Pakistan military can deliver security, but not a long-term solution

The burning barricades set up across Karachi today by Benazir Bhutto's supporters do not have to presage civil war. Pakistan has gone through a year of crisis, as eight years of military rule has unravelled, yet enough of the country's institutions work well to have provided a powerful steadying influence through the growing turmoil.

The military itself, the strongest organisation in the country, is the biggest insurance against widespread sectarian violence. The civil service, the judiciary (even though it has been drawn into politics since the spring), the provincial governments, have given Pakistan since its birth an astonishing self-righting capability during repeated crises. The health of the commercial sector — one of the most impressive products of President Musharraf's eight-year tenure — is a newer but powerful factor.

Of course, widespread civil unrest is possible — and the more likely if elections are postponed significantly. The best course for Pakistan now is to hold those polls, giving Benazir's grieving supporters a legitimate outlet for their fury. Her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) stands an excellent chance, if the vote goes ahead, of securing a majority.

The most serious immediate threat, however, may come from business and finance, if the capital that has poured into Pakistan in recent years begins to pour out. Beyond that, the greatest damage would come from any entrenchment of the position of the military.

Musharraf may have supplied stability, of a sort, but the encroachment of the army into every arena of public life, extending its own networks of preferment and corruption, was itself becoming the aggravation, not the solution. No doubt, the military has the ability to deliver peace on the streets in the very short term, but beyond, its primacy is a recipe for profound social unrest, as Musharraf's tenacity in clinging to power was beginning to show.

The PPP itself — as it tries to recover after the death of its charismatic leader, whose position was unchallenged even in eight years of exile — will have a central role in determining whether the current violence takes root and spreads. If it can produce a single leader to unite its many factions, then it may be able to direct its supporters to express their passion through rallies or votes, drawing on the network of local candidates it had already mustered to fight the elections. The most common name mentioned in the hours after Benazir's death as a possible leader was Makhdoom Ameen Fahim, the PPP vice-chairman who ran the party during her exile.

But the party — sometimes disparagingly called a cult, for the consuming devotion of its supporters to the Bhutto clan — may find it hard to convert that passion to a new leader. It was built by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father, out of the obsessive loyalty of many of the poorest people in the farmland of Sindh province, the slums of Karachi and the villages of Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province. That passion was transfered to Benazir after her father's execution.

At her homecoming in Karachi in October, the party's formidable machine managed to assemble hundreds of thousands to greet her. Outside Bilawal House, the family compound, hundreds of supporters who had travelled miles simply sat, day after day, at the foot of the 30ft security barrier, knowing they would not catch a glimpse of their leader but happy to be within yards of her presence.

If the PPP cannot pick a new leader, the danger is that its factions now start fighting. Urban intellectuals may rally to Aitzaz Ahsan, the omnipresent head of the Supreme Court of Pakistan Bar Association, who led lawyers' protests against Musharraf. But he has no political base; instead, others of the 700,000-strong Bhutto clan, many of whom loathed Benazir, may jostle for their share of support.

If that happens, it may become impossible to hold elections, even if the army has managed to keep the lid on violence. In that case, the frustrations of Benazir's supporters have the potential to keep erupting in violent protest.

The army is large enough (with more than half a million soldiers) and well-disciplined enough to control uprisings in the main cities, although it can do nothing — as her assassination has shown — against suicide bombers. This year, Pakistan has suffered 40-odd suicide attacks, killing more than 750 people, although most of the attacks have been near the Afghan border. The big cities, always vulnerable, have largely been spared.

A display of stability, even delivered as a state of emergency, will do a lot to reassure financial markets. It might deter expatriate Pakistanis working in the Gulf from withdrawing the cash they had so enthusiastically begun putting into their home country.

But the curse of Pakistan is that while the army can always claim to deliver security, it cannot deliver reform. One of Musharraf's worst mistakes, although ignored by Britain, the US and his other international supporters, was to allow the army to abuse its power to shore up the standing and personal wealth of key officers.

The heart of the army — about 70 per cent of its soldiers and officers — is the Punjab. The appropriation of land by officers in the other three provinces stirred up local resentments, particularly in Sindh and Baluchistan, which came to regard it not as a national defence force, but a predatory organisation from the Punjab.

In the most valuable analysis of Pakistan published this year, Ayesha Siddiqa, a London-based academic, describes the reach of Pakistan's military into every part of official and commercial life. In Military Inc — inside Pakistan's Military Economy, she describes how the four foundations set up by the services run cement and sugar plants, among others, taking a share of many parts of commercial life.

“The systematic exploitation of national resources, especially land, has significantly enriched the officer cadre”, Dr Siddiqa writes. The roots lie in a British colonial method of rewarding officers, but an unsurprising result, as the military has acquired a greater commercial stake, is that it has become ever more unwilling to see thoroughgoing democracy restored.

Musharraf has done a great deal for Pakistan: restoring its economy, renewing ties with the US, taking the heat out of the Kashmir dispute with India, and most surprising (because he had no need to do so), championing women's rights. But his pursuit of terrorism has been erratic and inflammatory, costly in military casulties and damaging to army morale. His heavy-handed reliance on military solutions has inflamed local resentments in Baluchistan and Sindh.

His justification for continued military rule has always been the need for security — and his response now may well be to call for emergency powers. But his use of military solutions where political ones were needed has provoked much of this year's turmoil. After Benazir's death, many will be tempted to see the military as the best bulwark against civil war, yet in all but the very short term, the military is more likely to provoke social disorder than rescue Pakistan from that fate.

Translation - we are leftists and socialists, we want socialism, only socialism can help us. The army is nationalist and center-right, we hate the center right, we don't care what it has ever done for us or how necessary it is, center righters own things and we want them, we hate the center right, it should go away and leave all power to us.

Droned on and on like some hopelessly soulless mechanical object, without the slightest regard for anything happening. The left hasn't had a thought since 1950.

Oh yes,Why don’t we go into the hallowed history of the Pakistani army-it’s China’s oldest ally.HELLO,anyone remember that??????IT created the Taliban & still sponsors terrorists against India & Afghanistan.

Things became much clearer if we throw away the left-right-center theories out of the window when it comes to Pakistan.

On the contrary. The PPP are commies whose sole redeeming feature is their secularist modernism. The army are the civilization Britain established in the country. The Islamic nutjobs are the enemy, and can exist only by saying "why don't you and him fight?"

If the Islamic crazies had any chance of winning an actual election in Pakistan, they wouldn't have needed to do what they did yesterday. They do not. The country's difficulty is just like ours, that the left is more interested in fighting their political opponents than everyone's actual enemies.

And so are you. Sitting there saying "why don't you and him fight?" Gee I wonder why?

Burp,The Brits created the army to defend Pakistan’s borders.Not run the country.

The Islamic nutjobs you talk about of were fostered by Musharraf’s mentor & another former US Ally,Zia Ul Haq.They are severely fragmented among ethnic/sectarian lines to be of any real threat to the Pakistani army as whole.But the dissent among ethnic lines in Baluchistan & Sindh,which till a few years ago were moderate is only helping the bearded ones.

Bhutto,Sharif & the Army have all slept with the Islamists & with each other when it suited them.Guess you need to wake up & smell the coffee instead of talking about left & right.

For those who consider the Pakistani army as rightwing & nationalist-this book would be helpful-

http://www.amazon.com/Military-Inc-Inside-Pakistans-Economy/dp/0745325459

Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (Paperback)

by Ayesha Siddiqa (Author)

Actually the Brits very much used the locally recruited army to run the country. That is how they managed rule India for hundreds of years with a handful of their own personnel.

And the Islamic nutjobs were kind of conspicuous at the time of independence, when oh only a million people were killed in religious pograms in India and Pakistan. They were kind of conspicuous running secular educators out of the country for trying to teach English instead of the Koran.

Yes they are disunited, they are also deeply unpopular, and that means they are no threat to Pakistan as a whole in an *election*, but as yesterday would appear to demonstrate to anyone who isn't brain dead, this does not mean they are not a threat to Pakistan. Or if say Chechen rebels blew up Putin tomorrow, would you conclude that they are no threat to all of Russia?

I've forgotten more about south Asian politics than you will ever know, and the coffee is fine.

So the Indian civil service,the Indian police & judiciary(all of which still use british era statutes) are a myth-it was an all army job then to run the Raj??

I said The radicals of the cross border variety are not a threat to the military,not Pakistan.Pakistan can barely cope,but life goes on for the military.

About forgetting more about South Asian politics & the brain dead comment-guess you are truly on the dot over there.

Regardless of how the various Pakistani political parties describe themselves, the hold of a military dictatorship over the populace will yet be unreliable. The continued vigilance of other nations over the situation in Pakistan will be costly and probably unsuccessful in the long run.

IMO, let India decide as to what to do with Pakistan, and let more of our spoiled diplomats start working in potentially friendlier Turkmenistan. The comfort of plush services should not be the prime determinant for their places of interest.

Our US Government was putting Bhutto up for the gig with Musharraf anyway. Apparently, our leadership doesn’t have much faith in his chances of continuing to keep order there, either.

...enough appeasements. Propping a dictatorship in Pakistan is useless frivolity, while allowing Iran to build nukes. If the regimes in those countries are not shut down and thoroughly denazified, they’ll eventually launch on targets like the Vatican and London.

There is no long term "good" solution for any country named the "Islamic Republic" of... Anything - as long as Sharia Law is in place as the national law. There can only be continued misery, injustice, absence of personal freedom, perversion of human rights, strife, and death.

"Democracy"?

*Snort!*

"Strongman"? Maybe. "Cruel Theocracy"? More likely.

Whatever solution lies out there for such a country is either "not pretty" or "even less pretty". It is a pipe dream that any country depending upon Sharia Law for jurisprudence and guidance can be anything but a hellhole for those living in it or their neighbors who have to live next to it.

You are simply mistaken, I never made such a claim. If you are referring to post number 5, I called the PPP secularist, and the army not secularist but civilized (and elsewhere, nationalist) - which it is.

If they fight each other, the Islamicists have a chance. If instead they agree to cooperate against the Islamicists, then the latter do not have a prayer. If the PPP in particular would rather fight the entire army than just the Islamicist nutjobs, the latter will be ever so happy - and the PPP will lose.

America has slept with commies before when one evil was lesser than the other i.e China vs USSR. In Pakistan, an Islamist Right is a far greater evil than a Secular Left although I dont agree one little bit that the PPP is anymore Leftist than the army. To have the word “People” in a party’s name makes it no more a leftist institution than to have “Liberal” making one a free for all(I am referring to John Howards party in Australia).

Working with Benazir's version of the PPP, allied with the army to present a united front against the Islamic radicals, was indeed US policy and sensible in the circumstances. But the PPP doesn't just have the word "people" in its name. It was a socialist party from its inception.

Benazir's father rule Pakistan in the first half of the 1970s. He founded the party, with the slogans "Islam is our faith, democracy is our policy, socialism is our economy. All power to the people."

Here is what the PPP was doing then, in economic policy matters. Taken from wikipedia -

"On January 2, 1972, Bhutto announced the nationalisation of all major industries, including iron and steel, heavy engineering, heavy electricals, petrochemicals, cement and public utilities."

"Bhutto announced reforms limiting land ownership and a government take-over of over a million acres to distribute to landless peasants."

"Bhutto intensified his nationalisation programme, extending government control over agricultural processing and consumer industries."

"...the performance of the Pakistani economy declined amidst increasing bureaucracy"

The PPP was economically a socialist party and its economics were thoroughly communist in orientation. It fell to a coup over the issue of the use of force in politics, not its economics, though the latter had been ineffective. Incidentally, Bhutto pere is also the one who militarized the Pakistani nuclear energy program and started development their bomb.

The daughter was not the father, the 1990s were not the 1970s, and communist economics have been discredited (outside of Zimbabwe at least) since 1991. But the roots of the PPP are thoroughly socialist, make no mistake.

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