The World Today: PAKISTAN: Back to the Future

The World Today
November 1999

PAKISTAN: Back to the Future
By Maleeha Lodhi

For much of its fifty-two year history Pakistan has lurched between ineffectual civilian governments and military rule. Half its independent existence has been spent under direct or indirect military control. Political instability has been endemic. Pakistan’s quest for a stable and viable political order has proved frustratingly elusive.

The latest intervention by the army on 12 October is driven by an urgent need to deal with Pakistan’s growing crisis of governability. This in turn is the product of half a century of political failures, institutional decay, missed economic opportunities, postponed reforms and civil and military misrule. The increasing asymmetry between a centralised, over extended state and weak civil society and an even weaker civic culture is at the heart of the crisis.

The October military takeover by army chief General Pervez Musharraf was the fourth coup d’état. The first in 1958 lasted a decade; the second in 1969 paved the way for the country’s first elections, but also led to a civil war that culminated in the secession of Bangladesh. The third, under General-turned-President Zia ul Haq in 1977, ushered in the longest spell of military rule, lasting eleven years.

Familiar and expected

This coup was thus neither an unfamiliar event nor an unexpected one. What precipitated it was Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif’s abrupt sacking of the army chief just a year after he had dismissed his predecessor. Differences between the two centred as much on Sharif’s wayward and erratic governance as his handling of the May-June conflict in Kashmir. Even though two weeks before the coup, Sharif had confirmed that Musharraf would complete his tenure, his volte face was the trigger for an increasingly restive army to strike back and oust the Prime Minister.

Few in Pakistan were either surprised or unhappy with this dramatic turn of events. Sharif’s unpopularity had grown because of his increasing authoritarianism and personalisation of power, as well as his failure to stem, much less reverse, the country’s spiral of decline. The economy crumbled, law and order deteriorated and public discontent grew, especially in the smaller provinces.

Using his enhanced powers to subvert civil liberties and undermine democratic institutions, Sharif manipulated the constitution for personal ends and sought to blur the distinction between his government and the state.

Few democratically-elected leaders had assumed office with as many advantages as Sharif: a decisive parliamentary majority, unequivocal backing from the civil-military establishment and considerable public goodwill. Yet a unique opportunity was squandered. The confluence of unattended problems—an unprecedented financial crisis and growing lawlessness—and a government acting randomly and autocratically—sowed the seeds of Sharif’s eventual downfall.

In his two and a half years in power Sharif, like his bitter opponent Benazir Bhutto, showed he had learnt little from his first stint in office (1990-93). His confrontational style thrust him into seemingly endless tussles with the presidency, the judiciary, the press, opposition parties—whose ranks were swelled by virtually all of his former political allies—and eventually the army.

This confrontational approach drove Sharif to emasculate the presidency, muzzle parliamentary dissent, repress civil liberties and bring the judiciary to heel. His exploitation of religion for political purposes opened up a pandora’s box and fostered the resurgence of orthodoxy and militancy. This fuelled growing religiously-inspired violence which manifested itself in the worst sectarian conflict in the country’s history.

His government was unable to deal effectively with the country’s chronic macro-economic instability or to decisively halt the descent into lawlessness. Even though a financial bailout by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-led international financial institutions helped to stave off a default on its mounting external debt last year, Sharif’s administration failed to use the opportunity for reform that could have driven an economic revival.

In a radical departure from past coups, this one saw virtually no public resistance—not even a squeal of protest. Instead strong public acceptance or approval greeted the military’s return to centre-stage. Widely seen as the only institution that could help bring order and stability to a leaderless country in unprecedented economic, political and social disarray, the army reinforced its credentials as the ultimate arbiter and saviour.

That, however, does not diminish the daunting challenges and difficulties ahead for the military government, especially as expectations are high for the new dispensation to deliver what inept and venal politicians consistently failed to.

Far from edifying

Pakistan’s experience with military rule is far from edifying. In the Ayub Khan period in the 1960s, the military acted as a modernising force and ushered in economic growth and development. But this was achieved at the cost of growing social and provincial inequalities that were later to explode in mass public protests that overwhelmed his administration and led to Ayub’s ouster.

General Zia’s long military dictatorship was even more controversial and left the most troublesome legacy. Many present day problems, such as a runaway fiscal deficit, ethnic and sectarian tensions, general lawlessness, weakened state institutions including the judiciary, and reduced administrative effectiveness in dealing with threats to order, can be traced to Zia’s rule.

Added to this volatile mix was General Zia’s engagement in the long Afghan war. This won him international applause and legitimacy, but exposed the country to a multidimensional aftershock: the proliferation of weapons and narcotics, as well as state patronage of orthodox and increasingly militant religious organisations whose fervour to promote the jihad was not limited to expelling the Russians from Afghanistan. The culture of violence that subsequently pulverised the country and strained the national fabric was spawned by the Zia years.

The use of public assets to set up networks of venal dependency between politicians and state institutions not only fostered a pervasive system of patronage and corruption but also drained scarce public resources.

Missed opportunity

The Zia years were an extraordinary missed economic opportunity. Just when generous levels of western aid were forthcoming for a country regarded as a key Cold War ally, remittances from overseas Pakistanis were also peaking. But the $25 billion in remittances was not translated into investment in productive sectors. A uniquely fortuitous situation was thus frittered away by a regime whose fiscal irresponsibility left unprecedented budget and trade deficits.

Faced with this legacy and the end of Pakistan’s Cold War importance, Zia’s civilian successors working in an uncharted democracy only compounded the financial woes by borrowing their way out of the situation. Crushing internal and external debt was created. This remains among Pakistan’s most pressing economic problems.

The country’s new military rulers seem all too aware of this record and have pledged to break with tradition. General Musharraf’s first public announcement, soon after the takeover, cited economic revival as his top priority and Sharif’s failure to halt the economic slide as one of the main justifications for his action.

The generals, who now rule with civilian technocrats, confront a formidable array of challenges. They range from saving the country from financial bankruptcy to rebuilding tattered state institutions and above all restoring public faith in government.

The challenges also involve dealing with multiple sources of domestic civic disorder. These reflect the fallout of the country’s regional engagements, especially the resurgence of religious orthodoxy and extremism being fanned from across the border by a Taliban-run Afghanistan.

Healing national wounds and promoting reconciliation between the centre and disaffected provinces and ethnic minorities will also be crucial to reviving confidence. Uniting the country behind a reformist agenda will entail wrenching changes and require a broad consensus.

In his first national address, General Musharraf announced a wide-ranging agenda of reforms, promising to return the country to real and not what he called the sham democracy of the past decade, once an enabling environment had been created for genuine democracy. This suggests that a return to civilian rule may have to wait at least a couple of years so that reforms can put Pakistan back on the economic rails and depoliticise state institutions in utter disrepair.

Ironies abound

Ironies abound in this new phase of Pakistan’s volatile history. The military is promising to rebuild the economy and institutions to whose weakening it has itself contributed. It is also assuring protection for religious and ethnic minorities which democracy failed to protect, despite constitutionally-guaranteed rights that could easily have been enforced.

Significantly, Pakistan’s new military ruler has called for religious tolerance and invoked the liberal vision of the country’s founder, Mohammad Jinnah, to define the modern, moderate direction he wants the country to move in. This is also intended to assuage domestic and international concerns about the danger of a slide towards a clerical state.

There are other paradoxes too. Public approval for a military-run Pakistan is high, even with the robust desire for fundamental freedoms and civil liberties. Disenchanted with the performance of the professional practitioners of democracy, the people are willing to give the military another chance. Nobody in Pakistan, not even the military, believes that a military-dominated National Security Council can be a longer term substitute for democracy. But the widespread view is that the country must be extricated from the mess it is in and put on a viable path to economic revival before democratic politics can return.

Engagement

The support of the international community will be critical to Pakistan’s ability to avert bankruptcy and to stage an economic recovery, thus establishing sustainable longer term stability. With high stakes in the stability of the world’s newest nuclear power, the international community is nevertheless placed in a predicament. While not wishing to openly condone an interruption of democracy, the US-led international community has nonetheless reacted in a restrained manner to the unfolding drama. And behind the tough posture of key western countries and the European Union, there is a policy of constructive engagement rather than isolation.

The outside world is gradually coming around to share the opinion of most Pakistanis that however imperfect and politically incorrect, the new dispensation should be given a chance. For should this experiment in military-sponsored reform falter or fail, there is little standing in the way of a descent into an abyss of lawlessness and insolvency—an explosive mix that holds the risk of Pakistan’s eventual Lebanonisation.

If this experiment does not work, the nightmare scenario that may emerge is one where extremists of different hues will drive the country towards chaos and fragmentation, filling the vacuum created by the discrediting of traditional political forces and further eroding the writ of the state.

Dr Maleeha Lodhi, Editor of The News, Pakistan’s leading English daily paper, was Ambassador to the US from 1994 to 1997 under the government of Benazir Bhutto and the caretaker administration of President Leghari.