Unease in Balochistan

Some of the better-known politicians in Balochistan, and the "nationalist" organizations they lead, have been condemning vociferously an allegedly "ongoing" army operation which, they say, is designed to suppress the Baloch demand for their legitimate rights. Opposition parties in the country (PPP, PML-N, ANP, JI, JUI, PTI, PDP) and even one of the present government's allies (MQM) have also been denouncing it.

Asfandyar Wali Khan (ANP) and Altaf Hussain (MQM) warn that the central government's policy of ignoring the interests of Balochistan, and its inclination to equate Pakistan with Punjab, will lead to another dismemberment of the country. General Pervez Musharraf, Faisal Saleh Hayat (interior minister), Jam Mohammad Yousuf (Balochistan chief minister), and other government spokesmen deny that any army operation is under way. Mr Hayat does, however, threaten an operation in case the Baloch "sub-nationalists" (whom he calls "anti-national") do not heed the government's repeated invitations to a dialogue and continue their resort to violence.

Other non-official observers report that the army is out there combating tribesmen in Makran, Gwadar, Turbat, Chaman, Sui, and Kohlu among other places. The government says no such thing is happening. All concerned agree that the parties to the confrontation should sit down to a dialogue, but no dialogue is taking place.

A few of the relevant facts are known, and these should be kept in view. On July 31 the police arrested Malik Jailani Khan Achakzai, a local ANP leader in Chaman, in connection with a treason case. Following this arrest three men from his tribe, and belonging to his party, and a police head constable were killed, and three men were wounded in an exchange of fire. The police said the tribesmen had opened fire on them, but apparently the local people did not believe this version. They went on a strike and were said to be angry.

The next day (August 1) five army men, dressed in civilian clothes and travelling in a private van from their base to a local market, along with their driver, were gunned down by some unidentified armed men in Khuzdar. Other similar incidents have occurred in subsequent days. More recently (August 16) four Frontier Corps men were killed, and five wounded, when unknown assailants hit their vehicle with automatic weapons and a bomb.

Central ministers and the provincial chief minister allege that forces opposed to the government's development projects (Mirani dam, coastal highway, Gwadar port and related works) are instigating the attacks. They assert also that the Baloch tribal chiefs, fearful that economic development and modernization will end their supremacy, have been encouraging subversive activities in the province.

While reports of clashes keep coming, the larger meaning and import of the conflict remain obscure. The incidents so far have all been rather minor. Since the assailants of government personnel and installations continue to be unknown, it is hard to say that the tribal chiefs, or the "nationalist" leaders, are engineering the attacks. The nationalists and their sympathizers in the other provinces have likewise failed to provide specifics of where, for instance, the army has struck and how many nationalists it has killed.

It is possible, as some observers have suggested, that the incidents referred to above are of a piece with the terrorist acts that are taking place in the country almost on a daily basis. This interpretations merits attention in view of General Musharraf's and Jam Yousuf's statements to the effect that while no army operation is under way, law enforcement agencies are indeed out to apprehend terrorists and saboteurs.

The opposition of certain elements in the province to the development projects mentioned above is a known fact. Government spokesmen assert that the projects in question will bring prosperity to the people of Balochistan. Not so, say the opponents. Sardar Ataullah Mengal and Shahid Hasan Bugti, among others, maintain that the projects are being launched to bring in and settle great numbers of outsiders, mainly Punjabis, and thus make the Baloch a minority in their own province. Some unskilled local workers may be hired, but better-paying jobs and opportunities for setting up businesses, large and small, will go mostly to the Punjabis. Mengal and Bugti vow that they will not allow this to happen.

There is opposition to the establishment of new army cantonments at several places in Balochistan (Kohlu. Sui, Gwadar). They are not needed for national defence; they are being set up, allegedly, to protect the planned Punjabi settlements and to suppress Baloch opposition to these outsiders' usurpation of Baloch rights.

Objection to the outsiders coming in and taking what is perceived as rightfully belonging to the local people is not anything new. It had become loud enough within months of independence to have engaged the Quaid-i-Azam's concern. He told an audience in Quetta that while local attachments had their place, a "part" had significance and strength only within the context of the "whole." He went on to emphasize that "these whisperings of Mulki and non-Mulki (local and non-local) are neither profitable for the land (Balochistan) nor worthy of it. We are now all Pakistanis and we should be proud to be known as Pakistanis and nothing else."

At the same time, the Quaid-i-Azam expressed great concern, and a sense of personal responsibility, for hastening Balochistan's economic development and its advancement to the same degree of self-government as the other provinces had. He would appear to have understood that patriotism would grow if its object (the country) appeared to the people as the harbinger of a good life for them. But his successors ignored his insight in this, as in most other, respects.

The notion that the natives should have the first right to local resources and opportunities is not peculiar to Balochistan. It has its adherents in NWFP, and it has caused a lot of anguish in Sindhi politics. It is muted in Punjab probably because not many non-Punjabis have settled in that province.

It is influential in varying degrees in other parts of the world also. Residence requirements limit eligibility for posts in the government bureaucracy and elective public office in the various American states. (In most cases residence of one year is considered sufficient.)

We in Pakistan have never given this matter much thought. We have been wandering in an area between the concept of a federal polity and that of a unitary state. We have established residence requirements, and call for certificates of domicile, for admission to certain educational institutions and for determining eligibility for certain categories of government posts in Sindh and Balochistan. But we have no residence requirement for elective offices in the national and provincial governments. A person may contest for a provincial assembly, or for the National Assembly, from any number of constituencies regardless of his normal place of residence. (the case of Mr Shaukat Aziz.)

The people of Balochistan have been left behind other Pakistanis in all spheres. Their state of underdevelopment is owed primarily to the central government's neglect. Note that they did not even get to have their own elected government (assembly, chief minister, and his cabinet) until 25 years after independence. They do surely need a package of protective measures; something in the nature of "affirmative action," that will pull them up to the level of other Pakistanis.

Instead of going about it in a whimsical sort of a way, the issue with all its ramifications should be put to a full-scale debate and a coherent policy formed that is acceptable to both the government and the opposition leaders in Balochistan. The latter should be asked to spell out the conditions that the "outsiders" must fulfil before they are allowed to live and work in Balochistan and have the same rights as the "natives" do. They should also have to say in what sense Balochistan is a part of Pakistan if they take the position that the outsiders can come only to visit but not to stay.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain is reported to have said recently that the Baloch opposition leaders are all patriotic Pakistanis. It is good to hear him say so. Jam Yousuf reminded us a few weeks ago that the "nationalists" did not oppose the development projects, referred to above, when they were in power.

It may be well to recall that the so-called nationalists in NWFP and Balochistan became staunch patriots when the late Mr Bhutto allowed them to form the government (in coalition with Mufti Mahmood's JUI) in these provinces. They mounted an insurrection in Balochistan after Mr Bhutto had unwisely dismissed their government. The Pakistan army battled the rebels, albeit, inconclusively for the next years.

In the present situation, and in the one that followed their dismissal in 1973, the "nationalists" felt that they had been cheated out of power. They cannot be brought into the government at this time. But they can be given a measure of participation in the making of development policies and plans for their province.

I propose, as a way of accomplishing this end, the establishment of a body that includes the more notable of the opposition politicians, along with government representatives, to prepare development plans for Balochistan and oversee their implementation. Too idealistic, unworkable? We won't really know until we try it out. Remember also that, as the ancient Greeks used to say, it is the difficult things that are the more beautiful.

Jam Yousuf says action is being taken against terrorists and their training centres which the anti-development forces have set up and equipped with satellite phones, solar energy systems, weapons, and numerous other modern devices and facilities. Are the central and the provincial governments saying, or even implying, that there is a connection between the "nationalists" and the terrorists? If so, let the specifics be spelled out. The two governments, more than the opposition leaders, owe the nation plain and unalloyed truth about what exactly is going on.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

Search for new leadership

Any suggestion that after 50 years of alternating parliamentary governments and dictatorships Pakistan should now switch over and try the presidential system angers most politicians. Yet they have transformed even the truncated parliamentary system that emerged out of the Seventeenth Amendment into a full-blown presidential government.

Not under the laws but by the evolving practices, the president of Pakistan today is more powerful and influential both in domestic and foreign affairs than the president of the United States. The politicians - supporting or opposing him - have contributed equally to President Musharraf acquiring a status in public life much beyond what is envisaged even in the amended Constitution.

The grateful and faltering prime minister that Zafarullah Jamali was, he could not bring himself to check presidential incursions into his jurisdiction. He let the president do - substantially or just ceremonially - what belonged to him under the law or convention. Qazi Hussain Ahmad seems to have rightly quoted Jamali that since he himself had not come on merit he could hardly be expected to adhere to standards of merit in dealing with the others.

The diminished stature and powers of the prime minister, thus, took a deeper plunge with the attitude of the first incumbent of that office after the Seventeenth Amendment. Had Mr Jamali insisted on exercising all the powers vested in the prime minister, as Mohammad Khan Junejo had done after Ziaul Haq's Eighth Amendment, the government's parliamentary character would have been preserved somewhat.

Woefully, he accepted the president as his boss in the hope of lasting a full five years in an office which, he himself thought, he did not deserve. The obeisance did not pay. Mr Jamali's term proved shorter than Mr Junejo's and General Musharraf did not have to dissolve the parliament to get rid of him as Ziaul Haq had to in order to get rid of a gentle but assertive prime minister. A growl was enough.

The consideration that weighed with Chaudhry Shujaat in agreeing to fill the prime ministerial gap between Mr Jamali's departure and Shaukat Aziz's arrival remains a mystery. Whatever it might be, Qazi Husain Ahmad is again right in holding that by becoming a stopgap prime minister he had further lowered the image and importance of that office. Perhaps, one day Shujaat Husain should sit back and contemplate what he or the country gained by his short stint and what the parliamentary system certainly has lost. To dispel any impression that it was only for pension and perks after retirement, he should not take any for he does not need any. If Mr Jamali could not be tolerated or trusted for two more months, Rao Sikandar if not Khurshid Kasuri could have acted till Shaukat Aziz's election.

The executive authority of the state under the Constitution as it stands after the Seventeenth Amendment is vested in the cabinet. In a parliamentary system, the prime minister is the first among equals in the cabinet. The conditions and conventions in Pakistan, however, have made him into a boss of the other ministers. The prime ministers have increasingly tended to stand apart from the cabinet and on a higher pedestal as the number of ministers (more out of political bribe than workload) starting from ten is getting closer to a 100 with advisers and special assistants thrown in.

A more persuasive reason for the growing aura and authority of the executive head of government, however, is the penchant of the people of Pakistan to look for inspiration and resolution of their problems to a powerful individual rather than an institution with powers diffused and undefined. The electoral process has not been able to throw up an individual in that image, nor will it do in the foreseeable future as political parties are splintered and many of their leaders have been disqualified or are ever ready to change loyalties.

The elections, whether held now or in 2007, are not likely to bring forward outstanding leaders either of the government or of the opposition unless they are fair and open to all. Of that, too, there is little prospect, for the election scheme is made by the government, and polling is controlled by the police and party goons, and not by an organization which is independent and assertive.

The current void at the top, left by the politicians who either quarrel or grovel, is filled by Pervez Musharraf though he has no representative credentials nor is he the chief executive any longer. The powers of the President under the Constitution are still few and defined. Even his power of the last resort to dissolve the National Assembly is now subject to instant adjudication and verdict by the Supreme Court.

Vitriol and threats directed at Pervez Musharraf have contributed as much to the concentration of power and prestige in him as the toadying tributes paid to him. International terror and on-going negotiations with India have further consolidated his authority. Being a military ruler is no longer his handicap but an asset in the current world situation. Domestic politics have made him not just a constitutional head of state but an all powerful executive head of government.

No individual in the ruling party is in a position to question President Musharraf's authority. The incoming prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, may relieve him of much worrying work, but not question his dominance. The parliamentarians of the ruling party, too, are now being counselled by the president and are happy for it.

The ruling parties of the last decade - the PPP and Muslim League - deprived of their top leadership and weakened by defections, are in no position to change the present power structure nor, as far as one can see, can their leaders come back from exile to force a change. The religious parties threaten to launch an agitation but will not, knowing that whatever the outcome they will lose the position of eminence they have acquired in national politics, never to regain it. Any attempt to bring about a regime change in the current situation will get neither the support of the people at home nor of world powers, whatever their concerns about democracy and human rights may be.

The liberal and populist parties (that includes the MQM) have to reorganize their cadre and leadership and draw economic programmes for the next elections, whenever called which, it seems, will be earlier than three years. They are no strangers to the agony of death and exile that they should be inviting it once again through their own actions. By acting in haste while in disarray they would be only strengthen the grip of the extra-constitutional and reactionary forces on the politics of the country.

A concluding word for the new prime minister: The violence will not end nor the investors stake their money in Pakistan so long as the government is seen to be appeasing and not punishing the fanatics and fighters and the political parties hosting them.

The many faces of hypocrisy

In the cracked mirror of our national life, the nation has been abused by various sins: our inheritance at birth was tribalism and feudalism. In the 1960s we moved to a phase of infantile capitalism, which, not surprisingly, metamorphozed into robber baronism, celebrated in Mahboobul Haq's famous essay on the 22 families.

In the 1970s our national life was dominated by an imported brand of fascist-socialism, which was more putrid than puerile. For the past two decades state theocracy - against which we were forewarned by the founder of Pakistan - is the ism of fashion.

Historically speaking, any state religion from Sassanian Zoroastrianism to later day communism, interpreted and enforced by a priestly class, finds its perversion in corruption and crass hypocrisy. State theocracy is no exception. Hypocrisy stalks the land.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines hypocrisy as "the assumption or postulation of moral standards to which one's own behaviour does not conform". Change the word moral to religious and you have a locust cloud of falsity, which eats away at the vitals of every green leaf of truth and humanity. Such is our dilemma today.

To recall the most recent example of egregious hypocrisy, former NWFP minister Amanullah Khan Kundi was caught red-handed delivering 50 kilograms of heroin to a set up German buyer in Karachi on June 4, 1991. He was awarded life imprisonment in September 1992. Being a political heavyweight in D.I. Khan lubricated by narco-smuggling, an escape from the jail hospital on August 20, 1993 posed no serious problem. He chose to remain an absconder for 10 years. In the meantime he was allegedly involved in political wheeling and dealing and plying his trade.

Come elections in 2002, Mr. Kundi sees the light of legal freedom on his horizon. He plays a significant part in the election of Maulana Fazalur Rehman to win two seats in the National Assembly from D.I. Khan and Tank. It was now pay-off time. Mr. Kundi voluntarily surrenders to the government in April 2003, four months after the MMA government is installed in the NWFP. The first escape route planned by an obliging government was to have a medical board declare him "permanently incapacitated". The board did not oblige; so he was sent to a second medical board in Peshawar.

But, in the meantime, Mr Kundi was getting fed up with the delays and medical boards. He obtained from Chief Minister Durrani the suspension of the remaining period of life imprisonment even though the offence for which he was sentenced was a federal offence. Oddly enough, the jail sentence remission power given in British times to the chief executive of a province was declared in 1991 to be repugnant to the teachings of the Holy Quran and the Sunnah by the Federal Shariat Court. Mr. Kundi vanished from jail on July 26 before the high court could possibly rescind the reprieve.

In sum, the much advertized Islamic government of the Frontier Province, which is wont to incarcerate an innocent caught with a drink, is bending over backwards to get Mr Kundi off the hook - who cares for the pronouncements of the Federal Shariat Court? Yet externally this government makes tall claims about Islamic piety. This is what hypocrisy is all about.

Hypocrisy can also be lethal. Research of the Aurat Foundation establishes that a large number of murders, particularly of women in the name of so-called 'honour' or 'ghairat,' have nothing to do with 'honour'. These have to do with property, division of landed assets or acquiring a new wife without the hassle of supporting the previous one. Under the Qisas Ordnance, a murdered woman's 'wali' - her father or husband or brother - has the power to 'condone' or 'forgive' the murderer. Forgiveness is readily extended when the 'wali' is either complicit to the murder or agreeable to settle for cash compensation.

Islam absolutely forbids the taking of a life even if it be a case of so-called 'honour'. When I raised this issue in the National Assembly, the reply given by a member, which received much thumping of desks, was: "We are first Pathans, then we became Musalmans, and finally Pakistanis."

This means: if Islam is in conflict with tribal customs, the latter will be followed; if the spirit of Islam, which forbids the taking of a life, is in conflict with a literalist reading of the Holy Text, the latter will be followed. Yet these very persons can deliver long speeches glorifying the rights given to women by Islam. But, when it comes to saving or preserving a vulnerable woman's right to live, it is tribal custom or a self-serving selective reading of the Holy Writ which prevails.

The saddest example of this is the current Hadood law, which does not punish rape unless there are four honest, God-fearing witnesses to this heinous crime. The victim often dies a second death - the first being raped - when sentenced to imprisonment on the charge of 'fornication' if the required number of witnesses are unavailable to testify. In fact, the Hadood law is so badly drafted that it does not differentiate between consensual 'Zina' and 'rape' (Zina-bil-Jabr). To our eternal shame, the 2003 report on the Hudood Ordinances 1979 by the National Commission on the Status of Women declares:

"The basic concern is that where the victim is unable to produce the required number or witnesses, she is often booked under the offence of Zina, and her complaint is erroneously and negatively viewed and determined as sexual intercourse that was consensual. Hence, despite being a victim of rape, she is charged with the offence of Zina."

The situation on banking interest is no different. In the course of a debate in the National Assembly, I happened to mention that the scholars of Al Azhar University in Cairo had declared that modern banking interest was not 'riba' which is forbidden. Though the speaker kept on reminding members that this was not my view but the opinion of a learned and respected body of scholarship in the Sunni tradition, the members of the MMA walked out of the assembly in protest at having heard something very offensive but not before showering abuses, insults and a display of fisticuffs.

A polity that rejects reason, and is unwilling or incapable of developing an 'Ijma' through 'Ijtihad', which represents the principle of movement in Islamic thought, has little hope of competing in the 21st Century.

Labelling 'bank interest' as 'mark-up' is yet another euphemism for escapism. We do not have the courage of calling a spade a spade. Incidentally, a bank, which is owned by the Islamic government of the NWFP, operates on the 'mark-up' principle with a rising non-performing loan portfolio. If the Frontier government has courage of conviction, it should lend and borrow funds on a non-interest basis.

A blatant example of hypocrisy was the refusal of the Sharif industrial empire to pay interest on foreign loans obtained from a London-based Arab bank, claiming that the interest charge was anti-Islamic. The English judge asked the Sharifs how Islamic was it to dishonour one's written bond? And this too from a man who wished to impose Shariah as the grund norm of Pakistan's basic law.

The dichotomy between public posture and personal inclination is most manifest in the matter of alcohol consumption. Readers may be surprised to know that not one bottle of an alcoholic drink has been officially imported into Pakistan since 1979. Yet, the homes of our upper classes from Karachi to Peshawar - and these may be counted in the thousands - are filled with bars with the choicest imported liquor. Prohibition and hypocrisy are twins that go hand in hand.

Hypocrisy is now wedged in the marrow of our bone. The ostentatious display of wealth, the neon light culture, the vulgarity of our cinema, the all-pervasive corruption in society, in short, this dichotomy between perception and action is the result of the holier-than-thou syndrome.

What must be done? For starters, a government that believes in a moderate and progressive Islam should appoint progressive enlightened scholars to the Council of Islamic Ideology and include some from the Islamic ummah which spreads from Morocco to Indonesia. We behave as if we Pakistanis have proprietorial right to the interpretation of Islam. We forget the universality of Islam as a message for all time and all humanity.

The writer is a member of the National Assembly. E-mail: murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk