school from India of a subsection of Hanifism, which is popular in Pakistan and India as well as Afghanistan. And they put their madaris, they put Pakistani madaris, the madrasa system and the mosque system, And the money and the religious rhetoric and the political rhetoric, all the weight behind what was eventually becoming the Taliban. And we did support the Al-Qaeda as well, which was also anti— a lot of these mujahideen, more— I would describe them as more secular-minded warlords who were not necessarily like anti-Islam or anti-religious or Soviet in any way or shape or form, or communist or socialist, but they were just sort of more domestic nationalists as opposed to internationalists and jihadists. But Pakistan put their money behind the jihadists because they had more— there was again that sort of dichotomy of having their own policy as well as pursuing this American imperial agenda. I think it fit best in our policy that we support the jihadi types as opposed to the secular nationalist types because they might form a hostile Afghan government against Pakistan. So we end up with the '90s Taliban. Pakistan, the UAE, and Saudi. And it was the UAE, Saudi. And the UAE, Saudi means like vectors of America because our foreign policy with America is usually pursued through Riyadh and through Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And those are our vectors of access, which is why we've never had to been a Tel Aviv country. Pakistan has very, very like not even existent relations with even back channel relations with Israel. Now we have them more through Azerbaijan. Because that's another ally of Pakistan. Because we were very supportive of the anti-imperial expansionist policy of the Azeris, we really felt like those Armenians needed what was coming to them. So it's a nightmare. But here's the thing. Pakistan has a— not a prince, like with all countries, does not have a— unlike with Iran, which is an ideological sort of revolutionary country, it has to have ideologically aligned foreign policy alliances. Pakistan does not. Pakistan just sort of does them on a Machiavellian sort of need basis and then can abandon you entirely because there is no— I mean, every country does abandon you eventually. There is a realpolitik element there, but Pakistan doesn't even posture ideologically. It can, with the swoop of a hat domestically, it can change the narrative. They'll pump out enough propaganda, religious, secular nature, Of a nationalistic nature where they can sort of be like, now we have a problem with the Taliban. So the initial Taliban regime of the Mullah Omar was supported by Pakistan, recognized by the UAE, Saudi, and Pakistan. We helped build the country. Basic domestic needs of consumption are fulfilled through Pakistan via the Afghan transit trade. We militarize them. We give them all of it. But then 9/11 really changed things for us. We've had sporadic relationships with America. We've never been American allies. And they describe us as non-NATO allies, but America is always messing with us also with that alliance. And we've always—

Sina: Well, America doesn't have allies. It has vassals. And its vassalage is like— that's the thing in all of this is that we use the word allies like The US is a normal country, but it doesn't do that.

Aman Ullah Tariq: It's the Pole Empire. Yeah, it doesn't have friends or allies. It has vassals and slaves. So Pakistan in its vassalage has always had— even our deep state has always had a tussle with America. Like, I'll give you an example. In the heyday of the Afghan jihad in the '80s, Pakistan established the BCCI, which is the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The BCCI was the 3rd largest bank on Earth. We don't wear little hats.

Sina: Is that the Khashoggi? Is that Khashoggi's connection too?

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the Khashoggi-Epstein connection. Yeah, yeah, you're on the money. So, so, so Iran-Contra, you know, Noriega, money laundering, human trafficking, gun running, all the regular stuff that any commercial bank does, right? All the nice, you know. So we were in league with the— we were in the same league as Deutsche Bank or as one of these big European or transatlantic banks. And we were the 3rd largest commercial and investment bank on Earth. And we was kings at that time. We was literally kings at that time. That was cracked down upon when Pakistan's effectiveness as a vessel started to wane. Every 10, 20 years, our effectiveness starts to wane and we're punished for it. And that's our actual boom-bust cycle. It's not based on the movements of industry or of money markets. It's based on our relationship with America and the dollar. So in one of those bust cycles, you had John Kerry, very famous senator in America, American presidential candidate hopeful, very hated in Pakistan because of multiple interventions he's done in Pakistan over the years. He passed this bill, which was the anti-BCCI corruption bill. America, London, Paris, they cracked down on our bank. They took away our assets. They froze them. We were punished very heavily for it. But Pakistan always tried to maintain a sort of leverage. Like, we took the owner and founder of the bank and we rehabilitated him in Pakistan. We didn't allow him to be arrested and deported. And so Pakistan does try to keep, you know, like a measure-for-measure relationship with the Western world in that, you know, we'll take a blow, we'll take 2 blows, and we'll give one back or something. He died peacefully. He made a private commercial bank in Pakistan which still exists. In fact, is my neighbor. One of their branches is my neighbor right now.

Sina: Wow.

Aman Ullah Tariq: And is still very deeply involved with the Pakistani military state. So that was one of our bust cycles and it kept going bust because of the— and then it peaked at the Kargil conflict. Kargil was a pseudo-conflict that we had with India in Kashmir in the Kargil region. And it was sort of an expansion operation that went wrong for a variety of reasons. I'm not going to get into it, but one of the primary reasons was that the Americans sort of sold us out. Hmm. Because we had given them just exactly what they wanted. We had just given them a new India which was open to liberalization and anti— which had been very protectionist. So that threat, that constant pestering threat from Pakistan had finally materialized into India opening up its economy to America. And after the '90s, you see that new America, that new American-Indian nexus and relationship, which peaks during Obama's time. And then that is where you find the Hindutva manifestation as well. Hindutva had no legs to stand on until the Americans provided them with the industrial and trade base in Gujarat, or like with the H-1B visas and these kinds of rewards that were given for that kind of nationalism and anti-China rhetoric. They wanted a big—

Sina: And also dealings with the entity. India has been growing closer and closer to the entity for a long time.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Exactly.

Sina: India's one of the most strategic— That Iran War was an attempt. That was one— the 12-Day War was a flex of that Indian muscle they've built up.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yes. So India's relationship with Israel has always been there in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, even when India postured to be pro-Palestinian. But it was always on the back burner, the relationship with Israel. It became a forefront and center thing post the Kargil War. Post India becoming fully open to American imperial agendas and industrial bases in India, India then sort of becomes this industrial giant to challenge the Chinese economy or challenge the Chinese military. Never really happens, but the Americans are trying. As if, as if, as if, you know. But pull support, sir. You know, I mean anyways, they tried. The Americans are still trying. In fact, I think the carrot end of the policy has ended, and I think Trump is here with the stick end of the policy. He's trying to squeeze them into being—

Sina: Oh, because now the Russia, because of the Russian oil and playing like— Americans got a taste of their own medicine every now and then.

Aman Ullah Tariq: I think India did a Pakistan on America, and I think they didn't like it because that's a classic Pakistan move. So yeah, India is enjoying that status right now, the boom, the multiple boom-bust cycles that Pakistan enjoyed in the '60s, '80s, and And then stopped enjoying them up until now. So war on terror is another spin. 9/11 is this big game changer, right? And the Americans, like, for example, one of our generals was in— and this is in his memoir— he was in America the night before 9/11 asking for aid, military exercises and aid and cooperation and trade on a military basis. And he was very coldly received by the CIA and the Pentagon, right?

Sina: Right.

Aman Ullah Tariq: But 9/11 happens, and then the next morning he's called back in, even though he's scheduled to fly out back to Pakistan. And he was hugged by the chief of the CIA at that time. I think it was Tenet or Brennan or one of these characters. And he said he was a foot taller than me, and my shoulder was like covered with slobber and tears. And he said, we need your help now. So that was this insane sort of turnaround for Pakistan where it was like, Oh shit, I guess we is kings again. You know what I mean? And Pakistan at the drop of a hat just pursues this. And this one, this 180 sort of zigzag start-stop policy in Pakistan, that's the first time it came to a grinding halt where the population was not going along because we were like, yeah, Afghan brothers, we did a jihad, we beat the Soviets. You had thousands of people who had cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters and whatever. Who had gone and fought in the war or had gone and provided aid or set up schools or hospitals or whatever in Afghanistan. So all of a sudden you're telling them, no, no, no, listen, these guys are terrorists and we have to fight them and we have to deport them. And they're like, no, we don't. What are you talking about? America is our enemy, blah, blah, blah. We've defeated the Soviets and it's now time for the Americans and Israel and so on and so forth. So Pakistan does a 180 flip like it always does. This time it doesn't work. The blowback was insane. We lost 100,000 people in the civil war because we had a Taliban Pakistan chapter open up, which had a lot of domestic support. And our army fought 2 civil conflicts in 2 of our major provinces that are bordering Afghanistan. We experienced—

Sina: Are these the FATA provinces?

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yes. The FATA is a part of the Khyber province now. It was an independent tribal zone. But those are the tribal areas of the Pashtuns which border Afghanistan. Yes. So FATA, Khyber—

Sina: Yeah, because they say Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Tribal Area. Yeah. So that's where the tribals live. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 3 zones, Balochistan, Khyber, and FATA. Massive conflict. The Obama drone wars were primarily fought in this region. The Yemen and Iraq were there as well, but this region particularly was the target zone. Thousands of civilians were lost to drones. 100,000+ were lost to suicide bombings and terrorist attacks and combat, just general combat between the regular army and the militants. We lost billions and billions of dollars worth of economy, and we went into a bust cycle. But the financialization was booming because we had over 20 commercial private banks open up in an economy where only 20% of people have flipping bank accounts. We had 10 or 20 Japanese and Korean car manufacturers come in and set up car plants. We had a huge car market which still exists in Pakistan because some of our Iranian friends came with Navid and, um, you know, Mustafa Jan and all these people came, uh, Mustafa Pourhamadi and all these guys. And, uh, they were obsessed with the cars. They were obsessed with the cars because in Iran there's like a nightmare of and a dearth of cars, obviously, even though the petrol is free. But you pay for like 100 years of petrol because you, when you buy the car.

Sina: Yeah.

Aman Ullah Tariq: And so we got nice things in big cities and real estate flourished. That's when I started my career, roughly, by the way. People made money, a lot of money displacement was happening. And then we lost favor again. 9/11. After 9/11, we screwed up our relationship with the Taliban, with the Afghans, and we brutalized the—

Sina: When was this? When was this?

Aman Ullah Tariq: This is 9/11 all the way up until the 2010s.

Sina: I mean, Musharraf is in power for until what, 2000— I can't remember now.

Aman Ullah Tariq: '99 he starts, and he's in there like 2007, '08. Yeah, something like that. 2006, '07.

Sina: Basically the entire Bush administration.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Bush, and then the latter— the early parts of Obama. Even the so-called democratic governments that we had, the subsequent ones, they fully signed off on the drone wars. They fully, you know, the opposition was totally—

Sina: Bhutto assassination.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Bhutto's assassination was this time, yeah. Even Bhutto's party, by the way, was the subsequent party that came right after the assassination. Assassination, came into power through elections, uh, real elections, real ones, promise. Don't tell anyone they were real. Uh, they came into power and they signed off on the drone wars. In fact, they would provide intelligence, domestic intelligence, for the Americans to be able to— Obama's kill lists, you know, half of them were Pakistanis and Afghans here. Um, some of them Yemen and Iraq, obviously, uh, but primarily in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. We sold off the, the American— the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan Taliban to the Americans. He ended up in Gitmo. He wrote a book about it when he got out, which is very embarrassing. We sold, I think, a few thousand Pakistani citizens to the Americans under the War on Terror disappearances program for dollars. Like, not even kidding. Like, it was like $10,000, $5,000 a person or something. Something cartoonish and really evil. We had a retarded policy at that time. We completely soured our relationship with the Afghans. And now we did a 180.

Sina: Hmm.

Aman Ullah Tariq: We attempted a 180 when Afghanistan was emancipated from the Americans. And because we were covertly always supporting the Taliban, this is true, their incubation relationship was there. But again, it had friction.

Sina: I mean, Osama was in Pakistan the whole time.

Aman Ullah Tariq: No, he wasn't.

Sina: I mean, he was in for a chunk of the time. For a chunk. I mean, the whole time after he fell, where was he? We don't talk about that guy.

Aman Ullah Tariq: No, Osama, again, with Osama, we have a very schizophrenic relationship in our top brass and a lot of our society. He's seen as this heroic anti-Soviet, anti-imperial, a wealth of resources in a vast desert of an oasis in desert of scarcity and poverty. He was eloquent, he was smart, he was cunning. He was tough against the Americans. He fought so many wars, blah, blah, blah. And on the flip side, oh, he's a terrorist. We have both attitudes in Pakistan at the same time in the state. State legislators and officers will give interviews where he's a terrorist, and they'll give interviews where he's like this lionized hero. And we have a very weird attitude with Osama and the Soviet jihad and all of these characters, Mullah Omar and all of these guys as well. The Akhunds and what have you. So that we tried to do a 180 when the Americans were sort of unceremoniously left and were kicked out. And that didn't work because the Afghan regime had become wiser to us and they've had troubles with us. And they're also leaning into— again, we're already prisoners to geography. Pakistan has the main relationship Pakistan has with China, our main allies, by the way, China, which is insane.

Sina: Yeah.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Considering that we're an American vessel, an on and off, on again, off again vessel. Our main industrial relationship and economic relationship and military relationship is with China, as displayed in the May conflict with India, that our superior air defenses were primarily Chinese. They were American rigs, there were European rigs that we were using as well. And Pakistan has a unique integrated system where we're one of the few countries on Earth that uses both like American, American missiles on Chinese planes, and we have a mix of radar systems and And we've integrated them on a domestic native sort of, uh, software model where we can use all of them at the same time and there's no communication lag between the technologies. But at the same time, it was primarily Chinese, and the Chinese developed trains here. They give us, you know, infrastructure, our public transport networks, our energy networks. Right now, the, the electricity that we're probably using is from coming from the Sahiwal coal power plant, which is like 4 hours from me, which is made by the Chinese. Fully on a grant. It's a coal-based power plant, which is insane at the same time. So with China, I think we sort of bully China because of our geography. Like China, for it to escape with its huge industrial base and to bring its goods out into the world, one of the routes is the Silk Route. And the Silk Route goes through Pakistan into Afghanistan. So China has developed both Afghanistan and Pakistan post-American emancipation. This one. The recent one. And so now we all of a sudden we do this 180 flip. We're giving America minerals. They're minerals, Marie. Anyways, so we're giving America minerals like it's the cop from Breaking Bad or whatever. You know the cop from Breaking Bad? He loses his mind, then he starts dealing with minerals. Anyways, we're giving them minerals and we're giving— so we're giving them all the— we're giving— we're doing crypto deals with them, uh, you know. À la El Salvador with Bukele, and we're doing all kinds of security contracts with them, and we're offering them a port in the Persian Gulf, which is something that we've already given to the Chinese. It's like a weird sort of balance. And the Chinese, I think they understand this sort of balance that we make with America, but they're also disappointed by the lack of stick-to-itiveness in Pakistani policy. Pakistani policy lacks the sort of stick-to-itiveness, and then we sort of were able to flip on a dime. And right now, that Afghanistan conflict was actually a Pakistan-China— an America-China sort of showdown, as opposed to a Pakistan-Afghan one. It has domestic markets.

Sina: So explain. Yeah, can you— yeah, so let's figure this one out, because while we didn't talk about— before you talked about that war with India, I also wanted to talk about Pakistan's role in the Iran-Israel 12-Day War, because this is one of those instances where Pakistanis chose— where, like, at least— and we should talk about the nature of the Pakistani state, because it's a military state, and it has been for its entire existence.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yes.

Sina: And the relationship of the military to the civilian administration is like— basically Pakistani military is like Pakistani political history, because, like, that evolving relationship is what determines who— not who's in the prime minister's office, but What's the nature of the prime minister's office to the rest of the country? Yeah, at least this is what how it looks to me. So all of a sudden, because presumably I'm like this is this is post-Imran Khan Pakistan, right? Like they've like put Imran Khan. He showed a shape, at least from what it looked to me. Maybe you can correct me, but at least what it looked to me is that he show he tried the stick-to-itness. He tried to follow through on a break from America. And that's what it cost him. It almost cost him his life. So this might be one reason why they do it. I mean, it might be not the only thing that almost cost him his life, but he's not in power because some powerful people didn't like what he was doing. Now, they can't— from what I can tell, the support the Pakistani military gave to Iran is not something that is negotiable for the Pakistani military. They're not Jordan. They're not like Egypt. This is what's so interesting, is that like that, suddenly they're not a vassal. That means you're not a— when you can turn it on, when you can turn your vassalage on and off, that means you're not a vassal. You're something else.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Pakistan's a special kind of beast. It's a special kind of unique kind of beast. It's a whole other animal, sir. We're a whole other kind of beast. Anyways, Pakistan is a weird— again, that's a schizophrenic attitude, I suspect, is a is a purposeful one. That flipping on a dime thing with Iran, our relationship has never been good nor bad. We've always had a soft sort of— we don't have a real border dispute, but we've had a soft sort of proxy posturing through Jundullah and Iran sort of supporting. Iran's always been allied with India, and Iran always, which is a big threat to Pakistan, even though Iran— and then we had like a series of espionage attempts by the Indians via Iran. And, you know, we've had all these border posturings. And if you look back, even before the 12-day conflict, you had an exchange of missiles on the border between Iran and Pakistan, which is the peak of the tensions. If you go back to the revolution, Iran, the Iranian Revolution was exported to Pakistan, like with the rest of the Muslim world. And in Pakistan, it manifested in a way where it became a battleground for Iran and Saudi. And Pakistan sort of played both sides in that Iranian money came into Shia seminaries and Shia religious groups, and Saudi money came into Sunni and Wahhabi groups, and Pakistan played both sides and developed its own Sunni militant power base to counteract the Shia power base, but at the same time turned a blind eye to thousands and thousands and thousands of fighters going into Iraq, going into Syria, the Zainabiyun and Fatimiyun. In fact, the Pakistani state has facilitated those things. It's a very strange sort of balance. Our domestic—

Sina: Pakistanis were on all sides of the Syria dirty war.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sina: That's what's interesting. They were on all sides. Like, in theory, Pakistanis could have met other Pakistanis on the front line in Syria.

Aman Ullah Tariq: They did. There are videos. There are videos of, let's say, Fatem Yun or Zainab Yun capturing HTS or al-Qaeda militants and then interviewing them and then being like, does anyone speak Urdu? And then the guy shows up and then he speaks Urdu or Pashto. So Sunnis were on that side, Shias were on this side, and those were individually motivated, like religiously motivated militants. But the state sort of gave the room and wide berth to— like, for example, just now, a Pakistani— I'll just show you this article right now that someone sent me this morning. I laughed my ass off. This is hilarious. A Pakistani man, a weapons smuggler jailed for 40 years after shipping ballistic missiles from Iran to Yemen. And it's a Pakistani dude. Called Muhammad Pehelwan. Like Pehelwan, you know, Pehelwan, like wrestler. Is that a thing? Muhammad Pehelwan is a gentleman who is running dinghies on fishing boats to smuggle missiles to Yemen. And this is some Pakistani dude. So we— so Pakistan's government—

Sina: he stopped for chicken tikka masala on the way, probably.

Aman Ullah Tariq: He was caught off. And, you know, they've— in the BBC article, they've put up his text exchange with his wife, which is so Hauntingly romantic. It's like a Shahrazad kind of like reading of weapon smuggling. It's so beautiful. I would recommend this article to everybody. It's like, you know, my love, this route is difficult and I'm just praying to get back. But this is the nature of business. It's bad business, but it's good business. And he's all poetically talking. So they put the text exchange. It's on the BBC. I think he's been put 40 years in jail. I hope he gets out. You know, support, you know, support to the resistance or whatever. My guy was just trying to make a buck. Um, but yeah, Pakistan—

Sina: He was just doing import-export. He's doing what South Asians are good at, import-export, man.

Aman Ullah Tariq: What do you want? Essentially.

Sina: Do you want a global trading class of South Asians to connect the world or do you not?

Aman Ullah Tariq: That's my question. So, so, so yeah, the, the, the Iran situation was something always a soft problem. That we had with each other. Never the—it's never been a hard one or a hot one. The missile exchange was the peak of it. The proxy sort of militia conflicts in the Balochistan, in the Sistan, or in mainland you know Pakistan—they've always sort of been. We've turned a blind eye. Shia community enjoys sort of a special status in Pakistan because Indian Shiism is sort of a unique kind of mosaic. We've always always gotten along. It's not like a Lebanon or something. We're not like at each other's throats. People marry each other here. There's not a lot of ideas of— there's not like neighborhoods dedicated to Shia and Sunni and what have you. And the Shia are very well integrated in the state, prime ministers, interior ministers, generals, whatever. And their Shiism on the— so the upper classes of the Shia are very liberal and secular in their outlook of Pakistan and are very nationalistic. So Pakistani Shia are one of the most nationalistic kind of You'll get. In the lower classes, which are the kind who would join the Zainabian or Fatimian, they're very religious. They're very inclined towards Iran because of all these things.

Sina: Are they Hazara? Are these the Hazara?

Aman Ullah Tariq: Hazara are a particular ethnic group which are a genuinely underserved community in Pakistan. So they as an ethnic group altogether are majority Shia. And then by default, they would, because they're more religious in their outlook and they're more in-group preferred and tribal, So they will look to Iran as well as the Pashtuns of the Parachinar, again, an underserved community, and as well as the Urdu speakers who are immigrants from India who live in Karachi, the middle class, the lower middle class, the working class ethnic groups or tribal in-groups. They're very Iran-centered sort of in their outlook and political thinking. But in the more cosmopolitan city centers where you have the more settled industrial families or business families or bureaucrat families of Shias who are in the region for hundreds of years and are well settled and have, you know, they're the gentry or the landed class. They'll be more cosmopolitan in their religious outlook and Muharram is just their practice. And, you know, they'll be atheists and agnostics or communists or socialists in their political or religious outlooks, but they'll have Shia cultural sort of ties and they'll host big Muharram festivals. And but they'll be very ultra-nationalist Pakistani and they have a very particular sort of liberal, almost fascistic republic-style understanding of Pakistan. And they sort of centered their personalities around our founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was also Ismaili Khoja Shia who had converted to Ithna Ash'ari Jafari fiqh eventually later in his life. The founder of Pakistan was Shia, by the way. So people don't know this a lot.

Sina: I didn't know that.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sina: It's one of the biggest Sunni countries in the world.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yeah, our founding father is a Shia who was Ismaili, Khwaja Ismaili from India and then from Gujarat, and he converted to Ismaili Shiism later in his life, although his funeral was Sunni and his funeral was read by a Sunni imam who he supported politically a lot, so they had a relationship. And so he was a cosmopolitan kind of gora sahib. You know, Gora Babu, white lawyer character. You know, like the brown, white-brown Muslim character of India. You know, like you get in South Africa, those kinds of very— he's Gujarati, by the way. So sort of very cosmopolitan tradesman, very rich even in the British times. And he was, I think his family was, they were fishmongers or fish, they had fish, like those warehouses for fishing and they had some fishery business. He became a lawyer and the rest is history, I guess. But so Pakistan, what they did this time around with Iran was shocking even for us because Pakistan had a very weak stance this time around in the conflict, in the genocide with Gaza. Pakistan usually would have a very strong diplomatic response. And because so the Palestine issue is very far from Pakistan geographically and in our political sort of Posturing, that's never been a central theme in our religious or political posturing. Our religious and political posturing is more centered around the hijaz in Saudi Arabia. So Saudi Arabia is our big brother and Pakistan is a little brother. We will protect them. We have the nukes for them. Blah blah blah blah blah. That's always the relationship we've had. And Palestine, by an extension of Saudi policy, comes in. So the lip service, and even though the the founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Actually called Israel the bastard state of the British Empire, by the way. Those are exact words. Said it's the illegitimate bastard child of the British Empire. And he sourced guns and helicopters from Czechoslovakia and Poland, and he provided them to the Egyptians and Syrians and Palestinians at the first formation of Pakistan. And one of the first bills, the first bill Pakistan passed was the recognition of Palestine bill in 1948 and the admonishment and lack of recognition of Israel. In fact, Qaid-e-Azam, the founding father, wrote to Truman to force him to not recognize Israel and to convince him that the Muslims of the world will unite against them. There's a series of predictions he made which are very accurate. I would really like— I'll send you the letter and you can go through it. The letter he writes to Truman, it's genuinely— he's like a seer. It's genuinely like a prophecy. He tells you exactly what's going to happen with Israel. And what the response is going to be from the Muslim and Arab world. And when the Arabs had a zeal to fight Israel, Pakistan had a zeal to fight Israel. When Egypt and Syria— we had a weird relation with the Ba'athist dictatorships of the Middle East in that we were ambivalent to them and their ideologies, but we had good relationships with them via the OIC and other diplomatic enclaves.

Sina: Fatima Bhutto's family took refuge.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yes. And Damascus. And they had a time in Lebanon as well. The leftist parties of Pakistan had a much deeper relationship, but even the deep state has had a relationship with them, which is not ideological, but just one of convenience and Muslim brotherhood, like with Libya, with Syria, with Lebanon, just sort of ambivalent, sort of surface-level relationships. And when they had a zeal to fight Israel, Pakistan joined in on the zeal because it saw Israel as a potential threat in the future.

Sina: Right.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Because even after the Six-Day War, Ariel Sharon, when he makes his speech in Paris, he says that we have a big threat left in the Muslim world, and that's Pakistan. And that was not even a nuclear Pakistan, because Pakistan did sort of see itself as an ideological opponent to Israel. That's the Jewish state. This is the Muslim state. And obviously, we enjoyed that majority position or majoritarian position of being a Sunni country, quote unquote, because we're not a Sunni country, but, you know, like a Sunni majority country. And then Pakistan develops the nukes and the Arabs lose their zeal to fight. In the last 20 years, 30, 40 years since we developed the nukes, the Arabs have been waning and Iran has come into the position classically that Saudi Arabia or Syria would occupy. And Iran post the revolution, we've allowed Islamic Iranian Revolution propaganda to come into Pakistan. Like on city streets near the Husainias, you will, we don't call them Husainias here, but we call them Imam Barghas. Bargha is like an Urdu word for Imam presences, the places of presence of the Imam. And you'll have posters of the Khamenei and the Khomeini and of all these foreign political religious figures. There was a big funeral procession for Haj Qasem, and we have big posters of Haj Qasem all around Pakistan, and people celebrate those things. Iran has these art and cultural enclaves in every major city of Pakistan where they teach Farsi and music and art and poetry, and they have a big cultural program here. Pakistan always allows these things, and they sort of allow that Persian cultural cross-connect. And the Zaireen who go to Iraq, Iran, and to Syria were very well facilitated by Pakistan always. And they're like, it's just the same as Hajj or Umrah groups. They're private groups that operate. They get visas. They're facilitated by the government. And even the khums payment, for example, a lot of the religious community pay their khums into Iran. Into scholarship, not directly into Iran, but Iranian scholarship will then dictate how it is to be spent locally. And the state doesn't really mess around with that stuff. They don't really bother them that much. There's, there's more covert, uh, posture. There's more covert, like, arm twisting and stuff, like covert assassinations and, and, you know, bothering religious leadership and that kind of stuff, but nothing that's too gross or overt or obvious or, or, or unruly. And but still it was surprising when we supported Iran. It was still surprising.

Sina: Um, and support—it wasn't support; it was pivotal, technical, like technical backing. Like I don't. But Pakistan doesn't claim it. It wasn't supposed to go the way that it went.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Pakistan doesn't claim it in an official stance. Pakistan doesn't claim it because it wants to maintain that will they won't they kind of. Pakistan is like Schrödinger's. Vassal, you know what I mean? Like, is it there? Is it not there? None of our public posturing, it's always the vague, like in our military, in our political statements, always like, we will support them and we have supported Iran in ways never thought possible. It's like a vague sort of, you know, they'll never own up to it. And because if they own up to it, then the vassalage, that status comes into question. And it's like when Trump says to Erdogan, you know, he's a really smart guy. He took over Syria. They've been fighting for thousands of years. You know, he's acknowledging and he's saying the quiet part out loud. So with Pakistan, we prefer that the quiet part remains the quiet part, you know. Like, even with this guy—

Sina: I mean, the prime minister went to Iran, I think, or the other way around. And there was a big show. I mean, it was— yeah, yeah, it was— it was the last thing I expected to happen was that Pakistan would play—

Aman Ullah Tariq: We even met with the Saudis.

Sina: Yeah, like, Pakistan played spoiler to the Zionists and the Americans in a sense. From what I can tell happened, Iran's air defenses were not supposed to come back up. No. And it seems as like at least this is what I've heard. I don't know what you've heard in actual what actual Pakistani military did, like on the ground. Like I don't know. Like it was it just again?

Aman Ullah Tariq: This is your personal. This is your personal DC ASMR video, which is going to be very quiet. I'm not going to say the quiet part out loud.

Sina: It's just shipping containers. We don't know what's in them.

Aman Ullah Tariq: They just go back. So Pakistan's like a weird— Pakistan is a weird, weird place, man. Like, so for example, we're having this candid conversation, right? And I'm sitting in Pakistan, which is— it's loopy. It's loopy because from outside in, Pakistan is like this hardline military state and nobody has a voice and there's no freedoms. And then I'm sitting here in the middle of the smack in the middle of the most populous city in Pakistan, and I'm talking to you about all these sort of wacky things that we do and have done. So the Iran support, unexpected, but I see it fitting into the model because it's that balance between China, the Eastern axis, and the quote-unquote Western axis that we maintain. And then the Taliban flip, fighting the Afghans, that's again a very strange Because we do have real domestic problems with the Afghans. There are border disputes, and but those are all window dressing for the actual deeper international agenda that we were pursuing, the sort of balancing act that we were playing that culminated in the Qatar negotiations. Right now, I think Pakistan is reeling from the bootlicking situation that you described earlier, the the the tongue bath that we gave to Trump. That we're reeling from it. We didn't like it. Initially, when we had recommended Trump for the Nobel Prize after the settlement of the India-Pakistan conflict, we had actually become silent on a diplomatic front about the Nobel thing. We redoubled those efforts when we saw that maybe we could get domestic wins out of the Palestine negotiation. But that was a big screw-up. So now our government is very quiet about the tongue bath that we gave. They're not mentioning it as a win. They tried posturing it. They were like, no, this looks retarded. So they're very quiet now, all of a sudden. For us, Palestine is more of a domestic issue than a foreign policy issue, to be honest with you.

Sina: It must be nice to not have a Zionist lobby inside your country.

Aman Ullah Tariq: We do now.

Sina: You don't have to like—

Aman Ullah Tariq: We do now. We do now. There's a few dozen of them. About 70% of them live outside of Pakistan. Of the 30% that live in Pakistan, One of them, a Karachi-based journalist, he visited Israel after the 7th of October. He came back and he was subsequently assassinated by some private—

Sina: Wow. Yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. Schrödinger's vassal. I think this is going to be the name of the title of the show. Schrödinger's vassal.

Aman Ullah Tariq: So like the government also, it's not even with this conflict, this particular round of the fighting. For the last, since the time of Musharraf, at the time of Musharraf, we had the first official meeting of our ambassador with theirs, Israelis, in the first ever open meeting that we had with them. I think it was in some conference in Turkey. And that was received very negatively. And then they became quiet again. And then a few years later, some journalists went, a secret group of journalists to see Tel Aviv. And people get really angry. And so there was a threat where people were like, tell us the names, we want to deal with them. And then they became quiet again. And then years passed, and then the Abraham Accords came around. And then, oh, there's a group of business owners and journalists going to take carpets and dry fruits, and they're going to go have a cultural exchange in Tel Aviv. And oh, they just went and they came back, and then they became quiet. And this was in Imran Khan's time, by the way. So it doesn't matter who the prime minister is. The deep state is always at work. And those interest groups. So right now there's a few dozen losers who are like journalists and activist types. Some, most of them are in America and the UAE, but of Pakistan, some are in London as well, of Pakistani origin. And they're not appealing to anyone in the masses. They're mostly showpieces for Israel to show them, oh, we have support in Pakistan as well. No, you don't. Bitch, bitch. No, you don't. Nobody listens to them here. They're not on mainstream TV. They were tried to be made mainstream. There are always attempts to make them mainstream. Either they just won't have motion, like, because they're just like loser incel weirdos. Uh, because like, who the fuck would be like an Israel stan? Like, you know, America stans, I get.

Sina: It's all— yeah, especially given the fact how like Indians have already played this role of being pathetic brown, like, like cheerleaders.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Beautiful Israel woman, please marry me, beautiful Israel woman. I want to protect you from the Muslims.

Sina: Vivid Prowess, guy in India.

Aman Ullah Tariq: The most Indian gamertag, Vivid Prowess. No, I am from Tel Aviv, I promise. The sirens are going off right now. My family is in the shelter. Hello, dear, I am under the water here. Very much lonely below. Okay, now take off your shirt and show me the bobs. Show me the bobs, dear. So this online sex pervert character from India is so overplayed. That that Pakistanis just don't have any swagger. They don't have any motion to pull, you know, with the state. Whatever elements within the state that try to push the Israeli agenda, for us, recognizing Tel Aviv is not even a foreign policy. It's not even a real policy thing. It's more of a convenience of of visa grants, of going through Washington via Tel Aviv. It's just another access point. There's no real Israel poses no real threat to our nuclear nuclear assets anymore. They tried. They fucked up. Didn't happen for them. So now the state is in a catch-22 because Israel wants to aggress Pakistan like it does Iran. In the May conflict, the drones that were coming in from India were Israeli drones that were being operated by Israeli technicians sitting in India. So now the government can't have it both ways. They can't have their domestic win and they can't have their foreign policy win. They have to say, they have to recognize. So they had to recognize the military had to acknowledge the fact that some of the drones that were coming in The loitering munitions in our civil area, especially by the way, which is very ironic that the civil target civilian targets that were targeted by India were Israeli drones were used to do that. So they had to acknowledge that, and now all of a sudden they want us to recognize the Abraham Accords or whatever. It's not working out. It's just a case of what's happening in all the countries in the world where the elite is trying to force a very awake public that oh, it's the sixth of October again. Nothing has nothing has happened. There was no genocide. There was no resistance movement. Guys, we're back to square one. What about a 2-state solution? It's really goofy. We've switched our policy in the last 20 years. First, we used to say one-state solution, but now we say 2-state solution. And we say it very half-heartedly. Our prime ministers and our presidents give very vague statements. And there should be a state for Pakistan, for Palestine. And then there should be another one. I don't know what we would call it, but there should be one.

Sina: And people could live there.

Aman Ullah Tariq: It's not so gross like with the Indonesian premier coming into the UN and being like, we have to underwrite the security of Israel as well. It's none of that shit. But it's always like a vague, it's always like a vague—

Sina: Morocco. It's not Morocco. I mean, it's pretty clear from Morocco. Like, I think they just straight up said, listen, brother, if you don't sign this agreement, we're going to assassinate you, overthrow your country. Sign it right now. And they just said, okay. It's not support.

Aman Ullah Tariq: It's not yeah, full support. Full support, sir. It's not a Morocco, Egypt, Jordan situation, but it's not Iran kind of anti-Israel rhetoric. It's like that ambivalent sort of Pakistani style of you know like क्या हाँ? You talk bitch you talking about oil bitch you cooking you know what I mean like a huh what? No a casual kind of ignorance towards the existence of Israel, but at the same time trying to posture around it. Our relevance, is it back? We tried. I don't think it's working. I think the May performance, before the May performance, we were again back into the irrelevance corridor and we were fine with Afghanistan. But the May performance and then the sudden demand from—

Sina: You mean the war with India, the hot war with India?

Aman Ullah Tariq: Yes. The hot war with India all of a sudden excited the Riyadh, the UAE, The Washington, the capitals, the Londons, like, wait a second, these guys have something cooking. We thought they were out for the fight. But that, and all of a sudden, Trump is demanding the Bagram Air Base, and all of a sudden we have all these gripes with Afghanistan, and we're deporting all these Afghan citizens and what have you. We've been building up to this for 2, 3 years now to gain back the relevance with the Americans. I don't think it's working. I think this posturing with Trump is going to backfire, and it has backfired already. I don't think Trump can deliver on all that he promises because at the end of the day, he has to give a tongue bath to Miriam Adelson in Tel Aviv. If you give him a tongue bath, he's not going to turn around and he'll give a statement or two about the lovely prime minister and the field marshal whose names he will not remember. But the American deep state is dead set on the situation. And the Pakistani populace can't be controlled for so long. We're not a small country. We're 250 million. You can't control 250 million people and convince them that Israel is A-okay now. You just can't. It's just not possible.

Sina: And especially now, especially now, the only way they will normalize this entity is if they force governments around the world to pretend that it's normal. That's the only way. And countries And as long as countries like Pakistan— that's what I meant about the lobby question— there's no benefit. There's no benefit to them unless Americans pull up and say, here's a gun to your head, do it.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Here's the gun, give me the $10 billion. Which they can't do. Which they can't do to Pakistan anymore.

Sina: Yeah, they can't. They can't do that to Pakistan. I mean, I guess the question is, is this where the dependency on the Gulf comes in? Because Pakistan is the lifeblood of the Gulf, too. In the sense that, like, the labors of Pakistanis is literally what drives those states. Like, they, they— like, people actually drivers, like, all those people are Pakistani South Asians. Like, this is a source of immense— I guess, I don't know, it's, it's like a fuel of capitalism, Pakistan.

Aman Ullah Tariq: We're the labor force. We're not only the labor force, we also underwrite their security. Our nukes underwrite their security as well. Yes. Our military trains their militaries. Our Air Force fixes their jets and their planes and their air defense systems. We regularly have contracts with them, trainings, you know, cultural exchanges. Again, our Hajj and Umrah visas depend on it. Our labor contracts depend on it. It's a chicken and egg scenario. We're both very interdependent in that sense. Their investments into our agriculture and our industrial base, whatever exists of it, are very important to us. The labor force is of primary importance because a majority of Pakistan's exports are, at the end of the day, Labor exports, by the way. It's not food. It's not whatever. So that relationship with the Gulf, wherever the Gulf stands on the Abraham Accords, Pakistan is there one step behind them. That's where it is. And there's nothing really to offer to Pakistan right now in exchange for the legitimacy of Israel. That's what it is. You can't really threaten us into anything or give us something in exchange. The real—

Sina: Because the cost to any government doing that would be so high. They would have to murder people on the I mean, they do that already. They do that already. But like, they'd have to murder a lot.

Aman Ullah Tariq: En masse. Murder you en masse.

Sina: It would not be free to do this stuff.

Aman Ullah Tariq: And Pakistan can't pull it off. Pakistan can't— Pakistan, it's not a Ba'athist Iraqi army where you have Sunnis fighting the Kurds or the Shias or whatever. It's— you can't do it. It's a mosaic of tribal and ethnic groups, and you can't shoot at them directly. Because it'll be seen as targeting one religious or ethnic or tribal group, and then it'll blow up in your face. Even right now with the 2 big incidents in November of last year and the start of this month, where you had a religious party and earlier you had the PTI, Imran Khan's party, being cracked down on violently, and you had a few dozen deaths in the civilian protesters. They're not being able to manage that. It's become a crisis. It's a domestic crisis to the point where mainstream media, alternative media, people on the streets, people in their homes, in the bazaar, in the shops are like, we're not having this anymore. Right. And what they're offering in exchange of this liberty is security. So the state is becoming more securitized and we're having all these smart city stuff coming in and we have a counter-hit force in the police and they're taking out violent criminals. So they're trying to do a carrot and stick with the people. Look, if you give up on these kind of civil rights, like protesting and what have you, we'll make sure that the buses run on time and everything is air conditioned and you're very safe and the police is there. So they're trying to leverage. It's not going to work. We're a very undersocialized society. If Japan is on one end of the spectrum of being overly socialized, Pakistan is like a It's a savage country of wild men. You know, we all have guns and we have one of the biggest illegal—

Sina: Bro, I live in a civilized country. It's not all that cracked up to be. They're doing a genocide live and they're not even talking about it on TV.

Aman Ullah Tariq: No, but—

Sina: I'll take the savages anytime over these people.

Aman Ullah Tariq: No, but you say that, okay, here's the thing. You say that and a lot of Pakistani experts say that, but the moment they have to come in and make an ID card, that's when they realize that making lines is kind of important.

Sina: Yes, that is, this is a pan-brown people problem. They do not know how to make a line. Amanullah, it's been over an hour. Thank you very much. This is a lot of fun. Uh, we're gonna keep— we're— I want to keep this conversation going. Uh, it's been a fantastic conversation. Full support, full support. I'm gonna link to your podcast even though it's in Urdu, but this just means that, uh, you got to do more English stuff and you're gonna do it for me and my friends. I'll give you the English channel. Okay, great, great. Thank you very much for your time. I'm going to press stop recording, but just stay in the studio, let it upload. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Aman Ullah Tariq: Thank you.