Pakistan: Now or Never?
Perspectives on Pakistan
Army, Allah and America: on Pakistani pitfalls and the future of Egypt
All countries are unique and comparing two of the world’s most populous Muslim countries, Egypt and Pakistan, is as risky as comparing Britain to France at the time of the French Revolution. But many of the challenges likely to confront Egypt as it emerges from the mass protests against the 30-year-rule of President Hosni Mubarak are similar to those Pakistan has faced in the past, and provide at least a guide on what questions need to be addressed. In Pakistan, they are often summarised as the three A’s — Army, Allah and America.
Both have powerful armies which are seen as the backbone of the country; both have to work out how to accommodate political Islam with democracy, both are allies of America, yet with people who resent American power in propping up unpopular elites.
As my Reuters colleague Alastair Lyon writes, Egypt’s sprawling armed forces — the world’s 10th biggest and more than 468,000-strong — have been at the heart of power since army officers staged the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy. Mubarak’s announcement that he was naming his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as vice-president was seen as a move towards an eventual, military-approved handover of power. And Egyptian protesters have sometimes tried to see the army as their ally — an institution that puts country first before personal gain.
Yet armies, as Pakistan has discovered over its many years of on-again off-again military rule, are not designed for democracy. They are designed to be efficient, and with that comes the hierarchy and obedience to authority that would seem alien to many of those out on the streets of Cairo.
In his book about the Pakistan Army, defence expert Brian Cloughley writes about how the British general, the Duke of Wellington, responded to democracy in his first cabinet meeting as prime minister: ”An extraordinary affair. I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them.” The story is told as part of an argument about why the Pakistan Army has never been particularly successful at running the country.
“All Pakistan’s army coups have been bloodless, successful and popular – but popular only for a while,” he writes. “The trouble is that military people are usually quite good at running large organisations, even civilian ones, but generally fail to understand politics and government, and the give-and-take so necessary in that esoteric world.”
It is a lesson that may yet need to be learned in Egypt. As Amil Khan wrote from Islamabad in his Twitter feed, “Love the way Pakistani twitterers puzzled by Egyptians’ trust in army. Guys, you’re kinda similar, but kinda different.”
Pakistan, India and the value of democracy
Of the many comments I heard in Pakistan, one question particularly flummoxed me. Was democracy really the right system for South Asia? It came, unsurprisingly, from someone sympathetic to the military, and was couched in a comparison between Pakistan and India.
What had India achieved, he asked, with its long years of near-uninterrupted democracy, to reduce the gap between rich and poor? What of the Maoist rebellion eating away at its heartland? Its desperate poverty? The human rights abuses from Kashmir to Manipur, when Indian forces were called in to quell separatist revolts? Maybe, he said, democracy was just not suited to countries like India and Pakistan.
The question surprised me, in part because I had never really been forced before to defend democracy, possibly because in the West we take it so much for granted that we have forgotten why it matters. It also surprised me for the sheer conviction of the sentiment.
In Pakistan, this is not a mere academic debate. Just last week, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said there was no threat to democracy and the army had no intention of taking power. Yet the very fact he had to say so at all spoke of deep disquiet in the country over the civilian government’s handling of Pakistan’s floods, which with it has brought new mutterings of an eventual return to military rule.
“Why the prime minister needed to hammer this point home once again could be anybody’s guess,” the Daily Times said in an editorial. “The diminishing returns of a corrupt and incompetent democracy are leading to the inescapable suspicion that something is in the air, in the possible shape of an anti-democratic intervention.”
To be clear, there is no sign of an imminent military coup. The army neither wants to, nor needs to take power, since it already calls the shots on the issues that matter to it — foreign and security policy. But equally, the army’s lead role in flood relief has increased its clout and encouraged misgivings about the value of democracy which could act as a slow-burning fuse if the civilian government is not able to improve its performance. And according to some, it is a slow-burning fuse lit by the military itself — or by what Dawn columnist Cyril Almedia calls the 800-pound gorilla of Pakistani politics, the army.
Democracy must deliver or else, seems to be the refrain currently gripping Pakistan. So far, however, few have spelled out the value of democracy, nor for that matter said precisely what they mean by “or else”.
Democracy in India does not compare with that in the developed Western nations. It has its own unique flavor. I can compare the roads in India to those in the developed West. In Indian roads one sees pedestrians, bicycles, bullock carts, cows, old trucks, motor bikes, cars, beggars and everything is on a slow move with constant honks filling the background. In Western roads, one finds clean and spotless quality with honks seldom heard, modern vehicles going much faster. Both are transportation systems. But they appear vastly different.
What matters is the exercise. India has not achieved full maturity in democracy. It will probably take a couple of centuries to get to that level. But the exercise cannot be given up because it does not resemble that in developed nations which have dabbled with it for more than two hundred years.
For democracy to thrive, all one needs is wisdom. One does not have to be literate or elitist. The poor man in India has enough political wisdom to throw out candidates. Through a persistent exercise, Indian democracy has reached a somewhat elementary school level from kindergarten. Until about twenty years ago, one family and one political party dominated the Indian political scene. It was much like Pakistan being under military rule and a preference for it by Pakistanis for lack of alternatives.
I’d say that the Nehru dynasty simply mothered Indian democracy until it could crawl and move on its own. Now there are regional parties that have taken on the stage at the center and coalition governments have become the norm. In the 1970s, regional parties had no clout at the center. At the state level, dynastic politics still continues. But with more economic progress, this should change.
India has vast variation in terms of development on one side and utter backwardness on the other. The Maoist issue has arisen mostly due to political neglect and utter backwardness in those states. Like Arundhati Roy says, the barrel of the gun will not subdue it. But it is all part of the overall mosaic.
Democracy in India has gained some kind of momentum. No one can take away people’s right anymore. Many oppressed communities like Dalits and Muslims have realized the power of voter blocks. They vote en masse and politicians want their votes.
In Pakistan, cold war geo-politics wiped out the roots of democracy. The US always prefers dictators in other countries for quick returns. Its business like attitude has destroyed many small countries. Pakistan became a victim of American geo-politics. The US encouraged and supported Pakistani military generals, showered them with state of the art weapons, turned a blind eye to their regional ambitions and never helped democracy take root. A military that had become blood thirsty will never allow any other system to take its power away.
Pakistan has the same type of people as India does. If India managed to keep its democratic system alive all the way through, Pakistanis are fully capable of the same. It is just that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sixty years later, one cannot simply plug in democracy there and expect it to mature fast. The foundations for that have been destroyed. Though Pakistan sports a democratic government, it is its military that is the real power.
Corruption is a big menace in Indian politics. But we have not given up on our democracy. It definitely has become better compared to before. We’ll run along this road filled with bullock carts, cows, bicycles, pedestrians, beggars, luxury cars, auto rikshaws, buses and old trucks. We know there are many pot holes everywhere. But with time, things will improve.
A shoddy democracy is better than no democracy at all.
from Tales from the Trail:
General Kayani steals the spotlight at Pakistani embassy party
Pakistan's foreign minister heads his country's delegation to Washington this week for high-level talks, but there was no mistaking who was the star at a reception at the Pakistani Embassy on Tuesday night: Army General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Guests crowded around Kayani at the annual Pakistani National Day party at the embassy, posing for photos and jostling for the military leader's ear. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, also drew those eager for photographic souvenirs of the occasion, but not such a feeding frenzy as that around Kayani.
U.S. senators and Obama administration officials lined up to speak to the slim and dapper general, who Pakistani media say rules the roost back home but is also central to U.S. relations with Islamabad.
Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani, who has had his own tensions with the military in the past, heaped praise on Kayani during his introductory remarks for Qureshi.
"He (Kayani) embodies the conviction of the Pakistani armed forces, not just to defend the frontiers of Pakistan but also to ensure the continuity of constitutional democratic rule in accordance with the aspirations of our people of Pakistan," said Haqqani before Qureshi took the podium.
Since he has been in the United States, Kayani has had a busy schedule, meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, and other senior U.S. military officials.
@Mortal1, Khuidude,
Quit wasting your precious brain power trying to reach psychologically warped and disturbed bloggers like UmairPk.
Umair’s opinions shift on the drop of a coin, as soon as the Pak Army’s stances change on anything. Or let me rephrase, as soon as the USA bends the PA over the barrel and makes them fight the Taliban, then Umair jumps on the band wagon, “rah rah…PA…Men at their best, indeed”.
Pakistani’s most of them are still delusional, they think partition washed away thousands of years of identity and genetic kinship.
Let me remind you Umair, Pakistanis ARE Indians. Feel free to celebrate your fictitious identity, the one some of you Pakistanis have used so many times to hurt India.
Unfortunately, the politics of Islam have perverted the ways of the Indian muslims who are descendentss of those Indian muslims who migrated during partition.
I am sure that Paks will keep trying to hurt India, using one excuse or another, but mother India will always know how to handle the brats in Pakistan.
At the end of the day, Pakistanis are Indians, just 60 years behind.
Pakistan: Through the eye of a needle
For the first time in many months, the future of Pakistan is being determined not in the fight against Islamist militants, but within its institutions — its judiciary, its political parties, its government and its military. Last week’s decision by the Supreme Court to strike down a 2007 amnesty given to politicians and bureaucrats has provided Pakistan with a rare opportunity to remodel itself as a civilian democracy based on the rule of law. But the way forward is so fraught with difficulties that assessments of its chances of success are at best sober, at worst ominous.
The court decision to strike down the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) affects some 8,000 politicians and bureaucrats on a list of those who had been covered by the amnesty, including the defence and interior ministers. President Asif Ali Zardari had also been covered by the amnesty, but remains protected by presidential immunity. Such was the upheaval created by the ruling that foreign exchange markets were briefly shaken last week by unfounded rumours of a military coup. The real impact is likely to be more slow-burning.
THE POWER OF THE MILITARY
The disarray in government ranks will weaken its ability to take on the country’s powerful military, which continues to call the shots in Pakistan’s security and foreign policy.
“Building faith in the judicial system is vital and calls for accountability of all other state institutions as well to strengthen the perception that the decision on the NRO was in good faith and to strengthen the rule of law,” said Ayesha Siddiqa in a column in Dawn newspaper. ”But if a question is asked about whether the decision signifies the strengthening of the democratic process and civilian institutions, the answer must be in the negative. Since the perception regarding the decision is that it strengthens the armed forces and their ability to manipulate political stakeholders, it is not possible to see a major shift in the balance of power.”
Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has vowed to keep the army out of politics. But the military, which has ruled Pakistan for much of its existence, nonetheless exerts a powerful influence behind the scenes. Even when out of power it has tended to play the role of an over-protective parent which has never allowed fledgling civilian governments to learn from their mistakes and find their own feet, thereby paving the way for a more mature democracy. The result has been a cycle of military coups — the most recent of which was when former army chief Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999 — interspersed with brief periods of civilian rule.
Shortly after taking power, Zardari had not only tried to clip the wings of the military but also pushed for peace talks with India, carving out a radically different position from the army which has long seen India as a threat. He had even gone as far as to suggest Pakistan adopt a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons back in November 2008, breaking two taboos at a stroke – over the country’s stance towards India, and over an understanding that any discussion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons should remain the exclusive preserve of the military.
You need credibility specially in politics. Mr Zartdari should not have entered into politics and stayed in the background as a temorary party leader grooming his son to take over at the appropriate time. But no, he could not resist the temptation to come in the front line. This was a mistake because he did not have a clean background and also carried a bag of worms, his companero spread across in several countries, holding more than one residence and equally considered corrupt. Look at his minister of interior, he failed to bring in security asking military to intervene and now calling for muslim clergy to give religous Fatwas agaist the so called Talabans.In my view he should have banned ithe issuance of all religous fatwas in the country and any other activity involed in causing excitements and hatered on the basis of the religon. People in the country have gone bonkers becaus of foreign interventions and weak leadership.Now, mr Zardari has to struggle, stand down ond take the leave of absence until the allegations agaist him are settled in his favour in a court of law. They could bring in the speaker of the Parliament in his place.
Pakistan, India and the United States
While attention has almost entirely been focused on America’s difficult relationship with Pakistan – a writer in Foreign Policy magazine called it the world’s most dysfunctional relationship – India and the United States have quietly gone ahead and completed the largest military exercise ever undertaken by New Delhi with a foreign army.
The exercise named Yudh Abyhas 2009 (or practice for war) and conducted in northern India involved tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and helicopter-borne infantry. The U.S. army deployed 17 Strykers, its eight-wheeled armoured vehicle, in the largest deployment of the newest vehicle outside of Iraq and Afghanistan for Pacific Rim forces, the military said.
“This exercise indeed is a landmark. For the Indian Army, this is the biggest we have done with any foreign army,” Indian army director general of military operations, Lt. Gen. A.S. Sekhon said.
Since they began exercising together over the past decade after being on opposite sides of the Cold War, India and the United States have steadily advanced their military relationship. As the two big powers in the Indian Ocean, they have had steadily complex naval exercises and this year, for added measure, brought in the Japanese navy too in a three-way exercise, a move which must not have been lost on the Chinese.
Indeed, as Robert Haddick, who edits the Small Wars Journal, writes in his column at Foreign Policy that the one defence relationship in Asia that is progressing well for the United States is that involving India. It’s not trouble-free especially with a prickly power such as India, but it stands out compared with the troubled security relationships the United States has with Pakistan and China, the author notes.
USA never sincere Pakistan its a real history
http://www.adylimo.com/
Reforming Pakistan’s security agencies
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has put out a paper on the need to reform Pakistan’s intelligence agencies just as army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is winning much praise for playing what is seen as a decisive role in defusing the country’s latest political crisis and saving democracy.
French scholar Frederic Grare says in the paper the reform and “depoliticisation” of the agencies, in particular the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is imperative.
Grare says there is no magic formula to transform overnight an authoritarian regime into a full-fledged democracy but says there’s no excuse for the government to sit on its hands (“patience should not be an alibi for inaction”).
@David
Since India is hostile to Pakistan and sponsors terrorism inside the country, it is logical for the security agencies of Pakistan to focus on India.
Its not the job of security agencies to run economies or conduct foreign affairs.
India, Pakistan and covert operations. All in the family?
Do read this piece by Gurmeet Kanwal, the head of the Indian Army’s Centre for Land Warfare Studies, about how India should respond to the Mumbai attacks with covert operations against Pakistan.
He says that ”hard military options will have only a transitory impact unless sustained over a long period. These will also cause inevitable collateral damage, run the risk of escalating into a larger war with attendant nuclear dangers and have adverse international ramifications. To achieve a lasting impact and ensure that the actual perpetrators of terrorism are targeted, it is necessary to employ covert capabilities to neutralise the leadership of terrorist organisations.”
But he also argues that India’s covert capabilities in Pakistan were wound down on the orders of the Prime Minister in 1997 so as to promote reconciliation. “If that is true, a great deal of effort will be necessary to establish these capabilities from scratch. It will take at least three to five years to put in place basic capabilities for covert operations in Pakistan as both the terrorist organisations and their handlers like the ISI will have to be penetrated. The R&AW must be suitably restructured immediately to undertake sustained covert operations in Pakistan. The time to debate this issue on moral and legal grounds has long passed.”
Pakistan has long accused India of supporting militants in its Baluchistan province, among other places, in retaliation for what New Delhi sees as Pakistani support for separatist movements in Punjab, the north-east, and in Kashmir. But for a democratic government, the value of covert operations is limited. India’s Congress-led government is under pressure now to show it is standing firm against the Mumbai attacks and (leaving aside ethical questions) you can’t achieve electoral popularity with covert operations. That’s why it’s particularly interesting that someone like Gurmeet Kanwal would suggest them.
B. Raman, a former head of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) made similar points in an article he wrote in May 2002 in response to the attack on an Indian Army camp in Kaluchak.
“The situation we face today is due to the long neglect of the need for a carefully worked out counter proxy war doctrine to be implemented consistently, intelligently and with determination,” he wrote. ”Now is the time for formulating such a doctrine and implementing it — more covertly than overtly. A counter proxy war doctrine would provide space for both overt, correct state-to-state relations and simultaneously, covert undermining of the wielder of terrorism.”
We need to take some very strict actions against those who think about hurting people around even in their wildest dreams. We need to set some examples.
We need to bring proof in front of the world about the guilty people responsible for all that has happened, and ask some very straight forward questions to Pakistan. I am not in favour of stopping peace talks with Pakistan, but that should not come across as our weakness any more. Pakistan has been taking our efforts to establish peace for Granted, they have always tried to Make Kashmir an agenda, when we wanted to bring their attention towards stopping terrorism in their Land.
To certain extent it does not matter to the civilian community which part of the border they stay in, till the time they are assured of security, and prosperity and get their self respect. The very Idea of developing fear and hatred for each other is frightening.
Now that Coalition forces may draw back their troops from Iraq, there are high chances that Pakistan will join hands with Iraq and AfGanisthan to run antisocial activities.
All countries know about the truth of what happens inside Pakistan. They just want to say it publicly in front of the workd community. United nations needs to run an impartial investigation on this, and come up with a areport before all nations.
Once proved that Pakistan encourages antisocial acitivities, ut should be banned by the world community. If Pakistan changes its heart today, we are open for peace talks.
In any case citizens of either country should not be hurt, and governments of both nations should keep the benfit of their citizens in priority.
India and Pakistan: remember Kaluchak?
History never repeats itself exactly, but it does leave signposts. So with India and Pakistan settling into a familiar pattern of accusation and counter-claim following the Mumbai attacks, it’s worth remembering what happened after the December 2001 assault on India’s parliament brought the two countries to the brink of war. Or more to the point — thinking about the less remembered follow-up attack on an Indian army camp in Kaluchak in Jammu and Kashmir in May 2002 that nearly propelled India over the edge.
Following the attack on parliament that India blamed on the Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, both Pakistan-based militant groups, India mobilised its troops all along the border, prompting a similar mobilisation on the Pakistani side. Then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf went on national television in January to promise to crack down on Islamist groups; the activities of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed were curbed, and tensions abated somewhat.
These tensions exploded again in May when gunmen launched a “fedayeen” attack on a camp for army families in Kaluchak, killing 34 people. (For an Indian version of the Kaluchak attack written at the time, this piece by B. Raman is worth reading.) The Kaluchak attack so outraged India, and particularly the Indian Army, that it came perilously close to war with Pakistan. The crisis was averted after intensive American diplomacy.
So where does that leave us now in the current uneasy no-war, no-peace environment? Or in other words, is there a risk of another attack, another Kaluchak?
If, as some analysts believe, the objective of the Mumbai attacks was to trigger a new military stand-off between India and Pakistan to draw Pakistani troops away from the border with Afghanistan and reduce pressure on al Qaeda and the Taliban, then they failed. Does that mean more gunmen will be assigned to launch a new attack and complete the task? Or will the governments of India and Pakistan, remembering what happened last time around, find a way to insulate themselves from such a risk?
All my indian friends and media indulged in war frenzy should take sense-pills and go through the following
http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/01/02 /analysis-nuclear-armageddon-in-south-a sia/
For God-sake live and let live with peace and prosperity.
Looking past Musharraf and the role of the Pakistan Army
Amid the feverish speculation about when, how and where President Pervez Musharraf will go, analysts are already looking beyond to the future of Pakistan in a post-Musharraf era. One theme stands out: while the consensus appears to be that the Pakistan Army will not step in to save Musharraf, it might well intervene in the not so distant future if it believes it needs to save the country.
“Musharraf’s departure will highlight the problems that confront the country, which is in the grips of a food and energy crisis. Inflation is out of control,” writes Tariq Ali in the Los Angeles Times. ”The price of natural gas, used for cooking in many homes, has risen by 30%. Wheat, a staple, has seen a 20% price hike since November 2007 … According to a June survey, 86% of Pakistanis find it increasingly difficult to afford flour on a daily basis, for which they blame their new government.”
He adds that over the last 50 years the United States has preferred to work with the Pakistan Army rather than civilian rulers. ”Nothing has changed. The question being asked is, how long before the military is back at the helm?”
Shuja Nawaz, who has just published a book about the Pakistan Army, writes in the Washington Post that the military “would rather not be drawn into the current political squabble. They want to give the civilians the ‘time and space’ to operate government as best as they can.”
But he says the civilian government must take action quickly to restore stability in Pakistan. ”If it fails, there is talk in Pakistan of another cycle of military intervention in the offing, this time on the Bangladesh model: of a longer duration, and using a civilian facade to restore the country’s economic health.”
“With inflation running at 25 per cent, the economy is a shambles,” says an editorial in the TimesOnline. “Investors are fleeing Pakistan, and the rupee has fallen to a record low against the dollar. Separatists, Islamists and extremists are gaining ground in the restless border areas, and Islamabad now seems incapable of imposing its authority. Twenty years after the suspicious death of Zia ul-Haq, the former military ruler, feuding politicians are again set to squander their chances. A restless army is waiting.”
This is all going like so wrong? Can’t they just have peace?
Pakistan, Turkey and the art of the coup
“There can be few countries where the art of the coup is so finely honed as in Turkey…” So starts this Reuters blog by Ralph Boulton about the Turkish Army.
It’s well worth a read for anyone interested in comparing Pakistan and Turkey, two Muslim countries which have both struggled to reconcile secularism, democracy, Islam and domination by the military — and all the more so given President Pervez Musharraf’s own admiration for Turkey.
The armies of Turkey and Pakistan are very different — the former considering itself as a champion of secularism and the latter promoting Islam, particularly under President Zia.
But there are similarities too. The Turkish Army does not relish being in power, preferring to exercise control from behind the scenes. But the same argument can be heard in Pakistan, where many would say that getting involved in politics undermines the fighting strength of the Pakistan Army.
In all their interventions and coups, writes Ralph, Turkey’s generals have never acted flagrantly against popular will, but rather stepped in to restore order. Sounds familiar? The difference is that they then stepped down again to make way for an elected government. Are there lessons in Turkey for Pakistan? Or is Turkey itself sliding into choppier waters, as Ralph’s blog suggests?
Pakistan has been a true brother and friend to the Turkish government, nation and people. We have co-operated in many ways including the Turkish support with Pakistan’s war on terror against the Baloch Liberation Army’s Terrorists and how Pakistan’s supported Turkey’s war against the PKK. I as a Turkish nationalist think that the Mumbai attacks were simply an inside job and an evil conspiracy against the people of Pakistan. We the people of Turkiye and Pakistan will stand united and we are peaceful, freedom-loving people and we will make sure no Greeks, Armenians or Indians get in our way. Both Kemalists and Islamists of Turkey are Pro-Pakistan!
Mortal1: “It’s quite clear that this character, deliberately goes out of his way to ignore the facts which refute his ill-informed preconceived notions & expose his “stomach based” nonsense. He simply does not have the moral courage & integrity to challenge his ignorance & bigotry”
This guy is not alone. Most Pakistanis seem to be of the same mentality – deny, negate anything that does not agree with their vision. Facts or not, what they believe is only correct. The rest can be recited into deaf ears. This is the sign of a society getting walls closed around it. Ignorance will at some point blind them and they will be pushed into doing the wrong thing because of their own built in paranoia and could justify their actions based on it.