Midnight's Descendants

by John Keay

  But much judicial confusion over the validity and implementation of these reforms somewhat blunted their impact. As the federal and lower sharia courts jostled with the civil and military tribunals, ‘there were many courts but there was little justice’.10 Some laws were contested; others, like those concerning the observance of namaz (daily prayers), purdah and the Ramadan fast, were never fully enforced. Pakistan did not undergo an Islamic revolution like that in Iran. Instead, the piecemeal and contested nature of the reforms stirred up a hornets’ nest of self-righteous acrimony. Constitutional diehards, women’s groups and liberals in general joined the Western-educated elite in trying to alleviate the impact of Zia’s programme. More crucially, many devout Muslims also found fault with it. Privileging the Jamaat-e-Islami’s brand of orthodoxy alienated Sufi devotees, antagonised the large Shi’ite minority and seldom satisfied all shades even of Sunni opinion. Seemingly the most that these groups could agree on was another wave of persecution directed at the supposedly heretical Ahmadis. In the absence of a universally relevant and accepted authority on the sunnah (relating the deeds and practices of the Prophet and the early caliphs), there was no consensus on the precepts to be adopted, let alone on how they could be turned into workable laws.

  General Zia, with the smarmed-down hair and waxen moustache of a matinee magician, waved his swagger stick like a magic wand; but what he conjured up was not Islamic solidarity but cut-throat Islamic contention. Akhtar Hameed Khan saw it as a reversion to medieval thuggery rather than an assertion of Islamic brotherhood. The failure of the political process and the licence afforded to sectarian demagogues radicalised discontent, turning whole congregations into warring zealots. ‘People have come to believe that problems can only be solved by the gun, the junta of the gun; and from 1979 we have had no lack of guns,’ moaned Khan.11 The ‘Kalashnikov culture’ was transforming sectarian militants into sectarian paramilitaries. The result was what has been called ‘the Islamisation of criminal activity and the criminalisation of segments of Islamism’.12

  Nor, in so far as martial law permitted, was there any lack of political activity. Like the various ethnic groups, the different shades of Islamic opinion were represented by a kaleidoscope of political groupings. Come elections, Pakistan’s secularists would take heart from the poor showing of these jamaats (literally ‘gatherings’ rather than political parties), and see it as evidence of Islamisation’s limited appeal. Perhaps they should have taken more account of the estimated one million who turned out to mourn the Islamising Zia’s death – and this despite his latterday backtracking on the more divisive of his reforms. Electoral returns could anyway be deceptive. The Islamist vote was fragmented among numerous Sunni and Shi’ite parties; ethnic organisations like the MQM siphoned off many potential jamaatis; and religious opinion was further divided over whether political parties, or even democracy itself, were Quranically legitimate.

  Given the constraints on Pakistan’s post-Zia democracy, these doubters had a point. The military retained oversight of the political process: the defence budget was ring-fenced and the conduct of foreign affairs was reserved to the generals and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Meanwhile the army’s bureaucratic siblings pulled the electoral strings, stifled legislative initiatives and clung to Zia’s Eighth Amendment empowering the President summarily to dismiss any ministry. In short, mandated governments enjoyed little more freedom of movement after Zia than they had under him.

  The problem was compounded by the fragile parliamentary majorities of the post-Zia decade. A veritable musical chairs saw Benazir Bhutto (1988–90), Nawaz Sharif (1990–93), then Benazir again (1993–96) and Sharif again (1996–99) trooping through the prime ministerial residence. Both premiers were constrained by the need to form coalitions with minor parties; both failed to adjust to the idea of legitimate opposition; and both struggled with the weakening economy and the closer international scrutiny that followed Washington’s loss of interest in Afghanistan after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal. Fending off one another’s accusations of corruption was perhaps their most notable achievement. Benazir championed populist causes and invoked the legacy of her father; Sharif favoured Islam and fielded among his sponsors the wife and son of the dead Zia. But when in 1999 General Pervez Musharraf, the army’s Chief of Staff, survived Sharif’s quixotic attempt to replace him and then hit back by restoring martial rule, the game was over. Benazir (and, after a spell in detention, her husband) bolted back to London; Sharif set up home in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan entered its third decade under military rule. And once again, according to the BBC’s correspondent, ‘most Pakistanis were delighted’.13

  *

  The pattern of Pakistani politics under Ziaul Haq and his successors so nicely mirrors that of Bangladesh under Ziaur Rahman and his successors that collusion might be suspected. Both Generals Zia had been brought up in what was now India (Haq in Punjab, Rahman in Calcutta); both when rising through the ranks of the Pakistani army had imbibed its authoritarian contempt for politicians; and both when in power turned to Islam to redefine their respective nations. Just as Ziaul Haq favoured the ultra-orthodox Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, so did Ziaur Rahman favour its namesake in Bangladesh; as well as rehabilitating the Jamaat’s leaders after their near-fatal support for Pakistan in the 1971 war, he introduced the use of religious phrasing in official parlance. In a further bid for legitimacy, both Generals also strove to civilianise their regimes. In Zia’s Bangladesh, as in the other Zia’s Pakistan, elections were promised, political parties sponsored, referenda conducted, national assemblies reinstated, and polls eventually held – which in both cases yielded suspiciously large majorities for the Zia-backed contenders.

  Personally, the two Zias were reckoned courteous, dedicated and untainted by corruption. Each esteemed the example of Ayub Khan, and genuinely believed that only a disciplined military could fend off national chaos. Despite taking thousands of political prisoners, neither was universally detested; and if Ziaul Haq’s demise in a still unexplained plane crash brought a million mourners onto the streets of Lahore, just so did Ziaur Rahman’s death in a botched coup attempt bring as many onto the streets of Dhaka.

  There were of course differences. The beady-eyed Ziaul Haq managed a decade in power (1978–88), while the sunglasses-wearing Ziaur Rahman survived for little more than half as long (1975–81). But when the latter was gunned down in what was supposedly the twenty-first attempt on his life, it was not the end of military rule. In General Mohamed Ershad he left a second-in-command who reimposed martial law within a matter of months, and then clung to office for a further eight years (1982–90). Ershad’s greatest compliment to his predecessor’s example was to follow it to the letter. He too favoured a more central role for religion; indeed, he finally declared Islam the state creed and labelled Bangladesh an Islamic republic. Like the Zias, Ershad also formed his own political party, and claimed to be readying the nation for a return to civilian rule that was repeatedly postponed. Though lacking Ziaur Rahman’s charismatic record as a battlefield commander and as the voice of Bangladeshi independence, the uninspiring Ershad was ‘something less than a villain’, and according to Lawrence Ziring, ‘his rule was more benign than ruthless’.14

  Ershad still dealt firmly with opponents, whether military rivals or civilian politicians. The latter he so antagonised that to Ershad belongs the distinction of driving Khaleda Zia (the widow of Ziaur Rahman and leader of his Bangladesh National Party) into a short-lived pro-democracy alliance with Shaikh Hasina Wajed (the daughter of Banglabandhu Mujibur Rahman and leader of Mujib’s Awami League). Never again would the ‘two begums’ make common cause. Rather, it was their detestation of one another that would dominate the Bangladesh political scene for the next quarter of a century.

  Like Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, both begums had challenged martial law and been detained under it. They too considered themselves champions of democracy and, like Benazir, each claimed to be the sole legitimate heir to t
he foundational legacy of her ‘martyred’ father or husband. Each thus felt uniquely qualified to speak for the people. But there the similarities ended. Hasina promoted the secular, socialist and India-friendly policies associated with Mujib; Khaleda favoured the more Islam-inclusive, free-market and India-cautious policies associated with Zia. More fatally, each bore a personal grudge against the other. Hasina held Zia, and so his widow, guilty if not for the 1975 murder of her father and family, then for failing to prosecute those responsible; and Khaleda retaliated by blaming Hasina for ambivalence over attempts to reinvestigate the 1981 murder of her own husband. This bitter personal vendetta cut to the heart of Bangladeshi identity. The bereaved’s demand for justice crowded out the normal business of government, and would ensure that recriminatory moves over the events of 1971–81 remained front-page news for as long as the begums lasted.

  In 1990 Ershad finally capitulated to a show of ‘people power’ like those which four years earlier had toppled Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and were now convulsing the erstwhile Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe. Elections were duly called, in which an alliance headed by Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh National Party confronted another headed by Hasina Wajed’s Awami League. Both won around 30 per cent of the vote, and thus began a ding-dong struggle very like that between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Khaleda formed the first government (1991–96), Hasina the second (1996–2001), Khaleda the third (2001–06), and after a two-year interlude of army-backed rule, Hasina the fourth (2009–). All lasted their full five-year term; democracy of a sort seemed to be taking root. But so slim were the begums’ majorities, so disruptive their tactics, so confrontational their policies, and so negligible their achievements that many observers began to see either government as an irrelevance.

  Instead, the business of actually running the country, of evaluating needs, providing services, disbursing funds, protecting the vulnerable, engaging the masses and managing the country’s perennial natural disasters was increasingly being shouldered by a concourse of over 20,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These included not only indigenous giants like BRAC and the Grameen Bank, but a host of foreign or international aid and development agencies, plus innumerable community-led local ventures, dozens of religious and charitable foundations, and not a few well-camouflaged scams. Many of them relied on foreign or government funding, though others aimed to be self-financing. According to a World Bank report of 2006, ‘some 20 per cent to 35 per cent of the country’s population is believed to receive some services, usually credit, health or education, from an NGO’.15 Micro-credit was the developmentalists’ panacea, although it came with interest rates that were neither Islamic nor particularly cheap. Education ranged from universities like that founded by BRAC to rural programmes designed to increase civic awareness that might verge on the politically partisan. Even health was not wholly uncontroversial. A clash with the pharmaceutical giants resulted when an NGO called the ‘People’s Health Centre’ won the Ershad government’s support for the domestic production of cheaper generic alternatives to some essential branded medicines.

  The NGO trend was never without its critics. While some observers hailed it as evidence of an emerging ‘civil society’, others detected the incubation of a ‘parallel state’. They winced at the ranks of Land Rovers and Land Cruisers parked outside the expat watering holes of north Dhaka and wondered whether the NGO presence, in relieving the begums’ elected governments of so many present responsibilities, was not in fact contributing to their obsession with past injustices. ‘NGOs compete with government for donor resources and for wider legitimacy because successful NGO work can easily be perceived as governmental “failure”.’16 Conversely, military rulers had looked on the NGOs more benignly. As politically neutral organisations, they could be useful allies in a dictator’s quest for credibility. Moreover, their achievements served to stifle the criticism of opponents.

  In Bangladesh, voluntary grassroots organisations already had a respectable pedigree. Among the new NGOs, indigenous initiative continued to play a major role, and was widely applauded. Although hard to quantify, NGO activities appeared to raise educational and health standards, boost employment and land use, and improve the quality of the workforce. Women in particular benefited. Female literacy came to exceed that among males, while female participation in, for instance, the garments industry helped to transform the economy. The impact of environmental disasters, especially of inundation, may have been blunted by NGO initiatives. Poverty in general, if not alleviated, was at least made more bearable.

  But if the product of all this outsourcing to NGOs was an inert and paranoid government in Dhaka, it was a high price to pay. Grassroots activity was no substitute for state-level undertakings. Sweatshops went woefully unregulated; roads, bridges and other essential infrastructure were slow to materialise. Bangladesh took thirty years to come to terms with the Farakka dam (a barrage built by India across the Ganges on its own side of the border), and twenty years to begin similar negotiations over water-sharing of the Tista river following construction of another Indian dam. A third, at Tipaimukh in the Indian state of Manipur, was commenced in the 1980s but halted in the 1990s by a combination of environmental concerns and official objections. In 2012 work remained at a standstill. All these projects certainly had implications for downstream Bangladesh, and merited careful study. But in a floodplain subject to often catastrophic inundation, the opportunity of managing the rivers and obtaining a share of their hydro-electric potential ought to have been accorded the highest priority.

  Other opportunities were also let slip. In 2004 the Bombay- (now Mumbai-) based Tata group of companies announced discussions that would make Bangladesh the largest ever recipient of overseas Indian investment. Two and a half billion dollars were to be spent there constructing an industrial complex that included a colossal steel mill, a thermal power plant, an open-cast coalmine and a urea fertiliser plant. Together they would have represented much the biggest direct foreign investment made in Bangladesh, doubling its industrial capacity overnight and creating some 24,000 jobs. But they never materialised. The negotiations dragged on until 2007. Dhaka recognised the value of the project, and accepted the quid pro quo of giving India access to the gas expected from the offshore waters of the Bay of Bengal. But actually signing up to the project was more than successive Bangladeshi governments could agree on. Despite the obvious benefits, the politicians seem to have backed down lest they expose themselves to accusations of betraying the nation’s sovereignty by kowtowing to Delhi and trading away a national asset. Delhi’s patience was sorely tested.

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  Similar concerns dogged relations between the kingdom of Nepal and India, and for similar reasons. Impoverished countries with weak governments and a heavy dependency on foreign aid are not the easiest to deal with. In Nepal’s case, the difficulty of exercising any kind of administrative control was down to the switchback Himalayan terrain plus the ethnic, linguistic and caste fragmentation of the population. Panchayati raj, a variant of Ayub Khan’s bottom-up ‘Basic Democracy’, was supposed to chime with this situation. Panchayats, being village-based or district-based councils, were meant to encourage grassroots consensus by reflecting particularist interests and being locally accountable. But as in Bangladesh – where both Zia and Ershad introduced their own versions of decentralised government – devolving power proved in practice to be more about creating a personal constituency for an otherwise unrepresentative regime and so giving it a veneer of democratic legitimacy.

  In the Nepal of the 1980s the regime had been that of King Birendra, whose officials had managed the panchayat system as a projection of his authority and patronage. The main beneficiaries were the landed local elites rather than the actual cultivators. But for the support of these middlemen, the court had to compete with politicians promising reform and still greater perks. In particular, leaders of the Nepali Congress Party ‘heartily embraced these local power brokers … [and] t
ried their level best to recruit former members of the monarchical panchayat system at the grassroots level’. Come the restoration of parliamentary democracy, this policy would bear fruit. But in the process the politicians ‘unwittingly intervene[d] in favour of rural elites [and] against the rural poor, who had suffered under the same elites during the panchayat period’.17 Thus would be perpetuated that governmental indifference to the removal of social iniquities, like forced labour and various forms of caste and ethnic discrimination, which bore most heavily on the poorest minorities, This was especially true in the remote and sparsely administered mid-western districts of the country. There exploitation and neglect created a fertile ground for popular insurgency. It awaited only the dibbling-in of revolutionary dogma by bandana-ed Maoists.

  As in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, so in Nepal, 1990 brought long-awaited change. Here too democracy was restored, which meant reinstating the multi-party format that had been jettisoned back in 1951. Elsewhere in the world the wind of glasnost was fanning anti-authoritarian protest from Berlin to Beijing, and had already ruffled Katmandu. But the country also faced a crisis of its own. The King had recently brokered an arms purchase from China. India had objected, and had retaliated by terminating the preferential trade and transit arrangements along the Indo–Nepali border. Hardship and shortages resulted, against which Nepali students and politicians protested with strikes, mass demonstrations, and a violence that was amply repaid by the police. For fifty days Katmandu had been paralysed.