As the government of our enlightened and moderate leader President General Pervez Musharraf forks over large sums of money to rebuild Pakistan’s “image” by lauding the culture and warmth of the great Islamic Republic of Pakistan, here is a slice of cold-blooded reality. Last Tuesday, the Punjab Social Welfare Minister, Zille Huma, was shot dead in broad daylight in Gujranwala by a religious extremist who didn’t approve of the lady’s moderate and enlightened views. The same day, the media reported that religious extremists had beheaded yet another fellow Muslim in Waziristan because they thought he was an American spy. A day earlier, a train carrying Muslim travelers back to Pakistan from Delhi, India, was bombed, killing over 70 people, mostly Pakistanis. Apparently, the killers do not want détente between Pakistan and India and are angry that Pakistan under General Musharraf has abandoned the cause of jihad against the infidel. A couple of weeks earlier, a five star hotel and the VIP lounge of an international airport were targeted by religiously motivated suicide bombers whose message is: foreign infidel trash stay out. Around the same time, religious extremists suicide-bombed a police contingent guarding a Shia procession in Peshawar and a courtroom in Quetta, killing dozens.
These are not insignificant stray incidents. The religious extremist who killed Zille Huma has already killed many women because of their alleged moral laxity. Ms Huma was targeted because she was keen on promoting sporting activity – marathon walks – for the girls of Gujranwala. The killer had gone scot-free because the state is isolated in the face of bigots. Those who kill Muslim American “spies” in Waziristan are Taliban who like to smash and burn down TV-video shops. The suicide bombers who attacked the hotel and airport want to turn Pakistan into another Talibanised Afghanistan. The state’s capitulation was especially significant when religious extremists recently held a “children’s library” hostage in Islamabad for over two weeks. The only ones who get the boot in the face are the stupid “liberals” because they espouse peaceful and democratic values of protest.
General Pervez Musharraf claims that he wants to be army chief and president of Pakistan, which two offices are the fount of his ultimate power, because he has to attend to unfinished business relating to National Security (peace process with India, the war against terror, religious extremism in Pakistan) and countering the insurgency in Balochistan and Talibanism in Waziristan. This is a profoundly significant statement full of historical irony. His predecessor General Zia ul Haq was both army chief and president of Pakistan when he unleashed policies in the 1980s that eventually led to the creation and rise of militant Islam in the region, especially in Pakistan, including the birth of the Taliban and the rise of militant jihad as a state weapon in the conflict with India. So if the military establishment under General Musharraf has now seen the error of its ways in the past, it must be lauded for its realism and wisdom. Nonetheless, it is still pertinent to ask whether the prescription for injecting militant Islam into the body politic of Pakistan – being army chief and president at the same time – is the same for expunging it from the nation’s blood stream.
General Musharraf has had seven years to change the direction of Pakistan and ensure that there is no sliding back. But his scorecard is not inspiring. Apart from passing a diluted women’s protection bill and minimal proposals to change hate-filled text books, the issue of militant religious extremism seems to have gone from bad to worse. Indeed, religious violence and intolerance is spiraling out of control and undermining the very notion of a democratic nation-state.
The reason for this is not General Musharraf’s lack to commitment to the project – his sincerity is palpable since he remains the top target of the extremists – but his incapacity to deal with the issue precisely because he is both army chief and president. His presidency rests solely on his military power and does not give him popular legitimacy. And that is where the problem lies.
President General Zia needed military power to make the space for political Islam in Pakistan’s civil society. Subsequently, national security establishments retained the threat of military power to empower Islamists. But now that militant Islamists have established political roots among significant sections of the masses, military power alone without popular political power cannot reverse the process. And as long as General Musharraf insists on a strong centralized presidential system of government in which the aspirations of the popular mainstream and moderate parties are denied or thwarted, his project of moderating and enlightening Pakistan will not succeed. The space which the Islamists wish to retain and enlarge can only be won away from them by political parties that have deeper and more enduring roots among the people of Pakistan than the elitist and clinically isolated institution of the army. That is why General Musharraf must not hog power. He should enable the politicians to play their historic role in a democratic system.