[A-List] Deep-rooted malaise - By Husain Haqqani

["Tariq Mahmood" <zaogir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"M. Othman" <mm1582@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


 Deep-rooted malaise - By Husain Haqqani

 Hi Pakistan
 May 21 2003

 Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf will visit
> Washington and meet President Bush on June 24. General
> Musharraf's visit substitutes the visit by Prime Minister
> Zafarullah Jamali that was scheduled for April and cancelled due
> to the war in Iraq.
> Although Pakistanis elected a parliament in October and General
> Musharraf nominated a civilian Prime Minister earlier this year,
> no one really believes that the country has reverted to civilian
> rule. It is for that reason, perhaps, that the US decided to
> invite the general so that talks can be held with the real
> wielder of power instead of a stand-in. In Washington, General
> Musharraf can expect to be thanked for his cooperation in the
> war against Al-Qaeda and offered a long-term commitment of
> economic assistance. But he is also likely to be told of the
> deep misgivings that analysts and policy-makers have about the
> long-term direction of Pakistan. There is still apprehension
> that Pakistani authorities are pursuing mutually contradictory
> policies and that General Musharraf is not willing to undertake
> the fundamental shift that is needed to make Pakistan a more
> normal country than it has been in a long time.
> Two characteristics of the Pakistani State make it difficult for
> Pakistan to function as a democracy and as a civilian-led
> society. The first of these is that Pakistan has become a
> rent-seeking state, living off the rents of its strategic
> location since its involvement in US-sponsored treaties of the
> cold war era.
> The principal instrument of attracting foreign, mainly US,
> support for Pakistan has been the value of its military and
> intelligence apparatus. During the cold war, the Pakistani
> military-intelligence machinery was of use to the west against
> the Soviet Union. After 9/11, Washington looks upon General
> Musharraf's military regime as a key ally in the global war
> against terrorism. The military's status as the principal
> attraction for international interest, and the economic
> assistance that comes by way of strategic rents, vests
> considerable power and legitimacy in the Pakistani military's
> desire to control and direct the country's politics. Conflict
> with India is the military's raison d'_tre but it now sees
> itself as Pakistan's only effective institution and therefore
> the only group worthy of running the country.
> Pakistan is also a 'manipulated state', the second
> characteristic that distorts its politics. This means that
> political actors do not always function on their own and that
> much that appears to be domestic political bickering is actually
> the result of manipulation by the military-controlled
> intelligence services. Behind-the-scenes funding of political
> parties, creating and breaking up political alliances and
> engineering defection of politicians from one party to another
> is often part of the Pakistani intelligence services' agenda.
> Quite often, what passes off as politics is actually the
> military's covert handiwork. The objective is to ensure that the
> political process does not acquire a life of its own and that
> the military's ascendancy remains unquestioned.
> The October election and subsequent domestic developments must
> be seen in the light of these more permanent realities of
> military supremacy in Pakistan. Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali
> ostensibly leads a civilian government, cobbled together for him
> by the Intelligence services. He lacks national stature, did not
> lead the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q), also known as the
> king's party, in the general elections, and is dependent on
> several smaller factions including defectors from Benazir
> Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) for parliamentary support.
> He and the coalition he leads have no natural constituency and
> the thing that binds them is the willingness to bend to the will
> of Pakistan's permanent establishment. In any case, General
> Musharraf retains the power to dismiss the Prime Minister, his
> cabinet and the national assembly and is refusing to allow
> parliament to review constitutional amendments he promulgated as
> a package - the Legal Framework Order - at the time of
> parliamentary elections.
> Before holding elections, General Musharraf had declared his
> preference for a centralized system of government. "Unless there
> is unity of command, unless there is one man in charge on top,
> it will never function," he had said. Pakistan's mainstream
> political parties, bar associations and leading civil society
> organizations have questioned General Musharraf's right to
> arbitrarily alter the country's constitution but it is the
> recently resurgent Islamists against whom he says he has
> declared war that have led the charge against the military
> ruler. To keep the politicians from threatening his power, the general is
likely to cut a deal with the Islamists though that could undermine his
international support, which is dependent on his commitment to take on
militant Islamists.
 Prime Minister Jamali faces, in many ways, the dilemma that was faced by
Muhammad Khan Junejo when he was appointed Prime Minister by General Ziaul
Haq in 1985, after seven years of Martial Law. Like Junejo, Jamali must
balance his position as the military's creature with civilians' aspiration
for asserting greater influence over policy. Junejo found that the balancing
act was not easy. In the beginning, Junejo was extremely deferential to his
military benefactor, causing him to be seen as a mere puppet. The moment he
started exercising his constitutional authority, or failed to 'defend'
General Zia against parliamentary criticism, the general felt slighted. The
weak and embattled Prime Minister finally fell afoul of General Zia when he
agreed to the Geneva Accords for Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in April
1988. Zia dissolved parliament and dismissed Junejo under powers he had
given himself earlier.
 Elections to a new parliament could be held only after Zia died in a
mysterious plane crash and the new army chief, General Aslam Beg, opted to
control the government from behind-the-scenes.
 During the decade (1988-1999) that the military did not directly wield
power, Pakistan was said to be run by a troika comprising the President, the
army chief and the Prime Minister. Although General Zia's successors as
President were civilians, they wielded powers under Zia's constitutional
amendments. These powers were used to dismiss every elected Prime Minister
and to prematurely dissolve parliament thrice, each time with the military's
involvement. After the 1997 election, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose
political career had been launched by the military and the ISI, got
parliament to revoke the President's power to dismiss the Prime Minister and
dissolve parliament. In 1999, Sharif was toppled in the military coup that
brought General Musharraf to power.
 Prime Minister Jamali is likely to be extremely cautious, given the
experience of Junejo and Sharif, both of whom started out as the military's
political proteges like Jamali. He knows that Junejo and Sharif found no
protection against removal from office once they crossed the military's
path. The only pragmatic option for him is to enjoy the perks of office
without trying to assert his views in the realm of government policy. But
doing so would mean that he would not be able to raise either his own
stature or that of the office that he has now been given.
 The wild card in Pakistan's domestic politics remains the Islamists.
Unified under the banner of the Muttahida
 Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Pakistan's religious parties have been able to take
advantage of the political vacuum created by General Musharraf's suppression
of the mainstream PPP and PML. While traditionally the Islamists have been
allies of the military, they could leverage their new political strength in
making demands on General Musharraf, thereby limiting his ability to operate
as a free agent in domestic matters. On the other hand, the Islamists could
also be useful for the military as an excuse for dragging its feet in areas
such as relations with India and the US. Instead of refusing to cooperate
fully in clamping down on anti-India Kashmiri militants, for example,
Musharraf and the military could simply argue that domestic political
compulsions do not allow them a freer hand.
> Whatever the outcome of the political power play inside and outside
parliament, there is no immediate prospect of the military, as an
institution, relinquishing its pre-eminence in political matters. The US
can, at best, 'advise' Musharraf to set things right, focusing on what
matters to Washington (at this moment, the war against al-Qaeda) but that is
unlikely to address Pakistan's deeper-rooted malaise.