Where do we stand?

Other forces in the field are at least four. The loudest and the most significant are religious parties that exploit Islam for their politics. This is a rainbow force comprising any number of parties or groups. At one end, there are the Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI; at the other end are many hard and violent parties-cum-militias: the allies of al-Qaeda and Taliban. Most of these Islamists double as sectarian terrorists while some have kept Kashmir Jihad alive. Islamic ideology is a vague concept. Shorn of support its proponents get from the military in the managed polls they will soon be defeated. They have been penetrated by various intelligence agencies as well as by timeservers and mafiaso.

The PPP and PML (N) are the mainstream parties. These have been used and manipulated by Musharraf and previous Army Chiefs. Unless something new happens, none of them can win power for itself. Ultimately both of them depend on the Americans or other circumstances like another general to put them in power. They have not accurately assessed the national situation. Consequently they have no solutions for Pakistan's problems. They have no idea how to solve the problem of growing unemployment, poverty, masses' depressed living conditions amidst high GDP growth rates, not to mention foreign indebtedness. Both parties implemented the IFIs' dictated policies that have increased the prosperity of the elite classes while also increasing the poverty and misery of the larger masses.

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This situation should be the main focus. Insofar as the Americans are concerned, until now they do not appear to have any Plan B; what happens when something happens to General Musharraf? Although they can improvise quickly enough, the exact situation is that Pakistan is stuck with the present military dictatorship and there is no democratic way out of it, given the techniques of managing elections, a la 2002. In terms of likelihood, for the time being, the nation is stuck with the regime and it is incapable of doing anything serious about itit will get the wages of impotence.

Other forces in the nation are crystal clear: they are regional nationalists. There are Pushtoon, Baloch, Sindhi and even Mohajir (regional) nationalists. The MQM does have a credibility problem. But it is for it to emerge as a genuine nationalistic force. Some regional nationalists are already at war with the central government in some areas of Federally Administered Tribal Areas. There is serious Baloch nationalist consciousness and much action in Balochistan; a mini war is being waged by a Baloch Liberation Army. The Sindhi nationalists are loudly restive, though their ability to compose their personal differences and, given the class composition of their leadership, does not hold much promise. Sindhi nationalists, as now constituted, are not a serious threat to the military regime. There are traces of regional nationalisms in the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir. What obtains in Punjab is a Punjabi chauvinism, based on vague Islamic shibboleths that pass muster as Pakistan Ideology. It is a serious conservative force that sustains the military rule.

Pakistan polity has now to contend with various heroin- and klashnikov-dealing syndicates, organizations of smugglers and pure crime syndicates. These mafias seek respectability and have thirst for power. They are infiltrating politics mainly through religious parties. Anyway, there is no other explanation for religious parties being flush with unexplained money. But maybe these are sneaking into other parties also.

Superficially there are many crises; they begin with the federation's crisis. Over-centralisation represented by the military has generated radical challenges to its power in the FATA as well as in Balochistan. Indeed, in Balochistan it is regular insurgency; it is growing into something very dangerous.

There is a deep systemic crisis created by the regime's tom-tommed economic successes. The government continues to propagate its own successes. No refuting of governmental claims is necessary. Every nonofficial economist or observer is struck by the growth of unemployment and poverty. The government's social spending continues to be abysmally low. Paucity of health and educational facilities is obvious. A commoner meets the state as a police constable, taxman or clerk in a government office. Nothing gets done without an exchange of currency notes. The systemic corruption has made the society a tinder box. The Militias' growth is due to these facts of life. Under what ideology they operate is a matter of circumstances; what is available to common man is either Mullah or some other extremist to lead them.

Systemic corruption ensures the failure of any party being able to give Pakistan a purposeful representative government. Democracy collapsed within a few years of Pakistan's creation and has eluded it ever since. Political ineffectiveness, sloganeering instead of thinking, absence of rational thinking and prevalence of intolerance create a fascination for violence. Explanation can begin either in the middle ages, when the Muslims stopped thinking or to accept creative ideas. Rigid taqleed produced collective decadence, formalism and loss of élan vital. Or we can take recent hard facts as the cause of Muslims' dogmatism and intolerance of all differences of opinion and a tendency toward violence. Why wonder that polity's unity is now threatened.

What is not clear is the precise reason why Pakistanis have made such a mess of things. Muslim community before 1947 was confused, intellectually unhinged by the consolidation of British power and no tradition of creative thinking or ability to improvise. Later, power in East Pakistan was in the hands of lower middle class, while in western wing it resided in the landed gentry that quickly decided to end the Bengali majority and found the way in accepting the leadership of bureaucracy that was thought to control the Army. That took time to materialize in 1971. Pakistan was vivisected because of this social difference on top of ethnic factors in the leadership of the two zones, a thousand miles apart.

In the residual Pakistan, all of us are stuck with Army's rule. This is a disgrace to its people. But there, it is because the generals command about 750,000 rifles and many tanks and aircraft. Social elitesof at least Punjab and partially Sindhlove Army rule. The latter's countervailing force can only be the united voice of the people. This is absent. Why? Because people are weighed down by sterile old ideas of a dead past and a social and economic system that has not changed in essentials since the Sultanates period. Grinding poverty of bottom 40 to 50 per cent, in combination with puerile prejudices in the heads and no sane and creative advice from parties or intellectuals being available, people are wandering in a wasteland. So long adequate leadership does not emerge, they are fated to wander on aimlessly or to fight wrong wars at wrong times and by wrong weapons.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.