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