A nation of watchers?

In response to Mr. Ayaz Amir’s beautiful column in Dawn on Nov. 30th – http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm, I wrote him the following letter.

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Dear Mr. Amir,

I just read your column in Dawn.  It is a most beautifully written reflective account of what a military dictator promises and then fails to deliver and leaves in ruins through the turbulent history of our beloved Pakistan.

Sir, when would this cycle end!  This was after 40 years that people of Pakistan showed some resistance against a dictator, last time was when they forced Ayub to quit.  Yet this time just like every other time, all signs are that we as a nation will revert back to our cynical resignation.  Is it a failure of our politicians that we as the people of Pakistan are always forced to choose between evils and whenever we do it’s always a military dictator who gets our disinterested nod.  Coups, emergencies, martial laws, rigged elections, the leaders we elect being thrown out or assassinated, we accept calamities as the norm in our country.  If our generals fail to learn from the destructive legacies of their predecessors and the utter futility of even their sincere intentions, our nation doesn’t do much better.  Our wounds never heal yet we fail to learn from them.  As our next hero delivers another inevitable blow, we wince with unbearable pain and are forced to look at our amputated bleeding body.  The pain turns to anger but the anger remains just that, a mere feeling, it doesn’t turn to rage.

There are four types of people in the world – people who make things happen, people to whom things happen, people who watch things happen and people who don’t know things are happening.  We are certainly not the last kind.  We are a nation of watchers.

We must set a different precedence this time for this cycle to end but I doubt we will.

with utmost respect and admiration,

your biggest fan,

Khurram Mahmood
A Pakistani Software Professional and a passionate member of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf
Walnut Creek, California

 

People vs. The Dictator. Round I – results are in

Link to my post on the decision to restore the Chief Justice of Pakistan that was announced earlier today – http://ptisv.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/congratulations-to-pakistanis-from-tehreek-e-insaf/

 

Army Inc.

See my post on Dr. Kashif Iqbal’s detailed analysis of influence of Pakistan Army’s officials in all walks of civilian life – Army Inc.

 

On Article 62 and 63 of the Pakistan Constitution

My post from PTI’s Silicon Valley Chapter’s blog – http://ptisv.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/much-ado-about-the-article-62-63/

 

Comments on Ahmed Rashid’s Article in Washington Post

I just read Ahmed Rashid’s article in Washington Post quoted by Brent in his comments (thank you Brent for sharing it with us). I respect Mr. Rashid opinion, he always presents an insightful analysis of the political situation in Pakistan and the region in general (besides he attended my and my father, mother and brother’s alma mater – the great Government College Lahore).

Unfortunately, Afghanistan yet again has become the center stage of power struggle between Pakistan and Iran. To quote Mr. Rashid, “[CIA and Department of Defence] officers , many of whom have served in Islamabad or Kabul, understand the double game that Musharraf has played — helping the United States go after al-Qaeda while letting his intelligence services help the Taliban claw their way back in Afghanistan.” Since early 90s when Musharraf was a senior general in the army, Pakistan’s military intelligence has first openly and then covertly supported Taliban as an alternative to the so-called Northern Alliance. Ahmad Shah Masud who was the leader of the Northern Alliance was vehemently against the Taliban and Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan. He was supported by India (as India would support anyone and anybody against Pakistan – what a neighbor) and Iran (due to Shia ties). Hamid Karzai’s government in Afghanistan has Iran’s support and is against Pakistan. In order to ensure that the region does not become Iran’s satellite state, Pakistan is once against covertly supporting Taliban. This is a really dangerous game that Musharraf is playing. Taliban has a lot to gain from it. They have radicalized the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan – the only one of the four provinces where religious parties won overwhelming majority, also the province that has strong ethnic and cultural ties to Pashtuns in Afghanistan. British through the Durand Line essentially divided Pashtun families across national borders – similar to what happened to Kurdish people who now form minorities in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. The scenic Khyber Pass has always been a porous crossing. I visited Khyber Pass when I was really young. I still remember being struck by the natural beauty of the area – there was hardly any border security there. For years, Pashtuns have been going back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the area is also a widely used smuggling route – not just klashnikovs and rocket launchers but normal everyday items like clothes, expensive watches, all sorts of stuff. The area used to be relatively peaceful. I don’t remember having any reservations when I went with my mom to the beautiful Landi Kotal back in the eighties. Now it’s a hot bed of Islamic radicalization, Ahmad Rashid talks about it in his famous book, Taliban.

Coming back to Brent’s question. Currently, PTI is focussed on getting rid of Musharraf’s regime in Pakistan. As such the party has not had any support from the US state department or the White House due to the reasons outlined in Mr. Rashid’s essay. PTI is a secular party with a strong democratic agenda. Ahmad Rashid argues that US both as a matter of principle and national interest would be well advised to support democratic struggle in Pakistan. However, I don’t expect US to support PTI due to the fact that the party is fundamentally opposed to continued US involvement in Pakistan’s internal affairs especially the indiscriminate bombings of the various regions of Pakistan frequently carried out by US war planes and the (alleged) abduction of Pakistani citizens carried out by FBI within Pakistan. Imran Khan, PTI’s leader, has spoken up against such tactics. I do think that US think tanks will finally reach the conclusion that Musharraf’s is a sinking ship. At that point, I think they are more likely to support either Nawaz Sharif or Benezir Bhutto – both are tried and tested allies of the US. Between the two, I think Benezir Bhutto will be candidate of choice from US’ perspective as she is more secular in outlook, is more likely to win popular vote as her party has a very die hard vote bank, is a strong US ally, often looks upto the US for help and is known to compromise on everything to first come into power and then sustain herself in power (currently she is trying to reach an agreement with Musharraf’s regime so that she becomes the next Prime Minister with Musharraf as the president while the common man she claims to represent wants Musharraf out).

On a different note – political leaders who come to power through legitimate democratic means and enjoy vast support among the populace in their countries are less likely to depend on external powers to sustain themselves, after all why would they need outside powers to sustain themselves when their own people support them. Also any self-respecting nation, if given a chance, would not want an outside power running its affairs. True democracy in strategically important countries such as Pakistan can thus lead to a loss of control over the country’s critical policies for external powers such as the US. Therefore true democracy in any strategically important country is not in US’ national interest unless the majority of the people in that country are pro-US (even then they would not want to be controlled by an external power). Take Iraq for example. If there is true democracy there, given its civilization roots (remember Baghdad once was the center of Islamic civilization and literature), the country is more likely to become an important part of the Muslim world, certainly not a hub of pro-US westernization in the Middle East – note that Israel is westernized in its outlook not because of its democracy but because the majority of the Jewish populace there is composed of Ashkenazi Jews of European descent who migrated there from Europe and the former Soviet Union. Iraq given its Shia majority is more likely to form a strong alliance with Iran. Therefore it does not make sense for the US to support true democracy in Iraq. Don’t get me wrong, there will be elections in Iraq but mysteriously a pro-US puppet (like Karzai in Afghanistan) would keep on winning.

The problem with popularly elected leaders is that due to the massive support they enjoy among the populace, they either have a spine or tend to develop one over a period of time. Once that happens, they tend to stand up for their country and are eventually made horrible examples of – After India’s nuclear test in 1974, Pakistan embarked on a mission to become a nuclear power. When Z. A. Bhutto, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan (also a Cal Berkeley Alum) refused to back down from his policy of nuclear armament, Dr. Kissinger reportedly told him, “‘We’ll make a horrible example of you if you test. Okay?’ That was around August 1976. Later in 1978, Mr. Bhutto was hanged to death in the middle of the night after an expedited trial on charges of murder.

 

Does Judiciary have the power to declare a constitutional amendment ‘unconstitutional’?

I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with a group of well read and learned Pakistani expatriates in the bay area. What ensued was a very lively discussion on Pakistan politics, law, constitution, socio-economic situation, history and everything in between.

One of the many questions that came up for discussion today was the power or lack thereof of judiciary in Pakistan to declare a constitutional amendment “unconstitutional”. The issue remained unresolved, though the general consensus in the room was that the judiciary does not have such power. I am a bit confused on this point and would appreciate comments. Firstly, Article 239(6) of the 1973 constitution clearly states the following – “No amendment of the Constitution shall be called in question in any Court on any ground whatsoever.” This is the most unequivocal and clear statement, after this there should be absolutely no way a court can even hear a petition challenging a constitutional amendment. However, there was one such petition filed against the 17^th amendment by the Pakistan Lawyers Forum in jan, 2004. It was filed on the ground that the 17^th amendment had altered the federal parliamentary system and eroded the ideological basis of the country , the two basic features of the constitution, which even an elected parliament is not empowered to enact. Although their petition was rejected by the Supreme Court, it was heard by the court and thus raises a couple of interesting questions –

1. Where does the constitution of Pakistan state that the federal parliamentary system and ideological basis of the country are its two features that even an elected parliament can not alter? I couldn’t find the relevant text.
2. If there are such features of the constitution that are frozen in so far as the elected parliament cannot alter them, this seems to be in direct contradiction to Article 239(6) that clearly does not allow for any such provisions?

The bigger question is why is it so easy for an army chief whether Musharraf, Zia or Yaqub to amend the constitution to their liking whenever they want. All three first used the courts to justify their actions against democratically elected regimes and then made a mockery of the constitution by introducing amendments to it through their installed parliments. As we were talking about the importance of the rule of law and independence of judiciary in Pakistan, one gentleman brought up an intriguing point – All military reigns in Pakistan have not only been granted legitimacy by the judiciary but have also proceeded to amend constitution through totally legal and constitutional means to consolidate and legitimize their control over all branches of the government. It is also interesting to note that all of them have followed this tried and tested pattern of first using the courts to gain legitimacy and then quickly amending the constitution to preclude courts from interfering any further (remember courts only uphold the constitution including all its amendments).

This begs the question – what can be done to create conditions for a democracy to survive and thrive in Pakistan as rule of law alone does not seem to be sufficient.

 

The 4-minute mile

Recently the political environment in Pakistan has taken a very interesting turn with the suspension of the supreme court chief justice and the incredible outpouring of support he has received from the public for standing up to the dictator. This is the best time to be in Pakistan, I am sure the environment is electrifying, there’s revolution in the air. I miss it very much, this is the time to join the struggle, be part of a nation desperately trying to find a purpose, to justify its existence, through this perhaps I’ll be able to find my destiny too. I am pretty sure there won’t be a revolution, the most I can hope for is a victory for people as that would set a unique precedence in Pakistan where ordinary pakistanis defied a sitting dictator and won. This would be a reference point for future struggles. Remember the four minute mile, it was thought to be impossible. When Roger Bannister ran a mile in less than four minutes for the first time in recorded history in 1954, the psychological barrier was lifted. For all self-respecting athletes in the world the fundamental limits were redefined, it was no longer, “can it be done?” but “if he can do it so can I”. Within 6 weeks, John Landy broke Bannister’s record, read it again, it took only 6 weeks once the psychological barrier was lifted. If Pakistanis win this fight, next time instead of bending over to a dictator, they like any self-respecting nation might just be able to say, “How dare you!”

What is a revolution anyway if not an attempt by a subjugated people to regain respect. It’s the self-respect, the khudi that defines us as human beings. Dictatorship is an insult to our being. No matter how benign a dictator is, how quickly he increases the GDP, how fair he is to his people, his very existence relegates the people to the status of subjects. A dictatorship, thus more than anything else, is an insult to its people’s humanity. Democracy is the only way a self-respecting nation can survive. Let us all join hands and proclaim in unison that we as a self-respecting nation shall never again allow any individual, group of individuals or another nation to suppress and subjugate us the way we have been humiliated in the past eight years.

 

Review of President Musharraf’s book

I wrote this a couple of months ago, here it is for your viewing pleasure. You can also find it at – http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2VXZOQ64UJ4N5?ie=UTF8

Gripping but with flaws and contradictions

Whether President Musharraf’s book is full of lies or not, we’ll never know for sure but I can say one thing for sure – it is one of the most gripping books I have read this year. He gives a very detailed account of all the critical things that have hapenned in Pakistan politics in the last 10 or so years starting with the Kargil conflict. It is as expected a very accessible reading, almost conversational in style. His writing has a distinct lack of guile and he is not afraid to discuss highly controversial issues such as his military coup or his decision to not give up his military powers in 2004 as he had earlier promised. His explanations though are not always convincing. If you like mystery novels, you would love the chapters where he explains in detail how Pakistan’s intelligence services tracked down and then arrested a number of most wanted terrorists. It’s literally a day-by-day and in some cases (like the chapter on his military coup) a minute-by-minute detail of events. Once you pick it up, you won’t be able to put it down.

What I don’t like about the book is its annoying and overdone bravado, numerous repititions (sometime ridiculous to the point that even the same page is pasted in multiple places to describe the same event multiple times leaving the reader turning the pages to make sure he is not reading the same chapter again) and sometimes just way too much self-promotion. The fact that it is gripping doesn’t mean that it is flawless. In fact it has a few major flaws and contradictions. What I find quite amusing is that Mr. Musharraf contradicts himself in so many places without ever noticing it. In the chapter on Kargil conflict, for example, most of the evidence he lays out in painstaking detail actually implicates Pakistan as the instigator. But he being totally oblivious to that, keeps on browbeating about how brave his soldiers were and how India had forced them unwittingly into the conflict. In places, he criticizes somebody for doing something in one chapter and two chapters later he describes how he did essentially the samething at a later time.

I get a distinct feeling from reading this book that Mr. Musharraf has a deep disregard for bureaucracy, politicians and in general of any form of civilian administration. He hammers home this point at several occassions in the book not the least of which is the way he continuously refers to the 1990’s decade as the “dreaded decade of democracy” in Pakistan. There is a general consensus among Pakistani intelligentsia that Zia’s 11 years dictatorship caused more long-lasting harm to every institution and indeed the very social fabric of Pakistan than any other government in the history of the country with the excpetion of Yahya Khan’s short-lived regime. Yet while Mr. Musharraf spends a lot of ink vilifying each democratically elected prime minister all the way from Mr. Bhutto to the last government of Nawaz Sharif, he is unduly reserved in his criticism of Zia’s regime and of Zia-ul-Haq himself. You get a sense of military brotherhood when he talks about Zia and even about Yahya Khan – I find that most disconcerting. Also I find it propagandistic given the simple and undisputable fact that Pakistan for most of its tumultous political history has been under one military rule or another and democracy has never been given sufficient time to flourish in the country.

The numbers Mr. Musharraf quotes to prove how his government has turned around the economy are very impressive. Mr. Musharraf’s government is currently in the midst of major economic scandals and some of the statistics he so proudly quotes in his book have been disputed by non-partisan institutions and experts. However, overall you do get a sense and I think quite rightly so that his government is doing a better job than any other government in the last decacde or so in Pakistan especially when it comes to economy and freedom of the press. He also discusses at length his plans to strengthen democratic institutions in Pakistan and to provide women means to prosper politically, socially and economically in a male-dominated Pakistani society. Whether he is sincere in his plans or not, he is certainly the first head of government in Pakistan post-Bhutto who at least has identified the true causes of failure of democracy in Pakistan and has a pragmatic plan of action to correct those failures. I get the feeling that some of his ideas in this regard have been inspired by Farid Zakaria’s writings on democrarcy and freedom. In any case, his plans seem practical and I hope he remains sincere to his words and actually succeeds in implementing them hopefully by taking a more inclusive approach.

I especially enjoyed reading Mr. Musharraf’s views on the so-called clash of civilizations. His thoughts though not original are insightful and expressed in a logical fashion. He goes on to present his personal ideas on how to resolve the Israeli-Palestine problem. He does the same for the Kashmir conflict. In both cases, I was struck by the pragmatic nature of his ideas. It would have been more comfortable for him to take extreme positions on both of these issues. Such extreme rhetoric would have resonated well with the majority of Muslim masses all over the world. Instead by his candor and logical stance, he shows that he is indeed sincere about resolving these issues and is actually pursuing a viable plan of action. Like most Pakistanis, I have no illusions that Mr. Musharraf would be able to resolve any of the two issues. I do think, however, that he might be able to institute a new way of thinking and perhaps even a process in place that might help resolve these issues several years down the road.

The secular intelligentsia in Pakistan may be divided into three broad groups as far as their views on Musharraf’s regime are cocerned. First is group of intellectuals who will oppose his regime regardless of whatever it does. This is the group of individuals who believe that democracy is not just a means but an end in itself and thus a dictatorship benign or otherwise must cease to exist. They have some very valid points and most of their views cannot be discounted. The other extreme is the group that believes that democrarcy is a foreign idea and can never flourish in the socio-cultural environment in Pakistan. This group has some valid points too though theirs are based more on how democratic regimes have fared so far in Pakistan. As such at times they sound too short-sighted. There is fortunately a steadily growing third group of intellectuals in Pakistan who are willing to give Musharraf’s regime a chance. This is largely a breakaway from the first group. This is the group of individuals who were very skeptical of Musharraf’s regime early on but were refreshingly surprised to see that his regime is not marred by the same ills that had characterized prior military governments. For example, his is the first dictatorship in Pakistan’s history that has not only tolerated but actively encouraged freedom of speech and expression. Even Pakistan’s democratically elected governments have a shameful record in this regard. Mr. Bhutto, for example, was known to use sometimes brutal and humiliating means to quiesce leaders of the media, Mr. Sharif’s government would stop all government advertisements (a major source of a newspaper revenue) for those newspapers that openly criticized his regime. Both had a tight control on television and radio and never allowed any difference of opinion to surface there. No point discussing the prior military regimes as they were just outright savage when it came to even a slight difference of opinion. Similarly, Mr. Musharraf is doing a lot more for the rights of women and minorities in Pakistan than the prior regimes. In this and many other regards, Musharraf’s is a more democratic regime than Pakistan has seen in its history i.e. if you subscribe to the point of view that the foremost objective of democracy is to provide social, political and economic justice to the people regardless of their race, gender or ethnic background. Mr. Musharraf’s record is mixed when it comes to ethnic minorities, the Bughti crisis being the case in point. However, in my opinion the jury is still out on this one. Mr. Musharraf’s regime just like his book is not perfect, in fact it’s full of flaws but at least there seems to be a genuine attempt to correct the damage done by the successive regimes before him. Nevertheless, this group is running out of patience. Everytime Mr. Musharraf twists the constitution to suit his needs, he loses support among the people in the third group and that support is vital to his government’s survival. Pakistanis have a lot to be pessimistic about, what the poeple need is an optimistic piture of the future and tangible progress towards it. This optimistic future doesn’t just have justice and economic prosperity but also provides the Pakistanis the ability to elect their own representatives including the head of the state. Mr. Musharraf needs to do a lot more in this regard and he needs to do it fast as many of his supporters are turning back into cynics.

The book is written mainly for international readers and mystery and suspense fans of all backgrounds and I think both groups will enjoy it immensely. The main objective of the book seems to be three-folds – (a) promote Mr. Musharraf as the great secular leader of the Muslim world essentially the 21st century Attaturk and prove that he is the best thing that could happen to not only Pakistan but to the world at large (b) improve Pakistan’s image in the eyes of the international public and prove that Pakistan is doing its very best in fighting terrorism and last but not least to emphatically counter the views that India’s lobby routinely spreads against the country. I think Mr. Musharraf succeeds in achieving these objectives with varying degrees of success.