What America is reading?

WHY should the question posed in the title of this column be of interest to the readers of this newspaper? The answer will be obvious once I expand on the question. When I ask what America is reading, my reference is not to the general public. The big book of the season is obviously Senator Hillary Clinton’s much awaited biography. It appeared under the title of “Living History” and hit the book stands on June 10. Not unexpectedly, it became an instant best seller.

But that is not the book I want to discuss in this column. My interest is in the books that the policy makers in Washington are reading not for pleasure but for guiding them in the task of moving America forward towards the often repeated goals of the administration of President George W. Bush. Simply stated, the goals being pursued are to preserve America’s pre-eminent place in the world, to secure its citizens against terrorism, and to spread American values to the four corners of the world.

To reach these goals, the policy makers are asking a number of questions. What should be America’s approach to other centres of power — Western Europe, Russia, China, possibly India? Should America depend on its military strength to create a comfortable place for itself in which it can operate in the global community without being challenged? Or should this objective be achieved by the continued dominance of the American economy in the global system? Should America use its military strength and economic power to create a virtual empire that it could dominate? Should Washington continue to promote democracy in the developing world, particularly among the Muslim countries? Or should it draw a different lesson from its recent, albeit reluctant, involvement in nation-building activities, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq?

These questions were addressed in a number of books that have appeared in recent months. Three of these books are being read and discussed by the people in various think tanks that influence policy-making in Washington. What do these books say?

The first book of note is “Power and Paradise” by Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he is director of the US Leadership project. The book has been received with as much enthusiasm as the one by Francis Fukuyama that appeared soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In “The End of History,” Fukuyama predicted that the death of European communism had not only demonstrated the strength and staying power of liberal western democracy and market capitalism.

In fact, the end of communism as an ideology meant that the ascent of liberalism was the natural progression of institutional development in all societies and communities, not only in the West. In other words, it was in the natural order of things for all political and economic systems to gravitate towards liberal democracy and market capitalism. If history was the product of conflicts between different points of view and different ideologies, then it was correct that it had arrived at its natural end.

Not so argued political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in an equally powerful book. In “The Clash of Civilization,” the Harvard academic thought that history, as defined by Fukuyama, was nowhere close to an end. While European communism had indeed perished as an organizing ideology for human affairs, another one was raising its head to challenge the West. Islam was getting ready to counter the power of the West not only in the countries in which the Muslims were in majority but even in those in which the people of that faith had some kind of a presence.

Huntington’s work produced many vibrations but was eventually dismissed as a hyperbole, in particular by the Islamic scholars. Those who were not impressed by the suggestion that the West and Islam would inevitably clash based their arguments in the belief that religion, ultimately, is important in directing lives of individuals and perhaps that of communities. In today’s world, religion did not have the strength to motivate states to exert influence beyond their own borders.

“Nine-eleven” revived interest in Huntington’s thesis for the reason that that event demonstrated vividly and disturbingly that highly motivated individuals could inflict a great deal of damage on societies they despised provided, in the process, they were prepared to sacrifice their lives. The fact that the young men who carried out the attacks on the US were Muslims and the country they attacked was the leader of the western world seemed to vindicate Huntington. The clash of civilizations he had predicted seemed to have arrived.

My point in talking about the works of Fukuyama and Huntington is to emphasize that some books and the theses they espouse profoundly influence policymakers and policy making in Washington. Having emphasized that point, I return to the recent work of Robert Kagan which is devoted to understanding the role of America and Europe in the new world order. There are, Kagan believes, enormous differences in the way the Americans and Europeans look at the use of military power in projecting their strongly held beliefs. There is also a major difference in the sets of beliefs to which the Europeans and Americans subscribe.

“The United States... resorts to force more quickly and, compared with Europe, is less patient with diplomacy,” writes Kagan. “Americans generally see the world divided between good and evil, between friends and enemies, while Europeans see a more complex picture.” Not only that. “The United States remains mired in history, exercising power in a Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defence and promotion of a liberal order still depend upon the possession and use of military might.” The Europeans, on the other hand, are willing to surrender bits of national sovereignty in favour of international institutions that manage international treaties and international obligations.

The second influential book is by Niall Ferguson, an Oxford historian who has advanced the argument that the past empires dominated by the countries of the western world did more good than harm to the peoples they turned into their subjects.

The publication of this book — “Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World order and the Lessons for Global Power” — was well timed. In August 2001, a month before the terrorists’ attack of “nine-eleven,” a study conducted for Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s office was issued with the title “Strategy for Maintaining US Predominance.” In a section on “Lessons of History” which used the British, Roman, Chinese and Ottoman Empires as case studies, the report asked: “What does history suggest about the maintenance or failure of powers to hold similar positions of dominance?” Ferguson’s book deals with this and the prior question: “Should the countries that have the economic and military might to dominate the world cultivate the political will to do so?” The author’s answer to this question is unambiguously “yes.”

The obvious lesson the United States can draw from the British Empire, Niall Ferguson writes, is “that the most successful economy in the world — as Britain was for most of the 18th and 19th centuries — can do a great deal to impose its preferred values on less technologically advanced societies.” He adds that no one should pretend that “at least in fiscal terms, the cost of expanding the American Empire, even if it were to mean a great many small wars like the one in Afghanistan, would be prohibitive.” President George W. Bush’s two tax cut packages that have taken the United States from fiscal surpluses of the late Clinton years to the fiscal deficits as far as the eye can see are thus put in their empire-building perspective.

In what way were past empires good and why should America crate one of its own? Ferguson contends that the British Empire “pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour. He hails its investment of “immense sums in developing a global network of modern communications,” its maintenance of “a global peace unmatched before or since” and imposition of “western norms of law, order and governance around the world.” To criticize empire-building “risks underselling the scale — and modernity — of the achievements in the sphere of economics; just as criticism of the ‘ornamented’ (meaning hierarchical) character of British rule overseas tends to overlook the signal virtues of what were remarkably non-rural administrations.”

Given this argument, it is not surprising that Ferguson’s thesis has been eagerly grasped by the members of the Bush administration who would like to project American power beyond the country’s borders in a way that could not have been imagined when the world was multipolar, not dominated by one “hype-power” as is the case now. They believe with Ferguson that America is “capable of playing an imperial role.” This then provides the intellectual context in which the Bush administration has launched a series of nation-building experiments extending from Afghanistan to Iraq and to Palestine.

Would — or, more pertinently, should — nation-building encompass the democratization of developing world’s political systems? The answer to this question before the war in Afghanistan would have been clearly “yes.” For several years, America’s leaders had looked with great suspicion at the repeated attempts — in particular by the military in the developing world — to override democratic institutions. That such an uncritical support of democratization can have counter-productive consequences for nation-building and political development is an argument advanced by the third book being widely read and discussed in Washington.

The book is by Fareed Zakaria, a political thinker of Indian- Muslim origin who has gained an extraordinarily influential voice in the policy circles of Washington. In “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad,” Zakaria makes a convincing case that democracy is not inherently good. He argues that although we take the concept of “liberal democracy” for granted, it only works if it is preceded by “constitutional liberalism.” By the latter term he means the rule of law, a judicial system that works independently of the executive, protection of human rights, an educational system that provides real learning and not simply training for the workplace. Without a robust institutional base all attempts to force democracy are destined to fail. In some cases elections may empower despots rather than the people. This argument has begun to resonate as America continues with its faltering attempts at nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq.

How would I put in a couple of sentences on the advice offered by the authors of these three influential works? If their counsel were to be taken, America would ignore Europe and its interest in multilateralism. It would create a global empire for itself made up of quasi-independent countries. “Quasi” because they would not be allowed to project their power outside their borders and would follow internal policies that would not come into conflict with those espoused by America. The members of this empire would not rush into democratic forms of government. Their approach towards that goal would be cautious and deliberate.

The flip side of Camp David

NEITHER the effusive welcome for General Musharraf at Camp David nor the three-billion dollar aid package can hide the disappointment of Pakistan’s civil society over the general’s fourth visit to the United States.

The three billion dollar aid package is less than one-third of the ten billion dollar loss estimated recently by CENTCOM itself that Pakistan has suffered as a result of joining the fight against terror. The aid package has yet to clear several legislative hurdles before it becomes operational. Even after Congressional approval the money will not start flowing until 2005. The strings attached with the package, as indicated by the comments of US officials, are very tough. The aid flow is subject to annual monitoring. Pakistan must progressively fulfil certain hard conditions before the full aid has flown into the country over the next five years.

Out of the three billion dollars over five years, 1.5 billion dollars is earmarked for military-related expenses. What precisely are those items or heads of military spending has not been made public. Does it include payments to Pakistani troops in Iraq which General Musharraf himself later admitted in a TV interview that Pakistan had agreed to in principle? The likely political backlash of undertaking a mercenary operation for dollars can be ignored only by an unrepresentative and non- political regime.

Does it include payments to Pakistan for operations in tribal areas like the one conducted in Mohmand Agency just on the eve of Camp David? Again, only an unrepresentative government can be oblivious of a new element of instability which would enter into the equation as the issue of Durand Line is revived and a division of Afghanistan becomes a strong possibility?

Does it mean purchase of military hardware from the United States? If it does, it may mean helping securing American jobs in the defence industry of the United States and enriching a few in Pakistan who make defence purchases without audit and without parliamentary scrutiny rather than strengthening the country’s defences.

According to reports, another one billion dollar a year will be used for the repayment for the 1.8 billion dollar Pakistan owes to the US as bilateral debt. That leaves just 500 million dollar of assistance to be received by Pakistan in five years as a reward for handing over 500 Al Qaeda activists to the United States and shoving them into dungeons in Guantanamo Bay.

The defence package is even worse as President Bush publicly rejected F-16 sale to Pakistan. “The President (General Musharraf) is not afraid to bring up the issue of F-16s. (But) in the package that we discussed, the five-year, three billion dollar package, half of that money goes for defence matters, of which the F-16s won’t be a part”, Mr. Bush said.

Rejection of F-16 sale request was a loud statement of new American policy: Washington rejects the argument that Pakistan needs more arms and F-16s to offset its conventional military disadvantage against India. The message in the F-16 rejection is that Pakistan has to find the locus of its security not in more conventional arms but in eliminating threats to security by resolving conflicts and disputes in the region.

President Bush may have lavished praise on General Musharraf for his cooperation in the war on terror but also did not forget to warn about “the need to address extremism and cross-border infiltration.”

At least thrice in his statement Bush referred to extremism and terrorism in Pakistan and suggested that Pakistan would be better off if it addressed the issue of extremism and terrorism. He emphasized the need for 100 per cent commitment to dealing with the terrorist issue that he said was preventing a solution to Kashmir. “Every party involved with this issue must focus on not allowing a few to undermine the hopes of many”.

General Musharraf’s plea for a road map for Kashmir also fell on deaf ears. “Our role will be to aid the process forward. But the decision makers will be the governments of India and Pakistan,” Bush said, adding yet again “terrorists have to be fought”. Each time the US president uttered terms like “extremism and cross-border infiltration” he seemed to declare also that no one bought the plea that “nothing was happening on the LoC.”

And what is Pakistan’s part of the bargain to qualify for the rather small aid package? At the US Institute of Peace, which he later addressed, General Musharraf sought to dispel the impression that there were strings attached. But a US official spilled the beans when he talked of “bargain that the Pakistanis are entering into with their eyes wide open”.

What General Musharraf agreed to with ‘eyes wide open’, according to US officials, is an end to nuclear proliferation, effective monitoring and export controls, vigorous pursuit of terrorists and a functional democracy and parliament, according to US officials. It is in this context that the visit of Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz to Kahuta nuclear labs on the eve of Camp David yatra seems so significant.

When the official documents relating to South Asia for the period 1964-1968 were recently made public in the US under the declassification law after a lapse of thirty years, Pakistanis learnt with horror how a sitting finance minister of the time, described in the official American documents as “our best Pak friend”, had acted as the eyes and ears of the State Department rather than as his own country’s economic and financial manager.

It would indeed be unfair to insinuate motives to Shaukat Aziz’s visit to Kahuta. However, when people learn that a former finance minister had acted more like a spy of the US and when US officials say that Pakistanis had agreed ‘with eyes wide open’ to no more proliferation, certain questions pose themselves.

General Musharraf chose not to take up the issues of the plight of Pakistanis in America after 9/11 or that of the hapless prisoners in the cells of Guantonamo Bay detention centre. No political and representative government could afford to ignore such issues of vital public concern.

The writer is a PPP Senator.

Rich man, poor man

DO Republicans care less about the poor than other people? It probably would never have come up if they hadn’t tried to cut children out of the tax credit programme.

Republican House leader Tom Delay, who is known in Washington as “the Exterminator” (his actual profession in Texas), has been quoted as saying, “There are a lot of things more important than (tax credits for children). To me it’s difficult to give tax relief to people that don’t pay income tax.”

I called a friend, Rudolph the Red Nose Republican, and told him, “Delay shot himself in the foot. He said there are more important things than tax breaks for poor children.”

“He doesn’t dislike poor children,” Rudolph said. “He just likes people in the middle and upper classes more.”

I said, “The working poor were taken out of the original tax cut legislation and there was such an uproar that the Senate put it back by a vote of 94 to 2. The House finally agreed to pass something as long as the other classes got theirs first. What is the difference between the working poor and working rich?”

He said, “The working rich have accountants and lawyers, while the working poor can’t even afford H & R Block. The rich can find tax shelters in the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. The IRS has a tough time finding where the dummy corporations’ money went. It is much easier for the IRS to track down the working poor because they spend all their money on food.”

“Isn’t it true some of the rich pay no taxes at all?”

“Some of them don’t, but they give to the American Red Cross.”

I said, “I heard from a Democratic friend that the president insists on tax cuts for the rich because they are the big spenders.”

Rudolph said, “The president will do anything to jumpstart the economy. Besides, some of his best friends are rich.”

“You can say that again. They appreciate the good things in life, but don’t the working poor appreciate the good things too?”

“Possibly,” replied Red Nose, “but Republicans don’t know any poor people except the ones working for them. I think Delay is getting a bad rap. He just worries about balancing the budget or the political fund-raising. It is not only the Republicans who have problems with the working poor — a lot of Democrats do too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they put the tax cut back into the bill because they are worried about the 2004 election.”

“Why are the Republican house members so intent in their bill to make the poor wait a year to get their full tax cut?”

“What’s the hurry?” he answered. “Look, we are for the poor getting what they have coming to them. Our message is, if you vote Republican, then someday you’ll be rich and able to give money to the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and George Bush the second.”

I told Rudolph the Red Nose Republican, “I’m glad you straightened me out. If the economy keeps slipping, the working poor will become the majority.” — Dawn/Tribune Media Services

No free lunch

PRESIDENT Musharraf’s visit to the United States reminds me so much of when Ayub Khan went to Washington DC and was received with so much warmth by John F. Kennedy.

Since Ayub Khan had flown PIA, I had gone to Washington DC, indeed had gone a day ahead and was present at the Andrew’s Air Force base to receive the PIA Boeing 707. Pakistan’s ambassador had been Mr Aziz Ahmed and he and I had paced the tarmac scanning the skies for a sight of the gleaming silver bird. He kept looking at his watch and I kept reassuring him that the flight would be on time, on the button. President Kennedy had arrived by helicopter as the PIA Boeing 707 touched down.

Ayub Khan was an imposing figure and he looked the part of the man on a horseback. It had been a triumphant visit and he had addressed a joint session of Congress in which he had declared Pakistan to be the most allied ally of the United States and Pakistan as “a bloody good friend.”

Old ladies with their needle-work may have been shocked by this strong language but it went down well and confirmed his image of a bluff, military man (Sandhurst in the bargain) who called it as it was and a “our kind of a guy.”

We felt that it was the “beginning of a beautiful friendship” — the closing lines of the film Casablanca as Humphrey Bogart and Claude Raines walk and slowly dissolve into the sunset. Come the 1965 War, the friendship failed the test of durability and Pakistan felt betrayed.

We need not have, had we understood that friendship between nations is variable and national interests are not fixed but have to be re-adjusted as power positions shift.

Ziaul Haq tried to re-kindle that friendship when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and made Pakistan a frontline state which meant becoming a conduit for the flow of arms and the ‘jihadis’ that had been recruited by the United States among whom was one prominent figure and whose name was Osama bin Laden. When the Soviets were defeated, they went home, so too did the United States and Pakistan was left with the fallout and the backlash. Pakistan was also ‘rewarded’ with the Pressler Amendment

There seems to be no doubt that the chemistry between Musharraf and Bush is good. Bush had high praise for the Pakistan president and Musharraf conducted himself with great dignity at the press conference at Camp David.

But Bush doesn’t make policy, it is the hard-hats at the State Department and the Pentagon who do and the Pentagon, at the moment, has been infiltrated by the neoconservatives and they have an agenda of their own. To them Pakistan may have some strategic value in the war on terror but Pakistan is a Muslim country and it has nuclear weapons and in the zeal of their mission, the neoconservatives have Pakistan in the cross-hairs.

It is entirely possible that they may be losing influence and if Iraq becomes a quagmire, the long-haul of an occupation that may last for years, the American people, despite being brainwashed by a media that keeps a tight lid on bad news, may come to realise that they had been led up the garden path.

Vietnam was not that long ago that its memory has faded and there must be many veterans of that war in the United States as there are many victims in Vietnam who are still living the nightmare of falling Napalm bombs and the horrors of Agent Orange.

Over the years, the people of Pakistan have matured and with maturity comes cynicism, the realisation that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If Pakistan needs the United States, the United States needs Pakistan. The relationship will flourish so long as there is this mutual need.

There should be no illusions about this. There is no “till death do us part” conditionality or optimism. President Bush must have extracted some concessions and President Musharraf must have done the same.

Pakistan wants a more pro-active role for the United States in settling the Kashmir dispute and the United States holds the view that it will not act as mediator or honest broker. I am sure that President Musharraf must have been grilled on cross-border terrorism. Mr. Advani has been in Washington DC and must have done his best to muddy the waters. President Musharraf would have stated Pakistan’s position in reasonably forthright language.

I am not sure whether the treatment meted out to Pakistanis in the United States after 9/11 came up for discussion. It is a subject about which we feel strongly and there is resentment that Pakistanis have been dumped in dirty laundry bag of suspected terrorists. President Bush did mention “the industry and talents of Pakistani Americans.”

This message has not reached John Ashcroft and the Homeland Security people whose footsteps make the ominous sounds of jack-boots as they visit Pakistani homes and, sometimes, round them up as rustlers once rounded up cattle.

In the end, it is all about winning hearts. There was once a lot of goodwill for the Pakistani people in the United States. This goodwill has steadily eroded. While the Iraq war was on as a military operation, the question that was uppermost: After Iraq who?

That is to say whose turn was next to be ‘liberated.’ Syria and Iran led the field but Pakistan’s name also came up.

There may not have been any credible basis for this but there was and is the perception that there are many ‘ hawks’ in Washington who see Pakistan as a “rogue-state,” In the good, old days, such views would have been ascribed to the lunatic-fringe but many fear that the inmates may have taken over the asylum.

Still, one hopes that President Musharraf’s visit may have helped to clear the misgivings and doubts on both sides.

What have we made of ourselves?

AS one looks back at our past and contemplates the tragedy of a lost future with a deep sense of loss known and loss foreseen, one is smitten by a sacred rage. Like dinosaurs, disaster and frustration roam the country’s political landscape. Talk today is of a vanished dignity, of a nation diminished in ways not previously imaginable.

It is almost as if no one wants to acknowledge a sad end to what once seemed a beautiful dream. It speaks volumes for the failure of our rulers — elected or unelected, civilian or military — who squandered Jinnah’s legacy and turned his dream into a nightmare. I was born in slavery.

Few military commanders have started their rule with higher expectation than General Musharraf. He started with a blank cheque of goodwill and popular enthusiasm given to him by the people of Pakistan. ‘Surely, here was a star to follow, surely, here was a guide to follow’. But after more than three years of absolute rule, he has ended with a bankruptcy of moral and political support, plunging the country in worse condition than he had found it in. To paraphrase Churchill, the last three years were the years that the locusts had eaten. A perfectly good country has once again become the laughing stock of the world.

The country is in the grip of a grave political and constitutional crisis but President Musharraf doesn’t seem to comprehend the gravity of the situation and believes that all is well and things are working out according to plan. At the end of three years of absolute rule, people looked forward to a fresh beginning and a better future for themselves and their children in a genuinely democratic Pakistan. They were in for a rude shock. Amid widespread allegations of gerrymandering, blatant, flagrant use of official machinery and arm-twisting, Pakistan stepped into a ‘democratic’ future with mixed feelings.

Many poll candidates realized to their horror that while they had won the vote, they had lost the count. Not surprisingly, what has emerged is a distorted picture which does not reflect the ground reality and has confirmed the widely held belief that ‘democracy’ in Pakistan does not produce democratic results.

We thought the past was dead and gone on October 12. Tragically, it is not even past. Many known corrupt people, who had looted and plundered the country, are back in power as political allies of President Musharraf. The public stage is once again filled by weak-kneed triflers, mountebanks and charlatans tainted with corruption. How wrong can one be? How flawed can human judgment be?

Pakistan totters, pulled in one direction by the inertia of its authoritarian past and in another by the wobbly momentum of a democratic future. The substance of power remains in the hands of the president who is also the supreme commander of the armed forces, the Chief of Army Staff, Chairman of the National Command Structure and Chairman of the National Security Council. All important appointments, civil or military, are made by him in exercise of his discretionary powers. The elected prime minister has the thankless job of governing the country under a dysfunctional political system described as democracy with a despot sitting on top.

General Musharraf has literally reappointed himself as president of Pakistan on the basis of a dubious referendum, denying the people the right to elect their president in accordance with the Constitution. His determination to impose himself on the country has produced a leader driven by a sense of being right. He now believes that he knows better than almost anyone what is good for the country and what is right and what is wrong.

President Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order, the bedrock of the new political dispensation, is under attack, its legality challenged by major political parties which do not accept it as being part of the Constitution. In the absence of an agreed constitution, the federation is, to borrow George Washington’s words, united by a “rope of sand”, vulnerable to subversion. A plethora of arbitrary amendments has defaced, disfigured, defiled and decimated the 1973 Constitution and changed it beyond recognition. Our entire political system has been pulled into a black hole caused by periodic army interventions and prolonged army rule.

We always thought there was a continuum from autocracy to democracy. But it turns out that you can get half way there, and just stagnate. The latest democratic experiment in Pakistan is in the doldrums and stalled, waiting for a strong breeze to carry it either forward or back. The country appears to be adrift, lacking confidence about its future. People wonder if Pakistan will ever take the high road out of this moral squalor or wallow in it. Sometimes, One feels like the Punic general who had reached the end of all his hopes. Before he takes the cup of poison from his negro slave, the slave asks what will come after the drink. “We will not fall out of the world “, he replies. “We are in it once and for all”.

How can you have authentic democracy in a country where real sovereignty resides neither in the government, nor in the parliament, and where neither the judiciary’s independence nor the Constitution’s supremacy is fully respected. If sovereignty resides anywhere at all, it lies where the coercive power resides. Whatever the constitutional position, it is now abundantly clear that it is ‘Puvois Occult’ which decides when to abrogate or suspend the Constitution; when to dismiss an elected government and when to restore democracy.

Restoration of democracy in Pakistan is neither a moral issue nor a philosophical question, but a political necessity based on the pragmatic realities of the situation. It constitutes, to use a Kantian phrase, the ‘categorical imperative’ for the very survival of Pakistan. We live in a democratic age. Democracy or freedom of choice is not a luxury. It is intrinsic to human development.

For Pakistanis there are three mysteries in life: when they are going to die, when democracy will be established and when army will strike again. I put it another way: Will Pakistan ever have a durable political system based on national consensus or a freely elected parliament which reflects the will of the people? Will Pakistan ever have a strong, independent, incorruptible judiciary to protect the Constitution and the citizen’s inalienable rights? Will Pakistan ever have a strong and independent Election Commission?

Today Pakistan is splattered with American fortresses, seriously compromising our internal and external sovereignty. Foreign troops move in and out of the country without let or hindrance. People don’t feel safe in their own country because any citizen can be picked up by FBI agents in collusion with our government and smuggled out of the country, making a mockery of our independence and sovereignty. To apply the adjective sovereign to the people in today’s Pakistan is a tragic farce. What sort of a nation is this? What sort of a nation is it that permits this?

Pakistan is a case of failed leadership, not failed state. Until we get the right kind of leadership, the country will continue to oscillate between periods of authoritarianism and bouts of corrupt and sham democracy. I am a short — term pessimist but a long — term optimist. I have this feeling that the Maoist prescription — things have to get worse before they could get better — is being tested in Pakistan today. I have not given up on politics; I still nourish the notion that one of these years we will get it right and someone will emerge who will bring out the best in the country.

President Musharraf’s integrity is beyond doubt. Unlike his predecessors, his hands are clean. But in politics, probity is not enough. You are expected to respond to the vital needs of the country, not to your own personal rectitude. Many of his erstwhile admirers are today overcome by a sense of disappointment over his presidency. He ignored the lessons of history that military intervention in the affairs of state, however well-intentioned, inevitably results in tragic consequences for the country; that you cannot destroy democracy in the name of saving it; that you derive your legitimacy and title to rule from the people, not your uniform; that you cannot fight high-level corruption with corrupt people by your side; that nobody is indispensable, and that the graves of the world are filled with the bones of indispensable people.

Three years ago, Musharraf was heralded as the people’s champion; today he risks being dismissed as the latest in a long line of easily forgotten rulers. Today he is locked in a mortal conflict with the parliament over the issue of his uniform which he refuses to take off. President Musharraf is riding a tiger. Today he finds himself in a Hamlet — like situation. He may loath to ride the tiger too far, lest he got lost in the jungle. But now that he is on the tiger’s back, he cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount.

If Pakistan is to survive, both the presidency and the army must be placed outside the turbulent arena of political conflict. There should be only one authority in any government, in any state, in any country. There can’t be two suns in the sky. Their can’t be a second centre of power in a country and if you allow a second centre of power, civil or military, to develop, conflict between the two will be the inevitable result. Confusion and chaos will follow. The Indian Union is based on this very sound principle. It has kept India united, allowed its democracy to survive and kept its armed forces at bay. If it works in India, why can’t it work in Pakistan?