Showing posts with label Pakistan Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pakistan Politics. Show all posts
THE leaders in Pakistan seem possessed by magic. Is there another logical explanation for the deliberate effort of our rulers to nurture and strengthen the scourge of terror? The debate on whether the terrorists are misguided simpletons or vicious agents of our external enemies is now over. Led by Imran Khan we have concluded that those opposed to terrorists are enemies of peace. Can the noises made by these ‘dollar-inspired’ critics, demanding identification of redlines and non-negotiable issues, be anything other than crafty efforts to sabotage peace?
The prime minister confidently claimed in Turkey that the TTP would soon be the harbinger of good news. Within hours the TTP claimed mowing down another dozen or so policemen in Karachi (young men who had just committed themselves to serving the state). Why? In retaliation for action against terrorists in Peshawar and Swabi, says the TTP. The interior minister insists that talks and terror can’t go hand in hand. But they can go hand in glove, can’t they? The TTP can continue to fight and talk, and the state can continue to grovel and appease.
What is our obsession with large-scale operations anyways? Is it a part of our national psyche to act only when the enemy is banging down the gates? The Lal Masjid brigade was deliberately allowed by the state to emerge as a nuisance. It wasn’t nipped even after the fatwa that Pakistani soldiers if killed fighting Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas did not deserve a Muslim funeral. It wasn’t nipped in early 2007 when its vigilantes occupied a library or started enforcing morality in the neighbourhood.
And when it was nipped, it wasn’t done by shutting down water or electricity or using gas to snuff out residents, but through a massive military operation that is now used to illustrate the concept of ‘excessive use of force’ in the textbook on how not to do things. No efforts have been made since to sanitise militant-festered seminaries in the capital. No criminal responsibility could be pinned on Abdul Aziz who was released from detention and reinstalled in Lal Masjid. Aziz is now back in the business of declaring the constitution illegitimate and threatening the state with the wrath of suicide attackers in the TTP stockpile.
A former chief secretary of KP explains that Fazlullah too started out as a nuisance. By 2006 Fazalullah had managed to terrorise the local administration and had the support of around 200 fighters (150 locals and around 50 foreigners). The chief secretary decided to surround Fazlullah’s village and arrest him, which he claims could be accomplished easily at that stage. All he needed was 650 men from the police and the Frontier Constabulary. But despite throwing all his influence behind the plan, he could garner no support in Rawalpindi/Islamabad.
Eventually the Fazlullah problem grew bigger and graver and a massive military operation had to be launched to clean up Swat. We have followed the same pro-festering model to the dot vis-à-vis the TTP in North Waziristan, which is now the TTP’s emirate (drones being the only intrusion in exercise of its exclusive sovereignty). Meanwhile, the TTP-led terror syndicate has strengthened its ability to execute terror attacks across Pakistan and has begun claiming its pound of flesh in Karachi as well.
Can the present mode of negotiations produce anything other than terms of surrender to the TTP? Lets forget about the enforcement of Sharia for a moment and review the other uncontested demands. After having lost hundreds of soldiers and thousands of citizens, can the state withdraw troops from Fata and hand over all tribal agencies to the TTP? Can the state release over 4,000 prisoners accused of terror-related crimes across Pakistan or convicts, such as Aqeel and Imran Sadiq —masterminds of the GHQ attack?
The problem with peace negotiations is that they are not being conducted with a foreign state but an indigenous terror group. You can negotiate the release of prisoners after an interstate war because they go back to a different territory. How do you release terrorists who have admittedly masterminded or killed policemen, soldiers and citizens and have every intention of killing more once released? What legal or moral basis does the state have to prosecute or keep some criminals locked when others are literally allowed to get away with murder?
The negotiations under way have no future so long as Pakistan perceives itself as a sovereign nation state capable of exercising authority over its territory. There are simply no principles of law or morality that support any deal with the TTP other than committing more resources to mainstream Fata, which the TTP doesn’t care much about. The negotiations have no future also because for them to succeed the TTP would need to get out of the business of terror, which would deprive it of its financial resources and the power and influence it wields.
The negotiations have no utility because if the idea was to run a replay of Swat, it has backfired. The peace deal in Swat and its aftermath exposed Fazlullah’s outfit and caused enough revulsion to leash up public opinion in favour of an operation. But Fata is no Swat and this time TTP isn’t exposing itself either. The talks between pro-TTPers in power and pro-TTPers out of power have mainstreamed TTP’s noxious narrative and not isolated it.
Having dressed up herd-followers as leaders should we complain about lack of courage, conviction and clarity in their actions?
The writer is a lawyer.
sattar@post.harvard.edu
Twitter: @babar_sattar
How a few wealthy dynasties dominate the nation’s politics, and get even richer.
Last month, the Election Commission of Pakistan, manifesting its independence, declared Nawaz Sharif one of the country’s richest parliamentarians and revealed his assets: six agricultural properties, a house in Upper Mall, Lahore, Rs 126 million in seven bank accounts, and other properties under the name of his wife, making him a billionaire. This may be explained by the fact that he belongs to an affluent family of businessmen. His father, Muhammad Sharif, a Kashmiri from Amritsar who moved to Lahore in 1947, had slowly built up a smelting works. He was stripped of his property in 1972 by the wave of nationalisation ordered by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but the privatisation decided by Zia-ul-Haq (who blessed the elevation of Nawaz to the post of Punjab chief minister in 1985) helped the family recover its assets. The Sharifs also benefited from the investments they made abroad, including in Saudi Arabia, where they returned (the family was already a regular visitor before) after Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. But when the Sharif family returned from exile, it wasn’t this rich. At that time, Asif Ali Zardari was estimated to be the richest politician and second-richest man in Pakistan. The Sharif brothers came fourth, according to one ranking.
Such personal enrichment of politicians is related to the scale of corruption that affects Pakistan. Zardari, who in 2008 reportedly owned several estates in the UK and the US can, in this regard, be held up as a symbol. In an investigative report for The New York Times, John Burns showed that Zardari had not only spent $4 million to purchase Surrey Palace and spent $660,000 in barely a month, but also that this money indeed came from ill-gotten gains. In 2003, the Swiss judiciary determined that Benazir Bhutto and Zardari were guilty of money laundering and had to return $11.5 million to the Pakistani state. A gold bullion dealer also reportedly paid $10 million into the Bhutto-Zardari account after the Benazir government had granted him a monopoly on gold imports in Pakistan. It is not for nothing that Zardari was known as “Mr 10 per cent” when he was minister. Whether Nawaz has also enlarged his fortune by resorting to dubious means has not been established, but the fact that the head of the executive has also become extremely rich is reminiscent of the kind of regime German sociologist Max Weber called “sultanism”, a blend of the personalisation of power and patrimonialism he first detected in the Ottoman Empire.
While top leaders amass fortunes through largescale corruption, there are other forms of corruption on a smaller scale involving National Assembly members. A report by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency based on the declarations of assets by elected members of the assembly showed that, in 2010, the average value of an assembly member’s assets was three times higher than the average value of assets of members of the previous National Assembly, many being the same people.
The fact that politics pays explains, to a large extent, why it has become a family business: elected representatives not only try to transmit their ideological legacy to their scions, but also their political business. Most parties today are associated with a lineage. This is, of course, the case of the PPP, whose official head, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, was so designated (along with its “regent” Asif Ali Zardari) by his mother Benazir’s handwritten testament in a practice that harks back to that of material inheritances. The Bhutto-Zardari line (to which Zardari’s sister, Faryal Talpur, elected in Larkana in 2008, also belongs) is opposed by the one founded by Benazir’s brother, Murtaza Bhutto, whose widow Ghinwa established a separate PPP. The other major party, the PML-N, is only in its first generation but has managed to maintain phratry unity because although Nawaz is the party “Quaid”, his brother Shahbaz is the official chairman and has been chief minister of Punjab since 2008.
The Awami National Party (ANP) has in some regard entered its third generation, because even if Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan did not form a party, he started a movement — the red shirts — which spawned the NAP created by his son, Wali Khan, whose son, Asfandyar Wali Khan, leads the ANP today. The PML-Q also belongs to the club of the “three generation-plus” parties, since the son of Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi (former chief minister of Punjab and son of Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, a lieutenant of Ayub Khan after 1962), Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, was elected to the Punjab assembly in 2008.
These lineage practices are also becoming customary among the Islamic parties. Maulana Fazlur Rehman succeeded his father, Mufti Mahmud, as head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam — or at least the faction that bears his name, the JUI(F). Anas Noorani also replaced his father, Shah Ahmad Noorani, as head of Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan and the Jamaat-e-Islami, despite its being known for the key role played by ideology, is also affected, to a lesser extent, as the daughter of former leader Qazi Hussain Ahmad was elected to the parliament.
The percentage of members of the National Assembly and members of provincial assemblies who belong to a political family increased from 37 per cent in 1970 to 50 per cent in 1993, before falling to 44 per cent in 2008, according to The Herald. Since 1970, 597 families have controlled 3,300 seats out of the 7,600 across generations. The Legharis have had 14 elected representatives in the family since 1970.
During the last general election in May 2013, the popularity of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf partly reflected the rejection of this political class by the urban middle class. Like its Indian homologue, this social group was looking for new, clean politicians out of dynastic politics. But the PTI could only come second in terms of valid votes and third in terms of seats. Well-entrenched parties are not easy to dislodge from power, precisely because they have money and muscle. And the urban middle class is in a minority anyway.
Sultanism, therefore, may continue to prevail in Pakistan, all the more so as the army has also become a kind of commercial enterprise. This process, whose outcome Ayesha Siddiqa called “military inc” or “milbus” (for military business), uses foundations, the oldest and largest of which is the Fauji Foundation (FF). The FF has developed its own business enterprises, from sugar mills to cement factories. The air force followed its example and established the Shaheen Foundation (which manufactures a wide variety of products, from pharmaceuticals to shoes), and the navy has the Bahria Foundation (which, aside from manufacturing paint, is also involved in industrial bread-making). If armymen become businessmen, they may also indulge in corruption and create dynasties.
The writer is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/ CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London, Princeton Global Scholar and non-resident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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