COMMENTARY Retracing the path of
infamy By Ehsan Ahrari
Introduction On late
Friday, October 8, a bill was introduced in the
Pakistani parliament that was aimed at allowing President
General Pervez Musharraf to break a constitutional pledge that
he made with the opposition parties to quit the army by
the end of this year. If there was any doubt in the past
that he would not abide by that pledge, it is crystal-clear
now that he wishes to cling to the legacy of one of his
infamous predecessors, General Zia ul-Haq. Like Zia,
Musharraf knows where the levers of ultimate power are
in his country and he does not want to give them up.
Like Zia, he refuses to take off his uniform, fearing
that one of his proteges would oust him from office, as
he ousted his own mentor, Nawaz Sharif, and as Zia
ousted his mentor, the then prime minister Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto. Zia, like all his military predecessors, was
known for sabotaging the prospects of the evolution of
democracy in his country. Musharraf is currently
retracing the very same path of infamy today. Beyond
these, there are still more parallels regarding the
nature of Pakistan-US relations now and during the
dictatorship of Zia.
Brief background Musharraf is about to break a pledge made with
powerful Islamist parties in the middle of last year
that he would quit one of his dual-hatted jobs of army
chief and remain as president in his civilian capacity.
According to that pledge, he must step down on December
31 of 2004. However, there were doubts about his
earnestness related to that promise and his respect for
democracy and the constitution. Of course, he ousted
democracy from Pakistan in October 1999 in his bloodless
coup, and has been wishy-washy about the prospects of
reinstating it. He comes from the military culture of
Pakistan, where contempt for democracy is well
ingrained.
The Pakistani pantheon of heroes has
only two prominent civilians, Allama Mohammad Iqbal and
Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Iqbal was one of most prominent
poets of Islam (not just of Pakistan), who conceived the
very idea that Muslims of the subcontinent should have
a separate home. Pakistan is the materialization of that
very idea. Jinnah was the politician who worked for the
realization of Iqbal's idea.
The rest of that
pantheon has a slew of military dictators - Ayub Khan,
Yahya Khan, and Zia ul-Haq - who don't even form shining
examples of successful military leadership. The best
statement one can make about Ayub was that he was forced
to resign under domestic turbulence. Yahya Khan had the
ignominious role of presiding over the dismantlement of
East Pakistan into an independent Bangladesh in 1971.
Zia created his own infamous legacy of bringing
Islamists into mainstream politics by Islamizing
Pakistan. His chief purpose was to promote his
dictatorship. Pakistan continues to suffer from the
deleterious effects of that legacy, especially today.
But this is only a partial explanation of what went
wrong with Pakistan, especially during the regime of
Zia. An important point here is that history has a
strange way of repeating itself in that country.
When Zia was busy Islamizing Pakistan, the
United States went to that country to oust the Soviet
Union from neighboring Afghanistan. The last epic battle
between democracy and totalitarianism was fought in a
Muslim country (Afghanistan), while another Muslim
country (Pakistan) played an all-important role of
serving as the chief conduit for channeling America's
military weaponry to the mujahideen (Islamic freedom
fighters). In an ironic coincidence of history, Zia's
dubious Islamization of Pakistan came handy in president
Ronald Reagan's urgent need to indoctrinate the Afghan
fighters with the militant notions of jihad and use them
to wage a war on the Soviet Union. Zia gleefully
obliged, for he knew the double-edged nature of that
development. Popularity of militant jihad was to be used
in the 1980s for declaring another jihad inside
Indian-administered Kashmir, a development that brought
the South Asian sub-continent to the brink of a nuclear
war in 1999. Perhaps the Reagan administration was too
busy defeating the Soviet Union and winning the Cold War
at the global level to recognize the long-term
implications of reviving military jihadism. Zia, on the
contrary, knew exactly what he was doing.
Under
the Reagan presidency, ousting the Soviet Union from
Afghanistan was of primacy concern to the US. Democracy
had to wait for another day - as it turned out, more
than a decade - to become a reality in Pakistan.
Pakistan played its role beautifully and dutifully as a
"pawn" in America's grand chess game. Keep this entire
situation in mind while examining three very important
variables.
First, consider Musharraf's palpable
sabotage of democracy in Pakistan (just like Zia).
Second, his importance today in the global "war on
terrorism" of President George W Bush (much the same way
Zia was to Reagan's obsession of defeating the Soviet
Union). Finally, the fact that Bush is so gung-ho about
implanting democracy in the Muslim Middle East, but not
in Pakistan. Here the similarities between Zia's and
Musharraf's regimes concerning the US become especially
interesting. Both Reagan (then) and Bush (now) would prefer
democracy. However, for Reagan, the ouster of the Soviet
Union from Afghanistan was more important. By the same
token, Bush wants to establish democracy in the Muslim
world; however, for him winning the war on terror is
considerably more significant than insisting on the
emergence of Pakistan as a democracy, at least in the
near future.
Sabotaging democracy with a
purpose By capturing power in October
1999, Musharraf ousted democracy from Pakistan. It is hard
to believe that he would work assiduously for the return
of democracy, or would give up the ultimate base of
his power, his role as army chief of staff, as an
important first step toward democracy. That is like expecting
a brewery owner to dedicate his life to
promote anti-alcoholism. Musharraf has the same contempt
for civilian leadership and democracy as any
military officer of that country. Man for man, Pakistani
military officers (actually army officers, since the army is
the predominant service of that country) disparages
civilian leaders as corrupt and inept, as if they are
describing a lower breed. In that contempt, they almost never
fail to put their own kind on a rhetorical pedestal.
What emerges from such lopsided discussions is the
belief that civilian leaders cannot do anything right and
an army officer can't do any wrong, once he captures
power. Such a portrayal leaves no room or patience for
the evolution of democracy in that country. However,
when one examines the 54-year history of Pakistan, one sees a
series of blunders committed, even the loss of its
eastern wing, and wars fought with India, all under
military dictators.
So, despite past promises of
Musharraf that he would give up his position as the army
chief of staff, few Pakistanis believed him. Besides, he
had studied the brief history of his country well enough
to know that as a civilian head of state there is a good
chance that he would end up either in a dungeon or be
forced into exile in Saudi Arabia or Turkey (his
favorite state), once he became a civilian head of
state. And, like his military predecessors (especially
Zia), he was not willing to take that chance.
The chief problem of Pakistan related to
democracy is that, since the army has kept power for 29 out
of 54 years of that country's existence, there is not a
healthy corps of experienced civilian leadership waiting
in the wings to take over power and govern effectively.
Besides, in a democracy - even the fledgling ones - the
failure of one group of elected officials results in
their ouster through the use of ballot boxes. A new
slate of elected officials is given a chance to govern
and prove their worth to the voters. In Pakistan, the
army has used the inept or corrupt performance of the
elected officials as an excuse to oust them. So the
checkered record of military intervention emerges as a
self-fulfilling prophecy that the civilian leadership
will fail once it enters into office, thereby "proving"
the dubious argument of Pakistani army officers that
civilians are inept or corrupt.
This
denunciation of civilian leadership becomes a rationale
- such as it is - for the military's control and
exercise of political power. However, the real purpose
underlying this argument - as well the real purpose of
the sabotage of democracy in Pakistan - is the fear of
the army that, if democracy were to emerge as a
permanent basis of governance in their country, a
natural outcome would be the institutionalization of
civilian supremacy over the military; and, equally
important, the end of the army's privileged status in
the Pakistani polity.
Come to think of it,
that very fear helps the army maintain its firm control
of political power in Algeria. That very same fear
also drove the army in maintaining its firm grip on power
in Turkey. It was the warning of the European Union -
that Turkey would not become a part of the EU unless the
supremacy of civilian authority was firmly entrenched in
that country, and unless the army renounced its
interference in politics - that has played a crucial
role in the emergence of Turkey as a democracy. It will
be a long time before one can definitely state that the
polity of Turkey is fully democratized. However, that
country has indeed made a good start toward the
emergence of a tradition of supremacy of civilian
authority, an extremely vital precondition for the
emergence of democracy.
Unfortunately, there is no such
force pushing Pakistan in the direction of democracy.
The British Commonwealth countries originally made a
feeble attempt by ousting that country from amid their
ranks. However, the Commonwealth does not carry with it
financial rewards and political prestige a la
membership in the EU.
'Savior' of the Bush
presidency Musharraf only reluctantly joined
Bush's war on terror. From the perspective of protecting
its northern front, the Taliban government provided
Pakistan the best possible guarantee. As an Islamist
government, it eliminated Hindu India's influence from
the country, a reality all Pakistani leaders cherished.
In addition, the Taliban were the product of Pakistani
madrassas (seminaries). As such, they were not
likely to turn against Pakistan. So when Washington
approached Islamabad to help it dismantle the Taliban
regime in the wake of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
Musharraf did not have much of a choice but to agree.
One can only imagine what message was delivered to him
via diplomatic channels. A safe guess is the he was told
in no uncertain terms, "either you are with us or you
are with the Taliban and al-Qaeda". Musharraf did not
have to think too long or too hard to know what his
decision ought to be.
Pakistan did cooperate with the US in providing
basing facilities and sharing intelligence. However, there was
no zeal driving that sentiment until the last three months
or so of 2003, when Islamist
terror-related activities started to escalate. It was Ayman
al-Zawahiri's - al-Qaeda's No 2 in command - public denunciation of
Musharraf by name as a "lackey of America" and, more
important, two attempts on Musharraf's life last December that
proved to be the clinchers. Those events pushed Pakistan
in the same corner as the US. Musharraf knew then that
he became the target of al-Qaeda's version of the
declaration: "either you with us or you are with the
American infidels". His regime, from then on, emerged as
a zealot participant in Bush's "war on terror".
There is no turning back now. Musharraf must
oust al-Qaeda from his country. The trouble with that
proposition is that al-Qaeda as a movement has permeated
into Pakistan's polity so thoroughly that there is no
eradication of it, at least not merely by conducting
brutal military campaigns. That will only create
increased sympathy for al-Qaeda.
But as a
frontline "warrior" of the "war on terror", Musharraf
might even be able to guarantee the reelection of Bush,
if, for no other reason than through sheer luck, he can
either capture or kill one or more top leaders of
al-Qaeda. No one is more aware of the significance of
such a happenstance than Musharraf and Bush.
What is democracy among friends? An
important adage of South Asia and the Middle East is
that friends don't quibble or fight over formal rules
involving issues of mutual concern. Formal rules should
be insisted on and be enforced among strangers. Friends,
according to this frame of reference, reach compromises
over all issues, trivial or crucial. It appears that
that rule is being applied over the reinstatement of
democracy in Pakistan between Musharraf and Bush. Even
though he is a product of Western culture, Bush knows
what is at stake in Pakistan, and what America's
priorities ought to be, of course, from his
perspectives.
Musharraf
and Bush seem to have reached an
understanding that, as long as he maintains the intensity
of his military campaign against al-Qaeda, Bush will
not, publicly or through diplomatic channels, insist on
the imminent reinstatement of democracy in Pakistan. An
added dimension of this understanding is that Musharraf
has persuaded Bush about how indispensable he
really is vis-a-vis the "war on terror". As
long as America's understanding of Pakistani domestic politics
remains shallow, Musharraf can get away with
selling Bush his version of explanation: that the United
States is better off with Musharraf carrying the heavy
burden of fighting al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The clincher in
Musharraf's argument is that he continues to
periodically deliver al-Qaeda functionaries to the US.
Besides, between now and November 2, the role of
Musharraf in Bush's reelection campaign remains
extremely crucial. If he is reelected, Bush will still
extend the lease on Musharraf's sabotage of democracy.
The eradication of al-Qaeda would still be the primary
objective of the US.
Putting it all
together Reagan used Pakistan to wage a decisive
confrontation against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in
the 1980s. That confrontation is generally regarded as
the winning battle leading to the eventual implosion of
the communist superpower. At the end of that melee,
the US went home, leaving Pakistan to become a highly
explosive place as Islamists remained highly proactive
within its own borders, and as Islamists eventually took
over Afghanistan. Those types of forces, along with
al-Qaeda, are determined to convert Pakistan into
another radical Islamist stronghold.
The
Americans returned to Afghanistan in 2001 to fight
another fateful battle, the global "war on terror". As
Reagan used Pakistan to defeat the Soviet Union in the
1980s, Bush is now using it to win his campaign in the
region. Even though there is no likelihood that the "war
on terror" will be won any time soon, chances are the
US will leave once again, when or if the top
leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban is eradicated.
But that development is not likely to help Pakistan
become a stable democracy. In fact, regardless of the
near-term outcome of the "war on terror", Pakistan is
heading toward further radicalization and increased
instability, as one autocrat - Musharraf - is determined
to institutionalize his personal rule by eliminating all
chances of the emergence of democracy. In this sense,
Musharraf is well on his way of retracing the path of
infamy of Zia. Wittingly or unwittingly, Bush is very
much a part of Musharraf's inauspicious journey.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
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