Author: M.J. Akbar
Publication: Arab News
Date: May 20, 2002
URL: http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=15378
An escalation of the undeclared
war for Kashmir was inevitable after the recent referendum in Pakistan
that "confirmed" Gen. Pervez Musharraf's civilian job. This is not because
the referendum strengthened Musharraf. But because it weakened him.
The unstructured but recognized
pattern of behavior in a Pakistani coup goes something like this. Tension
begins to build between the civilian authority and the military establishment
for one reason or the other. A game of nerves begins. Both sides test how
far they can go. It does not necessarily end up in a victory for the brass.
When Gen. Jehangir Keramat and Nawaz Sharif lost confidence in each other,
it was the General who blinked. But at some point the army, which is always
fed up of civilian governments, decides that it is strong enough to take
on the civilians. Or it feels that it has no other choice but to cross
the Constitutional Avenue in Islamabad.
Musharraf was convinced, as were
his senior officers, that he would be killed - if not in the air then on
the ground - by Sharif if he did not take over. After the pistol-packing
boss has taken charge, there is what might be called a phase in which he
is trainee president. During this period the General is generally too embarrassed
to call himself president; he could be known as chief martial law administrator
(the preferred nomenclature). Musharraf simply called himself chief executive.
Then comes the second stage, when
the title is maneuvered into the general's designation. The third stage
comes with the "moment of legitimacy". This is the point when the General
feels that he needs some evidence that he has the support of the people
of Pakistan. It is not external factors alone that make him crave for such
legitimacy; a government cannot hang loose in the air, without any relationship
to those it rules.
Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ayub
Khan did not have to worry about American pressure for democracy. But he
too had to tinker with ideas like basic democracy and set up some kind
of national election to confirm him in his job. But at least Ayub Khan
had an opponent; and he must have got a bit of a shock when he discovered
that his opponent was the steely sister of the steely father of the nation,
Fatimah Jinnah. However Fatimah Jinnah was soon to appreciate that the
most basic fact about basic democracy is that the winner chose the electorate.
Gen. Zia-ul Haq, who knew what he
wanted to do with power, had no time for niceties and dispensed with unimportant
matters like an opponent. He became the cause as well as the effect. A
referendum changed from being a vote about a person or a post to being
a vote for a policy, or alleged policy. As a fraud, it was far more convenient.
The army mind has no understanding
of democracy, which is as it should be. The last democratic army, and maybe
the first too, existed in the early years of the French Revolution and
we all know how quickly it needed Napoleon. An army command is an oligarchy,
where decisions by a few are taken for a perceived common good. It is unsurprising
that officers do not understand the culture of democracy.
The most stupid civilian politician
would have understood the need to stuff a few votes against himself even
if he had to rig an election. But it must have become clear to Musharraf
and his friends from the reaction that they had shot themselves pretty
severely in the foot with this meaningless referendum. Their previous illegitimacy
was more legitimate, if only because it was more honest. The referendum
exposed in the starkest terms that the army clique that has seized power
in Pakistan does not represent the people.
If a government does not represent
the people, then what does it represent? Why is it in office? Musharraf
justified his coup by saying that the people of Pakistan had got fed up
of Sharif. That might even have been true, although there are other ways
of solving that dilemma. But what happens when the same people get fed
up of Musharraf?
Every government needs a rationale
to survive. The condition becomes acute in an illegitimate government born
of a coup and "ratified" by a fiction. An external threat becomes an acute
need for a general; but this too much be backed by a domestic agenda. Gen.
Zia thought he had found his answer when he made the Islamization of Pakistan
his domestic rationale, he got the ultimate foreign policy as gift with
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Musharraf brimmed over with good
intentions during his long honeymoon. He may even have seriously wanted
to end corruption and curb the extremists who, as he candidly admitted
in his famous Jan. 12 speech, had become Pakistan's biggest headache.
Good intentions are not good enough.
All that the General finally delivered was cosmetics. It may not have been
his fault. You cannot do much about corruption when the army itself has
institutionalized a massive system of state- lubricated comfort for itself.
You cannot curb extremism when its use is part of state policy in Kashmir.
The sag between the Musharraf of
mid-January, confident at home and applauded across the Western world,
and the man who donned strange turbans in his quest for some imaginary
vote was palpable. During the last two months Western journalists (and
all of them are now in Pakistan) had begun to sniff the duplicity in government
and write about it. Pakistanis could not contain their frustration and
even anger at the prospect of sustained military rule stretching into the
foreseeable future, without any hope of democracy as long as the "referended"
Musharraf was around. It was clear that the army needed a quick fix shift
of attention from itself to another story.
On Monday, May 13 the International
Herald Tribune carried a column by Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post.
I quote: "No one plays this aid game better than Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf,
whose uneven help in the way on terrorism has been purchased at excessive
monetary and moral cost to the United States. Washington's unconditional
generosity now seems to encourage the Pakistanis to toy with the United
States even on the subject of terrorism... How do you say chutzpah in Urdu?"
Hoagland then shifts to the scene in South Asia: "After a three-month lull,
terrorist groups that infiltrate saboteurs and killed into Kashmir have
in recent weeks resumed their normal rate of attacks across the informal
'line of control' in the disputed territory."
But the most striking part of the
column was a quotation from Lt.-Gen. Ehsanul Haq, the Pakistani intelligence
chief, from a speech he made to his commanders in the first week of May:
"There exists an all-time high risk of Pak- India conflict in the coming
weeks."
On what basis did Gen. Haq make
what by any standards is a dramatic assessment? This was certainly not
the view from this side of the border. The mood in New Delhi was induced
by the lull after the Parliament-assault storm. The threat of war, that
had seemed so real in December and January, had in fact receded, and there
were even murmurs about de-escalation.
Did the intelligence chief of Pakistan
know something that Delhi was not yet aware of? To speculate, did he know
for instance that there would be attacks on Indian Army camps in Kashmir
that would send the temperature on the border to flare-up levels? The phrase
that Gen. Haq used was "an all-time high risk". Higher than Kargil?
During Kargil the United States
of Bill Clinton was disengaged from the complexities of South Asia; it
wanted peace as a principle, while the rest of life went on. It required
the threat of a nuclear war in the region for Clinton to summon Sharif
and tell an ashen Pakistani prime minister that his own armed forces were
preparing for the unimaginable, without the knowledge of the country's
political leadership. In a sense the coup that removed Sharif had begun
long before it happened.
South Asia is a radically different
region after last September. No one could have predicted that American
troops would be holding joint exercises with India on Indian soil even
while their comrades were stationed in and off Pakistan at the same time.
War is easier than peace. That is
the one fact about India-Pakistan relations over the last 50 years. Armies
are war machines; they flourish in times of confrontation, they wither
during peace, even if they are indispensable at all times. The Pakistan
Army has taken this premise a few notches ahead; it wants to become a permanent
part of the power structure. On what basis can it sell this thesis to its
own people? Only by the thesis of a permanent war with India.
A democratic government in Pakistan
does not have to be friendly with India, but it will have a greater vested
interest in peace, if for no other reason than to keep the army at bay.
The Americans have taken, once again,
a shortsighted view of Islamabad. If Musharraf claims to serve their cause,
then he must be protected and even patronized. But an army cannot run a
country. At best it can defend its nation; at worst it can ruin it. There
is no middle ground. If there is ever going to be a solution to the problems
of the region it will only happen when democracy returns to Pakistan. A
fudge is not a solution.
The question at the beginning must
remain the question at the end. If the government in Pakistan does not
represent the people then what precisely does it represent? Think about
it.
