Another wake-up call?

“IF Pakistan is to move forward as a democratic and progressive state it is necessary to firmly check sectarian activities, otherwise Pakistan will be reduced to a retrogressive medieval state.” ––Punjab CID chief, 1952

ONE of the most relevant ways of looking at the Lal Masjid affair is to treat it as another wake-up call – hopefully the last one. On the one hand, this case has introduced us to a new, and perhaps the deadliest, form of religious militancy, and on the other hand, it has revealed the upgraded standing of the theocratic camp.

A combination of these two will be disastrous for the polity Pakistan has no far experimented with, unless those in command have wisdom and guts to redefine the foundational assumptions of the state, and do not ignore the present warning in the manner they have done so far.

The polity adopted by Pakistan at independence was an admixture of the Viceregal system and rudimentary democracy. The founding elite saw little wrong in this model and this was one of the major reasons for its failure to frame a new constitution for the state. The contradiction between this system and the religions basis of the demand for partition was ignored by the Muslim League leadership but those attracted by theocratic ideals had reason not to follow suit. Soon after independence they served their first warning of their political ambition when a memorandum calling for Islamisation of the state was submitted on behalf of the country’s ulema.

The government did not accept the ulema’s demands and yet it produced the Objectives Resolution. Despite government spokesmen’s rhetoric in the Constituent Assembly (statements such as ‘Pakistan was not supposed to be a laboratory for Islam’), the religious lobby viewed the resolution as the foundation-stone of a religious state (for instance, Jamat-i-Islami leader Mian Tufail Mohammad’s claim that after the adoption of the Objectives Resolution, the reservation on accepting Pakistan as an Islamic State had become redundant)

The religio-political lobby began challenging its rivals in power through the anti-Ahmadia agitation in Punjab. The government followed the way shown by its colonial predecessor. Two Ahrar leaders were sent to prison for making objectionable speeches in mosques. Their sentence was however remitted and the idea of prosecuting anyone for speeches in the house of God was almost totally given up. During the 1953 riots that followed, Maulana Abdul Sattar Niazi, who had been an important leader of the Punjab Muslim League, offered the first face of religious militancy and Lahore’s Wazir Khan Mosque became the pole of power to challenge the state.

What happened after this government-mosque clash? The military had a dress rehearsal for martial law. Prime Minister Nazimuddin ordered Mumtaz Daultana to vacate the Punjab Chief Minister’s couch and propose Firoz Khan Noon’s name as his successor. Many political parties that had jumped at the opportunity for populist politics learnt the lesson they are relying upon to this day – that it is possible to distance oneself from the methods of a protest and yet benefit from its fallont. Finally, Justices Munir and Kayani wrote a report on the anti-Ahmadi riots, which bears the former’s name only and which became a sort of Bible for middle class secularists, who deluded themselves with the thought that the challenge in the name of belief had been beaten off for good.

The post-1953 reality was otherwise. The 1956 constitution revealed the extent of the religious lobby’s nibbling at the polity. The republic became Islamic Republic; under the directive principles of policy, the state undertook to enable the Pakistani Muslims to order their lives in accordance with the Holy Quran and Sunnah, to make the teaching of the Quran compulsory, and to secure the proper organisation of Zakat, Waqfs and mosques; an Islamic research institution was set up; a bar was created against any legislation that was repugnant to Islamic injunctions and the existing law was to be brought into conformity with such injunctions (the latter task was to be done in the light of a commission’s report). These were quite significant gains for the religio-political lobby.

The imposition of the military regime in 1958 froze the tussle between the theocrats and the liberals – both so described for want of better definitions. The struggle for democratic rights dominated the national scene. The religio-political factions joined this struggle as it offered them a means to widen their base, but since the central issues were revival of parliamentary democracy and demands for provincial rights, they could not push their call for theocracy to the top of the national agenda.

In 1970, as the possibility of an end to military autocracy emerged, the liberals received another wake-up call. All religio-political groups joined the race for power. Much was made of an alleged burning of the Holy Quran and socialists were told they were going to lose their tongues. The theocrats failed because they were divided, the majority wing population did not brook any deviation from their struggle for autonomy and leadership of the state, and a majority of the West Wing people were swinging to the tune of the most effective slogan in Pakistan’s democratic politics – roti, kapra aur makan. But they had reason to be optimistic.

The new branch of the political elite, that had begun by proclaiming Islam as one of the three pillars of its ideology, increased the role of belief in constitutional life. Along with reiteration of democratic and socialist ideals, Islam was made the religion of the state.

So far the state’s pro- religion inclinations were not wholly became of pressure from religio-political factions. A stronger impetus was the argument developed by liberal Islamic scholars that Islam was in total accord with not only democratic governance but also with egalitarian economics. Some went on to argue that Islam envisaged a socialist order. Thus, Bhutto and Nasser (vide the constitution of the United Arab Republic) could swear by socialism while declaring Islam to be the religion of the state.

The most essential premise of this approach was the theory that determination of the political requisites of belief and their enforcement was not the monopoly of the theocratic camp – this authority lay with the country’s population and was to be exercised through its elected representatives.

The Zia years marked four substantial changes in the situation. First, the state accepted the goal of a theocracy and began working towards it. Secondly, traditionalists were enabled to consolidate their monopoly over religious discourse with the help of constitutional instruments. Thirdly, the authority to interpret Islamic injunctions and to enforce them was in effect taken away from parliament and handed over to officially recognised scholars. And, fourthly, the use of the gun to capture state power was added to the curriculum of a vastly expanded network of religions seminaries.

All this led to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the inevitable diversion of their attention to Pakistan. Lal Masjid constitutes a relatively small item on the agenda of the new breed of religious militants; some of their bigger enterprises are in Fata and the adjoining areas (hitherto described as settled districts).

The situation now is that the contenders for state power fall into three categories. The first category comprises political elements that swear by democracy and constitution, they may be called, for the sake of convenience, democrats, who can gain their goal only through political / electoral means. The second group comprises advocates of theocracy who accept elections as one of the legitimate means of securing power but are also open to other means. And the third is the army of militants who have acquired the skill to get their way by holding the state to ransom.

The present representative of militants is more dangerous than his precursors because he does not demand personal or group favours, he only demands enforcement of an Islamic order, a demand nobody can oppose. His strength also lies in the fact that his attempt to seek political ends through force cannot be seriously questioned in a country where seizure of state apparatus by force has been held legitimate more than once.

The appearance of the new militant has changed the political equation in favour of the theocratic lobby. While the so-called democratic camp remains divided (the latest proof is the London APC), and their division will not end so long as the military has its finger in the political pie, the religio-political parties have managed to forge functional unity. They stand to benefit from the militant elements’ adventures without commending their tactics, secure in the belief that public (and even government) endorsement of the militants’ demand advances their own agenda.

Pakistan’s real crisis is that so long as the military retains power it cannot but contribute to the growth of militancy, and even if these militants do not succeed in toppling the regime, they will have paved the way to the success of religio-political parties — the final result of the military establishment’s forays into politics.

Funding class enemies

GORDON Brown appears to have tested them. It is as if he wanted to discover how far he can go before the affiliated trade unions –– which provide most of the Labour party's funds –– decide that they have had enough. The results must reassure him: they will tolerate any level of abuse. Turkeys led by chickens, they will never stop voting for Christmas.

His government of all the talents has room for no professional trade unionists. But it does contain their sworn enemy. The new minister for trade and investment, now responsible for much of the policy that will affect union members, was not just the head of the Confederation of British Industry; he was the most neanderthal boss the CBI has ever had. Digby Jones campaigned to freeze the minimum wage, neuter the EU's working time directive, block corporate killing laws, promote privatisation, cripple environmental rules, and curtail maternity leave. Of the unions he said: "They are an irrelevance. They are backward looking and not on today's agenda." As if to show who the boss is, Comrade Digby refuses to join the Labour party: he has been permitted to enter the government on his own terms.

To test the unions further, Brown has appointed Damon Buffini to two of the bodies that will help the government reshape the workforce: the Business Council for Britain, and the National Council for Educational Excellence. Buffini is the target of the GMB union's most vocal anti-corporate campaign –– his private equity company sacked a third of the AA's workforce.

The ragged trousered philanthropists who subsidise this bosses' party mumble and fumble but they will not strike back. Desperate to believe, union leaders cling to broken promises. They refuse to utter the only threat that Brown will heed: disaffiliation.

It is true that some important victories have been won since 1997. We now have a minimum wage, better pension protection, improvements in parental leave, and better conditions for part-time workers.

But the list of defeats is much longer. There is the private finance initiative, doggedly promoted by Gordon Brown, which now dominates the provision of most public services. There is the creeping marketisation of health and education. The government promised the unions that it would give employment protection to temporary and agency workers. Instead, it has obstructed the European directive that would have introduced it; when a backbencher proposed a private members' bill, a government minister talked it out. Tony Blair preserved the opt-out clause in the EU's working time directive, which allows bosses to blackmail their workers. And the government has refused to repeal Thatcher's draconian union laws.

After 10 years of broken promises we still don't have a corporate killing act. Inequality has reached scarcely imaginable levels, tax evasion is rampant, the railways are still in private hands, council housing remains moribund, companies don't have to publish operating and financial reviews, and the minimum wage is far from being a living wage. And there is the small matter of an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died.

Amicus, one half of Unite, the super-union it recently formed with the TGWU, dismisses such complaints as "the hard left ... kick[ing] up a fuss over minor areas of difficulty". What, I wonder, would be a major area of difficulty? When you challenge the unions, they rattle a yellowed parchment and proclaim: "But we have the Warwick agreement!" This is the pact they signed with the government in 2004, which persuaded them not to break with the party.

But it must now be obvious to anyone who isn't singing loudly while stuffing his fingers in his ears that the government intends only to honour the easy bits. It has punted the more difficult promises –– like fair conditions for agency workers –– into the indeterminate future.

Of course, there is the perpetual fear of something worse. No trade union, quite rightly, wants to let the Tories back in. But if the unions won't use their power, the contest between the two parties will be scarcely worth fighting. Perhaps they don't realise how much the government now needs them. The cash-for-honours scandal has frightened off almost all the major private donors, leaving the party largely dependent on union funds. So what do they intend to do with this power? To judge by their recent statements, nothing.

In his speech to the union's annual conference in June, the GMB leader, Paul Kenny, begged: "Listen to us. Please listen to us ... I say to Gordon, please follow your instincts, not the spin doctors of the CBI." But he threatened nothing. Two weeks later, the Unison leader, Dave Prentis, told the government that it was "drinking in the last chance saloon". But he too imagines that Brown might be sweetly persuaded to "usher in a new era that sees the restoration of real Labour values".

Last week Tony Woodley, the general secretary of Unite's TGWU section, railed against the "outrage" and "disgrace" of Labour's policies. But it was hot air, and the government knows it. I phoned the TGWU and asked a spokesman what might prompt disaffiliation. "Nothing," he told me. So if Labour adopted the swastika as its logo and started holding torch-lit rallies in Parliament Square, it could still count on the TGWU's support? "That's an extreme example," he replied. But he did not deny it.

Knowing that it can take the support of the affiliated unions for granted, the government can concentrate on appeasing the bosses. The unions' involvement with the Labour party is rather like the government's special relationship with George Bush: their response to being used as a doormat is to become just a little more bristly.

The affiliated unions still rage about the class war, but keep funding their class enemies. When he crossed the floor and was given the safe seat of St Helen's South, then took his butler on the campaign trail, the multimillionaire Shaun Woodward represented everything they hated about New Labour. But last year the philanthropists in Amicus helped to fund his constituency office. The GMB denounces Blair's war crimes from the conference stage, but gives money to his office in Sedgefield. None of the bigger unions will contemplate forming or funding another party.

Two trade unions –– the RMT and the FBU –– walked out before the last election. Bob Crow, the leader of the RMT, recently told the other unions that "any hope of the Labour party working for workers is dead, finished, over. I think all you who are staying in the Labour party are just giving credibility to it". In 2004 Kevin Curran, then the leader of the GMB, warned that if Labour did not change, "we would have to look for a political partner that would advance the interests of people we represent". His timing was bad: the Warwick agreement, gravid with promise, had just been signed. But as the agreement bursts, the necessary threats have not materialised.

Brown has called their bluff, and they have flinched. He now knows that, out of fear and out of sentiment, the unions will stick with him. He can do whatever it takes to keep big business, Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail onside. The way things are going, the unions might as well cut out the middleman and give their money to the CBI.

––The Guardian, London

Failure to curb militancy

TODAY, we again stand at a crossroads where our decisions will determine our future. One choice is to get rid of the cancer of intolerance and militancy, eliminate poverty, strengthen national institutions and implement policies to provide equal opportunities in education, healthcare and economic activities to all.

The other is to allow the forces of violence and militancy, unleashed by bigots under the guise of religious leaders, to bring a bad name to a tolerant and equitable religion.

Can we allow power and the nation’s resources to be concentrated in the hands of a few, including the armed forces, ethnic elements, corrupt government servants, self-serving politicians, crooked businessmen and tyrannical feudal and tribal chieftains? All this in a set-up where justice is always delayed and denied and a parallel, murky government of intelligence agencies, answerable to no one, is causing great havoc.

While the president can take the credit for the good he believes he has done, he must shoulder his share of responsibility for contributing to many problems. He can make amends by declaring that the army has no business to be in power. Whenever it has assumed power in the erroneous assumption that it would be setting things right, it has, in fact, undermined state institutions.

Also, the armed forces have no business furthering their economic interests and must be held answerable for taxpayers’ money being spent on commercial ventures. It must be asserted that the only role for the armed forces is to defend the country.Gen Musharraf must relinquish the post of COAS, announce elections to new assemblies and establish a caretaker government under somebody of unimpeachable integrity like Air Marshal Asghar Khan. This set-up should be allowed to reconstitute the election commissions to ensure their effectiveness, neutrality and transparency.

As interim president, he should ensure that the full force of the law is available to the caretaker government to hold free and fair elections. He could, if he wants, stand for re-election as president but as a civilian, leaving it to the new assemblies to accept or reject his candidature without skullduggery and slush funds. Otherwise, he should retire gracefully.

In fairness, a quick review of some of his successes in the economic sphere would be appropriate. Reserves today stand at $15 billion dollars as opposed to less than one billion when he took over; annual growth has gone up to seven per cent from three per cent; our bourses have seen new records in growth and market capitalisation; tax collection is poised to cross a trillion rupees; exports have risen to $17 billion from seven billion dollars; the GDP has doubled and statistics show that poverty has come down.

Unfortunately, these statistics hide the real story. His biggest failure has been his inability to genuinely alleviate poverty and provide economic succour to the poorest segments. Poverty elimination comes with strong public and private sector institutions, well-planned policies, rule of law, an unhindered political process which cleanses itself at every rebirth, and equal access to healthcare, education, employment and economic opportunities. This failure has also strengthened militancy in our society.

On the political front, the jury is still out on attempts to strengthen grassroots governance through local government. The primary objective was to empower the people at the village, union council, tehsil and district levels to take control of their development needs.

Another objective was to create a new generation of grassroots political leadership answerable to the people and responsive to their needs and breaking the stranglehold of professional politicians and feudal elements. Only time will tell whether this institution will survive or be summarily dumped like Gen Ayub’s Basic Democracies system.

Parliamentary democracy has also suffered, despite the fact that all legislative bodies will complete or nearly their complete their tenures, a first for Pakistan. General Musharraf’s retention of the offices of president and chief of army staff, his tendency to rule by fiat and aversion to criticism of the armed forces, his collaboration with a dubious political group and inability to develop a working relationship with the opposition has made parliamentary democracy a mockery. His weaknesses have strengthened two former prime ministers’ bid for power and resumption of their misrule.

There have been halfhearted efforts to curb and eliminate militancy in society, and while some extremist religious outfits were banned, others were allowed to flourish. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, most militant outfits were established and nurtured by clandestine Pakistani state organs with patronage from the highest in the government, the armed forces and the intelligence agencies.

Such foolhardy experimentation was based on the myopic belief that it would achieve the country’s foreign policy objectives on the eastern and western borders. Young militants were indoctrinated with a distorted version of Islam. From there, it was a short walk to the Kargil misadventure — great in tactical application but lacking in geo-political strategy.

This strategy of using militancy as an instrument of state policy has spiralled out of the control of those who nurtured it. Armed, financed and supported by rogue elements of the state and others, militants have unleashed terror on those who do not conform to their rigid, narrow and misguided views. Totally in command of state power for eight years, General Musharraf today must take full responsibility for his failure to eliminate or to at least control militancy in Pakistan. He can defend himself on the basis of the post-9/11 environment, but the absence of will and scores of missed opportunities bear testimony to his failure.

The Lal Masjid episode, where the government’s writ was challenged with impunity and disdain in the nation’s capital, indicates this failure to curb radical elements. The heads of many in government should have rolled for allowing the situation to reach this stage. However, the responsibility is his alone for listening to wrong advice and for not acting on the right one. Militancy threatens all our efforts to create a liberal, tolerant, inclusive Pakistani society, in which people of all religious beliefs can live in peace and harmony.

In the early days, the induction of clean and capable advisers and ministers was evident. Unfortunately, General Musharraf fell victim to cronyism and familial ties in appointing less deserving people to positions of authority. This caused much damage to many institutions and resulted in the loss of credibility for him. His volte-face on relinquishing the COAS post in December 2004, as he had publicly committed, and the referendum farce further damaged his reputation. The Chief Justice saga is also a black mark against his better judgment.

To be fair, he is to be credited with the courageous step of opening up the electronic media to the private sector, hear opinions and criticism and its consequential benefits. To this end one, also must salute the rapidly maturing media, which has been for the most part fairly responsible and objective in its reporting.

To earn a place in history, the general must apologise to the tens of millions of Pakistanis who welcomed his arrival as a reformer. He has failed us all by living in denial and listening to his sycophants as exemplified by the May 12 Karachi carnage.There is no magic wand to solve our problems overnight. We have all collectively contributed to this mess — some more than others — including the armed forces, politicians, judiciary, civil servants, law-enforcement agencies, intelligence services, business community, our religious leadership and civil society.

However, there is hope and the choice is ours to either slide into the abyss of bigotry and obscurantism or rise towards a bright future of economic and social benefits, based on justice, transparency and accountability. We must bring to an end all forms of military adventurism in the governance of Pakistan. The armed forces must only play the role the Constitution and the Quaid defined for them as defenders of the geographical frontiers and servants of the state. Any future military adventurer must face the full force of constitutional law.

Adult gap years

YOUTH is wasted on the young, said George Bernard Shaw; the same goes for gap years. Every summer, hordes of middle-class teenagers head to India or Thailand –– or anywhere else exotic and cheap that offers shelter from the onerous demands of the student bar.

The youngsters seek new experience, although they often settle for soft drugs and a dutiable amount of tie-dye. As William Sutcliffe says in “Are You Experienced?”, his novel about teen backpackers: “Going to India ... it’s a form of conformity for ambitious middle-class kids.”

What if the trend changed, so professionals with fully formed CVs took time out? Something of the sort is happening today, as Richard Harvey, chief executive of the insurance giant Aviva, steps down after a decade in the job to head off to Africa. Dubbing it "the gap year I never had", he will help on Aids and sanitation projects.

Some teenager gappers do voluntary work — but where they offer energy, willing and not much else, the 57-year-old boss of a FTSE 100 company will bring maturity and management experience.

—The Guardian, London