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A test of Musharraf's
muscle
By B Raman
A little
more than two weeks before his scheduled departure for
the United States for high-profile talks with President
George W Bush at Camp David, Pakistan's President
General Pervez Musharraf finds himself confronted with
an embarrassing political deadlock that does not bode
well for his self-projected image as the designer of
democracy in Pakistani colors.
The coalition of
six religious fundamentalist parties called the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), with the support of the
Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) of Nawaz Sharif, the
Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) of
Benazir Bhutto and other smaller anti-military political
parties, has been waging a relentless battle against
Musharraf's continuing to function as "the olive green
president", wearing the two hats of the president of the
republic and the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS).
Another objective of its battle is to force
Musharraf to seek re-election as the president under the
provisions laid down in the constitution, according to
which the president is to be elected by a joint
electoral college consisting of the elected members of
the federal parliament and the provincial legislative
assemblies. Musharraf got himself elected last year
through a referendum, which was alleged to have been
rigged with the complicity of the Election Commission,
which has already ordered the destruction of all the
records pertaining to it.
The opposition led by
the MMA has also been challenging various constitutional
amendments grouped together under a Legal Framework
Order (LFO), which Musharraf had promulgated before the
elections of last October 10. The LFO restores or vastly
increases the powers of the president in matters such as
appointments of the chiefs of the armed forces, judges
of the federal and provincial high courts, the head and
members of the Election Commission, governors of the
provinces etc, dismissal of an elected government and
the elected assemblies and the constitution of a
National Security Council chaired by the president and
not the prime minister. Through the LFO, Musharraf has
sough to give Pakistan a revised constitution more akin
to that of France than those of other parliamentary
democracies, which follow the British model.
The
government headed by Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan
Jamali, which is a coalition dominated by the
Musharraf-engineered PML (Qaide Azam), finds itself
legislatively paralyzed due to the battle waged by the
MMA and its supporters in the federal parliament. Even
though it is more than six months since elections to the
National Assembly were held, no formal legislative
business has been transacted so far due to the deadlock.
The two houses of parliament have been functioning
without even the formal inauguration of the session by a
presidential address outlining the policy goals of the
government. This is attributed to the fears of Musharraf
that he might be heckled if he appeared before a joint
session for this purpose.
While the federal
government thus finds itself stymied in its efforts to
project a democratic image of Pakistan, the deadlock has
not come in the way of the administration of the
country. The economy continues to show sustained
improvement under the stewardship of Shaukat Aziz, the
finance minister, who enjoys the confidence of Musharraf
and the international financial institutions. The
government's response - positive, but not totally - to
India's overtures for re-opening the bilateral dialogue
process has not been inhibited by the murky political
situation.
Until now, Musharraf has had the
army, the judiciary and general public behind him in his
confrontation with the opposition parties led by the
MMA. Despite his vastly enhanced powers, his positive
international image and good vibrations with the US
administration, Musharraf has resisted any tendency to
ride roughshod over any dissenting views in the army.
His authoritarianism is tempered by his habit of seeking
consensus in the army and the civilian bureaucracy in
favor of his views. His views ultimately prevail, but
are not seen as imposed on the military-civilian
bureaucracy from above.
Even before he assumed
power in October 1999 in a bloodless coup, he was known
as an officer who was responsive to the views of his
colleagues and subordinates in the military and sought
their prior approval for his decisions. He has
maintained this practice. Moreover, all the present
Corps Commanders received their promotion as
lieutenants-general under his stewardship, and hence are
assumed to owe a personal loyalty to him. For these
reasons, he should normally have no reasons to fear
dissent in the armed forces over the way he has been
handling the political crisis.
The present
judiciary was largely picked and chosen by him after he
assumed office and has been systematically softened by
him through various lollipops, such as extended tenure
through increase in their retirement age, etc. Many of
them thus owe their career and comforts to him and have
found ways of standing by him whenever his decisions
have been challenged before the courts.
While
some sections of the elite (it is difficult to quantify
them) have backed the opposition's political struggle
against him, the general public of the country has by
and large remained indifferent until now to the campaign
against him. The bitter memories of the past style of
governance of Sharif and Benazir remain strong. The fact
that both these leaders have chosen for themselves the
safety and comforts of political exile instead of facing
the wrath of the regime by returning to the country has
not done any good to their image. The visible signs of
improvement in the economy marked by an increase in tax
collection and foreign exchange reserves, rise in
exports, a remarkably buoyant stock market, flood of
external cash flow and the improved international image
of Pakistan under Musharraf have had their impact on the
attitude of the general public towards him.
The
MMA is still able to draw large crowds into the streets
to demonstrate against his cooperation with the US
against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and
International Islamic Front, the US invasion of Iraq
etc, but its ability to draw similar crowds to protest
against his arbitrary political style and against his
continuing as the COAS is still to be proved, though the
MMA has been threatening to take recourse to public
agitation if its efforts to reach a compromise through
talks with the government fail.
The MMA owed its
remarkable success in the October elections to
Musharraf's munificence. He ordered the withdrawal of
the cases against many of their candidates from the
anti-terrorism courts so that they were not disqualified
by the Election Commission. He made the Election
Commission pass an order giving the certificates in
Islamic studies issued by the madrassas
(religious schools) the equivalence of an university
degree so that the newly-introduced electoral provision
that only graduates can contest elections did not come
in the way of the mullahs and their proteges contesting
the polls. He broke the PML-N and the PPPP, thereby
weakening their ability to counter the religious
fundamentalist parties.
One would have,
therefore, expected that the mullahs would have been
grateful to him and refrained from raising issues
inconvenient to him. Instead, they have been
relentlessly challenging his self-assumed political
supremacy and seeking to reduce his powers. Before
October last, all religious fundamentalist parties - and
particularly the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Qazi Hussain
Ahmed - were viewed as the stooges of the army, amenable
to its pressure. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
and the COAS never had difficulty in the past in calling
the mullahs to order, except on rare occasions. When
Qazi Hussain Ahmed strongly opposed Musharraf's visit to
India for the Agra summit in 2001, one courtesy call on
him by Lieutenant-General Ehsanul Haq, the present
director-general of the ISI who was then the Corps
Commander at Peshawar, was sufficient to make the Qazi
relent in his opposition.
Ehsanul Haq, who is an
old personal and family friend of the Qazi, and his
senior officers in the ISI have repeatedly failed since
October last in their efforts to make the Qazi and other
leaders of the MMA see reason. The ISI and the
Intelligence Bureau have not so far been able to
engineer a split in the opposition ranks. The MMA gives
the impression of being prepared to face the risk of a
dissolution of the National Assembly and the provincial
assemblies of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)
and Balochistan and fresh elections in which, without
the bounties of Musharraf, it may not do as well as it
did in October.
The questions which inevitably
arise in one's mind are: What explains the unity and
seeming confidence of the religious opposition? Are
there elements not only in the military-intelligence
establishment, but also in the scientific circles
associated with Pakistan's nuclear and missile
capability, which, while openly supporting Musharraf,
have been covertly instigating the MMA not to relent? If
so, who are these elements? Is it possible to quantify
their strength? Data presently available do not permit
convincing answers to these questions.
However,
one has to note reports of Musharraf's pro-US policies
causing unhappiness not only in the general public, but
also in some sections of the armed forces and the
scientific community. There are reportedly elements,
which are yet to reconcile themselves to some of his
actions, such as assisting the US in its efforts to
destroy the Taliban, giving the US intelligence agencies
a free run of the country, subjecting renowned
scientists, doctors and other professionals to the
humiliation of detention and interrogation just because
of the suspicion of the US intelligence of their having
possible links with al-Qaeda, rendering A Q Khan, the
so-called father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, a virtual
non-person by removing him, reportedly under US
pressure, from all positions of executive power in the
scientific field and starting a campaign to play down
his role in the development of Pakistan's military
nuclear capability, etc. There are continuing reports of
unease in the army and the Foreign Office over his
covert intelligence cooperation with the US against
Iran. However, there are at present no indicators to
suggest that such pockets of unhappiness of undetermined
strength could create serious dissensions in the
establishment against him.
The NWFP, which is
now ruled by the MMA, and Balochistan, which is ruled by
the MMA and PML(QA) in coalition, have been adding to
the headaches and embarrassment of Musharraf. The MMA
government in the NWFP has not only brazenly given
sanctuary and protection to the survivors of al-Qaeda
and the Taliban, but has also been trying to Talibanize
the province by setting up a department of virtue and
vice and by having a law enacted for the enforcement of
the Islamic Sharia laws in the province.
In
Balochistan, there has been a deterioration in the law
and order situation since October, with at least three
reported explosions disrupting oil and gas supplies
through pipelines to industry and other consumers of
Punjab and Sindh. Public agitation against the
Chinese-assisted Gwadar port development project has
been gathering momentum. Balochi nationalists have been
critical of the induction of a large number of Punjabis
and Pashtuns into the province to work in this project.
Musharraf's personal and political gains
hitherto by positioning himself as the frontline ally of
the US in the war against terrorism would stand in
danger of being reduced, if not wiped out, if he is not
able to bring the MMA and the administration controlled
by it in the NWFP to order. The specter of the
resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the fertile
soil of the NWFP and Balochistan would increasingly
haunt the US and the rest of the international community
if the alarming developments in NWFP are not arrested
and reversed.
There are some indications that
Musharraf might already be contemplating some action. He
has reportedly initiated some action against terrorist
organizations, which are close to the constituents of
the MMA. Examples are the reported action against the
Hizbul Mujahideen of Kashmir, which is an appendage of
the JEI, and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the
Jaish-e-Mohammad, which are close to the Jamiat-ul-Ulema
Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rehman. At the same time, he has
avoided action against the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which has no
association with any of the constituents of the MMA, so
that he does not lose the services of this organization,
the largest of the Pakistani terrorist organizations, in
his proxy war against India.
The heads of the
local administrative councils of the NWFP, called
nazims, have collectively resigned, reportedly at
his instigation, on the ground that the provincial
government has been interfering in their functioning,
which could be projected by him as a legitimate ground
for proclaiming the breakdown of the constitution in the
province. It has been reported that the Federal
government has unilaterally, without the concurrence of
the provincial government, ordered the transfer of the
chief secretary and the inspector-general of police of
the province.
Matters seem to be moving towards
an intensification of the confrontation and the ultimate
denouement may come before his visit to the US.
Musharraf would like to go there with his seeming
strength and following in the eyes of the US unimpaired
and as a leader totally in command of the military and
of the situation in the country whose value as a
stalwart ally remains undiminished.
Will he
wield the big stick against the religious fundamentalist
parties and, if he does, what will be the impact in the
country? The indications until now are that if he does
so, he might be able to get away with it, just as he got
away with his volte face in Afghanistan in October,
2001, when warnings of a public upsurge against him
proved to be wrong.
B Raman is
Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat,
Government of India, and presently director, Institute
For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the
National Security Advisory Board of the Government of
India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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