In My View

Double Jeopardy in Pakistan

Misfortune never comes alone. It comes in pairs. The names of the calamity that has struck Pakistan are Asif Ali Zardari and Mian Nawaz Sharif. When the country’s North West is up in flames; when its cities are being bombed and mutilated by assassins bullets everyday, the two decided to have their slugfest in public.

But then for Nawaz Sharif it was a question of political survival. For, the Pakistan Supreme Court had ruled him, and his brother, out of electoral politics for the rest of their life times. That meant they would not be able to ascend to any electoral office anymore. So Sharif had to take to the streets. In the process, he deftly transformed a very personal battle into one about democracy and the rule of law.

Zardari had possibly thought that if he could postpone taking a decision on the issue of reinstatement of Supreme Court chief justice, Ifthikar Chaudhuri long enough, the issue itself would go away. But he had obviously erred about the longevity of the issue. He should have remembered that it was the same issue that had launched a series of events which culminated into them being brought back to power. So he had an unpaid bill. In politics those kinds of bills can seldom be wished away.

So we all know how the events of the past fortnight unfolded in Pakistan. The social turmoil this proxy political battle could have caused would have exacted a price from a country that was being stripped to the bones paying its old IOUs. Not only is it repaying the US for its past benevolence, it is even paying the Taliban/al Qaeda combine for helping Islamabad to wage non-conventional tactics in asymmetric war.

While the Taliban/al Qaeda might have been waiting for the politicians to discredit themselves more, in the manner that made them or their understudies better options for the people of Pakistan in search of State, the US and its allies could ill afford such situation to develop.

The US is increasingly realising that this ‘War on Terror’ in South Asia – a potential key focal point for the Barack Obama administration – can only be won when the people of the Pakistan are geared towards resisting those dark forces of medievalist revivalism. The US establishment is feeling that their overdependence on the Pakistan army is commensurate with the results produced by the forces. The John Kerry-Richard Lugar bill that is slated to triple the hand-out to Pakistan given by the Joseph Biden-Lugar act last year is geared towards delivery of governance.

Unless that key element – which includes both security and development - is brought to the table in Pakistan, the people of the country would not consider their leadership worthy of banking on. And till that time it happens, the Pakistan government would have to find stop-gap measures of seeking to co-opt elements of the forces they are ranged against. In the longer run, these attempts to find ‘good Taliban’ would come back to bite the hands that fed them. For, the ideas that germinate these forces need to be defeated in totality before one can declare their complete extermination.

In that light, one has to look at the events of the past fortnight in Pakistan carefully to see signs of a rejuvenation of Pakistan’s socio-politics. The rent-a-crowd political gatherings of the sub continent ensure that the number of people in a political programme are seldom a measure of their popularity. So if one decides that the teeming hordes in various vehicles that almost laid siege to Islamabad last week are an indicator of the resurgence of democratic politics in Pakistan, one could be miserably mistaken.

On the other hand, if Nawaz Sharif’s return to politics was so unpalatable an idea to the general population, even his unaccounted billions could not have got so many people on the streets. It works on this principle. The goons who rig polls in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh change sides on the basis of the swings in popular mood. That way they ensure that the myths about their power continue to grow riding on the back of popular waves that occur irrespective of their muscle power.

Over and above that, Pakistan’s army would not gone out on a limb to make Zardari relent to the demands of Sharif brothers had they themselves sensed that latter was not resonating with the people.

In fact, the crucial element in the sage of the past few days in Pakistan has been attitude of the army. The way they stayed in barracks, preferring to pull strings to make the puppets dance showed a level sophistication that was sorely lacking in the case of that institution of Pakistan. Clearly, the army has realised that this time if they donned the mufti again, it would be gravely impolitic on their part thus challenging the sustenance of the only functioning institution of the country. At the end, not only the episode ended on a note that was not a reversal of the status quo in Pakistan, but it also did not denote a lasting damage to it.