Dr.
Zafar Altaf
'Time' Magazine of Sept 23 carried an article on its last
pages with four photographs of world dictators --- Stalin, Reza
Shah Pehlavi of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos and General Pervez Musharaf
--- all belonging to Asia, where the bulk of the population of this
world 
live,
all constituting part of the Third World. These dictators have been
arbitrarily drawn from a long list of dictators that have ruled
their countries and have spelt danger, not only to their country,
but to the rest of the world.
I was astonished to find General Musharraf's comparison with Stalin
because there is nothing common in the dictatorship that he was
guilty of and again since he is not desirous to become a monarch,
his comparison with the Shah of Iran was equally out of sorts. As
far as Marcos was concerned he was in a totally different cultural
context.
These comparisons are not in order. Stalin was in a different ball
game and put Communist Russia on the world map and in fact the West
should be grateful to him for he launched a massive counter attack
during the Second World War and was in the forefront of the cold
war.
The Shah of Iran was the blue eyed monarch dictator of not only
Iran but what was Imperial Persia and all its glory. His was an
empire of 1500 years or so. How could he be compared with ordinary,
mortals like Musharraf?
Ferdinand came through the election process and then became a dictator,
only to be thrown out through extra-constitutional process. Musharraf
came neither though an electoral process, nor did anything that
was earth shattering, like Stalin nor was he an Imperial highness.
He merely wanted to live and took on the political system that wanted
to replace him. For a long time the West refused to recognize him
and Pakistan came under serious attack. Would it not have been better
if more relevant dictators had been compared?
US compulsions in Afghanistan changed all this, just as they did
for General Zia ul Haq. US support is like Carbon dioxide and very
frequently the gas escapes leaving a flat taste in the mouth.
Geo-political situations will change [these are inevitable] and
with it Pakistan will again be on a limbo. US support for dictator
Samoza and the epithets used are again not in keeping. The powerful
do not have the right to make invidious comparisons.
The article glosses over many issues without touching any in a substantive
manner. It chooses to answer why it is justified to have him as
an ally in Pakistan. As a super power it arrogates to itself the
authority to trample upon the rights of every one.
The
strength of the Pakistan President lies in his having behind him
the force of physical power. We know that good governance is not
a function of power but of reason and humane considerations. Compassion
does rule in this world, though occasionally. People do suffer for
their thought processes and occasionally trade inconvenience for
convenience. Sometimes that is thrust upon the individual by accident.
There are other considerations to see whether the fact of good governance
(rule by a dictator) is a reality or otherwise. One is what McCauley
said ‘that any one who has a right to hanging has a right
to education’. Meaning thereby that it is better to invest
in quality education than in the police and such other regressive
agencies that ultimately take one to the limits of destruction.
We have a long list of our own dictators who ruined this country
for many decades at different periods of our small history of existence.
So, we can have our own comparisions. And all were backed by the
mighty Americans in the name of their interests which were always
served by these illegal military regimes.
Ayub Khan, the first dictator was similarly supported by the Americans
and the existing Planning Commission and other institutional developments
were set up at that time. Money flowed like water in Tarbela dam
at that moment. In fact the American Universities had complained
at that time that there should be no recruitment by the CIA from
their campuses of foreign students.
The
whiz persons from the academia in the USA had suggested that Pakistan
needed only 100 robber barons to develop the industrial sector.
We know of the consequences of that policy. The continuous economic
oppression of the former East Pakistan ultimately led to disaster.
We need to understand that democracy is well and prospering is what
one perceptive individual was telling the other. The other person
asked how is it possible in the given circumstances. The reply ‘We
are spending a lot on the police and that augurs well for democracy’.
The answer was accepted as a cogent one. But that aside the Pakistani
way has to be determined by the Pakistanis own culture and understanding
of governance. It cannot be an eastern body and a western mind.
There has to be harmony within. Or else wait for your turn to be
decimated. We lost East Pakistan and we do not want to have anything
like it.
Human ingenuity can rationalize anything and action no matter how
gruesome? The world belongs to the sword not to the pen. But when
the pen is prostituted then the world has something to worry about.
Franco, Pinochet and the death and killing of Allende were some
aspects that need to be recalled. Are we aware of what happened
to Paulo Fareire, Allende’s chief of mass literacy program?
He was a Brazilian priest who was exiled from Brazil by the army
as he posed a one-man threat to them. He was provided a carrot by
the American academia at that time. I was in Guyana managing a cricket
team and had an interesting conversation with Cheddi Jagan [former
prime minister and then president] who had just given evidence as
to his version of the killing of Allende and his own disposal at
the hands of Burnham Forbes the Prime Minister. The conflict was
between the African Americans and the Indian indentured labor that
survives to this day as a legacy of the colonial past in that country.
It might have been better to have compared Zia, Ayub and the present
chief Musharraf for an assessment of the performance. The bureaucracy
whom they hated to begin with and then surrendered to it has served
them all. The future will not have any bureaucracy but elected individuals
for what has been set in place is a system that is borrowed from
the American governance. So the elected district authority has replaced
the old colonial structure. The police have no checks and no balance.
Cowboys rule in the rural and urban areas. The powerful do as they
please and since they have the right to be everywhere policies are
coming in for the few and not for the many.
In
times to come the new piecemeal culture will give way to Armed forces
chiefs being cleared by the National Assembly [what will it be for
our enemies] and judges of the courts being appointed by the Prime
Minister but scrutinized by the elected representatives. It is all
on the cards.
The international agencies are mounting up all that they can to
prop up the economics of Pakistan but we know from the past, from
Zia’s time that such artificial propping is of no consequence.
It is never sustainable no matter how much the best Finance Minister
of Asia says it is so. Pakistan’s debt is entirely of the
making of the powerful agencies, the industrialists of this country.
Even now some of the mega projects that are being foisted on to
the people will become a burden in the future, just as the motorway
was.
The idea that the future is bleak and therefore the need to support
the current person is important is allowing oneself the right to
play God. So the person sitting somewhere in America has the vision
and the ability to tell us what is good for us. To justify intervention
the Chinese blamed India in 1963 of having taken their sheep. Some
such nonsensical issue can be raised. Yet the actions of the powerful
need not be rationalized. They are what they are. Pakistan has to
learn to stand on its own two feet. With all its chaos and its shortcomings
democratic ways are the best, yet Time magazine refuses to make
a single quote or reference to these.
Churchill can be quoted, Jonathan Swift likewise, the reign of Cromwell,
the Americans' own history of not accepting taxation without representation.
I wonder what their forefathers would have said if they were to
comment on the current analysis of four dictators of the recent
world history that has been done. I do not think that they would
have settled for anything less than the furtherance of humanity.
But who can say. I cannot play God. Maybe they were worse than the
present lot. Reason can be bastardized. Biological situations are
beyond the person for the sins are committed by the parents but
one can certainly avoid social and political bastardization?
The Tito regime in Yugoslavia comes to mind as I had done first
hand work with the Dean who worked on the communism's revised version
in his country. He was skeptical about what would happen once Tito
left. What did happen? The strength of Tito left Yugoslavia teetering
and uncertain. Has the world learnt any lessons? Are you willing
to safeguard brutality or will you bring civic society into being?
Who will resolve the paradoxes of this world? Some money in the
kitty of the developing world, crucify them on a cross of dollars.
Continue
unabated. I had said very early that the lessons from Afghanistan
will be telling ones and as I write this piece there are news of
unrest and attack. These will continue. The only way for a world
power to come to the rescue is not through coercive power but through
reasoned power, through humane decisions. Why hypocrisy? The gains
are so short term. Is it true that in the greatest democracy in
the world one in every twenty has a felony record? Is it true that
on campus rape has increased, almost six percent? Is it true that
school shootings have increased and classmates are buried every
now and then? Is that a way of life?
Is it true that truth does not matter any more? That truth is no
longer truth. Vaclav Havel where are you? Give them a lesson of
‘Living in Truth’ or tell them to write ‘Letters
to Olga’ from the communist jail and tell them what your powerful
communist guards used to say ‘He will kill us with his kindnesses’.
And what of the greatest of them, Nelson Mandela and his 28 years
of incarceration, in apartheid South Africa that did not allow him
to be bitter. Can you quote them, just occasionally?
You want to be selective in your quotes. I can be too. Others can
also do the same. Ideas and knowledge are for the furtherance of
mankind. How about looking at a few buildings in my hometown Lahore
where the University of Maryland produced orange gas for Vietnam.
Was it a weapon of mass destruction? No? Then was it one of mass
mutilation? No? Then what was it. The building lies closed with
a death sign on it. A living reminder of who have been doing what,
Hiroshima and other areas notwithstanding. My memory is a powerful
reminder of my faults and my shortcomings. How is it with you and
the general readers? Do you self criticize yourself? Are you introspective
enough?
Americans have their own biodiversity, for they have the Amish,
the Quakers and the Mormons and God knows what all. It became a
great nation based on the efforts of their leaders who were steeped
in morality. If the moral basis is lost all is lost. Modern day
capitalism has taken away that right to understand and to be happy.
I have my own oath to worry about and so have all the "greats"
that have been mentioned in the Time article. How will history be
abused when we are gone is another matter. But to be happy is to
understand the criticalities of a way of life. We shall be as great
as we can be allowed by our morality. So, please do not impose more
dictators on us as we have already enough!
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