Pakistan
- Back To The Past Again
By Mirza A. Beg
07 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Will
the future ever arrive in Pakistan? It is back to the past again. Technically,
President Musharraf has declared an emergency, but in reality, it is
a coup against the democracy creeping in; which he reluctantly promised
eight years ago. This time General Musharraf overthrew the government
of the other infernal co-resident in his body, President Musharraf.
Those familiar with the 1885
opera, The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan may take a cue; the General
is everything and everywhere; all the institutions of power reside in
him. To Pakistanis, this is not an opera. It is deadly serious to the
lives of one hundred and sixty million, caught in the vise of external
forces and internal instability exacerbated by an unrepresentative government.
General Musharraf came to
power in a coup against the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif on October
12, 1999, with the promise of election within months. In January 2000
as the Chief Executive of Pakistan, he ordered all the judges to take
a fresh oath of office swearing allegiance to the military rule. In
effect the judges were barred from making any decisions against his
rule.
The Judiciary did not play
dead. Thirteen judges of the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice
refused. They were summarily dismissed and replaced by pliant judges.
In June 2001 Musharraf appointed himself as the President, replacing
the constitutional president.
On September 11, 2001 Al-Qaida
attacked the United States. That changed the dynamics of power. To the
US, Pakistan became an indispensable ally to be courted, cajoled, threatened
and controlled in pursuit of the war against the Talibans and Al-Qaida.
This aggravated the fissures in a fissiparous Pakistani society that
experienced the wrenching away of Bangladesh in 1971.
To attain legitimacy, General
Musharraf won a carefully worded, widely boycotted referendum in April
2002, with a promise to hold the elections for National Assembly in
October 2002. In that election, a party co-opted for the purpose, won
a plurality and gave legitimacy to the government for a five year term
ending in October 2007. To quell the rebellion in the National Assembly,
in December 2003, Musharraf made a deal, that he will leave the Army
and be a full time President by December 2004 which he later reneged.
Musharraf knows; the military
has had a strangle-hold on Pakistani governments for about fifty years.
As the French saying goes, “A mistress should never become a wife;
it leaves the most important office of the mistress to be filled.”
The General may masquerade as a president, but if he relinquishes the
most important office of the Commanding General, his days will be numbered.
Most observers acknowledge
that in very precarious post 9/11times, Musharraf was successful in
navigating the ship-of-state. On one side was the US pressure to go
after the Taliban, rooted in Afghan-Pashtun tribes that straddle the
highly porous, artificial Afghan-Pakistan border (the Durand line).
It is a relic of British imperialism imposed on the Pashtunes more than
a century ago. On the other side, the Pashtun tribes in NW Pakistan,
used to complete internal autonomy through the centuries, deeply resent
the new heavy hand of the Pakistan government. The Afghan Taliban are
hiding with their tribal kith and kin in the North West Frontier area
of Pakistan, with the bedrock belief that “Blood is thicker than
water”: or in the present context, artificial borders, nations,
money or even a superpower.
With the US invasion of Iraq
on trumped-up charges in March 2003, more and more Pakistanis became
anti-American. Frequent bombings of Pashtunes by the US air power in
south-west Afghanistan, tyrannically killing large number of civilians,
has made the situation explosive. The Americans see it in false, stark
colors of their nebulous all-encompassing war; and the tribal Pashtunes
see it in equally false, reverse colors, as attacks on their families
and tribes. They perceive Musharraf to be an American stooge.
Gradually Musharraf has found
himself losing his grip. Tribesmen accuse him of killing his own people
and have adapted suicide bombings, a deadly new import to Pakistan.
The secular Pakistanis chafing under dictatorship accuse him of failing
to protect Pakistan from the growing reactionary extremism within Pakistan.
Considering the dire situation
in which Pakistan finds itself, Musharraf was reluctantly and tepidly
supported by the Pakistani intelligentsia, in the hope that he will
put the country on a sound footing and return it to democracy. He initially
made some headway maintaining a deft balance, but as always, unable
to deliver the promised panacea, dictators overstay their welcome.
In March of this year, the
specter of the promised elections of 2007 looming, a lawsuit was filed
in the Pakistani Supreme Court that the General can not contest the
election to Presidency unless he resigns the all-powerful position of
the General of the Army. Miffed that the court even entertained such
a case, he fired the Chief Justice on trumped up charges. The legal
profession could bear no more. The lawyers boycotted the courts and
took to the streets. In spite of harsh measures and police firings the
situation was getting out of control, so he backed down, re-instated
the Chief Justice and promised again that he would contest the election
as a civilian.
The US finds itself exposed
again by supporting dictatorship while paying lip service to the propagation
of democracy. Quietly the US pressurized the General through the summer
of 2007, not to mount a coup. The US strung together a formula of Musharraf
sharing power with the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, becoming
the Prime Minister again. The General reluctantly went along.
Just before the elections
in October 2007, a new challenge to the constitutionality of Musharraf's
candidacy to the Presidency was filed in the Supreme Court as he still
held on to the Generalship. The Supreme Court was supposed to render
a verdict this week. It is widely perceived that Musharraf believed
that the verdict will go against him. He could wait no more. Defying
the US pressure, he declared a state of emergency; suspending the Constitution
and thus the opinions of the Supreme Court.
The clock has come full circle.
General Musharraf has decided that the uniform is more important and
has mounted a coup with a promise, yet again, to hold elections for
the National Assembly soon. The Judges that do not take a new oath to
the new realities are being fired. Eleven of the seventeen judges refused
again. The US has tepidly criticized the coup and has urged the General
to reconsider.
There are no quick and easy
solutions. Dictators offer quick perfect solutions that always fail;
democracy offers a difficult, imperfect, winding road to consensual
nation-building. Pakistanis have to decide to trudge through on that
rocky road full of pitfalls as all democracies do.
Considering the quagmire
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush routinely threatening to bomb Iran
every week, the General knows that the US is stuck. It cannot cut off
aid to the Pakistani military to keep them in his camp or else Bush’s
cow-boyish dare of the third World War would be closer. The past is
haunting Pakistan’s future, and Bush’s march of folly has
landed the US foreign policy in the worst fiasco America has ever experienced.
My Pakistani friends find
a modicum of relief in the sardonic humor, "Other countries have
an Army. In Pakistan the Army has a country.
Mirza A. Beg
can be contacted at [email protected] or read this at
http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/
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