February 14 is a dark day in the history of Musharraf’s Pakistan. That is the day when activists of the Sunni Tehrik, Deoband Dawat i Islami, Ahle Hadith, Jamiat i Ulema i Islam, Jamaat i Islami, Lashkar i Taiba, PML(Q), PML(N), PPP, Shiite organizations, madrassah students, and even lumpen criminal elements rampaged on the streets of Lahore and ransacked the city. All this was done on the pretext of protesting the blasphemous European cartoons against the Prophet of Islam. But as General Pervez Musharraf has belatedly realized, the protests were merely a jumping pad for the mullahs to target him and him alone. Several questions arise. Who decided to allow the mullahs to vent their spleen? Why didn’t the police stop the arson and plunder? How has the episode irrevocably hurt Musharraf’s Pakistan? What does it foretell about the objectives of the religious parties in general and about General Musharraf’s political strategy in particular?
When the issue of protesting the cartoons arose, there were three contending points of view in Islamabad. It was argued that since the matter was close to the hearts of Pakistanis the PMLQ should swiftly monopolize and lead the protest in the Punjab. This would serve two purposes: it would ensure that the protests remained peaceful; and it would enable the PMLQ and not the religious parties to receive kudos from the media and public. But the opposing view was equally compelling: if the PMLQ hogged the show, it might send the wrong “message” to the world abroad and damage the good work done by General Musharraf to rehabilitate his government as moderate and enlightened – how could a regime in Pakistan that claimed to be pro-West actually stir up anti-West outrage in the same breath? Thus a middle course of action was adopted, with the government permitting and even facilitating and “blessing” rallies by the mullahs so that the people knew that it shared their anguish over the cartoons. Simultaneously, a “promise” was extracted from the mullahs not to resort to violence or turn the demonstration against the government. In exchange, concessions were readily granted, like permission to protest on The Mall and instructions to the police to keep its hands-off the rally. In the event, however, during the demonstration the mullahs scattered all agreements in the air, hardliners went on an orgy of looting and burning, the wretched police stood by and didn’t raise a lathi even when pictures and effigies of General Musharraf were burnt and attacks were launched on the provincial assembly on The Mall and offices of banks and multinationals, flooding the world with frightening images of Lahore that will not go away for a long time. The government had, once again, chosen to play on the mullahs’ wicket and once again reaped a bitter harvest. Why is the state and administration so sensitive to the demands and threats of the mullahs? Is it scared of them? Or is it in cahoots with them?
The PML has historically clutched at the mullahs for support for two reasons: one, its reactionary views are almost akin to those of the mullahs; two, because the military, with whose help it has propped itself up against the popular PPP, has historically relied on the mullahs as an essential element in its national security strategy of “Islamising Pakistan” against “secular arch-enemy India”. So to that extent the Musharraf-Chaudhry regime is “soft” on the mullahs. Indeed, if it wasn’t, the strength of the mullahs in parliament wouldn’t have risen so dramatically during Musharraf’s time since every device has been used to sideline the PPP and hoist the mullah parties as the loyal opposition. The unruly “mullah” also provides a useful peg on which to display the image of the Musharraf regime as a bulwark against “Islamic terror”, thereby generating valuable “rent” for Islamabad from Washington.
But this strategy is riddled with mounting problems. The stronger the mullahs get the less inclined they are to play second fiddle to the military and PML. Indeed, they seek to exploit every situation to further their autonomous agendas of seizing power in Pakistan. The first step is to get rid of Musharraf; the second is to discredit the mainstream parties as corrupt, incompetent or inefficient and encroach on their votes; the third is to fiercely resist any roll back of “Islamic law” even if it is unjust and discriminatory. Under the circumstances, the more General Musharraf and the PML play on their wicket the more they lose out to them. Nor is there any reason to fear the mullahs’ clout. The Punjab administration has shown time and again that when it comes to the crunch it can stoutly defend Lahore from Long Marches by the PPP as in the 1990s or angry protests by the Jamaat i Islami during the visit of Mr Vajpayee in 1999 or airport sieges by PMLN supporters when Shahbaz Sharif flew into Lahore two years ago.
The future should belong to the two party system led by the PPP and PML, with the MQM and provincial sub-nationalists playing second fiddle while the military remains in the shadows. The mullahs have a place in the world of faith but none in the realm of politics. That is the lesson of Lahore.