Engaging the General

8220;But there is one difference,8221; said Gianiji. 8220;I am assured of only a five-year term. You can rule for ever, inshallah.8221;

Zia was shaken by the vicious sarcasm and apparently the temperature in the room, despite the Punjabi bonhomie, dropped a few degrees. But in his very own rustic way, Zail Singh had underlined the fragility of Zia8217;s apparently smug abasement. He was a cruel dictator, backed by an almost hundred per cent referendum, a partyless election and prime minister, the clergy in his hip pocket, the Westrolled in his sleeve, and a non-existent opposition whose leader Benazir Bhutto, then only in her mid-30s, exiled in London.

Musharraf is nowhere near as secure as Zia in 1987. He is unsure of what constitutional position to choose, so he has avoided the old-style president or chief martial law administrator and chosen the innovative chief executive instead as his title. He hasn8217;t abrogated the Constitution. He hasn8217;t even dismissed the elected bodies though that was the first thing Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Farooq Leghari did as presidents while dumping Benazir and Nawaz Sharif in the past.

He also wants the West, and India in particular, to believe that he is no Idi Amin in khaki. He is just another regular, simple, patriotic soldier living on an officer8217;s modest wage and doing certain deeply painful things in the national interest. Do we take him at his word? Do we take him seriously at all? Do we hold him in contempt, or awe? Do we ignore him, or engage with him?

There are no simple answers. Thesimplest of them all is the easiest, the most obvious, and the dumbest in terms of our national interest. Democratic nostalgia is the easiest, laziest trap. Musharraf is the quintessential khaki despot, the killer of Kargil, a cynical, cold-blooded legatee of Ziaism. How shameful that the Americans, of all people, now seem to be paying positive attention to him. How shameful indeed the suggestion that even we now engage him in some sort of a conversation when he threw out the elected government that was keen to do business with us.

When it comes to Pakistan we the Indian liberals, carry a chip the size of a boulder on our shoulder. That oversized chip is called democracy. We somehow believe it is our moral responsibility to usher democracy in Pakistan and to then nurture it through all kinds of sweetheart deals. We believe democracy in Pakistan is in our best interest. Our two major wars were fought when military dictators controlled Pakistan. Our three most significant peace-oriented agreements Shimla,non-attack on nuclear establishments and the Lahore Declaration were signed with elected civilian governments. It was also an elected government that had the good sense of cutting its losses at Kargil.

Sound arguments. But what do we do when Pakistan chooses for whatever reason not to have an elected government? Even if Musharraf held a fair referendum now, he will probably get an overwhelming support for martial law from a people who haven8217;t yet acquired the temperament, maturity or patience for democratic methods of throwing out bad governments. This may not be good advertisement for democracy, but why must we go into deep depression? The seeds of dictatorship, of this great national trait of impatience with democracy, lie in a convoluted but significant way, in the genesis of the very idea of Pakistan. Or in the two-nation theory that rejected the idea of a diverse nationalism knit together with a liberal, democratic constitution. True, Jinnah was a westernised liberal in his own peculiar way and therule by a military junta 50 years after he created Pakistan could never have been his dream. But why should we go neurotic if Pakistanis let down their own founding fathers? God knows, we have done plenty to answer ours for.

So while we look hard at the political, diplomatic and security implications, we need have no moral compunctions about engaging the general in a conversation, dialogue, negotiation, whatever. Of course, the wise people should decide the timing. But the last thing India needs to do is blackball a Pakistani ruler just because he happens to be a dictator. Particularly when the Pakistanis themselves are applauding the way the story has unfolded so far.

The key to engaging a dictator is understanding the way his mind works, something the Americans seem to be working so hard at. They did not become the world8217;s only superpower because they were given to reacting or formulating policy in fits of moral outrage. They have chosen some of the nastiest dictators and political systems as friendsand allies, allowing nothing but cynical national interest to distinguish friend from foe. There is no reason why we should be any different. So chuck that moral dilemma over engaging with a dictator but then pause a bit for the best way of dealing with him.

No one knows enough about Musharraf just yet. What evidence we have is disturbing: his commando-style approach to strategy, whether military or political, exemplified by Kargil and the airborne coup, respectively. He has been close to the fundamentalists, the jehadis and the Taliban, and is probably a compulsive intriguer in the vicious ISI mould. But he is there. Even a great democracy such as ours can neither wish him away nor vote him out. So we might as well look at his problems and limitations and probably find a little solace there.

On all evidence so far, he is not crazy. He is worried about his economy and the need therefore to put the West8217;s fears at rest, particularly in these days of Islamophobia. He desperately wants the IMF to indulgerather than armtwist him. If you look at the body language in the TV clips of his meetings with the big-power ambassadors, you would find that some of the old cockiness has been replaced with an almost polite persuasiveness. What he needs right now is legitimacy, money and, above all, time. So unless we have evidence to suggest he is crazy, he is unlikely to do something desperate just yet. Or probably for another six months or so.

He would probably go that way if his economy continues to slide over the next six months. The sectarian groups will then grow impatient again. His jehadis and lashkars will get bored just sitting in the camps waiting for the illusionary ransom of an IMF largesse. The same Pakistanis who now cheer him as a saviour will begin to whisper that he is no more than another uniformed usurper.

If and when that happens, we will have a job cut out for us. But if, and when, that happens, wouldn8217;t we be better off having engaged with him, unravelled his mind a bit, and in a position to tellthe world we tried, as we did with Nawaz in Lahore before he blew it at Kargil? We have to make our choice now. And the choices aspiring great powers make had rather be hard-nosed than mushy and moral.