Divided government in the midst of crisis

EDITORIAL: Divided government fights on many fronts
Daily Times, April 13, 2007

Even as the PML president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, was “negotiating” with the Lal Masjid mullahs on Wednesday over their threat to start their own sharia court, the cabinet of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz found itself divided over whether or not to take direct action against the law-breaking clerics. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, whose technique in negotiations is based on giving concessions to the clergy, also slammed those who insisted that the government was in the process of making a “deal” with the PPP.

The top cleric of Lal Masjid made it very clear what kind of negotiations were going on when he said that “the mosque has guns on the premises and it will defend itself if the government attempts a crackdown”. The concessions already given are: a pledge to rebuild the illegal premises pulled down, and recognition that the vigilante moral squad of Hafsa was doing the right thing. The police record presented at the meeting with the Lal Masjid clerics showed offences committed by 56 people, including acts of violence and assault of citizens by the students of Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Fareedia and the Lal Masjid khateebs, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz who, together with President Pervez Musharraf, has given a clear charter to Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to parley with the offending clerics, said in the same breath that “anybody taking the law into his hands would be dealt with sternly as the law-enforcing agencies have clear instructions in this regard”. Faced with this ambiguity at the top, the cabinet was understandably divided. Reportedly, the foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, and some likeminded cabinet members wanted an immediate action against the administration of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa, while Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao and religious affairs minister Ijazul Haq opposed the idea, stressing “a peaceful solution to the problem”.

The foreign minister was supported by the education minister, Lieutenant General (Retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, who is equally worried about the wrong signals the government is emitting to the world outside. An ex-ISI chief, Mr Qazi knows that Lal Masjid was visited by militants from Waziristan in 2004, and the car belonging to one of the Lal Masjid clerics was found to be carrying explosives meant for acts of terrorism. The clerics make no bones of the fact of their affiliation and show letters written to them by Tahir Yuldashev, now fighting the tribals in South Waziristan. The founder of Lal Masjid, the father of the two clerics, too had a violent end.

Meanwhile, the sectarian war in Parachinar is going full tilt. The latest death of 15 has brought up the total men killed there to 55. This is the most alarming development in the Kurram Agency since 1986 when massacres took place while General Zia was in power. Coming down from Parachinar, the town of Laki Marwat has become the scene of vigilante action with armed men snatching record players from vehicles on the Indus highway and forcing men to grow beards. Already large swathes of regular and tribal territory have come under the rule of vigilante groups who have set aside state law and writ of the government.

The government also has to face the repercussions of the dismissal of the chief justice of Pakistan. Many observers think that the ‘Lal Masjid Affair’ has been allowed to become front-page news to take the limelight away from the judicial crisis. There are others who think that the Lal Masjid revolt has been allowed to grow so that the world outside realises that Pakistan is an extremist-dominated state and that democratic reform here might jeopardise its very existence.

Thus while the government is always ready to negotiate with the undemocratic and extremist forces in the country, it is unwilling to negotiate with the democratic forces in the country. Apparently, one has to use force and avow extremism to bring out the negotiating instincts of the government. From the beginning, the Musharraf interregnum has been characterised by riding with unnatural partners on the basis of their presumed “loyalty”. But with the passage of time some coalescence of the like-minded was essential to build a broad platform of consensus. But this wasn’t done. In fact, as the tendency not to make common cause with other political forces continued, more and more ‘fronts’ had to be opened.

However, ‘fronts’ are opened when the ruler is unable to communicate his values and then build alliances on the basis of them. Cohabiting with the wrong bedfellows is a temporary device but in the end ‘fronts’ against the government have to be closed and only the irreducible adversaries have to be faced. Ominously, as the Lal Masjid crisis wears on, the cleavage within the government is becoming apparent. The time for manning the barricades may be coming closer. *