by Ali, Tariq
Till the Bhutto assassination, the election campaign had been largely lackluster. The mainstream parties had few differences on ideological or policy grounds, either on the domestic or the international level. The Peoples Party had long abandoned its populism. The key interlinked issues were Musharraf’s presidency and the reinstatement of the chief justice and others sacked during the emergency. The PPP was divided on this issue. One of its Punjabi veterans, Aitzaz Ahsan, was a central figure in the campaign to bring the judges back. Bhutto’s widower, on the other hand, had been sentenced to years in prison by the same judiciary and loathed them. At a meeting of party leaders in April 2008, he made his views clear to Ahsan.
Leaving aside that the ANP, like the PPP, is not unfriendly to Washington, its electoral triumph in the Frontier Province confirms what some of us have consistently argued. The world’s sixth most populous country and a nuclear state is not on the verge of a jihadi takeover. If neocons in the Bush administration or their successor want their prophecies of gloom and doom fulfilled, all they need to do is to occupy parts of Pakistan, destroy its nuclear facility, and impose a puppet regime. The hell that is Iraq would rapidly shift eastward. Definitely not recommended.
The delighted politicians of the PPP and the triumphant Muslim League rapidly agreed to form a coalition and divide the ministerial spoils. True to form, Nawaz Sharif, himself out of parliament, selected tried-and-trusted supporters or relatives for the work that lay ahead. Zardari, empowered by his widow, was able to choose the new prime minister. During her exile, Bhutto had selected an amiable and unquestioning Sindhi landlord as her proxy. He was widely expected to be the PPP choice. Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a pir-cum-landlord, politician and religious divine rolled into one, is hardly a social liberal. Uniquely, even for Pakistan, all his four brothers-in-law are the Koran. Fahim’s family claims descent from the first Muslims to enter the subcontinent, the cohort of Muhammad bin Kasim who took Sind in 711. Women in early Islam owned and inherited property equally with men, a tradition that took root in parts of Sind. Landowners there devised an ingenious solution to prevent women from marrying outside the family, which could lead to the parcelization of the estates. The young heiresses were literally married off to the Koran—similar to nuns becoming brides of Christ. This preserved the girls’ virginity, which in turn provided them with magic healing powers; but above all it ensured that the property remained under the control of their fathers and brothers. The problem posed by the four wealthy sisters of the PPP leader was thus piously solved.
Zardari decided against Fahim for geopolitical reasons. He felt a Punjabi landlord would be better placed to run the country and selected another divine-plus-politician from the saint-ridden city of Multan. The choice was Yousaf Raza Gillani, a politician well attuned to the spirit of the age and cut from the same cloth as many of his contemporaries. Gillani’s qualities had been recognized by General Zia-ul-Haq, and like Nawaz Sharif, he became an early favorite of the dictator’s, serving loyally on various committees designed to buttress the regime. After Zia’s death, Gillani was a loyal supporter of the Muslim League, but fell out with Nawaz Sharif and joined the Peoples Party. He stayed with them and turned down offers from the Chaudhrys of Gujrat to jump ship and join their Muslim League. His instinct served him well in this case. His loyalty to the PPP when it was out of power has been handsomely rewarded by the party’s godfather.
The immediate impact of the electoral defeat suffered by Musharraf’s political factotums was to dispel the disillusionment and cynicism of the citizenry. The moral climate seemed to improve. But not for long. The fervor and naïveté soon turned to anger. The worm-eaten tongues of some politicians were soon back on display. Two major issues confronted the victors. The first concerned the judiciary. Nawaz Sharif had pledged that, if elected, his party would reverse the midnight actions carried out during the emergency and restore the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the other sacked judges to their former positions. Soon after their election triumph, the widower Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif met in Bhurban and publicly agreed that this would be a major priority and the judges would be brought back within thirty days of the new government taking office. There was general rejoicing in the country. Since November 3, 2007, until just after the election, the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, had been a prisoner of the regime, detained in his house that was sealed off with barbwire barricades and a complement of riot police permanently on guard. His landlines were cut and his cell phones incapacitated by jamming devices. Colleagues and lawyers defending him were subjected to similar treatment. One of them, Aitzaz Ahsan, railed against the Bush regime in an op-ed in the New York Times on December 23, 2007:
People in the United States wonder why extremist militants in Pakistan are winning. What they should ask is why does President Musharraf have so little respect for civil society—and why does he essentially have the backing of American officials?
The White House and State Department briefings on Pakistan ignore the removal of the justices and all these detentions. Meanwhile, lawyers, bar associations and institutes of law around the world have taken note of this brave movement for due process and constitutionalism. They have displayed their solidarity for the lawyers of Pakistan. These include, in the United States alone, the American Bar Association, state and local bars stretching from New York and New Jersey to Louisiana, Ohio and California, and citadels of legal education like Harvard and Yale Law Schools.
The detained chief justice continues to receive enormous recognition and acknowledgment. Harvard Law School has conferred on him its highest award, placing him on the same pedestal as Nelson Mandela and the legal team that argued Brown v. Board of Education. The National Law Journal has anointed him its lawyer of the year. The New York City Bar Association has admitted him as a rare honorary member. Despite all this, the Musharraf regime shows no sign of relenting.
The new government ordered the immediate release of the dismissed judges and the removal of all restrictions. This was widely seen as a prelude to their reinstatement. Musharraf and his backers in Washington panicked. If the chief justice and his colleagues resumed office, John Negroponte informed the new government (via Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher), Musharraf might be legally removed and that was unacceptable. He had to stay on, at least as long as Bush remained in the White House. His departure would be regarded as a setback in the war on terror.
This accelerated the political process and brought out into the open the differences on this issue between the PPP leadership and the Sharif brothers. At a subsequent meeting with U.S. officials in Dubai, in the presence of Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto’s fixers, the latter were asked to confirm the exact nature of the deal agreed by the late Benazir with the Americans prior to her return to Pakistan. Her husband had been sidelined during that period and appeared to be unaware of all the details.
Asif Zardari had his own worries. The National Reconciliation Ordinance that pardoned corrupt politicians had been part of the deal between Bhutto and Musharraf. It was a much-hated ordinance and the Supreme Court was due to hear an appeal questioning its legality. Zardari, only too aware that this and the possibility that cases against him in European courts might be resurrected, capitulated. Simultaneously, U.S. officials in Pakistan offered inducements to the chief justice in the form of a senior position on the International Court of Justice with all the perks of the post or even an academic post in the United States. The chief justice told them that he was not interested.
Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif met in London in April 2008 to iron out their differences. Each was accompanied by trusted aides. Two elected Muslim League parliamentarians flanked Nawaz Sharif. Two unelected political fixers, Rehman Malik and Husain Haqqani (the first a submissive courtier, the second a crucial link to Washington), sat with Zardari. No consensus could be reached on the restoration of the judiciary and this inevitably produced cracks in the alliance. After consulting senior colleagues, Nawaz Sharif withdrew Muslim Le
ague ministers from the central government, citing disagreement on this issue. It is extremely rare in Pakistan for any politician to relinquish office on an issue of principle. Nawaz Sharif’s popularity in the country soared. Zardari’s action provoked the deepest indignation among the supporters of the judiciary and a number of senior figures in the PPP were clearly unhappy at the public embrace of Musharraf. But having accepted Zardari as their temporary leader they had rendered themselves powerless. As the party’s guardian, the Bhutto family had deprived their ward of any intrinsic political identity and no group inside it was capable of formulating an independent political program. PPP politicians had grown so accustomed to the Bhutto harness that they could take no step without it. This is a pity. As I have argued earlier, the Bhutto family has long exhausted its historical function. Were the PPP to rid itself of this incubus, democracy could only be enhanced, even if it took a few years for its leaders and members to overcome their political numbness and become articulate again. In the meantime, the initiative lies entirely with Zardari and his close advisers. They make the key decisions, utilizing Prime Minister Gillani and the PPP cohort in parliament as a rubber stamp. For the moment this suits both Musharraf and Bush. What happens after their departure remains an open question.
The campaign to defend the judiciary was the first serious nationwide mass movement against the arbitrariness of military rule since 1969. The Supreme Court decisions that challenged the Musharraf regime had restored the country’s self-respect. Its secular character had disproved the myth that jihadi terrorists were on the verge of taking over the country. But the judges were much less popular in the ruling circles of the United States and Europe, where elite opinion was neoimperialist in outlook and obsessed with occupation and war. Pakistan’s judges were not regarded as helpful by these groups. Musharraf’s use of emergency powers to dismiss the “turbulent” chief justice had accelerated the decomposition of the regime. For defending the civil rights of the poor, the chief justice was referred to by some Western liberal newspapers as a “judicial activist” or a “firebrand.”
Washington and its allies regarded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s role in relation to it as the central priority. Everything else was seen as a diversion. What would be the attitude of the newly elected Pakistani politicians to the tempest in Afghanistan? Would they refrain from moves that might embarrass the United States and give Washington a free hand? In March 2008, Admiral Eric T. Olson, the head of the United States Special Operations Command, arrived in Islamabad for consultations with the Pakistan military and surprised locals by demanding a roundtable meeting with the country’s elected leaders, another first in the country’s history. Olson asked the politicians how they viewed the urgent U.S. need for cross-border incursions. None of the Pakistanis who responded regarded this as a good idea and they made their opposition very clear. The seniormost civil servant in the Frontier, Khalid Aziz, told Olson that “it would be extremely dangerous. It would increase the number of militants, it would become a war of liberation for the Pashtuns. They would say: ‘We are being slaughtered. Our enemy is the United States.’”
For Nawaz Sharif the possibility of the killing of Pakistani citizens in the Frontier Province by U.S. troops ruled out this arrangement as a serious option. He believed that negotiations with the militants in Waziristan and a gradual military withdrawal from the area were essential to deter terrorist attacks in the large cities. The PPP was more equivocal on, but it too was firmly against, NATO raids inside Pakistan. The ANP leaders in the Frontier, who had hitherto been supportive of the U.S. presence in neighboring Afghanistan, were not prepared to give Washington a blank check and supported negotiations with Baitullah Masood, a pro-Taliban militia leader in South Waziristan, accused by the CIA of masterminding Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, a claim denied by some of Bhutto’s closest colleagues. Two senior ANP leaders, Asfandyar Wali Khan (the grandson of the late Ghaffar Khan) and Afrasiab Khattak, were summoned to Washington for meetings with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and John Negroponte. There was only one point on the agenda: cross-border raids. Washington was determined to find Pakistani politicians who would defend them. Both ANP leaders refused. Later, Khattak informed the New York Times, “We told them physical intervention into the tribal areas by the United States would be a blunder. It would create an atmosphere in which the terrorists would rally popular support.” That this needed saying is worrying.
Owais Ghani the governor of the Frontier Province and, interestingly, a Musharraf appointee, also reiterated this view, “Pakistan will take care of its own problems, you take care of Afghanistan on your side. Pakistan is a sovereign state. NATO is in Afghanistan. It’s time they did some soldiering.”
On May 18, as if to underscore that the United States was not overly worried about the views of elected politicians, a Predator drone bombed Damadola in the Bajaur Agency in Pakistan and killed over a dozen people. The United States claimed that they had targeted and killed a “significant leader.” Akhundzada Chattan, the member of parliament from the Bajaur Agency and a PPP veteran, called a press conference and denounced the United States in strong language for “killing innocents.” Local PPP leaders backed him up strongly, especially when he repeatedly insisted that “the protest lodged by the Pakistan government against the missile raid is not enough. The government should also sever diplomatic ties with the U.S. and expel its ambassador immediately.”
Chattan said that a clear pattern had now been established. As soon as the Pakistan government and the local insurgents began to talk to one another and discuss a durable peace, NATO targeted the tribal areas inside Pakistan and killed innocent people. He warned Washington to cease these activities and issued an appeal to the tribal elders, the insurgents, the Pakistan army, and the new government to cast aside all other differences and unite against “foreign aggression.” This dissent in the PPP suggests that Zardari’s ascendancy is perhaps not as secure as he might imagine. It is also another reminder that the decision of successive Pakistan governments to keep the tribal areas formally separate from the rest of the country is counterproductive. Such an anomaly prevents political parties and other organizations from functioning in the region, leaving political control in the hands of tribal leaders, usually with dire results.
As if these developments on the Afghanistan border were not big enough problems by themselves, the country as a whole is in the grip of a food and power crisis that is creating severe difficulties in every city. Inflation is out of control and was approaching 15 percent in May 2008. Gas, which is used for cooking in many homes, has risen by 30 percent in the past year. Wheat, the staple diet of most people, has seen a 20 percent price hike since November 2007 and, while the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization admits that the world’s food stocks are at record lows, there is an additional problem in Pakistan. Large quantities of wheat are being smuggled into Afghanistan to serve the needs of the NATO armies. It is no secret in Pakistan that some of the smugglers include the newly elected parliamentarians. Their triumphant, smiling faces conceal odious calculations. Politics is a way to make money. The few hopes aroused by the election have faded. The poor are the worst hit, but middle-class families are also beginning to be affected.
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POLITICS IN A land of perpetual dictatorships and corrupt politicians is undoubtedly depressing, but with some positive aspects. For one, politics has revived an interest in stories from the popular literature of an earlier period of Muslim rule in the region. The following tale, first told by a sixteenth-century storyteller, repeated to me in Lahore in 2007, sums up, with a few modifications, life in Pakistan today: A man is seriously dissatisfied with a junior magistrate’s decision. The latter, irritated, taunts him to appeal to the qadi (a senior judge). The man replies, “But he’s your brother, he won’t listen to me.” The magistrate says, “Go to the mufti [expert in Muslim law].” The man replies, “But he’s your uncle.” The magistrate says, “Go to the minist
er.” The man replies, “He’s your grandfather.” The magistrate says, “Go to the king.” The man replies, “Your niece is engaged to him.” The magistrate, livid with anger, says, “Go to hell then.” The man replies, “That’s where your esteemed father reigns. He’ll see to it I get no satisfaction there.”
Official history is mainly composed of half-truths and outright lies, in which everything is attributed to well-meaning rulers and noble, pious sentiments. Those who write this are worshippers of accomplished facts, rallying to the side of victors. Sometimes a general, sometimes a politician. Success justifies everything. There is another history that refuses to be repressed.
Pakistan’s satirists, writers, and poets generally refuse to silence their voices. They serve as the collective conscience of the country, and life without them would indeed be bleak. They often sight victory in times of defeat. The Punjabi poet and novelist Fakhar Zaman, who as a PPP activist served his time in prison during the Zia dictatorship, is one who refuses to relinquish hope:
How can he who lost his eyesight paint?
How can he who lost his hands sculpt?
How can he who lost his hearing compose music?
How can he whose tongue was cut out sing?
How can he whose hands are tied write poetry?
And how can he whose feet are fettered dance?
With muffled nose and mouth how can one inhale the scent of flowers?
But all this has really happened:
Without eyes, we painted
Without hands, we sculpted statues
Without hearing, we composed music