| 04 July 2004 | Sunday | 15 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
More governance, less rancour
Kashmir: a possible solution
In authoritarian cultures one does not question the higher orders, ask them how a proposition came to be valid. It is enough that they have said so. One must assume that they, simply by virtue of their higher status, know all that needs to be known. Resort to further inquiry, reasoning, or debate will be taken as impertinence, insubordination, or even rebellion.
It is probable that until about a couple of hundred years ago all cultures discouraged the questioning mind and enjoined conformism ("taqleed"). The world began to be innovative, inventive, and productive on unprecedented scales as men and women began to inquire into the whys and wherefores of propositions, events, and phenomena.
There may still be islands of meek submissiveness, but in progressive societies, even where an organization places a high value on internal hierarchy and discipline, such as the police, employees for the most part will speak their minds, and disagree with superiors when necessary instead of saying what they think the latter might want to hear.
Our culture, and others like ours, still prefer conformism and will often penalize the deviant. We, as a people, are not inclined to be tolerant of the dissident. Consider also that moderation involves a degree of humility that requires us to concede that perfection belongs only to God, that the wit of man and the arrangements it devises will bear improvement, and that life is an eternal quest for betterment.
Authoritarian regimes are, by their very nature, arrogant and, as a result, immoderate and intolerant. Their intolerance spreads and, in the long run, it generates among the people an uncontrollable propensity to violence.
General Musharraf has been preaching enlightenment, moderation, and tolerance. At the same time, he appears to prefer an authoritarian and personal style of rule to the collegial and democratic modes of governance. Is he, and can he be, moderate, tolerant, and just at the same time that he is authoritarian? We shall return to this issue shortly.
Most of our rulers have opted for moderation when they found it to be expedient, that is, when it could be accommodated within the four walls of an authoritarian regime. They tended to be pragmatic inasmuch as they tried to figure out how much the traffic would bear. Ayub Khan wanted to be remembered as a reformer, but the reforms he decreed were modest. He was contemptuous of politicians and thought of democracy as unsuited to our culture, but he allowed the politicians and a limited version of democracy to return after four years of military rule.
Ziaul Haq and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were the two notable exceptions to this general tendency. The general set aside "soldiering" and put on the robes of an ideologue. He acted as an extremist in his passionate and ruthless campaign to wipe out the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), its leaders and workers. Wishing to appear as a zealous champion of Islam, and believing that the ulema's support would solidify his hold on power, he proceeded to placate them by placing parts of the Islamic law on the statute book and establishing a hierarchy of Islamic courts and tribunals.
He referred to "secularists" in the country as "snakes in the grass" that must be found and crushed. He raised, nourished, and unleashed Islamic militants. He fanned the fires of sectarian hatred in which our cities are still burning. He wrote into our Constitution Islamic provisions that are impossible to implement, that were probably never intended to be implemented, and thus insulted both Islam and the Constitution.
More authoritarian than any other Pakistani politicians I can think of, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did not wear a gun, but believing that he had the street power of the masses behind him, he pursued extremist courses of action in introducing economic change and in dealing with political dissidents and opponents, both within his own party and elsewhere.
Indications are that Gen Pervez Musharraf, our present ruler, is "enlightened," and there can be little doubt that he wants us to practise moderation. He condemns political assassinations and mass killings of fellow Muslims by sectarian fanatics every time they take place (which seems to be as often as once every two weeks).
He would like to reform, if not shut down, the seminaries ("madressahs") that impart more sectarian hatred than useful knowledge. He wants to expand women's participation in politics, economy, and professions, and generally to bring them on par with men. He wishes to soften, perhaps even abolish, the "Hudood" and blasphemy laws.
But he cannot, and does not, do any of these things because he does not have the requisite will. These are his aspirations, not commitments. He is committed to his own maintenance in power more than anything else. The implementation of any of these wishes will annoy the professional spokesmen of Islam (the ulema) in the country, and he does not want to annoy them. His predecessors in power were also reluctant to arouse the ulema's ire, but none would seem to have been quite as circumspect. He may be apprehensive that if he alienated them, they would engineer an uprising against him.
Let us assume for a moment that his apprehension is well founded. One may then wonder why in that case he does not act to mitigate their capacity to hurt him? Under his orders, and by way of accommodating American concerns, our army is battling our own people in Waziristan. Why can't appropriate agencies in the same army employ suitable means for subduing the menace the potentially militant ulema pose?
One may wish to recall that insofar as the political ulema are in a position to hurt the general at all, they have come to be so situated as a result of his own doings. He went to the extremes in his loathing of Mian Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto.
It was one thing not to welcome them back into the country's political arena. But it was an extremist measure to have the elections of October 2002 manipulated to the MMA's advantage and to the detriment of the PPP and PML (N). That was at once immoderate, intolerant, and unjust.
Similarly immoderate and unjust was the whole train of manipulations to keep the PPP from participating in the governance of Sindh where it had emerged as the largest single party in the provincial legislature.
Prime Minister Jamali was (and presumably will remain) a moderate person, in addition to being a decent gentleman of the old school. His detractors may say that, yes, he was moderate, but he was not "strong" enough to be holding the prime minister's office. This is not sound reasoning. Mr Jamali worked under the guidance and instructions of Gen Pervez Musharraf. It was for the general to muster the needed strength as he moved from one situation to the next. His ouster of Mr Jamali will probably be interpreted as his rejection of moderation in politics.
He has gone to the extremes of subservience in his dealings with the United States. It is understood that he had no alternative to joining Mr Bush in the fight against terrorism. But he could have taken the American request under "advisement," to use an American expression, consulted with the political forces in the country, explained the "score" to them, and then offered cooperation to the United States within the bounds of our domestic constraints as well as capabilities. Instead of projecting his own person as the embodiment of the nation's will, he could have allowed the decision to be seen as that of the nation.
The military has been intervening in our government and politics even when it was officially supposed to be in the barracks. We may lament it as much as we want, but we are told that it is a fact of life that must be reckoned with. The establishment of a "National Security Council," as an advisory body, was a compromise, a pragmatic measure in political moderation.
It was assumed that, having attained the participation it desired, the military would now stay in its own domain. But persistent reports in the press tell us that corps commanders continue to give directions to government functionaries at all levels. In allowing this to happen, Gen Musharraf is once again departing from the path of moderation.
The general appears to be tolerant of criticism. One may have heard of a journalist being manhandled occasionally, but for the most part the press is free. One reason for this apparent tolerance may be that he understands, better than many authoritarian rulers, that adverse comment in the press won't hurt him. He may have been told also that only a tiny percentage of the population reads editorials and columns in the newspapers, especially the English language ones.
On the other hand, we also have incredible instances of intolerance and immoderation. On June 26 the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, was prevented from entering Karachi. He was met by security agents at the airport, and forcibly put on a flight back to Islamabad.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of the Jamaat-i-Islami, was dealt the same blow the next day. The only element of "moderation" in these cases may have been that, instead of arresting them and taking them to jail, the officers took these dignitaries to the VIP lounge and entertained them to tea before sending them away.
Gen Musharraf has been saying that denial of justice, and want of moderation and tolerance, give rise to terrorism. It is lucky for us that most of the politicians whom he and his agents have treated shabbily are unlikely to respond with acts of violence. But note that extremism and intolerance at the top have ways of spreading into the country's political culture.
Society at large will not embrace moderation and tolerance until the rulers commit themselves to the same; and until they abandon authoritarianism and adopt democracy not only in their rhetoric but also in their actual practice.
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net
More governance, less rancour
Maulana Fazlur Rahman's aside that Shaukat Aziz designated to be the prime minister could not get elected even as a local councillor may be valid but, at the same time, the Maulana should be conscious of the fact that the people have become utterly weary of their nationally elected leaders.
The weariness that set in just as hope for a free and just society was arising after Ziaul Haq's oppressive decade has now sunk to despair.
Mr. Aziz's appointment as prime minister could provide to the common man the respite he needs, and deserves, from the wrangles of politics, its rancours and hypocrisy. Under him the expectation should be that there would be more of governance and less of combat. If it does not happen that way, there would be no justification for Aziz to hold the job even though, whatever Maulana Fazlur Rahman might have to say, he will be elected to the national assembly, may be twice over.
Of importance is the nomination and not the election. Zafarullah Jamali became the prime minister because he was nominated by the president. So will now Shaukat Aziz. Election from a constituency and later as leader of the house is taken for granted to fulfil a formality. Shujaat's protestation that Jamali was removed by the party carries little credence for just a few days ago he had spoken of a change but in 2007. Yet the party endorsed Jamali's removal as readily as it had his nomination.
Jamali was chosen to be the prime minister, it is easy to surmise, for two reasons: it would please the people and the chieftains of Balochistan none of whom had ever got to this office and, secondly, not being the leader of a political party or a religious group, he would look up only to the president for guidance, and implement his policies and directives without demur.
Jamali's appointment made no difference to the pathos of the ordinary people of Balochistan nor to the sullen hostility of its sardars but his overt efforts to carve out a niche of power for himself with the support of the religious groups proved his undoing. The president too used the religious alliance to legitimize his office but his declared objective to make Pakistan a liberal society and to crush extremism were aborted in the process and the sectarian violence rose to a new high.
Jamali who had no national, regional or ethnic group backing him became irrelevant when he failed to persuade his new-found friends in the MMA to vote for Musharraf's presidency and NSC nor would they help Musharraf in fighting the terrorists who to them remained holy fighters even if they were not the citizens of Pakistan.
For Jamali it has been a double whammy all through. He could not win over the clerics but lost the goodwill of the president and his own partymen alike. Some newspapers did not wait even for a day to publish accounts of his son's escapades, his own extravagance and the arbitrary appointments he made. That was a signal to stay compliant.
Mr. Jamali may have rid himself of his sense of failure, or guilt, with the concluding solemn note in his farewell speech to the parliament that the tenures of men in power are determined by God and not by men but his successors must draw lessons from his downfall.
The foremost is the one for the short-term prime minister Shujaat. His very first statement on taking up the job is that he would faithfully and expeditiously implement the policies of Pervez Musharraf. At the same time Shujaat considers the clerics of MMA as his natural allies while Musharraf finds them opposed to his concepts and untrustworthy in dealings.
To implement Musharraf's policies, thus, Shujaat has to seek support not from the MMA but from other elements in the opposition. He carries the responsibility for crafting an arrangement which has harmed the country much more than the authoritarian rule of Musharraf by itself could have done. Now it lies with him to undo it and lay the foundations of a new one more practical before he leaves the office and fades out of public life.
It is also the right time to remind Chaudhry Shujaat of a promise he made to the Biharis stranded in Bangladesh when he was minister in a previous government to bring them over. He did not last in power long enough to fulfil the promise and then forgot about it altogether. The time is again short but he has all the power to end the agony of those half a million people who made a last-ditch effort to save the unity of their country but in the denouement found themselves having no country they could call their own.
The latest reports are that they do not insist on coming to Pakistan but only urge the governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh to decide to which country they belong. This is a plea the two governments have to be too heartless to resist.
The new prime minister of Pakistan should visit Dhaka to redeem his pledge. He could persuade Begum Khaleda Zia to accept them as citizens of her country - after all now the majority is born there and is indistinguishable from the other citizens in language and culture. Pakistan could reciprocate by making a donation for their rehabilitation and welfare.
The people here should be willing to bear its extra burden. It could be a small cess on cars, electronics and some other commodities not consumed by the poor. (After all Lahore's Aiwan-i-Iqbal where the patriots and Islamists often gather to renew pledges to avenge past defeats and score new victories was built with cess on cement.
The doubting Thomases may check with Gen Saeed Qadir, the production minister of the time who now lives in retirement in Rawalpindi). Shujaat thus could carve a place for himself in history and public esteem that seldom comes to a politician in his lifetime.
Shaukat Aziz who will be prime minister hopefully longer than his predecessors carries no baggage, ideological or political. He should not throw away that advantage before or after he enters the office. Worryingly, he has started doing that already.
When he talks of his vision of Pakistan he is seeking to get lost in an ideological maze. His vision should be pure and simple that of an administrator. The ideology should be left to the care of the politicians and clerics and so should be the interest of the Ummah. He should just take care of the needs and worries of the common man.
The jargon of "evolving consensus" or "carrying everybody along" has come as glibly to Mr. Aziz as it does to conventional political leaders. In a democracy majority rules by laws. Consensus leads to maladministration and extravagance like having 60 ministers where 10 would do. In his 20 months Jamali did little else but try to evolve consensus only to leave the country in greater discord than he had found it.
Above all, the political forces of the country need to realign themselves. The ideas and policies of Musharraf to which Shujaat's Muslim League and its partners profess to subscribe fully just do not admit of cooperation in any form with the religious parties. Maulana Fazlur Rahman has rightly said Musharraf and Benazir think alike. It is the ego and fear that keeps them apart.
But political manoeuvres are better left to the president. Shaukat must have learnt it is beyond him at his very first port of call (Maulana Samiul Haq's madressah at Akora) after being named as the next prime minister.
He could get the three votes the maulana controls only if he agrees not to touch the Hudood laws, leaves the foreign fighters alone in Waziristan and introduces a true (Taliban-like) Islamic rule. It is a quagmire. The safety and economic well-being of the people should be Shaukat Aziz's full-time occupation. The president will take care of politics. He now looks relaxed and triumphant in that occupation.
Kashmir: a possible solution
Even in the annals of assassination, this was unique: a devout Muslim was in the actual mode of 'Sajda' in a small Srinagar mosque on May 29 when a single bullet gunned him down and he lay in his own pool of blood. The assassin escaped through a window.
Who was this man, and the cause of his assassination? Mushtaq Ahmad was the uncle of Umar Farooq, the Mirwaiz of Kashmir, the hereditary spiritual leader of the Kashmir Valleys' Sunni Muslims. The Mirwaiz is a pivotal member of the APHC - a loose conglomeration of pro-independence or pro-Pakistan parties in the Kashmir valley. The Mirwaiz group headed by the Shia Maulana Ansari - a good example of sectarian unity - is opposed by the pro-Pakistan Gilani group of the APHC.
The other "party" in the Kashmir freedom struggle are the terrorists. Till lately supported by Pakistan, now somewhat orphaned, are the natural allies of the Gilani group possibly with linkages to terrorist groups in Pakistan.
The Ansari group of the APHC has had at least two meetings with the late BJP government invoking the ire of the Gilani faction and the militants. As a consequence, the APHC is divided between parties which have agreed to a dialogue with the Indian government and those not so inclined.
Mushtaq Ahmad was perceived by the militants as a key figure in opening factional talks with the Indians. If engaging the perceived enemy in a dialogue is a sin, then there follows endless war (read terrorism) which is a great virtue. If this be the thinking, the victors may inherit a Kashmir someday as barren and silent as the moon.
The credentials of the Ansari-Mirwaiz group for Kashmir liberation are impeccable. Mirwaiz's father was killed in 1990 also at the hands of the extremists. If any one individual comes close to representing the Muslim voice of Kashmir, most commentators think it is the Mirwaiz, a well educated young man, not yet 32. Not even his opponents would consider him to be an Indian today; respected for his piety, moderation and traditional representation of Kashmiri interests as opposed to the real estate claims of either India or Pakistan.
For the militants to kill his close associate, friend and relative was a dastardly act. As far as I know, this assassination barely received any mention in our media. This leads to the speculation that official media in Pakistan is selective in condemning or condoning militancy in Kashmir. If we are hoping for better relations with India and western powers with influence in our region, we would be well advised to condemn all militancy in Kashmir. Terrorists wearing the holy dress of freedom fighters are out of fashion.
The rhetoric of the PTV playing up terrorism in the Valley needs to be toned down. We need deconstruction in our intelligence and media outfits. Equally we need an open debate on the possibilities and pitfalls of independence in Kashmir or part thereof.
Let us begin by saying that, if there is one unanimity between India and Pakistan on the dispute, it is that independence for Kashmir or part thereof is the worst of all for peace in South Asia. We do not agree.
Each country thinks independence is the cat's paw of the other: a cosmetic cover for nefarious designs. That any independent entity will not be economically viable is plain to see. Before we examine these reasons, let us look at the geographic parameters of independence. Purists such as the JKLF demand independence for the entire old Jammu and Kashmir state. This is illusory. These purists forget that J&K is not a homogeneous state, ethnically, linguistically or religiously.
The Dogras and Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Ladakh are ardent Indian nationalists, as are the Punjabi-speaking Muslims of Azad Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan in their loyalty to Pakistan. Incidentally, Ladakh, Gilgit and Baltistan were the colonial properties of the then ruler: the Maharaja was a British puppet. They have no linkage proper to Kashmir other than that by conquest over a period of history by the Dogra rulers of Kashmir.
The problem pertains to a narrow valley some fifty or sixty miles in length and some twenty miles wide, home to about five million persons, probably 85 per cent Muslim. If the world were a fair and just place, this valley should have been assigned to Pakistan at the time of partition: morally, legally and on the basis of the Hyderabad state precedent ('Police' action by India at the time of partition, which was adopted to invade the Muslim-ruled but Hindu-majority state in South India; the conditions there were almost identical to Kashmir).
In retrospect, it is clear that we made two mistakes. Instead of sending a disciplined 'police' invasion force - unfortunately the then British commander and our army chief General Gracey decided to defy the Quaid-i-Azam's order for military intervention - as did India in Hyderabad. Instead, we sent a bunch of hoodlums from the NWFP masquerading as freedom fighters who were more interested in rape and pillage than liberation of the Kashmiris. This caused a wave of revulsion even among the Muslim population of the Valley.
Such was the indignation of the Kashmiris that when in 1965 (Operation Gibraltar) our intelligence services, at the behest of the politico-military hawk faction led by Z.A. Bhutto (Ayub Khan resisted this adventure), the Kashmiris simply handed over the would-be 'freedom fighters' to the Indian authority.
Our second mistake was to drag our feet on the withdrawal of our troops from the disputed areas as required by the UN resolutions. This India would use as a trump card in the years to come to justify its sequential acts.
But we do not live in a fair and ideal world. Solutions have to be carved out of the rough granite of the real world, where nations in their self-interest behave as aggressively as individuals do in the market place.
A bad hand dealt today need not be a bad hand forever. With skill and a little luck it can be made into a winner. Consider: Finland at the close of World War II was forced by Stalin to enter into an unequal treaty, ceding its sovereignty in large measure to the Soviet Union. Over the last half a century all the attributes of the unequal treaty were diluted to the point where little Finland is the financier and technology provider of Russia. A bad hand dealt by history (and geography) has been turned into a winner.
Independence for the Valley is no new solution. To begin with, outright independence is not likely to be granted by India. Any government in New Delhi ceding it will probably fall. Let us provide an example, which is not comparable. We bought Gwadar from the Sultan of Oman about half a century back for a princely sum of money (incidentally this is the only territorial acquisition made by Pakistan).
Supposing the people of Gwadar were to say that they are not and never were a saleable commodity and desire independence, would we cede it? Certainly not. Any government in Islamabad would fall if this was attempted.
So, is the independence solution for the Valley a non-starter? It is not. It is a goal that can only be gradually realized. Contemporary history provides instances where people on the fault lines of sovereignty have asserted their national rights and uniqueness in insidious ways for either independence or for an acceptable level of autonomy.
We shall not offer the example of the Baltic or Central Asian states, for these are large entities, but entities comparable to the Kashmir Valley is South Tyrol, where its Germanic culture and way of life have received full recognition for autonomy within Italian sovereignty. Yet another example is little Andorra tucked in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. Such is the consanguinity that it is difficult to determine for the outsider to which country it belongs.
In any negotiation one must take into consideration the other partner's limits. India, today, will not surrender sovereignty for any part of Kashmir in its possession. Give 20 years of peace and it may be different. Pakistan will not accept the finality of the LoC as an international border. Within those outer limits there is the thin line of a solution.
If India is wise it will grant autonomy to the Valley in letter and spirit as provided under Article 370 of the Indian constitution. This conflict resolution should be within the Saarc framework, if the UN frame is not acceptable to India. But the agreement, which should have international force, has to be binding and non-reversible.
Apart from defence, communications and perhaps currency, all power should belong to the representatives of the people of the Valley (and this should include the Kashmiri Brahmins expelled by the terrorists), including entry and exit permission for foreigners. The Indian army in the Valley must be reduced to the levels existing in 1953.
If Pakistan is wise it will crack down on the terrorist organizations more determinedly than is the case at present. Extremists in both India and Pakistan should be put paid to politically and by arms if need be. Both countries need a GDP growth rate of eight per cent over the next decade to catch up with East Asian economies.
As far as the other parts of Kashmir, which are not matters of real dispute, be awarded by an agreement by each country to the other.
But, alas! history does not have happy endings; only unforeseen ones.
The writer is a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan.
murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk