A Leading
Columnist of Pakistan Regretfully Asks:
Is Pakistan's National
Defence in Safe Hands?
By
Ayaz Amir
NOT
AN inappropriate question to ask on the eve of what, through a
process of some self-bluffing, we choose to call the Defence of
Pakistan Day (every September the 6th).
The
self-bluffing comes from the fiction that the 1965 war was somehow
imposed upon us, that a predator enemy, seeking our destruction,
launched a war of aggression which we then fought back with amazing
skill and bravery. While this makes for riveting if not soul-lifting
history, it's not quite how it happened.
We
set off on a small adventure in Kashmir which quickly got out
of hand and saw us dragged into a full-scale war, a war we had
neither sought nor indeed calculated for. We thought the fighting
would remain confined to Kashmir and India would dare not cross
the international border.
Unfortunately,
India chose not to oblige us and -- as a little common sense,
let alone Napoleonic insight, might have forewarned us--chose
a place and time of its choosing to counter our moves in Kashmir.
(Another proof of the adage that wars while easy to start are
harder to finish. Ask the Brits and Americans about their adventure
in Iraq.)
Our
jawans and young officers fought well. (So did the Indian jawans
and their young officers.) But that's hardly the point. Our soldiers
fought an unnecessary war brought on by the stupidity of their
warlords.
What
led the nation into this fiasco? Simply put, one-man rule. Ayub
Khan was his own commander and his own president. He had installed
a yes-man as army c-in-c but it was Ayub with his field marshal's
baton--something he had bestowed on himself--who called the shots.
When he decided upon the adventure in Kashmir there was no one
to stop him. (It's no use blaming Bhutto or anyone else. The buck
stopped at the president's table.)
The
'65 war ended in a draw. There was no such consolation for us
in '71 when the folly of military rule led to abject defeat and
surrender in what was then East Pakistan. What was to blame for
that disaster? A repetition of the Ayub phenomenon: the fact that
the same person was military chief and political ruler.
The
Zia decade distorted the spirit of Pakistan and gave us in ample
measure a culture of sectarian murder and hypocrisy. What led
to this? Again, one-man rule and the destruction of political
institutions.As if to prove that learning from history is not
our forte, we are going through a similar phase again: another
military ruler who is his own pope and Caesar. Echoing the cry
of all his military predecessors he says he is indispensable and
must remain president and military chief as long as he himself
deems fit. In his book no bigger heresy exists than to question
this self-proclaimed doctrine of indispensability.
Was
national defence safe in the hands of Ayub, Yahya and Zia? The
disasters they presided over tell us it was not. They were competent
enough soldiers but they exceeded their briefs and stepped outside
the circle of their competence. The results could have been predicted.
They proved bad soldiers and poor leaders. Is there anything exceptional
in our present set of military saviors? What grounds for supposing
they can break the cycle of cause-and-effect?
Four
years is a long enough time to judge anything. Has Pakistan been
put on the road to development? Are the masses shouting for joy?
Has military rule delivered better administration, quicker justice?
Has it erected monuments to stability?
On
any honest valuation, General Musharraf's government would be
lucky to score 'average' on any performance chart. On its promise
to cleanse the national stables and usher in an era of 'real'
democracy it would probably score 'below average'. Well, everyone
knows what these kinds of grades get you in the army: early retirement.
But when you are your own umpire and examiner and you have the
luxury of writing your own annual report, who's to stop you from
proclaiming your performance as outstanding?
God
knows our democrats too have been crying failures. They had the
chance to change national direction, Benazir Bhutto in 1988, Nawaz
Sharif in 1997. But they squandered their opportunities and furnished
fresh justifications for the military to re-enter the political
arena. All the same, Pakistan's salvation lies in democracy not
militarism. Democracy can die a hundred deaths, suffer a thousand
failures, but it will yet be the only path for us to follow.
If
an army is defeated you don't disband it or forswear the use of
arms. You raise a fresh army and invest more in weapons and training
so that it fights better the next time there is a call to arms.
In similar fashion, democracy's failure should not mean the disbanding
of democracy but rather the creation of conditions where the chances
of going wrong the next time round are minimized.
France
was plagued by political instability from 1945 to 1958, the period
of the so-called Fourth Republic. General de Gaulle put an end
to France's malaise not by discontinuing democracy but by (1)
devising a more stable system and (2) providing leadership to
his country. The Fifth Republic, his legacy to France, survives
to this day.
Yes,
Pakistan needs leadership and it needs a stable democracy. But
it will get neither the one nor the other from military presidents
who think it their divine right to be embalmed in their uniforms
- leaders whose outstanding talent, as our history tells us, is
for repeating the failed experiments of the past.
Have
our military saviors ever considered that when they remove democracy
from the equation, or give the notion of democracy a self-serving
twist, they are erasing the very raison d'être of Pakistan?
Pakistan came into being on the basis of the right of self-determination.
The Muslims of India, exercising their free choice, opted for
a separate homeland. In other words, Muslim nationhood found political
expression through democracy. Remove democracy from the scaffolding
and the structure called Pakistan loses both identity and meaning.
True,
Pakistan has not been served well by its governing class. Its
leaders both military and political have largely failed it. (After
Jinnah the only real leader we had was Bhutto. But we hanged him.
And since then we have been groping for leadership.) But the solution
lies not in raising tin pot figures and hoping that they will
work miracles but in returning again and again, no matter how
numerous the failures, to democracy.
Bhutto
was a protégé of Ayub Khan's but as he moved along
the political scale he became a champion of the masses and the
father of the 1973 Constitution (not to mention the father of
the A-bomb, the pride of our military). Nawaz Sharif was a product
of another dictatorship but in his later incarnation he stood
up for himself and turned the moribund Muslim League into a mass
party. Like it or not, this is how political evolution occurs.
Pervez
Musharraf also had a chance to evolve and write himself more than
a minor footnote in history by holding honest elections and, if
he was so desperate to cling to power, by standing for election
as a legitimate president. This would have been the test of greatness
for him, his chance to score 'outstanding' on the political scorecard.
But he flunked it when he opted for a cooked-up referendum and
a comprehensive cooking up of the subsequent elections.
He
thought he was taking the safer and shorter route. As many a strongman
before him learnt to his cost, often the longest distance between
any two points is an illegitimate short-cut. - Courtesy Dawn
Read
South Asia Tribune Column "Musharraf's
Record of Repeated Disasters: Can We Trust His Judgment"
Click
for original Ayaz Amir Column in Dawn
