Another ‘last hope’

Columnist HUMAYUN GAUHAR analyses the performance of the military regime.

General Musharraf, says General Zinni, is the ‘last hope’. The Economist delivers tedious sermons from its Mount Olympus on St. James’ Street, London entitled “Musharraf fails the test”; “Pakistan’s useless dictator”. Musharraf blames drawing room chatter for spreading despondency. One is left breathless with questions. ‘Last hope’ for whom and to do what? Is a country of 150 million so bankrupt that an individual can become its last hope? Or is it meant as an insult? What ‘test’ has he ‘failed’? What would make him ‘useful’? How has the General convinced himself that struggling Pakistanis need drawing rooms to persuade them that they are ‘despondent’?

We have had many ‘last hopes’ before who have invariably paved the way for the next ‘last hope’. Remember the 1986 version when Benazir took Lahore by storm? Then again in 1988 when she became the darling first Muslim woman Prime Minister of west and east, Oxford-educated and westernised, the perfect foil to fundamentalism? Or when the businessman Prime Minister replaced the discredited Bonnie and Clyde team, ‘hopefully’ to propel us into the 21st Century but becoming an Asian Tiger himself? Now General Musharraf is it.

Why have none of the last hopes fulfilled the last hope? Is it because the hope that they represent is not the hope of the people but the hope of the West and its lambs in our drawing rooms? Just what is their last hope? What ‘test’ has the General ‘failed’ to be called ‘useless’? The Economist says it all. “What was required from the general was...a reining-in of Pakistan’s growing band of Islamic militants, a reduction of tension with India, a dose of economic shock-therapy...” Thus Musharraf was ‘required’ to:

1) Defang Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

2) Accept India’s regional hegemony and forget about Kashmir instead of causing India “eternal annoyance”.

3) Deliver Osama bin Laden and curb his “tendency to vent his wild-eyed terrorists on the world”.

4) Implement “the economic reforms that would allow the IMF to release a much-needed injection of cash.”

Of course the obligatory mention about “a speedy return to barracks” is there, even if means reverting to a bogus democracy. “On all these counts the general has disappointed,” says The Economist. “Until General Musharraf acknowledges these problems and stops exacerbating them, his country will slide ever-deeper into isolation.”

Now consider the inherent hypocrisy. Why should Musharraf’s repeated offers to negotiate with India any time, any place, at any level cause it “eternal annoyance”? Since India and Britain jointly committed the crime of delivering Kashmir into Indian occupation they would have us pretend that it never happened. Agreeing to talk would imply that it did. India would much rather that the world focused on Pakistan’s ‘promotion of terrorism’. Every freedom movement has been called terrorist until it succeeds.

The Afghan mess is an American-Pakistani joint venture that has become an exclusive Pakistani responsibility now. But we must pretend that the USA had no hand in it. We can’t say that the CIA created Osama and the threat he really poses is to the oil-rich Saudi system. ‘Get Osama’ is America’s demand on behalf of its client. Were not the Taliban also created by the CIA, Saudi Intelligence and ISI? Now that they have run amok Pakistan is left to deal with them. But don’t dare breathe a word of this to anyone. Just deliver, no matter how.

“Probably no more urgent task was expected from the general than a crackdown on corruption,” says The Economist. “Here again the record is mixed.” True, but who, might one ask, was doling out the loot? The case against Admiral Mansoor was “launched by Mr. Sharif, and the man in question is, in any event, safely ensconced in America.” What stops them from extraditing him and our other criminals to Pakistan? Laws? Where was respect for our laws when we meekly handed over Aimal Kasi and Ramzi Yusuf to them like thieves in the darkness of the night?

We must get ‘globalised’ by accepting Western economic prescriptions and reduce ourselves to a country without a manufacturing base dependent forever on imports purchased with more loans. Put the future of a hundred generations in hock. If in the process the people become poorer, who cares? They are only Pakistanis, and Muslims to boot. In short, become a vassal state.

Whilst the West sanctimoniously lectures us on democracy, the truth is that Musharraf would only be ‘useful’ to it if he really were the classical dictator, armed with Martial Law, a captive press and expression in fetters. He could then attack Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban, slaughter anyone wearing a beard, sign the CTBT and NPT, accept India’s hegemony and leave the Kashmiris to their own devices, Pakistani public opinion be damned. Is this what they actually want us to understand without their having to say so for they want to maintain the new facade of promoting democracy? They would then as innocently say that the General needs the world’s understanding and help in his most difficult task of rooting out terrorism and eliminating the horror of nuclear holocaust. It’s as easy as that.

The notion that implementing IMF conditions alone would get the money flowing is naive. The magazine that likes to call itself a newspaper says in one breath that “the presence of the zealots has done nothing for the West’s willingness to let the IMF go on bailing Pakistan out” but in the next states that “he has failed to carry out the economic reforms that would allow the IMF to release a much-needed cash injection”? The cat is out of the bag. It is not the IMF that decides bailouts; it is the US Treasury Secretary. Any bailout decision will be taken not for implementing IMF conditions but for implementing America’s strategic conditions. In any case, the ‘cash-injection’ by the IMF for implementing its conditions will be so small that we will never see the colour of the money for it will have been adjusted in the books against our debt servicing obligations, adding to our principal debt.

In antiquity Zeus, king of the Greek gods, would stand on Mount Olympus cracking thunder and lightening. Today it is The Economist’s quaint little god Ignoramus astride Simla Pahari who would have us believe that “At the moment barely 1% of the country’s population of 150m pay any tax at all.” Any little beggar boy on the street would tell Ignoramus that every child, man and woman pay at least one indirect tax everyday.

Our rulers should have matured enough by now to ignore such gibberish. A ‘favourable’ report in The Economist will not bring hordes of foreign investors descending on Pakistan with their cheque books and pens at the ready. Greed will. To tap that greed the General has to make Pakistan business-friendly. Then they will come in droves, beards, bombs and boozelessness notwithstanding.

As to ‘drawing room despondency’, how many drawing rooms would the General say there are in Pakistan? Do they have the reach to enter the millions of drawing roomless ghettos, slums and hovels? Do the newspapers, with a total circulation of a million or two? Does he seriously imagine that the housewife would not become despondent about prices going beyond the small knot in her doppata containing a few precious rupees if it were not for drawing rooms and newspapers leading her astray? The General has the one medium that does reach ghettos, slums and hovels. Why doesn’t he use television effectively and positively to start open debates to counter drawing room despondency? People would be better equipped to understand the reasons behind their predicament and what it will take to overcome them. Why doesn’t he use television to galvanise and mobilise the people behind his vision? Is it because his vision is made fuzzy by wanting to be all things to all men? Is it that he wants to fulfil the ‘last hope’ of both East and West at the same time? In that case he is in danger of falling between two stools.

No doubt many of our few comfortable drawing rooms are alienated from reality. No doubt to most of them salvation lies in accepting Western diktat and IMF nostrums. They ask silly, rhetorical, uni-dimensional questions like “Is Pakistan more important or Kashmir?” If only life were that simple. But the General, having led this country for better or for worse for a year, should know by now what the people want. Fifty million of them want food, their fundamental right in an Islamic State. The rest want the unbearable economic burden to reduce, not increase. They want justice, clean water, healthcare, education, jobs, affordable energy, transport, security and effective administration. They want corrupt rulers to be brought to book without selectivity. What is so unreasonable about this? Citizens of other countries regard these as their fundamental rights. Why can’t ours?

The General decided to pick up a fireball without realising how hot it is. Now his hands are burning. Instead of focusing exclusively on the people’s hopes, he has scatter-bombed, opening many unnecessary fronts as if the myriad problems he has landed himself with are not enough and he needs more challenges. Now his best short-term option is to hold local government elections, such as they will be, scrupulously well. Throw open the airwaves to debate and discussion to precede the elections. Learn from the American presidential debates. That might alleviate some of the despondency and get a buzz going in the country.

Bow to your users, General, and you will lose your heart and soul. Change your Qibla and find liberation.