The Dawn, Pakistan April 07, 2007
Dilemmas and desires
By Irfan Husain
MANY people think a dictator's army swagger stick is like a magic wand: all he has to do to make something happen is to wave it and utter the appropriate spell, and hey, presto! The job is done. How General Musharraf must wish it were as simple as that. But if he really did have Harry Potter's magical powers, what would he wish for?
High up on this wish list must be the immediate disappearance of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from the face of the earth. How much easier life would be if Musharraf could simply make a general the Chief Justice. But as he has discovered, there are some things he simply cannot do, and one of them is to sack the top judge at his whim.
As he continues to learn, after seven years on the job he operates under severe constraints. These may not be the checks and balances democratically elected presidents often chafe under, but there are certain limits to his power. Indeed, just a mile or so from the presidency in Islamabad is a reminder of what he can and cannot do.
The Jamia Hafsa, a women's seminary, has been in open revolt against the state for several weeks. For all the might of the Pakistani establishment, the scary looking girls remain in occupation of a children's library, apart from committing all sorts of crimes, including kidnapping.
Despite the duration and extent of the provocation, the standoff continues. And yet, the same establishment has no qualms about beating up women demanding the release of their relatives, presumably kidnapped by state functionaries.
And while Musharraf would be delighted if he could quietly command the earth to open up under the seminary and swallow these armed Amazons, he is reluctant to move openly against them. Given the symbiotic relationship between the army and the religious parties, he is forced to appease them, instead of taking them on. But he should have learned that their bark is worse than their bite: when he finally managed to push through the Women's Protection Bill, even though in a watered down version, the sky did not fall on GHQ.
Even where Musharraf can use force, he has been less than successful. In South Waziristan, he has had to resort to a softly-softly approach after the army lost hundreds of soldiers in heavy fighting against tribal militants. Despite using artillery and helicopter gunships, the army has been forced to retreat into its fortified garrisons under a face-saving agreement.
In Balochistan, the insurgency continues, with daily reports of gas pipelines, railway tracks and electricity pylons being attacked. Here, too, the limits of Musharraf's power have been cruelly exposed.
Another of many unfulfilled wishes Musharraf has is his desire to end corruption. Indeed, all army dictators appear on the scene with this stated desire. And without exception, they all fail.
Over seven years of the current military dispensation, corruption has increased. According to Transparency International, Pakistan is now a far more corrupt country than it was in 1999. Tales of shady deals in high places are constantly doing the rounds. Had a civilian leader been in charge, the press would have been baying for his blood long ago. But with a general at the helm, our editors tend to be more circumspect.
The one advantage of a dictatorship over a democracy is that in the former, things can be pushed through without heeding popular opinion or legal niceties. But in all our long and painful experience of army rule, we find few generals willing to go against the tide to do what is right.
Ayub Khan, to his credit, did take on the mullahs and rammed through the Family Laws Ordinance that prohibited child marriage and arbitrary divorce, and made polygamy more difficult. But his successors could not even get taxis to run with accurate meters.The reason for this lack of courage is simple: soon after seizing power and announcing they will return to the barracks after holding "free and fair" elections, generals develop a taste for power. So they start behaving like politicians, trying to please people and build a support base. Thus they end up by falling between two stools, paralysed by their search for an elusive legitimacy.
Musharraf and Zia were both forced to take certain actions by external factors beyond their control. The former by 9/11 and the latter by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Had it not been for these two fortuitous events, these Pakistani dictators would have been mere footnotes in contemporary history: tin-pot dictators of a failing state.Both were international pariahs before the seismic events occurred, and gained in standing and delusions of grandeur only after the West clasped them to its bosom because of their temporary usefulness.
If, by the wave of a magic wand, the entire poisonous chapter of violent Islamic extremism could be closed, Musharraf's utility to Washington would cease, and he would be a suddenly reduced figure. So clearly, it is not in his interest to stamp down too hard on those pushing this destructive agenda. We should remember that around the time of the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, Zia departed abruptly from our midst to his permanent abode in the nether regions.
Reluctantly returning to the Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid, what kind of signal is this open rebellion in the capital sending Musharraf's western patrons? Can they seriously expect him to take on the armed and dangerous Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in the remote and rugged tribal areas, when he cannot put an end to this revolt by female fanatics a mile away from him?
Add to these challenges the change in America's power structure with the unfriendly Democrats in charge of Congress, and you will get an idea of Musharraf's multiplying problems. At this point, I am sure he would give up his swagger stick for a magic wand. But in the finest tradition of Pakistani dictators, he will not give up power.
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges