The return of politics

THE man who would have been ameer-ul-momineen thought he had become kingmaker. It turns out that Nawaz is the court jester, a punching bag for the amusement of Asif and Musharraf.

The era of post-politics is over before it began. The international community is tut-tutting, our homegrown democrats are beating their chests and everyone is a little bemused: did it really take them just six weeks to mess it up?

Another patch-up is on the cards but the damage is real, whatever the transitionists say. Cabinet splits go beyond teething problems. The idea of transition is to keep the democracy jalopy sputtering and inching forward, not slipping into reverse. The uncomfortable comparisons to the decade of democracy are already being trotted out. Ignore what the Sherrys and Farhatullahs say; it’s setting the bar pretty low for parliamentary stability if cabinet upheavals become the norm. Credit to Nawaz for trying though. Like a forlorn lover, he flew to Dubai and then to London, desperate to break the Asif-Musharraf marriage of convenience. Asif wore his perma-grin and preached reconciliation, but he wasn’t about to give up his meal ticket so easily.

Let’s be clear: the fault primarily is Asif’s. Not for refusing to reinstate the judges, but for lying that he would. Nobody forced him to sign the Murree Declaration. But sign he did, only to later dismiss it contemptuously as a political agreement. In doing so, he made artifice the currency of this coalition. Rehman Malik’s antics and Salman Taseer’s appointment were simply confirmation that far from transcending the politics of the 1990s, the trenches are being dug anew.

Blaming Musharraf is pointless, like wondering if the devil will tempt you. Of course he will; that’s what he does. Railing against the devil is always an exercise in futility. And whatever doubts there are about Nawaz’s motives, he has spoken plainly on restoring the judges.

Zardari could have handled the negotiations very differently. He could have been — hold on to your hat — honest. He could have flatly refused to reinstate the judges without culling a few. He could have admitted that it was the pound of flesh Musharraf demanded. He could have chosen not to play footsie with every loathsome character in politics. He could have treated Nawaz with more respect.

Sounds woolly? Not really. Hard politics demanded it. Asif argues that his party’s mandate is roti kapra aur makan, but the slogan filched from Maulana Bhashani is shop-worn and losing its resonance amongst voters, especially in Punjab. People upgrading to motorbikes, salaried employment and amenities are looking at the PPP and wondering what it has to offer them. The answer: not much. The People’s Party desperately needs five years of solid governance to convince voters that it can deliver on the economic front. And if the Punjabi voter is really becoming an issues voter, then all the more reason to emphasise stable governance. Toeing the establishment’s line on the judges today will scarcely harm the People’s Party five years hence if it pulls off good governance and delivers more equitable growth.

Nawaz too needed a compromise. His party infrastructure was systematically dismantled by Musharraf’s henchmen and only continuity in government will recover that lost position. And two-thirds in parliament — necessary if Nawaz wants to become a three-term prime minister — is only possible if he sticks with Asif.

So all Zardari needed to do was provide Nawaz with a compromise that did not paint him as a sell-out. The PPP can survive the perception that it’s in hock to the presidency, but Nawaz can’t. Yet Asif cynically gambled that Nawaz would not opt out of a coalition if the PPP reneged on its judges’ pledge. The rest we know. Asif hasn’t been hoisted on his own petard yet, but he must do better.

For now, we are stuck with numbing debates on judicial reform and constitutional packages which really boils down to which permutation of Chaudhry, Ramday and Dogar is acceptable to Nawaz, Asif, Musharraf and the lawyers. Trial balloons are being floated every other day. At least it has exposed the ridiculousness of the chief justice’s nomination by Buggin’s turn — on the basis of seniority — rather than merit. Given the power that the CJ wields you would hope the most capable judge is elevated to his seat. Instead, we have a rule that allows an incompetent judge to become an incompetent CJ. Admittedly, there is method to the madness: judges don’t have to seek the executive’s favour for the powerful CJ slot and can, in theory, adjudicate more independently. However, if the CJ’s powers are clipped it makes no sense to retain the principle. The best legal mind should occupy the CJ seat.

And don’t worry about calling the judges incompetent. Apparently, we needn’t worry about contempt anymore, at least if the attorney-general is to be believed. Amazing, isn’t it? Not only do we not know how to interpret the laws that do exist, sometimes we can’t be sure if a law even exists. The farcical situation is an inevitable consequence of having a parallel presidential law making track which has been duly abused.

Is the future already so bleak? No. But Zardari must fix the mess he’s created. Earlier this year, he startled a group of visitors when he asked for their forgiveness as they were leaving. His party was learning the dance of democracy on a bed of broken glass, he told them. Mistakes would be made, but his heart was in the right place. He was right. The party deserves some space to commit mistakes. But forgiveness will be difficult if Zardari is found to be the one adding to the bed of broken glass.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Will Fata’s truce succeed?

ISLAMABAD’S well-intentioned truce with the militants in the NWFP and Fata is headed for an inevitable crash. Prime Minister Syed Raza Gilani’s assertion that, unlike the past, the current truce would hold because it is carried out by an elected government is a shallow, state-centric approach to a complex problem with interstate dimensions.

The problem of militancy in the NWFP is not of Pakistan’s own making. Therefore, Pakistan does not have the strategic capacity to curb it unilaterally. It is a direct consequence of General Tommy Franks and Rumsfeld’s strategic vision called Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). After 9/11, when the Pentagon was devising its strategy for OEF, which was ostensibly based on an examination of the enemy’s current situation and the history of military operations in Afghanistan, its generals were clearly aware of the fact that Fata and adjacent areas in Pakistan could harbour an enduring insurgency against Kabul.

An elaborately planned infrastructure was laid for the purpose from 1979-89 in Pakistan’s areas bordering Afghanistan with the collaboration of the Central Intelligence Agency which had provided sanctuary to the Afghan insurgents against the Soviets. Later, it functioned as an organisational base for the Taliban.

Many families in Fata have their members in the Afghan Taliban party. The intent of the OEF mission was to decimate the Al Qaeda as well as the Taliban, instead of overthrowing the latter. That is why hundreds of Taliban were massacred while in custody as prisoners of war after they surrendered to the Northern Alliance and General Franks’ forces in Nov 2001.

A commander’s job is to assess his enemies’ strength and weakness at both political (strategic) and military (tactical) levels and devise his plan accordingly. Given the cross-border strategic assets of the Pakhtun Taliban, General Franks should have demanded that Pakistan seal its border with Afghanistan prior to the launching of OEF and should have helped the Pakistan Army monitor the border with the help of the latest technology in addition to traditional check posts.

The argument that the border cannot be sealed because of the terrain is untenable. Present-day technology allows the fencing of the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Given what 9/11 portends for the US, allocating a budget for UAV monitoring of the sealed border was a strategic necessity. History will debate as to why General Franks and Rumsfeld did not devise a Pakistan-Afghanistan border control strategy prior to commencing OEF.

As a direct consequence of this oversight, instead of decimating terrorism in Afghanistan, an expanded regional version of it has been created and Pakistan has been engulfed in it. We now have the following situation. Having pushed the Taliban into Pakistan instead of destroying them, the US does not want to negotiate peace with them. Washington is relying on the Pakistan military to serve Pentagon as its regional extension and decimate the Taliban for it. Given the support structure that has traditionally operated for the Taliban in Fata and the NWFP, Pakistan’s war on the Afghan Taliban has zero local support within the NWFP. America’s bad publicity in Iraq has turned this lack of support into violent hostility over time.

Because the Pakistan military itself propelled the Taliban in Kabul, its soldiers are psychologically reluctant to engage in mass killing of the latter. The last time the soldiers’ reluctance based upon cultural norms was pushed to the wall by a foreign force in the region was in Meerut in 1856-57. It became the genesis of a widespread mutiny in the Indian army against the British East India Company in 1857, ending its direct rule.

The Al Qaeda, we are told, is in Fata. Although this claim was denied by Musharraf prior to the February election and has no other source as its origin than the US military intelligence, Fata’s socio-political environment renders this assertion plausible. US refusal to negotiate with even the anti-Al Qaeda Taliban has fostered a strategic alliance between the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Given this ground reality, Pakistan’s peace deal with the Fata militants and the latter’s pledge to expel foreign militants is toothless because the control of the entire gamut of violence lies with the US that is convinced that the fountainhead of the Afghan insurgency and international terrorism is inside Fata. The US cannot comb Fata in a house-to-house search to satisfy itself of the veracity of Fata militants’ pledge to Islamabad.

Due to force protection considerations, the US and Nato have preferred aerial bombardment to engagement at ground troop level which is a requirement for combating insurgencies. This is the reason they are producing a high rate of civilian casualties and losing the battles in Afghanistan. This is also the reason they are increasingly looking to the Pakistan Army to do their work for them.

Because the Afghan insurgency is decentralised, the US has no high-profile target for bombing. If Islamabad withdraws forces from Fata without including the US in the peace plan, Fata becomes America’s target serving a dual purpose; a showing for the new commander General Petraeus and a boost for the John McCain election campaign. Unless engaged in a peace-making process right now, General Petraeus would be driven to extensive bombardment of Fata. Should he do so, the peace deal will blow up in Gilani’s face, making his government look too effete to walk the talk once again, after it met a similar fate in the matter of restoration of law in the country.

Therefore, it is vital that the matter of peace be handled with the involvement of the US. Seizing the opportunity provided by Nato’s strategic vision statement of April 3 in Bucharest which prioritised political measures for Afghanistan, Islamabad should launch a diplomatic campaign in all 40 ISAF states, seeking multilateral commitment to its peace plan. The plan should involve General Dan McNeil, General Petraeus and Hamid Karzai, in addition to the Taliban and Fata militants.

Taliban who are not allied with the Al Qaeda are no threat to the US or Europe. Taliban’s political ideology is the mirror image of the ideology of the House of Saud, Washington’s long-standing ally. The main goal of collaboration for peace should be the capturing of the Al Qaeda leadership. Pakistan should seek a multilateral politico-military effort for this objective. Due to the upcoming US and Afghan elections, a change of US military command and European weariness with the Afghan war, the international environment for seeking such cooperation is propitious.

The writer is an independent consultant and analyst of energy geopolitics based in Washington DC

zeenia.satti@yahoo.com

Back to square one

BY the end of 2007, the president and his allies, the PML-Q, had hit rock bottom. The president was on shaky ground and the PML-Q couldn’t find enough candidates to cover all constituencies, as even its ministers and advisors remained reluctant to apply for party tickets.

Against this backdrop and seething public discontent, it was hoped that the elections would produce substantial change.

But nothing has changed. Though the PML-Q was washed out at the polls, the president remains as powerful as before with unfailing American support and now enjoying the backing of an even larger and more popular political party than the PML-Q, the People’s Party.

His governors still occupy three of the four Governor’s Houses. His attorney-general, despite his tainted past, still remains in office. The People’s Party has climbed into bed with the MQM, which stood badly shaken in the aftermath of the May 12 tragedy, and the PML-Q, despite being disgraced at the polls, is set to receive a share of power should the PPP–PML-N alliance fall through. The net effect of this will be the resuscitation of the pre-election ruling alliance, with the addition of the People’s Party. So much for the voice of the electorate.

The People’s Party has emerged as the reincarnation of the defeated PML-Q. Because of the deal between the People’s Party and President Musharraf, its interests have come to be identified with those of the president’s. Public posturing notwithstanding, they are now squarely in Musharraf’s camp.

As a result of this deal, and in return for the withdrawal of cases and allowing looted billions to be swallowed, courtesy the NRO, the PPP did not oppose the holding of presidential elections before the general elections. It refrained from voting against Musharraf in his bid for re-election, choosing to sit futilely on the fence. Its election campaign was a vitriolic assault on the PML-Q, but not a word was uttered against the president.

In the post-election period too the People’s Party has in practice mirrored the position taken by President Musharraf on all major issues, most prominent of which is the issue of the restoration of the judges. In this issue, there is a confluence of interests between Musharraf and Zardari. Just as the restoration of the judges, particularly the chief justice, can open up a Pandora’s box for Musharraf, not least by calling into question the legality of his re-election, Zardari too stands to lose everything if the National Reconciliation Ordinance is challenged.

The People’s Party was never serious about the restoration of the judges and resorted to dilatory tactics. Drafting a parliamentary resolution is a very simple matter and does not require a committee of the finest legal minds in the land. The surest way to ensure that something does not get done is to form a committee.

The resolution simply needed to state that the House is of the view that the proclamation of emergency by the chief of army staff on Nov 3, 2007, was illegal since the COAS lacks the constitutional authority to issue such a proclamation and the House recommends to the government that the PCO and the consequences arising therefrom may be declared null and void.

But such a resolution would send home the new judges who took oath under the PCO, leaving the NRO and the presidential re-election vulnerable to challenge before the restored judges. Hence the PPP’s insistence upon a constitutional package that would ensure the continuity of the new judges and clip the wings of the restored chief justice by shortening his tenure and depriving him of some of his powers, including the power to review all that transpired under the PCO. Such a reform, far from enabling the judiciary and making it independent, would cripple it forever.

Nawaz Sharif has taken a sound stand on this issue. Whether he possesses the intestinal fortitude to withstand the pressure he is bound to come under, not least from his own party members who will be loathe to leave the treasury benches and sit in opposition for who knows how long, remains to be seen. If the PPP–PML-N alliance falls through, will the PPP do the honourable thing and return to the electorate for a fresh mandate? Or will they embrace the newly buffed and polished PML-Q, which Asif Zardari is on record as having labelled the ‘Qatil’ league, unmistakably implicating it in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, to hold on to power?

Time will tell. But all this while, as the power brokers wiggle and squirm to make deals and form alliances to preserve their hold on power, the hapless people await in vain the promised relief from high prices of essential life-supporting commodities, lawlessness, power shortages, poverty, unemployment and every other misery that has pushed them to breaking point. Who can afford to think of them when the throne is on the line?

The People’s Party won the February elections on a groundswell of sympathy arising from the assassination of its leader. They clamoured for a United Nations inquiry into the assassination. Now, after nearly two months in power, all they have achieved is passing a resolution in the National Assembly, which itself took several weeks, recommending that the government move the United Nations for an inquiry.

While the fate of the letter to the UN for inquiry into the killing of the leader on whose name the PPP won this election remains uncertain, buried in a summary pending before the law department, no time was wasted in throwing behind bars a PML-Q former provincial minister, Altaf Unar, and forcing another former minister, Sohrab Sarki, to go into hiding, because the two were implicated in an attack on Zardari’s sister, Azra Pechuho, at a polling station in Jamshoro during a provincial assembly by-election in February 2007.

People have very short memories. More often than not, the stomach rather than the conscience dictates the future course of action. The tragedy of Dec 27, 2007, has been eclipsed by euphoric celebrations and revelry in the corridors of power. The popular mandate to bring about meaningful change has been set aside and we see ghosts of a painful, ruinous past looming ominously over the horizon.

Serbia: when the sulking stops

THE rhetoric before the Serbian parliamentary election on May 11 was ugly enough, but it has got worse since. President Boris Tadic spun the outcome as a victory for the pro-European Union forces when only half the votes were counted, which served his purposes as he is also the leader of the main pro-EU party, the Democratic Party. But when all the votes were counted it turned out that 48 percent of Serbs had voted anti-EU, and only 44 percent pro-EU. (The rest voted for various small ethnic-minority parties.)

This doesn’t mean that the anti-EU, pro-Moscow forces will actually form the next government, because thirty parties ran in the elections and many different coalitions are theoretically possible. The negotiations between the parties are getting quite complicated, which is why President Tadic complained about “sickening post-election mathematics (that) betray the will of the citizens and dramatically change the strategic course of the country.” In other words, he fears that his side may not form the winning coalition.

The swing party whose choice will ultimately decide the shape of the next government is the Socialist Party, once the political vehicle of strongman Slobodan Milosevic, whose pan-Serbian ambitions plunged former Yugoslavia into a decade of war. Since Milosevic died while on trial for war crimes before the United Nations tribunal at The Hague, the Socialists have been trying to reposition their party, but their deepest instincts are certainly anti-EU.

For the moment, the Socialists are talking about a coalition with the ultra-nationalist Radical Party (whose leader, Vojislav Seselj, is currently on trial at The Hague on war crimes charges) and the right-wing Serbian Democrats. All three parties dislike the European Union, admire Russia, refuse to accept the independence of Kosovo, and will not surrender war criminals to The Hague tribunal. So you’d think it would be an easy deal to strike, but it’s not.

As Boris Tadic put it, a socialist-nationalist coalition would probably be “a short trip on the Titanic.” A country with a stagnant economy and 18 per cent unemployment really needs the influx of aid and investment that the EU can provide and Russia cannot. Moreover, some of the Socialists, whose 20 seats in parliament are indispensable to any coalition, want to remake their party as a modern, moderate left-wing party that would not be out of place in any EU member country.

That ambition would incline them towards a coalition deal with Tadic’s Democratic Party, which is why the Radical leader recently warned Tadic to keep his party’s “Mafioso, thieving, criminal” hands off the talks between the extreme nationalist parties and the Socialists. It really isn’t possible to predict how long the horse-trading will last, or what kind of Serbian government will emerge from these negotiations. The only safe prediction is that the next government will indulge in much wishful thinking (or just plain hypocrisy) about Kosovo.

The EU really wants Serbia to join, not because it has any great economic or strategic value but because if the nationalist fever struck there again it could still destabilise the whole Balkans. Just before the election Brussels signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (the first step towards EU membership) with the caretaker government in Belgrade to show Serbian voters that they really were welcome in Europe. But the EU will not yield on its demand that Serbia hand the war criminals over, which may queer the whole deal.

Many Serbs believe that their alternative is a close relationship with Moscow, which is outraged by the West’s disregard for international law. Russians do have a genuine emotional attachment to Serbia, so the word “friendship” is not entirely out of place. But great powers do not have friends; they have interests — and Russia’s interests do not include getting into a major confrontation with the West over Serbia. It will be sympathetic to Serbia, but not very helpful.

So there is no crisis. Serbia will get a pro-EU government that gets on with negotiating the country’s membership, or it will get a socialist-nationalist coalition that takes “a short trip on the Titanic.” But even the Serbs are not ready for another war, so it will be a purely Serbian shipwreck — and then there will be another election (the ninth since 2000) and they will try to get the right answer again.

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