IN the bright dawn of the Musharraf era when at least for the innocent the air seemed full of hope and the promise of renewal, a Focal Group was set up to suggest a package of police reforms. The godfather of this enterprise was someone who has since emerged as the country's foremost orator, Lt-Gen Moinuddin Haider, and its chairman was my friend, the ex-senior policeman (and great bibliophile) Zafar Rathore.
Around the table were other grizzled veterans of the bureaucratic trade, senior civil servants and luminaries of the police service, each one of them (not a whit abashed by his own modest record in service) behaving as if he had found the Holy Grail. No doubt because of some accident, I too found myself a member of this distinguished group. Knowing something of the value of such conclaves I missed the first couple of meetings. At some stage I made an appearance, there to find that the most serious issue before the Group was how to end 'political interference' in the workings of the police department, this being considered by the assembled bishops as the root cause of the department's malaise.
This I found a bit odd. Of what immediate relevance, I asked, was 'political interference' at a time when the imposition of military rule had put an end to the last notion of political interference? Eyebrows rising quizzically, I was told that this was for the future. And hence, in order to free the angels of the police department of any interference, the Focal Group agreed on a package of measures more ingenious if not complicated than the hidden structure of the pyramids.
The Focal Group's recommendations have not been implemented and never will be. But what it was trying to achieve through its elaborate proposals is now a fact on the ground, thanks to military rule. No wadera or politician has a hand in the posting of SHOs. No local grandee can influence an investigation. Has this led to any improvement in police performance? Not a bit. Freed from political restraint police officials have become more arbitrary and corrupt.
About Chakwal at least I can say with confidence that in every matter coming before the police, cognizable or not, the ultimate arbiter is money. While this was always the case before, this practice has become more enshrined in the last 12 months. Nor should this be surprising. Whatever the other consequences of military rule, two things happen whenever the military dons the garb of national saviour: the bureaucracy becomes coarser and more wilful while bribery rates go up. It has been no exception this time. Granted, political interference is mostly unwarranted. But sometimes it is a salutary check on bureaucratic excess or indifference.
The banishing of politics removes the last restraint on the bureaucracy. If the army monitoring teams think they are a check on anything they should take a second look at their effectiveness.
My friend Afzal Shigri, Commandant, National Police Academy, and one of the moving spirits behind the Focal Group on Police Reforms, often spoke the most vehemently against 'political interference'. He should take time out and visit the field, perhaps taking Chakwal in his ambit, to see for himself the general happiness resulting from the independence not so much declared as assumed by the Punjab Police's thanedars.
As for superintendents of police, take Chakwal again where the SP, a decent and likeable fellow (qualities not to be scoffed at in this day and age), seems content to play the role of postmaster, readily receiving complaints and marking each one of them 'for inquiry', a process so stretched out in practice that it breaks a petitioner's back before it leads to anything. The SP is unable or unwilling to sift matters for himself, perhaps because of his lameduck status, his transfer having been ordered six months ago but no one yet being sent to replace him. Most inquiries he sends to the assistant superintendent of police, a lost soul who seems to have stumbled into this profession.
In revenue matters sensible people never approach the deputy commissioner. They go straight to the patwari. So too in criminal cases. Sensible people talk things over with the Station House Officer or the investigating officer (usually a sub-inspector or assistant sub-inspector). Unless one has an uncle or a son-in-law in the service, climbing higher up the ladder is a waste of time, so lax has supervision become in this department. Of course police officers have long excuses on their lips. But what avail excuses to the common man?
With no petro-dollars to burn, and this being neither Taiwan nor Singapore, life is hard enough for most Pakistanis. There should be no need for a corrupt and predatory administration to make it any harder. Notice how ordinary Pakistanis cringe before authority. They are stuck with the habits of servitude because authority is so fashioned here that it bears down upon the weak and lowly, treating them as things of no consequence. But why blame only the poor? Notice how better-placed Pakistanis make fools of themselves before foreigners. Colonialism alone is not to blame. The young of today know nothing of colonialism. Other countries have got over worse colonial hangovers. Our predicament seems different.
The arbitrariness of power - the fact that it can be given and withdrawn without reference to constitutional sanction - lends a sense of precariousness and insecurity even to the elite classes. Thus we see the absurdities with which this land abounds. Politicians not standing for their own rights or the rights of the people but begging favours from the military. The spirit of authoritarianism strong and pervading everything, the flame of resistance dead. The highest politicians considering it a great boon if junior American and British diplomats come calling on them. Retired generals vying for ambassadorial appointments. Serving corps commanders not considering it a waste of time to head sports organizations. Judges every three or five years adjusting themselves to the doctrine of necessity. The state itself extending a begging bowl before foreign donors. The common man helpless before his SHO.
The entire culture thus woven is one of dependence, sycophancy and insecurity. Why should we be surprised if the best amongst us are also the foremost in corruption? Insecurity of such Mughal proportions (advancement and procurement of sinecure in Mughal times depending upon the goodwill of the emperor) can only breed corruption and flight to sunnier climes. This then seems to be the bitterest wage of authoritarian rule: it imposes the habits of subservience on a people, makes them bend and teaches them how survival is a function of conformity, prosperity the reward of being able to swim with the tide.
Then we say we did not speak up when Yahya Khan and the Eastern Command performed their macabre dance in East Pakistan. We could not have spoken up. We were not programmed to speak up. A similar situation recurring, our national response will still be the same.
Forget the distant past, where were the howls of protest over the transparent folly of Kargil? There was no martial law imposed on the country then. It is just that the national intelligentsia has been trained, like beasts in a circus responding to the whip, to take anything that comes from the defence establishment on trust. What hidden dimensions of rocket science were needed to tell us that conducting nuclear tests would be a huge mistake? Yet on this question the national intelligentsia was mesmerized by the atomic lobby which for years, and for mindless reasons, has been advocating nuclear belligerence.
So it applauded the nuclear tests just as it has applauded every shenanigan Pakistan has contrived for itself these past 50 years.
The only change discernible is now. After the economic knocks of the past three years, the atomic lobby has gone quiet. Generals and air marshals no longer write so frequently about the imperatives of 'national security'.
The national intelligentsia was always obsessed with foreign policy almost as if it was a branch of science independent of domestic policy. Now it has become slightly more introspective, turning its gaze inwards and trying to focus for the first time on the evidence of disorder mounting within the Republic's hallowed frontiers.
When the curtains come down finally on the current episode in our history, this may well be counted as the foremost achievement of the Musharraf regime: that by the very fitfulness of its journey across the desert sands, it may have opened the nation's eyes to the real nature of its problems.