DR. FATIMA SHAHNAZ analyses the Musharraf versus judiciary conflict and the grip of military on the country. She presents the details of overwhelming influence which military and its masters wield over economy and administration of the country strugg
The crisis pitting the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (CJP), Iftikhar Chowdhry, suspended by President Parvez Musharraf on March 9 has opened up deep-rooted systemic flaws that sporadically erupt throughout the nation’s turbulent sixty-year old history. Often locked in the impasse between military dictatorships and Islamists (called the ‘military-masjid’ syndrome by some critics), a coterie of elitist ‘zamindars,’ buttressed by feudal military institutions based on predation, or as a ‘client state’ of the United States, this Muslim nation has travelled a rocky and tortuous road between ‘soft dictatorship’ and modern democracy.
Chowdhry’s judgments against the ‘corrupt misuses of his office’ by Musharraf included the privatisation of the Karachi Steel Mills in Karach; for ‘disappeared’ political activists to appear in court; and for rape victims to be given due process of law. While the crackdown by Musharraf against the CJP was seen as a signal to intimidate the judiciary and impose military rule over Pakistan, this incident was reportedly the first assault on an edifice of law. Followed by media censorship (to gag television coverage of the incidents) and the General’s repressive measures against dissent from activists, the General’s heavy-handedness has boomeranged against his regime.
For the first time in the country’s history lawyers across the judicial board united in solidarity to challenge the President’s arbitrary and unconstitutional power. The spin-offs of the standoff between the Justice and General unravel new players and even ‘special interest parties’ covertly fanning the flames of destabilization.
LEGACY OF COLONIALISM
Like many of Pakistan’s military dictators of the past, Musharraf often found himself in a logjam between Islamists and his militaristic, secularist outlook. What is less known, however, is the ‘dark side’ of military rule in Pakistan, the outdated colonial laws going back to 1912 relating to proprietary rights over land which India, while it was moving towards socialist pattern of society, got rid of during land reforms to avoid institutionalizing feudal land laws; but Pakistan retained.
Now, between the Justice and the General, the genie of these arbitrary laws has popped out of the bottle again, and it may become a full-blown legal entanglement before a compromise is reached between the judiciary and the Musharraf regime. The nation’s protest is as much against historic corruption in the military as against Musharraf’s government itself, thus making the challenges a national issue, highlighting a need for deeper reforms and not merely quick-fix solutions.
A shrewd political survivor since he became a key regional player after the 9/11 events in the United States, even in the latest crisis Musharraf has shown his characteristic resilience and survival instincts by gaining support from unexpected quarters, namely the Pakistan Muslim League whose President Chaudhary Shujat Hussain has supported allegations that a campaign to malign the armed forces and anti-government factions was being initiated by India. But this may prove to be a smokescreen for Pakistan’s systemic problems, and the appeasement of Washington may be as much of its problem as neighbouring India’s.
U.S. DOUBLE STANDARDS
Nor have the General’s friends in Washington sent in a cavalry charge to save their ‘most loyal ally’, either. The Bush administration has been observing Musharraf’s dilemma cautiously, even hypocritically exposing its habitual double standards towards those the CIA exploits, then dumps in the dustbin of history. (The case of the assassinated former Pakistani General, Zia ul-Haq comes to mind, and Saddam Hussein’s).
Has Washington’s timer on Musharraf sent signals that now that his need is terminated he may be ‘expendable,’ even an embarrassing liability to the Bush administration? Already, Bush has Democratic Congress legislators baying for Musharraf’s blood. As the champion of democracy among the authoritarian regions of the East, will Bush hear the Democrat doomsayers? While the President was delivering a speech in Prague about democratizing US allies Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Senators Joseph Biden, and Tom Lantos, heads of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees, charged the administration with complicity with the Musharraf regime: “The national interests of the US and Pakistan are both served by a speedy restoration of full democracy to Pakistan and the end to state-sponsored intimidation of Pakistani citizens protesting government actions in a legal and peaceful manner,” they warned. They urged State Secretary Condoleezza Rice to “publicly call for an immediate end to the violence and urge … Pakistan to commit to holding free and fair elections by year’s end.” In control of funding for Pakistan, the American legislators were supported by civil liberty groups and the media.
The Bush response was feeble: “The media should be free to cover the process” (the conflict between the judiciary and the military) and, to quote state department spokesman Sean McCormack, “It’s an important element of making sure the Pakistani people are informed of what their government is doing. So it is a situation that we’re watching closely”. The rumblings from Washington underscore its characteristic double-standards regarding foreign policy.
Recent pressures on Musharraf’s government from Washington have also escalated, forcing him to deliver more al-Qaeda terrorists, and to hunt out the Taliban which the Pakistan regime itself created (with Washington’s blessing). While claiming that the judiciary-military conflict is an internal affair, the Bush administration also calls for press freedom. In brief, Musharraf is left a dangling man, his isolation complete.
THE WHISTLEBLOWERS
While Pakistan’s destiny seems to hover at one of its darkest hours between political uncertainty and dictatorship, internal fragmentation and civil strife, a roadmap out of the labyrinthine maze between Musharraf and the magistrate may lie in the past, and examining Pakistan’s dilemma under “de facto military rule for exactly half of its life,” according to Tariq Ali.
The author points out that the life-span of Pakistan’s military rulers has been limited to ten-year cycles, from Ayub Khan (1958-69) to Zia-ul-Haq (1977-89). Ayub Khan’s removal followed a national insurrection of three months and Zia was assassinated. Musharraf’s hour is near with a year and half to complete his deathly decade, since this seems the shelf-life of Pakistan’s generals.
Will Musharraf last, outwitting his treacherous American allies? Thus far Musharraf has manifested more staying power than Zia-ul-Haq; but what may undo him would be the corruption scandals now emerging through whistleblowers and ‘leaks’ in government. One of these, Ayesha Siddiqua, writes on Pakistan’s military affairs for Jane’s Information Group. She was asked to work as the Director of Naval Research with the Navy, becoming the first civilian and woman to work at this position in the Pakistan defence establishment. She was interviewed online on the subject of her upcoming book, Pakistan affairs and post 9/11 scenario by editor, Irshad Salim. In the course of the interview, Ms. Siddiqua explained her book focused on military business operations with a “case study of Pakistan.” As a civil servant, she had had to “deal with numbers of military spending and doing that one slowly realized that a lot was hidden. It is the search for numbers that took me in this direction,” she said. “The other thing is that it is essential to understand the dynamics of the institution that virtually controls Pakistan’s past, present and future.”
After joining the civil service in 1988, Siddiqua left in 2001. She served in the military accounts, defence audit and later in the navy. Her findings regarding the “Pakistan army’s business” were, in her own words, as follows: “First, the military has become predatory engaging in political and economic predation. Second, political predation is not complete without economic predation. Third, military has mutated into a separate class that shares interests with other members of the ruling elite. Finally, because the military protects its vested interests, it leads to alienation of the masses.” She attributes much of Pakistan’s militarism to institutionalized feudalism. “I am saying that it [the army] is a feudal institution as well.” Irshad Salim interjects, “So in that case their interests converge with feudal system.”
MILITARY FEUDAL INSTITUTION
This process of ‘corruption’ in the military establishment allegedly dates back to the early 1950s. Business ventures began with the Fauji Foundation in 1953, the first predatory foundation of this type, according to Siddiqua. Established with the war veteran’s rehabilitation fund of Rs.18 million, she believes that this predatory step by the army occurred through economic predation. “A politically strong entity that engages in political predation needs to feel economically or financially autonomous,” she said. “This completes the picture of predation. The generals thought that they wanted to establish independent means of providing for their welfare and not depending on the civilians like it happened in India. The financial autonomy gradually created the logic for greater interest in political control.”
The predation began in 1953 when Ayub Khan “and his cabal” acquired agricultural land, enriching and empowering themselves. Ayub received agricultural land for himself and established his sons in business. “Look at the entire lot of generals at the moment,” added Siddiqua. “A Major General has a legal worth of about Rs. 300 million (Rs. 30 crores). These are conservative estimates.” Of course, it is an open secret that both opposition parties leaders are living luxuriously in exile abroad.
Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan People’s Party leader) appointed her husband Asif Zardari as the ‘Minister for Investment’ and, in Tariq Ali’s words, “together with their cronies, began to milk the country dry. The Bhutto-Zardari accounts in safe havens abroad are reputed to be in the region of a billion dollars. Bhutto’s failure to do anything substantial for the poor who had voted her into office resulted in mass disillusion. She was removed from office for corruption.” This enabled her old rival, Pakistan Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif to win a majority; but the old predatory pattern of the ‘zamindars’ prevailed again, with Sharif appointing his brother Shahbaz the Chief Minister of the Punjab, and his late father, the unofficial President of Pakistan, became the link to the disaffected army. Tariq Ali concludes, “It was old man Sharif who advised his sons that Generals, not being angels from heaven, could also be bought and sold in the market-place.” However, Musharraf, it appears, was a different ‘kettle of fish.’ Sharif would lose out to Musharraf.
NIGHT OF THE GENERALS
After 9/11, Musharraf attracted American and European funds (with EU trade concessions worth over a billion Euros) into the country. Nuclear sanctions were lifted and Musharraf relaxed tariffs on Pakistan’s textile exports. Pakistan reclaimed its old status as a “frontline state,’ excluding the ‘Islamists,’ alienated by the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban. Meanwhile, the Pakistan army’s ‘parallel economy’ (including real estate, the businesses through subsidiaries, organizations and individuals) is around 4% of GDP (according to their own estimates), according to Siddiqua.
Their share in the private sector assets would be around 7-10 per cent of private sector assets, a very big amount “for any single group”. In monetary terms, this means around Rs. 200 billion. With real estate added to business, it would be around Rs. 1 trillion. Siddiqua summarises Pakistan’s major problem: “You have to understand that this economy is predatory by nature because it does not accept any form of civilian control over it. It is independent in terms of planning, appropriation of funds, etc.” In the year 2001, Pakistan’s defence budget was 131 billion rupees. By the time Siddiqua left that year, there were around a few hundred in the command structure of the army.
The price of a full general is worth Rs. 500 million (Rs. 50 crores) (around five million pounds or US $ 9.8 million). The forces own around 7-9 million acres of land in Punjab alone, a major portion of the state. In Sindh, this is less due to 2 barrages constructed after independence. The military acquires 10 % of land allotments everywhere in Pakistan according to the 1912 Colonisation of Land Act. All land in the cities is thus military land turned into housing colonies. After 1999, particularly since 9/11, the value of land skyrocketed and the generals “have turned into absentee land lords,” she said. One of the reasons for the rise in land value after 9/11 was due to money flowing in from Pakistani expatriates and other Muslim countries.
But in the final analysis, the fatal combine of the new rural capitalist class and the landlord generals may backfire against military domination. The only way out of the impasse may be, Siddiqua believes, for the leadership to “negotiate the military’s gradual withdrawal from the economy if they want democratic institutions to grow.”