Dawn,June 30, 2006
Cracks in the mirror
By Ayaz Amir
REGARDING Pakistan’s democratic process, says the Foreign Office adopting a high tone, “We do not require advice from outside.” These are brave words from a country run largely on foreign advice.
If there is any place bursting at the seams because of foreign ‘consultants’, it is Pakistan. Bureaucracy reform, judicial reform, direction of the economy, privatization, ‘capacity-building’, the fiasco that has been ‘devolution’, you name it...on all the effort going into these ill-conceived adventures you can detect the heavy footprint of foreign advice.
This is not to mention foreign policy, Waziristan a powerful reminder of what happens when a country succumbs to foreign pressure and places the interests of an outside power before its own. The Pakistan army wouldn’t be bogged down in Waziristan, facing a mini-Iraq at home, if its leadership had been able to think for itself and not swallowed American advice, hook, line and sinker.
“There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind,” says the FO further, “that the (coming) elections will be free and fair.” This too is rich. Most Pakistanis, let alone outsiders, entertain the gravest doubts about them. Confusion surrounds the question of how Gen Musharraf will give himself another presidential term. And here the FO says there shouldn’t be any doubts. It had better consult ISI before issuing similar statements in future.
Just as there are two governments in Pakistan — one nominal represented by prime minister and parliament, the other real represented by the president-in-uniform — there are two election commissions in Pakistan: one headed by the chief election commissioner, the other in ISI. The first makes all the sound and fury. The real ballot-counting takes place in the second.
Come to think of it, who should know this better than the foreign minister himself, dapper Khurshid Kasuri, stern guardian of the national interest? Legend has it he wouldn’t have made it to the National Assembly but for the timely exertions of the real as opposed to the nominal election commission.
Anyone wishing to contest the coming elections — which I hope I have the sense not to — should have his/her horoscope read by one of the three intelligence chiefs: ISI, MI, IB. That would be a surer guide to success than any assurances of fairness from the chief election commissioner.
Anyhow, the FO statement comes in response to the remarks of the American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, during her visit to Islamabad in which she expressed the hope that the elections in 2007 would be free and fair. Talk of salt being poured over open wounds.
Here we have a beleaguered government wallowing in confusion, giving every appearance of losing control over things (as seen to telling effect in the botched steel mills’ privatization deal), sure only about one thing that the generalissimo must get another extension to his presidential term, regardless of what that most abused of documents, the Constitution, says.
And here, instead of providing comfort or praising Musharraf’s ‘leadership’ qualities, as the Americans were wont to do when the generalissimo hopped aboard their Afghan bandwagon, Condi Rice is touching him where it really hurts, his democracy heel. In the president’s current state of mind, nothing could be less welcome.
He threw in his lot with the Americans because he thought the quid pro quo would be unqualified support. He got that in the beginning when ‘the war on terror’ was still in its infancy and America was filled with optimism that it would have its way in Afghanistan and Iraq, bring Iran to heel and reshape the map of the Middle East. That dream has gone sour. The Americans were facing a tough time in Iraq from the beginning. Now events are slipping out of control in Afghanistan too.
Karzai is being seen as a failure because he has belied the hopes invested in him. In the big American papers there is now sharp criticism of him, how he is not up to the job. But there is also a sharper tone being used for Pakistan.
Why? Because the Americans feel the Pakistan army is not doing enough of a job of self-destruction. It may have suffered more casualties in Waziristan than the Americans have in Afghanistan. But still the Americans want the Pakistan army to do more.
It probably would more if it could. But it has been fought to a standstill by the militants, army units in Waziristan now largely confined to their bases, afraid to venture out. Governmental authority has all but evaporated.
No one has briefed the media — that not being the done thing in Pakistan — but it seems as if at long last government policy is slowly changing and the militant leadership in both North and South Waziristan is being engaged in talks in an effort to lower the temperature and defuse the situation.
Perhaps the new Frontier governor, Lt Gen (r) Aurakzai (himself a tribesman), has something to do with this although it is hard to say for sure. In any event, lesser bullets are flying about in South Waziristan and some kind of a ceasefire has been announced in North Waziristan. Let’s hope this leads to a more permanent solution.
How can the Americans be happy with this change of emphasis (if indeed there is one)? Just as they expect the native Iraqi army (trained and equipped by them) to carry more of the burden of fighting in Iraq, they want the Pakistan army to be more aggressive in Waziristan.
Who is to tell them that just as their invasion of Iraq, far from eradicating ‘extremism’, has spurred ‘extremism’, the Pakistan army’s intrusion into Waziristan, instead of destroying elements supportive of the Taliban, has made them stronger?
(Much the same has happened in Balochistan where Nawab Bugti would not have taken to the hills if the government had been slightly more subtle in its approach to him. His politics were never those of Marri or Mengal but now he has been pushed into taking a hardline position. Matters can still be mended, the point of no return not having been crossed, but for that an Aurakzai approach is needed, not the language of guns which the Baloch can speak as well as anyone else.)
So let us be clear in our minds: the American worry is about Waziristan not democracy. If Musharraf could get the army to commit more follies in Waziristan and suffer more losses, he could declare himself president for life and the Americans would not bat an eyelid. But since he or rather the army seems to be having second thoughts, the Americans are getting worked up about democracy.
Hand it to them for playing the dictatorship card when it suits them and the democracy card when their interests change.
Can the embattled generalissimo do anything about this? He can but only if he can untie the knots he has tied himself into. What he takes as his biggest strength is his biggest weakness: his reliance on his army position. He cannot look the Americans in the eye because they know the worth of his popular legitimacy. And I doubt if within his own constituency there are many takers for the prospect of an army chief actively contesting for a political office.
This has never happened before. Army chiefs have seized power and bent the political field to their will. They have chosen the referendum route to political consolidation. But if Musharraf sticks to his uniform this is the first time that an army chief will be actively contesting an election (however fixed that election may be).
Perhaps times have changed but the army I served in more than thirty years ago would not have been amused.
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