Ground Realities
Pakistan, or how a dictator humiliates a country
General Pervez Musharraf has just proved how fragile the state he rules by fiat remains. He has defied the Supreme Court and turned his back on civilised behaviour to demonstrate to the hapless people of his country and to the world at large that when it comes to a question of survival, a dictator will do anything and everything to ensure that he goes on and everyone else goes fleeing for dear life.
The unceremonious manner in which former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was bundled off into fresh exile in Saudi Arabia, a mere four hours into his return to Pakistan, on Monday simply reconfirmed our worries that government by illegitimacy remains a potent danger for nations economically deprived and politically tenuous.
There are some other dark truths that Nawaz Sharif's forcible deportation to Saudi Arabia have revealed through the high-handedness of the Pakistani military regime. A definitive one is that with men like Musharraf in power, it becomes rather easy for other nations, those with clear economic clout, to intervene unabashedly in the internal politics of a poverty-stricken country.
The representative of the Saudi royal family and the son of Lebanon's late Rafik Hariri saw little that was immoral in the way they turned up in Pakistan to explain the case for the Musharraf regime in the Sharif affair.
The deposed prime minister, they noted without batting an eyelid, owed it to his conscience to fulfill his part of the bargain he had reached with Musharraf and the Saudi royals seven years ago, about staying in Saudi Arabia and out of politics for ten years. What was conveniently not explained was the universally acknowledged idea that any deal made under duress was not acceptable in terms of the law.
Neither did either of the two men care to tell Pakistanis that Pakistan's Supreme Court was a much more credible institution than any foreign-based monarchy.
You could go on exploring this entire issue of how badly, sometimes viciously, foreign nations interfere with the political process of a sovereign country, and thereby keep its people from fully realising their potential. There used to be a time when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took it upon himself, as prime minister, to warn anyone outside Pakistan and wishing to challenge its sovereignty to keep off. But that was for a few years, until early 1977 when Bhutto himself was compelled to seek Middle Eastern support in his bid to tame the increasingly violent opposition to him after the elections in March that year.
Overall, though, you might argue that Pakistan's fate has, by and large, traditionally been decided by others. What the Saudis have just done is a mere continuation of that process, though you would be right to suggest that General Musharraf has carried this whole idea of foreign involvement in Pakistan's politics to ludicrous heights.
From a properly historical point of view, though, Pakistan's dependence on foreign powers, be it in conducting diplomacy or handling irksome democratically oriented politicians at home, began as far back as the late 1940s, when Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan spurned a Soviet invitation to visit Moscow and instead accepted President Truman's offer of a trip to Washington. It was the beginning of what would come to be Pakistan's dependence on the West, especially the United States, in its search for a place in the international community.
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Mohammad Ali Bogra were ardent advocates of ties with Washington. Not even General Ayub Khan (and this was before he seized control of the country in 1958) proved impervious to American charm. He may have earned a few plaudits with his address to a joint session of the US Congress in 1961, where he spoke of Pakistan's desire for friends and not masters; but in truth he remained a passionate believer in close links with the West.
It was policy that would benefit Pakistan in the short run, as in 1971 when General Yahya Khan would facilitate Washington's opening to China through making it possible for Henry Kissinger to fly to Beijing from Rawalpindi. In the long run, however, such a policy would prove disastrous. The China factor in 1971 did nothing to help Pakistan persuade the Nixon administration that it needed to be saved from destruction in East Pakistan.
In the 1980s, an enthusiastic General Ziaul Haq went overboard in cobbling, with the Reagan administration, the Mujahideen resistance to Soviet dominance in Afghanistan. Once Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew his soldiers from Kabul (and by then Zia was dead), it was Pakistan that paid the price. The Kalashnikov culture that swept Pakistan after Zia would lead eventually to greater tragedy. You only have to study the history of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
It does not help Pakistanis at all when the West cheerfully acknowledges Pakistan's role as a frontline state in the war on terrorism, and when men like Musharraf take that as a compliment. If anything, that is as patronising an attitude as any. Worse, it is a clever way of keeping Pakistan's democratic forces at bay, through suggesting that dictators like Musharraf are a guarantee that terrorism will one day, sooner rather than later, be beaten.
Almost invariably it turns out, though, that with military rulers in charge, terrorists get that ululating feeling in them, one that rekindles fresh energy in their misguided belief that they are right in everything they do, and the rest of the world be damned.
In these six years since September 11, 2001, you might note, General Musharraf has only made Pakistan a far more dangerous place than it used to be. Moreover, his writ in a number of areas simply has ceased to run. The frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda cheerfully plan their future, is something he does not control.
That embarrassment is compounded by the periodic intentions of his American patrons, publicly announced to the media, to bomb terrorist positions inside Pakistan with little thought to the country's sovereign status.
It is a truism that is not much at variance with the way Pakistan found itself in trouble over the U2 affair in 1960. The American Francis Gary Powers took off from a US base in Peshawar, infiltrated Soviet territory and was swiftly shot down. Both the Eisenhower administration and the Ayub Khan military junta denied that the incident had actually taken place, until Nikita Khrushchev produced Powers before the media. It was a shame.
Ironically, however, every military ruler in Pakistan has perpetuated such shame in one form or another. And Musharraf holds perhaps the dubious reputation of embarrassing his country and its elected government when, as chief of army staff, he planned and executed the Kargil operation in the late 1990s without letting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif into the details.
All these sordid acts of successive Pakistani military regimes have sullied the reputation of a country yet unable, sadly enough, to define its reason for being. And now that a former prime minister has been handed over to a foreign country, to be kept in its territory as a prisoner, a whole new question opens up about the degree of national sovereignty and self-esteem General Musharraf has destroyed in the furtherance of his grasping ambitions.
It is an odd condition for a country to be in. General Musharraf has been handing over Pakistani citizens to be handled by American authorities on Guantanamo. Now he has initiated a process of finding prisons for Pakistan's politicians in a desert kingdom yet to know what intellectual and political freedom is all about. It is a hard slap across the face for all Pakistanis.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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