About-Turn in Pakistan Again

By M.M. Ali

Instability is what is constant in Pakistan. Once again the political clock has been turned back. The germ that afflicted the military brass has also infected the bureaucrat. Following in the footsteps of Gen. Zia Ul Haq, who during his time as president summarily dismissed duly elected Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan has, for the second time in three years, fired a prime minister and dissolved the National Assembly. In 1990 he removed Benazir Bhutto from office. This time he removed her archrival, Nawaz Sharif. In both instances, Khan exercised the powers vested in the office of the president by the 1985 Eighth Amendment to Pakistan's Constitution. The charges offered to justify his present decision are similar to those presented for the earlier action—" maladministration, nepotism and corruption."

Pakistani politics seldom have risen above personalities, and have been marked by palace intrigues or military coups. The three elections in the country's 45-year history were exceptions, not the rule. Each democratically elected government has been ended prematurely by the strong arm of a dictator or a manipulative head of state.

In the process, the growth of grassroots political life has been stunted. Political parties, which have helped orderly governance in Western democracies, were either banned or badly weakened by internecine bickering. In the name of stability, military dictators like Generals Ayub Khan and Zia Ul Haq destroyed the political life of the country. They used the corrupt to silence opposition and patronized decadent feudalists to stay in power. The bureaucracy became the handmaid of the ruler. Throughout this disappointing history, the United States, as Pakistan's principal ally and benefactor, aided and abetted the dictators for its own Cold War global objectives. As a direct result of the unscrupulousness of its "leaders," corruption has been institutionalized in Pakistan. It has become possible to halt the democratic trend any time a crafty individual can carry the army with him, The key is the coercive machinery, not the electorate or the elected.

Short-term individual gains have taken precedence over long-range national interests in Pakistan. It is true that both the Benazir Bhutto regime and the Nawaz Sharif administration were plagued by nepotism and corruption. Even after previous removals of elected prime ministers, the climate of maladministration remained. In fact Ghulam Ishaq Khan needed only to take into confidence the army and the civil service (he belongs to the latter as Gen. Zia Ul Haq belonged to the former) to prolong his own authority. Thanks to the late General Zia, the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution enables an indirectly elected president to dismiss an elected prime minister almost at will.

It did not take long for the honeymoon to end between Ghulam Ishaq and Nawaz Sharif. Both were courting the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. The president wanted her help to remove Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the prime minister wanted her support to remove the Eighth Amendment. The release of Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, from jail while he still was charged with "bribery" and "murder" was clear evidence that palace intrigue was at play once again.

Nawaz Sharif, in an emotional TV broadcast to the nation on April 17, charged that plotting against his government was going on at "the President's House. " On April 18, Ishaq dismissed the prime minister, dissolved the National Assembly, appointed a caretaker government, removed the governments of the four provinces, and promised new elections within 90 days. It was back to square one.

It was obvious that President Ghulam Ishaq Khan's move was well prepared. He had caused a series of resignations from Nawaz's cabinet, kept his hand-picked commander-in-chief, Abdul Waheed Kakar, on his side and had enticed Benazir Bhutto to join him. Nawaz's April 17th speech provided the excuse. Nawaz banked too much on his National Assembly support and trusted his home base, Punjab, the largest majority province, to come to his aid. However, his government's 30-month record of corruption may have eroded his support.

A Further Letdown

President Ishaq, unfortunately, has replaced the discredited administration with an interim cabinet containing men of questionable repute, like Asif Ali Zardari. This has alienated even the few who had supported the president.

In this disappointing drama, the biggest letdown has been the role played by Benazir Bhutto. She violently protested her own dismissal from the premiership by Ghularn Ishaq in 1990, but today she has acquiesced in an identical action taken by the same Ishaq against Nawaz Sharif.

If she had emerged from discussions with President Ishaq denouncing his manipulations against her rival and refusing to participate in them, she would have better I served the interests of democracy. By doing so, however, she would have missed an opportunity to get even with Nawaz and perhaps lost a chance to get some of her party members into the interim government through the back door. She has chosen short-term gain.

Benazir Bhutto knows that no amount of cooperation with him will win her the confidence of Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Whenever those promised elections are held, she will have to watch members of her own party like Farooq Leghari, Jehangir Badar, Faisal Saleh Hayath and Mustafa Khar, who have large political home-bases of their own and are capable of replacing her as the head of the People's Party.

Ghulam Ishaq also is capable of turning the tables, presenting his dismissal of the Nawaz government as a patriotic gesture that serves the national interest. Ishaq is in his late seventies and realizes he cannot play his games much longer. The future belongs to the generation of Benazir and Nawaz. It should surprise no one if Ishaq should announce his decision not to run for the presidency again, playing the role of the man on the white horse riding off into the sunset.

While Ghularn Ishaq, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto are grappling for power, the country is faced with more serious issues in the wake of the Cold War.

Larger Issues at Stake

For Pakistan, the end of the Afghan war has removed its geopolitical clout with the only remaining superpower-the United States. In the words of The Washington Post (April 21, 1993): "During the Cold War, the United States pumped millions of dollars' worth of weapons and training into Pakistan, working with this country's intelligence service to back the guerrillas fighting communism in Afghanistan... Today the United States is threatening to brand its long-time ally a terrorist state, attacking Pakistan as a rogue nuclear power and a haven for terrorists and drug smugglers ... Amid domestic political turmoil, Pakistan is struggling to cope with the refuse of a superpower battle: a glut of weapons in the marketplace, large numbers of restless, combat-experienced foreign guerrillas, millions of Afghan refugees and an unbridled drug trade ... The plunge in Pakistani-U.S. relations illustrates what can happen in a poor country when it is no longer needed by a superpower."

In fact, the close Pakistani-U.S. ties began long before the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In the 1950s, Pakistan joined the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), a U.S.-sponsored military pact against communist countries. Pakistan also entered the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and agreed to allow the United States to establish a major intelligence base in the Peshawar area close to the Soviet Union. The U-2 spyplane flown by Francis Gary Powers, shot down over the U.S.S.R. in the 1960s, had taken off from the Peshawar base. The United States also used the facility to spy on the Chinese nuclear program. All this bilateral collaboration was undertaken by Pakistan at considerable risk to its own security and heavy cost to its economy. It was revealed in several military intelligence reports that Pakistan was among the top 10 targets earmarked by the Soviet Union for strategic strikes. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made his first clandestine trip to Beijing in July of 1971 with the help of Pakistan.

That was then. Today, the U.S. government has threatened to declare Pakistan a terrorist state on charges that it harbors terrorists and aids the Sikh uprising in Indian Punjab and the muyahedeen activities in Indian-held Kashmir. Although there are differences of opinion on these charges within the Clinton administration, the Indian and Israeli lobbies are pushing the State Department hard on the issue. Opponents argue that such a declaration would deprive Pakistan of all assistance from and trade with the U.S., as well as from international agencies and U. S. allies, and that it would create a strong anti-West reaction in a country that still retains great importance in a strategic and politically evolving region.

“Pakistan is becoming the world's punching bag.”

Cool-headed analysts question the wisdom of declaring a nuclear power a terrorist state and freeing it of all inhibitions to the spread of nuclear know-how. A Christian Science Monitor report (April 20, 1993) quoted an American diplomat as saying: "Pakistan is becoming the world's punching bag. " He added that consigning Pakistan to the list of terrorist states could cause more problems than it would solve, and "open up the floodgates."

Taking advantage of the changed U.S. mood, India—the new convert to free enterprise and a market economy—is transferring, or at least attempting to transfer, its problems to Pakistan. Delhi charged Pakistan with engineering the bomb explosions in Bombay. Washington had to deny it.

Commenting on the Kashmir dispute, Cord Meyer of the Washington Times wrote on April 23, 1993: "Fearful that any successful secession from Indian control will only start a rush for the exits, New Delhi seems determined to maintain its heavy-handed rule [in Kashmir]." Since India is desperately seeking U.S. assistance to continue its stranglehold on Kashmir, the charge of "terrorism" is being leveled at Pakistan.

Drug trafficking in Pakistan is still another issue with international dimensions that the government of Pakistan has left unattended while its leaders contend for political power. So far, however, the only fallout from the Ishaq-Sharif-Bhutto struggle appears to be two resignations. Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador to Sri Lanka, resigned 24 hours before the April 18 dismissals. Begurn Abida Husain, the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., resigned just 24 hours afterwards.

Call it deja vu or what you will, in Pakistan it is constantly one step forward, two steps back.

M. M. Ali is a professor at the University of the District of Columbia.