LET’S keep our eyes on the ball. Lest we forget our main enemy is not this or that politician or political party. It is military authoritarianism and its most visible symptom is Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf.

But over three months after a clear-cut popular vote against him, the former general refuses to relinquish the highest office of the state he illegally occupies.

Instead, he is using the presidential bully pulpit to displace blame on to the elected government. Last week, an anonymous presidential advisor not so indirectly blamed the civilian government for the economic downslide and the flight of foreign investors. Some media reports suggest that a Musharraf-sponsored charge-sheet against the civilian government is under preparation. These are dangerous signs that authoritarianism is down but not yet out.

Unfortunately, many in the media are unwittingly playing straight into Musharraf’s hands by recycling his desperate rhetoric of dysfunction. The civilian government has been in power for less than three months but the rumour mills are already in overdrive predicting a presidential and even a military intervention. The energy crisis, food shortages, inflation, unemployment and the general law and order deficit carried over from the ancien regime have all been unduly laid at its door.

We are well within our democratic rights to rake our elected representatives over the coals for their acts of omission and commission. But before we blast them out of the water, it might be a good idea to at least acknowledge the difficulties attending a transition to democracy. Eight years of authoritarian rule have cast their ominous shadows far and wide.

Musharraf and his PML-Q allies are still conspiring in and outside parliament to throw sand in the machine. There is still a formidable autonomous military which has retreated to the garrison out of institutional necessity not a commitment to constitutionalism. National security is still its prerogative.

The nuclear programme remains out of bounds for civilians. The rule of law is in tatters. The constitution is a disfigured version of itself, violated with impunity by a military dictator. The fear of terrorism and the virtual breakdown of law and order are playing havoc with our collective sense of safety and security. And, of course, the economy is in a veritable mess.

That is not all. Before the transition got off the ground, former premier Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The untimely demise of the PPP leader triggered a leadership vacuum in the party and the polity. To its credit, the PPP handled the succession rather smoothly considering the odds.

Surprising many, the then newly appointed party co-chair Asif Ali Zardari deftly calmed the partisan passions ignited in the wake of her death. The Murree declaration convinced many a sceptic that Mr Zardari was a changed man by virtue of his long imprisonment and exile. But it didn’t take long for his detractors in and outside the media to reinstate him to his state-sponsored status as evil incarnate.

The NRO acquittals did not help. That he had not been duly convicted in any case filed against him and was imprisoned for a decade did not matter one bit. And it was not long before he was castigated for appointing ‘corrupt’ loyalists to high state offices.

That loyalty and political responsiveness are unfortunate default qualifications for public office in a system mined with authoritarian residues was no issue at all. He was also unduly denigrated for kowtowing to the Americans, without much acknowledgment of the deeply embedded US influence in Pakistan.

Mr Zardari may be the perfect scapegoat for all that is wrong with Pakistan. But is it fair to expect miracles from a fledgling democratic order? Shouldn’t credit be given where it is due?

Even though the PML-N left the federal cabinet after the expiry of the May 12 deadline for the restoration of the judiciary, both Nawaz Sharif and Mr Zardari have exhibited considerable political maturity by keeping the coalition intact. Their coalition in Punjab is still in place despite differences over the appointment of the provincial governor. The two sides are in broad agreement over the PPP-drafted package of constitutional amendments which will clip the authoritarian powers of the presidency.

There is more good news. However tortuously slow, frustrating and uncertain, consensus-building and conciliation are slowly replacing authoritarian fiat as the main mode of decision-making. The government has taken positive steps towards healing inter-provincial fissures. For instance, it has released key political prisoners from Balochistan as a confidence-building measure. It also appears to have adopted a smarter, calibrated political-military strategy for tackling militancy in Swat and the tribal areas despite US and Nato objections.

No less encouragingly, the coalition leadership has apparently stood its ground in the face of American pressure to stick with Musharraf. The days of the ‘one fatal phone call’ are hopefully over. In fact, it seems like Washington might be slowly, if reluctantly, coming to terms with a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

Of course, these gains are no reason for complacency. The PPP-led government should have wasted no time in restoring the 1973 Constitution as it stood on Oct 12, 1999. There was no justifiable reason to delay the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary even by a day. There still isn’t one. That is not all. The structure and conduct of our political parties leave much to be desired. The lack of intra-party democracy is a major problem they must address as is the elite capture of the electoral process.

But right now, the main political project is to consolidate the democratic transition by removing all the dangerous ‘relics of the past’. One can only hope that the current rumours of Musharraf’s imminent resignation are more than just rumours. Musharraf’s exit alone may not herald political stability. That is a much more complex task which entails the institutionalisation of the rules of the democratic game. But it will be an important substantive and symbolic victory for democracy.

The writer, a PhD candidate in political science at Columbia University, is conducting doctoral research in Pakistan.

as2552@columbia.edu

IN 2001, Gen Musharraf had expressed public concern over the increasing population and set the challenge of cutting the then growth rate of 2.2-2.4 per cent to a more sustainable 1.9 per cent by 2003. He also called for an increase in contraception use from 32 to 40 per cent in the following two years. This was a formidable challenge.

Government sources claimed success. A recent survey undertaken in association with an independent foreign organisation, however, showed that there has not been an increase in contraceptive use at all. Use of modern methods of contraception stagnated at 22 per cent and traditional methods were supposed to contribute eight per cent giving a total of 30 per cent.

During this time, even in the South Asian region, Pakistan has fallen behind all other countries by a large margin in doing something serious about this problem. Nevertheless, there has been an important change of attitude. There is greater awareness, and if reports are to be believed, throughout the country 30 to 40 per cent women are supposed to have an unmet need for contraception. There is still a small anticontraception group based on religious or ethical beliefs but it is almost irrelevant. It does not amount to very much. The claim that the ulema are a problem is often used as an alibi when people fail to meet their commitments.

There are two major problems with the business of limiting population. The first is political correctness. It is politically objectionable to call it ‘population control’ which is what the Chinese did successfully. The euphemisms for this have periodically changed. From ‘family planning’ to ‘population welfare’ to ‘family welfare’ and finally, since the 1995 Cairo Conference, it is simply referred to as ‘reproductive health’, which has made everything vague and unfocussed.

The second major problem is the lack of political commitment. Paradoxically, as a political issue, it isn’t very attractive and governments are not motivated to undertake such projects. At the end of the day, there is nothing concrete to crow about. No big industrial units, no magnificent buildings, no motorways, no large bridges; nothing to show for it except fewer and possibly healthier and more educated children. The benefits are all rather abstract. Increasing population does not affect any current government. It is 15 to 20 years later that the chickens come home to roost. What is happening today is the result of inaction 15 to 20 years ago i.e. around 1990.However, it is one of the vital issues in poverty reduction. The four major components of any poverty reduction programme are clean water, basic health services, education and, believe it or not, smaller families. Amongst the poorer classes, because of resource limitations, the recreational aspects of marriage cannot be underestimated.

What one attempts to do in this business is to separate pleasure from pregnancy. This needs awareness combined with availability and affordability of the necessary products. There is also the issue of women’s empowerment which means that family-planning NGOs should coordinate their efforts with NGOs working for women’s empowerment. For instance, if a woman wants to limit her family she has to obtain the consent of her husband. Since husbands may not care about a woman’s problems this may result in refusal by medical practitioners to perform the procedure.

Free distribution is usually not the answer. In this process, the major problem is getting a fix on how much of the product is actually used and there is no way of ascertaining performance with any degree of accuracy. Besides, anything given free is not valued.

The second problem is to determine an affordable price. A rule of thumb is that it should not exceed one per cent of annual income for a year’s supply. Secondly, the price should not be so low that the sales staff can pay for meeting targets for the sale of products out of their monthly salary by simply claiming bogus sales figures. Currently, social marketing prices are set around half per cent per month of monthly income.

Awareness comes through education and promotional activity. In populations of low literacy, the best medium is interpersonal communication followed by television and radio. Since family planning is a very private issue, no matter how delicately the advertisement deals with the subject, some kid, somewhere, some time, is bound to ask his mother an awkward question.

The West has a very handy explanation for babies. They are brought by storks. In our culture, they are sent by God. Whilst one can shoot the stork, one is helpless before the Almighty. There will always be some flak, but after some time, the message may get through that having fewer children is good not only for the children but also for the mother and father. However, to support this we also need to control infant mortality.

Newspapers are shy about having this problem aired in their columns. The result is that the technical and social aspects of family planning are never discussed to see how the problem is to be solved. They merely make Cassandra-like pronouncements about the doubling of the population in 25 years and its economic consequences.

The fact is that in spite of Gen Musharraf’s statement he never promoted it as an issue. His favourite prime minister never bothered to show up for the Population Day meeting scheduled annually for July 11. Mr Nawaz Sharif did come. He strode in looking grim, gave a speech stating that this was a major problem and that his government was doing everything to resolve the problem. He then left the hall and the problem until the next July 11.

Gen Musharraf’s government did provide more resources to the Ministry of Population Welfare. Unfortunately, there was a tendency to appoint discarded officers to head the ministry. As a matter of fact, last year, the ministry of finance started talking about the ‘demographic dividend’ of an increasing population. Nothing could be more irrelevant.

From 2002 onwards, there has been an increasing contribution by NGOs in the population sector. The fact is that if the government is serious about reducing population growth, it can be best done through public/private cooperation and support.

GUESSING whether Washington’s Iran policy is moving nearer or farther from military attack is almost as hard as guessing what is going on in Tehran. A debate is under way in both capitals but the signals are obscure. As Winston Churchill purportedly said about power struggles in the Kremlin: “It’s like watching two bloodhounds fighting under a carpet. You can detect a furious battle but you have no idea who’s winning.”

On the downside, take the US reaction to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran, which Gregory Schulte, the chief US delegate, describes as “stonewalling” and a “direct rebuttal” of Iran’s argument that it has already satisfactorily answered all nuclear questions.

On the plus side comes the announcement that Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, is to travel to Tehran shortly with a package of incentives for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. The Bush administration has endorsed the new offer.

Another broadly positive development was the landslide victory for Ali Larijani when the Iranian parliament elected a new speaker. According to experts, Larijani is not a member of the ruling elite’s reformist or pragmatic camps. He remains a hardliner. But analysts point to his resignation as chief nuclear negotiator in October, apparently in protest at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s abrasive international statements. Larijani’s re-emergence in a powerful post is seen as a possible signal of a more sophisticated Iran. Epithets aside, the IAEA report was the usual mixture of good and bad points. Contrary to most western news accounts, it was not unusually harsh. It did not express IAEA frustration or accuse Iran of a willful lack of cooperation. In fact, it said all activities at Iran’s fuel-enrichment plants remained under IAEA containment and surveillance.

It then outlined a series of areas where Iran needed to provide answers. Many relate to the “alleged studies”, a shorthand phrase for material given by US intelligence agencies to the IAEA, which the IAEA is not allowed to pass on to Iran except in broad outline. While claiming the material is forged, the Iranians have begun to provide answers on some points.

To some, this may all sound like dancing on a pinhead. But Scott McClellan, Bush’s former press secretary, has just accused his former boss of manipulating the truth and mounting a dishonest propaganda campaign against Iraq before the invasion. We ignore similar efforts against Iran at our peril.

That said, the Iranians are probably waiting, like everyone else, to see whether Obama wins the White House and makes good on his promise to open a comprehensive dialogue with Iran. Direct talks between Washington and Tehran offer a far greater hope of detente than anything Solana is bringing. What Iran wants above all is an end to US hostility, and reliable guarantees that Iran’s security concerns in the region are recognised.

Neither man is willing to admit that Iran has legitimate interests in Iraq. Iran was attacked by Iraq in the 1980s and has no wish to see the current regime signing up to an agreement for the US to have bases there. Hence Tehran’s assiduous wooing of the government in Baghdad. Tehran also has close links to Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army, but avoids having to choose between these two allies. It was largely thanks to Iran’s good offices that a ceasefire quickly ended the recent fighting in Basra between the Iraqi army and the Mahdi army.

Indeed, the irony of today’s Baghdad is that Iran has an embassy there while none of Bush’s Arab allies, neither Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia, do. This was underlined in Sweden on May 29 at a conference of international donors, which was attended by the Iranian foreign minister but boycotted by most of his Arab counterparts. Condoleezza Rice pleaded in vain for them to come.

Washington is caught in a bind. On the one hand, it does all it can to boost the status and authority of Iraq’s government, even though Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his sectarian party remain firmly against sharing power with Sunnis.

Worse still, in its zeal to exclude Sadr, the US is forcing al-Maliki more closely into the arms of the Kurdish parties and the other main Shia party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. They support the idea of a loose federalism that could lead to the breakup of Iraq — an outcome which many in Tehran would welcome.

On the other hand, in order to minimise anti-occupation resistance from Iraq’s Sunni nationalists, Washington is financing new Sunni militias and encouraging anti-Shia and anti-Iranian prejudice among them. If Iran can be portrayed as a regional threat, it will be easier — so the thinking goes — for the US to pose as the indispensable policeman in the Gulf.

A new US approach is urgently needed. Peace and stability can only be reached in Iraq with Iran’s cooperation, and this will not happen until the US president announces a timetable for leaving Iraq. Whatever one’s view of Iranian intentions, even the most sceptical analyst does not believe Iran could acquire a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it for several years.

The more immediate danger is that the Gulf becomes a theatre for artificial Sunni-versus-Shia tensions, deliberately stoked by outsiders. There is no axis of evil. There is no arc of crisis. There is just a series of states which need sovereignty and mutual respect, and the chance to trade and work together.

—The Guardian, London