DISASTROUS DIVORCE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    A bitter divorce between the unlikely political bed-fellows – the supposedly left-of-centre, liberal Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP) and right-of-centre, conservative Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif (PMLN) – was always on the cards. But the manner and timing of the final parting of ways doesn't seem to make much sense. At a time when the Pakistani state is finding it difficult to maintain effective control over more than half of the country, anarchy, chaos and unrest in Punjab is the last thing Pakistan needed. However, the Machiavellian manipulations of Asif Zardari, coupled with the politically motivated moral rigidity of Nawaz Sharif, seem to have pushed Pakistan further in the direction of state failure.

With the crucial senate elections out of the way, the political air was pregnant with the possibility of some major changes in the power structure of the country. Reports were doing the rounds for quite some time of moves being made and deals being struck to effect regime change in Pakistan's political powerhouse, Punjab. Lending credence to these reports were the provocative actions and utterances of the Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, who kept the PMLN led provincial government unsettled by taking pot-shots at it on every conceivable occasion.

And yet, many believed that political brinkmanship would not push things over the edge at this point in time since it would only give a huge fillip to the lawyers Long March and sit-in (Dharna) for the restoration of the ousted chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry. Until the ouster of the PMLN government in Punjab, the lawyers had received only a somewhat cautious and lukewarm backing from the PMLN. Without the PMLN support, the lawyers would never have got anywhere and in all likelihood their Long March in mid-March would have ended in a whimper. But now, with nothing to lose, nothing at stake, and nursing a deep sense of betrayal, there will be little to restrain Nawaz Sharif from going whole hog to make life difficult, if not impossible, for the PPP-led coalition.

With an open, unrestrained and headlong confrontation between the two biggest political parties of Pakistan now inevitable, the current government is bound to be buffeted by political storms. To protect its flanks, the PPP will be force to seek the support of the military establishment on one side and the quintessential establishment political party, PMLQ, on the other. The end result of this could be the dislodging of the PPP-led coalition and/or another derailment of the democratic process. At the very least the military will once again start playing a pivotal role in deciding the course of Pakistani politics.

On its part, the PPP will be banking upon the public fatigue with agitational politics to ride out the political storm. The rising levels of economic distress will also make it difficult to sustain the momentum of any agitation for a prolonged period. According to the PPP calculation, the bulk of Nawaz Sharif's support comes from Punjabi urban middle-class and traders, not exactly the sort of people who are known for their street fighting skills. Moreover, the PPP sees the PMLN as a 'GT Road party', i.e. a party that is centred only in the Raiwind-Rawalpindi (central Punjab) area. Therefore PMLN's influence and ability to put unbearable pressure on the government is limited. Of course, what the PPP ignores at its own peril is the fact that Nawaz Sharif's bastion is also the centre of gravity of Pakistan's politics. Any upheaval in this belt is enough to destabilise the government in both Lahore and Islamabad.

For Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari's cleverness and slipperiness is a god-send opportunity. On the one hand he has acquired the halo of a victimised hero. On the other hand, his political space is no longer constrained by the need for maintaining a friendly relationship with his biggest political rival, the PPP. Although Nawaz Sharif never tires of pointing out that he is practising the politics of principles (especially on the issue of judges), the fact is that this was a very convenient posture for him to adopt. Like every ambitious politician, Nawaz Sharif too desires power. But this he could not get in the present set-up. He expects to win, and win big, in the next elections and the sooner these take place the better it is for him. His entire effort now will be to bring down the PPP coalition by forcing mid-term elections through use of street power and political manoeuvres.

Nawaz Sharif's success or otherwise in attaining his objective will of course depend not only on his ability to bring his supporters out, but also on the response of the other parties like Jamaat Islami and Tehrik-i-Insaf. Equally important will be the political calculation of other Muslim League factions, particularly the PMLQ, which will have to decide whether to use this opportunity to settle their differences with Nawaz or push him into a corner. Interestingly, Nawaz Sharif's success on the street could easily be a double-edged sword. It could push his political rivals into the waiting arms of Asif Zardari. What is worse, it could also spook the army which is in any case not very comfortable with the prospect of seeing him back in power, even less so as an enormously popular and powerful Prime Minister.

The Pakistan army fears that Nawaz Sharif will almost certainly try and clip its wings by not tolerating any interference by the army in Pakistani politics. The more radical an agenda Nawaz Sharif pushes, the more he prevents the army from taking any action against Asif Zardari. So much so that even if the army is unhappy with Asif Zardari, they will see him as a more pliable, malleable and a lesser evil than Nawaz Sharif who promises to shake things up not only on civil-military relations but also in the War on Terror, the relations with US and on the issue of Islamisation.

To his credit, one major reason why Nawaz Sharif has been hesitant in pushing things with Asif Zardari beyond the point of no return is his political and personal aversion to riding back into power on the back of the army. But despite his own reluctance to look towards the GHQ in Rawalpindi for succour, and notwithstanding the army's reservations, if the situation deteriorates to a point where the PPP government's continuation becomes untenable, and the army finds itself in no position to assume direct control, it might eat humble pie and bring Nawaz Sharif back into power.

The army is however not the only way Nawaz Sharif can dislodge the PPP's government. If he is able to strike a deal with his erstwhile colleagues who are now in the PMLQ, it could devastate the PPP's political calculations. But as things stand, the chances of this happening are negligible, because it will involve a compromise that Nawaz Sharif will find unacceptable. This is something that suits PPP just fine because not only does it divide the Muslim League vote in Punjab, it also provides the PPP and PMLQ alliance the glue of Nawaz Sharif's hostility.

Clearly, Pakistan has entered a phase of political confrontation and competition between the PPP and PMLN which it can ill-afford. Under normal political conditions and a stable state such a power game would have been understandable, even expected. But with the spectre of instability and turmoil looming large over the country, the power struggle getting underway could easily end up pushing Pakistan over the brink.

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    <1246 Words>                        28^th February, 2009

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SURRENDER IN SWAT

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

On the face of it, the furore within Pakistan and without over the imposition of Shariah law in Swat and six other districts of Malakand division in NWFP is nothing more than a storm in a teacup. After all, Pakistan's legal system had been Shariah-ised long ago, and the constitution expressly forbids any law that is repugnant to Islamic law or Shariah. Civil, criminal, evidence, inheritance and personal laws are all Shariah compliant, although punishments prescribed by Islamic laws have been replaced by penalties under English law. In the specific case of Swat, once the Islamic packaging of the Nizam-e-Adl regulations (commonly interpreted as Shariah laws) is stripped away, everything is supposed to remain as it was before, except for certain procedural and structural changes in the judicial system to ensure speedy and inexpensive justice to the people.

The issue in Swat, as indeed in rest of Pakistan, is not about Shariah. It is about who decides what is Shariah. Will this be decided by the State, or will it be decided by radical and obscurantist mullahs like Sufi Muhammad, the head of the extremist movement Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Mohamaddi (TNSM) and father-in-law of the leader of the Swat Taliban, Mullah Fazlullah. Equally important is the question of whether Shariah law will be administered by judicial officers appointed by the state or by the Mullah militias, better known as Taliban. Finally there are the cultural issues that are at the root of any interpretation of Islamic law and which draw the maximum attention and reaction. These include education of girls, employment of women, the issue of keeping beards or the sort of clothes permissible under Islam, the debate over music, dance, painting and photography, allowing women to step out of their homes unescorted by male relatives etc.

All these issues have more to do with exercise of temporal power rather than any spiritual cleansing of society. And this is precisely the reason why the agreement that has been stuck between the Pakistani state and the Islamists is so contentious and dangerous. There are two unmistakable signals that the 'announcement' of the Shariah deal has sent out. Firstly, it shows the desperation and helplessness of the Pakistani state in the face of the unrelenting onslaught of the Taliban, not to mention the utter failure to restore the writ and authority of the state. Second, it signals the start of the process of imposing a hard line and radical version of Islamic law on the people of Pakistan.

Caught in the middle are the hapless people of Pakistan, who have no choice but to accept this medieval and obscurantist version of Shariah because the state is either complicit or too weak to resist the Islamists. The only other option before the people is that they form their own militias to resist the Islamists. But it is highly unlikely that the ordinary people will ever be able to match the firepower, training, resources, commitment, conviction and most of all wanton brutality and cruelty of the Islamists.

For the moment, however, the people are supporting the Shariah deal partly because they are too scared to oppose it and partly because they hope that it will bring some kind of peace in the area, even though this may be peace of the type that reigned in Afghanistan under the Taliban. But the ambiguities that underscore the Shariah agreement, including all the riders on implementing the agreement, don't inspire too much confidence in the prospects for peace being restored in the Malakand division.

The first major problem is that the government has tried to win on the negotiating table all that it has lost on the battlefield. Bizarrely enough, after having failed to restore the writ of the state in spite of military operations against the Islamist insurgents, the government now wants the insurgents to re-establish the authority of the state before it implements the Shariah agreement on the ground! Equally strange is the fact that the authorities have made Sufi Mohammad the lynchpin of the deal. On the one hand, Sufi Mohammad now holds a virtual veto on certifying that Shariah has been imposed. On the other hand, he will be responsible for restoring peace, partly by using his influence on the combatants and partly by forging a counter force to deal with the recalcitrant militants.

The assumption is that Sufi Mohammad will be able to divide the Taliban ranks and will rob the insurgents of any justification for their militancy. But since the deal has been done with the non-combatants belonging to TNSM, it is an open question as to how much influence they will wield on the gun-toting militias. Some analysts suggest that even if Fazlullah is amenable to the deal, he might not be able to deliver because he doesn't call all the shots and there are many hardliners who could object and obstruct any acquiescence to the deal by Fazlullah.

Complicating matters is the differing interpretations about what exactly the deal entails. The government is giving the spin that the Shariah regulation will only tinker with the judicial procedures and processes. But this is not how the combatants interpret the regulations. There are reports that in the initial contacts between Sufi Mohammad and Fazlullah, the latter accepted the agreement but made it contingent on creation of the department of prevention of vice and promotion of virtue (amr bil maroof, anil bin munkar). Effectively this means no female education, women can't be treated by male doctors, beards are compulsory, music and dance is forbidden and so on and so forth.

The reported insistence of the insurgents on a complete withdrawal of the army is also likely to play a spoiler in the deal. The government insists that the army will withdraw after peace is restored while the insurgents demand that peace will not be possible until the army quits the area. For now, a middle path of sorts has been found with the NWFP chief minister saying that the security forces will henceforth not be pro-active but reactive. This is, to say the least, disingenuous because the military operations have been a total failure. Before the army started operations, the insurgents controlled 20 percent of the area. After the army moved in, the insurgents control almost 90 percent of the area!

Part of the problem is that the army has not been given clear terms of engagement, leading to delayed response, which in turn opens the army to accusations of playing a double-game. Add to this the massive collateral damage caused by the troops, the lack of public support for the military operation and the growing suspicions about the motives and objectives of the army, all of which have resulted in extreme demoralisation in the military rank and file. The people fear the Taliban more than they fear the army simply because they don't trust the army's ability in protecting them against the Taliban.

Clearly then, the Shariah regulations smack of trying to be too clever by half by entering into tactical peace deals to buy temporary peace and get over the immediate crisis, without giving any thought to the long term consequences of this move. If this gambit succeeds, there will be a clamour by mullahs all over Pakistan to extend the Shariah regulations all over Pakistan, thereby transforming the country into a medieval emirate. On the other hand, if the move fails to satisfy the insurgents, then the fighting will start all over again and engulf all of Pakistan.

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    <1250 Words>                    20^th February, 2009

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A CONFUSED PAKISTAN

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    A meeting last week of South Asian journalists in the Bangladeshi beach resort of Cox's Bazaar offered a great opportunity to touch base with senior scribes from Pakistan, many of who one is proud and privileged to count as good friends. Unfortunately, the very engaging conversations with Pakistani colleagues left an unmistakable impression that Pakistanis are in a self-destruct mode. Despite a realisation of the gravity of the problems facing their country, Pakistanis don't seem to attach the sort of urgency that is required to address the multiple crises confronting them. Apart from a few notable exceptions, most of the Pakistanis are in semi-denial over the existential threat that faces their country. Others are complacent, confident that the Pakistani army and state will be able to set things right if it got down to it.

Ask why the army and the state haven't got down to setting things back in order, and all that is on offer is very cogently constructed conspiracy theories. Very few people are willing to admit the possibility that the Pakistan army is either not willing or not able to put the jihad genie back in the bottle. 'Not able' is simply a function of the army being demoralised, too compromised by jihadists within its ranks, not enjoying public support, being over-stretched, and not trained to fight such low intensity conflicts. 'Not willing' is partly because the army doesn't want to fight its own people. More seriously, the unwillingness to fight the Taliban menace is suspected to be the result of a delusional grand design to attain great glory for Islam and Pakistan by destroying America's super-power status in Afghanistan.

A popular TV show anchor believes that whenever a country is seen as a threat to the security of rest of the world – for instance, Germany and Japan in the 1940's – only two outcomes are possible. The first is that there emerges a political leadership that can pull the country out of the morass and is able to reassure the world. But if this does not happen, as seems to be the case increasingly, then it is inevitable that the rest of the world will gang up against Pakistan to clean up the mess and completely overhaul the political, economic, military, social structure in the country.

    Even though other Pakistanis don't share such a dismal outlook, they agree that things are deteriorating at an alarming pace. At the same time they are convinced that the Taliban will not be able to spread their influence into Punjab simply because the social realities of Punjab will not tolerate the talibanisation. They say that if a fatwa was issued in Punjab against education of girls or if a girls school was bombed in Punjab, the people would come out on the streets in protest, putting so much pressure on the state machinery that it would be forced to crack down on the Islamist networks with the full force at its command.

    The sceptics disagree. They argue that the functionaries of the state are complicit in the spread of talibanisation and will probably turn a blind eye to Taliban activities. More importantly, they say that pressure that the civil society can bring to bear on the state and the political establishment must not be overestimated. According to them, chances are that the Punjabi elite will quietly pull the girls out of school and either educate them at home or send them abroad. In the worst case scenario, they will even pull out their sons from public schools and put them in madrasas rather than resist the Taliban.

    Resistance, if any, will be easily crushed. For one, Punjabis are not exactly known for resisting oppression. They will prefer to take the path of least resistance, more so because the people face greater threat in resisting non-state actors than they have ever faced in resisting oppression by the state being controlled by a military regime. Protesting against an authoritarian regime was easier simply because by and large the state machinery had to operate under some laws and regulations and even if someone was arrested, he could seek relief from the courts. But protesting against the Taliban is a totally different ball game. The Islamists shoot first and ask questions later. There is no appeal, no relief, and no law that will restrain their actions.

For another, even if there is some resistance, it will vaporise the moment a demonstration against the Taliban is bombed, as has happened in NWFP where tribal Lashkars that were supported by the Pakistani state against the Taliban were targeted by suicide bombers, ending this fledgling counter-Taliban movement. Finally, unlike military dictators who seek legitimacy for their actions, in the case of the Taliban their actions alone provide them the legitimacy they need. The Taliban are not interested in entering a popularity contest or seek approval for their actions. Therefore to imagine that they will respect the cultural mores of Punjab is nothing but wishful thinking.

Precisely, it is the inability to think things through and the tendency to wish away cruel and inconvenient realities that is preventing the Pakistani state and society in countering the spread of talibanisation in that country. The public debate in Punjab and Sindh, the two provinces relatively untouched by the Taliban menace, centres around the political power games involving the army, judiciary and political parties rather than on the spreading Islamist insurgency. Instead of the Taliban, it is President Asif Zardari and his Pakistan People's Party that is the pet hatred of the predominantly urban, middle-class, Punjabi elite, including the military, media, merchants and intelligentsia. Somehow the impression is gaining ground that if Asif Zardari is replaced and the ousted chief justice is restored, Pakistan would become a land of milk and honey.

In their unrestrained, somewhat unfair and utterly hostile criticism of the Zardari/Gilani regime, members of the Pakistani media are either deliberately or unwittingly helping the cause of the Taliban by destabilising the lawfully constituted government. While there is little doubt that the government has made plenty of embarrassing gaffes in the manner it has run the administration, much of the criticism is not just misdirected, it also ignores the compulsions confronting the government. There is a lot of gratuitous comment on what all is wrong with the economy, the politics, the social system, the education system, the health services, the security situation and what have you. Everyone is readily offering generalised advice on what needs to be done. But no one has stepped forward to lay out the specifics on how to do it.

Even though, not many people in Pakistan want to live under a Talibanised system, the confused and convoluted intellectual debate inside Pakistan increasingly suggests that Pakistan is moving in a direction where a hard-line interpretation of Islamic law will ultimately be imposed on the country. The only question that is yet to be answered is whether it will be administered by the current dispensation or by the Islamists, either under the garb of Taliban or under a more moderate label. In other words, what remains to be seen is whether the current political establishment imposes a stricter version of Shariah to both appease and disarm the Islamists, or whether the Islamists impose a Talibanised Shariat after taking over control of the Pakistani state.

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    <1225 Words>                    15^th February, 2009

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