Another Coup In
The 'Land Of The Pure'By Tarek Fatah
06 November, 2007
National Post, Canada
Every country has an army, but in Pakistan the army has a country. I was only eight when the first Pakistani military coup took place in 1958. Field Marshal Ayub Khan stepped in to ensure the country's centre-left secularists would not win the upcoming elections. The spectre of communism was enough to ensure that U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower would give his blessings to the new military power. Pakistan has not looked back since then.
I was not even 18 when the second coup took place. I was the secretary-general of the National Students Federation that organized protests calling for an end to military rule. I was thrown in jail with others from the student federation for our troubles.
Most of us who were born in the "Land of the Pure" have gotten used to men in uniform bullying their countrymen into submission. But what happened in Pakistan last week was unique, even by Pakistani standards. General Pervez Musharraf -- who staged a coup in 1999 overthrowing an elected government and proclaimed himself president of the country -- staged yet another military coup on Saturday, this time to forestall any future possibility of a challenge to his power.
What differs today from 1958 is justification; the spectre of communism has been replaced by the spectre of Islamic extremism.
There is another difference of note. The Pakistani Armed Forces of 1958 and that of 2007 are vastly different entities. The professional army led by Sandhurst-trained officers in 1958 has been replaced by a vast military-industrial machine that is led by a network of immensely wealthy officers commanding a million men recruited from the poorest of the poor. They are ill fed, ill-equipped and demoralized.
When the Pakistani President claims that Pakistan has sacrificed nearly 1,000 soldiers in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, he is referring to the ordinary Pakistan " sipahi," not the officer who treats these men like latter day slaves. Pakistani officers have rarely fought in battles. Earlier this year when a colonel, two majors and 300 troops were confronted with a dozen jihadis, the Pakistani colonel surrendered without a fight.
So why does Musharraf want to cling to office? The answer lies in the massive US$20-billion business operations ranging from corn flakes to cement production, from missile production to municipal taxation, that the Pakistani Armed Forces are involved in.
Pakistani analyst Ayesha Siddiqa writing in her book, Military Inc., notes that General Musharraf alone has real estate holdings of over US$10-million. His only job has been that of an army officer. Her book is banned in Pakistan. The country's military is more of a holding company that runs businesses, hotels, shopping malls, insurance companies, banks, farms and an airline as well.
For 50 years the Pakistan Armed Forces have justified their interventions by depicting civilians as incompetent and corrupt and insisting that only they have the capacity and capability of managing the country of 150 million people.
When Gen. Musharraf tramples over democracy, the judiciary and human rights, it is not just Pakistanis who suffer; we in the West lose in the battle of ideas. Musharraf 's actions feed into the propaganda of the Islamists who maintain that democracy is nothing more than a tool of the West to force our values on Islam.
As long as ordinary Pakistanis see the West support a dictator and position him as a champion of liberalism and moderation, they are more likely to support the extremist jihadi doctrine than the road to moderation and liberalism. For the sake of the security of Canada and the West, we must end our backing of Musharraf. As a first step, Canada should bar Pakistan Army officers and their families from taking up residence here.Tarek Fatah, a former student activist in his native Pakistan, is founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress.
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