BY now we all know that General Pervez Musharraf can talk the talk, but we would like to know if he can walk the walk, specially as he has signalled his intention to remain in power for the foreseeable future by donning the presidential mantle.
His recent speech at the Seerat Conference to a large assembly of religious leaders and holy men of varying degrees of piety has been widely applauded by drawing room liberals and editorial writers across the land. Even the Indian prime minister has joined this chorus. So clearly, by lambasting religious extremism and telling the assembled worthies that they were out of synch with the real world, Pakistan's chief executive struck a responsive chord in most people worried about the increasing number and power of the zealots in our midst.
So far, so good. But unless the general plans to do something about the rapidly multiplying jihadi groups and extremist parties that are hell-bent on spreading hatred and committing mayhem within Pakistan and across our borders, there is little point in raising the issue at all. For months now, the interior minister, the well-meaning and talkative General Moinuddin Haider, has been travelling the length and breadth of the country, hinting that the government is "considering" placing a ban on sectarian parties. So what's to consider? What is stopping the government from banning these militant organizations? And if the army can't or won't take decisive action, why make all this noise and raise expectations?
Take the current campaign to make Pakistan a weapon-free society as an example. After massive publicity accompanied by regularly announced threats by the interior minister, the number of weapons surrendered by the deadline of June 20 would not be enough to arm even a platoon. Had this government been serious, it has lists of ethnic and sectarian groups that are armed to the teeth. Most of these organizations have been infiltrated by our intelligence agencies. The location of training camps run by jihadi groups for militants to be sent into Kashmir and Afghanistan is well known.
What is stopping the government from disarming all these highly dangerous people? And now that the deadline has come and gone, what does General Moinuddin propose to do? For his information, an alliance of six religious parties banded together under the appropriate acronym of IMAM (Ittehad Millat Islamia Mahaz), has recently rejected the deweaponization campaign. Maulana Sherani, the Balochistan chief of IMAM, and the Amir of the provincial JUI (F), has declared that "to keep arms and ammunition by a Muslim was purely Islamic." He went on to argue that if a person "living in a border area or a tribal area wants to keep a heavy gun or a tank, he should have the right." I suppose a tactical nuclear weapon is IMAM's next logical demand.
Another subject General Musharraf loves to expand on is investment. In his speech at the Seerat Conference, he asked his audience who would invest in a country where religious leaders were forever talking of war. Who indeed? But equally, who would want to invest in a country in which a bench of the Supreme Court had given the government a year to abolish interest? Clearly, these honourable judges are as much out of touch with economic realities as are the fundamentalists who listened to General Musharraf in stunned silence. And who would want to invest in a country in which any two-bit ethnic or sectarian party can bring the commercial capital to a grinding halt by torching buses and threatening to destroy businesses if they open their shutters on the days "strikes" are called?
The only possible justification for a military government is the fact that it is free to act, unrestrained by legal niceties or the need to get re-elected. But this one has consistently acted like a weak coalition government, executing a series of tactical retreats whenever it has met any opposition. Throughout its 20 months in office, it has talked tough, but then immediately backed down whenever the extremists have refused to pay heed.
Take General Musharraf's early days as our saviour as an example: his photograph with his dogs and his sari clad wife, together with his publicly announced admiration of Turkey's secular reformer Mustafa Kemal Pasha, encouraged many of us to think he was a relaxed liberal. But it took one ferocious statement from Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the Jamaat-i-Islami chief, to make the good general back off and announce that there was no danger of a Kemalist revolution in Pakistan.
Clearly, General Musharraf is enjoying his stint as supreme commander, and as he relaxes, he becomes more and more expansive in his pronouncements. The problem is that all too often, the line between vague and woolly declarations of intent and agenda items for action gets blurred. When the government declares that it is going to crack down on the holders of illegal arms, for example, we expect it to actually take action. However, now that we have a pretty good idea on how this regime functions, nobody has any high expectations.
But there are some things that are too important to be put on the backburner. Indeed, there is simply no space left there. For starters, the whole extremist, jihadi culture that has put down root here, together with the arms it has inducted into our society, has to be stamped out if this country is to survive as a modern state and not be relegated to the pariah status currently 'enjoyed' by Afghanistan. Ditto for ethnic groups like the MQM. Both extremist groupings have a history of violence, and both spread their hate-filled messages through terrorism and the threat of force.
This is clearly a tough task, and will require much political will and determination at every level. General Musharraf still has to demonstrate that he has the stomach to take on these elements. But leaders are judged by their actions, not by their words. Making pronouncements and policies is the easy part; translating them into reality is far more difficult.
After he has elevated himself to the presidency on the basis of the role he perceives for himself in the shaping of the future of Pakistan, General Musharraf needs to reflect on the fact that true leadership is often about taking the right decisions that may be initially unpopular but are in the true interest of the country. It is not about pandering to the lowest common denominator, thereby gaining fleeting cheap popularity. The new president would do well to remember this when he goes to India for his talks with Mr Vajpayee next month.