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Journalism of Courage
In a recent speech, General Pervez Musharraf attempted to justify the duplicitous policies of his government on grounds of pragmatism. ‘‘Pakistan is an imperfect society,’’ he told the annual dinner of the Pakistani American Physicians Political Action Committee, adding, ‘‘idealistic solutions will not work in an imperfect society. When idealism and pragmatism clash, pragmatism will be followed for the sake of the country.’’ In effect, he was saying that he and his colleagues in the ruling oligarchy know what is best for the country and if they seem self-serving, it is simply their pragmatic response to imperfect conditions.
Musharraf is, of course, a soldier, not an intellectual. His effort to intellectualise his regime’s now almost universally criticised conduct reflects the lack of knowledge of politics and history that has been the characteristic of most of Pakistan’s military leaders. During the Agra summit in 2001, he reportedly turned to his Indian hosts and asked how Gandhi died, making it obvious that knowledge of political history was not his forte.
The fact is, there are no perfect societies and if Pakistan has imperfections, that is not sufficient reason to run it as a cross between a medieval monarchy and a praetorian state. Musharraf only focused on the election of not-so-good politicians to Parliament as the major imperfection. Not once did he pause to consider that the real cause of Pakistan’s backwardness might lie with the absence of institutional balance, which in turn is attributable to the overwhelming role of the Pakistani military in national life.
Take the economy: is it alleged loot and plunder or over five decades of unsustainable military expenditure that has prevented investment in infrastructure? Can there be investment in a country where legitimacy of governments is constantly under question and the investor welcomed by one regime is imprisoned by the next? Is economic growth attainable in the midst of conflict and militancy? How can the public sector be productive when it is managed mostly by Generals trained in the art of warfare? Where in the world from Latin America to Myanmar to Nigeria to Indonesia has military rule been able to generate self-sustaining economic growth, notwithstanding the temporary fulfillment of IMF criteria?
Moreover, what did imperfections of Pakistani society have to do with the military adventurism of 1965, the debacle of 1971 or the strategic delusions of the last two decades that made Pakistan the patron of Afghanistan’s Taliban? How are ordinary Pakistanis to blame for the consistent fallacy of periodically joining the United States in its global plans as a means of maintaining military balance with India?
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Can there be investment in a country where legitimacy of govts is constantly under question, the investor welcomed by one regime is imprisoned by the next? Is economic growth attainable in the midst of militancy? |
The imperfections that ail Pakistan are not those of its society but rather those of its state. Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and maintains an impressive military capability. But it does not have the structure of a state under rule of law, and its economic and institutional foundations are far weaker than its military capability. Its judiciary is subject to manipulation by the executive. Its constitution is at the mercy of its army chief. Its decisions of friendship with other countries are made not through open discussion but as a result of secret deliberations.
Pakistan is paying a heavy price today for becoming part of the jehadi adventurism of the 1990s. Extremists continue to threaten peace and tranquillity in Pakistani cities, where terrorist attacks have become a regular feature. Pakistani citizens are being humiliated in the US by being asked to submit themselves to fingerprinting like criminals. Yet not once has Musharraf or any of his colleagues thought of analysing why their jehadi policy led to this state of affairs.
The success of a nation lies in unleashing the energy of its people for productive purposes. But in Pakistan, individual talent and ability is considered a liability. Soldiers with no training in statecraft run the country. Intelligence officers trained for limited tasks make strategy and confer certificates of patriotism. The secretive nature of the state gets the nation involved in matters it has not even contemplated. For example, the Soviet Union was angered by the flight of American U-2 spy planes from Peshawar in 1962 and in 1971 by Pakistan’s role in facilitating US contacts with China in the form of Henry Kissinger’s secret Beijing trip. But the people of Pakistan knew nothing about Ayub Khan’s decision to allow the U-2s to operate from Pakistan or of Chief Martial Law Administrator General Yahya Khan’s diplomatic adventure involving Kissinger.
While trying to pass blame for his regime’s failings to the imperfections of Pakistani society, Musharraf once again spoke disparagingly of the Pakistani media. ‘‘Sometimes I ask myself whether I should have given freedom to this extent because the newspapers distorted the facts,’’ he said while describing journalists as irresponsible. ‘‘The enemy lies within.’’ Shouldn’t Musharraf and his team be answering the arguments of his critics instead of attacking them? Goals in football are scored by kicking the ball, not by kicking the player.
(Husain Haqqani is a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He served as adviser to Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto and as Pakistan’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka)
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