Pakistan: Miracle that keeps going wrong

“Pakistan, the peeling, fragmenting palimpsest, increasingly at war with itself, may be described as a failure of the dreaming mind…a miracle that went wrong.” Salman Rushdie’s old description of Pakistan has come alive again in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and the aftermath of chaos and uncertainty. Pakistan has faced crisis after crisis from the moment of its creation, which was a miracle in more than a literary sense. But sixty years after the partition of British India and thirty six years after the severance of East Pakistan (as Bangladesh), Pakistan is a social and political reality of 162 million people who form the sixth largest national population in the world. The people of Pakistan deserve more than a failing miracle.

For the first twenty five years after partition and independence, Pakistan’s main challenge was keeping the two wings of the country, separated by a vast Indian territory, together as a nation state. The leaders of Pakistan went to extraordinarily counterproductive lengths to meet this challenge, seemingly obsessed with proving wrong the cynical Indian skepticism about Pakistan’s survivability. Their efforts failed with the breakup of old Pakistan, in 1971, into Bangladesh and the current Pakistan, and the hangovers from the failed attempts are still haunting Pakistan. In addition, new predicaments have emerged in the last thirty five years.

Both Bangladesh and Pakistan have shown their propensity to alternate between civilian and military rules, but whereas Bangladesh’s difficulties are mostly internal and often compounded by floods and famines, Pakistan’s predicaments are internal and external, national as well as international. The seamless spread of Islamic radicalism from West Asia and the involvement in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union has led to the talibanisation of Pakistani society, even as it has transformed the nature of Pakistan’s conflict with India over Kashmir. On the other hand, President Musharraf’s ‘official’ fight against the al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of the US retaliation against the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on America, is tearing apart Pakistani society. The country is again “at war with itself”, as Rushdie wrote earlier.

Past hangovers and new predicaments

The hangovers from the first twenty five years are also the result of Pakistan’s peculiar inheritances from British colonial rule. Chief among them were the remnants of the British Indian Army who were mostly Punjabi Muslims, and the Muslim members of the colonial bureaucracy who massively migrated to West Pakistan from Muslim-minority Provinces in India. The latter, known as Mohajirs (refugees or immigrants, whose ranks have included such famous names as Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Liquat Ali Khan, Perverz Musharraf, Javed Miandad, to name a few), who were the real instigators for a separate Muslim state, became a power unto themselves in the new Pakistan. Together with the Punjabi dominated army, Mohajirs formed the military-bureaucracy complex that has dominated Pakistan’s politics for most of its history and prevented the development of a constitutional democracy.

The main reason for foreclosing representative democracy was to prevent majority rule by East Pakistanis (Bengalis) who constituted 54% of the population. Pakistan’s leaders even contrived a one-unit arrangement in West Pakistan snuffing out the provincial, ethnic and linguistic identities of the Punjabis, Sindhis, Pashtuns and Baluchis. English was made the official language and Urdu (spoken by about 9% of the population, mostly Mohajirs) the lingua franca of the nation. Despite Jinnah’s occasional allusions to secularism, Islam was made the state religion primarily to achieve an overarching national unity. To complete the circus, Pakistan also become America’s satellite state in South Asia, a status that suited the interests of the ruling elites and was sold to the people of Pakistan as the nation’s insurance against the enemy next door, India.

It is fair to say that the development of a secular constitutional democracy became possible on the Indian side because of more diverse inheritances from colonial rule and a postcolonial leadership that was also diverse and secular in character. As Pakistani commentator Khalid Sayeed has aptly noted, between 1950 and 1958, Pakistan had seven prime ministers and one commander-in-chief, while India had one prime minister and several commanders-in-chief. India successfully enacted and adopted a new constitution soon after independence, while Pakistan took nine years to adopt its first constitution but only to have it suspended two years later, by General Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first military ruler. The second constitution was adopted in 1973 under Bhutto’s premiership and that was set aside by General Zia-ul Haq in 1978. The third constitution adopted in 1991 is currently in force, but only in name.

During the nearly dozen years of military rule under General Ayub Khan (1959-1968) and General Yahya Khan (1968-1971), Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, emerged as a prominent civilian political leader holding a variety of ministerial positions. Belonging to the Sindhi community and hailing from a wealthy landowning family, Bhutto was educated in the West, a lawyer by training and an eloquent speaker both in English and the national languages. As Foreign Minister he passionately pleaded Pakistan’s case at the UN during the East Pakistan crisis, and when the country invariably broke up took on the task of rallying what was left as the new Pakistan.

Bhutto was Pakistan’s first long serving civilian Prime Minister. He negotiated a peace agreement with India and laid the foundation for a constitutional democracy in the country. However, he faced implacable opposition from the conservative and religious sections of Pakistanis who feared Bhutto’s progressive and secular tendencies. In the end he did not bring about any radical secular changes, and lost the support of the progressives without appeasing his religious opponents. Worse, Bhutto turned autocratic and undemocratic in dealing with political opposition and dissent. Within four years of the new constitution and election he had polarized the nation, and ethnic differences involving the Sindhis, Pashtuns, Baloch and Mohajirs, long suppressed, burst out into the open. The country was at war with itself again, and once more the military took control.

General Zia-ul Haq, a religious fundamentalist handpicked by Bhutto as the Army Chief for his supposed loyalty, ousted Bhutto him from office in 1977, and had him hanged two years later on a controversial murder charge ignoring worldwide please for clemency. Zia was isolated internationally, and found in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the opportunity to rehabilitate himself with the West. He made Pakistan the bridgehead in America’s war against the communist “evil empire” on Afghan soil. Pakistan became the conduit for supplying weapons to Taliban forces in Afghanistan, weapons purchased worldwide with American money and with China being the major supplier.

Pakistan’s role led to the emergence of what Ahmad Rashid has called “an enormous nexus of corruption” pervading the entire Pakistani establishment. Ideologically, the war in Afghanistan paralleled Zia’s brutal efforts in Pakistan to impose his version of Islamic law, and paved the way for the talibanisation of many sections of Pakistani society. After the Soviet Union’s inglorious withdrawal from Afghanistan, and with America washing its hands off the resultant mess, Pakistan was left with loads of Afghan refugees on its soil and the Taliban regime in Kabul to look after.

Daughter of destiny

Zia’s end came in a mysterious air crash in 1988, but his political nemesis, Benazir Bhutto, had been working independently to avenge the heinous hanging of her father. She was unique among South Asian leaders, female or male, in charming Western governments and media and presenting herself as their best option to bridge the clashing civilizations of Islam and the West. She established and maintained at considerable expense well-cultivated networks in Washington and London, using her contemporaries at Harvard and Oxford. According to the New York Times, Benazir understood Washington more than Washington understood her; she used Washington more than it used her in both her first and second political comings. It took Washington to convince the Pakistani military and the then acting President Gulam Ishaq Khan to invite Ms. Bhutto to form a new government, after her party won the largest number, but not a majority, of seats in the 1988 election following Zia-ul Haq’s death.

But for all her natural charm and inherited charisma, Benazir was a political failure. Even her sense of destiny sprang more from father fixation than any extraordinary sense of history or vision for the future of Pakistan, and she never quite succeeded in rallying the nation behind her. Her appeal did not go far beyond the followers of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) founded by her father and now bequeathed to her son, the nineteen year old Oxford University student, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Bhutto’s two terms as Prime Minister, in 1988-1990 and 1993-1996 clearly showed that she was not only incompetent, but also autocratic and corrupt. She was thick-skinned enough to appoint her husband Asif Ali Zardari, aka Mr. 10 Percent, to her second term cabinet. Following her death, Mr. Zardari has assumed the role of being the regent for the young prince in waiting to lead the PPP, and is promising to be Pakistan’s Sonia Gandhi-looking after the (family) Party without running for election or holding public office.

Benazir’s feminism did not go deeper than her make up. As Pakistani women commentators have noted, Benazir faced monumental difficulties in being a political leader in a patriarchal society fed on religious fundamentalism, but the least a woman leader in such situations could do is to scrupulously avoid the failings of corruption and abuse of power associated with male politics. Benazir Bhutto showed notorious proclivity for both, not unlike other South Asian political heiresses. And so was her-again, not unlike her South Asian counterparts-selective understanding of democracy, that democracy is only for the country, but not for the Party. The Party leadership will always stay in the family.

Sacked half way through each of her two terms and facing criminal charges for corruption, Ms. Bhutto was forced to stay out of Pakistan for eight years, “living in splendid exile”, as a Western newspaper put it. She again used her Washington contacts to enable her return to Pakistan and share political power as Prime Minister, while General Musharraf remained President. The cynical opportunism in the arrangement was transparent and was reviled even by her supporters, but this was the only way Benazir Bhutto could have returned to Pakistan for a final attempt for power and restoration.

General Musharraf had taken control of Pakistan in 1999 in a power struggle with Bhutto’s rival successor as Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. Bhutto and Sharif were equally corrupt and inept, and the two had started meddling in military affairs to firm up their own positions. However, Musharraf’s ousting of an elected Prime Minister (Nawaz Sharif) did not go down well with Western powers, and Musharraf was ostracized internationally, just as Zia had been isolated earlier for hanging Bhutto. Then came the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in the US and Musharraf seized the opportunity to rehabilitate himself, just as Zia had done after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan twenty years earlier.

This time, however, Musharraf took Pakistan in the opposite direction, against the al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and in support of the American retaliation against the Taliban government in Afghanistan. It was a bold decision that won the support of secular and moderate sections of Pakistan’s society and the wrath of religious extremists. He won praise for turning the economy around after a decade of mismanagement and corruption under Bhutto and Sharif. But all goodwill for the benign dictator evaporated when Musharraf ham-handedly took on the judiciary for ruling against his government. America’s attempt to salvage the situation by brokering a political marriage between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto has now backfired even before the ceremony could begin.

The Bush Administration is now reportedly considering new covert operations within Pakistan to prevent further destabilization of Pakistan by al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. But direct American operations are ill advised according to many in the US including the State Department, as they will only lead to a massive backlash and general instability. Musharraf for his part has indicated his opposition to any direct involvement by the US. The elections rescheduled for 18 February are unlikely to lead to a stable parliament and a new power sharing arrangement, although the consequences of not having an election could be far worse than having one.

There is no easy way out for Pakistan from its current predicaments. In its crises-ridden past, Pakistan got past each crisis by alternating between civilian and military administrations and sacking the incumbent leader as the scapegoat responsible for the crisis. Every leader reflected and personified one or the other of Pakistan’s multiple contradictions and none has left behind a positive legacy for successors to build on. Each new leader began with new support from Washington, even as each new phase began as farce and ended in tragedy, and none more so than Benazir Bhutto.