Seven things we should not do to help the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

The general elections may be around the corner, but Pakistan continues to careen dangerously out of control. Specific incidents and events are not the issue, but the totality of developments that have been taking place, beginning last year.
A convenient date would be March 9, 2007, the fateful day on which President Pervez Musharraf began his ill-advised campaign to edge out Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from the country’s Supreme Court. This enraged the community of lawyers, who have since led the civil protest movement against Musharraf.
Parallel to this, the general also managed to botch up the Lal Masjid situation. The mosque, located near the ISI headquarters in Islamabad, had a reputation for radicalism since the time of Zia ul Haq. It had links with the North West Frontier Province because it drew a number of its students from there. The mosque was used by radicals who railed against Musharraf’s US policy and even called for his assassination, yet he failed to act against it. In early 2007, students of the mosque’s two madarsas — one for men and the other for women — began to enforce a puritanical law in parts of Islamabad. They shut down video shops and assaulted people they said were involved in immoral activities.
Finally in July 2007, Musharraf sent in the army. A bitter clash took place, leaving scores dead. While the senior imam of the mosque was captured, his younger brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed. The army action led to the breakdown of a truce between the Pakistan army and anti-government tribesmen in North and South Waziristan, and a spate of suicide bombings aimed at Pakistani army personnel, and even the ISI.
Musharraf’s meltdown has led to a great deal of nervousness across the world. Concerns over the safety of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal have been voiced in the US and India. But New Delhi has few options beyond tailing the US. For the present the Pakistan army remains a strong force and is unlikely to take kindly to any Indian intervention. Yet there are things that India can do to help Pakistan. But first New Delhi must understand that there are things it must not do to help Islamabad.

First, see Pakistan as a basket case. It is easy when you are up in South Asia, to see the other as down and out. It was just the other day, in the early 1990s, when in their arrogance of having helped the US win the jehad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Islamabad thought India could be brought low by supporting separatist movements. In the wake of the 1989 elections, India was indeed in bad shape, its polity shot to hell, separatist movements taking roots in key states like Punjab and its economy in a shambles. The ISI could have been excused for thinking that one more push would have India come apart. But it did not. So, let’s be clear that Pakistan is not about to keel over, just as India was not at that time.

Second, New Delhi must not delay its internal negotiations with Kashmiri parties on the issue of autonomy or whatever. In the past year, while Musharraf has grappled with the judiciary and the mullahs, the India-Pakistan talks have maintained their formal continuity. But there has been little forward movement. But there is one element in which India does not need to involve Pakistan — the issue of internal democracy in Jammu & Kashmir. Addressing the second round table meet on Kashmir in May 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that the first task was to see “what are those political institutions and arrangements which can strengthen the relationship between the Centre and the state.” In line with this he had set up a working group under former Justice Saghir Ahmad to come up with a report on the issue of autonomy or self-rule. Though four other working groups on issues relating to economy and cross-border trade have finished their reports, little or nothing has been heard about the workings of the autonomy group.

Third, India must not demand that the US and other countries accept Indian primacy in South Asia. This is a mug’s game. Indian primacy cannot be got by request or grant. It is an existential fact. Anyone who tries to deny it — like Pakistan has in the past 60 years — has had his head buried firmly in the sand.

Fourth, India must not pander to Pakistan's sense of entitlement on Kashmir or Afghanistan. Islamabad has no locus standi in J&K and we must deal with it as such. There are issues that have arisen in the wake of the Pakistan-engineered tribal invasion in 1947 — the creation of Azad Kashmir, the UN resolutions and the no-man's land status of the Northern Areas — that need to be worked out through negotiations, but not the status of the state.
In normal times — and you can count the period 1947-1979 as “normal” in the context of Pakistan-Afghanistan affairs — the relationship between the two was positively chilly. New Delhi need not insert itself into the equation to deny Pakistan what it did not have in the first place — a pliant Afghanistan. Pakistan’s ability to “manage” Afghanistan of the Taliban era was strictly limited. Islamabad is learning now that the seemingly barbarian Taliban were shrewder than the ISI thought. Instead of Pakistan getting strategic depth, it is the Taliban which has obtained it in the NWFP, Balochistan and Swat at the expense of the Pakistani central authority.

Fifth, we must not encourage fissiparous trends in Pakistan. In other words, do unto Islamabad what Islamabad has been doing to us. As long as Pakistan remains together even in a tattered form, there is hope that it can be repaired. But if it falls apart like Yugoslavia, there will be little chance of putting it back together again. To say that such a development would be counter-productive would be to make an understatement.

Sixth, New Delhi must not privilege the Pakistan Army over the mainstream political parties and civil society in the country. It is one thing to deal with the army when it wields power, it is quite another thing to be happy about it. India's strategic position must always be that the final settlement on anything will have to be with a democratically elected government. India’s relations with Musharraf have been quite proper, and they should continue to be so as long as he is the head of the government. But New Delhi needs to clearly put across the message that while it deals with the army, it does so at sufferance, and not because it thinks that the army is the only viable political institution in the country, because it is not. Fortunately, Musharraf’s own actions have brought this message home to Pakistan far more effectively than through anything that India could have done.

Seventh, we must not give up on Pakistan. It is tempting to say “The hell with you”, redouble the border fence, strengthen the army and maintain bare minimum relations with our western neighbour. This is not an option. While we need not worry about millions streaming across the border from a failed state, we need to understand that “shining” or “incredible” India will not be going anywhere if its neighbours, in this case Pakistan, do not go with it. A Great Power does not have the option of turning its back on failing neighbours.

In the meantime, the new army chief in Pakistan can take six steps to set things right: Get the president to resign, restore the Supreme Court and higher judiciary, set up a neutral caretaker government, get all-party consent for a neutral commission and then hold the elections.

The article was published in Mail Today February 12, 2008

Islamabad versus Pakistan

Pervez Musharraf's predicament is not new. He has bent the Constitution, broken promises, and not paid political debts. The country seems to want the payment for the next set of promises upfront, ie. before it re-elects him President. This article appeared in Hindustan Times May 16, 2007

There comes a time in the life of every political leader when things pall, words and gestures that once fascinated appear flat and tested techniques of teasing public opinion lose traction. When this happens in the democratic world, the leader is replaced, sometimes mid-stream, as in the case of Tony Blair. In other cases, there are term limits that ensure that the once wildly popular leaders, like George W Bush who have lost it, are quietly put to pasture. But what does a dictator like General Pervez Musharraf do?

The very act of toppling a civilian government and seizing power meant that he has decided to ride a tiger, and getting off one, it is said, is never easy. Two of his predecessors, Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, were effectively eased out of office and ended their lives in comfortable retirement. Zia-ul-Haq died in harness, though in an accident, or by assassination, we will never know. Musharraf, for one, is signalling that as of now he does not contemplate retirement from either his post as President or Chief of Army Staff.

But this is crunch time, and not just because of a wildcard in the form of a Chief Justice who refuses to play ball. Ever since he seized power in October 1999, he has managed through a variety of semi-legal devices, and a string of broken promises, to buy time till 2007 to remain President. The promise to doff the uniform by December 2004 has been long forgotten. But to continue as President after October 2007, he needs more than just promises and sleight of hand. How he manages to do this will have huge implications for Pakistan, as well as its various friends and foes — India, Afghanistan, the US and so on.

As dictators go, Musharraf has been a fairly mild one, his only major failing an overweening conceit. He set himself up as ‘Chief Executive’, rather than the Chief Martial Law Administrator when the army seized power from the ham-handed civilian Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif. Even after he dumped figurehead President, Rafiq Tarrar, and appointed himself President, he did take some pains to get himself endorsed by a referendum in 2002 which, however, was so overzealously managed that he won an improbable 98 per cent of the votes.

Musharraf’s present status rests on reasonably legitimate grounds. ‘Reasonably’ because in the Provincial and National Assemblies’ elections of October 2002, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were barred from contesting and many difficulties were placed in the way of these two mainstream parties. The result was that the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML(Q)) came first, Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party parliamentarians second, and an alliance of Islamists, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, surged to third position. In December 2003, through the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, Musharraf’s coup was legitimised, in exchange for a commitment that he would shed his army uniform by December 31, 2004. In addition, the National and Provincial assemblies elected him President for three years, till October 2007.

Musharraf did not keep his promise. There cannot be two centres of power in Pakistan. Musharraf knows that the moment he takes off his uniform and becomes a civilian president, he will have to contend with that other centre of power— his successor as Chief of the Army Staff. While Prime Ministers and Presidents have been persons of straw, the Army Chief in Pakistan has always been a real figure of authority, barring perhaps for a brief period when Jinnah was alive and when Z.A. Bhutto was supreme. So, now, it is all or nothing for Musharraf, hence the decision to continue to remain on the back of the tiger.

What Musharraf does with his uniform is something that will be decided in consultation with his army colleagues, and as of now they do not appear to be questioning his authority. But he must be re-elected as President by October 2007. His problem is that he cannot be sure that the result will be anything like that of 2002. In the past few years, the MMA that backed him in 2004 has frayed and anti-American feelings in the country increased manifold. The PML (Q) is not particularly popular and so the General has hit on a plan to have the outgoing National and Provincial assemblies re-endorse his candidacy before they are dissolved.

Can he be elected President by the same electoral college that elected him in January 2004 ? The possibility that this unusual procedure will be challenged in the Supreme Court has led to the pre-emptive strike on Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The Supreme Court, like the National Assembly and other formal State institutions, have so far proved quite complaisant. In fact, the Supreme Court took the oath under the Army’s Legal Framework Order, rather than the Constitution, after the October 1999 coup. Later, it rendered a judgment accepting the military rule on grounds of “State necessity”, even though it ordered elections by 2002. But for some reason Chaudhry has turned out to be a maverick, and the result is great turbulence in Pakistan’s establishment.

Though he positions himself as an advocate of “enlightened moderation”, Musharraf has also displayed a streak of ineptness that defies his otherwise deft handling of difficult situations. The no-win Kargil operation preceded his arrival on Pakistan’s political stage. But there have been several instances — the tough crackdown on Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, the handling of the Mukhtaran Mai case, and now that of Chief Justice Chaudhry — that have revealed critical weaknesses in his political temperament.

The outcome of the current ‘war’ between Musharraf and large segments of Pakistan’s civil society is difficult to predict. Suffice to say that history is littered with generals who had to learn that it is easy to start a war, but quite difficult to predict how it would unfold. Pakistan is not your usual polity, because its army is not your usual army.

In a recent book, Ayesha Siddiqa has argued that the “burgeoning economic empire” that the Pakistan army has developed “establishes the officer cadre’s interest in retaining political control of the State.” It has so skilfully interposed itself in the system as a guardian of the Pakistani State and the vehicle of its nationalism that there is little opposition to its hegemonic political role. But though he gets the loyalty of his officer cadre, the Army chief’s primary responsibility is to the corporate interests of the entity he heads. These are not merely professional but also political and economic. And these have traditionally never been centred around one individual.

Unlike some of his predecessors, Musharraf has had to deal with an uncommonly difficult set of circumstances. He has had to join the American war against terrorism over the opposition of the average Pakistani, curb the jehadi struggle in Jammu & Kashmir in the face of Indian military pressure and contend with the biggest nuclear proliferation scandal in the world. He has had to face bitter sectarian and ethnic conflicts within Pakistan and attempts on his own life. He tried to turn some of these events into opportunities for transforming his country, but clearly so far, despite the best wishes of many, even in this country, he has been found wanting.