Clueless Caesars, unintended consequences

Dawn, April 1, 2005
Clueless Caesars, unintended consequences
By Ayaz Amir

Nothing more vividly illustrates the gulf/disconnect between Islamabad and the rest of the country than the manufactured hype over F-16s. While official wizards, obliged to sing off-key hymns to super patriotism, are ecstatic, ordinary Pakistanis - hit by something more powerful than all the F-16s in the world, out-of-control inflation - couldn't give a damn.

If the tidings about the planes were such good news, oil tankers, protesting against the never-ending rise in fuel prices, wouldn't be on strike and the mullah leadership of the MMA, with their permanent lien on the patriotic corner, wouldn't be calling a national strike on April 2.

And the government - military core, civilian facade - wouldn't be looking so off-colour. This is a government not so much beleaguered, for that would be painting it too thick, but one increasingly clueless about how to plough ahead.

Cluelessness on a grand scale or, to put it in terms better understood by the general staff, strategic cluelessness, an alarming sign of having lost the favour of the gods. For remember, whom the gods wish to teach a lesson, they first deprive one of ordinary eyesight.

What's the general staff's answer to this growing sense of losing the script? F-16s. Smack in the midst of the F-16 drumbeat comes news of Pakistan's readiness to send 'used' centrifuges to the IAEA in Vienna.

What's going on? First we said no centrifuges going anywhere, now this amazing flexibility. A nation inheriting a fair amount of confusion at its birth, turned into a playground of confusion by its rulers.

Our problem is not external aggression, never was, but internal lack of cohesiveness and direction, absence of political stability, the military's stubborn refusal to get off the nation's back. How do F-16s address this problem?

Suppose instead of the two dozen or so F-16s our military geniuses are thinking of buying, we get 300. How does that translate into political stability, our foremost need?

Even as far as the details of the proposed deal are concerned, how foolish can anyone get? Examine this from the Washington Post: "The Bush administration's decision to sell F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan is likely to be as warmly greeted in Fort Worth as it is in (Islamabad).

That's because Lockheed Martin Corp. has said it needs new orders for the jet before this fall, or it will have to take action to close the production line there that employs about 5,000 workers."

So it wasn't just philanthropy but to a great extent American self-interest behind the decision to sell us F-16s. The American ambassador in Islamabad helpfully suggests that Islamabad can use the three billion dollar package - our rent for services rendered - for buying the F-16s.

Brilliant. What the US gives with one hand, it takes with the other. Meanwhile Pakistan keeps toeing the American line above and beyond the call of duty. Front-line ally: say that again.

If we had our wits about us, instead of getting caught in an un winnable arms race with India, we could have said thanks but no thanks to the Americans if their generosity also meant selling F-16s to India.

Consider, for every single F-16 coming to us, America is prepared to sell three to India. Not only that. The American goodies on offer to India include the far superior F-18 fighter planes and Patriot missiles. How does this work to Pakistan's advantage?

If at the end of it all, Pakistan has about 28 new F-16s and India more than three or four times that number - always assuming that India is foolish enough to be taken in by America's sales pitch - where does that leave us or the conventional imbalance in the subcontinent?

Foreign Minister Kasuri says that the US decision regarding the F-16s is a foreign policy success for Pakistan. If this is success, it would be good to know what failure looks like.

Breaking out of American thralldom, for the American connection has done us more harm than good, is another of Pakistan's fundamental problems (ranking almost as high as the elusive quest for political stability). A devil's deal like the one about the F-16s further reinforces the American presence in this country, as if any more reinforcing was necessary.

Of course, our air force needs planes. But how about a more realistic definition of deterrence which allows us to search for cheaper alternatives and a more reliable supplier than America has proved to be?

The old Soviet Union was militarily powerful but politically bankrupt, the absence of political reform in turn hampering the quest for economic reform. Under Gorbachev the wimp, one of the greatest disasters in Russian history, these contradictions came to a head, in the end proving more powerful than Hitler's armies.

Whereas Hitler, even though knocking at the gates of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, failed to destroy the Soviet Union, what he couldn't achieve the lack of political reform did.

Thanks to military rule, Pakistan is beginning to look like a minor Soviet-style republic, heavily armed and militarized, with a nuclear capability to boot, but for lack of political reform, inwardly hollow.

That's why nothing on the political front clicks, why Pakistanis are the world's heaviest investors in cynicism and gloom-and-doom theories. There is nothing much wrong with the people of Pakistan but everything wrong with their environment which, because of militarism and democratic failure, nourishes negativism on a vast scale.

A political government would be more sensitive to popular needs and less sure of itself when making patently absurd claims. Of what use better macro-economic indicators and fat foreign exchange reserves when jobs continue to be scarce and inflation reaches back-breaking proportions?

The government's idea of poverty reduction - sorry, alleviation, that being the fashionable term - comes down to more consumer finance - auto-finance, credit cards, etc - for the middle classes. Don't be surprised if the poor and the left-out don't appreciate the joke.

In the hallowed precincts of Army House and General Headquarters does no one realize how the clock is ticking, how time is running out? Musharraf is lucky, his haphazard political experiment surviving for five and a half years. But this system - president in uniform, toothless prime minister, huge cabinet, a ruling party incapable of standing up to the elements if deprived of military support, parliament without relevance or power - is simply not sustainable over the long term.

If the president wants another five-year term, and if he wants to spare the army the embarrassment of large-scale electoral rigging and manipulation, he will have to reach out to the mainstream parties, PPP and N League, not out of abstract goodwill but for wholly pragmatic reasons. From now on, he needs them more than they need him. But there is a joker pack in the form of mullah power, expanding rather than diminishing, thanks to confusion and dithering in Army House. With Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif out of the country, Musharraf still not summoning up the courage to allow them back, the mullahs are filling the vacuum on the national horizon. They have held rallies in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar and now look with confidence to the outcome of their call for a wheel-jam strike on April 2 (tomorrow).

From what little I can judge of the situation from the trenches of Chakwal, the strike call is having some effect not because mullahs or their agenda are suddenly popular but because there is a general sense of disquiet and uneasiness arising from (1) inflation, (2) the dismal law-and-order situation and (3) the unabashed pro-Americanism of the Musharraf regime.

As anyone could have predicted, the government's precipitate retreat on the passport non-issue - succumbing to the absurd demand for a religious column - far from appeasing the mullahs has only whetted their appetite for more.

They approach their strike call with renewed vigour. The age of 'enlightened moderation' was supposed to lead to the retreat of obscurantism and the triumph of 'liberalism'. Yet because Musharraf's political priorities remain skewed and he has yet to take the decisive - sorry, strategic - steps leading to real national reconciliation, he remains stuck in a hole, speaking of expansive goals but in reality hostage to pressures suddenly too big for him.