Chaos shrouds the minds of Pakistanis, especially those associated with the Musharraf regime or at its receiving end. There’s no telling what the general will unleash next and how those involved will react to it. He has kept everyone guessing, and that includes his American backers. US diplomats have been at pains to explain to Pakistanis that Washington supports neither emergency rule nor the curbs placed on the media.Their silence on the booting out of an independent judiciary, however, is not lost on the average Pakistani. To him it says more than words could, hence a hectic people-targeted diplomacy on the part of US envoys here. What the Americans fail to understand is that after their invasion of Iraq they have little credibility left in the Muslim world. The two judges who did give relief to the Lal Masjid suicide bombers-to-be are part of Musharraf’s recently handpicked Supreme Court. US diplomats do not have an enviable job to do in Pakistan.Here’s why: while life seems normal on the streets, it takes less than a superficial scratch to sense what’s simmering beneath the surface. Young, upwardly mobile urban youngsters, speaking English with a foreign accent and attending private schools and colleges — the lot everyone thought were irredeemably depoliticised — are dealing with what for all practical purposes is martial law in a garb their predecessors a generation ago never knew. Their resistance manifests itself in subtler ways than taking to the street in a fit of emotion. They are choosing to discuss matters, organise seminars, hold candlelight vigils, start email and sms chain petitions and wear black bands to register their protest. Yet police barge into campuses, beat up these students black and blue, and arrest them by the truckload every day.The feeling is most tangible in Lahore, which has a tradition of a strong, vibrant academic culture. In many privately managed colleges and universities, the faculty have joined the students. The protests are confined to the safe environs of the campuses, whose state-of-the-art buildings are owned by big businessmen and sitting ministers, including foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri, and the mayor of Lahore amongst others. Many of the institution owners have made a fortune under Musharraf’s liberal economic policy and also, of course, by staying on the right side of the general.What is brewing is indeed unprecedented, and lends credence to the cliché that within every disaster lie the seeds of opportunity. The situation gives hope to Pakistan’s hopeless millions that even if these protests don’t turn the tide of autocracy any time soon, they will have invested in academics a point of reference for students of politics in the future. This will serve as a solid base after the restoration of democracy, whenever that happens. This is no small feat in a country where democratic institutions have failed to take root. One says this because the students involved are very much children of the market-based economy. They believe in achieving the American dream. Most attend business schools and tertiary colleges imparting education in IT, multimedia, art studies and corporate law. Globalisation of the young mind has come home with just the right mix of the heart, which is in the right place.The rest is the job of the politicians. Whether they have their finger on the pulse of the emerging new voter — the voting age is 18 — is doubtful. Mainstream secular parties with any roots in the people are headed by the feudal class. If it is the Bhuttos, the Pirs and Chaudhries in Sindh and Punjab, the Frontier and Balochistan have more than their fair share of the Maliks and Sardars. Even those such as the MQM-led by Altaf Hussain and the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf Party of Imran Khan, who claim to be sympathetic to the middle class behave in explicitly feudal terms. Both vest absolute power in their respective leaders, and operate along that gem of a Bush one-liner: “You’re either with us or against us.” The obvious recipe for tyranny cloaked in the garb of a brave, new democracy that they stand for. Only if these feudal-minded parties sweep the polls in their areas of influence, will the election be hailed as being fair. Any setback to their vote count leads to violent allegations of rigging, giving no consideration to the possibility of a change of heart on the part of voters. The process is well under way in Punjab and the Frontier, where Benazir’s PPP will be in for a rude shock and the old blue-eyed boy-turned-dissident Nawaz Sharif is gaining the popular vote at her expense.Musharraf remains the unpredictable man with a penchant for brinkmanship that he was on the eve of the Kargil crisis. Only now he has more under his belt: a friendly US and a neutralised, if grudgingly so, India. For both all’s well, as long as Musharraf’s own people keep bearing the brunt of his adventurism. The man has an amazing capacity when it comes to doublespeak or even telling outright lies. The varying narration of many a same event in his book In the Line of Fire in its Urdu and English editions betrays blatant doublespeak; his promise to clean up corruption when he ousted Sharif in 1999, his account of Kargil, and promises of doffing the army uniform. The list of lies goes on. That is why people don’t believe him now when he says he has imposed emergency rule to root out terrorism. How can they, when in fact his henchmen in plain clothes have been locking up secular opposition leaders and torturing the lawyers and students — people who are more westernised and enlightened in their world view than our top commando-cum-jihadi-turned Mr Saviour of Pakistan fancies himself to be.That Musharraf considered stepping down at some point but decided against it, as he revealed to British TV recently, is the latest in the series of lies he’s been telling himself and the world. The choice of the foreign media for this revelation speaks of the man’s fear that none of the banned Pakistani news networks would have bought the dubious admission. His best allies remain the US and Britain, and the best they can do by him and Pakistan is to airlift him to security before all runs amuck, and Pakistan starts becoming the nightmare no one wants to dream.The writer is an editor with Dawn, Karachi
