Ethnic rage, brazen dacoities, impudent kidnappings and political vendettas in Sindh have merely served to draw long yawns in Islamabad. Bloody drug wars, ugly assassinations, tribal feuds and hot border skirmishes in Balochistan and the NWFP may have yielded a sigh or two. No, we were told, “law and order” was rapidly improving under the new government.
Pakistanis may have become reconciled to the increasing violence and degeneration of everyday life, but many will not forget last June in a hurry. Hundreds died in train crashes, bomb explosions and terrorist murders all over the country. The armed strife within the MQM and between warring political factions laid low dozens of young men in Sindh. There was even the scandalous spectacle of a couple of errant Punjabi MPs slugging it out with the police in Lahore. Not much later, we heard of thousands being arrested on the eve of polling in Jacobabad. And then we read of rigged elections in Azad Kashmir and wondered how much more punishment democracy in Pakistan would take before its carcass could be hauled away for good.
Now the sick chickens of our uncaring state have come home to roost. The slaughter of 22 citizens of two trading families in the Punjab has jolted our top dogs out of their slumber and forced a cancellation of the PM’s trip to Japan. New laws, including public hangings, we are informed, are the answer to the crisis of law and order in the country. There is also talk of rolling some important heads in Sindh and maybe even bringing a military man back in the saddle.
This is a hopeless response. We need to focus on two separate aspects of this crisis of “law and order”. First, there is the question of blatant illegalities committed by the state in foisting unrepresentative and unpopular governmetns on the people of this country. Second, we must seriously consider the domestic implications of our foreign policy which seeks to (a) install a govenment of its choosing on Afghanistan, (b) undermine India by fueling the fires of insurgencies in Kashmir and East Punjab, (c) defy the United States by continuing our not-so-secret nuclear programme.
Take the first issue. The writ of the state has eroded not least because of the brutally divisive legacies of Zia ul Haq’s long military rule. Matters have been made worse in Sindh recently by foisting Jam Sadiq on the people and thwarting their will by rigging the elections. It is necessary, though by no means sufficient, to sort out this mess by immediately getting rid of Jam Sahib and installing consensual and representative political leaders who genuinely command respect from, and are equally firm towards, the warring factions in the province.
The second issue is more thorny and more pressing. The Pakistani state, it seems, is determined to take on the Soviet Union, India and the United States, all at a time when its writ is wearing thin even on its own home ground. The price of fingering a powerful neighbour and two superpowers is beginning to exact its toll. The recent outbreak of terrorism in the country, including the bombs, train disasters and the butchery of innocent people in their homes, is not a law and order problem. It is a direct consequence of our policies in support of insurgencies in India and Afghanistan. Not all the laws and punishments in the world, nor any of the transfers of administration officials, will effect a halt to such reciprocatory state terrorism. In fact, we might be better advised by the government to prepare for many more such acts of terrorism in the near future.
The real tragedy is, of course, that our foreign policy makers are in firm control of our domestic cirumstances rather than the other way round. And because it is Rawalpindi rather than Islamabad which aggressively pulls all the foreign policy strings, elected civilian representatives have been slotted to become the unhappy fall guys from its devastating consequences at home.
That said, we may well speculate about the fate of Pakistan if our state is determined to push ahead, regardless of reverberations, with its existing set of covenants. At the end of the corky road, there is more death and destruction, and a war of incalculable consequences with India cannot be too far off.
We could jsut as easily proffer the benefits of a change of tack, at least where Afghanistan and East Punjab are concerned. By backing a durable political settlement in Kabul through negative symmetry and removing our finger from the Khalistan pie in East Punjab, we might find it easier to promote the cause of Kashmir and effect an enduring nuclear balance in the region.
It might then also become possible for civilian politicians to accept the validity of the democratic impulse at home and get on with the business of tackling unemployment, illiteracy, disease and poverty — all of which form the real backdrop to lawlessness and rising alienation in society.