Musharraf under siege

["Ulhas Joglekar" <ulhasj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Volume 17 - Issue 14, July 08 - 21, 2000
India's National Magazine on indiaserver.com
from the publishers of THE HINDU

ESSAY
Musharraf under siege

As a combination of overlapping pressures threatens to immobilise General
Pervez Musharraf, the long-term prospects in Pakistan appear grim.
AIJAZ AHMAD

THE military regime in Pakistan is now into its ninth month. Invoking the
"Doctrine of Necessity" which has been used in Pakistan time and again to
justify all deviations from constitutional governance, the Supreme Court has
granted the regime three years in which to implement its agenda and return
the country to civilian rule. Nawaz Sharif, the deposed Prime Minister, has
been despatched to prison for life. Benazir Bhutto, the alternative
candidate for premiership, has been declared a "fugitive from law" by the
courts and is cooling her heels in London while her husband languishes in a
Pakistan prison - both facing multiple cases of corruption. The rest of the
civilian Opposition, barring the religious parties, never gathered any
momentum. On all such counts, Musharraf would appear to be safe. The real
turbulence that he faces is of a different kind.
The processes set in motion by Musharraf
against a variety of illicit financial practices have created a base for
cooperation among vast sections of the affluent that are ranged against his
regime.
Musharraf could not have started with more political capital on his side.
His version of the events that led to the coup and counter-coup of October
12 was believed widely, and he was therefore seen as the victim of a
conspiracy and a reluctant coup-maker. Sharif was widely disliked for his
corruption, his attacks on a variety of civilian institutions, his
Islamicist demagoguery, his impulsiveness. So his departure produced much
relief and jubilation. Musharraf did not put the country under martial law,
did not suspend fundamental rights and civil liberties, did not abolish the
Constitution, did not appoint himself President or Prime Minister. Instead,
he spoke of strengthening the institutions of civil democracy, the
devolution of power to the district and local levels, streamlining the
electoral rolls to safeguard against fraud, modernising the taxation system,
replacing the punitive Islam of his predecessors with a liberal and
progressive Islam, controlling the proliferation of weapons in Pakistani
society, and waging effective campaigns against smugglers, tax-dodgers, and
illicit wealth of all sorts.
Large sections of the public responded with enthusiasm. There was also the
personal reputation of a secular, civilised man. Many observers of Pakistani
politics knew that Sharif had tried to buy the loyalties of the corps
commanders with sacks of money, which had infuriated Musharraf, and that
Sharif had then tried to dismiss him for his lack of acquiescence. Just as
he was perceived as not being a part of the corruption machines of the
civilian Prime Ministers, Sharif and Benazir, he was similarly perceived as
having no particular coterie surrounding him in the military high command.
He was of course the Chief of the Army Staff and thus the principal guardian
of Pakistan's military objectives, but unlike Lt. General Ziauddin whom
Sharif had tried to appoint in his place, Musharraf was not a man of the
notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Nor did he have any shadowy
involvement with the jehadi groups; indeed, his conflict with the chief of
the Jamaat-e-Islami came so early that some naive journalists began
spreading the story that he was connected with the Lashkar-e-Toyeba.
His good intentions were greeted with widespread goodwill. Yet the signs of
trouble came early. Pakistan now has relatively a much more developed civil
society than was the case in the past, and tolerance for prolonged military
rule has correspondingly declined even further. That Musharraf did not
suspend civil liberties or freedoms of expression meant that this scepticism
could be expressed much more openly and consistently than before, without
the presspersons and other opinion-makers feeling the kind of dread which
was a fact of daily life under the previous military regimes, notably the
Zia regime. Even among the sympathisers, therefore, a virtual consensus soon
began emerging that in putting away Sharif and his gang Musharraf had
already done the needful and he should now devise a way to restore civilian
rule quickly and get out.
Musharraf's announcements of good intentions - the de-weaponisation of
society; re-building institutions of democratic governance from the bottom
up; a wide net of "accountability" against the corrupt, and so on - led to
contradictory effects. On the one hand he produced high expectations which
could not possibly be satisfied in the short run and therefore risked
widespread disaffection. At the same time, his insistence that he would not
give a schedule for return to civilian rule until the requisite structural
changes were in place indicated that he was settling down to a long tenure
as head of state, for which there was no real consent.
The odd assortment of individuals whom he chose early as members of his
National Security Council (NSC) and the Federal Cabinet seemed to suggest
that far from having a vision of radical and coherent change, he was
conventional, clumsy and confused. The only merit was that he chose
civilians rather than the military brass. For the rest, it was an
incongruous and singularly undistinguished group. Sharifuddin Pirzada, who
emerged as the main adviser to the Chief Executive (which is what Musharraf
curiously called himself), had served every martial law regime of the past.
Aziz A. Munshi, Musharraf's Law Minister, had served both Gen. Zia-ul-Haq
and Nawaz Sharif as Attorney-General and was the author of the notorious
Eighth Amendment to the Constitution which had justified the military's
role in national politics. Dr. Attiya Inayatullah, the only woman on the
NSC, had been a Federal Minister under Zia and an active member of Sharif's
party, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML).
In all such appointments there was a strong sense of continuity with the
past histories of martial law regimes and civilian corruptions; Musharraf
too was proving himself to be an Establishment man. Another sort of
continuity was indicated in the choice of Shaukat Aziz as Finance Minister.
Imported directly from the world of private banking in New York, Aziz is
only the latest of a string of individuals who have been sent by the
International Monetary Fund/World Bank combine to look after the country's
finances. The strongest link to the immediately preceding setup is of course
there in the person of Rafiq Tarar, the arch-conservative President of
Pakistan whom Nawaz Sharif had put in that office as a token of his respect
for men of the Sharia. Musharraf seems to have retained Tarar because (a)
he really does not have the strength to remove so big a symbol of Islamic
conservatism at the helm of the Pakistani state and (b) there is no
provision in the Pakistan Constitution for the office of a "Chief Ex
ecutive", which Musharraf has devised and assumed, but the continuation of
the same person in the office of the presidency gives an illusion of
constitutional continuity.
The choice of the younger men who were to represent "new blood" in the
Cabinet was at best whimsical and indicated a partiality towards personal
networks. Thus the main merit of Omar Asghar Khan, who was assigned a number
of minor Ministries, is that he is the son of Air Marshal (retd.) Asghar
Khan. For the rest, he has been running a non-governmental organisation
(NGO), Sungi, since 1987; he fought two elections, in 1988 and 1990, and
lost both times. Smuggled into the world of political power through the back
door, he undoubtedly hopes to be to Musharraf what Bhutto was to Ayub Khan
and Nawaz Sharif was to Zia. The other such face is that of Abbas Sarfraz,
descended from two powerful political families, who is said to have
purchased his seat in the n ow-defunct Senate with bags of money; he is not
known to have delivered a speech on the floor of the House or to hold a
press conference on a political issue during the three years that he spent
as a Senator.
Such a team could hardly be expected to bring about the swift and radical
changes that Pakistan so desperately needs or to implement the plans
Musharraf had announced. Yet Pakistan is ridden with so many crises, of such
an urgent nature, that no regime can survive for long without addressing
those crises - especially a regime that has no political machinery at its
command, no backing from Pakistan's traditional patrons in the United
States, not even a notably united Army behind it. His own responses have
been fitful and contradictory, and what he has so far undertaken has had the
effect of galvanising many forces of opposition against him without building
any powerful constituencies which may be mobilised against those forces of
opposition. What is the nature of those crises, his responses, the forces of
opposition, and the likely outcome?
THERE is, first, the economic crisis of gigantic proportions. Pakistan has
an outstanding foreign debt of $42 billion and a domestic debt of $70
billion - with a GDP of roughly $65 billion. The servicing of foreign and
national debt takes up 60 per cent of the GDP and defence accounts for
another 30 per cent or so; this was balanced against foreign exchange
reserves of $1.6 billion at the time Musharraf took over. In a country of
130 million people, the tax base is restricted to 1.2 million people. With
483,094 listed bank defaulters, there is almost one defaulter for every two
taxpayers; the bad debts, amounting to 211 billion rupees, are equal to
roughly 70 per cent of the nation's revenue base. Investment is down by 37
per cent since last year and industrial growth is down to 1.6 per cent.
With exports stagnating at about $8 billion, Pakistan needs $5 billion just
to service foreign debt.
Caught in this "debt&defence" trap, the state provides very little of its
people's needs by way of goods and services. The gap is filled on the one
hand by thousands of NGOs littered throughout the country, and on the other
by the informal economy which by World Bank estimates accounts for 70 per
cent of the whole of Pakistan's economy. This is reflected then in abysmally
low levels of investment in health, education and other areas of social
development, and corresponding rates of growth in crime, contraband, trade,
ethnic and sectarian violence which too the state is quite unable to
control. Indeed, individuals and groups employed in the state agencies are a
major force in facilitating smuggling, tax evasion, violence and crime. In
the province of Sind, for example, there is hardly an official in the
prison system who is himself not charged with some crime, the crimes ranging
from extortion to rape or murder. The immensely lucrative smuggling networks
in contraband arms, drugs and a vast variety of consumer goods are
inconceivable without the active involvement of law enforcement personnel at
every point.
The shortage of cash has led to at least one remarkable consequence. In
sharp contrast with India which increased its military budget this year by a
record 28 per cent, Pakistan's recent budget offers zero increase to its
defence forces; indeed, Pakistan 's total current defence budget of $2.8
billion is less than the $3 billion that India's increase amounts to. That
this remarkable restriction on the defence budget should come at this point
tells us not only about the extent of the cash shortage in Pakistan but
also about the nature of the current regime in Pakistan. And this also tells
us something about Musharraf's sense of priorities as well as his sense of
confidence that he can persuade his military establishment to accept such a
restriction in the face of India's dramatic increase in defence spending.
Strapped for cash, Pakistan is seeking a loan of $2.2 billion from the IMF.
One of the IMF's conditions is that the tax base must be broadened from 1.2
million to 2.5 million and that the ratio of tax in national income must be
enhanced from 10 to 12 - p referably 15 - per cent. It is estimated that the
imposition of general sales tax (GST), some moderate revision of the
agricultural income tax, and effective anti-smuggling measures, if
implemented, can yield 200 billion rupees - or the equivalent of the
outstanding annual payments on foreign debt.
Just a couple of adverse decisions at the IMF and among the donors can cause
a debt dafault and therefore the collapse of credit ratings for Pakistan, so
that the regime is more vulnerable to pressure from the U.S. as well as the
'world government'of the IMF, the World Bank and the international financial
institutions (IFIs) than any previous regime, precisely at the time when the
U.S. is unhappy with Musharraf personally, for having removed Sharif, and
with Pakistan generally, for its relative defiance of the U.S. on a number
of current issues, notably Afghanistan. At home, meanwhile, any serious
attempt to carry out a National Tax Survey, impose GST, revise the
agricultural income tax and/or control smuggling would bring the regime into
conflict with powerful forces which it is ill-equipped to take on.
Caught in this whirlwind, the regime threatens to carry out a hasty National
Tax Survey with little prior preparation. Half a million shopkeepers, acting
notably through the All Pakistan Organisation of Small Traders and Cottage
Industry (APOSTCI), are up in arms on the issue of GST, for, even though
the tax itself is paid by the purchaser, the collection of GST would force
the traders to keep records of sales and thus reveal their incomes for tax
purposes. The traders' shutdown is combined with other strikes being
threatened by transporters, oil tanker operators and so on. At the same
time, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), with broad powers to
investigate bank defaults, tax evasions and a variety of illicit practices,
is widening its net in such a way that broad sections of the affluent are
feeling threatened and turning against the regime. Meanwhile, the
involvement of the civil bureaucracy in these nefarious practices is of such
a scale that Musharraf is increasingly turning to the Armed Forces
personnel to oversee these processes. This may at length prove to be a great
corrupting force for those personnel themselves, but the immediate result is
that broad sections of the mercantile, bureaucratic and professional elite,
cutting across ideological and political affiliations, are finding new
bases for cooperation against the regime.
These objective bases for cooperation are producing strange bedfellows.
Aitzaz Ahsan, a noted Barrister who served as Interior Minister in Benazir
Bhutto's government, has filed a writ petition against the NAB in the High
Court, levelling charges of arbitrary and illegal conduct, violation of
privacy laws and so on - on behalf, interestingly, of Nawaz Sharif.
Immediately after the coup, Benazir had congratulated Musharraf for getting
rid of the "corrupt" Nawaz Sharif and advised him to restore civilian rule -
in short, offering herself as the alternative. She was to find out soon
enough that corruption charges against herself were to be pursued in the
courts, as per schedule. She began to turn against the regime. Recent
reports suggest that there have been exploratory contacts between Benazir
and Sharif's wife, Kulsum, over the question of cooperation in a "democratic
agitation" against military rule. On the other hand, the traders' lobby is
the crucial element in the social make-up of Sharif's political machine,
and a convergence of Benazir's PPP, Sharif's PML, sundry other champions of
civil supremacy, in an agitation that is funded by the traders and explodes
into a revolt of the rich cannot be ruled out. By the same token, it is
entirely possible that the regime, supervising a dysfunctional state with a
far from united Army and without any clear sense of purpose, may retreat
from the confrontation. How the Opposition shall respond to a regime that is
seen to be weakening internally and friendless abroad is yet to be seen.
Musharraf's other pet project was the "de-weaponisation" of Pakistan: the
registration of licensed weapons, the confiscation or regularisation of the
currently unlicensed ones, prohibition on public display of such weapons,
and strict control of the weapons market. Not much seems to have happened,
although the Interior Minister keeps claiming that the plan is being
fine-tuned and shall be implemented one of these days. Now, for all the
publicity surrounding the jehadi groups, weapons in Pakistani society are by
no means concentrated in these groups alone. Virtually all political
parties, and even a great many of the students' groups and ethnic and/or
sectarian organisations, not to speak of the biggest landowners, have their
own armed militias. Insecurity in large parts of Pakistan, reaching deep
into the countryside and the remote corners of the highways, is such that
millions of people want weapons for their own and their families'
protection. A single drive to register licensed weapons, in June 1998,
produced 500,000 such weapons.
This weaponised society began taking shape in the early years of the U.S.
intervention in Afghanistan and has kept growing ever since. The rich
barricade themselves in houses watched by armed guards. Gun-runners,
indigenous manufacturers of small arms, smugglers and shadowy retailers of
all sorts, besides narcotics networks, participate in the illegal traffic of
weapons, as do sections of military and intelligence personnel. Vested
interests in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan,
themselves deeply involved in the world of illicit weapons, resist every
attempt to regularise this world on the plea that free access to weapons is
part of the culture of the Pathans and the Baloch. Pakistan, in other words,
a swirling sea of weapons in which the licensed ones alone would run into
millions and the latest kinds of recoilless rifles and machine guns would
evoke no surprise. Whether or not de-weaponisation is possible remains to be
seen.
The armed Islamicist militias are part of this larger landscape. The Army
itself has been the largest single patron of these militias. Initially they
were controlled by the ISI alone, which favoured the Jamaat-e-Islami. By the
1980s, and especially after the ascent to power of Benazir, who wanted to
superimpose her own establishment over the ISI, the two factions of the
Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) were united and assigned increasingly dominant
role. Their Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan and camps in Afghanistan are
said to have produced between 60,000 and 100,000 militants. The Americans,
on their part, were particularly keen to neutralise the Irani influence and
favoured the diehard Sunni fanaticism of the Wahabi-Deobandi crowd. Thus it
is that the Taliban, the product of those madrassas, rode to power with
Pakistan-U.S. sponsorship, which also laid the basis for escalating
sectarian strife between Shias and Sunnis in Pakistan as well as in
Afghanistan.
That coincided with Pakistan's policy, also formulated in the 1980s, to fan
the flames of insurgency in Kashmir in the long-term perspective of a
low-intensity warfare. Few of the intruding militants in Kashmir were at
that time allied explicitly with the Taliban or with groups controlled by
them. Many of them are still not strictly of that vintage, but some of the
more militant groups, such as the Lashkar-e-Toyeba and the
Harikat-al-Mujahideen, are directly connected with the Taliban; few are
entirely immune to that network. There now appears to be some degree of
reversal in the respective roles. That groups aligned with the Taliban are
central to Pakistan's calculation actually means that they have gained a
much freer hand within Pakistan, not always controllable by the state and
its agencies even in such matters as methodical sectarian attacks on Shias,
let alone their clandestine networks within Pakistan or activities in
Kashmir.
IF what I have called 'the weaponised society of Pakistan' is one side of
the environment in which the Islamicist militias have taken root, widespread
Islamisation of the urban middle classes, especially in its mercantile and
salaried fractions, is the other side. A large number of poor people, in
all corners of the country, whom the state provides no facilities for
health, education or recreation, are glad to give their children to the
madrassas for education and social mobility. Pakistan now has a widespread
culture of commodified, semi-literate, vengeful and hysterical religiosity
which is the exact equivalent of the Rashtra Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its
social base in India.
Musharraf is not their man and they expressed their wariness quite soon
after his takeover. He, on his part, has not been willing to confront
them -- perhaps because he is not sure of the level of support he can count
on within his own armed forces. The result is that he gives an impression of
weakness and vacillation. He said that he admired Ataturk, the founder of
the secular state in Turkey. When challenged by the Islamicists, he claimed
that he admired Ataturk only as a "soldier". He promised to change the
notorious Blasphemy Law in a way that would make it much more difficult to
hurl such an accusation, but backtracked after 19 Islamic parties joined
hands and threatened an agitation. He held a Convention on Human Rights and
Human Dignity at which he condemned violence against the minorities and the
'honour killing' of women, but then allowed his Minister to dilute the
proceedings. After sectarian killings in Attock, his Interior Minister
hinted at banning "four religious groups that have militant wings", but the
groups were neither identified nor banned. There was some talk of revising
the rabid syllabi that are taught in the madrassas but even the talk had
died down.
Meanwhile, the historic antagonists in the camp of the Islamicist political
parties - Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Maulana Fazlur Rehman
of the JUI and Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistan
(JUP) - have drawn together in Milli Yakjehti Council (MYC, or, in rough
translation, the Council of National Unity); talks are afoot to include more
such groupings in a broad Islamic front to oppose the regime's lax ways.
They have detected weaknesses and are pressing on with their demands: the
inclusion of Islamic articles in the Provisional Constitutional Order, a
free hand for religious institutions and jehadi organisations, the rejection
of joint electorates for all religious communities, and so on. The Sunni
militias have stepped up attacks on the Christian minority and the Shia sect
within Islam, with a view to test the regime's nerves. The jehadi groups
that are based in Pakistan and Afghanistan but also operate in Kashmir have
publicly warned the Hurriyat leaders that they would be endangering their
own lives if they are seen negotiating with Indian authorities. That the
Pakistan government itself has advised the Hurriyat leaders not to let go of
the chance for even a bilateral dialogue seems not to matter to the jehadis.
The long-term prospects in Pakistan appear grim, and Musharraf may get quite
immobilised by a combination of overlapping pressures. His policies on
taxation and smuggling can fuel an uprising of the rich, while his
equidistance from Sharif and Benazir alike may bring those two antagonists
of yesteryear into an alliance, funded by the trading and racketeering
groups. This may coincide with the united action of the Islamicist groups
which would want to retaliate against any curbs imposed upon them, without
which neither de-weaponisation at home nor a credible peace initiative for
Kashmir in the international arena can take off. As the U.S. is seen to be
pressing Pakistan on issues of Islamic militancy, a cynical anti-American
religious populism can coincide with hysterical forms of anti-India
patriotism. The liberal media may step up its demands for the 'restoration'
of 'civilian rule'. Together, these distinct and even conflicting social
forces may provisionally come together in what can be billed as "
pro-democracy" agitations.
If such a conjunction of forces comes about, the regime will either collapse
or try to save itself by imposing a real martial law. None of it may
actually come about but there is a writing on the wall that needs
deciphering.
ASIDE from the zero growth in the defence budget, two other indications may
be significant in assessing the intentions - or at least the current
temper - of the Musharraf regime. One is that the rate of infiltration from
Pakistan into the valley has been remarkably low this summer, even though
the apprehensions after Kargil were rather different. The introduction of
suicide bombers and newer levels of weaponry undoubtedly indicate an
intensification of another kind, but that may be owed more to the decision
of the Taliban and the groups they sponsor than to the Musharraf regime. For
at least some of the jehadi groups infiltrating from Pakistan, the chain of
supply and command has become quite complex, often going directly to
Kandahar and bypassing Islamabad. It is also quite possible that particular
elements in the Pakistan Army would direct and supply those groups in tacit
defiance of the regime per se.
The second indication of great interest is that Pakistan seems to have
opened a dialogue with a number of neighbouring Islamic states, urging them
to take back those of their citizens who are residing in Pakistan and
working in the jehadi groups. Islamicist militants from a variety of
countries, often dissidents in their countries of origin, had come to
Pakistan during the Afghan war legally and with the full cooperation of the
Pakistani state and U.S. operatives. Some 3,000 of them are said to have
been deported by the Benazir government. Many of them returned when Sharif
returned to power. Karachi alone is said to have perhaps as many as 10,000
such "guest militants" and there is reason to believe that their immediate
hosts in the local seminaries and neighbourhoods are preparing secret
sanctuaries for them in case the government tries to evacuate them. Whether
or not the regime will feel strong enough to attempt such an eviction -
hence the confrontation with the whole of the Islamicist Establishment
outside as well as inside the armed forces - is yet to be seen and is far
from certain.

Copyrights © 2000, Frontline & Tribeca Internet Initiatives Inc.
Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are
expressly prohibited
without the written consent of Frontline & Tribeca Internet Initiatives Inc.
All rights reserved worldwide.