Is Pakistan On Way from Failing to Failed State?

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

A theatre of the absurd is on display in Islamabad with the street-fighters of Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri breaching the barricades to storm the Parliament and lay siege to the Prime Minister’s House. The denouement of this clear collapse of state authority in the face of a marauding mob is not yet clear. What is clear is that democracy has been grievously damaged, the civilian government has been reduced to a mockery and the political and administrative system has been brought to the verge of a meltdown. The question is no longer about whether or not Nawaz Sharif survives, but of what sort of a caricature he will be reduced to if he survives and what will replace him if he doesn’t survive. Even more important will be the impact of the political implosion underway on the security, stability and economic viability of Pakistan.

To be fair to Nawaz Sharif, neither Imran Khan nor Tahirul Qadri have a real case against him. Nor for that matter do they have a cogent and coherent plan on how to run Pakistan, if indeed they manage to force Nawaz Sharif out of office and take over power. Sloganeering is one thing, fixing a broken down country like Pakistan quite another. Given the brainlessness, belligerence and anarchic demagoguery on display, both Imran Khan and Qadri don’t inspire any confidence whatsoever that they are up to the job. Their main demand for now is to see the back of Nawaz Sharif. Chances are that if they achieve what they want, it will be a pyrrhic victory, one in which they will also be left out in the cold.

The single most dangerous trend that both these people have unleashed is that they have crafted a new template on how to make and break governments in Pakistan. Anyone who can now manage to gather a committed crowd of 10-20 thousand can hold a government hostage and even pull it down by causing chaos and anarchy in the seat of government. What Imran Khan and Qadri have done today, some other political party or even religious party can do tomorrow, making governance by a political government next to impossible. To an extent, this template of political terrorism or mobocracy has been on display in other parts of the world – Egypt (Tehrir Square), Ukraine, Georgia etc. come to mind. Even in India, the AAP tried something similar when they decided to besiege the PM House some months back. The AAP’s antics on Raj Path on the eve of the Republic Day parade were also somewhat similar to what Khan and Qadri have done in Islamabad. But while India’s mature polity snuffed out the AAP’s anarchist approach to politics, Pakistan is being put through a political churning that could easily escalate into a political implosion which at the very least will deal a body blow to the fledgling democracy in that country.

What is most shocking is how things have reached such a pass in just over an year since Nawaz Sharif won a resounding verdict in the 2013 General Elections. Although Imran Khan’s main grouse against Nawaz Sharif is that he stole the election – Khan has deluded himself into believing that he had won the elections – the fact remains that it was by and large a clean election and Nawaz Sharif was always the front runner. In other words, Imran has absolutely no case as far as the elections go. Imran Khan’s screaming and shouting over the elections hasn’t received much traction except among his die-hard supporters. While there is some merit in some of the criticisms (coming from Imran Khan’s foul-mouth, these are more invectives than criticisms) that Imran has made of the Sharif brothers – their style of governance, the rampant nepotism, allegations of deal making on mega projects etc. – there wasn’t anything like a mass upsurge against the Sharifs. In the one year and more that he has been in office, Nawaz Sharif hasn’t exactly worked any miracles in terms of putting the economy back on the rails, ending the crippling power shortages, creating jobs, reining in prices or any of the other tall promises he had made during the election campaign.

Although there was disillusionment with the Nawaz Sharif government, there was no simmering anger waiting to burst that Imran Khan and Qadri have harnessed. It is not as though the scenes being witnessed in Islamabad had been playing out in other cities and towns around the country and it all snowballed into a massive protest in the capital. If anything, except for a few well attended rallies held by Imran Khan in a couple of cities during the build-up to his Azadi march, there were practically no signs of such protest at the mass level. By all accounts then, this is a manufactured protest aimed at putting pressure on Nawaz Sharif to either quit or else accept subordination to the military establishment on issues ranging from defence and security to foreign and economic policy. In other words, the military wanted to restore the dyarchial system in which it called the shots on all matters of state and the civilians were allowed to run municipal functions. Nawaz Sharif, however, was quite ready to play ball and enjoy powers of the chairman of a municipal corporation with the rank of Prime Minister. Imran Khan and Qadri thus became instruments in the hands of the army to fix Nawaz Sharif.

However, as things developed, it wasn’t long before the army too lost control of the plot. It is one thing to manipulate politics through court intrigues and quite a different ball game to manipulate things through street protests. The former can be controlled; the latter have a nasty habit of going out of control because of the sheer number of moving pieces involved. This is precisely what seems to have happened in the current case. Imran Khan and Qadri ratcheted up the rhetoric to a point where they left no wriggle room for themselves to retreat. Backing down from the demand of the resignation of the Sharifs – the other five demands relating to electoral reforms, audit of elections etc. had been conceded – would have meant the end of their politics. Even the army seemed to be unable to make them back off. The grapevine is that when the duo decided to storm the barricades on the night of August 30, they were given a wink and a nod by the military which probably came to the conclusion that the only way they could retain some control over their instruments was by unleashing them.

On its part, the government seemed all at sea on how to handle the protests in Islamabad. Everything it tried – cajoling Imran Khan by initiating the process of electoral reforms, trying to drive a wedge between Khan and Qadri by treating them differently, trying to scare off the protestors by handling control of vital installations in Islamabad to the army, trying to block the path of the protestors resorting to placing of containers all across the province and making preventive arrests, giving in by and by to the demands of both Qadri and Khan – failed. Initially, they used the traditional methods – tax notices, anti-encroachment drives, arrests – to browbeat Qadri into submission. But this backfired when the police resorted to firing to quell a violent mob protesting against an attempt to demolish illegal structures around Qadri’s Lahore HQs. 14 people died and nearly 100 were injured. To compound the disaster, the political government in Punjab washed its hands off the affair and put the blame on the policemen. This demoralised the police, something that proved expensive when the push came to shove in Islamabad. Despite anything between 30-40,000 policemen in Islamabad, a crowd of around 15-25000 was able to overwhelm them! This in itself is an unmitigated disaster and signalled the complete collapse of government authority.

Already on the back-foot because of the Lahore firing, the government forbid the police from using firearms to control the crowd. Part of the reason for this was that the government had come to the conclusion that the only way Khan and Qadri would succeed in their objective of ousting the government was through the cynical exploitation of the politics of dead bodies. In other words, if some 20, 30 or 50 people were killed in police firing, it would cause such a furore that the military would step in, or else there would be widespread revulsion against the government which would make its survival untenable and impossible. This situation the government wished to avoid at all costs. The very fact that the military has been watching the unfolding drama from the side-lines seems to vindicate the government’s thinking. Given the scenes of anarchy and chaos in the heart of Islamabad, it was widely expected that the military could step in. That it didn’t for more than 24 hours could be either because it is waiting for the bodies, or else because the military suddenly realises that it too is caught in a terrible bind and has become a victim of the conspiracy of circumstances which are now beyond anyone’s control. In either case, it means that while the military retains the ability of destabilising a political government, it isn’t very confident about its own power or political capital to displace, replace or take place of a legitimate political government.

With matters reaching a head, there are now no easy answers for any of the players, even less so because constitutionally there is absolutely no way to get rid of Nawaz Sharif unless he himself decides to throw in the towel, something that he has flatly refused so far. Some analysts are of the view that the FIR filed in the Lahore firing case against the Sharif brothers might come in handy to force them out of office. Asides of the fact that merely being named in an FIR doesn’t mean a thing, there is also the issue of the constitutional maintainability of an FIR against a sitting chief minister and Prime Minister for some action he may have taken in the discharge of his duties. If such a precedent was set, then it would make any sort of governance impossible because tomorrow a chief minister or prime minister can be booked for any and every act of any government servant, regardless of whether or not he sanctioned that act.

As things stand, therefore, there are broadly four possible outcomes of the present fracas. The most likely is that the storm will blow over but will have left Nawaz Sharif so weak that he will be reduced to the Mayor of Islamabad and the army will call the shots on all issues of any importance. The second most likely scenario is that the army forces Nawaz Sharif out of office either by mutilating the constitution (the Pakistani genius for this is unlimited) or by violating it. This would however mean that the army will have to run the country directly. It may appoint some proxies (technocrats) for some time and promise fresh elections, but no one can say with certainty when or if these elections will be held because once it takes over, the army will also once again try to clean the Augean stables, a mission which will take a few years at the very minimum.

The third possibility, one which is very slim, almost non-existent, is that Nawaz Sharif survives and instead of becoming weaker actually becomes stronger by taking advantage of the domestic and international complications and compulsions that follow if the military overthrew a legitimate government. In other words, once the limits of how far the military can go against the civilian government are established, Nawaz Sharif could use the space available to recover lost ground. The final possibility is also very slim but also very scary from Pakistan's perspective. The protests could spiral out of control and spread to other parts of the country with all sorts of forces and characters exploiting the situation for their own benefit. This would make the country ungovernable and cause a political implosion that is beyond the control of anyone in Pakistan. This is the doomsday scenario in which Pakistan graduates from a failing to a failed state. Regardless of the scenario that unfolds, one thing is certain. Pakistan is likely to be in the throes of prolonged political instability.

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Published Date: 1^stSeptember 2014, Image source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com

The Neighbour from Hell - India-Pakistan: Iron in the Soul

Prabhat P Shukla, 

Distinguished Fellow, VIF

The decision to call off the scheduled Foreign Secretary level talks with Pakistan appears to have taken many by surprise, and left many in India quite unhappy. They seem to be unable to understand that a meeting between the Pakistan High Commissioner and various Hurriyat leaders could call forth such a response from the Indian Government. These persons have accepted the Pakistani argument that it was routine for Pakistani leaders to meet the Hurriyat, and so there was no call for the talks to be cancelled.

The Pakistanis have spoken with one voice, as they usually do on India-related matters; there are no doves on their side. Not one person from Pakistan who appeared on our TV shouting matches has accepted that their High Commissioner was wrong to disregard the clear message given by the Indian side of the consequences of going ahead with the meeting with the Hurriyat.

Instead, they have utilised the occasion to come across as the injured innocents, and have added that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was keen on improving ties with India; that he deserved credit for coming to India for Modi’s swearing-in and staying overnight for a meeting; that he was under pressure, and needed support, not this snub; and that the Indian action had strengthened the hard-liners in Pakistan. In short, they have spelt out the usual paradigm, in which the onus is on India to show restraint because otherwise bilateral relations will suffer.

To dispose of the most frequently-employed argument in this case: it was routine for Pakistani leaders and diplomats to meet Hurriyat representatives. All too true, but it was rarely the case that we did not make our unhappiness known to the Pakistani side. They knew well that we did not like it, but in our typical craven approach to Pakistan, we never did anything about it. In these circumstances, it is only appropriate that the Government should have reacted by cancelling the FS level talks. The fact that we did not react in this manner in the past is no reason why we should not do so now. Indeed, it is important that the Government draw up a series of red lines vis a vis Pakistan, like the use of terrorism directed against India, which if crossed would involve appropriate punitive measures.

Think about it: the Pakistanis have also made it a routine to use terror against for the past thirty years, starting in Punjab, going on to Kashmir, and then all over the country. And after each such act, once the initial outrage passed, the Indian side would crawl back into some sort of dialogue. Does that mean that this is the right pattern of behaviour? Or, take the fact that Pakistan, in egregious violation of its international legal obligations, refuses to allow Indian exports into Pakistan on MFN basis - on the most puerile of excuses. If we were to take action on this, is it any defence to say that they have been doing this for twenty years?

If the Indian Government decides to address these brazen violations of international law and takes counter measures, it would be no defence to say that these are all ongoing issues of long standing. No, Pakistan had it coming, and cannot play injured innocent now. The fact that earlier Indian Government’s did not take the required counter measures on a host of transgressions by Pakistan does not mean that that the present Government should desist from so doing.

Then there is the argument about Nawaz Sharif. There are two angles to this one: one, is he really the friend he is projected to be? And, two, even if he is, does that mean he can be allowed to hurt our interests? On the first, it would be worthwhile remembering his record since the early 1990’s. It was during his tenure as Prime Minister 1990 – 93, that the horrific Mumbai blasts occurred and Pakistan was place on the watch-list of state-sponsors of terrorism by the US. And it was during his second term that he gave us Kargil, and then allowed that he was not in the know. In fact, he was very much in the know.

And in this term, he has raised the Kashmir issue at the UN, and with the US President. He has also talked of moving forward on trade, but has refused to accept his WTO obligation of giving Indian exports MFN treatment. Cease-fire violations continue apace, are in fact, growing in number and intensity, including across the international boundary.

The second angle is equally important. From the days of Ayub and the Tashkent Agreement, we have made ourselves mental prisoners of the logic that we have to “do something” to help one or other leader. With Ayub as “best bet”, it was the hard-line ZA Bhutto, who had to be held off, with his promise of a thousand-year war. Irony of ironies, this very same man had to be helped at Simla in 1972, because he was now the man of peace! These “best bets” have been dangled before us subsequently too, right up to the present, through Benazir Bhutto, Zardari, and of course the perennial Mian Sahib; they should by now be a warning to Indian policy-makers inclined to gamble with the fate of India.

It would also be legitimate to ask, doesn’t Modi need to be given a leg-up by the Pakistanis? This same Nawaz Sharif let down Vajpayee with the Kargil War, and no one accused him of letting down a sincere interlocutor. In the same way, he has let down Modi, who clearly wanted to seek a fresh start. Even at his Independence Day speech, he did not respond to Mian Sahib’s remarks on Kashmir the previous day. And yet, our mind-sets remain the same: India must put up with Pakistani rogue behaviour, the other side has no stakes in showing concern for our interests.

The other charge is that Modi has strengthened the Pakistani hard-liners with this decision. History tells us that, in fact, the hard-liners – and they are all over, not just in the Army – were softened up after 1971, when they tasted humiliation after their over-reach. The appeasement of the last two decades has, in fact, strengthened the hard-liners. They have come to accept that India will turn the other cheek, and come back to the negotiating table sooner or later, if only Pakistan stood its ground. And this has become the set pattern of behaviour.

In fact, this is a good opportunity for Mian Sahib, if indeed he wants good relations with India but is being held back by some other hard-liners, to turn to those who drove the pro-Hurriyat stance and ask what they now propose to do. It is they who are boxed in, not Modi. The harsh truth is that we do not need Pakistan for any of our strategic purposes. There was a time when it could play spoiler, but that time is now gone. On the contrary, it is Pakistan that needs India. Pakistan needs electricity, which it is horribly short of, and there are shutdowns of up to 18 hours a day in urban centres too. Things have got to the point where it is becoming a social and political problem. We were prepared to sell electricity to them, but should now reconsider. Similarly, we were preparing to sell imported natural gas to them, and this again is something Pakistan desperately needs, since all its own import schemes have come a cropper – the country is effectively bankrupt.

All this, however, now needs to be fitted into a new pattern of relations. . Of course, this means consistency, and a steady hand: good behaviour will call forth a generous response; aggressiveness will be met with a firm response involving penal measures. It will take time, but the hard-liners will get the message. There are some externalities in the equation, and they cannot be ignored. But they can, and ought to be, be tackled with some pro-active diplomacy. It would also be imperative to look to our defences.

Essentially, what Pakistan was doing was probing Modi, testing his resolve – was he the same as all those who went before him, or was he different? They have got an answer, but the testing of his firmness, and capability, will continue. The Pakistani deep state is committed to this provocative policy stance, and has been indulged by us for three decades. It will not give up easily, and we should also recognise that they are resolute and tactically smart. But they are financially and strategically bankrupt, and those are the weaknesses we have to play on.

There is, certainly, every chance that the country will implode before all that happens. As this is being written, Islamabad is under siege from the shock-troops of Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri. Where all this will lead is anybody’s guess, but the Pakistani commentators, even the sober ones, seem to be growing ever more pessimistic about the country’s future. It may thus come to pass that the country itself might disintegrate. That poses a different set of issues, and we need to prepare for every contingency arising in our North-West.

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Published Date: 21^st August 2014, Image source: https://pakistanisforpeace.files.wordpress.com

Creeping Coup Redux: Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

A few months before the 1999 military coup, a monthly newsmagazine in Pakistan carried a cover story titled ‘Creeping Coup’. In his second stint as Prime Minister from 1996-99, Nawaz Sharif had started involving the military in all sorts of things that ideally should have been handled by the civilian government. From checking electricity meters to unearthing ghost schools to cleaning canals, the army was being deployed in the role of a sort of National Guard. The then Army Chief, Gen Pervez Musharraf was always ready to oblige, quite willingly it appeared. Nawaz Sharif, at that point in time, was unassailable. He had a 2/3^rd majority in the National Assembly, the opposition was in disarray, the nuclear tests had beefed up his position even move (even though in the aftermath of these tests, the economy had virtually collapsed), he had sacked a Navy chief and followed it up by forcing out an army chief, the ISI Chief was his man. In short, everything seemed to be going in Nawaz Sharif’s favor.

Then Kargil happened, and things started sliding very fast. So much so that even a statement from the US warning against any extra constitutional move against the elected government didn’t help. Nor for that matter did Nawaz Sharif’s efforts of going out of the way to placate Musharraf. When it came, all it took was what a former Prime Minister Ch. Shujaat Hussain calls ‘one jeep and two trucks’ to overthrow the civilian government. Therefore, the thumb rule number one about civil-military relations in Pakistan is to never imagine that the democratic process is irreversible.

A decade and a half after he was ousted in a military coup, Nawaz Sharif is once again occupying the Prime Minister’s chair. A lot of water has flowed down the Indus during this time and a lot of things appear to have changed. But as recent events have demonstrated, what hasn’t changed is the reality of the military establishment’s ability to destabilize a civilian government and box it into a corner. What also hasn’t changed is the tendency of the civil politicians, whether in government or out of it, to fall back on the military and seek its support to fix their opponents. What is more, with most state institutions steadily becoming dysfunctional, the military has become the default option when things need to be set right. If in 1999 the military was cleaning canals, unearthing ghost schools, reading electricity meters, in 2014 they have gone a step further and have been handed over the security of airports, railway stations, and other vital installations. Worse, not just is the army virtually in control of two major cities – Karachi and now Islamabad – it is practically calling the shots in two provinces – Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The democratic transition from one civilian government to another had led many to imagine that democracy had finally stuck firm roots in Pakistan. Much of the credit for that ‘historic’ transition is due to former President Asif Zardari’s remarkable skill at political gymnastics which ensured that his party’s government completed its term. But he was also aided by individuals and circumstances, without which he might have fallen well short of breasting the tape.

The first thing that helped Zardari was that the PPP was replacing a quasi-military regime and for the military to directly intervene in political affairs soon after restoration of democracy was neither politically feasible nor possible. This is a second thumb rule of Pakistani politics – it is a two party system with the civilians being one party and the military the second party; each side gets a 10 year ‘term’, give or take a couple of years. Viewed from this perspective, the current problems facing the Nawaz Sharif government could be explained as ‘mid-term blues’ of the civilian dispensation. Be that as it may, Asif Zardari got the benefit of this thumb rule. What also worked in his favor was that the main opposition leader was Nawaz Sharif who never really allowed political differences and competition reach the point of no return. Nawaz Sharif’s attitude was partly colored by his experience of the sordid politics of the 1990s when political parties conspired with the military against the government, something that allowed the Army to become the dominant political player in Pakistan. Equally important was the fact that Nawaz Sharif was not left out in the cold after the transition from quasi-military to civilian rule.

By virtue of his party coming into power in the province of Punjab, Nawaz Sharif had a stake in the system which also meant that he could afford to be patient and let the government complete its term. Apart from the role played by Nawaz Sharif in ensuring the survival of the Zardari-led PPP government, there was also a judiciary running amok under the former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and a media which fancied itself as a guardian of democracy. Add to all this the international situation that wasn’t conducive to any direct military takeover, and it’s not difficult to figure out how and why Zardari managed to drag his party’s government across the finish line in spite of a terrible record of governance.

Nawaz Sharif started his 3^rd term with some advantages that Asif Zardari never enjoyed. Based on the strength that these advantages gave the Nawaz Sharif dispensation, many observers and analysts were convinced that democracy would only get strengthened. Nawaz Sharif had a comfortable majority in the centre and controlled two provinces –Punjab and Balochistan. The judiciary and media were not hostile to him. In fact, the judiciary was beholden to him because of the role he played in the restoration of judges. The PMLN’s legendary media management skills meant that he would not face the hostility that Asif Zardari had faced from a right-wing, illiberal and intellectually challenged media. Most of all, the army appeared to be a bit on the back foot. They were wary of Nawaz Sharif and weren’t quite sure whether he will adopt a vindictive and vengeful policy towards the military. There were fears in the army that Nawaz Sharif might actually take the rhetoric of civilian superiority seriously and try to implement it. This wasn’t a problem that the army faced with Asif Zardari or his nominated Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, who were more than willing to even grovel before the military to keep it in good humor. So much so, at one point Gilani is reported to have said that he had told the then army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani that he was at the service of the military.

While the army didn’t expect this level of obsequiousness from Nawaz Sharif, it also didn’t think it would be very smooth sailing with the new Prime Minister because of his reputation for never forgiving and his legendary aversion to being pushed around or being dictated to. Therefore, some amount of civil-military tension was inherent, more so because Nawaz Sharif was expected to not just push the envelope but also push back in order assert himself and show who is the boss and who will call the shots.

In the case of the PPP government, the civil-military tussle and tension came fairly early. Within weeks of the ouster of Musharraf from the Presidency, an attempt was made to bring the ISI under the control of the interior ministry. The army let the government know in no uncertain terms where it got off. After this first chastening, the PPP consistently yielded to the wishes and whims of the military. In Nawaz Sharif’s case, it took around six months for the latent tensions to surface. Until October 2013 when Gen Kayani was in office, and given how well-set and well-established he was, Nawaz Sharif bided his time. Another restraining factor on Nawaz Sharif during his first six months in office was the presence of the former chief justice, who retired only in December. It was after the exit of both these people that the transition was complete and Nawaz Sharif was in a position to be pretty much his own boss, or so be thought because almost immediately the problems started.

There were broadly four issues that became the bone of contention. The first was Musharraf and the treason case against him. The second was the government policy on TTP or the Islamist insurgency terrorism. The third was India and the fourth was the media war which broke out after the botched assassination attempt on the Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir. All these issues prompted the political hyenas to jump into the fray, either because they thought they could exploit the growing gulf between the civilian government and military, or as many believe, they were put up to this in order to box the government into a corner.

The manner in which these issues became a wedge between the government and the military give rise to two or three more thumb rules of Pakistani politics. Thumb rule number three is what can be called the paradox of power. Briefly, this means that in Pakistan the more powerful and unassailable you appear to be, the weaker and more vulnerable you are because the anti- forces then have a compelling reason to bring you down regardless of the consequences. A corollary to this thumb rule is the ‘devil may cause attitude’ of Pakistan and Pakistanis wherein the culture of ‘bringing down the wall of the neighbor or enemy even if you come under it’ has been internalized. This corollary has implications for India because when Indians parrot the nonsense about ‘neighbors can’t be changed’ and ‘geography cannot be changed’, the perversity that guides Pakistani thinking is often ignored. In other words, the Pakistanis would go to any length to bring India’s wall down even if they perish in the process.

The fourth thumb rule is that civil-military relations are based on system of diarchy in which the civilians are allowed a free hand in taking charge of municipal functions, while all the serious strategic, defence and foreign policy matters are controlled by the military. The fifth thumb rule is that once you appoint an army chief you lose control over him. It is a unique country in which an elected Prime Minister appoints his own nemesis. At the very least, it is a unique system in which the appointing authority loses control of the appointee as soon as the appointment is made.

These thumb rules need to be kept in mind to understand why the predicament in which the Nawaz Sharif government finds itself in and despite enjoying a more than comfortable majority in the National Assembly, rumors of its pre-mature demise are starting to do the rounds.

The Musharraf case clearly caused lot of bad blood between the military and the civilian government. It is not that the army is in love with Musharraf but more that it’s an institutional response to a former chief being humiliated and being put on trial. An even bigger issue is that of senior military officials being held accountable by the ‘bloody civilians’. For Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf is both a personal and political issue. At a personal level, Nawaz Sharif and many members of his kitchen cabinet have suffered terrible indignities at the hands of Musharraf and would like to settle scores. Politically, while the hardliners realize that the Musharraf issue can backfire on them, they also don’t want to open themselves to the chance of having resiled from the tough talk they did on Musharraf both while in opposition and after coming into power. The pro-treason trial lobby in the ruling dispensation fears that they will have to pay a heavy political cost if they let Musharraf go scot free. Plus there is the entire argument that if Musharraf is left off the hook, then it will only serve as an encouragement to the next man on the horseback to usurp power. While these people are aware of the heartburn in the military, some of them argue that if they have to run the country they must have a free hand else what’s the point of being in government but without the power to do things they want to do.

To be sure, there is a split within the ruling party on the Musharraf issue with one faction advocating the hard line and another faction led by Shahbaz Sharif and the Interior Minister Ch. Nisar Ali Khan advocating caution and accommodation. What really spoiled matters was when an alleged understanding that Musharraf would be allowed to leave the country after a court allowed him to do so, was scotched by the hard line faction at the last minute. Many formal and informal advisors are now advising the Prime Minister that he should live to fight another day and not fritter away his government on as irrelevant a figure as Musharraf, more so when even the army would like to see his back. For now there is a stalemate on this issue. But increasingly it seems the army will eventually get its way.

The second issue was on how to handle the TTP and other Islamist groups. The army’s strategic calculation demanded that action be taken against the ‘bad’ Taliban and control be established over the ‘no-go’ areas like North Waziristan. The civilian government had its reasons for not being very enthusiastic about giving the army a go ahead to launch a military operation in this area. One reason was of course personal security of the members of the ruling family and party. But another reason was that an operation would mean giving a free hand to the army which would increase its political space, something the government wanted to avoid. There was also the whole issue of blowback or retaliation which would not only affect the political popularity of the government and alienate its conservative right wing vote bank but also ruin the economic and investment climate. But as things have turned out, the military finally got its way when it launched the operation. In a clear signal that it was the military and not the government that called the shots on the operation in North Waziristan, the announcement of the operation was made first by the military spokesman and the Prime Minister’s statement followed.

The third issue bedeviling relations between the civilian government and the Army was India. Nawaz Sharif was very keen and eager to do business with India. A trade deal heavily loaded in favor of the Pakistan was agreed by India in February 2014. But at the last moment the military put pressure and scuttled it. The army clearly is not ready to let the civilians take charge of the India policy and it increasingly appears that the government has given in to the army on this issue. What this means for India is that it should take anything that the civilian government in Pakistan says with a healthy dose of skepticism. In any case, India’s policy on Pakistan should not be predicated on what the Pakistanis say but on what they do and by all accounts what they are doing on ground doesn’t really inspire any confidence that there is any major shift in policy towards India.

The fourth issue which spoiled relations between the government and the military was the media war that broke out after the assassination attempt on the Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir. After Mir’s TV channel accused the ISI chief of being behind the attempt on his life, a virtual storm was unleashed against the Jang/Geo group. Much of this was orchestrated by the ISI which mobilized other news channels against Geo and used all sorts of strong arm tactics to shut Geo down. This was a moment of truth for the Pakistan media and it exposed the lie of independence of media. The ISI-Geo tussle was in part a commercial fight. For some months now, there were reports that ISI was in the process of starting a news channel of its own. Seed money for this was allegedly being partly contributed by the international terrorist and criminal Dawood Ibrahim. Also allegedly involved was a dubious business group in Dubai which is infamous for gold smuggling and also runs a TV channel in Pakistan.

The big obstacle in the path of these plans was Geo, which not only dominated the news networks and print media but also poked the ISI in the eye by exposing its media plans. As long as Geo’s domination continued, the ISI’s news channel would remain a bit player. Shutting Geo down or blocking its transmission was therefore imperative if space had to be created for another channel in an already crowded media space. The other channels became wiling partners in this misadventure, behaving like typical hyenas to bring down an adversary against whom they couldn’t compete otherwise. A prominent role in this was played by ARY channel which for months had been conducting a campaign of slander and vilification against Geo and its owners. The civilian government was caught in the middle of this media war and tried to walk the tight rope, or if you will the knife’s edge. They couldn’t ignore the army but also could not allow it to ride rough shod over Geo because if today it was Geo, tomorrow it would be someone else, perhaps even the government itself.

The Geo episode exposed the armpit of Pakistan politics and media. It became clear who stood where and how independent or subservient the media was. It also exposed the helplessness of the judiciary vis-à-vis the army, and irrelevance of civil society. The limitations of the civilian government in reining in the military became apparent. But ironically, the episode also revealed the weakness of the Army which despite all its efforts could only go so far and no further in targeting Geo. The point is that while the Army remains the most powerful political force in Pakistan, it no longer enjoys the kind of domination that it did some years back. Over the years, it has been challenged politically and militarily and its monopoly over the national narrative has also been dented.

While the Army’s ability to destabilize the government remains quite intact as does its power to overthrow the government, it probably no longer enjoys the power to run the country as it did in the past, not that it ran the country well when it got the chance. In fact, most of the problems confronting Pakistan today can be traced back to the military regimes or the military’s control over national security and foreign policy. What, however, gives the military an advantage over the civilians is the bugling and inefficient and uninspiring performance of the civilian governments – not just in the political realm but also in the economic and administrative domain. The failure of civilians to give even a modicum of good governance and solve the problems of the people has created space for the military.

Today, the political situation is once again in a bit of flux. Just one year after winning a third term as Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif’s government is finding itself under siege. Partly the situation is of the government’s own making and its bumbling and bungling ways. Apart from the fact that the government has failed to give even a little relief from the crippling energy shortages despite doubling the electricity tariffs, it is the almost amateurish political management which has created the spectre of instability despite the government having an almost 2/3rd majority in the National Assembly. For now a challenge is being mounted in the street by Imran Khan and a somewhat clownish cleric from Canada, Tahirul Qadri who is promising an instant revolution like it is some kind of instant coffee. Imran Khan, whose intellectual capacity and political thinking, is limited to drawing silly cricketing analogies wants the system to stay but at the same time is threatening to overthrow it by using street power and set the date of Aug 14 for forcing the government out of office. On the other hand, Tahirul Qadri, who was given a huge issue after the Punjab government fired on his supporters in Lahore and killed around a dozen people and injured around a 100, is making no bones about wanting to scrap the whole system.

Normally, a demonstration or even a massive anti-government protest shouldn’t be much cause for worry for a legitimate government, even less so when the demands being made by the protestors are illogical, extra-legal and even extra-constitutional. But Nawaz Sharif’s style of politics has come back to haunt him. Apart from the fact that many in the ruling party think that the agitation on streets is being orchestrated by the army to bring the government under pressure, perhaps even oust it, it is the steady isolation of Nawaz Sharif and his immediate circle from rest of the political mainstream and even his own party that is creating the impression of a government that is flailing rather helplessly. Not only has Nawaz Sharif ignored the very institution from which he derives his strength and legitimacy i.e. Parliament, he has also alienated members of his party by appointing cronies and family members to all plum positions in government. Even the decisions being taken are by a tiny group comprising the kitchen cabinet. The neglect of elected legislators has meant that they really don’t have any stake in the system. Worse, Nawaz Sharif has also ignored the main opposition party, PPP, which has suddenly woken up to the uncomfortable fact that by maintaining a posture of friendly opposition it is getting marginalized in the larger political game. The space that PPP has ceded has been filled by Imran Khan’s party, especially in the Punjab. Not surprisingly, PPP leaders from Punjab are restive and itching to take on the government. In order to keep the flock together, the PPP has now started making noises which have only added to the discomfiture of the ruling dispensation.

The nightmare for the government now is that if there are large scale street disturbances which go out of control, it could lead to a military intervention even if the military doesn’t want to intervene. The Army finds itself caught on many fronts and taking over the government will only stretch it further. Apart from confronting all the economic, political and other problems facing the government, the army will also have to face up to the diplomatic implications of ousting an elected government. Conversely, given that the army has already been involved in so many things, it might even consider taking over if things go out of control of civilian government. For its part, the civilian government has demonstrated its weakness by asking the military to intercede and convince Imran Khan to back off. It has also made a rather clumsy attempt by pitting the army against Imran Khan’s supporters by handing over security of Islamabad to the Army.

Under these circumstances, even if the current round of political confrontation passes off without incident, the government has already subordinated itself to the military and the only logical conclusion of this is that henceforth it will be left with only municipal functions while the military will call the shots on all issues of foreign and security policy including the mother of all issues which is India. What this means is that any engagement that India enters into with the civilian government will remain hostage to the Pakistan Army’s unreconstructed and unreformed view of India.

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Published Date: 20^th August 2014, Image source: http://images.thenews.com.pk

Disarrayed Dialogue: Moderate Taliban reach out to Real Taliban in Pakistan

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

After months of to-ing and fro-ing on a clear, cogent and coherent policy and strategy to combat the ‘Mother of all Problems” in Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pulled yet another surprise on his countrymen by announcing a last ditch attempt to hold a dialogue with the Taliban. Two earlier behind-the-scene attempts by the Nawaz Sharif government to bring the Taliban to the talks table – the first through Major Amir and Harkatul Mujahideen chief Fazlur Rehman Khalil and the second through some clerics – had never really got off the ground. Meanwhile, a sudden spike in Taliban attacks seemed to stiffen the back of the Pakistan army which carried out retaliatory attacks against suspected ‘bad’ Taliban targets in North Waziristan (NWA) using helicopter gunships and jet fighter aircraft. The general impression that was gaining ground was that the Pakistani state, especially the Army, was gearing up to take the fight to the Taliban and perhaps even launch either a full scale or a targeted operation in ‘Terror Central’ i.e. North Waziristan.

The Taliban sympathisers in Pakistan had been put on the back-foot by the growing public opinion in favour of a military operation against Taliban safe havens in NWA. The elusive political consensus for launching such an operation seemed finally at hand with even Taliban sympathisers like Imran Khan declaring that his party would stand with the army if an operation was launched. Even the Taliban were convinced about an impending military assault and in order to forestall it they suddenly started sending signals that they were open to holding talks with the government. In the days leading up to Nawaz Sharif’s much anticipated policy statement in Parliament on tackling Taliban terrorism, a series of statements were issued by the Taliban spokesmen expressing their willingness to hold ‘meaningful talks’ with the government.

But with ministers engaging in tough talk in public, it was expected that Nawaz Sharif would end his government’s dithering and go on the offensive against the Taliban. Alas, that wasn’t to be. Making a sharp about-turn, Nawaz Sharif once again opted for the talks tack and announced a four man committee to hold negotiations with the Taliban. With Nawaz Sharif having played into their hands, the Taliban were quick to grab the opportunity offered to them on a platter. They let a couple of days pass just so as to not betray their delight at the turn of events and then magnanimously announced their own five-man negotiating team and also a 10 man committee to oversee, supervise, guide and monitor the dialogue with the government.

The decision to give talks another chance has come as a shot in the arm for the Taliban supporters who have capitalised on this opportunity to push their sinister agenda and grotesquely morph the public discourse and debate from one centred on countering terrorism to one focussed on enforcing Shariah (Islamic law) in the country. Suddenly, those demanding action against the Taliban have been put on the defensive. With the depredations of the Taliban being explained away as the struggle for transforming Pakistan into an Islamic utopia with Shariah as supreme law, those opposing the Taliban can mount only a muted opposition to the Taliban tactics, not to their objectives. Whether or not they agree with Shariah, everybody has to pay lip service to it because not doing so is like giving an open invitation to murder.

Regardless of who the government nominated as its negotiators, once the negotiation gets centred around Shariah, as they are likely to because the Taliban have proclaimed this to be their ultimate goal, the table will tilt in favour of the Taliban. Although this is bad enough, what has added to the sense of disquiet is the fact that the negotiations will not be taking place between those who take a more nuanced and moderate view of what is Shariah, and those who want to stuff a literal and stone-age version of Shariah down the throats of the people; the negotiations will actually be taking place between a set of moderate Taliban (i.e. the government nominated committee) and hard-line or real Taliban (i.e. the Taliban nominated committee).

Out of the four members on the government committee, three – Major Amir, Irfan Siddiqui and Rustam Shah Mohmand – are known to be either closet Taliban or have publicly taken positions that represent, or at least favour, the Taliban and jihadist cause. The fourth – Rahimullah Yusufzai – has never really come out unequivocally against the Taliban in a way that he could be labelled as someone opposed to them. In short, they all have Islamist leanings. As far as the Taliban nominees are concerned, it gets even worse. Maulana Samiul Haq not only openly claims to be the father of the Taliban but also has ‘swung both ways’ (pun intended) because before he became the Taliban representative he was approached by the government to intercede on its behalf with the Taliban. Maulana Abdul Aziz of the Lal Masjid fame has known Al Qaeda links and has issued fatwas against reading funeral prayers for soldiers who died fighting the Taliban. Prof Ibrahim is a Jamaat Islami leader which has openly advocated and defended the Taliban and functioned as the political face of Al Qaeda. Imran Khan and Kifayatullah, who have begged off from the Taliban committee have also been espousing the Taliban cause. Incidentally, five out of the seven negotiators from both sides are Pashtuns, one (Irfan Siddiqui) is a Punjabi and one, (Abdul Aziz) is from a Baloch tribe settled in Punjab.

The ideological predilection, orientation and affinity of the negotiators from both sides have practically put the Taliban in the driving seat as far as the dialogue is concerned. More than the Pakistani state’s narrative, it is the Taliban narrative and demands that are dominating the discourse. Already, by appearing to go on its knees in the quest for a dialogue with the Taliban, the government had conceded valuable space to the adversary. Compounding the mistake, it appointed negotiators who tend to speak the language of the other side instead of that of the home side. Members of the government team have already weakened their sides negotiating position by providing an alibi to the Taliban on one of the implicit but critical red-lines laid down by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his parliament speech i.e. talks and terror cannot happen together.

Instead of holding the Taliban feet to fire on the issue of terror attacks, the government team members have been holding forth on why such attacks might continue to happen because groups opposed to the negotiations might try to sabotage the dialogue by launching terror strikes. Quite asides the fact that this is exactly the sort of alibi Pakistanis use with India when they conveniently wash their hands off terrorist outrages in India by blaming them on ‘non-state actors’, buying into this sort of explanation amounts to allowing the Taliban ‘plausible deniability’ even before the formal start of negotiations. In other words, the Taliban can use shadowy groups to continue with their grisly task. This is exactly what has happened in the case of the suicide attack on a Peshawar restaurant frequented by Shias. The Taliban denied any responsibility for the attack and distanced themselves from the Jundullah which first claimed responsibility. Incidentally, Jundullah is a known affiliate of the Taliban. A day later, a group claiming to be TTP (Peshawar) claimed responsibility, but not a peep has come from either the government team, or the Taliban or even the Taliban committee members who were busy blaming India and US for the Peshawar attack.

One of the government’s primary objectives behind holding a dialogue was that it would bring a halt to the wave of terror attacks and this would in turn create space for some sort of a political settlement. Although the whole premise of a political settlement with a group like the Taliban with millenarian objectives is rather far-fetched, there is the attendant problem of who to negotiate with to usher in peace. This acquires even more salience in light of the alibi, or if you will ‘deniability’, that has been granted to the TTP, which is the umbrella organisation of most of the 60 odd terror groups operating in Pakistan. The point is that if the TTP cannot ensure that there won’t be any terror strike during the negotiations then what purpose will be served by talking to it. In essence, if the TTP can’t stop the violence then it is just one of the groups and not the only group with which talks will have to be held. This is where the confusion gets further confounded. In principle, the government has declared it is ready to talk to any of the groups that is interested in holding a dialogue with the state. And yet, the entire focus has been on holding a dialogue with just the TTP. In fact, in order to woo the TTP to the negotiating table, the government is reported to have shelved the tentative dialogue it was purportedly holding with some smaller groups. But if the TTP cannot, or as the case may be, will not, deliver on a cessation of terror attacks then the entire exercise is quite futile.

The continuation of violence is only one part of the conundrum. Even though peace in itself is a laudable objective, there is no clarity on the terms on which peace will be achieved. Except for a pro forma reference to holding the talks within the parameters of the constitution (which means nothing if Samiul Haq is to be taken seriously when he says that the Taliban are fighting for upholding and implementation of the constitution which according to him is being violated by the government!), everything else is up in the air. Even the negotiators of both sides are not clear on what they are going to talk about. Not only are the negotiators speaking in different voices on what they think their mandate is, they are also having their own take on the issues that will be coming up for discussion. For instance, Samiul Haq and Ibrahim have been saying that their role will be that of mediators. In fact, Samiul Haq has said that his committee represents neither the Taliban nor the government and will protect the interests of both sides. Abdul Aziz, on the other hand, has been waxing eloquent about how the main issue will be imposition of Shariah, which even Samiul Haq and Ibrahim agree will be the bottom-line of the Taliban.

On the government side, the negotiators have already defined what according to them will be the central points that the Taliban will raise – among other things, release of prisoners, withdrawal of army from FATA, reparations and compensation for damage caused by military operations, general amnesty (including for the foreign fighters). Rustam Shah Mohmand has even gone to the extent of saying that Shariah was not an issue for the Tribals, as though they will be negotiating not with the Taliban but with the Tribals. Yusufzai has also listed these same items around which negotiations will take place. In a sense, by anticipating what the tactical or transactional demands of the Taliban will be, the government negotiators seem to be creating a climate for conceding them, more so because they have also pointed out the likely objections from the army to accepting these demands. By making public what they think will be the initial demands of the Taliban (which they suggest will have to be conceded if the peace process has to progress) they have confronted the Pakistani state – both the government and the military – with a grave dilemma. If these demands are conceded, it will embolden and strengthen the Islamist insurgents; if they are not, then the whole process will collapse. What is more, these demands could drive a wedge between the civilian government and the military if the former is inclined to concede these demands and the latter is opposed to them.

There are also serious doubts harboured on both sides about the mandate and authority that the nominated committees exercise. Although the government has declared that its committee is fully empowered to negotiate with the Taliban, the negotiators on the other side have raised questions how empowered the government committee really is. Similar questions have been raised by the government committee about its Taliban counterpart. While the Taliban have ‘reposed’ their confidence in the people they have nominated, they have also announced a 10 member committee comprising top members of the Taliban Shura to oversee, supervise, monitor and issue directions to the people who will be directly negotiating with the government. If anything, this is a clear message (if one was needed) of the subservient and subordinate nature of the committee that will negotiate with the government.

Although people like Samiul Haq and Abdul Aziz might pretend to be ideologues of the Taliban and the Jamaat Islami may behave as the political face and over-ground spokesperson of the Al Qaeda/Taliban combine, the TTP has really shown them their place. Not only have these stalwarts, who assumed that they would be riding on Taliban shoulders into power which has otherwise eluded them, been disabused of these foolish notions, their stature and status has been reduced to that of mere errand boys. The same was the message for Imran Khan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman (through his party man, Kifayatullah), who probably understood it and did not become part of the Taliban committee. But people like Samiul Haq, Abdul Aziz and the Jamaat Islami, in their desperation to regain some relevance have ended up as useful fools in the hands of the Taliban who will dispense them in the rubbish bin of history once they have served their purpose.

Clearly then, this dialogue is going nowhere. This begs the question why Nawaz Sharif decided to try this tack when even he would have known the minefield he was walking into. There are probably three or four explanations behind this decision. The first reason is purely personal. Initiating hostilities would make him and his family a target of attack. He has already backed off from the execution of a couple of Taliban prisoners after he was warned that it would make the Sharif family fair game for the Taliban. The second reason was that any operation would result in retaliation in Punjab. This he wants to avoid at all costs. After all, if the ‘controlling authority’ of the state of Pakistan becomes unsafe, all of Sharif’s plans to resurrect the economy and cement his political base would come a cropper. Third, he did not want to alienate his core right-wing and conservative constituency that has an ambivalent attitude towards the Taliban and other sundry Islamists.

Although before the dialogue started, even his core constituency was leaning on the side of a military operation, Sharif knows how fickle this sentiment is. The moment the bombs would start going off in Lahore, Faisalabad and other parts of Punjab, a clamour would start to talk to the Taliban. What is more, if things went wrong during the operation (as they inevitably would) and civilian casualties started mounting, the Taliban supporters would start beating the drums to stop the operation. Nawaz Sharif would also keep the Lal Masjid crisis in mind where first the media shouted itself hoarse demanding an operation, and after the operation was launched it switched sides and started breast beating about the casualties caused by the operation. Fourth, Nawaz Sharif is somewhat chary of using the army in a big way because of the fear that it might tilt the civil-military balance in favour of the latter. Finally, Nawaz Sharif cannot afford to ignore the impact that such an operation would have on Pakistan's game-plan in Afghanistan where the situation is already in a flux what with the withdrawal of ISAF looming large on the horizon. The last thing he would want is to precipitate matters and create a situation that sucks the Pakistan army even deeper into the quagmire by making the Taliban of all hues close ranks and turn their guns against Pakistan. It is another matter that this is exactly what would happen once the US and ISAF troops withdraw, but that is something that is still some months away.

As far as the Taliban are concerned, the dialogue works to their advantage every which way and the longer they can carry on with this charade, the more they stand to gain. The way the Taliban see it, as the US drawdown takes place in Afghanistan, their allies (some would say principals, i.e. the Afghan Taliban) are expected to start controlling large swathes of territory. Neither the Afghan nor the Pakistani Taliban would therefore like to get bogged down in a scrap with the Pakistani forces at this stage. In other words, the Taliban don’t want to muddy the waters just yet. The closer the TTP can push the possible military operation to the withdrawal date of the Americans, the more difficult and complicated it will become for Pakistani forces to move against them. What is more, the TTP would be better placed to retreat into sanctuaries under Afghan Taliban control inside Afghanistan with the foreign forces withdrawing. Of course, the Pakistanis who have put a lot in the store of their ‘strategic allies’ – the Afghan Taliban – believe that once these people start operating openly inside Afghanistan, they will squeeze the TTP and not just deny them any safe haven but push them back into Pakistan where the Pakistani forces can eliminate them. It is another matter that the Pakistanis have a inherent quality for miscalculating and misreading situations and then regretting at leisure.

By entering into negotiations, not only have the Taliban delayed the military operation (and in the process retained their safe havens in not just North Waziristan but also other areas in the Tribal Areas), they have also demolished the consensus that was developing in favour of exercising the military option. Just when the Pakistani state and society appeared to be closing ranks against the Taliban, the talks have once again widened the cleavages within the society and between the civilian leadership and the military. As mentioned earlier, they have managed to twist the debate from terrorism to Islam and sowed ideological confusion among their opponents. What is worse, the dialogue would certainly have an impact on the morale of the troops who will bristle at the spectacle of the Taliban negotiating with the Pakistani state not just as equals but also from a position of strength. The fact that the Pakistan army was all keyed up to move into NWA and had to stand down at the last moment is unlikely to go down well among the rank and file. Motivating troops for an operation that is likely to be somewhat long drawn out takes a little doing. The task becomes even more complicated when there are confused signals that are being sent about the adversary the troops are supposed to fight.

Nawaz Sharif would of course be seeing things differently. According to his calculation, if the talks collapse, it would provide a valid justification to launch military operations. But then the question arises that if 50000 casualties are not enough of a justification, how will public opinion crystallise in favour of the military option just because the dialogue breaks down. Chances are therefore that Nawaz Sharif will end up with the worst of both worlds. Not only will the talks will fail but Nawaz Sharif will also be accused of engaging the Taliban in bad faith and not doing enough to ensure the success of the dialogue. Far from public opinion consolidating in favour of use of force, it will not just remain divided but might even fragment more than it already is.

All this presumes that the Taliban version of Shariah will not be acceptable to the Pakistani state. But given Nawaz Sharif’s Islamist proclivities, it is entirely possible that he might toy with the idea of conceding many if not all of the Islamist demands. This way he can anoint himself Amir-ul-Momineen. Not that this will end the violence. On the contrary, this will lead to a new round of conflict with the Taliban who swear loyalty to Mullah Omar – after all, it isn’t possible to have two Amir-ul-Momineens. Even if Nawaz Sharif resists the temptation of becoming Amir-ul-Momineen, he will satisfy his Islamist urges by further Islamising the laws in Pakistan. He could then use this to mobilise the public behind him by taking the stand that he has done what was being demanded and yet the Taliban remain recalcitrant. In other words, the war will however still have to be fought because at the end of the day it is all about a power grab. But then this will be a war between two groups of Taliban – the faux version led by Nawaz Sharif and the real version fighting under Mullah Omar’s banner. 

Pakistan: When Enemy No. 1 Becomes Martyr No.1, The War is Lost

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

What is to be made of a society, people and country whose political leadership erupts in anger and weaves bizarre conspiracy theories because its self-declared ‘enemy no. 1’ is eliminated in a drone attack by a country which has not only accorded it the status of a ‘major non-NATO ally’, but is the largest aid giver, and one of the largest trading partners, source of remittances and arms supplier? The words ‘strategic confusion’, ‘policy disarray’, ‘social schizophrenia’ and ‘national Stockholm Syndrome’ immediately come to mind. The drone attack on November 1, 2013, that killed Hakimullah Mehsud, Emir of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has resulted in total reversal of roles with the USA being designated as Pakistan's ‘enemy no. 1’ by top political and religious leaders in Pakistan, and Mehsud, who is responsible for the killings of thousands of Pakistani civilians and security force officials, being labelled as a ‘martyr’.

While the Pakistan Army has so far refrained from any comment on the drone attack on Hakimullah, there has been an almost hysterical reaction from the political and religious leadership which is not just willing to take on the US and NATO by threatening to block the Ground Lines of Communications (GLOCs) – some quarters are even demanding that Pakistan Air Force be ordered to shoot down the drones – but is also leaning over backwards with entreaties and pleas to the Taliban to spare them from any retaliatory terror attacks to avenge the killing of Hakimullah. There is a desperate effort underway to convince the Taliban that the Pakistan government had nothing whatsoever to do with the US attack and is genuine in its desire to enter into negotiations and dialogue with the Taliban leadership without any pre-conditions. In fact, according to some reports, which haven’t as yet been denied, the Pakistani authorities were offering major political and economic concessions to the Taliban (virtually conceding an autonomous Emirate with Dubai-like privileges for local people of FATA) to woo them to the negotiating table.

Not only is the US being accused of deliberately sabotaging the ‘peace talks’ that the Pakistan government was set to start with the Pakistani Taliban, some leaders like Imran Khan and the Jamaat Islami chief Munawar Hasan have even gone to the extent of insinuating, if not outrightly blaming, the US of being behind the major terror attacks – bombing of the Church in Peshawar, the Kissa-Khwani bazaar bombing in Peshawar and the killing of the GOC, 17 Infantry Division in Swat – which followed the All Parties Conference that decided on opening a dialogue with the Taliban. Clearly, in the minds of the Pakistani political and religious leadership it is not just that the fear of the Taliban that over-rides any fear of the US, but also their loathing for the Americans which far outweighs any such sentiment that they might harbour for the depredations and devastation caused by the Taliban.

The genuflection of the civilian establishment of Pakistan (which claims the complete backing of the military establishment in this) before the Taliban betrays, at one level, the sheer defeatism with which the Pakistani authorities are approaching the Taliban for peace negotiations. But there is also a political angle to the whole thing. The anti-US tirade of the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali (whose wife and kids incidentally are US citizens!) has stolen the thunder from Imran Khan who has for long positioned himself as the anti-American and pro-Taliban champion in Pakistani politics. At the same time, there are reports in the Pakistani media that Nisar was unleashed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who wanted to avoid Taliban retaliation in the Punjab. Apparently, Nawaz Sharif had received intelligence reports that over a 100 Taliban suicide bombers had been placed in Punjab and were waiting to strike as soon as they received orders. Nawaz Sharif was therefore indulging in a dissemble to defuse this threat by taking a strident anti-US position to assuage the Taliban and dissuade them from another devastating terror bombing campaign.

Politics and the pusillanimity of the politicians aside, and notwithstanding the negative impact this has on forging the elusive national consensus on how to tackle the terrorist challenge, there are other serious questions that arise from the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud. The compound that Hakimullah was targeted in bears remarkable similarity to the Abottabad compound that Osama bin Laden lived in when he was killed by US Special Forces. Not only did both these structures stick out like a sore thumb, they were also located right under the nose of the Pakistani military establishment – Osama bin Laden lived near the Pakistan Military Academy and Hakimullah a stone’s throw away from the Miranshah military fort of the Pakistan Army. And yet, either out of complicity or sheer incompetence, the all-powerful Pakistan Army and its infamous but powerful intelligence agencies (ISI and Military Intelligence) were neither able to locate the world’s most wanted terrorist nor Pakistan’s ‘enemy no.1’. Even more interestingly, he was living in an area which is dominated by the ‘good Taliban’ – a.k.a. ‘strategic assets’ of the Pakistan Army – namely, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the Haqqani Network, without any let or hindrance. This means that either the area was an undeclared ‘safe zone’ in which all combatants could live without molesting each other, or else it puts a lie into the fictitious distinction between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. Another possibility is that the Pakistan Army was deliberately not targeting the TTP chieftain for some sinister reason.

In all likelihood, the Americans got a fix on Hakimullah, who they were hunting ever since the bombing of the CIA base in Khost in 2009 and the botched Times Square bombing in New York by the idiot bomber Faisal Shehzad in 2010, after they captured his right-hand man Latifullah Mehsud in Logar, Afghanistan early October last. Apparently, the Americans had given enough hints to the Pakistanis even before Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington in late October that they had Hakimullah in their sight and were going to take him out regardless of Pakistani reservations on drone attacks. For the Pakistanis to now accuse the Americans of sabotaging the peace talks at the eleventh hour is somewhat disingenuous.

From the shrillness of the Pakistani protests, it would appear as though the ‘peace talks’ with the Taliban had reached a conclusion. The fact, however, is otherwise. These talks had not even started. Some initial contacts had been made and some tentative understanding reached on the back channel between intermediaries of the Taliban and the government. A delegation of Ulema was purportedly going to go to Miranshah to hand a formal invitation for talks to the Taliban. In other words, there was no real dialogue underway at the time Hakimullah was killed. Everything else – the Taliban accepting the invitation for talks, the terms and conditions under which the talks would proceed, what solution, if any, these talks would throw up, whether this would be a lasting solution acceptable to all ‘stakeholders’, and whether any or all of the sides would stick to their side of the bargain or renege on it – was all pretty much in the realm of speculation.

What now remains to be seen is the impact that Hakimullah’s killing will have on the TTP and the Islamist insurgency that it is spearheading in Pakistan. The hope among some security analysts in Pakistan is that Hakimullah’s death will deal a body blow to the TTP and could deepen the divisions within its ranks. Hakimullah was seen as a ruthless and charismatic commander who was also a brilliant planner of attacks. Replacing him, according to these analysts, will not be easy. Even more difficult will be to find a replacement who is able to lead all the other commanders. But if the past record of the TTP is anything to go by, then this optimism is likely to be belied.

Every successive commander starting from Nek Muhammed to Abdullah Mehsud to Baitullah Mehsud to Hakimullah Mehsud had taken the insurgency to a higher level. While there have been differences between faction leaders and operational commanders of the TTP (including the occasional internecine warfare), by and large the commanders stuck together in pursuit of their larger objective of taking over the Pakistani state, supporting the Al Qaeda and Taliban and fighting the ISAF and Pakistan Army. It is unlikely that this dynamic will undergo a major change with the death of Hakimullah. It is possible that the TTP might agree to enter into a dialogue for reasons of gaining some tactical space; but it would be stretching incredulity to think that such a dialogue would lead to lasting peace and re-establish the writ of the Pakistani state in the territories over which the Taliban hold sway.

Instead of putting the TTP on the defensive, the killing of Hakimullah coupled with the cringing appeals from the Pakistan government and political leadership to not break off the talks, has given a huge advantage to the TTP to arm twist the Pakistani state into making concessions even before they deign to enter into ‘peace talks’. There is also a possibility that the TTP decides to first launch a campaign of terror to further force the Pakistani state on its knees before they decide to enter into talks, which again will be on their and not the Pakistani state’s terms. In either case, the weak-kneed response of the Pakistani state and its desperate desire to win the peace without fighting the war is only going to strengthen the hand of the TTP and its affiliates. While there could be a tussle for the crown of the next TTP chief, whether this struggle for power will prove devastating for the Pakistani Taliban is something that will be closely watched. The fact that the TTP and its affiliates accept the leadership of the Afghan Taliban (Mullah Omar) could prevent differences over leadership from spinning out of control. What is more, as an umbrella organisation, the TTP gives enough operational autonomy and space to all its commanders. This factor will also limit the potential of the leadership fight to destroy the TTP from within. To be sure, the Pakistani agencies will work overtime to sow dissensions between the various commanders. But over the years, the TTP appears to have developed the capacity and even structures to effectively counter these tactics. The next TTP chief could also divide responsibilities in a way to satisfy all the contending commanders and give them additional territories to control.

Hakimullah’s death is therefore not likely to deal a body blow to the TTP. If Pakistan wishes to reclaim the territories it has ceded to the Taliban, then it will have to use military force and combine it with a political and ideological narrative that weans away the support, both open and tacit, that is currently available to the Islamists in Pakistan. But this will require a complete overhaul of the national mindset, something that will require clarity of thought and time, neither of which is available. Simply put, the Pakistani state has neither the capacity nor the willingness to undertake the reforms that will enable it to defeat the Taliban. Meanwhile, regardless of the song and dance made by the Pakistanis about the drone attacks, it is clear that this remains perhaps the most potent and effective weapon in the arsenal of the US to target terrorist networks, and is therefore not going to be given up anytime soon. Pakistan will just have to learn to live with this awesome weapon, which incidentally is the only weapon system that really scares the Taliban terror groups, which is also the reason why they insist on stopping drone strikes if the Pakistani state wants negotiations. While the opposition of the Taliban to drones is entirely borne out of an instinct for self-preservation, it would seem the opposition of the Pakistani – Punjabis really – is the result of their instinct for self-destruction. 

Carnage of Christians and Other Minorities in Pakistan

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

On 22^nd September, 2013, two suicide bombers targeted a church in Peshawar, killing over 80 people and injuring nearly 150. Entire families were wiped out. Many Christian households, who in any case barely eke out an existence in a country and society where they are treated as Untermensch (sub-humans, because they are not Muslims) lost their sole bread earner. Teachers, students, newly-weds, about to be married, pregnant women, children (around 20) were blown to bits by the jihadists fighting for the glory of Islam. Of course, this is neither the first time such a carnage of minorities has happened in the ‘Land of the Pure’, nor will it be the last time such a massacre has happened because if truth be told, an open season has been declared on minorities in Pakistan. Muslim minority sects, Shias in particular and within the Shia community, the Hazaras, have routinely come in the cross hairs of jihadist mass murderers. Other non-Muslim communities too have been targeted – Hindu girls are a favourite target, Ahmediyas subjected to the worst kinds of hate crimes, and Christians not only made victims to the infamous and obnoxious blasphemy laws but also pogroms in which entire neighbourhoods are burnt by rampaging mobs. 

Every time an outrage such as the bombing of the All Saints’ Church in Peshawar takes place, there is the standard response in Pakistan: the government wrings its hands helplessly and issues a pro forma condemnation but does absolutely nothing tangible to prevent such an incident from being repeated; most politicians also issue similar pro forma condemnation not because they genuinely feel outraged, but because that is the politically correct thing to do; other politicians – to name just the most notorious of this lot, the Taliban defender and supporter Imran Khan, the flag-bearer of Islamist terror Munawar Hasan of Jamaat Islami and the Maulana who wants to run the Taliban but is currently running scared of them, Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI-F – condemn the incident but then make the whole thing sound insincere and disingenuous by adding qualifications which are really short hand for not pointing the finger at the real perpetrators but deflecting the blame to an un-named ‘third force’ or insinuating a ‘foreign hand’ (which though not always specified is often an allusion to the US, Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies).

The ugly reality is however quite different from the spin that the self-serving and scared politicians, analysts and strategists give to gruesome acts of terrorism. A son of Maulana Maudoodi, founder of the Jamaat Islami, the party that serves as the ‘Mother of political Islamism’ and is arguably not only one of the political faces of the Al Qaeda but also partners Imran Khan’s party in running the provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, hit the nail on the head when he said that the bombing of the Peshawar church was a natural outcome of creating a state in the name of religion. But even this is a partial explanation of the blood lust that drives the jihadists. Pakistan's real problem isn’t so much that terrorists are running amok, but that Islamist terrorists are operating with impunity and, to an extent, with the sanction of state. In other words, more than terrorism, the problem is societal extremism and a communalised national mindset.

Much as Pakistanis like to explain away extremism in society as something that was fostered on the country by the Islamisation policies unleashed by the former military dictator, Gen Zia ul Haq, the fact is that this mindset has been present since before independence. If anything, it was this mindset that gave birth to Pakistan, and if there is no course correction, then this very mindset will probably become the reason for the death of the state of Pakistan. Terrorism and radicalism are only the manifestations or symptoms of the deep seated extremist mindset which has been consciously and deliberately fuelled by the State through an education system in which children are taught to hate other communities, rendering most of them incapable of living in peace with not only non-Muslims but also Muslims who adhere to a different sect or school of theology.

A recent example of this climate of intolerance was when a news anchor (infamous for being part of the caretaker setup put in place in 2007 by the then dictator and self-proclaimed ‘enlightened moderate’, Gen Pervez Musharraf) who started a campaign against an elite Lahore school because it was teaching comparative religions to students in order to inculcate tolerance and understanding of other faiths, and the alacrity and zeal with which the Punjab government headed by Shahbaz Sharif came down on the school administration and registered cases against them. In such an environment, bombing of religious places of ‘others’ – Christian churches, Hindu temples, Shia Imambargahs and Ahmediya masjids – is par for the course.

Yet another example is that of the Blasphemy law. The problem with the blasphemy law isn’t so much that it is a bad law (which it is) but the extremism in society. Many places have bad laws or laws that are anachronistic. For instance, Britain has both an adultery law and even a blasphemy law but it is hardly ever applied because society has moved on. In Pakistan, however, merely accusing a person of blasphemy is enough to practically pronounce the death sentence on the person because if the people don’t kill you even before any court finds you guilty, the judge will be so terrified of acquitting you that he will pronounce the guilty verdict without applying his mind or evaluating the evidence, and if by chance he does acquit you, then waiting to kill you outside the court will be all sorts of people.

There is little doubt that a lot of the terrorism that is affecting Pakistan now is really a blowback of the Pakistani State’s policy of using jihadist terror groups as instruments of state policy. But here again, it was not this policy per se that's the problem. Other countries have also used such cynical and disastrous policies and lived to regret it and then being forced to change course and jettison such policies. But unlike other countries, Pakistan doesn’t have the benefit of the political and social space for pulling back from the disastrous course it took some seven decades ago when it first tried to use jihad to achieve foreign policy and national security objectives. If anything, it appears extremely unlikely that the Pakistani State (as it is currently constituted) will survive the wages of this jihadist policy. The reason is that this policy fits in well and feeds on the national narrative of extremism. It is both a concomitant and a corollary of the conscious spread and tolerance of extremist thought in Pakistani society. It is now part of the culture that the state inculcated in the people.

It is precisely because of this culture of intolerance that neo-jihadists like Imran Khan and old school communalists like members of the ruling PML-Nawaz invariably resort to denial, deflection and obfuscation even in the face of horrific incidents of terrorism. So terrified are these so-called leaders of the Pakistani people that they do not even mention the name of the terrorist group which carries out such attacks, even though the terrorist group openly takes responsibility for the attack. With almost the entire country suffering from a sort of national and civilizational Stockholm Syndrome, how can Pakistan even think of fighting, forget about defeating, the Taliban?

While there are still a lot of right thinking and sensible people in Pakistan, many of whom display great courage and intrepidness to openly criticise, condemn and even challenge the Taliban and other Islamist terror groups and their overground supporters, the sad fact is that these brave people don't count for anything in today’s Pakistan. The main reason for this is that they depend on the state to fight on their side but the state is run by people who are either on the side of the terrorists or are using terrorists for their grandiose, if also delusional, strategic objectives or are just too scared of facing, much less fighting, the terrorists. A prime example is Shahbaz Sharif who publicly pleaded to the Taliban to spare the Punjab from their attacks since the PML-N and the Taliban were fighting for the same cause!

Today, the PML-N is in power not only in Punjab but also in Islamabad, and given the recent resolution passed by the All Parties Conference for opening a dialogue with the Taliban, the ‘fighting for the same cause’ has now been taken to the next level, in which the Taliban have been made ‘stakeholders’ in the system. In such a situation, the massacre of minorities is a small price to pay, especially when the PML-N storm-troopers in Punjab have also participated in pogroms against Christians. Therefore, chances are that in the coming weeks, months and years, there will be many more such incidents, all of which will be followed by the usual meaningless statements of condemnation and bizarre conspiracy theories.