THE PIA flight carrying Mr Nawaz Sharif and his companions, among others, arrived at the Islamabad airport on the morning of Sept 10. All passengers except him disembarked and went their way. Some four hours later government agents escorted him first to a lounge and then to another airplane, which took him to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia).

This was done because he had allegedly violated an undertaking he had given in December 2000 to the effect that he would stay away from the soil and the politics of Pakistan for a period of 10 years. He had returned three years sooner, and he was sent away to complete the full term of his exile.

Official spokesmen have been claiming that the undertaking in question was in the nature of a covenant (“muahida”) that Mr Sharif made with the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Not true. A covenant is a statement of obligations and rights which two or more contracting parties have assumed and given one another.

The government of Pakistan submitted a document supposedly embodying this covenant to the Supreme Court last month. It turned out to be a typewritten statement on plain paper that made no reference to the party to whom Mr Sharif’s “undertaking” might have been addressed and owed. It was merely a unilateral declaration of a resolve being made. No wonder then that the court dismissed it as having no legal import. It confirmed Mr Sharif’s “inalienable” right as a citizen of Pakistan to return and remain in the country. It also instructed all government agencies not to obstruct his exercise of this right.

I don’t know for sure how this undertaking came about, but commonsense would suggest the following chain of events. Mr Sharif had substantial business interests and close personal relations with highly placed persons in Saudi Arabia, including some in the royal family.

Consider also that governments in Pakistan have all along been deferential and beholden to the Saudi ruling authorities. Putting these two facts together, the Sharif family asked their Saudi friends to intercede on their behalf and get Nawaz Sharif out of prison.

When approached, and after assurances of mutual affection and eternal friendship had been exchanged, General Musharraf agreed to let Nawaz Sharif go if the Saudis would get him out of his hair and keep him away from the country for the foreseeable future. The Saudis conveyed Musharraf’s terms to Nawaz Sharif and he accepted them.

The transaction thus made did not constitute an agreement between two governments. The general had no authority under the law to make a deal with a foreign government for the purpose of expelling a citizen from his country. The Saudis asked a favour which Musharraf agreed to do. Pakistan did not, as a result, become in any way indebted to Saudi Arabia. It was, instead, the Saudi dignitaries who had reason to feel indebted to Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif asked his Saudi friends to do him a favour. They agreed and got him out of jail. They also took him and his family to their own country and extended lavish hospitality to all of them.

It follows that he had every reason in the world to be indebted to his hosts. It was his moral obligation to abide by the understanding he had given them, assuming that they were really interested in its fulfilment for 10 whole years, so much so that they would have objected to his making a “deal” with the government of Pakistan that opened the way for his return home sooner.

The claim of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and others that the government sent him back to Saudi Arabia under the compulsion of a moral imperative doesn’t make sense. The moral crisis, if there was any, involved Mr Sharif and the Saudis, not the government of Pakistan.

Did the Saudis really care whether or not Mr Sharif stayed away from Pakistan for the entire 10-year period stipulated in his undertaking? I don’t think so. They could not possibly have been unaware that since his arrival in London Mr Sharif had been declaring his resolve to return to Pakistan at his convenience. They could have conveyed their firm opposition to his plans if they had been so inclined.

I heard a couple of years ago that Mr Sharif was setting up a huge steel mill in Saudi Arabia, and that he had other business interests in that country. The Saudis could have threatened to confiscate his assets in case he went back on his undertaking. But they are not known to have done any of this. Mr Shahbaz Sharif who had signed the same kind of undertaking did actually arrive in Lahore a couple of years ago and was sent back to Saudi Arabia from the airport.

The Saudis are not known to have scolded him for this violation of the undertaking he had given them at the same time that his brother did. I do not rule out the possibility that he made this attempt to return to Pakistan with their knowledge and concurrence.

One may then wonder how and why the Saudis became actively involved in this affair: sent emissaries to talk with Nawaz Sharif in London and then to speak with Pakistani officials in Islamabad a week or so before his announced date of return. It is possible that General Musharraf and other officials, who went to Saudi Arabia (professedly to perform umrah ), met the Saudi king and other high officials, explained to them that Mr Sharif’s return was liable to destabilise Pakistani politics and cause a terrible nuisance for the present government, and that they should do what they could to prevent his return.

They might, for instance, make it known that they took Mr Sharif’s undertaking of December 2000 seriously, and that they would be greatly embarrassed if it were violated. Such a declaration on their part would give the government of Pakistan a reason to deport Mr Sharif back to Saudi Arabia as a gesture of respect for the sensibilities of a “brotherly” country and those of the custodians of Islam’s holiest places (“haramayn-i-sharifayn”).

The Saudis honoured Musharraf’s request, and his government thought it now had got a good justification for throwing Mr Sharif out of the country and denying him the elevating popular welcome he had been hoping to receive on the GT Road all the way to Lahore.

A couple of days before Mr Sharif’s return, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain claimed to have advised General Musharraf to let the former prime minister return, for the PML-Q was capable of doing battle with him and his party (PML-N) at the polls and defeating them. This was mere bragging.

A number of PML-Q legislators were reportedly itching to defect to PML-N following the Supreme Court’s ruling that Mr Sharif could not be stopped from returning home and waging politics.

The Chaudhrys are in fact opposed to the return of both the Sharifs and Benazir Bhutto because the return of either of them is deemed potentially disastrous for PML-Q’s integrity and its electoral fortunes. That, and not any moral crisis, prompted the present government to send Mr Sharif away.

Mr Shaukat Aziz had repeatedly declared that upon his arrival in Pakistan Mr Sharif would be treated according to law. In expelling him his government has defied the Supreme Court’s verdict and directive and acted lawlessly.

If this is any indication of how it respects the law, one may have good reason to suspect that it will use all means within its reach, fair and foul, to remain in power for the foreseeable future.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US

Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

WHILE the rights and wrongs of Nawaz Sharif’s forced deportation to Jeddah (or was it voluntary departure?) and its propriety in terms of law and political expediency will be long debated, the sordid drama played out at Islamabad airport on Sept 10 has established some hard facts.

One, a promise given to the Saudi royals takes precedence over the Constitution of Pakistan and the ruling of its Supreme Court. The argument advanced is that pledges are protected by the Sharia, fundamental rights are not. (In retrospect, Nawaz Sharif should be ever thankful to the senators who blocked his Fifteenth Amendment Bill under which the Sharia would have replaced the Constitution as the supreme law of the land).

Two, the billionaires and tribal chieftains of Islamic Middle East can be arbiters in Pakistan’s internal disputes only because it is a poor country with an unstable political system. So what if it is a country of 160 million people?

Three, the Musharraf regime despite its claims to eight years of unparalleled economic growth, a majority in parliament, the backing of the armed forces and an alliance with America still considers Nawaz Sharif a threat to its power and legitimacy, even if he were to be lodged in a remote prison, say Mach in Balochistan, burdened with myriad charges of corruption and abuse of power.

Four, the credibility of the administration, even with its well-wishers, has been stretched to a breaking point by its contention that Nawaz Sharif chose asylum in Jeddah once again over a court trial at home on the allegations of money laundering that was conveyed to him at the airport.

Five, Nawaz Sharif, a precocious first-generation rich, who so far was considered a passing phenomenon, no more than a blip on Pakistan’s political horizon, has emerged as a national leader in his own right. He was indeed brought into politics by the generals but now refuses to be cowed down by them.

These facts, controvertible they may be, surely point toward hazards and not hope in the days ahead. A question mark hangs over every institution of the state and every actor on the political stage. Critically important, however, are just two: first, did Gen Musharraf in handling the Nawaz Sharif affair act in desperation or on the back of renewed messages of support from the army command and President Bush?

The second question pertains to how promptly and unambiguously the Supreme Court determines whether the actions of the government at Islamabad airport were legal and proper or in defiance of Article 15 of the Constitution and its order affirming Nawaz Sharif’s inalienable right to enter and live in his own country even if he himself had renounced that right.

The Supreme Court can also examine Nawaz Sharif on commission abroad to ascertain whether he went back on his own, as some ministers contend, or was forcibly sent away, as Lord Nazir Ahmad and Mustafa Khar who accompanied him allege.

The Supreme Court can also direct a subordinate court to summon Nawaz to answer the criminal charge said to have been read out to him at the airport. On the other hand, if Nawaz’s petition is left to be argued and decided in due course, the purpose of the government in keeping him out of the election campaign and thus out of the power structure for the next five years would have been served.

America has kept its options open. While the White House dismissed Nawaz’s externment as a matter that concerned the people and the judiciary of Pakistan, the State Department, at the same time, administered a rebuke to the government for acting contrary to the decision of the Supreme Court. The European Union and the Commonwealth have been more critical and certainly no support has come to the government from any foreign quarter, however friendly. The already low image of Pakistan has taken yet another dip.

The irony of the situation is that in dealing with the questions that are germane to democracy in Pakistan and the fundamental rights of its citizens, the political leaders count the last. For them, politics has always been (it is no different this time round) a tussle for personal power, and not for the democratic rights of the people. That explains the panic blockade by the government, the missing millions of Nawaz Sharif’s own party and the cold indifference of all other parties.

The battle for power in the courts and on the streets seems to have made the belligerents as well as the people oblivious to the surging extremism that threatens to swamp not just the country’s established political order but the way of life itself.

Arbab Hedayatullah, a retired inspector general of police, living on the fringes of the tribal areas, acts as a listening post for his friends farther down in the plains. To him, the contest for power in Islamabad is irrelevant when he sees the state itself fast vanishing all around him.

The troops waylaid, killed and taken hostage, the shops set on fire if the roving maniacs do not approve of their merchandise, women beheaded on suspicion of immoral behaviour and girls prevented from going to school and similar activities get known through the media. Much less publicised are the marauding hordes of Ansarul Islam and Lashkar-i-Islami vying for control of Tirah valley, bordering on Peshawar, to the exclusion of the tribal elders and the government officials.

In the vast tracts of Kohistan, Swat, Dir and Bajaur, the writ that prevails is that of Mullah Sufi Mohammad, and not of the government. The local Taliban administer Darra Adamkhel with its armouries and drugs on the vital route linking the Peshawar garrison with troops in Kohat, Miramshah and beyond.

Against this background, any government emerging from national elections (likely to be delayed and unlikely to be fair) would not be able to stem the rising tide of extremism that has been nurtured by every government of the past 30 years, no less by this one. The democratic forces having been sidelined, the field now belongs to the military and the militants alone.

In putting an end to the on-going conflict in the borderlands, the old system of tribal administration, if reinstated, may succeed where the military campaigns and grand jirgas have failed. When innovations do not work it is wise to go back to the basics. Notwithstanding Pakistan’s involvement in the war on terror, the relations with the tribes should be conducted by the political agents, as they have been for 100 years under the supervision of the provincial, not the central, government.

The army may continue to intercept the infiltrators and hunt down the Taliban but on the Afghan territory alongside the international security force. It should not be seen to be fighting its own people and bombing their homesteads. The insurgency is in Afghanistan and not in Pakistan. As it is, we are shooting ourselves in both feet. We breed extremists and kill them too.

MUCH has been made of political developments that unfolded over the past week. While headlines reflect the immediate newsworthiness of an event, true significance lies in how events alter or inform patterns of behaviour in society. And on that score, it has merely been another week of more of the same.

As a society, we find short cuts simply irresistible, even in circumstances where long-term benefit is clearly compromised. Our leaders act in our image. Consider: a self-proclaimed leader chooses to take the shortest way towards the perpetuation of his own regime, heedless of the fallout on either his own credibility or the country’s stability. One former prime minister tries to leapfrog her way into power at the cost of her popularity with the voters while the similar intentions of another former prime minister are thwarted because he took an earlier short cut out of prison and opposition politics.

In the attempt to milk a situation for all it’s worth, these personalities seek help from internal and external players that are all too aware of the durability of political alliances in the country. The irony is that our leaders then count on long-term support from their international friends.

Opportunism is symptomatic of Pakistan’s society as a whole. The lack of foresight, the inability to connect cause and effect, is evident everywhere. Unable to resist the lure of expediency, we shelve any considerations of societal development or, indeed, civilised and self-respecting behaviour. The kindest explanation is that perhaps we hope to deal with the larger issues once the current crisis — of which there is no shortage on the individual, institutional or constitutional levels — has been survived. The cynical explanation is that we simply don’t care — the future, when it comes around, will be dealt with by future players.

Our method of dealing with traffic jams, for example, is revealing. Vehicles try to beat the line by encroaching on to the parallel lane, thus blocking oncoming traffic and rendering the gridlock worse than ever — although oncoming vehicles are extremely unlikely to simply evaporate. That this pattern is displayed by vehicles ranging from Prados to donkey carts is indicative of the fact that the inability to weigh the consequences of our actions has little to do with education, economic standing or social standing.

The same lack of structured thinking is evident in those clinging to power. They address the short-term problem — how to get a reprieve — without recognising that power cannot be infinitely prolonged. And in humiliating those they have beaten, they forget that they too will have their faces ground in the dust by others who are far more unscrupulous.

It may be instructive to ponder, variously, that citizens refer to General Ziaul Haq’s grave as Jabra Chowk; that the court to which Mr Sharif directs his appeal for justice was stormed by his own men, during his government; and that the politician who returned in such triumph in 1986 is now so severely diminished.