Democracy In The Line Of Fire
By Hassan N. Gardezi26 June, 2007
Countercurrents.orgI started with the biggest domestic challenge: having to steer the ship of the state out of troubled waters before it sank. ... Things are moving well now domestically despite external constraints being imposed on me by the West in its demand for "democracy." - Musharraf
When Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s memoir, In the Line of Fire appeared last year it was perhaps dismissed too quickly by progressive readers and commentators as a military ruler's attempt at self promotion.1 Yet, as Pakistan is about to celebrates its 60th anniversary, once again under the rule of a military man, it is worthwhile to revisit his book and try specifically to figure out who this man is, how he rose to power, how his mind works as a military politician, and how does his rule link up with previous military regimes in shaping the kind of political system and the civil society we have in Pakistan today.
Personal Background
After introducing the reader to an exciting episode of attempt on his life in the Epilogue, Musharraf proceeds to describe his early life in the first five chapters of the book. The picture that emerges is that of a youngster growing up in Karachi in the environment of a typical well off family belonging to what sociologist Alavi has described as the educated Muslim "salariat class"of the subcontinent, a large segment of which migrated from India to Pakistan at the time of partition to take advantage of opportunities opened up in the new country, particularly in the state bureaucracy.2 Musharraf’s father was educated at the famous Aligargh Muslim University and was married to the daughter of a Khan Bahadur, the honorary title conferred by the colonial government on some prominent and loyal members of India’s Muslim gentry. So one has to be a bit skeptical when he reminds his readers that "I was more of a commoner..." (pp. 79-80).
As a child Musharraf was sent to the old and well-regarded St. Patrick’s School of Karachi run by Catholic missionaries and also spent some time in Turkey where his father was posted as an accountant in the Pakistan Embassy in Ankara. For college education he was sent to another private institution, the Forman Christian (FC) College, in Lahore run by American missionaries, which attracted "anglicized" and "modern" students according to Musharraf. This college, we are told, is one of the three in Lahore that "have produced many leaders for Pakistan in various fields because they keep their students grounded in native culture and history, quite unlike those boys who went to foreign universities, which have mostly produced political leaders disconnected from Pakistan’s culture and history, leaders who have damaged the country not only with their corruption but also with their alien political and economic philosophies." (pp. 31-32)
Aside from the rather contentious logic of the above sentence, it is hard to imagine how much grounding young Musharraf had in Pakistan’s culture and history as he just "managed to get through" two years of education at FC College. All told there is nothing academically noteworthy in Musharraf’s educational background and he is frank enough to admit that: "If from all this, you have concluded that I was not intensely focused on my studies, you would not be far wrong." (P.34)
In 1961, at the age of 18 Musharraf entered the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA). where he did well as a cadet, particularly in mastering the demanding routines of physical training. Soon after graduating from the PMA, he saw action in the 1965 war with India. As a young officer Musarraf proved his mettle on the front lines and received an award for gallantry. In this war, he writes, "Pakistan gave India a fright and a bloody nose," a common perception among patriotic Pakistanis.
Politician BashingNot much is said about the 1971 lost war with India, but in chapter 7 Musharraf for the first time offers his views on "political developments in Pakistan." These relate to the secession of East Pakistan for which most of the blame is laid on the shoulders of "wily Bhutto." Other reasons mentioned for the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 include, India’s invasion, " with overt help" of the Soviet Union, lack of intervention on behalf of Pakistan by the US "our longtime ally," and "incompetence" of the ruling generals of the time (Yahya Khan and his associates). As for Musharraf himself he was all ready in West Pakistan with his commando company "to seize a bridge about twenty miles (thirty-two kilometers) inside the enemy territory," when to his dismay cease-fire was declared on December 17. (p.54)
Musharraf returns to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s follies in the next chapter. He admits to having "admired" the man once but changed his mind when told by his civil servant brother that "Bhutto was no good and would ruin the country." (p.58) In what appears to be Bhutto-mania in reverse, Musharraf blames the late prime minister for a long list of wrongdoings. He sought ‘raw power" by not reverting to the 1956 constitution (abrogated with the imposition of 1958 martial law) and instead had a new constitution enacted (1973) which curtailed the authority of the president to fire the prime minister; he "ravaged" the economy by "mindless nationalization;" he "destroyed" the country’s institutions "under his brand of so-called Islamic socialism;" and he acted like a "despotic dictator" and was "really a fascist." In addition Bhutto is denounced for throwing many of his opponents in prison and "being first to appease the religious right." To conclude, says Musharraf, "Bhutto was the worst thing that had yet happened to Pakistan," and that he "did more damage to the country than anyone else, damage from which we have still not fully recovered." (p.58)
Bhutto’s style of governance and policy failures as a prime minister have been extensively critiqued by astute political analysts. Musharraf’s intense dislike of the man, once a popular politician, has more to do with his obsession with discrediting civilian political leaders of the country en-block. Bhutto comes in for special rebuke for putting the army establishment in its place, although he did refurbish a very much discredited military very quickly after its1971debacle. Bhutto "is said to have adopted a mocking, belittling attitude toward his own appointee as army chief, Gen. Zia ul-Haq," complains Musharraf. (p.60)
Gen. Zia ul-Haq’s coup of 1977 and his decade long repressive regime is also given some coverage, but unlike the downright and copious condemnation of Bhutto not much is said about the far reaching social and political consequences of Zia dictatorship. A few remarks do occur about his enforcement of the "terrible" punishment of lashings, his alliance with the "religious lobby" and banning of "music and entertainment" from official functions. But little is said about his enduring legacy of victimization of women and minorities through the ordination of so called sharia laws and above all his major contribution to the entrenchment of military’s hegemonic role in the affairs of Pakistani state and society.
Corruption and Militarization
The militarization of the state of Pakistan began in eanest when Gen. (later Field Marshall) Ayub Khan took over in 1958, "as a last bid to save the country," from politicians, such as had survived the encroachment of bureaucrats into high government offices during the first decade of independence.3 The process was interrupted by the events of 1970-71 and election of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as the prime minister of territorially diminished Pakistan, but revived again diligently when military rule was reestablished by Gen. Zia who ousted Bhutto in 1977. Zia proceeded not only to tighten the military’s grip on state power, it was also under his long rule that the military made deep inroads into the spheres of national politics and civil administration, as well as private industry and commerce. Many serving and retired military officers were inducted into the state bureaucracy and others appointed heads of public corporations, administrators of institutions of higher education and board members of private enterprises. The military establishment also began to enter directly into business and production on a massive scale.4
Given this heavy influx of army’s officer crops into the political, administrative and economic spheres of society, it is no longer realistic to conceive of Pakistan’s military establishment functioning by norms of conduct unsullied by pervasive corruptions that every coup maker from Gen. Ayub Khan to Gen. Pervez Musharraf has attributed to "politicians"and other civilian functionaries.
Nevertheless, Musharraf believes that: "The pattern in my country has been repetitive: elected officials have been vulnerable to corruption and create conditions that lead to an army takeover, ..." (p.71). While making this observation he is certainly not speaking from the detached distance of his army command posts. His own narrative that follows is a chronicle of how both the military and civilian elite that rule Pakistan interact in the same social and political milieu. They communicate with each other officially and unofficially, share their political agendas, compete for political power, discuss business, socialize at the wedding parties of their offspring, harbor similar personal grudges and professional rivalries, and also gossip about each other through their spouses. The following excerpts indicate how readily the army GHQ becomes the hub of political activity drawing the civil and military elite together whenever conditions are ripe for a regime change:
"In 1995 I was promoted to lieutenant general and posted to Mangla to command the elite strike corps of the Pakistan Army. As a corps commander I was automatically part of army’s highest decision-making body - the Corps Commanders’ Conference. I saw then how national personalities from all professions - including opposition politicians - regularly visited the army chief to encourage him to oppose the sitting government. I also came to know of many peoples’ political agendas. Whenever a government was performing poorly (unfortunately that was the norm in the "democratic" decade of the 1990s) or was in political trouble, all roads led to the army GHQ." (p.77)
Again we read on another page:
"It is not unusual in Pakistan for the general public and the intelligentsia to approach the army chief and ask him to save the nation. In all crises, everyone sees Pakistan’s army as the country’s savior. Whenever governments have malfunctioned (as has frequently occurred), whenever there has been a tussle between the president and the prime minister (especially during the 1990s) all roads lead to the general headquarters of the army. The army chief was regularly expected to put pressure on the prime minister to perform - to avoid corruption, nepotism, and sometimes downright criminality. The army chief was also dragged in to mediate all disputes between the president and the prime minister." (p. 137)
These are supposedly insider observations which the author makes in particular reference to what he calls the "dreadful decade" of "sham democracy," the post-Zia interregnum of civilian rule between November 1988 and October 1999. During this period Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif of the Muslim League (MLN) each served twice alternately as elected prime minister, and each was ousted twice by presidential decree or intervention by the army chief without being able to complete their full terms of office.
Soldiering Into Politics
What Musharraf does not acknowledge here is that much more was going on behind the scenes during this period besides the regular visits to the army GHQ by national personalities and opposition politicians. The military high command, greatly enhanced in its political and economic clout, was itself keeping the situation under close watch while constantly interfering with the post-Zia democratic transition in order to make sure that no elected government, not the least one led by Bhutto’s PPP, will emerge strong enough to challenge the military’s newfound sphere of power and privilege or undo its policies put in place for internal governance and external relations. Not only sitting governments were being deposed, the army’s most insidious intelligence service known as ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) was actively manipulating election outcomes, engineering alliances among political factions and supporting individual candidates acceptable to the army GHQ.
General Zia’s unmitigated military rule had left the 1973 parliamentary constitution deformed beyond recognition through numerous amendments, especially the 8th one which gave the president power to dismiss the prime minister and dissolve the parliament. The army had been thoroughly politicized and its defacto power over the affairs of the state vastly increased. In Musharraf’s own words:
"During these eleven years, every army chief - there were four of them - eventually clashed with the prime minister. The head of the government invariably got on the wrong side of the president and the army chief. Advice to Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto fell on deaf ears, leading every time to confrontation." (p. 78)
In other words by 1990s the chiefs of Pakistan army had become accustomed to counseling the elected prime ministers and requiring compliance to their advice, resistance to which brought confrontations. Although this mode of intervention by the army chief in the governance of the country is not sanctioned by the constitution, even after all the amendments introduced into it since 1977, it did put the elected prime ministers on the defensive and drove them to function under constant fear of imminent reversion to military rule.
When Nawaz Sharif was elected prime minister for the second time in 1997 he had, in Musharraf’s words, "a brute two-thirds majority in the National Assembly." (p.162) He first used this majority to rescind Gen. Zia’s 8th amendment to the constitution which had given the president power to dismiss the prime minister and dissolve the parliament. In Musharraf’s view this was a bad move because it " removed the safety valve that could get rid of corrupt and inapt governments without the intervention of the army." (p. 85) Secondly, Nawaz Sharif is said to have forced the incumbent army chief of staff, Gen. Jahangir Karamat’s resignation, allegedly for making a speech at the Naval Staff College criticizing the government and suggesting the establishment of a national security council.
Musharraf writes that he was "shocked" at the "meek manner" in which the army chief tendered his resignation. It also "caused great resentment in the army, as soldiers and officers alike felt humiliated." (p. 84) But much more intriguing is the less than transparent manner in which Musharraf himself was appointed to replace Gen. Karamat as the army chief. He describes this episode with much relish and without any qualms, the gist of which follows.
The Beginning of the End
On the night of October 7, 1998 while watching TV and unaware of Gen. Karamat’s resignation, Musharraf received a surprise telephone call at his residence in Mangla that Nawaz Sharif wished to see him and that he should come to Islamabad immediately without letting Gen. Karamat know anything about his visit. He "sensed that there was something abnormal afoot," but took off for Islamabad with his military police escort. As his car was entering Islamabad he received another call from an ISI brigadier and a friend who congratulated him and told him that Gen Karamat had resigned and "you are being made chief." On hearing this news, says Musharraf, his "mind raced back" to several corps commanders’ meetings at the GHQ a few months ago when a tussle was going on between prime minister Nawaz Sharif and president Farooq Lagharai, and the chief of the army had to decide what action to take in the matter. He recalled how he had stood up for democracy and favored the prime minister who was now in the position of appointing the army chief of staff. Another lieutenant general, Ali Kuli Khan, who was higher in the seniority list, strongly favored the president, a friend of his, who was then empowered to appoint the army chief of staff. Musharraf also remembered at this point how "color had drained from Lieutenant General Ali Kuli’s face" when he learned that his friend, the president, had lost his power to appoint the army chief with the annulment of the 8th amendment to the constitution and how a desperate Ali Kuli had called for the imposition of martial law in the country, a proposal rejected by the army chief Gen. Karamat.
These thoughts still in his mind Musharraf entered the office of the prime minister in Islamabad and found him "sitting on a sofa and smiling a victorious smile." (p.84) His entry was followed by a warm meeting between the two as Nawaz Sharf appointed him the new army chief. After this exciting meeting, says Musharraf, he "saluted the prime minister and left." First he called on Gen. Karamat at the Army House to express his regrets at his resignation, and then called his wife and parents to convey the good news of his promotion as army chief which they were thrilled to hear. His only disappointment was that Lt. Gen. Ali Kuli Khan announced his retirement from the army forthwith, rather than being "glad that his friend was appointed chief." To all those in the army who were full of resentment over the forced resignation of Gen. Karamat, he offered the pragmatic advice "to stop brooding and ... get on with the job."
Whatever this episode means personally to Musharraf, it certainly does not appear to be a normal procedure for the appointment of an army chief by an executive head of the state. Nawaz Sharif in this case sets out to appoint the chief of his armed forces in his capacity as prime minister. Normally, one would think, it should be a matter of picking out the senior most military officer for the job, in consultation with the outgoing chief of the army, and issuing a government notification to that affect. But what we find is that the incumbent army chief has been "forced" to resign, in hushed up conditions, because of a speech he made offering "suggestions about how to improve the governance of the country," which put him on the wrong side of the prime minister. The process of his replacement that follows turns out to be even more enigmatic. The secretive phone calls, the late night meeting, the victorious smile on the face of Nawaz Sharif, are all suggestive of a devious political game being played rather than a transparent executive decision being made.
It is hard to believe that the real significance of this staged act was lost on Musharraf. It is quite obvious that Nawaz Sharif was trying to impress upon him that he was being chosen for the job over Ali Kuli Khan as a special favor which he must return by staying loyal to the prime minister and not doing anything to subvert his government. In other words it was a political appointment which, of course, is not unusual in Pakistan’s history. All elected civilian prime ministers ever since Ayub Khan’s first military coup have tried to chose an army chief who is not the most senior or best qualified among the officer corps, but the one perceived to be the most pliant and obsequious in character. Nawaz Sharif did the same according to his wits and his style.
However, a relationship which was founded on bonds of wishful personal loyalties rather than objectively shared professional commitments and division of labor, soon got mired in games of "he loves me, he loves me not," giving rise to suspicions of betrayal and perfidy. In the beginning, says Musharraf, my relationship with the prime minister was "perfectly good." He writes that "I did my best to be cooperative as army chief." But the very language used to describe such cooperation betrays the fact that this army chief too was prone more to intrude into matters of governing the country rather then doing his own job for which he had been trained. For example, he says:
"I regularly asked Nawaz Sharif how the army could help to improve his sagging government." (p. 137)
"I had ventured to advise him several times how to improve his government." (p. 137)
"In October 1999, the nation was fast headed toward economic and political collapse. Under these trying circumstances, I was working to shore up the prime minister and help him perform better. It is unfortunate that he distrusted my good intentions. ... His misplaced perception of my loyalty, coupled with the suspicion that I was planning a coup, must have led to Nawaz Sharif’s paranoia." (pp. 137-38)
Wherever the nation was headed toward in October 1999, it is clear that Musharraf’s constant intrusion into the sphere of prime minister’s duties was having little effect other than breeding mutual distrust and suspicions. Their relations had reached a point where each was afraid that the other was planning to get rid of him. Some anecdotes narrated by Musharraf in retrospect on this situation make quite an engaging reading:
"Mrs. Ziauddin, the wife of the officer who was supposed to replace me , asked another officer’s wife about the deportment expected of a chief’s spouse. In the presence of the wife of a major general, one of Ziauddin’s relatives asked about the difference in ranks worn by a full general compared to a lieutenant general." (p. 109)
"I had already conveyed an indirect warning to the prime minister through several intermediaries: "I am not Jahangir Karamat." My predecessor had retired quietly ..." (p.110)"Slowly but surely Nawaz Sharif was being fed information to make him paranoid about me by people who stood to gain from my exit. He was constantly being told that I was going to remove him." (p. 110)
What one can conclude from these extracts is that in the absence of an established professional code of conduct, working relationship between the prime minister and his army chief, as well as within the army high command, were being shaped by gossip and hearsay. In the end Nawaz Sharif tried to appease Musharraf by resorting to the same kind of personalized approach hat he had used at the time of elevating him to the position of army chief. He invited Musharraf and his wife to "accompany him and his wife to Mecca for pilgrimage" and to have a family dinner with him before departure for the holy land. At the dinner was also present Nawaz Sharif’s brother Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab province, and the event was presided over by their father, Abbaji. During the dinner Abbaji is said to have made a long and uninterrupted speech narrating his life experiences at the end of which he turned to Musharraf and said, "You are also my son, and these two sons of mine dare not speak against you. If they do, they will be answerable to me." (p.113)
Musharraf writes that he was only "embarrassed," by all this which he thought "was quite a charade." At the same time he was enforcing his own code of personal loyalties within the army high command. He suspected Lt. Gen. Tariq Pervez of being the source of leaked information that the army chief was planning to carry out a coup. Sometime after the dinner with Abbaji, the prime minister’s brother, Shahbaz, came to see him and in Musharraf’s words, "I told him to tell his brother two things. One, I would not agree to give up my present position of chief of army staff ... Two, I was recommending the retirement of the corps commander in Quetta, Lieutenant General Tariq Pervez. He was ill disciplined, and I suspected him of plotting against me. The problem was that TP, as he was known in the army, was brother-in-law of one of Nawaz Sharif’s ministers and was using his influence ..." (p.112)
Whatever Nawaz Sharif’s covert intentions may have been in his dealings with Musharraf, in the open he was ready to go to any extent to please him. When presented with papers from the army chief’s office to retire PT, he simply signed them. This would appear to be a gross violation of fair play and due process, the cardinal principles of better governance so ardently advocated by Musharraf. If the army chief was there to make the prime minister "perform better," who was there to check the performance of the army chief,? one wonders.The Kargil Crisis
Ironically, it was Nawaz Sharif who found himself in the midst of an international crisis for not being able or willing to keep his army chief’s activities under check. Musharaff writes that it was the Kargil conflict which initially "soured" his relations with the prime minister. He devotes a whole chapter in his book on this issue in order to vindicate himself and shift all the blame for the Kargil crisis onto Nawaz Sharif.
Kargil, a small town on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LOC) is located in the frigid high mountains of northern Kashmir. According to Musharraf’s narrative, in early 1999 "Kashmiri freedom fighting mujahideen occupied the Kargil heights that the Indian army had vacated for the winter." When Indian soldiers returned to their posts in early summer, Musharraf had already moved several battalions of troops belonging to Northern Light Infantry (NLI), a paramilitary force not fully integrated in the Pakistan army, in "support" of the mujahideen. As he puts it, "Our field commanders were fully engaged in supporting them in the face of growing momentum of the Indian operations." In practical terms, this "growing momentum of the Indian operations" amounted to a massive Indian air and ground attack by "more than four divisions" of the Indian army to expel "five battalions" of Pakistan’s NLI troops from their side of LOC. They "also started crossing over and bombarding positions of the Pakistan army," says Musharraf. Outnumbered and outgunned the mujahideen and the supporting soldiers from Pakistan were being picked one by one by the Indian fire. Nevertheless, Musharaf remained convinced that his fighters will be able to repel the "disproportionate" Indian assault. He insists that by July 4, the day cease-fire was declared, the Indians "did achieve some success, which I would consider insignificant. Our troops were fully prepared to hold our dominating positions ahead of the watershed." (p.93)
In the meantime, the world leaders were getting very alarmed by this bloody flare-up which they feared could lead to a nuclear war between the two South Asian rivals. There was "intense international pressure" on Nawaz Sharif, according to Musharraf’s own admission, and there was talk about Pakistan army being a "rogue army." (p. 95)On July 3, Nawaz Sharif flew to Washington to address President Clinton’s concerns about the situation, but not before asking his army chief one more time: "Should we accept a cease-fire and a withdrawal?" Musharraf writes that his " answer was the same: the military situation is favourable; the political decision has to be his own." (p. 97)
In Washington on July 4, as one can recall, President Clinton confronted Nawaz Sharif with satellite surveillance pictures showing a massive buildup of Indian war machine on Pakistan’s international borders and the prime minister, no less a "patriot" than Musharraf one would assume, realized that withdrawal was the only alternative to another devastating all-out war with India. He agreed to cease-fire and withdrawal from the Kargil heights. But Musharraf in his book protests: "He went off and decided on a cease-fire. It remains a mystery to me why he was in such a hurry."(p. 97)
Yet, Nawaz Sharif’s going off to Washinton and negotiating a cease-fire was no more of a mystery than Field Marshall Ayub Khan’s taking off to Tashkent to negotiate the end of 1965 war with India. The problem is that in launching the Kargil operation Musharraf, and a few of his commanders he had taken into confidence, had learned nothing from the past mistakes. He claims that the operation he initiated "on the snow clad peaks and in the boulder ridden valleys of the Northern Areas" was "a tactical marvel of military professionalism." What he does not realize is that this "marvel" was merely a thoughtless repetition of the same old and failed strategy the venerable Field Marshall had employed in Kashmir in the August of 1965, touching off an all-out war with India. It was the same old story of reliance on volunteer militant fighters, now available ready-made in all shapes and forms of mujahideen zealots, to cross the LOC in Kashmir, followed by deployment of regular troops, followed by denials when the other side turned the heat on, and the whole operation undertaken without a full and sober assessment of its military, political and international-diplomatic consequences.
Why did Musharraf not oppose the cease-fire at the time it was negotiated, if he was so sure that it was a bad idea, and left the "political decision" to the prime minister? Here is a rather implausible explanation:
"As the chief of the army staff, I found myself in a very difficult position. I wanted to explain the military situation, to demonstrate how successful we had been and point out political mishandling that had caused so much despair. But that would have been disloyal, and very unsettling for the political leaders." (p. 95)
Coming from a self-assured politician-bashing general, it certainly is an odd statement. What seems closer to truth is that the reckless Kargil operation, undertaken secretively in disregard of its grave political and security consequences for Pakistan and the region, had raised a storm of criticism in both the domestic and foreign media, as is also evident from Musharraf’s own complaint that: "All kinds of carefully placed articles had appeared, including a one page advertisement in a newspaper in the United States, maligning the army and creating a divide between it and the government." (p.137) Any attempt to justify what he had done would have prolonged the questioning of his judgement and his competence as chief of the army. That seems to be the real reason which kept him quiet in the immediate aftermath of the Kargil crisis.
While writing in retrospect, from his secure presidential perch, Musharraf can afford to be himself again, a military general with overflowing confidence. And that is what is really important for a proper assessment of what his rule, or military rule in general, means for Pakistan. Quoting Richard Nixon, Musharraf says that a leader must never "suffer paralysis through analysis." (p. 131) This is surely not a very reassuring precept coming from someone who leads a modern state.
The Case of Balochistan
A specific example of this narrow militaristic approach to complex domestic issues is also encountered in Musharraf’s thinking on the current political unrest in Balochistan and methods adopted by his regime to contain that unrest. He writes:
"Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province in area but smallest in population. It is also the most backward. ... Ninety-five percent of Balochistan is administratively a "B area," where the government does not exercise total authority and the local sirdar or chief plays an important role. Only 5 percent is an "A area," which comes under the regular government. A few of the sirdars in B area have been manipulating and blackmailing every Pakistani government for decades, using militant mercenaries that they maintain as their local militia forces. They have also kept their own tribes suppressed under their iron grip through indiscriminate use of force. I have taken upon myself to convert all the B areas into A areas and establish the government writ there." (p.59)
This is indeed a stark depiction of a complex political and social problem. Shorn of its colonial and historical accretions, the persistent Baloch demand for political autonomy and control over their natural resources is simply reduced to the problem of enforcing the government’s writ. And as is common knowledge, that enforcement is being accomplished through a massive military and para-military operation, third of its kind in Balochistan since independence and perhaps the most brutal. On top of it innumerable complaints are being voiced about human rights violations and "disappearances." All this is bound to be counterproductive, as past experiences with domestic military operations have shown. If the problem was just to convert B areas into A areas, that objective could have been achieved more peacefully and effectively by extending to all the people of Balochistan their entitlements to full citizenship, such as adequate means of livelihood, education, health care, electricity, communication and transportation services, thereby raising their sense of identification with the nation and the national government. Unfortunately, today there are more military and paramilitary soldiers posted in Balochistan than there are teachers at all levels of educational institutions.
In fact, what is happening in Balochistan today is part of a continuous process of building the Pakistani state into a highly centralized, unitary and authoritarian political structure in which the army establishment has come to play a decisive role. Such a political structure remains impervious to the basic needs of people, operates in a neo-colonial framework and is inimical to pluralistic democracy.
Who Rules Pakistan?
There is an interesting chapter in Musharraf’s book in which the author picks up the question of why democracy has "eluded Pakistan since its birth in 1947." He starts out by defining democracy with textbook precision as "rule by the people." This is followed by an undisputable observation that: "What we in Pakistan have consciously created instead is rule by a small elite - never democratic, often autocratic, usually plutocratic, and lately kleptocratic - all working with a tribal- feudal mind-set, ..." (p.154) But then he makes a strategic omission in his next statement: "This small elite comprises feudal barons, tribal warlords, and politicians of all hues." Missing conspicuously from this statement are the army generals who have ruled Pakistan directly and indirectly over most of its history. They could, of course, be included with some justification, in any of the categories of feudal barons, warlords, or politicians of all hues, but that is not what is intended. The generals are said to be the monitors of good government who occasionally stage military coups to "save the nation."
In reality, however, the generals have not only ruled Pakistan for extended periods of time, they have shown a great appetite for politics and political engineering of "what we in Pakistan have consciously created. ..." It was General Ayub Khan, who first swept aside whatever the civilian politicians had accomplished in the first decade of independence and started out afresh "to establish political institutions and stable instruments of government."5 Even before he took over the reigns of government, he was obsessed with thoughts of doing something with the political "problem" in the country. On a sleepless night in October 1954, he sat up in a hotel room in London and wrote a document on how the people of Pakistan shall be governed.6 The document was later incorporated in the constitution of Pakistan when he took over, putting the country on the road to "controlled democracy" and a powerful unitary state.
Each subsequent military ruler has made his own contribution to enhancing the power of the central state over its citizens and its constituent units. When Musharraf took over as head of the state he too set himself a political agenda with two major priorities laid out in his book, first, to "instutionalize" the army establishment’s defacto role and power in conducting the affairs of the state, and secondly to centralize state power in the federal government on the pattern of militaristic hierarchy of control and command.In support of his first project, he starts out by asserting that there are "three power brokers" in Pakistan’s political system, the army, the president and the prime minister, and affirms that: "Imposing checks and balances on the three power brokers of the country was always high on my agenda." (p.170) Although the power of all the three is to be checked and balanced, his argument revolves mainly on the need to check the prime minister’s power in order to make him "govern better." Referring to the interregnum of civilian democracy between 1988-1999, he writes:
"It almost invariably happened that the prime minister would refuse to listen, and this refusal would lead to intense acrimony between him and the president or even the army chief. This invariably resulted either in dissolution of the assembly by the president or, once the power of the president to dissolve the Assembly was removed, the danger of the imposition of martial law by the army chief." (p.170)
In order for the country to escape that "danger"in future, Musharraf proposed and got enacted, by a simple majority vote of the National Assembly, the establishment of a National Security Council (NSC), on which are represented " four men in uniform," the three army, navy, air force chiefs and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee . The Council is to meet regularly and keep pressure on the prime minister to "perform," which will help "sustain democracy and avoid martial law." Musharraf also argues that there will be no need for the army chief to remove the prime minister and take over "because he has an institution available to voice his concerns (and the concerns of a worried people) to the prime minister and can then allow the constitution and the political process to take its course." (p.171) Some consolation indeed, for the future prime ministers.The reader is also assured that the NSC is to be a "consultative body" only. However, one cannot help but note that the raison d’etre behind the NSC is army’s monopoly over the coercive power of the state which it has used in the past to overthrow elected civilian governments, not withstanding the after-the-fact rationalizations (the imminent destruction of the country, the doctrine of necessity and its various versions). On the other hand, the president and the prime minister derive their power and its limits from the constitution which Gen. Zia once dubbed as a mere "piece of paper." One can take Musharraf’s word for it, but the "consultative" role of the NSC with four men in uniform on it can indeed be quite formidable and intimidating, to say the least.
Musharraf’s second political project of centralizing power in the federal state appears aspoint 2 of his seven point political agenda, announced shortly after his 1999 coup, which states: ‘Strengthen the federation, remove interprovincial disharmony and restore national cohesion. (p.149) However, there is no proposal in his book specifically aimed at structural changes in the existing relations of power between the center and the federating units, highly centralized as they already are. What we have is a plan to "devolve power to the grass roots," which seeks to forge direct links between the central government and the local level administrations, bypassing the provincial governments. According to Musharraf, "Pakistan has had a central (federal) government and large regional(provincial) governments, but the local affairs have been either unregulated or managed by the provincial governments." (p.172)
His Local Government Ordinance, 2000 creates a three tier administrative structure of elected bodies , the District Council, the sub-district or tehsil Council and a multi-village Union Council, each headed by a nazim or administrator. The delivery of services and public goods are transferred from the provincial governments to the district administrations, and direct budgetary allocations can be made to the district and lower level bodies by both the central and provincial governments.
It has been a usual practice for Pakistan’s military rulers to fall back on projects of local level democracy after overthrowing the elected national governments in order to claim popular legitimacy for their rule, Yahya Khan’s short lived rule being an exception. Ayub Khan crafted "Basic Democracy" as a truly indigenous form of Pakistani democracy. Zia ul-Haq relied on the holding of party-less local bodies’ elections to shore up his democratic credentials and Musharraf points to his Local Government Ordinance (LGO) to project himself as a true democrat. All have a record restricting the jurisdiction of provincial governments, and suppressing movements of provincial autonomy with military force. Ayub conducted such army opperations in Balochistan, Yahya in East Bengal when it was part of Pakistan, Zia in Sindh, and now Musharraf again in Balochistan.
While Musharraf takes much credit for having introduced grass roots democracy with his LGO the implementation of which he calls a "silent revolution" on the authority of World Bank (p. 151), he is also compulsively attracted to a militaristic, hierarchal power structure in governing the country. He contends that Pakistan was in "dire need of unity of command," by which he means a "single authority," not only in the political system but also over above the bureaucracy and the military. (p. 177) Interestingly enough he considers his military uniform as the symbol of that unity of command and single authority. He admits quite candidly that he had given "verbal commitment to retire from the army and remove my uniform by December 2004," but realizing the gravity of the domestic and international situation, particularly "the war against terror,"he came to realize that "removing my uniform would dilute my authority and command at a time when both were required most." (pp. 176-177) Referring to the concerns abroad about military’s involvement in politics, he says: "I am still struggling to convince the West that Pakistan is more democratic today than it ever was. Ironically, to become so it needed me in uniform." (p.333)
Overview
Musharraf is fourth in the line of army chiefs of Pakistan who have ruled the country directly as heads of the state. His memoir can be read as the summation of how these men have charted the direction in which Pakistan’s political system has evolved, with the army located at the center of its structure of power and privilege.
It is claimed by this president in uniform that the army is "the last institution of stability left in Pakistan."(p. 149) Perhaps no one will dispute that army has emerged as the only institution in Pakistan that can claim stability, and has established its defacto power in the political economy of Pakistan . The question is how did the army achieve that kind of exclusive stability and power, and whether it is conducive to the long term survival of Pakistan as a democratic state? According to Musharraf’ narrative, corruption of the politicians who are elected to exercise legislative and executive power lies at the root of military’s ascendency. At some point when the political and financial corruption of the politicians gets out of hand, the military as an honest broker springs to action, removes the incumbent government, and "saves the nation."
But corruption is by no means the exclusive endowment of the Pakistani politician. Political and financial corruption in inherent in the political economy of capitalism, although it can be more blatant and visible in countries like Pakistan where property relations of capitalism are underdeveloped.
To check or contain the ubiquitous problem of corruption, stable capitalist democracies provide for an independent and constitutionally empowered judiciary as one of the three branches of the state, the other two being the executive and the legislative. The concept of Checks and balances applies to these three branched of the state, not to the so called "three power brokers" as conceived by Musharraf. Army is only part of the executive branch of the state whose job is to take orders from the incumbent government and defend the territorial borders of the state.
So long as Pakistan’s military high command continues to cross the boundaries of its constitutionally allocated role and preempts the judiciary from performing its functions, setting itself up as the "savior of the nation," so long as the army chief does not learn to accept orders from the constitutionally recognized executive head of the state and instead tries to impose his counsel on him or takes military action to displace him, and so long as the army establishment continues to spread its tentacles into the political sphere and manipulate the process of elections to the legislature, the army will indeed be "the only institution of stability left in Pakistan. The rest of the instititutions, the foundations of a modern democratic stare - an exacutive that rules by consent and not commamd, a legislature that represents all the people and a judiciary that understands and upholds the rule of law - will either wither away or exist in a crippled and corrupt form. Unfortunately, in that case, there will also be no end to the crisis of governance in Pakistan.
End Notes:
1. Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, London, Simon and Shuster, 2006
2. Hamza Alawi, "Ethnicity, Muslin Society and Pakistan Ideology," in Anita Weiss, (ed), Islamic Reassertion in Pakistan, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1986.
3. Muhammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters: A Political Autoiography, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 70.
4. Ayesha Siddiqa, MilitaryInc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2007.
5. Muhammad Ayub Khan, Frienda Not Masters, p. vii.
Ibid, pp. 186-192.
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