Going Deeper
Pakistan crisis revisited
The crisis in Pakistan has further deepened with Benazir Bhutto's demand for President Musharraf to step down from office, her threat not to participate in the January 2008 elections, and her internment.
President Bush's positive attitude regarding the unfolding drama in Pakistan and reported US plans to prevent Pakistan's nuclear weapons from falling into wrong hands, coupled with US Democratic lawmakers' concern about President Musharraf's orders to law enforcing agencies to quell opposition movement and their conclusion that "it is increasingly clear that the administration's policy has served neither the needs or the people of Pakistan, nor security interest of our country," are worrying developments in South Asia.
It would be dangerous for the subcontinent if the events in Pakistan were to lead to state failure, because the first victims of such a situation are inevitably the immediate neighbours. The world is witnessing the pressure now being borne by Chad, itself a poor country, because of the refugees streaming in from Darfur to escape the genocide that is going on the area. Rwanda and Srebrenica aside, the situation in Ivory Coast, DR Congo, Liberia and Somalia should be lesson enough for the fast developing globalised world about the features of weak or failed states, defined by William Olsen as those facing serious "internal problems that threaten their continued coherence" and "significant internal challenges to their political order." Former British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, termed a failed state as one when (a) it is unable to control its territory and guarantee security to its citizens; (b) to maintain rule of law, promote human rights, and provide effective governance; and (c) to deliver public goods to the people (in the shape of education, health, economic growth etc.)
Parts of the picturesque state of Swat have gone under the control of the forces of Maulana Faizullah, a firebrand Taliban sympathiser, and his people have hoisted their flags atop government buildings in defiance of the central government in Islamabad. A Western journalist working in Pakistan has written a horrifying account of beheading of "criminals, drug pushers bootleggers, and extortionists" executed for running "dens of iniquity" amidst public acclaim that "the Talibans have done the job that the enlightened moderates refused to do. May Allah provide us with leaders like Mollah Omar."
The applauding crowd, according to the journalist, was not Afghan or Mujahedeen, but "young men from Pakistani seminaries, school students, as well as jobless tribesmen" calling themselves Pakistani Taliban who constitute the de facto political leadership in north and south Waziristan. Pakistan today is paying the price for the myopic US-Pakistani policy of building up the Taliban with men, money and material to fight the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan. The Taiban, even after the expulsion of their rulers from Afghanistan, still remain a formidable force, and are allied with al-Qaeda and Islamists from Central Asia and Chechnya in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), described by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte as a secure hideout from which "al-Qaeda radiates to its affiliates in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe."
In this matrix one must also recognise the aspiration of some for an independent Pashtunistan consisting of FATA, and the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and NWFP and parts of Baluchistan. Whether such irredentist aspirations are taken seriously or not, the fact remains that Pakistani nationalism based only on religion has failed since 1947 to forge a strong nationalistic fervour cutting across tribal, ethnic and linguistic barriers dividing the country into many regions. It is said that Punjabi and not Urdu is the state language of Pakistan. Understandably, veteran journalist Robert Kaplan sees Pakistan as a Yugoslavia in the making, and he sees the fight over Kashmir as obscuring "the core issue in South Asia: the institutional meltdown in Pakistan. And, as was true of Yugoslavia, it is the bewildering complexity of ethnic and religious divisions that makes Pakistan so fragile."
Different ethnic and linguistic groups in a country do not necessarily give rise to "identity politics" based on group interest being greater than the interest of the people as a whole. As it is, Pakistan is bedeviled by religious sectarian conflict. The Sunnis are divided into two groups, one following the Deobandi school and the other the Barelvi school of thought. Deobandis are anti-Shia and want the Shias to be declared as infidels, and demand constitutional amendment to that effect.
The ethnic-religious divide among the people has been taken full advantage of by the Pakistani military through promotion of Islamist political parties in order to marginalise moderate political forces. The six-party combine of Muttahida Majlish-e-Amal has been the main beneficiary, and whose crucial support enabled the passing of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, enabling an indirectly elected president who "represents the unity of the Republic," and giving him power to remove an elected prime minister and dissolve the national Parliament, to dismiss Provincial governments and legislatures, and to appoint service chiefs and governors.
The reasons for the unstable situation in Pakistan are declaration of the emergency against international advice, the sacking of Chief Justice Ifthikar Ahmed Choudhury (now a number of the judges have gone due to their refusal to take oath under Provisional Constitutional Order), and President Musharraf's reneging on his reported understanding with Benazir Bhutto for power sharing.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Western interest in Pakistan continues to remain as a bulwark against Islamic extremism and, consequently, President Bush's advice to Musharraf has been to hold elections soonest possible and to lift the state of emergency. While leading South Asian analyst Stephen Cohen considers Pakistan as "a case study of negatives, a state seemingly incapable of establishing a normal political system; supporting radical Islamic Taliban and mounting jihadi operations into India while its own economic and political systems were collapsing, and internal religious and ethnic based violence was rising dramatically." Husein Haqqani (of Carnegie Foundation) sees Pakistan's weakness as being the disproportionate focus on ideology, military capability and external alliance since the country's inception in 1947, and Ashley Tellis (also of Carnegie Foundation) says: "Pakistan is clearly both part of the problem and the solution to the threat of terrorism facing the United States."
It is, therefore, imperative that international support be given to the moderate political elements to pave the way to complete civilianisation of political authority in Pakistan. The sooner the dichotomy between Pakistan the state (which is for the Pakistanis to decide) and Pakistan the nation (as giving sanctuary to aggrieved Muslims in the outside world) is solved the better it will be for all. Pakistan cannot play the role of mother to Muslims elsewhere, and must control its jihadi and extremist Islamists regardless of their political importance domestically.
The Americans should heed Leon Haader's (of Cato Institute) warning to Washington to view Pakistan "as a reluctant supporter of US goals at best and as a potential long term problem at worst." In the ultimate analysis, condemnation of Pakistan's present political course would be counterproductive, and all should help Pakistan so that peace and security of the region and the world are not put in jeopardy.
Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.
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