Expectations from Obama

MUCH in America and elsewhere is going to change as Barack Obama’s term as president of the US rolls along.

Political observers across the world have been asking how his presidency would affect their countries. Our own commentators have wondered what changes his administration might make in American policy towards Pakistan. They all hope the change would work to Pakistan’s greater advantage.

In order to think intelligently about America’s future transactions with Pakistan, it would be useful to identify the point of departure, to see what the general pattern of their relations during the last 50 years or so has been. We may begin with the well-known maxim that nations have interests but they do not have permanent friends or enemies. Barring brief interludes when President Woodrow Wilson’s high idealism, or isolationism, influenced American thinking, this maxim has guided its foreign policy through much of its history.

Note also that not all interests are equally vital, and some of them may be transitional. American policymakers have combined political realism with a measure of idealism because that is good for the country’s image, for instance, when they send food and blankets to the victims of an earthquake somewhere or when they aid a developing country’s schools and colleges. Realism is still the dominant element in American thinking on foreign relations.

One should like to assume that the makers of foreign policy in Pakistan are likewise moved by considerations of the national interest. Two interfering agents that work against this rule of prudence may be mentioned. First, the ruling elite’s propensity to equate its personal gain with the national interest is more pronounced in Pakistan than it may be in many other countries. Second, this elite has never been at ease with independence. Short of self-assurance, it has wanted to be under the protective shadow of a powerful patron.

It found such a patron in the US which in the mid-1950s was looking for allies in its campaign to stop the spread of Soviet-inspired communism. Eager to enlist, Pakistan joined American-sponsored anti-communist alliances and began to receive military and economic assistance. This alliance and the accompanying aid has had its high points (1954-65, 1980-88 and 2001 to date) when America needed Pakistan’s active assistance with its anti-Soviet and, more recently, anti-Taliban ventures. In the intervening periods, when Pakistan’s services were not needed, relations between them remained low-key. It should, however, be noted that even during its high points this was essentially a patron-client relationship. In America’s reckoning it was an ‘alliance’ only as a figure of speech for ease of reference.

Governments in Pakistan preferred to think of America as a friend and expected from it more than the money and weapons they received. They wanted to be treated at par with India, preferably even better. They expected America to pressure India to settle the Kashmir dispute to their satisfaction. They also wanted it to share with Pakistan nuclear technology for civilian uses that it had agreed to share with India. This, to their disappointment, American officials declined to do.

This broad pattern of Pakistani-American relations holds to this day. American economic and military aid is still coming in. American forces are fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan, and Pakistan is helping them in this enterprise. Within this context of mutual assistance tensions have developed. Taliban militants are attacking targets (military and civilian personnel, installations and unarmed non-combatants) in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. They have hiding places in Pakistan’s tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistani military and paramilitary forces are trying to eradicate them. Believing that Pakistani forces are not capable and determined enough to do an adequate job, American forces have been attacking suspected Taliban hideouts in Pakistani territory and killing not only some of them but also innocent civilians.

These American attacks perceived as violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity have incensed a great many of its people, who are asking their government to stop these American acts of war. There is nothing the government of Pakistan can do except to lodge protests which have been of no avail. It cannot use military force to stop American transgressions, for that would mean going to war against the US, which is not a viable option.

On the other hand, one hears also that the two governments have a secret understanding to the effect that each may continue its present course of action: America hitting targets in Pakistan and the latter protesting.

It is not clear what changes in America’s posture Pakistan expects or wants once Barack Obama has been installed in the Oval Office in the White House. He is an exceedingly bright individual, a competent organiser and strategist, a master of detail, and well informed about the business at hand. It may be assumed that he will be fully aware of the instrumental role that Pakistan has traditionally played in its interaction with the US: receiving compensation for services rendered. He will also be aware of the Pakistani political culture, the fact among others that the ruling elite here is not only vulnerable to material inducement but also accustomed to being subservient to superior power centres.

The likelihood is that President Obama will be supportive of democracy in Pakistan, but until it becomes firmly grounded in its soil, the existing pattern of relations between the two countries will continue. He will pay no more attention to Pakistan’s declarations of national sovereignty than the Bush administration did. He has already made it clear that American attacks on Al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts on Pakistani territory will continue and may even intensify.

He will not share nuclear technology with Pakistan or otherwise treat Pakistan on par with India for the simple reason that they are not equals. He did say recently that if the war against terrorism is to be effective the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India should be resolved. But it does not follow that he will or can pressure India to make concessions that may be satisfactory to Pakistan and the Kashmiris.

I am not sure what it is that Pakistan will want from President Obama in addition to the money it is already receiving and the aforementioned satisfactions which America has declined to provide.

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

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

Law and order in party government

THESE are hard times for Pakistan. The hope however remains that some day, not soon though, the insurgency in the tribal region will subside and that the threat of financial bankruptcy will also go away sooner.

How one wishes it were possible to entertain a similar hope for law and order in the country. The apprehension is to the contrary — it will further deteriorate.

The American and Pakistani armies willingly collaborated in the 1980s to sow the seeds of the insurgency when they joined forces to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan. They were compelled to collaborate again after 9/11 when the very mujahedin they had jointly trained and armed posed a threat to their security and way of life.

Pakistan having walked out of the IMF programme in the nineties has once again been persuaded by America, China, Saudi Arabia and other friends to go back to the Fund and comply with its austerity regime before they stake their aid for the revival of its economy.

Thus while Pakistan has America and Nato fighting by its side in the battlefield and the IMF is providing money to save it from default (other friends have promised to help later) the enforcement of law and order remains the government’s exclusive responsibility. No outside agency or friend can help nor should be seen doing so for their intervention could make it worse. But this is one responsibility that no Pakistani government has taken seriously — the present one even less so. Worse still, the administration as it stands is not capable of enforcing the rule of law even if it were to be left alone.

The efforts of successive governments have been, and so it is now, to bring the law and order machinery under political control and put neutral officials out of the way. In this accelerating process spanning half a century, Ayub Khan was the first to dismiss arbitrarily a score of senior administrators whom he considered too headstrong or sticklers for propriety even though their services were protected by covenant with the Secretary of State for India which meant even the viceroy was not empowered to remove them. But neither the people nor the service cadres protested nor the courts intervened.

Thus was set a precedent which Gen Yahya followed by dismissing offhand 303 officials. A democratic chief martial law administrator, Z.A. Bhutto, surpassed the two generals in arbitrariness by sending home some 1,300 officials without getting, in haste, even their names right. Bhutto also withdrew the constitutional protection that the civil servants had enjoyed since times colonial, abolished their service cadres and threw the public service open to appointments at all levels circumventing the established criteria and procedures.

In Ziaul Haq’s time there were no reforms, so to say, but the impartiality of the administration was constantly subjected to the rigours of an undefined Islamic ideology and military orders. It was however left to Gen Musharraf formally to abolish all distinction between politics and administration. The laws he enacted placed the law enforcement agencies, the police in particular, under the control of the politicians through a web of commissions and committees and made the district nazims, who with some exceptions were all nominees of political parties, responsible for law and order.

Since the driving force behind the reforms all along was political interest of the party or individual in power, governance as a whole inevitably suffered and most to suffer was the law and order administration. Maximum damage was done by the laws introduced by Gen Musharraf.

Luckily, it is easy to undo that damage because the systems and procedures he devised never really took hold. Let it be illustrated by some examples.

The public safety commissions that were intended to guard the citizens against police excesses were either not formed at all or where formed failed to provide any relief to the people or help to the police commanders.

The nazims never really got down to performing law and order functions nor were held accountable for it.

Against a guaranteed tenure of three years for the head of the provincial police (IG), it was actually less than a year in Sindh — seven IGs changed in six years.

Thousands of appointments were made bypassing the public service commissions and departmental committees.

The provincial and district governments never settled down to a smooth working relationship. Disputes over jurisdiction were perennial and festered to the end. The most unedifying example was the fight between the Karachi nazim and the concerned minister over the building control authority and bulk water supply.

It was said earlier in this piece that every previous reform or change in the system was motivated by personal or party interest and not for public welfare. Now that the laws and institutions introduced by Gen Musharraf are up for review the same consideration seems to prevail once again to our misfortune.

Though Musharraf’s plan was selfish in content and necessarily had to be rejected once he left the scene, some credit must be given to him for reviving the local government councils that were altogether abandoned after the separation of East Pakistan. The new emerging system must ensure that doesn’t happen again.

The local councils must stay to ensure the participation of the people in civic affairs. Law and order and other regulatory functions should however revert to the provinces for the sake of uniformity if not for reason of greater competence. For development schemes and community services, like health and education, a line can be drawn for local services to be managed by the councils. For example, it makes little sense for provincial governments to manage primary schools. In any case their inability or incompetence is demonstrated by the thousands of rural school buildings used as guest houses or cattle sheds of the local bigwigs.

In broader terms, the point of principle to be emphasised is that in determining the respective roles of the province and the district the approach should be professional and not political. Transferring responsibility for law and order from the district to the province, and some even to the centre, is the first necessary step. How the enforcement of the law can be made effective and impartial and insulated from power politics is a subject needing separate treatment. It is a tall order considering that even the impartiality of the Supreme Court is being questioned at every step.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com

Brothers, behave!

“WE the leaders didn’t indulge in it. It was the work of some low-rankers,” Shahbaz Sharif told journalists in the run-up to the February 2008 polls. He had been asked whether it was possible for us to exorcise from our midst the ghosts that patronise the ugliest kinds of personal attacks.

Specifically, his attention was drawn to the posters that had been unfurled in Lahore in 1988 to stop the PPP from taking Punjab after the party had won the centre in a general election. These showed the PPP leaders, Nusrat and Benazir Bhutto, indulging in acts that were supposedly impermissible in the Islamic republic and unworthy of its leaders.Two decades later, the big two now look to take on the forces of Gen Pervez Musharraf. Even if they were destined to go their separate ways sooner or later, it was wished that the PPP and PML-N could at least abide by a more decent code of conduct.

The distance between November 2008 and October 1988 was covered in one big stride last week. The perpetrator was a not-so-junior member of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s party, his law minister, a popular veteran of the PML-N’s nine-year-long war with Gen Pervez Musharraf. Some of us found an explanation for his act in the doings of agent provocateur, Governor Salmaan Taseer. Enough justification?

The minister was angry over the ‘poisonous’ letters Governor Taseer has prolifically written to Chief Minister Sharif. A few warnings that impressed on the governor to stay within his constitutional limits later, Law Minister Rana Sanaullah had decided that he had had enough. So he went on a tirade against Governor Taseer and by the time he was through this constitutional journey of his many around him were left thinking what items they would have to remove from their daily itinerary to come up to the prevalent standards of virtue.

What the bruised PML-N veteran had in hand was not new. The Taseer family pictures had been doing the rounds for many days. They may have caused chatter here and there but generally they were thought to be lacking in the masala that is generally associated with such desperate ventures in these times. The shock lay not so much in the pictures but in their showing, and in the prospects of the act leading to yet one more scandalous slinging match between the PPP and PML-N.

The PPP did respond furiously but mercifully for everyone someone sitting somewhere soon realised how important it was to diffuse the matter. Within a few days of his devastating revelations, Rana Sana was speaking to the media again, this time seeking to establish a blood bond with the governor’s family. In typical Pakistani style, he called the governor his brother, reminding one and all that what we often took for politics was actually a feud.

Not only that, a number of PML-N politicians joined the PPP jiyalas in a rally taken out on Thursday in Lahore to show solidarity with President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani. The hope in the strangest of coalitions was revived. Those who had predicted some kind of a rapprochement between the sparring parties after President Zardari’s recent pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia insisted they had been vindicated by the latest friendly overtures of Rana Sana.

Nonetheless, questions abounded. Foremost, if all this talk about a Saudi-inspired patch-up between the PML-N and PPP was true, why wasn’t someone conveying the message to Governor Taseer? As yet, there was no stopping him from his confrontational path. On the day the Punjab law minister made his famous U-turn on the anti-people activities of the governor and his family, Mr Taseer was busy trying to please, well, his favourite family.

An old politician, he invited more acrimony for himself and his party by disclosing his latest plans: catapulting Bilawal Zardari Bhutto from the obscurity of being the chairman of the country’s biggest political party to the seat of the chief minister of Punjab.

Also, it is very unlike PML-N politicians to do anything without taking their leadership into confidence over it. This waywardness and indiscipline is generally associated with the PPP brand of politicians. How could Rana Sanaullah’s outburst have come without the blessings of his leaders — at a time when Shahbaz Sharif had a perfect alibi since he happened to be visiting China?

If he had moved on his own, Rana Sana should have earned himself a bigger reprimand from the PML-N leader than going through the old ritual of the offender calling the offended his brother.

Some thinking somewhere must have gone into Rana Sana’s attack on Mr Taseer and it did follow a pattern. The accusations against the PPP’s ‘misrule’ are getting louder with time and President Zardari and Governor Taseer are invariably at the centre of these accusations. Rana Sana’s offensive came when Mr Taseer was faced with condemnation after venting his spleen on the television channels.

Rana Sana may have been seeking to strike when the anti-governor sentiment was at its peak and there are no guarantees that the subject has been closed for good. By all appearances, this one tradition is yet very much alive in the historic city of Lahore.