To most Americans the recent declaration of “emergency rules” —
a form of martial law — in Pakistan may not seem much different
from what previously existed. The head of the Supreme Court is
placed under house arrest and the court is disbanded. Hundreds of
rock throwing, dark suited lawyers take to the streets and are
clubbed into submission by police or simply dragged off to jail.
Not much new, you might say. Didn’t we see this just a few months
ago?
Nobody seeks to ask why these normally extravagantly courteous,
legally preoccupied attorneys would want to turn themselves into a
fighting mob. Surely these worthy gentlemen know enough about
politics so as to be able to organize Pakistani street gangs to go
out and battle the cops. What does it take to start a riot in
Islamabad? Certainly not a bunch of lawyers and law students.
What’s the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey might say? First,
the judges and lawyers firmly believe that their role as arbiters
of justice has been usurped by the Musharraf government. In China
it’s known as “breaking one’s rice bowl.” But this is not only an
economic action, it’s an assault on the Pakistani legal
profession’s political status. The government justifies its
crackdown by claiming the courts have been releasing known
terrorists. This had to be challenged, said their ambassador in
Washington.
Next is tradition. Politics in Pakistan has been rife with
corruption for many years. The administrations of both Benazir
Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were clearly corrupt and mismanaged. This
was what brought the army into coup mode in the first place.
Furthermore, the same sequence of governments being replaced
through military action had existed in previous decades. The
problem always has been that after cleaning out the original mess,
the military would succumb to the enticement of power and fall into
the same ethical traps.
Beyond the lure of personal material gain at all levels of
Pakistani politics is the equally alluring attraction of simple
power. Leadership in Pakistan comes with all the trappings of
feudal dominance culturally and historically appropriate to South
Asia. And this affects whoever is in control, be it military or
civilian.
The Musharraf-led military is charged with being deeply involved
in business operations. The President/General hasn’t been tainted
personally by the usual official graft, but there appears to have
been a substantial growth of ownership of private industry and
commerce by ranking army officers, their families and friends.
Interestingly, this matter has been under only marginal attack by
the opposition; it seems to be treated with a sense of
inevitability.
THE ELEMENT, HOWEVER, THAT MOST IMPACTS and influences Pakistani
civilian and military life no matter who is in power is the
internal intelligence structure. Multiple layers of intelligence
organization and operation exist throughout the country on the
local, provincial and national level. There is military
intelligence, counter-intelligence, domestic civilian intelligence,
police intelligence, foreign intelligence — just about every form
of intelligence gathering possible.
The principal intelligence coordinating structure, Inter Service
Intelligence (ISI), was said to have cooperated covertly with the
several jihadi groups operating within Pakistan. General
Musharraf has been credited with cleaning out the most egregious of
these covert connections, but nonetheless even he has had to turn a
blind eye to some of the dealings of the intel services with the
Taliban and border tribal leadership.
The “democracy” that the street crowds and main political
parties are seeking to bring into being still will require the
maintenance of Pakistan’s large army and intelligence/security
structure. The control over the nation’s nuclear weapon arsenal
will remain essentially in the same hands. The system of payoffs on
the local and national level will be changed — but only in terms
of who, what, and where. And, in any case, the religious radicals
will continue to have to be considered, dealt with and, in many
instances, catered to.
The best that the United States can hope for is an effective
power sharing arrangement between Benazir Bhutto and the military
and intelligence leadership. Pervez Musharraf still has the
leverage, for the moment, to make that happen. He knows, however,
that he, too, can be replaced by another dynamic military
personality. That’s the way it happens in Pakistan.
