In 1965, the book  Braun buch [Brown Book] became a bestseller in erstwhile West Germany. It was written by Albert Norden, a prominent member in the ruling party of erstwhile East Germany. At the time, East Germany was in the orbit of the Soviet Union. It was authoritarian and communist. West Germany had adopted democracy and capitalism. Germany had split into two separate sovereign nation-states four years after the fall of the Nazi regime and the end of World War II in 1945. 

In Braunbuch, Norden published a list of over 1,000 members of the fallen Nazi regime that the West German state had ‘rehabilitated’ by inducting them into the country’s post-war bureaucracy, judiciary, military and police.

According to Norden, the ‘denazification’ programme, which was initiated in Germany after World War II, had been abandoned in the early 1950s, and many Nazis facing charges of committing war crimes, were given light sentences by the courts. This was also because a number of former Nazis had conveniently sneaked into the judiciary and in important lawyers’ associations in West Germany.

Flustered by the book, the West German state denounced it as “communist propaganda.” But evidence substantiating Norden’s claims continued to mount. Over the next few years, evidence began to emerge showing that the US had also employed former Nazi officials during the Cold War — despite the fact that the US had lost over 12 million men and women fighting against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War ll. 

History has shown that transgressions by and against the state, when left unpunished, tend to resurface with greater intensity

From 1949 onwards, the US and its non-communist European allies had begun to treat communism as a ‘greater threat to democracy’ than the possible return of far-right ideologies such as Nazism. The abandonment of denazification programmes helped the far-right sentiment to quietly stay afloat, and eventually find a place in post-war Germany’s political decision-making process. 

Today, the far-right has become a legitimate part of the contemporary political culture that is haunting Europe (and the US).

According to the Kurdish scholar Dr Zakria Qaderi, Nazism was a manifestation of the Germans’ national ethos in the early 20th century. Despite Nazism’s fall, this ethos, rather pathos, remained in the country’s ‘subconscious’. It survived due to the rather intentional failure of denazification and the appeasement of whatever Nazism was left after World War II. 

The West German state, its politics, judiciary and economics, played a key role in this and, therefore, uncannily allowed far-right sentiments to survive and simmer. No wonder then, today, Germany and many other European countries, are facing a troubling resurgence of far-right politics and sentiment among large sections of their (white) populations. 

Serious transgressions by the state or against the state, when allowed to go unpunished, almost always re-emerge. Wherever such transgressions were lightly punished or their memory suppressed, they appeared over and over again, weakening the nation-state with each blow. 

But, henceforth, I will only focus on how certain transgressions against the state in Pakistan have become repeatable possibilities more than ever due to the state’s weak response to such transgressions.

‘Anti-state’ activity in the former East Pakistan was tackled by the state in a most brutal manner. There was no parliament to resolve this in a democratic manner, and the judiciary was largely unable to make any meaningful adjudications regarding the ‘anti-state’ nature of the uprising in East Pakistan.

When the state was defeated in 1971 and East Pakistan separated, the memory of the defeat and separation was actively suppressed. But it remained in the collective subconscious and has erupted in the shape of anti-state insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

The military establishment (ME) has often exhibited an aggressive intent to eliminate the Baloch insurgency, but the ME hasn’t allowed the legislature and the executive to have much say in the matter. The judiciary, on the other hand, can’t decide whether it’s an insurgency or a ‘rights movement.’ 

This last factor has frustrated the ME the most, especially with India becoming quite vocal about its involvement in Balochistan, and Baloch militant groups now deploying even more violent tactics. The issue needs to be addressed by the ME and the legislature, and then clearly put as a case in front of a more decisive judiciary, so that violence (from any side) can be punished. This is vital to ensure an insurgency-free future. 

What about the Islamist insurgency in KP? Until 2014, many mainstream parties of the right and the centre-right viewed the Islamists as “brothers who had lost their way.” When the ‘brothers’ were busy slaughtering soldiers, policemen, ulema [religious clerics], politicians and common citizens, the government, parliament, the electronic media, the judiciary and the time’s ME, were busy navel-gazing about how to talk peace with the brethren. 

However, in early 2015, all instruments of the state finally came together to punish the militants who had by then killed thousands of Pakistanis. But from 2018 till mid-2022, the time’s government and ME turned the militants back into ‘brothers’ who were to be reintegrated into society. Many of them got away, untried and unpunished. They have now risen once again.

It should also be noted that, from 2014 till 2019, the punishment against the militants didn’t really come from the courts as such, but from military action. The courts were too busy adjudicating headline-grabbing political cases. 

Another example in this regard are the attacks on military properties by mobs spearheaded by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in May 2022. For over a year, a heated debate about this has been raging. One side accuses PTI of trying to instigate a pro-PTI mutiny in the ME (through the attacks), while the other side (PTI) has gone back and forth in its response to these accusations. It first claimed that it was a “false flag operation”, and then turned it into a case of free speech and the right to protest. 

The role of the courts in all this has been vague. The question whether the May 2022 riots (and their purpose) were anti-state in nature is yet to be argued at any length in the courts. The judiciary seems to have become deadlocked in its own politics — between so-called “pro-PTI” judges and those accused (by PTI) of being “pro-establishment.”

The courts must decide what the true nature of the unprecedented riots was, and punish the perpetrators (from any side) accordingly. If they fail to do this, such attacks can be expected over and over again, weakening an already fragile nation-state.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 2nd, 2025