OUR ENDANGERED SPECIES
Noam Chomsky says humans are an "endangered species" and given the nature of their institutions, they are likely to destroy themselves in a fairly short time. When Chomsky was in Pakistan in late November 2001 to deliver the Distinguished Eqbal Ahmed Annual Lecture, I asked him about the survival prospects of civilian institutions and society in Pakistan, a 'species' endangered by the institutional hegemony of a pathologically powerful military establishment. With a curiosity unique to his razor sharp mind, Chomsky threw the ball right back at me: "Do you see any glimmer of hope?" In response, 1 inadvertently found myself playing the proverbial prophet of doom.
At the turn of the new millennium, when most countries around the world have more or less accepted democracy as the best possible form of government, Pakistan is still grappling with unending praetorianism. After eleven years of electoral democracy in which power alternated between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) often at the behest of the military, the generals seized direct control in October 1999.
How did Pakistan get here? The roots of praetorianism date back to the early years of Independence when a host of external and internal factors combined to tilt the civil-military institutional equation in favour of the military. For one, a migrant political leadership lacking in a domestic political constituency continually resorted to extra-constitutional tactics to hold on to power. At the same time, the fledgling state prioritized national defence over critical development needs as it faced a hostile neighbourhood. Moreover, weak civilian administrations routinely fell back on the wellorganised military to undertake even day-to-day civilian tasks. This reliance on the military gradually eroded respect for civilian authority among the men in khaki, spurring them to 'save Pakistan' at the slightest sign of political instability. The military ultimately emerged as a domineering vested interest in state and society.
This superimposition of the military on vital aspects of civil and political life over the decades has stripped civilian authority of even its basic functions. Be it federal or provincial administrations, universities, examination boards, public utility corporations, state research institutions, the military has gradually 'taken over' in the name of promoting accountability and reducing corruption. Militarisation is not just limited to the public sector. Name a vital sector of the economy (logistics, public works, fertiliser, cement, sugar production) and the military runs it tax free, clearly undermining any chances of fair competition, besides crowding out scarce investment resources required for private sector development.
Finance Ministry insiders also whisper of the financial rot within the military which, subject to little external scrutiny, claims a lion's share of the government's budget. The military's unquestioned dominance of state affairs coupled with its holy cow public image allows it to act the untainted angel while holding its civilian counterparts accountable for their actions. For instance, under the current military regime's much touted accountability process, civil officials and anti-military politicians are hauled up in the name of 'fair account- ability' while military officers are excluded under the convenient pretext of existing stringent internal accountability mechanisms.
Desperate optimism
The long-term effect of the military's consolidation of civil and political affairs has been disastrous in other ways. Military rule has wrought pervasive de-intellectualisation and de-politicisation on Pakistani society. The various factors have coalesced to tranquilise the society so that it is unable to tackle its internal contradictions, nor be aware of its due place in governing the country, or its inalienable right to challenge the state's unlawful coercion. Thus far, the 'attentive public' has remained confined to the fringes of politics. "Politics is just not our business," is the ingenuous reaction of most middle-class Pakistanis to all matters political, willing as they are to give the military the benefit of the doubt till an imaginary "leader with vision" shows up on the horizon. The public has been confused by the constant harping on the failures of elected governments by democracy's influential detractors, liberal and otherwise.
In the opinion of these detractors, eleven years of what General Pervez Musharraf calls "sham democracy" had worsened corruption in government, failed to ensure the rule of law, fanned ethnic and sectarian politics, undermined key state institutions, politicized the civil service and failed in implementing much-needed structural reforms. Hence, military intervention had become a necessary evil. Given Islamabad's external threat perceptions, this acquiescence to the military's political involvement is even understandable. But in this desperate optimism, Pakistanis have failed to realise that with each foray into politics the military develops its own political ambitions and usurps civilian poles of power. Military rulers, seeking political legitimacy, invariably play off ethnic, religious or other pro-military groups against mainstream political forces, thus creating a peculiar set of distortions in society. And in all fairness, the insecure elected governments have had little room to manoeuvre in the face of overwhelming policy constraints imposed by scarce government revenues, large debt and defence burdens, externally imposed harsh economic conditionalities, the needs of political give and take, and- – on top of it all— a military establishment with an exclusive control over crucial national defence, security and nuclear policies.
Ironically, after two years in power the military remains as clueless about managing Pakistan's complex governance crisis as were the "corrupt" politicians it replaced to "reconstruct real democracy". Despite his self-important rhetoric of providing good governance, General Musharraf has set about the business of government by nakedly perverting the civilian share of the state, centralising power within a close-knit cohort of trusted senior military commanders, manipulating the political process in favour of pliant pro-military politicians, while brutally suppressing legitimate political opposition.
The events of 11 September 2001 and the changed geo-political alignments have turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the general. The immediate needs of the war on terror have made a secure and stable dictatorship in Pakistan indispensable for the Americans. As expected, the international community's calls for restoration of civilian rule have been pushed to the back burner. This outright international support gives the general-president complete control over the chessboard of Pakistani politics— in essence allowing him to create another period of 'guided democracy' in which the military determines who is fit to rule Pakistan.
The million-rupee question is this: where does the country go from here? Given the almost universal failure of military experiments in Pakistan, it seems safe to argue that the country's salvation rests on an uninterrupted political process. Political democracy, despite numerous imperfections, makes citizens sovereign. Their allegiance to the state is contingent on their willful agreement to the exercise of its legal and political imperatives. At least in theory, the state is not allowed to exercise these imperatives for its own sake, or for granting preferential advantage to dominant groups or classes. Representative and judicial institutions keep a check on the state's arbitrariness. Democratic political processes, however, evolve slowly. Institutional checks and balances, that may take a long time to evolve, ensure that no leader takes the public for a ride and gets away with it.
As a critical first step, the 'attentive public' of Paksitan must partake in politics. Indeed, the power of the state is so colossal that individual attempts to engage or challenge will be like crying in the wilderness. To be effective, societal political endeavours require the integrated support of a broad coalition of interests, and aggressive lobbying of the news media, political parties and Parliament too is critical. But all this can be done only if Pakistanis at home and abroad recognise that non-democratic experiments, whether military or civilian, are disastrous for the polity in the long run.
Towards the end of our meeting, Chomsky was curious about the state of the Pakistani intelligentsia. "What role are they playing?" he asked, "Have they been able to reach out to the larger public?" Exiled, coopted, harassed, or marginalized, I replied, intellectuals too are an "endangered species" in Pakistan.