| 10 February 2004 | Tuesday | 18 Zilhaj 1424 |
A tangled web
A democracy only in name
President Pervez Musharraf is faced with four important and difficult tasks. He has struck out along a new path for Pakistan's relations with India, particularly Kashmir. Secondly, he seeks to remain steadfast in his close alliance with the US in the war against terror abroad.
He has also, of late, shown determination in dealing with fundamentalists and extremists at home. Finally, he maintains that Pakistan will not tolerate, and indeed will punish severely, any individuals involved in nuclear proliferation, irrespective of status.
Each one of these goals is difficult to achieve. The position is further complicated by the fact that in their totality they are not acceptable, by and large, by the Pakistani public because they are viewed as instigated by the US and considered anti-Muslim.
This in itself should not deter the president from pursuing these goals if they are in the nation's interest. It would be a true test of his leadership qualities.
Let us briefly examine each of the four goals. There is no doubt that new approaches should be explored in our relations with India, particularly with regard to Kashmir.
After more than half a century of unfriendliness and open hostility, which have resulted in three expensive wars and a major skirmish at Kargil, we are no nearer achieving a settlement. Sadly, the people of Pakistan and the Kashmiris have borne the major burden of the cost of these failures.
It undoubtedly takes leadership to approach negotiations with India with an open mind on all issues. However, no leader should publicly and unilaterally 'set aside' a long standing principle relating to the enforcement of the UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir in advance and without getting something in return, apart from a general and ambiguous statement that there will be further talks.
This is true, despite the fact that the UN secretary-general has said that times have changed and much has happened since the resolutions were first passed, and even Muslim countries no longer give much support to the resolution calling for a referendum.
President Musharraf could argue that if no one cares much about these resolutions, what is the harm in accepting that they be 'set aside'. But that is not dissimilar to saying that if, after fifty years, we are unable to show much progress in social advancement, we should give up trying to make progress in that field.
Pakistan needs to enter into a full dialogue with India. But why this haste to show preparedness for a settlement on almost any terms? Surely it would pay to heed the words of the English statesman and man of letters, Lord Chesterfield, who said, 'Whoever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is about to get is too big for him'.
On the second issue of continuing in close alliance with the US in the war against terror abroad, President Musharraf would appear to have very little manoeuvrability left.
Undoubtedly, it can be argued that he succumbed too soon on one telephone call from US secretary of state Colin Powell after 9/11. Then he might have held out for a better deal, but today his options are essentially closed. No country can get into bed with the sole superpower and then hope to get out without the superpower's permission, or against its dictates.
It is part of the misfortune of Pakistan that the war on terror is viewed by the Muslims in the world as a war on them. The war on terror has come to mean the war against defenceless Afghanistan and against Iraq.
It has come to mean the acceptance of India's position on the question of 'cross-border terrorism'. It has come to mean that the US can strike preemptively anywhere, be it in Iran, Syria, or for that matter, even Pakistan when our utility diminishes or ceases. This war, as currently conducted by the US, is potentially full of grave consequences for Pakistan.
On the third issue, President Musharraf's declaration of jihad against fundamentalists and extremists is similar to President Bush's call for a 'crusade'. What is surprising, however, is that this jihad was declared so soon after the MMA lent support to the president in the passing of the LFO.
The MMA might not be extremist but several of their followers are. Sooner rather than later, the MMA leadership will have to support their own followers rather than Musharraf or his appointed civilian government.
In these circumstances, to whom will the president turn, apart of course from the army? The civilian government at the centre has so far not been tested. Whether it can withstand public agitation or serious dissent remains to be seen. What is clear is that the government lacks a popular base. President Musharraf will need to widen his base of support, particularly when he sheds his uniform by the end of 2004.
In Karachi and parts of Hyderabad and other towns of Sindh, he has the support of the MQM. Elsewhere, he will require the support of the PPP, or the Nawaz Muslim League, or just possibly both. The year ahead promises to be an interesting one, if for no other reason than watching how this develops.
The last of the four issues, namely dealing with individual nuclear proliferators, is not only important but highly sensitive. It is a pity that some of the naming and shaming has come from fellow Muslim countries. It has been massively played up in the foreign press, particularly in the US.
Of the seven powers which have admitted possession of nuclear weapons, Pakistan is by far the weakest and least independent. It is also the only Muslim country with a nuclear bomb. As Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said, no other nuclear bomb has been given a religious colour, other than our 'Islamic bomb'.
The world's sole superpower, our important neighbour India, and the entire Jewish lobby worldwide have maintained that we are also the only 'irresponsible' and 'unstable' country with a nuclear bomb.
They would dearly like to see our programme and progress capped in this field. They have so far not succeeded. Now, under the guise of proliferation, they have the opportunity to realize their wishes.
Pakistan needs to pause for breath at this stage and not hasten to complicate our own position. It is no doubt right that no individual should be allowed to trade our nuclear secrets, even more so for personal gain. But are we opening our own Pandora's box?
Until 9/11, our nuclear assets provided our ultimate defence, if not first-strike capability in offence. Since then, all our capabilities, military, political and diplomatic, have been utilized in the defence of these assets.
If we proceed with the publicity over questioning, apart from humiliating, our nuclear scientists, and putting them on trial, who will then be in control of the fallout, and where or when will it stop.
Pakistan is not the only country from which individual scientists could transfer nuclear technology; and President Musharraf has also rightly referred to western corporate suppliers for profit. What happens to them?
One Pakistani political pundit has already said that our nuclear assets have now become a liability. If we continue in the present manner, considerable support will be provided to all those opposed to our nuclear programme.
Are we succeeding in doing to ourselves what our enemies have so far failed to achieve. There is clearly every reason to pause and deliberate on this issue.
The four goals touched upon above are complex in all respects. If pursued purely on our own initiative and for our own reasons, each would be difficult to achieve. As if these complexities were not enough, there is the added complication that each of these goals is also sought by the US.
Merely because the US seeks the same ends does not ipso facto make them bad. But given the prevailing mood in Pakistan, and much of the Muslim world, it is almost tantamount to the same thing.
The government can well be asked how many of these initiatives are our own, and to what extent we are attempting to fulfil the US agenda. Not only should the country ask these questions, but the government itself should examine the issues in this light.
This is not intended as a masochistic exercise. It will ensure a proper and objective examination of these vital issues, to use that much maligned expression, in the national interest.
No less important, such an analysis would help in the difficult task of explaining these goals to the general public. For it is they who need to be convinced, and they who need to be carried forward when policy is implemented.
Only if he succeeds in this effort will President Musharraf's leadership qualities stand tested and proven. Because, as a French statesman once said, 'It is always a great mistake to command when you are not sure you will be obeyed'.
A tangled web
There is the tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. There is the outrageous lie, repeated like a prayer or a mantra and it transforms and becomes the truth. To sustain the truth needs more truth and in the end, we arrive at the beginning. The spider gets tangled in its own web.
There was no ambiguity about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. They existed. There was no doubt about Saddam Hussain's intentions. He would use his weapons of mass destruction. These were not arguing points. They were certainties.
Nor were there any doubts how this grave and imminent threat had to be countered. The case for war was compelling. Not just a police action but a full scale war of shock and awe that would remove the weapons of mass destruction, bring about a regime change and liberate the people of Iraq from the clutches of a murderous tyrant. The results have been mixed. The weapons of mass destruction was the easy part.
It turns out that there were no weapons of mass destruction, none that have been found. The regime was changed and Saddam Hussain captured. Iraq has not been liberated but occupied and the occupation is being resisted by remnants of the Saddam regime and other thugs.
These remnants and thugs are putting up quite a resistance, ostensibly, preferring the slavery of Saddam Hussein to the liberation offered by their saviours. So far so good or, perhaps, not so good.
There have been casualties. American and British soldiers have been killed but nowhere near the number of Iraqis who have been killed and are being killed and no one can hazard a guess how many because no one is counting.
Hundreds? Thousands? But it's a small price to pay for the democracy that will emerge, that heaven of freedom that George Bush and Tony Blair so avowedly want for Iraq. Sometimes, it is necessary to be cruel in order to be kind. Isn't it the way cancer is treated, by chemo-therapy?
An Iraqi family was celebrating an engagement and as is traditional, some members of the family were shooting in the air. An American patrol that was passing by heard the shots and opened fire and among others, shot dead a six-year old girl.
Three teen-agers were recently released from Guantanamo Bay, the youngest was 13-year-old. He had been held in detention ( captivity ) for a year which means he was 12-years when he was picked up as an illegal combatant.
Let us not be fooled by his age. No threat is too young when it comes to safeguarding the world and making it safe for liberty and apple-pie. Can our humanity be switched off and on to suit the moment? It can be if we call it collateral damage.
But collateral damage is selective. When the terrorists strike and cause the deaths of scores of innocent people, the dead are called victims and there is an outpouring of grief and expressions of outrage even among those who are not affected. This is not called collateral damage.
A terrorist attack is directed at a target but surely the terrorists must know that innocent bystanders will get killed. It is this fact that makes terrorism an act of murder and not a political statement.
Why then is this logic not applied when Afghans and Iraqis are killed? When bombing raids are carried out with ' shock and awe' is there not the certainty that the damage caused by daisy-cutters and other wonder explosives will take into the embrace of the blasts many innocent lives? It will be argued that this is unavoidable and well it may be.
But this is hardly any consolation for the families of the dead, provided, of course, the families are not also dead. War is hell but are there two kinds of hell? One for the guilty and one for the innocent?
It is becoming increasing clear that the goal-posts are being shifted when it comes to the reasons or the validity of going to war against Iraq. Even George Tenet, the director of CIA, who made such a robust defence of pre-war intelligence has had to admit that Iraq had not posed an imminent danger though he stuck to the party-line that Saddam Hussein had to be removed and that the search for weapons of mass destruction will go on despite Dr. Kay having given up and solemnly declaring that under his stewardship of the Iraq survey group no weapons of mass destruction had been found.
Both Bush and Blair have agreed to 'independent' inquiries about the quality of pre-war intelligence. At the same time, weapons of mass destruction have been demoted. The removal of Saddam Hussein and the dismantling of his regime have made the world a safer place and opened new vistas for the Iraqi people who are now better off.
Those who still want to challenge the original reason for going to war can now be told that they should wait for the outcome or results of the inquiries. In a sense, the subject has been made sub judice.
Tony Blair is still on slippery ground. He had counted on the Hutton Report but the remit of his inquiry was too narrow and his Lordship made it even more narrow when he changed his terms of reference and made the BBC the main villain for not only sloppy reporting but even held the board of directors responsible for not exercising vigilance.
This is the equivalent of holding the board of directors of an airline liable for the loss of a passenger's suitcase. Tony Blair went scot-free as did Geoff Hoon and even Alistair Campbell, not even a wrap on the knuckles. There was a brief moment of gloating until the full extent of the whitewash became apparent.
Taken to its logical conclusion, the Hutton Report was an assault on the freedom of the press and would ring the death-knell of investigative journalism. The British public would have none of it. And another inquiry has been ordered but it will not focus on the judgment-calls of the politicians but on the quality of intelligence.
One final point: it emerges that Iraq may not have had weapons of mass destruction but it had programmes. It had intentions to have them. An intention does not constitute ownership.
I may have an intention to buy a Rolls Royce. It does not mean that I already possess one. You don't need an inquiry to establish this elementary statement of the obvious. Indeed, what a tangled web we weave.
A democracy only in name
More than a year after the October 2002, elections, Gen Pervez Musharraf finally addressed the joint session of parliament. There has been no formal explanation of this belated compliance of the mandatory provision of the Constitution enshrined in Article 56(3).
This provision requires the president to address both houses of parliament at the commencement of the first session after general elections as well as at the beginning of the first session of each year.
This is not a mere formality as the presidential address is required to place the government's legislative agenda and overall domestic and foreign policy before the representatives of the people. Thereafter, the presidential speech is debated and discussed in depth by the parliament.
The presidential address was the climax of long efforts of Gen Musharraf to secure legitimacy which has eluded him so far. With his election as president through a referendum becoming a classic illustration of sham democracy, he sought shelter behind the Legal Framework Order (LFO).
He was soon disabused of his mistaken pretensions. With the Seventeenth Amendment, he managed to bring the MMA out of the closet so that the king may finally be clothed.
With the 17th constitutional amendment, Gen Musharraf's position has been further strengthened. He now feels confident enough to agree to severing his survival chord from the military by the end of the year. We are now a parliamentary democracy only in name.
In substance it is neither parliamentary nor democracy. The political structure revolves around one individual. The prime minister, the cabinet and indeed the National Assembly exist so long as he desires them to.
Whenever he wants, as he surely would in due course, he can roll them back just as the last military ruler did. If the military could not accept Muhammad Khan Junejo, it will not accept any other civilian.
Looking at the global perspective, Gen Musharraf is obviously a man in a hurry. He is once again the leader of a frontline state with a mission to accomplish. Like Zia, he too would eventually walk into sunset once his mission is accomplished. What would then happen to the country? It will be the same all over again. But how long would this game of musical chairs continue?
The problem would continue to pervade our society as long as we tamper with the democratic process. Unless we treat the Constitution as sacred and punish those who subvert it, the instability would continue.
But who would rein in the unbridled horse? After all, it only takes a truckload of soldiers to nullify the mandate of the people and overthrow the Constitution. The last politician who talked about Article 6 of the Constitution for punishing those who subvert the Constitution was Javed Hashmi.
Not surprisingly, he is himself facing such a trial. It is always the civilians who take the brunt. We cannot name one popularly elected civilian leader who was allowed to complete his tenure in peace.
From Liaquat Ali Khan to Nawaz Sharif, prime ministers have been assassinated, strangled, executed, dismissed or exiled. This is the fate of popularly elected leaders. As against them, has any military ruler ever faced a discomfort? General Yahya, the man who presided over the ignominious surrender and dismemberment of the country was subjected only to house detention.
Hamoodur Rehman Commission's report should have resulted in court martial of those indicted in the report. Yet nothing happened. Nawaz Sharif is in exile but what happened to General Ziauddin Butt.
General Aslam Beg made a highly contemptuous statement about the Supreme Court but he did not go to jail for contempt. Now he has made a disclosure about nuclear decision making while he was Chief of Army Staff.
Is this not violative of Official Secrets Act. But who can ask this question. The present saga about proliferation of nuclear technology by some scientists happened under the strict control of the army but does anyone seriously believe that any general would be taken to task for this incident?
Blaming the military would not necessarily exonerate the civilians. Our political leaders have been no less dictatorial. They have accumulated wealth and power with a callous disregard for the people.
Nothing beyond self-interest has motivated them to act. The Constitution has been as much a victim of our civilian leaders' ambitions as those of the men in uniform.
Our tragedy is that we have not allowed the institutions to develop. Politics has always revolved around a powerful ruler. There are no institutional restraints on his power. If there is unchecked power, it shall be abused. A society producing civilian tyrants is unlikely to yield a uniformed democrat.
We mistake majority rule for democracy. It is only a majoritarian rule - not democracy. Democracy presupposes majoritarian rule but does not end with it. In fact, it only begins with it.
Periodic elections without the constraints of the rule of law is hardly an improvement on military rule. Tyranny whether of a majority or an individual is still tyranny. The arbitrary will of the majority needs to be curbed as much as the will of a military dictator.
If we are to transform into a democracy, we must treat the Constitution as sacred. It is the supreme law of the land. The parliament, the judiciary, the military, the bureaucracy are all subordinate to the Constitution.
A society which has no respect for its basic law would not last long. It will ultimately descend into chaos. All power must be subject to institutional restraints.
This is possible only when independent institutions are allowed to develop. The foremost institution in a parliamentary democracy is the parliament. The other institution is judiciary.
It is tragic that we have allowed neither to flourish. Parliament has either been subordinated to the will of a powerful prime minister or been dissolved by a powerful president.
When neither happened, the army dismissed it. Thus, it failed to check the abusive exercise of power by our rulers. It is time that we abandon this harmful tradition.
This brings us to the institution which has the greatest potential to curb governmental excesses and rectify injustice to the people, i.e. the judiciary. There can be no democracy or the rule of law unless judiciary is independent and the public perceives it to be so.
No doubt we have many independent judges who would not permit any interference in the performance of their functions by anyone. However, the public perception about the independence of the judiciary as an institution is different.
The resurrection of the doctrine of necessity by the Supreme Court and conferring power of constitutional amendment on an unelected person has dealt a mortal blow to the public confidence in judicial independence.
However, it is not all doomed. It is indeed heartening to see that in the past few years there has been a tremendous growth of non-governmental organizations. They raise their voice on issues of public importance and have a powerful and free media to convey this to the public.
The emergence of independent print and electronic media is the most important recent development and would have far reaching consequences for our society. No matter should be beyond the scope of discussion. Unanimity of opinion is as dangerous for democracy as suppression of dissent. An intolerant society can never be democratic.
Until and unless we develop a civil society with power diffused in different groups and sections, the rule of law shall remain a distant dream. Today all power is concentrated in one institution which is not accountable to anyone. It is time that we make them accountable.
They have a constitutionally allocated role to play. It is indeed a formidable task but we must make a beginning. As one Spanish proverb goes: Roads, there are none, roads are made by travellers. It is a long and arduous journey but we must take the first step.