Democracy and Dictatorship in Pakistan by Hasan Gardezi

Democracy and Dictatorship in Pakistan

by Hassan N. Gardezi

[22 December 1999]

The wheel of military coups turned once again in Pakistan on
October 12, 1999 and brought the entire country under direct military rule
for the fourth time. I was reminded of a retired colonel who had once
confided that a manual on how to stage bloodless coups has been in
circulation among the officer corps of the Pakistan army for a long while.
So it was small wonder that when time came Gen. Parvez Musharraf's men
seized power with textbook precision. The only thing new about this coup
was the theatrics staged by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his attempt to
remove the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), appointed by himself a few months
earlier, which backfired.
In contrast to the banality of the event the media commentary and
international reaction that followed attached great significance to the
military takeover, but on the basis of two opposite perceptions both of
which missed the central point of the reality of Pakistani state. The
first perception originating mainly with the media commentators and
political analysts within Pakistan blamed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's
increasingly corrupt, manipulative and oppressive government for the
latest military intervention, while at the same time raising hopes that
the coup makers will return the country to democracy "after cleaning up
the mess." This view was reinforced by the calmness, even a sense of
relief, that characterised the response of a cynical public to the
dismissal of Nawaz Sharif's elected but much discredited government.
The second perception was revealed in the form of a strong and
swift international reaction to the military coup in Pakistan. The United
States, having backed every ruthless dictatorship in the past was quick to
disapprove the removal of Nawaz Sharif's civilian government as a serious
deviation from democratic norms and threatened the continuation of
sanctions imposed earlier at the time of Pakistan's nuclear tests. The IMF
hinted at suspension of its loan installments to the military regime. The
British Commonwealth and the European Union decided to dispatch
high-profile delegations to investigate the situation and to urge prompt
restoration of civilian rule within a fixed time frame or face
ostracisation.
But it so happens that none of these perceptions of the October
12 coup are correct and as a consequence any course of action based on
these perceptions for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan is a mere
illusion. In order to understand the reasons for the failure of
parliamentary democracy to take root in Pakistan one has to understand the
central reality of the Pakistani state. To put it in a few words, the
state in Pakistan has evolved into a highly centralized, unitary and
oligarchic instrument which continues to operate in a neo-colonial
framework.

The Centralisation of State Power.
The history and the genesis of rise to power of a
military-bureaucratic oligarchy in Pakistan from the early 1950s and the
centralization of state power in the hands of this oligarchy,
predominantly native to or domiciled in Punjab, is well researched and
documented by the country's own reputable scholars from Hamza Alavi to
Ayesha Jalal. What is conveniently overlooked for ideological reasons or
just poverty of imagination is the fact that many of Pakistan's grave
political, economic and social problems, including the failure of
parliamentary democracy to take roots, emanate from this unitary, highly
centralized, patriarchal and authoritarian structure of the state and the
forces that sustain this structure. The corruption and misdeeds of the
civil politicians elected to high state offices are not primary factors
leading to direct military interventions and martial rule. They are rather
integral to the capitalist system globally and only more visibly blatant
in instances where bourgeois legalisms regulating private property
relations are underdeveloped and inadequately enforced.
On the other hand democracy, indeed the vibrancy of the civil
society itself, is the first casualty of a highly centralised oligarchic
state. It makes little difference if such a state maintains a facade of
parliamentary democracy or its affairs are conducted by its military and
bureaucratic arms directly in the absence of any democratic procedures and
structures.
What we see in the first quarter century of Pakistan's existence
is an uninterrupted process of concentration of power at the centre of the
federal state through the agency of a military bureaucratic oligarchy
unresponsive to the basic needs of people and riding rough shod over the
interests and aspirations of the culturally and linguistically diverse
federating units. The decade long rule of Field Marshal Ayub Khan
(1958-1968) was the first substantive outcome of this process during which
the relationship between the Pakistani state and civil society came to be
defined. The state emerged as an institution above society assuming the
role of the guardian of public interest and national purpose. The regime
derived its main sustenance from the neo- colonial links established with
the United states and its global defense treaty system aimed at containing
the influence of the "communist block." Western style parliamentary
democracy was declared contrary to the "genius" of the people of Pakistan
by Ayub Khan who, with the help of his bureaucrat advisors, devised a
system of party-less indirect elections named "basic democracy." The
provinces of West Pakistan were amalgamated into one administrative unit
and a movement for autonomy that arose in the tribal areas of Baluchistan
was crushed with a massive military crack down. Political parties were
banned, and severe restrictions were placed on labour unions, civil
liberties and freedom of the press.
The basic model of Pakistan's economic development was also
formulated during this period. Rapid capital accumulation or maximization
of profits at the cost of economic equality and social justice was the
central goal of the model and its success was measured exclusively in
rates of economic growth. The state elite and US experts rather than the
people in general were to play the central role in the planning and
execution of the development process. It is interesting to note that this
was the same time when the late Akhter Hamid Khan working, at the
periphery of the state activities, was successfully demonstrating that
people power was more effective in developing prosperous communities
through his Comila project. But such initiatives had to be ignored as they
were threatening to elitist control.

General Elections After 24 Years.
When the Ayub regime fell apart as a result of popular uprising
spurred by political repression and aggravation of class and regional
inequalities, Gen. Yahya Khan took over at the head of another martial law
regime. This regime finally allowed general elections to be held on the
basis of universal adult franchise in 1970, twenty four years after the
creation of Pakistan.
The results of these elections required
the transfer of power to the Awami League which took a majority of the
national assembly seats by its land slide victory in East Bengal, a
prospect threatening to the power of the central state dominated by a
predominantly Punjabi military- bureaucratic establishment. The refusal of
this establishment to honour the verdict of these elections, the military
crack down in East Bengal, the 1971 war with India and the secession of
East Pakistan is now history. What is significant is that at least after
these events the first long stretch of military rule ended in the
territorially diminished Pakistan and a civilian politician, Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto, who had won a majority of the parliamentary seats in West Pakistan
as the leader of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) emerged as the first
directly elected prime minister of the country.
The populist
manifesto of the PPP, embellished with Bhutto's rhetoric of "all power to
the people" and "socialism" generated much hope that Pakistan was now on
its way to democracy. However, Bhutto found a coercive, alienated, and
neo-colonial state structure, in which his political career was nurtured
within the Ayub regime, much more congenial to his temperament than the
image of the "man of the masses" he had projected for himself during his
election campaign. Once in office, he made all the right noises about the
inordinate power enjoyed by the military and the bureaucracy, but went no
further than effecting a few cosmetic changes in the structure of these
institutions. The armed forces continued to swallow as much as 40 percent
of the national revenues and an expensive nuclear programme was initiated
to build a bomb to counter the perennial "threat" from India. A new
paramilitary force , the Federal Security Force (FSF) was also created to
suppress any emergent civil unrest or challenge to his regime.
Bhutto also demonstrated that the central state's writ will
prevail within the federation by dismissing the non-PPP governments of the
smaller provinces of NWFP and Balochistan and prosecuting their leaders
for anti-state activities. And as far as the socialist goals of his party
were concerned, those of his close circle who took this project seriously
soon fell by the wayside and their places were taken by eulogists and
sycophants. When the factory workers who had rallied behind his election
campaign came out to protest the broken promises, they were warned that
the "power of the street will be met with the power of the state."
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto must of course be given the credit for using
his legislative majority to enact for Pakistan a standard parliamentary
democratic constitution in 1973, which even contained a specific clause
making military coups illegal. But a social democrat as he claimed to be,
Bhutto should have known that mere paragraphs in constitutions are not
enough to ensure a democratic order.The best assurance for the survival of
democracy is its work, the work that secures the essentials of a civilized
existence for people and respect for their dignity as human beings.
Missing this point, Bhutto continued to strengthen the institutional power
of the central state hoping that this will secure his personal civilian
rule, a mistake he had to discover at his own peril.

The Islamic Military State.

In 1977 as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto faced a storm of political protest
at the alleged rigging of his second term elections, his obsequious chief
of the armed forces, Gen. Ziaul Haq, staged his coup promising to hold
"fair and free" elections within 90 days. But he soon settled down to rule
Pakistan with an iron hand until his death in 1988. His regime was fully
supported by the United States and its allies militarily and financially
for taking on the Russians in Afghanistan. Except for a short lived and
vacillating period towards the end of his rule, Zia made no pretense of
ruling by popular consent. His brutally repressive regime in known for
many novelties but viewed in its entirety his genius, if we can call it
that, comprised in taking all those pre-existing ideological elements,
distortions and practical devices from the political history of Pakistan
that had been used to legitimise authoritarian regimes in the past and
simply perfecting their application to his own ends.
One can take the example of Zia's prime mission to "Islamise" the
Pakistani society. The use of the name of Islam and "Islamic ideology"
was quite common among the previous regimes to oppose movements for
social equality as "godless socialism" and to counter the demands for
linguistic rights and provincial autonomy as disruptive of Islamic
solidarity. In Zia's hands Islam and Islamic ideology became a versatile
tool for the extension of state control in the domain of personal and
private lives of citizens as well as their public, political, professional
and cultural activities. Borrowing from the Jamat-e-Islami's exposition of
the Islamic state and its righteous ruler, the amir-ul-momineen, Zia
vested in himself limitless prerogatives to define and enforce , through
martial law and presidential ordinances, what was to be proper or improper
conduct and thought for men and women. The introduction of the patriarchal
medieval Islamic code, the shari'a law, was part of this exercise, which
for better or worse, remains the law of modern Pakistan. In the end Zia
dug up the Objectives Resolution, a relic of Pakistan's initial failed
attempts to frame an "Islamic" constitution for the country, and enshrined
it in the 1973 constitution. The highlight of the Objectives Resolution is
the proclamation that sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to Allah, contrary
to the usual attribution of sovereignty in democratic state constitutions
to the people. Never mind whether Allah, the Beneficent, would care to be
recognized as sovereign of what has turned out to be one of the most
corrupt countries in the world; what is significant here is the implicit
denial of the principle of popular sovereignty.

Democracy Under the Military's Shadow.
On Gen. Ziaul Haq's demise in 1988, the military high command,
greatly enhanced in its sphere of power and somewhat sobered by the
excesses of the previous regime, allowed formal parliamentary democracy to
return by permitting party-based elections to be held under the 1973
constitution which now stood heavily amended and distorted, especially
with its 8th amendment giving the president power to dismiss the directly
elected prime minister and dissolve the parliament.
Benazir Bhutto as leader of the PPP formed the first post-Zia
elected government but with less than a clear majority in the parliament
and not before she had made all the right moves to receive the endorsement
of the army, the bureaucracy and the US administration. By this time the
balance of power had tilted so much in favour of the military-bureaucratic
oligarchy that we forewarmed not to expect that "the death of Zia has
cleared the way for transition to a new era of unfettered democratic rule
and popular determination of the national and international orientations
of the Pakistani state ( Gardezi, H. N., Understanding Pakistan, Lahore,
1991, p. 120). We also noted at the time that the degree of "the
military's defacto involvement in the affairs of the state had increased
so much that the imposition of another martial law was unnecessary, at
least in the short run." (p. 121)
That short run lasted for 11 years during which three elected
governments were dismissed by presidential edicts alternating between
Bhutto and Sharif. The fourth elected government led by Nawaz Sharif could
perhaps have lasted for a little longer had he reined in his ambitions
and not taken on the military in the manner he did after clipping the
wings of the presidency and humiliating the higher judiciary.
Nevertheless, it had become evident over those 11 years of the elected
governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif that they could hardly be
regarded as functional democracies. Ushered in and out of office without
completing their constitutionally allotted tenures and operating under the
shadow of a powerful military establishment, they were trapped in such
internal and external structural constraints that their ability to deal
with the cumulated burden of Pakistan's problems was seriously impaired.
Unable even to guarantee the basic livelihood and physical safety of the
citizens, the leaders of these elected govenments remained preoccupied in
victimizing their political opponents, silencing the voices of dissent
from the civil society, warding off threats to their rule from within the
state institutions, and of course, amassing private fortunes while the
opportunity was there.
To make matters worse for both Bhutto and Sharif administrations,
the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1988 coincided with a new
stage of world imperialism, designated as globalisation, that posed new
and more serious problems for Pakistan's model of dependent development.
In order to enforce conformity to the agenda of globalization the IMF and
World Bank loans now came with new conditionalities the brunt of which was
to be borne by the already poverty stricken people of Pakistan. These
conditionalities, euphemistically called structural reforms, require the
dependent economies to privatise state assets, deregulate, downsize,
introduce regressive sales taxes, eliminate state subsidies for essential
consumer goods and public utilities, devalue national currencies and so
on. These measures played havoc with the lives of the low and subsistence
wage workers as jobs disappeared, wages were reduced, prices rose, and
access to essential services such as health, housing, transportation and
education were further limited. During her second term in office Benazir
Bhutto's government had to accept such stringent conditionalities to
qualify for a $1.5 billion World Bank loan creating severe hardships for
the people. The result was that in the following election in 1997 her
party supporters sat home as Nawaz Sharif marched to a big victory on the
basis of very low voter turn-out. The implementation of the IMF/Word Bank
structural reforms continued during his government and in combination with
the infliction of additional austerities on the public, triggered a
spectacular spate of economic suicides by people driven insane with
poverty. But even such screams of public agony failed to move any
collective consciousness or produce any policy response at the official
level. Confident in his "heavy mandate" Nawaz Sharif ruled merrily
hounding his political opponents and public critics, demolishing judicial
constraints to the exercise of his power and playing cricket in front of
his TV audiences until ousted by Gen. Musharraf's military coup.This was
"sham democracy," declared Gen. Musharraf as he took over and promised to
lead the country to "true democracy" in his post-coup address to the
nation on October 17, 1999.

What Is To Be Done.
The lesson that follows from any objective sketch of the
political realities of Pakistan, with more than half a century of history
behind them, is quite clear - democracy in any form or substance cannot
coexist with a state in which all power is centralized and which is
thoroughly alienated from the civil society. If this lesson is received
seriously it also suggests what will have to be done if Gen. Pervez
Musharraf is to succeed in "ending the era of sham democracy" in Pakistan
and directing Pakistan to the path of "true democracy."
First and foremost a bold and concrete plan will have to be put
into effect to dismantle the highly centralised, unitary and
authoritarian structure of the Pakistani state. As noted earlier the
concentration of power in the central state has been its own justification
for attempting to resolve all types of national issues by application of
coercive force, rather than political negotiation and democratic consensus
building, with disastrous social and political consequences.
A prime example is the frequent use of central authority in the
form of military and police action, as well as constitutional and
extra-constitutional dismissals of the elected provincial governments, to
promote national unity. The results of all such exercises proved to be
counterproductive, leading to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 and in
subsequent years giving rise to what Gen. Musarraf in his October 17
address called "provincial disharmony" and "cracks in the federation." A
truly democratic state must be firmly based on the principle of consent
rather than coercion at all levels. One of these critical levels is that
of linguistically and culturally identifiable sub-national groups that
roughly comprise the provinces of Pakistan today. These groups must be
accommodated in the federation as free and equal partners in law.
Within the existing setup of Pakistan this means downward
devolution of power by the central government to the provincial
governments, as well as divisional, district and tehsil administrations.
But such devolution of power to the local levels should not be a cynical
device to legitimise the central rule corresponding to the schemes
employed by the previous military regimes, the so called basic democracy
of Ayub Khan and the party-less local bodies elections of Ziaul Haq.
To set up networks of locally elected bodies without empowering
the local people to exercise their choices freely, and control the bodies
so created, amounts to a sham of grass root's democracy. The outcome of
such exercises may reflect the existing power structures based on class,
caste, biradri (kinship) etc., but it does not reflect "people power." It
is often repeated as a truism in Pakistan that feudalism is a major
obstacle to the working of democratic institutions. But to make such broad
statements is not very helpful. Much change has taken place in the
agrarian relations of production in the country over the last few decades.
Most peasants in the countryside are no longer sharecroppers bound to the
so called feudals by traditional bonds and extra-economic coercion. If
they are empowered through organisation and meaningful participation,
economic security and freedom from intimidation not only by influential
land lords and tribal lords but also by the state police and religious
zealots, they can make wise and independent political choices affecting
their collective welfare. One can recall how Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had just
by his rhetoric of equality infused enough confidence among the under
classes and oppressed groups that they had begun to stand up for their
rights and challenge their traditional masters and bullies. Unfortunately
all that was reversed when Zia brought back the politics of influence
paddling and the PPP itself betrayed its constituency of the
underprivileged.
The empowerment of people, of course, has to be an integral part
of the overall project of strengthening the civil society visa-vis the
state. The democratically organised political parties, independent and
free press and electronic media, advocacy groups, wokers and peasants
groups are prerequisites of the civil society. Its essence lies in the
existence of a plurality of open and secular voluntary associations where
people come together as coequals to debate and define the issues that
concern their lives such as work, health, education, housing, environment,
gender equality, human rights, violence and so forth; they mobilise their
resources to deal with these issues and mediate in the policy processes of
the state. For too long the authoritarian state elite, not only in
Pakistan but in all of South Asia, have tried to do all these things for
the people with a miserable record of achievement tarnished with
corruption and patronage. The state can serve the people better, while at
the same time strengthen the culture of democracy, by letting people
decide for themselves what their needs are in all these areas and how they
are to be met, reconstituting the role of its officials to providing
financial, legal and technical expertise as required. Some of the more
imaginative and well functioning non-governmental organizations or NGOs
have already demonstrated how even the economically and socially
marginalised groups can organise to solve their problems more effectively
than the state bureaucracies. A specific example of what people themselves
should be able to do much better than state bureaucracies is the grandiose
housing project floated by the defunct Nawaz Sharif government under the
label of "Mera Ghar." To be implemented by a bureaucracy out of touch
with the lives of the people, it is bound to fail leaving behind a trail
of waste and disillusionment, unless thoroughly redesigned on the pattern
of something like the Orangi project of Karachi, developed and
implemented with full community involvement and participation.

State policy.
The opportunities and possibilities of what people can accomplish
for their communities depends also on the overall state policy in various
sectors of national administration. Two such important sectors in which
state policy has seriously affected the lives of the people of Pakistan
are the economy and the country's foreign relations both of which are
closely interrelated.
What is striking in the economic sector is that distributive
justice has never been a recognised and actively pursued goal of
development policy and planning since its blue print was laid out during
the Ayub era. Although there was an underlying assumption that the fruits
of development will one day trickle down to the poor and the working
classes, that trickle down never took place until a combination of
excessive external borrowing, heavy defense spending and mismanagement
landed the Pakistani state into a full blown fiscal crisis. With over 60
percent of the annual revenues going to debt servicing and 45 percent
allocated to defense (1999-2000 budget) there is little left to finance
the development sector any more. To add to the misery of the poor and the
working classes the IMF/World Bank conditionalities now prohibit the
subsidizing of food and other essential items as noted earlier. No
political system, least of all a democratic one, can remain stable under
these conditions.
Pakistan's economy is indeed in "deep trouble" to use Gen.
Musharraf's words from his October 17 speech. The question now is what can
be done to "revitalize" it ? The measures being suggested by Gen.
Musharraf and his cabinet amount to doing more of the same thing, which
combined with the operation to recover defaulting bank loans and the
embezzled wealth of the country, if successful, may buy some time but will
not turn things around unless there is a fundamental change in the
existing economic priorities. In fact the entire model of Pakistan's
economic development requires radical change so that the welfare of the
people and their participation acquires a place at the centre of the
development process. But even without waiting for a major change in the
development paradigm , a beginning can be made to redress the serious
imbalances in the existing allocation of resources.
Obviously a major drain on the country's economic resources is the
very heavy expenditure on defense, combined now with the added cost of
nuclear armament, which has grown out of all proportion to other
investments necessary for building a minimally prosperous and stable
society. Although a symbolic cut in the defense expenditure announced by
the present military government in the economic reforms package unveiled
on December 15, 1999 is in the right direction, this reduction has to be
more substantial and Gen. Musharraf is in a good position to initiate this
task for several reasons. He is said to enjoy a high degree of support
within the armed forces; he has direct and open lines of communication
with the rank and file of the armed forces to sell the idea of cuts in
defense expenditure; he is privy to the detailed break down of the defense
budget and as such in a position to determine where the cuts can be made
most prudently. Besides, he has assumed the position of the head of state
at a time when the aftermath of the May, 1998 India-Pakistan nuclear tests
produced a wide-spread peace movement in the subcontinent which can
counter the right-wing militant formations whose business it has been to
keep alive costly tensions between the two neighbours.
An effective downsizing of the defense establishment will no doubt
necessitate a change and a fresh perspective in Pakistan's traditional
foreign policy which has been based too narrowly on a single minded
preoccupation with the "Indian threat," at the core of which lies the
Kashmir conflict. For too long the civil and military rulers of Pakistan
have used this Indian equation to justify the building of a military power
far beyond the capacity of available national resources to support it,
going even to the extent of serving the Cold War interests of the United
States in return for military and economic aid. It is about time to admit
that the results of this policy have been catastrophic for Pakistan. No
wars with India have been won on the battlefield leading only to tragic
losses of military and civilian lives on both sides, the Kashmir conflict
is no closer to settlement, and proxy engagements on behalf of the United
States in Afghanistan have subverted the internal peace and security of
Pakistani society.
There are precious resources tied up in maintaining an adversarial
relationship with a neighbour manifold larger in size and means of waging
war. Peace with India will not only release these resources for more
productive use and social uplift; it will yield additional economic
dividends by opening up mutually beneficial trade and commerce between the
two countries. In short Pakistan has much to gain economically and
politically by adopting a pro- active policy of improving its relations
with India.
The related issue of Kashmir also demands a fresh approach.
Officially, Pakistan has always maintained the justifiable position that
the people of Kashmir have the right of self- determination. Yet it is
ironic that the successive governments of the country have been totally
negligent of consulting the people of Kashmir under Indian control or
their leaders before launching strategic operations to "liberate" them.
While each of such operations has failed in its objectives, as did the
latest Kargil move, they have brought massive Indian retaliations and
untold misery to the people of Kashmir. It may be best as a first step to
leave the Kashmiris alone for a change so that they can themselves
determine the course of their struggle for self- determination. Abdul
Ghani Lone, a leader of of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) on a
visit to New York after the Kargil fiasco told Pakistani journalists that
APHC wants "no help from Pakistan politically, financially and militarily
(Herald, October, 1999, p. 23). He does make a lots of sense. Pakistan can
play a much more constructive role in helping the people of Kashmir
through quiet diplomacy and negotiations, from which the representatives
of the people of Kashmir are not excluded.
The problem is that Pakistan's jingoistic foreign policy towards
India, and by implication its stand on the Kashmir issue has been closely
tied to the ideology of monolithic Islamic nationalism adopted and
promoted by the state for its strategic purposes. The operative logic of
this ideology is based on a simplistic dichotomy between "We" and the
"Other." The collective solidarity of "We", the Muslim Pakistanis, needs
to be constantly nourished by hostility towards the "Other", the Indian
Hindus.
For the state this ideology of monolithic Islamic nationalism has
served two main strategic functions. First, it has served as a
justification for maintaining a well financed and sacrosanct sphere of
military power as a defense against an identifiable "Other." Secondly it
has been used to deny the cultural and linguistic plurality of Pakistan's
nationhood. Those within "We" who individually or collectively assert an
identity as Sindhi, Siraiki, Balochi etc. are disruptive of Islamic
solidarity and therefore a challenge to national unity. The use of force
is justified to bring them back to the fold. That this logic has never
worked is another matter.
In reality this brand of nationalism that has come to define
Pakistan's nationhood exclusively in terms of Islamic identity is patently
undemocratic. It has no foundation in the ethos of a majority of Muslims
in Pakistan, especially in the vast southern regions of the country where
people follow the Sufi tradition of tolerant, syncretic Islam. It is the
creation of politico- Islamic parties led by articulate orthodox Sunni
clerics or ulema. Whenever such parties havefielded candidates in
Pakistan's national elections they have done poorly. That is why these
parties have to use psychological and physical intimidation or state
patronage to promote their objectives.
Given the imperatives of the authoritarian Pakistani state all
government leaders whether military or civilian have accommodated these
politico-Islamic parties regardless of their popular support. But their
influence on Pakistan's politics and civil society has increased
tremendously since the late 1970s when the Zia regime drew them into
active collaboration with the army's US supported operations in
Afghanistan. Now they are an important link in Pakistan's support for the
Taliban rule in Afghanistan and have at the same time acqired an
independent power base that cross-cuts the border between the two
countries. Integrared into this power base are their religious schools and
military training camps that supply young fighters to the Taliban and
Kashmiri mujahideen, the operations of the truck and transport mafias that
smuggle consumer goods, narcotics and guns between Pakistan and the
central Asian states, the armed gangs that kill members of minority Muslim
sects, the terrorists who explode bombs and lauch rockets in the major
cities of Pakistan including the federal capital of Islamabad killing
innocent civilians and disappear without a trace while the government
officials dutifully blame all this to the Indian agents.
To conclude, we have identified some of the major, and no doubt
complex, problems that stand in the way of democracy and economic revival
in Pakistan. If any credible agenda is to be laid out for restoring the
economic and political health of the country these problems will have to
be addressed. Otherwise one cannot realistically expect that the latest
military regime is going to "clean up the mess" and return the country to
democratic governance. As far the concern of Pakistan's Western
well-wishers, particularly the United States, for restoration of civilian
rule in Pakistan is concerned, it will be well for them to remember that
they have been part of the political and economic problems that afflict
Pakistan today.

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