Last January, General Pervez Musharraf gave a rousing speech to the nation in which he promised to crack down on terrorism inspired by internal or external forces. He also vowed to stamp out religious extremism in all its manifestations, especially sectarian warfare at home and violent jihad against members of the international community. The speech went down very well at home and abroad. No country can afford to be racked by such divisive and fearful forces. Nor can it expect the international community to condone a lack of will in tackling such critical issues. At last, we thought, General Musharraf is coming to grips with the real problem bequeathed by General Zia ul Haq and twenty years of misplaced regional policy in quest of dubious national security goals. In fact, our hopes soared when General Musharraf ordered a clean-up of the intelligence agencies that have spawned many terrorists wittingly or otherwise and followed it up by arresting potential and actual troublemakers.
Barely three months later, however, we have grave cause to reassess General Musharraf’s will and ability in pursuit of this objective. The “deweaponisation” campaign that was launched with so much trumpeting has turned out to be a dismal flop. Worse, the government has quietly relaxed its grip over the religious extremists even as they appear more determined than ever before to undermine the Musharraf regime. Now we are faced with a wave of terrorism in which the sinister forces of sectarianism, ethnicity, jihad and India (all outgrowths of our national security policies) seem to be involved in a dire project to “get General Musharraf” and plunge the country into anarchy. And what, pray tell, is he doing about all this?
He is donning bewildering headdresses, drumming up dubious referendums, conjuring dozens of constitutional amendments, herding non-entities into grand sounding national alliances, arm-twisting Muslim League “fence-sitters” to join his entourage, and generally having sleepless nights tossing and turning the permutations and combinations of a parliament that is not yet born but may not be sufficiently obedient after it has been midwifed by him. In short, he looks very much like a modern day Don Quixote tilting at the windmills.
The problem basically stems from two misplaced notions. First, he wants to stake an institutional role for the army and for himself personally (via the office of the COAS) in the constitution of the country. That is against the natural political order of things and is bound to create many problems. He is seeking an institutional entry into politics whereas he should be searching a viable exit from it. Second, he means to perform this inherently difficult task by allying with political non-entities and weak economic classes while alienating mainstream political heavyweights and soft peddling on the extremists. This is the worst of all possible worlds. Gen Ayub Khan allied with the business classes and the bureaucracy but put down the democratic impulse in the country and paid the price for it. General Zia ul Haq went one step further: he allied with the religious lobby and the business classes and the bureaucracy and the Muslim League but still couldn’t hold down the main democratic impulse in the country at that time. What General Musharraf should do is, in fact, the opposite of what he is doing. And what is that?
This country needs a period of stable, liberal democratic order in step with the economic requirements of this day and age. In fact, as modern day economists remind us, democracy and development go hand in hand, and the model of patriarchal development so favoured by small state-nations in South East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s is no longer valid. Thus, having being pushed into the well of politics, General Musharraf needs to pull himself out of it rather than trying to nestle comfortably in it. He also needs to recognize that, notwithstanding personal likes and dislikes for some parties or political leaders, he must join hands with the liberal and forward looking forces in the country in order to get out of this quagmire. In other words, he must change his political strategy 180 degrees and reorder his priorities. He is blowing against the wind instead of blowing with the wind.
It is possible that General Musharraf has been lulled into a false sense of security because the international community cannot discern a “better” or more credible alternative to him right now. But this support is ephemeral. It is here today, may be gone tomorrow. That is also why he should worry about what happened in Karachi on Wednesday when foreigners working on a defense related project were blasted to smithereens by a suicide bomber. If he doesn’t act decisively against terrorism in all its forms, he will become a victim of it himself in one way or another. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If General Musharraf is not able or willing to crush this monster, it will devour everyone and everything in its path. In the event, all his carefully crafted designs of political and economic restructuring will fall by the wayside. And someone else will have to pick up the pieces and start all over again.