Whose game is it?

SEPTEMBER 29 has been marked as another dark day in Pakistan’s history. It was a day when the state’s coercion was used against innocent journalists and lawyers. The authorities felt the need to use brutal methods to control the people. Interestingly, it was also the first time in history that the police resorted to the ways of street urchins and pelted the protestors with stones.

It seems that it is not only the general public that has learnt something from the Palestinian Intifada. Such tactics were used to physically assault people like lawyers Aitzaz Ahsan and Ali Ahmed Kurd.

Apparently, the khakis are extremely unhappy with the Chief Justice’s team of lawyers and are determined to sort these people out for challenging the army chief and making comments denigrating his uniform. The regime has shown its ugly face which had been feared eight years ago when Pervez Musharraf seized power. This may not be because he is a born tyrant but due to the nature of his personal and organisational power.

Since the military lacks political legitimacy, it is bound to end up in conflict with society within a few years of taking control. The dictator starts out with good intentions but soon runs into problems created due to his utter lack of understanding of politics.

The military dictator is accustomed to another culture which is more organised and disciplined. Such a culture looks good in a bureaucracy but not in politics where different stakeholders vie for a greater share of political, financial and other resources. So, the dictator soon gets out of breath and embarks on the path of coercion. The more time he spends at the helm, the more frustrated he becomes. The more frustrated he gets the more coercive his regime is. This cycle is unchangeable when the military comes into power.

To those who believe that General Musharraf is an extraordinary man who can rise above this cyclic behaviour, one would like to pose this question: who gave orders for the brutality that was on display on May 12 and Sept 29?

Logically, (if we forget for a minute that this is not another military regime) the government should not have shown aggression soon after the Supreme Court judgment even if it wanted to send a message to the general public that any difference of opinion and act of disobedience would not be tolerated. Although pressure from several sides was mounting, Musharraf had won a round of the political battle when the Supreme Court rejected the petitions challenging his eligibility for the presidential race.

Was it Musharraf himself who ordered the police to use the tactics of street urchins? Perhaps not. He is certainly not choreographing the entire show of his regime. In fact, possibly the problem exists that he is not in total control of all parts of his government including the armed forces.

Some might consider this an extreme conclusion and would argue that he is very much in control. In this case, it is nothing more than poor intelligence which the agencies are quite capable of. Historically, the intelligence agencies have never been up to the mark in informing a regime intelligently.

In 1965, these agencies had advised the government that Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Kashmir were ready for a revolt against the Indian forces, which they were not. During the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s, these very agencies had given poor advice to the government about the reaction of the Bengali population in East Pakistan. Very recently, the agencies were found to have no information (or pretended not to have any) on the Lal Masjid crisis in the heart of the capital.

It was also a dire miscalculation on their part that the lawyers’ movement would die down within a couple of months, which it didn’t. One could go on and on about the failure of the intelligence in this blessed country.

But then, why is no one checking such failures — or is it really a question of how much General Musharraf is in control of the situation? A political crisis is a good way for the organisation to get rid of an individual when he refuses to give up. Surely, people around the top general know how greater coercion is counterproductive. More aggression will create the opposite result of what the regime would like to see.

Domestic politics, however, is not the only area where policy contradictions are obvious. One equally draws a blank in understanding the policy on militancy. Are we trying our best to eliminate the militants? Have all connections in the name of a higher strategic mission been ruptured? Or is there still a tactical linkage with some militant organisations?

It is not just that foreign agencies and think-tanks point an accusing finger at the country’s policy on the militants but available evidence also indicates covert linkages.

The obvious question is: why is nothing being done about the Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammad leadership when they are in the country and the agencies know about their hideouts? Then there are stories about linkages with some Taliban elements in Waziristan while there is a battle going on with others. Surely, this brings lots of questions to mind to which there are some possible explanations.

First, as part of the war tactic it is not possible to completely end relations with the enemy. There is always the possibility of co-opting some and thus breaking the power of the enemy.Second, there is a conscious plan to resurrect a Wahabi state which would then lead to creating the historical Islamic empire that a number of people dream about. Some such people have also been referred to by the general-president in his speeches in which he talked about former senior military officers with links to the extremists.

The Taliban style of governance is a good method of centralised control of a vital region. This is certainly what many in government and among analysts learned from the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The defenders of the Taliban in Islamabad used to eulogise them for having brought discipline and peace to a warring society.

These unidentified elements (be they serving or retired) have a vision of an Islamic empire which would be led by the only Muslim nuclear power that is Pakistan. One saw some glimpses of this thought in a paper written almost a decade ago by a group of intellectuals in the GHQ titled ‘Gulf Crisis 1990’ in which the basic thesis was that a power vacuum created by US military losses in the Gulf would be filled by Pakistan.A painfully slow defeat in Iraq or Afghanistan remains a possibility. The departure of Nato and US troops in five years would create a huge power vacuum which will be extremely lethal. The idea is not that the US or Nato should not pull out but that their stay, the use of military force and the lack of clear identification of forces which would like to control the area in the future do not present thrilling conclusions for the country or the region’s future.

It is vital for the people to understand where power resides in Pakistan today. Is the general-president, who claims to be fighting extremism, completely in charge or are there forces and ideas that we do not know anything about? Transparency is essential for restoring the common man’s confidence in his country.

The writer is an independent analyst and author of the book, ‘Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’.

E-mail: ayesha.ibd@gmail.com

All oppressors are the same

THE stately building of the Supreme Court stands on Constitution Avenue in Islamabad. The avenue has seen the Pakistani Constitution being battered again and again. It has come to remind one of Tiananmen Square in Beijing where pro-democracy protestors were beaten and bundled off to jail when they criticised the rule of the communist government.

Totalitarian regimes, whether Left or Right, are the same when it comes to oppression.Unlike the Chinese, the people of Pakistan have not yet surrendered the right to rule themselves. The flame of democracy still burns, although dimly. The desire to protect it has inspired Pakistanis to defy the authorities for years as they did recently on Constitution Avenue. Their demonstration was against the Supreme Court’s 6-3 judgment rejecting the petitions questioning General Pervez Musharraf’s eligibility to stand for another presidential term.

The police and the soldiers beat some 200 lawyers and journalists, coming like waves in a battlefield. What I saw on Pakistan television screens, before they were switched off, was no beating. It was carnage. Leading lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, who won Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry his reinstatement, seemed to be the main target. Some journalists, at the risk of their own lives, tried to save him. They were brought to hospital injured.

That the Supreme Court ordered a suo motu inquiry into the beating in Islamabad is a commendable step. Two police officials have already been suspended. But the Supreme Court went over a similar exercise a few months ago. That too was a suo motu inquiry. At that time also, the ‘police’ was equally brutal in beating up the lawyers who were agitating for the reinstatement of the Chief Justice. I do not recall the dismissal of the police chief, nor of any arrests. If some ordinary policemen were punished, no one knows about it.

I am not surprised at the brutalities. When governments run amok, they use every method, illegal and repressive, to suppress opponents and critics. The idea is to use power to break the morale of the opposition and the intelligentsia. I saw this happening in India during the Emergency (1975-77) when the police and government servants became a willing tool of tyranny.

What hurts me is that the ethical considerations inherent in public behaviour become dim and in many cases go beyond the mental grasp of many government functionaries. Desire for self-preservation is the sole motivation for official action and behaviour. What the police did on Constitution Avenue could not have been possible without a word from above. Reports are that the ‘police’ were given instructions by the powers that be.

Police brutality is not uncommon in India either. There are instances of Gujjars being beaten up in Rajasthan and workers in Haryana. The difference in India is that people have their revenge when free and fair elections take place. They see to it that the rulers who use the police for their ends are defeated.

I wish elections in Pakistan could give the kind of freedom which the Indians have. A democratic system makes all the difference despite the excesses which the security forces commit. In an open society, justice catches up with the criminals, sooner or later.

What I have not been able to make out is why PPP chief Benazir Bhutto is conspicuous by her silence. Many lawyers who were beaten up are her party’s stalwarts, particularly Aitzaz Ahsan. There has been no public condemnation, nor any warning to the government which behaved as if it was pitted against the enemy.

That Benazir Bhutto has been negotiating a deal with General Musharraf had been known for some time. Now the cat is out of the bag. The details of the deal are coming out. Benazir Bhutto will return to power after the next elections which may have to be ‘managed’ in such a way that a particular number of seats go to the PPP and a particular number to the religious parties.Musharraf will see to it and balance the two in such a way that he and his supporters become the arbiters. This way he hopes to complete his five-year term as president even without his uniform.

Benazir Bhutto may go down in the estimation of the public because all cases of corruption against her are being taken back and questionable bank accounts, frozen so far, released. I hope she is aware of the protest within the PPP, particularly for not standing by the side of the members who have given their all to the party to attain the position she enjoys today.

Beating was bad enough, but her tacit acceptance was worse. Is it a part of the deal that some articulate and radical members should be eliminated for the smooth running of the new relationship between Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf?

It was once said that all political parties would ask their members from the National Assembly to resign if General Musharraf were to file the nomination paper for the president’s office without discarding his uniform. At least Musharraf has created confusion by announcing the name of his successor as the chief of the army staff. The surprising part is that most opposition members of the National Assembly submitted their resignations in protest but not those of the PPP, which, although once in the forefront, is now seen to be on the side of Musharraf and his kind of politics.

Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who also resigned, has said that he will now go to the masses and awaken them against Musharraf. That alone is not enough to restore democracy in Pakistan. The soldiers have to go back to the barracks and stay there as is the practice in India and other democratic countries.

It is a pity that America which calls itself the strongest democracy in the world has been a party to what has been agreed upon between Benazir Bhutto and General Musharraf. Washington has its own ways to ‘save’ democracy.

The wrier is a senior columnist based in New Delhi.

Saving the past from obliteration

NOTHING is safe any longer from the malevolence of those who continue to bring death and destruction in the name of God in this increasingly Islamic republic; not even a harmless rock-carved image of the Buddha dating back to the second century BC and which no one worshipped.

The giant Buddha at Jahanabad near Mingora in Swat finally lost its face, parts of the shoulders and the feet in a second assault last Friday by Islamist militants. The historical relic had survived two earlier attacks. But this time round, in spite of the law enforcement agencies having been warned of the danger the militants posed to the rock carving, the latter planned and carried out the blast unchecked.

The roadside massive rock on which the Buddha is carved is by no means in a remote area hidden from the public eye. It is the most conspicuous rock that greets every visitor to Mingora, the commercial hub of the Swat valley. For the militants to have planned and carried out the assault the way it was done, it is clear the government and the local administration couldn’t care less about the damage inflicted on this national archaeological treasure.

The attackers reportedly had the time to drill holes into the solid rock, disfiguring the Buddha measuring 13 feet by nine feet, while they were at it, before filling up those holes with explosives and setting them off. Given the location and the size of the relic, it cannot be said that anyone up to causing such carefully planned destruction was not visible to the passersby or the vehicular traffic, let alone the law enforcement agencies whose job it is to protect such sites.

Archaeology department officials had lodged an FIR with the Swat police, warning them of attempts by Islamist militants to blow up the historical relic after the last assault suffered by the carving on Sept 11 only this year. The police and the government have no defence against their apathy towards the country’s pre-Islamic historical relics. Indeed, they are guilty by their studied inaction of being party to the destruction of the unique rock carving, which was second only in the region to the spectacular and now annihilated Buddhas at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

The question is: why this tolerance of extremism and hate of the other in the most hideous form? The answer perhaps lies partly in political exigencies of the current regime, combined with the glorification of the bigots in our history books. Consider that 11-century bandit Mahmud of Ghazni, who was credited with bringing down idols as he invaded India, raided only those Hindu temples which were laden with gold and other ornamental wealth. Once his empire took hold in the subcontinent, and the rich temples had been laid bare of their gold and silver, idol worship carried on unhindered.

The puritan, bigoted and born-again Muslim creed of the Taliban variety poses a serious threat to the evolved notions of tolerance and fine moral and social ideals of a humane, civilised society. That they breed and sustain themselves in isolation from evolved social norms, among rugged mountains and under primitive conditions, denying themselves and others at their mercy the right to practise social norms brings out the primitive instincts best known for causing destruction all around.

Following the blowing up of the Buddha relic in Swat, it is most astounding that not a word of condemnation has come from the highest and the mightiest in the government who otherwise preach enlightened moderation and tolerance. There is nothing un-Islamic or anti-religion about deploring barbarism, whether it is practised against a people or shared human heritage.

What is going on in Swat, a valley known for its natural beauty as well as for attracting the common pleasure-trip seeker and the history enthusiast, threatens both equally: the people living there and the national historical treasures.

The way the authorities have buckled under pressure from Mullah Fazlullah, who is broadcasting his bigoted views and issuing threats to the people via an illegally operated radio station, has emboldened the misguided few of his ilk to now cause damage to pre-Islamic historical sites and relics. The Butkarra remains and the museum in Saidu Sharif, so many other such sites in the region and another well-endowed museum with ancient Buddhist-era relics at nearby Chakdara are crying out for help.

The intolerant, extremist brigade has to be stopped, and stopped fast in its tracks. But until that happens, rolling a few heads whose job it was to protect the ill-fated Jahanabad rock carving, will not be a bad start in trying to salvage the precious little we have left of our national heritage.