A
clearer roadmap
MB
Naqvi
The
author is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist
mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk
Chief Executive
General Pervez Musharraf's decision to become the President of Pakistan also
should surprise no one after the clear hints he had been dropping since April
last. That he now has to wear five hats - of the COAS, CJCSC, CE, NSC Chief and
the President of the Republic and in this order - is a predicament for which he
deserves no sympathy. For all the eminence that surrounds him, his is not a
personal-cum-party regime like those of President Saddam Hussain or President
Hafez al Assad of Syria or even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It is a
strictly military regime in which a college of top generals rule, though the
hierarchical principle gives a lot of weightage to the Chief.
Historically speaking, the military has resumed its direct rule after its
second experiment with democracy (1986 to 1999) did not work out to its
satisfaction.
The military and
the regime have nothing to fear, certainly not in the short run. No
authoritarian can find a more docile and compliant populace than the Pakistanis
- for long periods. There is not much of an effective opposition. Mainstream or
parliamentary parties are in a sad and dispirited state. Look at PML and its
factions. With the dissolution of Assemblies, it loses its significance; its
agitational capacity, despite the claims of men like Mushahid Hussain and Iqbal
Ahsan, can be dismissed with a smile. PPP, as of now, is also dispirited for
being headless, though its capability to make the regime's life difficult is
confined to Sindh. But this latter capability is now being questioned for its
extent and intensity. MQM, with its just under 6 percent share in the National
Assembly and 27 percent in Sindh Provincial Assembly, still possesses a
capability that can alarm any regime. But its militant wing seems to have become
weakened, if not decimated, by Army action (1992-94) and PPP government's no
holds-barred operations (1995-96). ANP largely retains its salience in NWFP and
can have a national role in opposition. But the most vociferous force, the true
beneficiaries of a military regime, are regional nationalists in Sindh, NWFP and
Balochistan. But except for MQM-JSQM alliance, none of them poses any real
(short-term) threat to the regime.
There is another
category of parties and groups: religious one, with JI, JUI and JUP in the lead,
and are divided into innumerable splinters. They have front organisations too.
There is a second category: it is Jehadi organisations, over a dozen of them.
But they are armed and flush with money, the source of which is not known.
Despite their known linkage with the undercover agencies, a government in such
straits cannot be the source of this kind of money. Anyway, are they friends of
the regime? Or are they to be seen as likely opponents of the regime if it
modifies its Kashmir stance? In the latter case, the regime will have a tough
time if they retrain their guns on it. Which way will they move will depend on
what the regime will do over the major issues facing the country, especially
during the Agra summit?
What is the
regime's expected line of advance? Major issues are well-known and many of them
look like dilemmas. To begin with, there is the perennial question of Ideology.
The issue is relevant because a military regime, having trampled democracy
underfoot, talks incessantly of this or that reform, of 'true democracy',
remains engaged in political engineering. This virtually invites Islamicists to
struggle harder for an Islamic dispensation. More so as most of military's
politics tends to be outside the limits of democracy and constitution.
Religious parties
are sure to be supported by Jehadis in their demands for an Islamic State,
Nizam-i-Islam or Nizam-i-Mustafa. The new money and armaments of the religious
lobby, including sectarian terrorists, has given much perceived clout to them
and nobody seems to know which way will this lobby turn in a crisis.
Let us now look at
the national agenda. Ignoring the central one of evolving a democratic political
order for the time being - in which task the Pakistanis have so far failed,
giving rise to gibes of a Banana Republic or a failed state - two are generally
assigned the highest importance as crises: there is the Kashmir dispute with
India that has occasioned the Jehad and a nuclear deterrent has had to be built.
Events have moved rapidly since '98 nuclear test explosions and the threat of an
India Pakistan war, probably nuclear, is built into the situation.
The situation
mandates disengagement with India on Kashmir after which Pakistan should move
quickly towards a compromise solution, if a calamitous war is to be avoided. How
would these groups take a compromise solution - necessarily so because no
military victory has been won - toward which the Agra Summit might move? Would
they not shout 'sellout'?
The second crisis
is the economy itself. It has been bankrupted by (a) unsustainably high defence
budgets, including the cost of the nuclear deterrent, (b) too high levels of
consumption, (c) wrong strategies and priorities in development and (d)
pervasive corruption in the governing processes, including in development and
defence spendings. The successive intakes of World Bank officials, retired or
serving, as Finance Ministers over the years should occasion a study of overt as
well as covert roles played by (a) BWIs (Bretton Woods Institutions), (b)
American government and (c) the Army Chief of the day in the way the governments
have fallen, always at a time when IMF despaired of each. Saddening conclusions
are likely to emerge.
We Pakistanis
should see ourselves as being in Receivership required by the US-led creditors,
in which IMF is the managing agency. It is possible to generalise and take an
overview. Over the years the Pakistanis have lived under a sort of Regency
Council sitting on the shoulders of our famed establishment. It comprises (a)
the BWIs (b) the US ambassador and (c) the Pak Army's COAS. Look at the timing
and background of CE becoming the President. It came a few days after World Bank
gave us an interest free loan, a virtual gift for our BoP. This came after CE's
Seerat Conference speech and the fixing of the US-brokered Summit in Delhi.
Earlier CE's repeated statements of his determination to make his (IMF's)
reforms "irreversible" were followed by Mr Shaukat Aziz's mission to
Washington that sought to convince BWIs and the US government that the CE would
provide a virtually failsafe guarantee of staying on in command indefinitely
(five years) to ensure the implementation of the reforms. The WB gesture signals
the BWIs - and the US - acceptance of these assurances including the
Presidentship of the CE, the official critical statements by the State
Department notwithstanding.
What follows from
this is that as in the cases of earlier military regimes, this one too will be
accepted before long and sustained because this is the only way of (a) keeping
Pakistan economy afloat or current on its debt servicing and (b) complying with
things as told. The regime, no doubt, will have to bear with the slings and
arrows of criticisms from foreign offices and world media for postponing the
democratic order indefinitely. But that will be more or less proforma. The
regime will have the fullest understanding of at least the BWIs and the US
government. And would not the UK, Germany, France and Japan fall in line before
long? Anyway if the citizens of Pakistan are too impotent to demand self-rule,
how can foreigners ensure democracy's success in Pakistan. If the self-appointed
COAS-President remains unchallenged at home, why would any foreigner keep him in
a political quarantine for long?
All the battles of
and for Pakistan will be fought inside it. The issues that may be far more
decisive are not in the media spotlight: How long will the hard pressed masses
of poor Pakistanis go on carrying the heavy load of taxes, high prices, their
growing poverty and hopelessness without protest? Will they indefinitely remain
apathetic and apolitical? Secondly, for all the compliance of BWIs
conditionalities and likely aid and debt reschedulings, can the economy remain
viable in the sense of timely payments to all the foreign creditors? Some think
that the crises will go on being created because no one is going to give a
long-term (ten years) debt rescheduling and a big loan of say 12 to 15 billion
dollars in one go for a true reconstruction. The effort to ensure simultaneous
political compliances will mean the BWIs giving just about enough to keep the
head above swirling waters. That may prove to be too little too late.
The immediate
challenge is that Pakistanis will have to remain content with making a beginning
at the Agra Summit and paying the price of moderating the rhetoric. Given that
blood-curdling shibboleths are so dear to our Jehadis and which have created an
especially excitable and paranoid mindset, it will look like unmerited climbdown.
The worry is relevant: foreign influences and interests can divide the
establishment, which is the only real constituency for the Musharraf regime.
Should this happen, all bets will be off?
After all
Pakistan's support to Taliban and Kashmir Jehad parties has occasioned American
and western displeasure, on the one hand, and Shanghai Six's conversion into a
security alignment against Taliban, on the other. Pakistan China cooperation and
friendship, so dear to some security thinkers, is now a hostage to our support
for Taliban. It will also suffer if the regime moves closer to India and the US,
to get off the Kashmir hook and getting western creditors off its hair. Given
the various linkages, Pakistan society's and economy's dormant problems -
large-scale unemployment that is scheduled to grow in near future, social
inequalities, denial of democracy and above all provincial rights' conundrum -
can come alive and new alignments can be formed to challenge the regime. Horizon
is darkly clouded.