All except religious extremists have hailed General Pervez Musharraf’s recent speech. The Americans approved it. The Indians welcomed it. Domestic liberals delighted in it. Politicians lined up behind it. The media appreciated it. And the public has breathed a sigh of relief after it. He has averted a terrible war and put the lid on religious strife in the country. That’s a great beginning.
The speech, read as a manifesto, has two aspects: domestic and foreign. Each is significant, but the foreign element is mainly responsible for its timing and thrust. The suspicion is that without unbearable military pressure from India and compelling diplomatic advice from the US, it might not have been made at all or certainly not at this time and in this form. After all, some of us have pleaded for much the same sort of forceful state intervention and policy change in the national interest for donkeys of years but been sidelined as “negative” and “unpatriotic” elements by the very patrons of the “new” Pakistan.
This is not to say that General Musharraf has acted only because a gun was put to his head. Indeed, there is evidence to show that he has long thought of moderating Pakistan’s domestic and foreign policies in line with present economic and geo-political realities. But there is also contrary evidence to suggest that he was thwarted from doing so by military advisors and civilian colleagues to whom he was personally indebted in some way or by whom he was intellectually overawed, or a bit of both.
We might recall that in his first speech to the nation on October 12, 1999, General Musharraf had instinctively and spontaneously framed the right questions about Pakistan’s crises and hinted at the right answers in an Ataturkian fashion. But thereafter certain khaki colleagues prevailed upon him to make conservative “tactical readjustments” on many issues, the retreat on the blasphemy law being one of the most objectionable. In due course, his frustration and anger with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the sectarian parties and groups at home also became increasingly obvious. Yet, even as he rejected the “strategic depth” doctrine of his predecessors vis a vis Afghanistan, he was unable to fully break free of the “national security” doctrines regarding India into which most army officers are straitjacketed as a matter of training and motivation.
In fact General Musharraf was most intransigent in the case of India. At first he pooh-poohed the Lahore Summit, saying he wouldn’t talk to India until it was ready to principally discuss the “core” issue of Kashmir in the light of the 1948 UN resolutions. Then he went so far as to stamp jihad as a “legitimate” weapon in the Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom and self-determination, irrespective of the source of that jehad. Fortunately, however, by the time of Agra a degree of realism had naturally crept back into him and he was ready to discuss all options with India. But he was prevented by his glib “nationalist” hawks from cementing an agreement with India. Provoked by Pakistani insistence on the centrality of Kashmir, India countervailed with the unprecedented centrality of “cross-border terrorism” to it and wrecked the Summit. The loss of an agreement in Agra is acutely felt in Islamabad because General Musharraf has had to say that Pakistan and Pakistanis will not sponsor or support any jihad on the soil of any country. This is a unilateral commitment not to export militancy of any kind to India (what India calls “cross-border terrorism”). India has yet to concede a dialogue focused on the Kashmir dispute in exchange.
If a Pakistani about-turn on a ten-year Afghan policy was an immediate response to the events of September 11, there are two additional political turns evident from General Musharraf’s latest speech. One, a retreat to the pre-1989 “hands-off Kashmir” policy negotiated with India at Simla in 1972 and in Lahore in 1999. Two, a commitment to return to the modern, moderate and progressive Pakistan envisioned by the Quaid-e-Azam in 1947, with General Musharraf seemingly categorical in burying the notion that Pakistan might become a theocratic state. Both steps are in the right direction.
If the force of military habit and political insecurity marks the early Musharraf, the force of circumstance and political maturity is writ all over the late Musharraf. But administrative regulation of the madrassa and the mosque is only a half-curative measure. The organs of the state — the military and its intelligence agencies, the judiciary and civil services, the public universities, colleges and curricula, the state controlled and patronized media, etc – which have jointly spawned politico-religious indoctrination for elusive “national” or “ideological” interests since General Zia ul Haq have all got be to purged as well. And these vested interests will not go without a bloody fight. On the preventive side, too, nothing less than universal education, gainful employment and health security is needed, which means a substantial economic revival programme. And that is not going to be available on a platter.
There are miles to go and promises to keep. Only time will tell whether or not General Pervez Musharraf was the man of the hour.