Failure of new system

Eighteen months after the elections the perennial question of Pakistan's politics - "what lies ahead" - refuses to die. In the current circumstances it has arisen with new foreboding. Hard realities and glib grist are feeding the same old rumour mills, only grinding faster.

The parliament and the assemblies, the cabinets and the councils have come back in numbers larger than needed to fill the scene with bluster but no assurance. Whether in hope or despair the people still look up to General Musharraf, and so does the rest of the world.

The role of the president in the affairs of the state and his executive powers under the Constitution even after the 17th amendment are few and defined. Yet, he continues to function as head of the government because the institutions which were to take over that function are weak and divided. The war on terror has only reinforced Musharraf's authority in the subjects and areas which legitimately belong to the parliament and the cabinet.

The institutional cause of this weakness and division is not the incompetence of the people populating the assemblies and cabinets, though that is a significant factor, but the flawed and manipulated electoral process and ill-conceived administrative reforms which have thrown up these institutions.

An agreement on the content of the Constitution, free elections open to all citizens except the felons and the review or reversal of the administrative reforms will take their own time and uncertain, unpredictable course. The problems that the people face and the imperatives of economic progress however, demand a remedy in a shorter timeframe before the basic and structural changes come about after four or more years.

A wide gap between the situation in the country and the government's understanding of it is noticeable every day. The inadequacies of the new district government and police system, its contradictions and the conflicts it has created are being widely reported. Even the chief of the national reconstruction bureau has observed that the provincial governments by design humiliate and harass the councils.

It is also not disputed that the safety commissions and complaint authorities which were to check the abuse of power by the police have either not come into being or where they have, they provide no remedy, nor the police feels responsible to the nazim even in the rudimentary manner envisaged in the law.

Yet the government keeps insisting that the new system is working. Meetings are held by the prime minister and the president and committees are formed now and then to remove the so-called mental cobwebs and physical hurdles but not to after or abandon the system itself despite two fractious and wasted years.

Yet another illustration of the gap in the perceptions of the public and government is the atta availability and price. Long queues daily form at the flour mills and nazims too are photographed distributing atta at controlled price to outstretched hands.

Then, an economic planner of yesteryear, Dr. Akhtar Hassan Khan, says the shortage of wheat was never worse and prices higher. Yet the government at the highest level insists that the problem exists only in the newspaper columns and thus pours salt over the wounds of the hungry and jobless. (Dawn EBR, March 22)

The most glaring and costly failure of the new political process is being witnessed in the ongoing military intervention in South Waziristan. In times when the laws and traditions held sway and the government suffered from no internal contradictions, a political agent backed by his own levies suitably dealt with the recalcitrant tribes and the fugitives if any they harboured.

To deal with more defiant tribes with foreign agents instigating them, he would call for the para-military help. Ask Naseerullah Babar how in the eighties as commander of the militia with commissioner Nasrum Minallah by his side, they quelled the insurgency by some tribes of upper Mohmand, Nawagai and Bajaur by firing a few shots but causing no death.

True, Waziristan today presents a bigger and more serious problem both in numbers and arms but had the political authorities in the province and at the centre acted in unison and with restraint, the use of force and loss of life would have been at a much reduced scale. As it happens the terrorists to the central authority are the holy warriors to the provincial government.

The political officers and tribal elders could not but be torn between the two governments because for their career and reward they are dependent on both.

With the new political system failing to take roots and the external pressures depriving it of whatever little capacity it possessed to do good to the people, demands are gaining momentum for a new constitution or even altogether a new compact among the federating units.

That may pose no threat to the security of the country but certainly does not foster the unity needed to tackle the variety of crises it faces and the popular backing its leadership needs to negotiate with a united, resurgent India and to resist the invasion of its own territory by a foreign power in pursuit of terrorists. In short, if despondency among the people on the poor state of governance is not called for, the government's brimming confidence is even less justified.

Musharraf's experience of public life away from the barracks and trenches over the last four and a half years must have shown him how fragile are the loyalties and fast shifting are the alliances in politics. The deserters from the party (PML) he toppled and the party (PPP) he loathed form the hard core of his brand of democracy.

The reactionary right (MMA) then helped him get the parliamentary legitimacy he, a liberal, needed not for love of him but to save their own provincial governments and are now trying to wash that obloquy by agitating against him.

The politics of the country and consequently its representative institutions will remain unstable, lacking in substance and open to manipulation so long as the leaders of its major parties - PPP, Muslim League and MQM - remain out of the country and the leaders of numerous nationalist groups are cast out of the mainstream. They should be all invited to play their part ending their exile or isolation. The quid pro quo by the returning leaders should be to commit to work within the present constitutional system and wait to win enough seats in the next election to change it.

The broadening of the political base and diverse activity should cause no worry to the president and his colleagues in the military and government. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif both having been prime minister for two terms are barred from that office. Nawaz is barred twice over for he stands convicted in the plane hijacking and helicopter purchase cases. Altaf Husain, though his party is a formidable force in Sindh, does not have a political base wide enough to aspire to head a government at the centre. The nationalist parties want only recognition of their rights and culture.

That leaves only Shahbaz Sharif on the sidelines to contend against the ruling Chaudhries, Jamalis and Maulvis. He is not convicted and is willing to face the charge of extrajudicial murder in a court brought against him after he was dispatched out of the country. Ironically, he is being denied any relief because he is held to be a fugitive from law though he is pining to return home.

Now he has gone to the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the authorities not to put him back on the plane forcibly when he returns to defend himself against the charge as, indeed, his wife and daughter were last year. It will be up to the electorate but the country will not be, perhaps, a loser if he were to get back into public office. In him people recall a tough administrator somewhat in the mould of Nawab of Kalabagh and Mustafa Khar.

No law, or authority however high and no court howsoever supreme can deprive a citizen of his right to live in his own country even if it has to be a prison. It is immeasurably painful to comprehend that in this age and time a government should use force to stop a citizen from returning to his home country and its judicial system should let it happen.

That brings this argument to the heart of the matter. No society can claim to be civilized much less democratic if its election commission acts as an agent of the party in power and if its courts are not fearlessly just in all circumstances and compassionate too when an ordinary citizen is pitched against the might of a government. But, then, in a society like ours where the authority and majority routinely oppress the week and the small, be it individual or community, the fundamental rights cease to be universal, they become a privilege of the powerful.

New allegations scare Bush

The swiftness and ferocity of the Bush White House's attack on Richard Clarke tells you two things: his story may be largely true, and the Bush administration is terrified that the American people will believe it. The central allegation - that Mr Bush was so obsessed with going after Saddam Hussein that he openly challenged his counter-terrorism adviser to find a link between September 11 and Iraq the day after the attacks took place - is serious.

It threatens the fundamental platform of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign: that you are safer with them than you are with the Democrats. The White House did not let a single news cycle go by before questioning that the alleged encounter between the president and Clarke had ever taken place, assigning dark motives to a man who has served four presidents, three of them Republicans. But you don't have to be Bob Woodward to check Clarke's story out. There were other witnesses to this meeting, one of whom spoke to me.

"The conversation absolutely took place. I was there, but you can't name me," the witness said. "I was one of several people present. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the president had Iraq on his mind, first and foremost." This former national security council official was too terrified to go on the record - he knows how vengeful this administration can be.

He remembers the late night phone call former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill received just before he published The Price of Loyalty, his account of how the Bush White House set its sights on Iraq from day one. He was about to discover the price of disloyalty to this administration.

It was Donald Rumsfeld on the line, a man more used to authorising deadly force on the grandest scale, gently advising him that it might not be in his best interests to go public. When O'Neill ignored him, he instantly became the target of an investigation by his former department, which claimed that he had revealed state secrets.

Bush's mantra to the international community during his inexorable march to war in 2002-2003 - you are either with us or against us - applies, with equal force, to all who serve him. His inner circle has used fear and intimidation to keep the White House airtight. But the cracks are opening up, and those pesky facts keep resurfacing like unsightly flotsam, evidence that supports Richard Clarke's revelations.

The fact that the Pentagon pulled the fighting force most equipped for hunting down Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan in March 2002 in order to pre- position it for Iraq cannot be denied.

Fifth Group Special Forces were a rare breed in the US military: they spoke Arabic, Pastun and Dari. They had been in Afghanistan for half a year, had developed a network of local sources and alliances, and believed that they were closing in on bin Laden. Without warning, they were then given the task of tracking down Saddam.

"We were going nuts on the ground about that decision," one of them recalls. "In spite of the fact that it had taken five months to establish trust, suddenly there were two days to hand over to people who spoke no Dari, Pastun or Arabic, and had no rapport."

Along with the redeployment of human assets came a reallocation of sophisticated hardware. The US air force has only two specially-equipped RC135 U spy planes. They had successfully vectored in on Al Qaeda leadership radio transmissions and cellphone calls, but they would no longer circle over the mountains of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

The Bush White House has banked on all who were privy to these details keeping the code of silence. But too many people outside the White House sphere of influence are too well informed, be they commandos on the ground or career civil servants at the state department and CIA.

Some have come forward, risking the ire of the Bushies. Many more are considering it, weighing their conscience alongside their sense of self-preservation. Several who are talking are doing so on the condition of anonymity. But, as this campaign heats up, some will rethink and go on the record. It is becoming clear their silence might ensure that the Bush White House gets away with the central lie of its tenure - the blanket denial that it abandoned the war on terror to pursue an unrelated, pre-selected Iraq agenda.

The louder the Bush administration proclaims that it is the only qualified protector of national security, the more offensively that rings in the ears of those who know the truth. Sooner or later - and certainly before November - that truth will out. - Dawn-Guardian Service

The writer is a former senior Democratic party strategist.