MOST if not all political observers agree that the Pakistani society is now ripe for a violent revolution. Renaming a province or doling out cash to some of the poor won’t appease the rumbling volcano about to erupt.

The time for reform and rebuilding, even if the present ruling class is willing and able, is over. The basic causes of popular rage, like power shortage, rising cost of living, growing poverty, widespread and staggering corruption, cannot be addressed at a reformatory pace that would amble on for years if not decades. We hardly have that much time, for we have already entered the pre-revolutionary period of chaos and anarchy when intervention by the ultimate coercive power of the state, the armed forces, is frequently resorted to or even demanded by some.

But how the revolution would happen and where it would it take us defies the imagination, for hardly any society that ever was a crucible for a revolution was as rife with social, political and cultural conflicts as ours is. Think of any such conflict, and we have it. Rich-poor, urban-rural, national-regional, liberal-orthodox, syncretic-sectarian, military-civilian, democratic-authoritarian, modern-mediaeval, feudal-industrial are only the major conflicts that muddle the thoughts and loyalties of even the best of us.

It is not easy, therefore, to predict what the interaction between these conflicts would produce. In fact it is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at a consensus on what this churning lava of discontent has already produced. You can have any number of answers, for example, to the question who the terrorists are, what do they want and who supports them.

An observer of the French, Russian, Chinese or Iranian revolution had no reason to be unsure about what the outcome would be if the revolution succeeded. Here in Pakistan one doesn’t know what a successful revolution would lead us to, or even who would lead it, for we cannot be sure whether the revolution would be religious, ethnic, or militarist in nature.

The two worldviews that contend for people’s hearts and minds, the religious and the secular, have their own separate obsessions that weaken their appeal to the vast majority of people and also tempt external forces to intervene for or against them.

The religious parties happen to be incorrigibly sectarian, and prone to violent clashes among themselves. An all embracing cross-sectarian view of Islam eludes them despite the pan-Islamic slogans they raise. They remain obsessed with their brand Islamic penal code, rather than an egalitarian Islamic code. Thus, they are not emotionally and intellectually equipped to win the hearts and minds of the people.

The secular parties, on the other hand, are mainly ethnic in their appeal (Sindhi, Baloch, Pashtun, Mohajir) and too parochial to bring about a countrywide movement. Their world is too small even for a large section of their respective ethnic populations.

This leaves us with the two largest parties, the PPP and the PML-N that are supposed to represent Pakistani nationalists who are neither regionalists nor religionists. But neither of them is revolutionary material, for both of them have opted to perch on a carefully chosen fence in response, perhaps, to their inner feelings or to the expediencies of the moment. The PPP, with its much-flaunted Sindh card, is sitting on an ethnic fence, while the PML-N, with liberal claims but radical, even militant, associations, is sitting on an ideological one. But revolutionaries never sit on fences of any kind. They prefer to plunge into the raging storm to ride the crest.

This overview of the existing political scenario can lead to only one conclusion: the inability of the political parties to launch a revolution or even take steps to appease the popular discontent, is an open, though unintended, invitation to the armed forces to intervene. What if the invitation is accepted?

The past four interventions by the armed forces are no guide to the agenda of yet another intervention. The first and the fourth (Ayub and Musharraf) were liberal-authoritarian in nature; the second (Yahya Khan) was just a military rule by the army chief and for the army chief, with no pretences of any kind; the third was an Islamist-authoritarian intervention.

However, both the liberal and the Islamic claims were only expedient slogans, relevant to the given situation, to seek foreign patronage, and some domestic acceptability.

The fifth intervention, if there is one, by the armed forces is likely to be quite different. The next intervention, unlike the previous ones, would come not only because the military high command may like to intervene, but also to prevent the complete breakdown of the state machinery and contain the dangerously high level of disaffection among the junior officers and other ranks.

For this reason, another intervention could be more intrusive than previous ones. Since the armed forces cannot play a reformatory role within a framework of democratic norms, the fifth intervention could place the federation of Pakistan under great stress. It could even lead to the second dismemberment of Pakistan during the army’s watch.

This then, is a likely scenario if the political leadership remains oblivious of the consequences of their single-minded and all-consuming passion to sort each other out. If this is what they want, they would indeed be sorted out. One hopes that the political leadership realises that the people, having been denied the benefits of democracy, are in no mood to listen to lectures on the merits of democracy, and may not care about the demerits of military rule.

The writer is a retired civil servant.

iqbal.jafar1@yahoo.com