What’s the give and take?

Columnist M B NAQVI wants to know the quid pro quo between Pakistan and the US.

Pakistan’s General-President Pervez Musharraf has been engaged in a process of consultation with leaders of political parties on the present situation of course.  The latest in the series of his meetings was with the PPP leaders.  What the President wants can only be cooperation from all sections of society during this grave crisis goes without saying. But what is the basis and the format for this cooperation? 

Insofar as the crises created by the Afghan war is concerned, following the Sept 11 attacks on American targets by still-not-fully-identified terrorists, the need for understanding the gravity of the situation by the politically aware sections is obvious.  As it happens, the War has convulsed Pakistan’s political life. The religious parties and Jehadi groups are  up in arms; they are supporting Taliban while the government is fully committed to the international Alliance, against Terrorism led by the US and Britain.  This has created a sharp polarisation between the religious Right and the so-called modernists. The identification of the religious lobbies poses no problem but who are the modernists?

The criterion for identifying the modernists is not easy. Superficially, their avant gardes are the Pakistan Army which is ruling the country, though many will contest this. But of that presently. The mainstream political parties such as PML, PPP, ANP, MQM and many others, are collectively treated as the modernist and moderate face of an Islamic polity.  Are there any qualifications to be made in this description?

But first let us take up Islam and give it a non-academic look over it is the practical or non-theoretical touchstone. A particular kind of Islam, a latter day development, that the Army and its secret agencies have been encouraging and patronizing by manipulating religious parties and in the generation of Jehadi groups for supporting Kashmir Jehad and using to legitimize military’s political role.  Doubtless, its motive in all this was quite secular: Ample evidence is in that these were utilised for creating and sustaining an insurgency in Kashmir.  Gen. Zia used it for his own political consolidation and for anti-Soviet and pro-American purposes in Afghanistan. But apart from the wisdom or otherwise of the policy orientation of preferring and sustaining a violent form of freedom struggle in Kashmir, there is the consideration about the means that the army adopted.  The Jehadi organisations are imbued with a high religious passion against the infidel rule over Kashmir or the atheistic regime in Afghanistan. The true motivation of the Jehadis is to fight for Islamic rule everywhere in the world, beginning with Afghanistan and Kashmir.  It is a view of Islam which is remarkably similar to those of Taliban; it is wholly intolerant and violent and is quite unwilling to tolerate any kind of dissent or minority.  It was a cynical and perverse kind of secular aim to reap a harvest of youngmen who were blinded by red hot faith and fervour of a kind that of Islam that is ceaselessly at war with infidels and cannot rest until it has eliminated or subdued them.  Naturally there is no such Islam in real life in any Islamic country anywhere. It is certainly at total variance with the kind of Subcontinental Islam that Prof Mujeeb has described. In the latter people were content to live peaceably in the rich plural world that they were born into though there were fringe movements among them that had the objectives that approached the Taliban kind of an Islamic dispensation —- all of which were in their later post-1947 form promoted and funded by the US and Saudi Arabia for cold war purposes.  Modernism of the Army  was vitiated and compromised by Gen. Zia’s dishonest undercover activities inside and outside Pakistan. He openly tried to make this Army more Islamic —- fanatical —- and he is believed to have succeeded to an indeterminate extent. To what extent he has succeeded is the sixtyfour dollar question today. A lot hangs on this.

Let us now turn our gaze on the parties. If the parties are expected to rally to the President’s support in this crisis, their own record as modernists must be examined and kept in view. How do the various Pakistani parties measure up as modernists?  PPP leader has said after the meeting with President Pervez Musharraf that there was complete identity of view with the President on the desirability of supporting the international campaign against Terrorism. But that is where probably the unanimity might have ended. Whether the PPP and other parties are willing to support the President and positively respond to the call for national unity in the present circumstances in which the government finds itself is hard to say. There are other parties that are also in a similar position.  Some of them, like ANP, appear to be going all out in support of the President’s politics without joining the government —- may be at this stage.  It does look as if the ANP would readily join the government if invited.  There are many other organisations that are in a similar situation like the Millat Party, Insaf Party also Istiqlal Party —- whatever the latter’s preoccupation with alliances and mergers.  A familiar section of the PML, with indeterminate strength, is straining at the leash to join the government if the President would only invite it.

But are all these parties truly modernist, particularly the two largest ones: PML and PPP.  Insofar as the PML is concerned, its outlook and political philosophy  as also record is remarkably similar to that of the army generals; indeed most military dictators have utilised the PML as a handmaiden and, except for the faction loyal to Nawaz Sharif, the President will enjoy the full support of all the PML leaders no matter what policy he adopts, pro or anti- Taliban.  Much the same can be said for  the PPP, though  its credentials as a secular entity are better —- but only because the Jamaat-e-Islami and other religious parties used to condemn it in 1970s as a socialist and secular party.  And yet all three PPP regimes had a relationship with the Army that, in day-to-day politics, was indistinguishable from that of the PML or even the army generals’ rule.  It espoused all the nostrums of the religious parties: Islamic Ideology, the Kashmir policy, encouragement of the Jehad in Kashmir by patronising the Taliban and helping them to win in Afghanistan. They had no compunction in espousing all the anti-liberation policies of the army dictators.  Only ANP and MQM politics is basically secular, though they talk about Islam as much as anybody else does. There is no clear cut secular party in Pakistan, except MQM and ANP along with various regional parties. But few of them are able to win a seat in any assembly.

The point is what is the President offering to the political parties? The maximum he is likely to do is to invite them to join his government and call it as some kind of a national government. Although few of these would object to his being the real leader of the national government, they would perhaps expect some gesture towards restoring democracy and halting his active measures to persecute political opponents.  Can he make this gesture?  Let us also ask another question. How precisely are the leaders that met him can be expected to behave politically: hold frequent public meetings and proclaim that President Musharraf policies are very good, please follow them while staying out of office?  Few politicians would take the trouble of going and meeting him if this was all that was expected of them.  The point is whether he can or will make the required gestures and whether he will let Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto come back after he credibly withdraws the various cases and disabilities against these two and so many others. Going by his previous comments and apparently the mood of the Army, it is still doubtful. Since the sword of Damocles hangs over heads of all in the shapes of the constitutional amendments that he is going to make before too many moons.  Can all these parties accept them whatever they are? And will Musharraf defer to the politicians views on this subject? 

Unless doubts on these issues are resolved, association of major parties with the one man government will remain rather difficult. Why would the politicians support him is the question.  All politicians habitually ask about any proposition: what is in it for me or my party.  The crucial test for the President and the various politicians is: would he listen to them about constitutional changes? Earlier it had appeared that the intent of the Army was to rule the country alone and to revamp the whole politics of the country by consigning its Nawaz Sharifs and Benazirs to political oblivion.  The fate’s wheel has turned full circle and it looks as if the time has come for the army to seek the support of those whom it had replaced and to give up the plans of the Army to rule the country alone in perpetuity. The situation in the country is certainly not fully under military government’s control. The outlook for the military regime, left to its own devices, is bleak. Moreover, it has no political devices or know-how to cope with the growing discontent and opposition, given the hard problems of the country.  Army needs the support of those whom it had condemned as corrupt and inept: Nawaz Sharif and Benazir but many others.  Can General Musharraf reverse and court and recruit these politicians and coordinate them in a government under himself? And can these two simply acquiesce in the new order the Army wanted to bring in after October 2002 — merely after their cases and disabilities have been withdrawn? Isn’t there a future in which people will ask questions?