Foreign intervention

INTERNATIONAL law used to refer to states as sovereign, meaning that each one of them is entitled to do with its land and people as it deems fit and no outside power may interfere with its actions, howsoever gruesome they may be.

This theory was based on the premise that all states were equal in law regardless of the quantum of their resources and power. In actual practice, however, international relations did not proceed the way the theory of sovereignty had led students to believe.

Actually, the notion that an entity can be sovereign in the sense that it may do whatever it wants is no more than a useful myth. Even in the case of the mighty all kinds of constraints bear upon one’s choice-making. I will venture to suggest that the myth was created for two reasons. First, contracts are valid if the parties concerned are free and competent to make them. Further, a contract would be hard to enforce if one of the parties were capable of disappearing.

Let us take the case of a king who has borrowed money. If he loses his kingdom, the loans he had taken go with him, for his successor, if any, may not assume them. So, what are the moneylenders to do? Their problem would be resolved if the borrower were an entity in perpetuity, a body corporate, a state, whose obligations would remain in effect regardless of the identity of its rulers. But in that case the borrower, the state, must be presumed to be fully capable of making its decisions.

That states are sovereign is then a presumption and not necessarily a ground reality. The more powerful states do exploit the resources and dominate the resource management policies of the smaller ones. They may do the same where their strategic interests are involved.

Of late, a reformist kind of intervention in the affairs of the more receptive developing countries has emerged under the rubric of ‘globalisation’. Instances abound in the western powers’ relations with Pakistan. Public authorities and the media in America, Britain and the European Union have been sending advice to the government and politicians in Pakistan on the reordering of their governance and politics.

They did accept Gen Pervez Musharraf’s coup in Oct 1999, but soon thereafter, they started saying that the military government should yield to a civilian regime. Following the elections of 2002, they urged the general, almost on a weekly basis, to give up his army post. During the last one year or so they have been saying that the elections — now to be held on Feb 18 — must be fair and honest, and that they will have no credibility if they are rigged.They have periodically condemned the violation of human rights in Pakistan. They denounced the imposition of emergency rule and the sacking of judges and repeatedly asked Musharraf to lift the emergency. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has asked the government of Pakistan to release all political prisoners before the elections.

President Bush wanted Pervez Musharraf to remain at the helm in Pakistan. But he also wanted Musharraf to improve his public image and, to that end, allow Benazir Bhutto and the Sharifs to return home and participate in politics. His administration insisted that he conclude a power-sharing deal with Ms Bhutto and sponsored negotiations between them to facilitate it.

American officials and other spokesmen express concern that ‘extremists’ might come to power in Pakistan and take control of its nuclear weapons, implying that some external agency should take charge of them.

I do not recall that American and European officials have burdened other developing countries with as much advice as they have been pouring on Pakistan. And it is inconceivable that the government of Pakistan would ask the American president or the British prime minister to make sure that the next elections in his country are fair and ‘transparent’. Nor is it likely to send such advice to the prime minister of Malaysia or the president of the Philippines.

It may be argued that in the ‘global village’, the domestic affairs of a nation are no longer exclusively its own concern. Pakistani commentators feel free to advise the British, French and German governments to treat their Muslim populations as well as they treat their native sons of the soil. This is not an adequate explanation, or justification, of the amount and frequency of the foreign advice coming to Pakistan. That is the way it is not merely because Pakistan is a relatively weak or poor country. The reason may be that its elites, both in government and opposition, lacking self-confidence and self-reliance, end up soliciting foreign approval, assistance, guidance and intervention.

There are situations in which money and advice come together. The government wants money from international lending institutions and they name the conditions that must be met to ensure that the money being given is spent for approved purposes. Pakistan has also been taking money from foreign governments in return for services rendered. It likes to call itself a ‘frontline’ state which in effect means that its government chooses to act as a mercenary, doing errands for a foreign employer and getting paid for the work done. It has had this type of transactions mostly with the United States.

Governments in Pakistan, both military and civilian, have been authoritarian for the most part. They have treated opponents arbitrarily, violating their fundamental rights. Judges have not been able to protect the victims, and recently (March 2007) when they proceeded to restrain the government, a majority of them in the Supreme Court were sacked.

Opposition leaders can bring their followers out on the streets in protest movements to deflect the government from a certain course of action, but these do not always work. Of late, their other recourse has been to appeal to the international ‘community’ to pressure the government of Pakistan to return to decent and lawful modes of interaction with them. They have been holding meetings with groups of foreign ambassadors in Islamabad to ‘brief’ them on the political situation in the country. Expecting that the coming elections will not be fair, they have been requesting the American and European governments to do something to prevent rigging.

Acting from the mistaken notion that the United Nations is some kind of a world policeman or an investigative agency, the PPP leaders have asked it to investigate the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto and tell them who did the deed and at whose behest. They are not satisfied with the inquiry conducted by the Scotland Yard because Musharraf had commissioned it.

Foreign intervention in their internal affairs is something that Pakistanis seem to desire and expect. It is a pity, and a shame, that they are so distrusting of one another that they cannot settle matters among themselves. An outside observer is liable to form the impression, shocking though it may be, that they do not know, or even wish to know, what to do with independence.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is currently a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

Crisis of weak institutions

AT the root of all problems that beset the country (and that are worsening by the day) lies the failure of the government to enforce the law and provide justice. The president may put on a brave face on the rout but cannot escape the responsibility, for he, and he alone, has destroyed or alienated the institutions which could have prevented the problems from arising — and having arisen would not have let them become the crises they have.

Take the worst two of the many raging crises at opposite ends — the tribal areas and the judiciary. It is the political agent who should have been dealing with the unlettered, restive tribal elders and the attorney-general with the learned but piqued judges.

Deprived, by Musharraf’s reforms, of the backing of a well-knit service hierarchy, and made to work under the gaze of army commanders, the political agent now cuts a lonely, pathetic figure.

And the attorney-general appears to act more as a legal adviser of the president and defender of his person rather than as a law officer of the state assisting the courts in dispensing justice.

Taking yet another example, the defiant clerics of Islamabad’s Red Mosque, who have since become a role model for terrorists, were handled by ministers who had political motives of their own, rather than by the administrators of the capital territory. A law and order problem was thus raised to the plane of ideology and martyrdom.

Two other occasions on which an unprofessional and biased approach to law and order led to deaths and devastation on a horrendous scale included the protest demonstrations following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and before that in March last year when Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry came to Karachi.

On both these occasions, the enforcers of law and order either took instructions from politicians or succumbed to pressure from them.

In the background of such bungling, the problem of law and order looms larger and more menacing in the weeks ahead as the election campaign gathers pace, votes are polled on Feb 18 and celebrations or protests take place.

On the other hand, the institutions of state which have to cope with numerous and serious conflicts that might arise have all passed under political control.

Such is the degree of lack of trust in the will and ability of the civil administration to implement the rule of law that parties in the opposition who otherwise insist that the army must return to the barracks are now demanding that the troops should be out not only on the streets but present inside every polling station to maintain order and check bogus voting.

Some political leaders, Imran Khan in particular, strongly feel that polls cannot be fair unless the judges compulsorily retired are all reinstated. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also hold the same view.

While their concern for the independence of the judiciary is laudable, it is of little relevance to free and orderly polls at this stage of the proceedings.

The polls will be supervised by the returning officers and conducted by officials who, under the Representation of the People Act, will be all drawn from the federal, provincial and district governments. Crucial to fair and orderly polls will be the conduct of these officials. The judges come into the picture much later and that too only if the result of the ballot is disputed by losing candidates. Such disputes usually take long to decide.

It is to remove the pressure of the party in power on the law enforcement agencies and the officials conducting the polls that the Constitution provides for elected federal and provincial governments to make way for caretaker cabinets 60 days before the polling day.

The same rule, however, does not apply to district governments.

Though the neutral character even of caretaker cabinets is being questioned, the threat to orderly and fair polls comes mainly from district governments which are dominated by one or the other political party.

In the laws enacted under Musharraf’s devolution plan — the Local Government Ordinance of 2001 and Police Order of 2002 — the district nazim is the head of the district administration and responsible for law and order.

The police too is answerable to him. Departments like revenue, irrigation, excise, cooperatives and education, which will provide the bulk of the staff for polling, are also controlled by the nazim.

The nazim, in fact, now performs all those functions (and more) which under the old system were performed by the deputy commissioner and commissioner together. The nazim, therefore, can, and surely will, influence the ballot.

The past five years have amply demonstrated that the nazims cannot be politically neutral as envisaged in the devolution scheme. The Karachi city district government, for example, openly operates under the banner of Haq Parast (MQM) leadership, and that of Gujarat under the Q League.

The best illustration of a nazim using his power to influence the elections has come in a briefing Ms Sassi Palijo recently gave to European Union observers.

Ms Palijo, the PPP’s candidate from Thatta, told observers that hundreds of her activists had been jailed only because she is contesting against a son of nazim Shafqat Hussain Shah Shirazi.

Other relatives of the nazim, according to Palijo, are contesting from all seven seats of the district.

The prospects of polls being fair and peaceful are remote in a situation where the opposition maintains that neither the caretaker governments nor the election commission nor the nazims are neutral.

Despite protests by the opposition and persuasion by international agencies and foreign governments, President Musharraf has not found it expedient to reconstitute the caretaker government and the election commission to make them demonstrably impartial.

It is too late in the day to expect him to dissolve or suspend the district governments which, surely, he would be even less inclined to do.

But his assurances that polls will be fair and peaceful would have some credibility if the district coordination officers, instead of the nazims, were to be made responsible for law and order and polling arrangements under the election commission.

If not you, then who? By Shehzad Roy

ONCE while performing at a school in Islamabad on a Friday afternoon, I stopped the concert as the azaan began. A little girl came up to me and asked, “Shehzad bhai, why did you stop singing?” I smiled and said, “If I sing now, God will send me to hell.” She was spontaneous in her response, “Shehzad bhai. Please sing. You are not going to heaven anyway!”

That night for a long time I pondered over the remark made by the young child. I could not, for the life of me, understand why her parents would bring her to a place for musical entertainment if they believed that the likes of me were not entitled to a place in heaven or its offerings. I then realised that we as a nation lack the confidence to stand up for our beliefs.

The age-old belief that music is a sin and musicians the carriers of sin has sadly been transferred to the minds of these young ones by their parents and teachers, no doubt, wrapped and folded neatly under the covers of religion.

Funnily enough, I have also come across many more who give themselves the undue credit of accepting it as a sin whilst they enjoy the soothing effects of music in their lives! This was just a small example. We face the same mindset on a wider scale as well.

When it comes to bigger issues, ‘my plate is full’ is the answer we get from our friends who belong to the intelligentsia of our country when they are requested to roll up their sleeves, come forward, partner with the government and show some action to make things better for others.

Some say ‘we donate’, others ‘we are members of a social organisation’, and yet others that ‘we are on the board of a foundation’. And many young people aspiring to seek admission to top colleges (in Pakistan and abroad) proudly claim a number of hours completed in community service (more for the sake of getting admission into their choice of university than for the sake of community service).

Can we stop here for a moment and ask one simple question that I am sure has played on many intelligent minds every now and then? If all of us are doing our share of ‘community service’, why isn’t our country progressing the way it should? Why are most issues still considered problems without any solutions?

In my opinion, not only have we failed to identify our problems correctly, we also lack the collective and consolidated will (political and individual), and the drive to draw up plans and implement them.

Let us also ask another politically correct question: Why are the essentials missing when the country’s intelligentsia is there, supposedly playing the role of watchdog over everything ranging from the minor to the major? Are they not the ones that should have the solutions to our problems?

They are, and to give the devil its due, they do take a microscopic view of problems.

But let us not discuss the identification of problems or finding solutions, that are all there. For once, let us talk about the implementation of these solutions. How do we, as a nation, go over this hurdle? First things first.

They (the intelligentsia) need to get over the much-planned and at times deliberate selfishness, jealousy, ego, non-seriousness, laziness and sometimes a serious attack of verbal diarrhoea.

It’s very rare that their ‘plate is full’. Very few of them have the guts and honesty to admit that they give priority to their personal and professional lives over issues that their country is faced with.

When the US consulate in Karachi decided to move into the vicinity of Karachi Grammar School, those who claim to be the intelligentsia of the city got united and rightly made sure that the security of their children was not jeopardised by having any US facility near the school. Entirely conceivable is the thought that if the same people were to decide to get serious about health, education, water/sanitation and other grave problems that society faces, things could improve at the speed of light.

The problems are of such a grave nature that they call for emergency and gigantic efforts to tackle them. Fundraising fashion shows, coffee mornings and kitty parties will not do. Knowingly or unknowingly, many people are suffering from the tamasha syndrome. The need of the hour is for the intelligentsia to get on a collective platform to select a leader from among themselves. It requires a standard and hands-on approach to start working towards the betterment of education and other areas on a macro and holistic level.

This or that side of the world, east or west, the intelligentsia in any part of the globe are similar with regard to their job description.

It paid off when our counterparts in the West decided to put a man on the moon. How long will it take us to put our children into schools? When will we accept the fact that we are no different? When will we embrace the reality that we stand on the same ground with our intelligence, determination and will? It is not that we have failed, it is just that we have found a thousand different ways that don’t work.

We need an approach that will work this time. We are light years away from sending a man to the moon, but the optimist that I am, I believe that we will someday.

First, let us start with the basics. Saying that something as powerful as education can take a long time to show results is not a good enough excuse for not taking action. Mostly, changes can take place quicker than expected. The greatest sadness is not to try and fail but fail to try at all.

The writer, a pop singer, is president of Zindagi Trust, an organisation working for child welfare and education.

royzad@gmail.com