THE fury we are seeing across the country may have been sparked by the Danish cartoons. But only the complacent and the foolish (admittedly, no shortage of both kinds in the higher echelons of the Islamic Republic) will think it is about the cartoons alone. The way it has acquired momentum, and not a little touch of anarchy, stems from causes altogether different.

Pakistan these last few years has become an explosive dump of anger and despair. Circles close to the ruling establishment or the farce of democracy flourishing under the banner of the Q-League will not concede this, their self-interest not allowing them to do so, but the rest of us are aware, even if dimly, of what is happening.

All is not well with Pakistan. There is too much unrest in unexpected places and too many flashpoints from north to south.

Many things have gone into the creation of this dump: anger at the US for sins real and imagined; anger at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the rape of Iraq; anger against the military establishment for toeing the American line and not caring for local sensitivities; anger against the despoliation of democracy and the rising cost of living.

The price of sugar rose fifty paisas during the fag-end of the Ayub regime. This relatively trivial thing was the signal for a popular uprising. Today sugar has become so expensive it looks less like sugar and more like salt on open wounds (of the poor, that is; don’t expect the rich to be bothered). Yet no one in Islamabad seems overly concerned. Which is just one more indication of the widening disconnect between it and the rest of the country.

In a democracy where regular elections are held, anger and frustration are vented through the ballot box. You get fed up with one party, you vote in another. What do you do in Pakistan where the choice is between one general and another or between a civilian government pushed around by the military and outright military rule?

This is a game going on for 58 years and if the people are getting tired, you can hardly blame them. If the present military dispensation received any welcome from some quarters in October ‘99 — there being no shortage of the ‘liberal’ benighted, may the Lord forgive them their sins, who thought this was the hour Pakistan had been waiting for — it has long since outlasted it. Doesn’t ISI conduct any sort of gallup poll? Doesn’t it have any idea of the depths of national frustration?

We should be defusing the explosive dump on which we are sitting instead of doing all in our power, driven by God knows what furies, to make it more lethal. Whenever someone more-loyal-than-the-king from the ranks of the Q-League says that elections can be postponed for a year and Gen Musharraf ‘elected’ president-in-uniform for another five years, a ton of combustible material is added to this dump. Whenever Gen Musharraf says he will take a decision about his uniform — not now but in 2007, more slabs of TNT are added to the smouldering pile.

Parts of Balochistan are in the grip of a mini-insurgency. Parts of the two Waziristans increasingly are no-go areas for the army. The Kalabagh controversy mercifully has died down but only after the sensible U-turn executed by the powers-that-be. Otherwise there is no knowing what mischief would have been afoot. (The killing of the three Chinese engineers in Hub the other day is very disturbing.)

Now a foretaste of anarchy in Lahore and Peshawar. Live television usually doesn’t lie and what it had to show on Tuesday in Lahore was a searing glimpse into the future, mobs in charge of the Mall and adjoining areas, torching vehicles and setting buildings on fire, and while this mayhem was being played out, authority not just on the run but totally collapsing.

Punjab was supposed to be a model of stability and ‘good governance’. Some good governance we saw on Black Tuesday, Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi’s government, while the mob was at its worst, performing a vanishing act which Houdini would have been proud of. Marx’s withering away of the state: we’ll be able to tell our grandchildren, we saw it on television.

As for the Punjab police, surely its finest hour. How mighty and invincible a force is the Punjab police when dealing with helpless citizens, how ragged and lost its majesty that troubled afternoon. In fact, it did even better than that. Where things were really getting out of hand, it was not to be seen at all.

And right when parts of the Mall were in flames, the Punjab law minister, Raja Basharat, was assuring one of the private TV channels that the situation was under control. When a ship is sinking there is always a Raja Basharat to say it is sailing full steam ahead. Even when a situation is at its darkest, there is some comic relief at hand.

These weren’t madressah students protesting against the Danish cartoons. Had that been the case, we could have taken refuge behind the usual stereotypes. These were ordinary people, the lumpen proletariat of Lahore, emerging from the less well-heeled parts of the city and swarming on to the Mall, giving vent to feelings compounded of resentment and frustration. This was not anger geared to a higher purpose but anger for the sake of anger, a fleeting glimpse into the anarchy lurking below the surface of Pakistani society.

There was some looting in Lahore. More of it in Peshawar the next day, gangs taking to the streets and carrying away anything they could lay their hands on. The fury of the mobs was frightening. But perhaps more frightening was the collapse of state authority.

The performance of the administration was no better in Islamabad. Crowds of students, kids most of them, who could have been stopped at one of twenty places between Zero Point and Constitution Avenue, were able to come up to the Serena Hotel, smash hoardings and traffic lights and storm the seemingly impregnable diplomatic enclave. Try entering the diplomatic enclave on any normal day. You won’t be allowed in. But that afternoon its defences were easily breached.

First the micro angle to this administrative collapse. Matters once upon a time handled by the district administration now, after the unwept demise of the deputy commissioner, are perforce handled by the military authorities. During the glorious referendum of 2002, when angels filled ballot boxes, and during local and general elections, we have seen corps commanders performing the functions of deputy commissioners. In North and South Waziristan, things dealt with by the Political Agent have now to be addressed by corps headquarters, Peshawar.

At this rate, the next time there is rioting in Lahore or college students in Islamabad head for the diplomatic enclave, the respective corps commanders will have to sit in ops’ rooms to monitor the situation.

That myth or fantasy called ‘devolution’ was supposed to distribute power at the grassroots. In practice, it has catapulted power up to the tree tops. In this situation, of what use to man or beast is that creature called the district nazim? The deputy commissioners, even the most useless of them, had to be more active. In Lahore and Peshawar the district nazims were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps for good reason. If they had been spotted by the crowds, they would have run the risk of a sound thrashing, so tarred are the nazims now with the brush of the present order.

But the macro angle to this growing unrest is more worthy of our attention. Military rule is no answer to Pakistan’s problems. We need to get back to a predictable scheme of things, resting upon laws and the Constitution. And the military high command needs to get back to its primary duty of national defence instead of dabbling in everything else under the sun. We don’t ensure this and we’ll soon reach a point of no return.

There is a problem of understanding which crops up when you talk of a return to democracy, with any number of people, mostly from the middle classes, saying, “Do you want to bring in Benazir and Nawaz Sharif?” That’s hardly the point. Let the masses choose whom they want and let them kick those same representatives out if they don’t come up to their expectations. That’s what democracy is about.

Other democracies don’t elect paragons of virtue to public office. All too often they are fallible individuals but they are subject to laws and institutions. The lack of institutions and not any external enemy is what is destroying Pakistan.

Therefore, enough of false starts and half-baked experiments. Enough of making a godhead of personal ambitions. If we don’t forge a consensus on how this nation is to be governed, and don’t stick to that consensus, scenes like those of Lahore, instead of being the occasional nightmare, will become all too regular occurrences. Then tears and lamentations would be of no use.