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COVER STORY: PAKISTAN
History Repeats Itself
Musharraf himself
compounds the paradox. He insists he runs the most democratic government
that Pakistan has ever had and that he has no ambitions of staying on.
But those who know Pakistan well say there is a grim sense of deja vu
about recent events. They detect a replay of the country's troubled history,
with the main actor having changed though the colour of his clothing-khaki-has
not. In 1978, a year after he had ousted the mercurial Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,
General Zia-ul Haq had nonchalantly remarked, "What is a Constitution?
A mere 15-page document that I can tear at will and the politicians will
follow, wagging their tails."
The military's disdain for politicians has rubbed
off on Musharraf. The General waited for 20 months after he staged his
October 12, 1999 coup to use a technique perfected by Zia to gain absolute
power. Three weeks before his summit with Indian Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee,
he issued a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) that junked the existing
law and anointed himself President of Pakistan. Now, as the President,
chief executive and chief of army staff, Musharraf has effortlessly stepped
into the shoes of the four military dictators who preceded him.
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"He
will get a planted mandate to firm up his rule."
Z. Haq, Chairman, PML
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"It's
dark days for the civil society. There is no hope."
F. Babar, Spokesman, PPP
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That is Pakistan. Even 54 years after its creation
as a confessional state, it has not been able to come to grips with the
fundamentals of either modern statehood or nationhood. Democracy has been
more an aberration than the rule. Despite massive international subsidies,
its economy has always teetered on the edge of insolvency. Its foreign
policy has vacillated between slavish subservience to the US and projecting
itself as the leader of Islamic radicalism. Its insecurity over its national
raison d'etre-that Muslims could not live as equals in a Hindu-dominated
India-has seen it wage four wars on its larger neighbour. Its constricted
sense of national identity has seen more than half its people going their
own way in 1971.
That Pakistan was more anti-India than pro anything
else saw it develop nuclear weapons through stealth and deception. But
with it came the tag of a pariah. Its defeat in the Kargil war, a misadventure
that Musharraf masterminded and the subsequent military coup have compounded
Pakistan's sense of disorientation. It is now regarded in international
circles as a dangerous oddity with nuclear weapons. A country dangerously
adrift. "The real problem is that the culture of resistance is going.
It is as if we have lost our backbones. The people's spirit is sapped
and there is widespread disillusionment," says Mushahid Hussain,
former information minister in the ousted Nawaz Sharif government. Adds
Farahtullah Babar, spokesman for former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's
Pakistan People's Party (PPP): "These are dark days for civil society.
There is only despair. No hope."
Musharraf knows his nation is psychologically
battered by decades of "disgruntlement and disillusionment".
But instead of being overwhelmed by angst, he has convinced himself that
he is destiny's choice to pull Pakistan out of the rut. Speaking to India
Today last week he claimed, "Whatever we are doing is to correct
and arrest the decay that occurred in the past decade. This is the demand
among the public." (See interview).
It's a modest claim. To Musharraf's credit,
his dictatorship has so far not been visibly heavy-handed. He has hard-focused
on economic reforms and has gone about cleaning up administrative sloth
and corruption with an ardour that few elected governments in Pakistan
have shown. His motto: good government is preferable to self-government.
Even Hussain concedes, "Musharraf's success is our failure. He has
a fighting chance by default."
Of the military dictators who ruled Pakistan,
Musharraf models himself, almost self-consciously, on Field Marshal Ayub
Khan, the pucca Sandhurst-trained patriarch who was in power from 1958
to 1969. Ayub had a grandiose vision for Pakistan that he went about implementing
with acknowledged zeal. He kept a semblance of "basic democracy"
but ensured a strong centralised control. Musharraf is culturally closer
to him, though he is yet to acquire the kind of stature and adulation
Ayub enjoyed in his prime. He is certainly no Yahya Khan, who succeeded
Ayub and almost destroyed the country through his drinking binges and
ruthless disregard for all civilised norms.
Unlike Zia, Musharraf has so far not played
the Islamic card to garner support for his actions or used existing political
parties and leaders to push through his agenda. Also, the circumstances
under which the two assumed power are vastly different. Zia had to face
the impact of two major events on Pakistan's border-the rise of Ayatollah
Khomeini in Iran and the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. He set about
trying to make Pakistan a fundamentalist Islamic state apart from positioning
himself as a latter day Moghul and the leader of the Muslim world. Says
retired lieutenant-general Talat Masood, who was Zia's staff officer and
later secretary, defence production: "Zia understood political forces
and aligned with them. Where his self-interests were concerned, he was
ruthless-a true dictator. Musharraf is transparent, straightforward and
intelligent. He is a soldier in many ways but is also very reform-oriented.
He gets away through his openness."
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