It looks like Musharraf’s party lost pretty badly in Pakistan’s elections there on Monday. So is this a good thing that will somehow change Pakistan for the better as many in the blogosphere seem to hope? Probably not is what I have asserted in the past. Vinod followed up with a great post about the dangers of an illiberal democracy. From an American perspective I find myself suddenly much more concerned about Pakistan now that Musharraf is in a weakened position there. I do not see this as some great victory of the people. Rather, it may just be a step out of the frying pan:
Early results showed a “big gain” for Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto’s parties, Mr Azeem told the AFP news agency.“If the results are confirmed we will play the part of the opposition as effectively as we can,” he said.
Most official counts will not be declared until later on Tuesday, and correspondents caution that it is still to early to be sure of the overall trends.
But high-profile victims of the poll were reported to include party president Chaudry Shujaat Hussain and his close ally, Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid.
They were among the PML-Q losses in Punjab, the country’s most populous province and a key electoral battleground.
“The result will be the voice of the nation and whosoever wins we should accept it – that includes myself,” said Mr Musharraf. [Link]
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p>In Vinod’s earlier post he wrote the following (partly an analysis of a Zakaria article):
…the naked pursuit of Democracy – so the argument goes – becomes a sort of Cargo Cult pursued by well intentioned, often outside reformers with potentially tragic results. In an incorrigibly tribal or sectarian context, elections can merely result in one group gaining the bludgeon of state power to loot the assets and trample the rights of another.Before Zakaria, the Founding Fathers famously used the aphorism “Tyranny of the Majority” and the diktat “People Get the Government They Deserve” to describe exactly such a breakdown. The implication is that in our politically-correct, post-modern world, while criticism of the government flows easily from our lips, perhaps criticism of the “governed” doesn’t flow quite enough. [Link]
Speaking of “trampling the rights of another,” we also saw this story out of Pakistan today:
Posters of the Muslim world’s first female prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto, fluttered in the wind. But the ballot boxes inside the women’s polling station of this impoverished village were empty Monday.
The elders of the village in the Islamic nation’s conservative northwest took their own vote the day before Pakistan staged its crucial elections. They decided women would not have a say in selecting the constituency’s national and provincial lawmakers.
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p>No one defied the order, said Farida Begum, an election official at the largest segregated polling station in Khazana…
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p>It was the same story in Sheikh Mohammedi, a village not far from recent violent clashes between Pakistan’s military and pro-Taliban insurgents farther out of the city. [Link]
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p>More than ever, Pakistan needs a strong central government, especially to help combat the rising terrorist state within a state in its western provinces along the Afghan border. This new illiberal democracy we may be seeing the birth of may only exacerbate the situation there. As the different parties fight for control, terrorists and sepratists have some cover to pursue their own agendas. For those of you that missed it, three weeks ago there was a must-read op-ed in the New York Times by Selig S. Harrison, the director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and the author of “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,” a study of Baluch nationalism. If his analysis is true, Iraq isn’t the nation that we should be worried about in terms of breaking apart into separate countries. Pakistan may be headed down that road as well:
WHATEVER the outcome of the Pakistani elections, now scheduled for Feb. 18, the existing multiethnic Pakistani state is not likely to survive for long unless it is radically restructured.Given enough American pressure, a loosely united, confederated Pakistan could still be preserved by reinstating and liberalizing the defunct 1973 Constitution, which has been shelved by successive military rulers. But as matters stand, the Punjabi-dominated regime of Pervez Musharraf is headed for a bloody confrontation with the country’s Pashtun, Baluch and Sindhi minorities that could well lead to the breakup of Pakistan into three sovereign entities.
In that event, the Pashtuns, concentrated in the northwestern tribal areas, would join with their ethnic brethren across the Afghan border (some 40 million of them combined) to form an independent “Pashtunistan.” The Sindhis in the southeast, numbering 23 million, would unite with the six million Baluch tribesmen in the southwest to establish a federation along the Arabian Sea from India to Iran. “Pakistan” would then be a nuclear-armed Punjabi rump state.
In historical context, such a breakup would not be surprising. There had never been a national entity encompassing the areas now constituting Pakistan, an ethnic mélange thrown together hastily by the British for strategic reasons when they partitioned the subcontinent in 1947.
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p>Harrison ends by suggesting that elected officials won’t really be able to stabilize Pakistan. That role will always fall to the army. A strong Pakistani Army still seems to be the best path to eventually, someday, establishing a liberal democracy:
It is often argued that the United States must stand by Mr. Musharraf and a unitary Pakistani state to safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. But the nuclear safeguards depend on the Pakistani Army as an institution, not on the president. They would not be affected by a break-up, since the nuclear weapons would remain under the control of the Punjabi rump state and its army.The Army has built up a far-flung empire of economic enterprises in all parts of Pakistan with assets in the tens of billions, and can best protect its interests by defusing the escalating conflict with the minorities. Similarly, the minorities would profit from cooperative economic relations with the Punjab, and for this reason prefer confederal autonomy to secession. All concerned, including the United States, have a profound stake in stopping the present slide to Balkanization.
So what will we see play out in Pakistan? There will be celebrations for a few weeks. Everyone will denigrate Musharraf some more for good measure. Then the people will see that their new democracy, probably composed of a weak and continually warring “coalition,” isn’t all that and that their leaders are as corrupt as they were the first time around. Eventually the new general in charge of the army will be forced to take over, just like Musharraf did eight years ago. But hey, I don’t mean to be a party pooper. I truly hope that at the very least we see the birth of a new breed of Pakistani politicians (not like the corrupt Bhutto and Sharif). If that is the only thing we see come of this (two or three superstar leaders of tomorrow) then that is still some comfort.
is there a babe theory of pakistani democracy? like hix in hijabs? lol.
Solid good post, Abhi. And I also meant to congratulate you on your posts on Obama from last week.
It looks like Sharif and Zardari will form a joint PPP-PML-N government. They had met over the weekend, and held a joint press conference in which Zardari said that even if his party gets a majority outright, they will include the PML-N, to ‘preserve the federation’. Or in effect, Sharif will support Zardari for PM.
Neither Zardari nor Sharif was a candidate in this election, but if they form a government, they have some time to get elected in a by-election. But, as Jemima Khan noted in her article, the Bhutto-Zardari and Sharif families has each jailed or prosecuted the other – and both served time in jail under Musharraf as well. Its going to be a very uneasy alliance, but (if) when it happens, it will be billed a ‘Government of National Reconciliation’ – and may even include someone from PML-Q (though almost all their top people have lost). An interesting question is whether most of the PPP MNAs will rally behind Zardari, or whether a significant chunk will support Aitzaz Ahsan instead, splitting the party. Interesting times ahead.
I braced myself this morning for the inevitable news of violence in connection with the election. I was relieved that it wasn’t as bad as I expected, but it seems that the worst may be yet to come as Musharraf and his party won’t go easy I’m sure.
Abhi, your posts on this site are consistently very good, but on Pakistan I fear that you continue to be quite off the mark.
If that government continues to lack any popular legitimacy, as Musharraf’s tinpot autocracy has, then it will continue to risk feeding extremism in the process of trying to fight it. That is not in the interests of the United States or the Pakistani people. There is no panacea here — at this point, there are difficult paths and more difficult paths, and we ought to get used to the reality that this will be a long and difficult struggle. But for that reason, we have to start thinking beyond palliating the short-term insecurity of today or next week if there’s going to be any meaningful progress here. The short-term illusion of comfort that someone like Musharraf seems to provide is probably not not in our medium- or long-term interest.
“From an American perspective,” my principal hope is that the U.S. government will stop formulating foreign policy in Pakistan or anywhere else on the basis of the armchair “cult of personality” which also seems to pervade your own writing on Pakistan (emphasizing here, for example, the need to find “two or three superstar leaders of tomorrow” with whom we think we can do business, rather than supporting democratic processes that Pakistani citizens themselves regard as legitimate). Musharraf has long since lacked the legitimacy necessary to play a constructive political role in Pakistani politics or to fight the war on terrorism effectively. Whether or not he’s formally removed, the sooner he’s sidelined probably the better for everyone — and I expect that at some point in the not-too-distant future, the Pakistan army itself will probably come to recognize that.
I think you’re misreading this passage by reading a lot into the op-ed that doesn’t really seem to be there.
As much as anything else, what makes Pakistan’s democracy “illiberal” in the Zakaria sense is the failure of the institutions of democracy, the rule of law, and civil society to firmly take hold. However, that state of affairs has come in large measure due to the predatory nature of military rule, which you essentially seem to celebrate (but which Harrison merely describes, in the process of making a completely different point altogether). The army, in other words, has played no small part in ensuring that civilian rule, when it has returned, has been “illiberal” and hamstrung. Take Musharraf’s so-called “Emergency” in November as Exhibit A, but we could even look as Exhibit B to the experience throughout the entire period of “civilian rule” in the 1990s, which you dismissively term as “corrupt,” with some justification, but which Husain Haqqani has rather aptly termed a period of “military rule by other means.” Far too often, the United States has reinforced that state of affairs, to everyone’s detriment.
Incidentally, in the time since you and Vinod last wrote on Pakistan, Zakaria himself has more or less come around to this same view — after going to Pakistan and actually doing some reporting. As Zakaria correctly notes, “[t]he American debate [on Pakistan] has been, as is often the case, largely removed from reality.” Unfortunately, this post, like the earlier posts on Pakistan by you and Vinod, seems like it may be as well.
Incidentally, tne thing your post doesn’t mention is that it wasn’t just Musharraf’s PML-Q that was trounced in this election. The religious parties seem to have taken quite a beating as well.
p.s. – I think you have a typo: “Bhutto” has an ‘h’ in it.
Nice response Anil. I think the original post by Abhi is good too in that it raises good questions.
This post is typical of the american nationalist thinking, often expressed on sepia mutiny, and consistent with the general US analysis of “lesser nations”. This is the same kind of thinking that ensured support for Marcos, Shah of Iran, Mubarak, Musharraf and so on. I guess the temptation is always to stand for “order” and somehow re-arrange things so as to ensure primacy of US commercial and military interests.
I am under no illusions that pakistan is going to turn into sweden anytime soon. But we should respect the genuine upsurge in democratic politics that this election represents. The role of the judiciary and media as independent stake holders in the process has grown over the last couple of years.
The real issue is: how should we support and help grow these civil society institutions? How can pakistani democracy be more transparent and less driven by ethnic/family interests? How could a more federal-style sharing of powers with provinces be constructed? How much damage is the $1B+ US annual bribe to the military causing and how could it be reduced/changed in scope?
Thanks, GreenDaddy. Abhi does raise important questions, as he very often does. And I think he and I would agree that it is a mistake to equate “elections” with success in bringing out meaningful “democracy,” as people sometimes do. But the key question is defining the path to bring out about more meaningful civilian and democratic rule, and whether blind trust and continued unconditional support for military rule is helping or hindering that trajectory — and it is there that I think his answers to those questions are quite misguided.
There is some good news from the elections, mainly that the mullah party has been routed. They were also decimated in the NWFP and the Nationalist Pushtun Party has won NWFP.
Abhi is right in his analysis. I think this will hurt the war against the crazies in NWFP. Sharif wants to ‘talk’ to the extremists and this will really complicate the US war on terror in that region.
Let’s just celebrate the democratic process at this point.
I have scant opinions on this matter – what is good for the Pakistani people, what is good for the US or what is good (or bad) for global terrorism as related to the events in Pakistan. Manoj Joshi of Mail Today has his own prescription for what is good for India. Joshi’s piece was written a week ago.
preliminary analysis of background behind the pakistani elections – much more informative than regurgitated slogans from zakaria..
Pakistan election: rise of the middle classes
What is a liberal democracy?
And what’s so good about it?
Wait! Wait! I have the solution! I’m sure if we just make Kayani
dictatordear leader for life, everything will turn out just peachy this time around. I promise.Now that the elections have resulted in what was largely expected (no clear majority for anyone, but mush kicked out), it is perhaps time to ask a couple of fundamental questions
People from Punjab and Sindh would rather see peace in their prosperous provinces than see majority of resources devoted to NWFP. The political parties cant give a free reign to Americans as Mushy did, so Americans might not oppose any separatist movement any more. India might not be opposed to having smaller and more manageable states as neighbors. China – May be.
Is the viability of Pakistan higher under the dictator Mush or under these two democratically elected idiots? How long before the next coup?
much more informative than regurgitated slogans from zakaria
Dont diss on Zakaria foo’. He iz da man!
@ #14 P A:
Is that an Agni rocket in your pocket or are you just happy about the prospect of Pakistan falling apart?
Dictatorship does not foster liberal democracies. Imperfect/illiberal democracies gradually shift toward liberal democracies. Under Musharraf’s 9 years, we have seen the erosion of democratic institutions, because they fundamentally challenged his authority. The feeble coalition, however warring its factions would be, provide a framework for the rebuilding of Pakistan. And as for NWFP, it became a mess that it is during Musharraf’s rule. Why didn’t Musharraf prevent the infiltration of Taliban elements into Pakistan when the Afghan war started? I think, partly, Musharraf’s iron fist and the willingness to do the dirty work for the u.s have caused more people to get alienated and turn toward extremism.
The tyranny of the majority is a problem with democracy, but it can be addressed in many ways, federalism and power sharing being two popular mechanisms.
One thing is certain – deny the Muslim world democracy, and disenfranchised Muslims will look to the radicals and their ideology of holy war for their representation – radicals whose recruiting strategy is based on a showing that the Christian West is supporting oppressive dictators to oppress common Muslims.
Musharraf is about to be ejected, and this is your response? Like the UN, I decry this politely in the most ambiguous terms possible before adjourning for lack of consensus. Some day I’m going to take you out back and write your Pakistan policy a strongly-worded letter.
Great post Abhi. I’m still learning about the unique political and social issues facing Pakistan, but I think Anil brings up some good points which could be applied to most governments on the road to democracy; what is best for the people is best for the country.
Trust me, I understand what you refer to as “nationalist thinking.” I am in the middle of reading Legacy of Ashes right now. To provide a critique of the situation as I see it doesn’t make me a raving nationalist. It makes me a raving realist.
To Anil,
We’ll let the facts on the ground be the judge of that. If I am wrong then things will only get better. If on the other hand your assessment is off then things will just get worse.
Except you fail to mention the obvious which is that a weak central government ALWAYS feeds extremism even more. A strong central government can at the very least usually provide security. In this particular case I just don’t see a crop of young leaders that can change Pakistan.
Regardless of who the President is, America has to keep pumping billions of dollars into Pakistan to maintain our (and much of the world’s) interest in combating terrorism. Musharraf isn’t some hand-picked puppet of the U.S. who is only in power because of us. To imply such is to conflate his rise to power with the way in which other despots (installed by the U.S. over the years) rose to power in other parts of the world. And I actually agree with you. The army will see that with this election loss Musharraf has become weakened. Having recognized that maybe they’ll just take over in the coming months.
I am not misreading the op-ed. I am just using it to make a different point than the one you are making. Also, I am not celebrating military rule. I just disagree with people that think democracy is the quick answer to every country with a problem.
Taking a quote out of context to label mine and Vinod’s earlier posts as irrelevant is a sleight-of-hand trick, not a cogent argument.
Thanks, fixed the spelling. Slate has some additional links to blogs writing about this.
I wonder how the victory for mainstream political parties on an agenda of human rights, constitutional governance, rule of law and freedom of expression can be termed as the beginning of “illiberal democracy”. The Mullahs have been defeated… and mainstream centrists, leftists and secularists have won.
This – the article above- is by far the most pathetic analysis I have read of these elections so far.
What kind of response is really possible to this sort of comment?
Sad, very sad. Again a deeply self-serving (US national interest very narrowly defined) comment. Please read the history of US-Pakistan relations over the last 50 years. You are both deeply ignorant and yet very full of opinions.
All of this money is going strictly to rent out the Paki army for whatever the US wants. It has almost nothing to do with the big picture fight against islamic terrorism. It has nothing to do with supporting democratic values of any kind. This has been going on since 1948!!!!
If you want to understand the world out there, please open your eyes first.
Nice “American elite” perspective. Tagging of political leaders as “corrupt” and military leaders as “honest” and hence the support is a “time tested” strategy. 🙂
What’s up with all the personal attacks? “open your eyes” etc. I am quite well read on U.S.-Pakistan history, thank you. For the record, I don’t wish Mush had won. It was obvious he had no chance. Since my last post he had become to weak to be effective because of a number of reasons, some out of his control (Anil touched on some of these). However, I think that the people who believe that elections are going to somehow bring a change to Pakistan are being naive. The military is still who runs Pakistan, and who will probably end up taking over when corruption rears its head again. And yes, I always write from an American perspective since that is what I have always been. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they are ignorant and don’t know what they are talking about. It is lazy to suggest so.
The dictator is gone. Long live President Musharraf. snark
Dont forget, Sharif was involved in the Kargil war (1999). He denies it now, but it is too hard to believe. He was the PM at the time. Sharif gave Kargil war as a Thank you response to Vajpayee’s bus trip. Vajpayee was back-stabbed. I would rather have Zardari become PM of Pakistan than Nawaz sharif. It is Zardari’s sympathy that the people of Pakistan have voted Musharraf (the executioner of the failed Kargil war) out.
Actually, the trajectory that Gen. Kiyani has been signaling in recent weeks has been precisely the opposite, a rather sharp move away from Musharraf’s deep entanglement of the army in political affairs and civilian administration. But let’s see. I’ll let us agree to disagree, for now, on the rest of your response.
22 · YLH said
Barring the Bacha Khan and Khan Abdul Wali Khan affiliated parties (leaving aside Jiye Sindh which is not a political party) all political parties in Pakistan are religious parties. The difference between a mullah run party and the PPP or PML is one of degree not principle. Pakistan was founded to provide a homeland for Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. That and the founding of Pakistan as an Islamic state remain among the basics of the nation and its state. No election in Pakistan has ever changed that. This is not to say that an Islamic state such as Pakistan is better or worse than any other state organised on non-religious lines.
You’re absolutely right as far as I’m concerned. I’m Pakistani, and I didn’t vote precisely because I don’t believe that my exercise of a faux-democratic action will actually do anything. All the elections have accomplished, near as I can tell what with being in PK and all that, is a regurgitation of the same corrupt, incompetent personalities who’ve spent the last four decades kicking the shit out of the country. The change has to mandated and achieved by the military, and by integration of the military back into civil society. To scream “Oh, the Army people are gone, elections have been held, yay democracy” is to be myopic.
Hardly. Your logic is a bit fallacious, if you’ll pardon the phrasing. Being predicated on a particular notion or idea has nothing to do with where political parties currently stand. I’m not great on US history, but isn’t this statement akin to saying that because Puritans came to the US originally, all American political parties are therefore Puritanical? That sort of sweeping generalisation ignores the distinction between parties urging a religious transformation and those that are working from a more secular perspective, not to mention the gradations of opinion and approach that each individual member of a party has. If anything, the parties here tend towards being ethnic in nature.
In the absence of great luck, you need the tug of success and failures of democracy and electoral politics for these great leaders to fall out. If there is tacit or overt encouragement of military strongmen who crush all dissent taking over every ten years, where is the healthy process that will nurture these leaders?
It might be that the wave of Islamic extremism in the northwest combined with separatist forces will lead to Pakistan splintering because of a weak central government. But the blame for that rests in a 40 year tradition of periodically having one-man shows based on myopic agendas, not on the fact that the current government is weak. The use of force might create the illusion of stability for a few more years, but it can hardly put a stop to these forces if they are indeed as inexorable as you fear. On the other hand, if they are not, it is very possible that a functional representative government emerges from this crucible of violence provided there is adequate and reasoned international support.
Kayani has known for a while that Musharraf is weak. He has explicitly enforced regulations that prevent army officers from meeting with politicians, and also relinquished responsibility for actually running the election because he did not want to have any suspicion of doctored results on the army. The cycle seems to be in the mode of separating army and politics, but again, that is not a new development in Pakistani politics. The question is what the US response will be when the next strongman wants to play his cards.
Abhi’s comments on Pakistan continue to be rather misguided. Army rule in Pakistan has consistently led to disaster – the 65 war with India, the 71 debacle which cost a million or more Bengalis their lives, the Afghan adventure that helped lead to the Taliban, and then the recent period which has de-stabalized the country even further and may lead who knows where. Sure, the politicians are inept, but it is much better to have a process that can lead to change rather than a tinpot dictator who thinks he knows the national interest better than anyone. India has done fine with a flawed democracy, there is no reason why Pakistan – so similar in so many ways – cannot do so as well. We just have never been given much of a chance.
30 · Ochre said
No political party in Pakistan stands for separating Islam from the state or the nation, or changing the role of the military from being a defender of Islam to being a defender of the nation and its state. Gallantry awards in the Pakistan military are still conferred for having sacrificed one’s life for Islam (which is one becomes a shaheed, not just a mohib) and dispatching the infidel to jahannum.
No, because the founders of the US categorically delinked faith from the state.
Those who believe “nothing good can come of it” re: pakistani elections should ponder on what they are saying. That the struggle of pakistani people for better govt can never ever progress? That only the US-centred viewpoint matters? That because elected officials tend to be more overtly corrupt they should be rejected in preference to a military general? Is that how western democracies developed between 1850 – 1950?
This discounts the HUNDREDS of billions that have been consumed by the pakistani army. There are whole books that have now been written that analyze the scale and magnitude of this stealing, which must be some kind of world record.
Aren’t indian politicans corrupt? Should indians also be ruled by their military?
Here is a Boston Globe article that basically echoes Abhi’s US-national-interest-is-the-only-important-issue viewpoint. You can clearly see the impact of narrow american nationalism on the writers thought process.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/02/21/reading_the_tea_leaves_in_pakistan/
Al Beruni, Why do you think that American nationals should be egalitarian, vasudhaiva-kutumbakam (the whole world is my family) type?? Why should American nationals not look for American interests ?? What is the incentive for American national to do something against his/her interest (if they percieve something to be against their interest) ???
RC
You are absolutely right – but we should all be honest and aim for less hypocrisy. What is dissapointing is the pretense of universalism – the idea that US concerns are naturally universal concerns etc – clothing it in abstract discussion of liberty/democracy and other fancy words. This what I have objected to in Abhi’s posting.
But you have to understand this kind of brainwashing goes deep into the culture. American culture is so self-absorbed that it is difficult for many people to even realize this – they are genuinely puzzled by the idea that the whole world doesnt resolve around american self-interest. This is also typified by Abhi’s responses to comments..
Al Beruni, where do you spot hypocrisy? This has ALWAYS been an American blog. I think we have only ever had a single non-American as a guest blogger even. I am sure there are plenty of other blogs (and I linked to a summary of some above) written by non-Americans with differing viewpoints that you can find to agree with your viewpoint.
Al Beruni, you frame this issue all wrong. This isn’t a post reflecting “US concerns,” it’s a post reflecting “Abhi’s concerns.” Of course, Abhi is an American, and so his concerns obviously reflect his perspective and experience as an American. And certainly there are Americans who agree with him. Especially in the Bush administration. 😉 But there are also many other Americans who don’t, and their concerns also reflect their perspectives and experiences as Americans. We’re not a monolith.
Anil
Obviously, there is a difference between an opinion from an american and an opinion which reflects US nationalism and national interests. Abhi’s opinion belongs to the second class.
What is unfortunate, is that he titles his piece “victory for the pakistani people?” whereas his real title should be “Who will best help US achieve its goals in Pakistan?”. This is the hypocrisy I am referring to – talking about democracy, liberalism, other fancy words, while actually reaching conclusions based on hard-nosed real-politik.
And, yes, I am aware that our current US administration specializes in this kind of stuff…