Notwithstanding stout denials of resignation and thundering demands for impeachment, General (retired) Pervez Musharraf’s departure last Monday was scripted to the bitter end in order to get him safe passage, protect his policies and erstwhile army, political and judicial colleagues and provide the PPP government with a swift transition to the next stage. Two obvious questions arise. What is General (retd) Musharraf’s legacy? How will Pakistan fare under the civilian dispensation?
We are too emotionally charged right now to objectively award General (retd) Mushharaf a good or bad place in history. Eventually, a fair assessment will flow partly from what he did or didn’t do and partly from what the civilians do or don’t do in the months ahead. But if Pakistan gets more dysfunctional, people will hark back to the days under him with more than a wishful sigh.
Of course, some non-controversial plusses and negatives can be chalked up to him even now. There was remarkable economic growth for at least five years. But the growth strategy was seriously challenged in the end by hyperinflation and energy and food shortages. There was an explosion of the consumptive middle class. But the very poor are probably worse off now than ever. Women and the minorities certainly benefited from positive political discrimination for a change and the social and cultural environment was less suffocating than before. But much more could have been done. The media was unshackled from the bureaucracy and enabled to soar. But the honeymoon ended when he lashed out at it following a series of political blunders in the last year or so of his term. When he left, the country was so bitterly and violently divided along sectarian, ethnic, tribal and regional fault-lines that many Pakistanis are fearful whether it will survive at all as a nation-state.
The Musharraf era can be divided into three distinct periods. The first from 1999-2002 was marked by misplaced political engineering – a rigged local body system to prop him up, bull-headed and sham-populist accountability leading to capital and managerial flight from the country, consolidation of Military-Mullah Alliance to exclude mainstream political parties and fuel jihads in India and Afghanistan, economic bankruptcy exemplified by a begging-bowl approach to the IMF and World Bank, and international isolation highlighted by US President Bill Clinton’s five hour grudging and hectoring detour to Islamabad in 2000 when he refused to shake hands in public with General Musharraf after frolicking for five glorious days in new-found strategic ally India.
The second period dates roughly from 9/11, 2001, to March 2007. This was marked by a slow but definite about-turn on major strategic issues. The Military-Mullah Alliance was broken after the abandonment of the Taliban in Kabul, followed by a closing of the jihadi tap against India and a halt to nuclear proliferation; the economy was flushed with foreign aid and debt write-offs and rescheduling, businessmen became kosher again and there was visibly better financial management; pro-women political reforms and pro-middle-class economic initiatives were taken; and In the Line of Fire, his international best-selling memoir, catapultedMusharraf to the frontline of world leaders. Even better, his popularity at home touched 70% in opinion polls.
The third period dates from March, 2007, to his exit in August, 2008. This period was characterized by a series of remarkable blunders that can only belaid at the door ofhubris and the arrogance of power. These include the brutal sacking of the chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, followed by a stubborn refusal to concede to popular opinion and reinstate him. The killings fields of May 12 in Karachi became a millstone around his neck. After that, it was downhill all the way. The mishandling of the Lal Masjid affair led to a terrible indictment. The mini-coup of November 3, 2007, the sacking of the troublesome judges and his presidential election all came to haunt Musharrafin the end. Finally, Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination last December eroded his shelf life dramatically because she had accused him of complicity in advance. And the rest, as they say, is history.
To be sure, the civilian regime can still salvage the economy, enlarge pro-women and minority reforms and start the process of alleviating poverty seriously if it can stabilize itself. But a holistic approach to consolidating the economy and defending civil society requires the new political leadership to retain focus on two critical elements of General Musharraf’s attempted strategic paradigm shift: the peace process with India exemplified by his out-of-the-box thinking on Kashmir; and the dismantling of the Military-Mullah Alliance, whose blowback included two assassination attempts on him, the rise of the Pakistani Taliban, the death of Benazir Bhutto, and the visible glee at his ouster of Al Qaeda and the sectarian outfits. Without establishing the framework for enduring peace with India and reclaiming the writ of the state from local and foreign terrorists, the new political leadership in Pakistan will fail to build a newcountry in which the military is subservient to the democratic impulse.
Everything depends on Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari. If, as seems probable, there is a bitter power-struggle soon, the net loser will be Pakistan.