Pakistan's Armored Democracy

Pakistan's "Armored" DemocracyShah, Aqil.

Journal of Democracy, Volume 14, Number 4, October 2003, pp. 26-40(Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/jod.2003.0088

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PAKISTANSARMORED DEMOCRACY

Aqil Shah

The events leading up to and flowing out of the Pakistani generalelections of 10 October 2002 shed light on the curious and dangerousnature of the hybridized authoritarianism that grips Pakistan today. Tobegin with, there is the election date itself. October 2002 was the timeset for polling because it marked three years from the bloodless militarycoup in which General Pervez Musharraf, the army chief of staff, toppledelected premier Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML)and appointed himself president. The Supreme Court retroactively ap-proved the coup in May 2000, citing the doctrine of state necessity;the October 2002 election deadline was the Courts idea.

Then there is the play of illusion and reality that characterizes theelectoral process in this large (nearly 150 millionstrong and growing),poor (per capita GDP equals US $420), nuclear-armed, and strategicallylocated country on the northwest side of India, the southern edge of Af-ghanistan, and the eastern flank of the Middle East. For Musharraf, elec-tions are events of great instrumental significance. The self-proclaimedpresident has always known that he cannot hope to rely indefinitely onthe entrance legitimacy that he had when he first took over, and needssome sort of popular consent to rule. As a hedge against a wrong out-come in the parliamentary voting, he staged a fraudulent referendum inApril 2002 with the goal of gaining approval for a five-year extension ofhis presidential term. Rivers of cash flowed from state coffers to rent crowdsfor his public rallies and for hauling voters to polling stations. The thor-

Aqil Shah is an independent political and security analyst based inIslamabad, Pakistan. A former Rhodes Scholar trained at Oxford Univer-sity, he focuses on national security, democratization, and civil-militaryrelations in South Asia and Afghanistan. His essay Democracy on Hold inPakistan appeared in the January 2002 issue of the Journal of Democracy.He will be a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endow-ment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. from October 2003 to July 2004.

Journal of Democracy Volume 14, Number 4 October 2003

Aqil Shah 27

oughly unsurprising result was a 97.5 percent vote in favor of keeping thegeneral in the presidents seat for another five years.

While the ostensible goal of all the voting that Musharraf has beensponsoring may be the restoration of real democracy, the reality isstarkly different. In fact, the electionswhich were most noted over-seas because of the alarmingly strong showing made by Pakistans loudand highly organized Islamist movementswere part of a military exitstrategy from politics that involves a lot of strategy and not much exit,at least if one means by that word the actual withdrawal of the militaryfrom the exercise of political power. Pakistan today is at best a hybridregime, where elections are not completely without meaning, but wherethe principles of civilian rule and constitutionalism are honored farmore in the breach than in the observance.

Despite Musharrafs repeated promises of a free and fair election,external as well as domestic observers joined opposition political par-ties in noting widespread irregularities. The European Union ElectionObservation Mission to Pakistan censured the run-up to and actual con-duct of the voting as deeply flawed, raising serious questions aboutwhether the military regime really ever meant to hand power back tocivilians.1 The militarys pervasive pre-poll rigging also promptedlocal and international human rights groups to condemn the whole elec-toral process as seriously flawed.2

The militarys plan had been to bootstrap its own favored politicalfactiona rump of the Muslim League known as the PML-Q to distin-guish it from the PML-N faction affiliated with Nawaz Sharifinto amajority in the 342-seat lower house of the national assembly. In theevent, however, the PML-Q managed to win only 77 seats.3 This left itwith more seats than any other single party, but still far short of a major-ity. Exiled former premier Benazir Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party(PPP)traditionally the main center-left contendercame in secondwith 60 seats, though it also managed to win the largest share of thepopular vote.

More notably still, the United Action Forum (MMA), an alliance ofsix Islamist parties formed after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan,secured the third-largest seat tally (53) while also scoring local sweepsin the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as well as in predominantlyPushtun-speaking areas of Baluchistan province. Independent legisla-tors numbered 30, a high tally given Musharrafs decree just two daysbefore the election that independents would have three days to affiliatewith a party or face possible disqualification.

In November 2002, a coalition government led by the PML-QsZafarullah Khan Jamali took office with a razor-thin majority. Musharrafcould thus claim that he had transferred full executive powers to anelected prime minister and restored the 1973 Constitution, even as thegeneral was arranging for Senate elections to be delayed until February

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2003 so that the military could do more horse-trading and arm-twistingin order to ensure a PML-Q victory in the upper-house races.

The militarys manipulations of the electoral process aimed at threegoals. The first was to undermine the civilian opposition, meaningprincipally the PPP and the PML-N. The second was to ensure the suc-cess of the PML-Q and its Grand National Alliance, a military-backedcoalition of mainly center-right parties.4 And last but by no meansleast, the third goal was to devise a more lasting institutional basis formilitary control over politics.

A series of executive orders issued from June to August 2002 effec-tively barred former premiers Sharif and Bhutto (both by this time exiled)from again holding office, and also increased the governments controlover the inner workings of political parties. In addition, all candidatesfor both the national and provincial assemblies were required to have abachelors degreea move which, according to the EU observers, de-nied 96 percent of all voters their right to run for office.

In August 2002, Musharraf introduced 29 sweeping constitutionalamendments under the heading of the Legal Framework Order (LFO).The most striking of these measures seeks to institutionalize the militarysrole in politics by creating a Turkish-style National Security Council(NSC) through which senior uniformed officers can oversee the civiliangovernment. Another revived amendment allows the president, actingin conjunction with the NSC, to dismiss an elected government anddissolve parliament.5 Presidential powers of appointment expand, as dothe grounds on which individuals can be disqualified from holding aseat in parliament (offenses warranting the red card now include fail-ure to pay ones utility bills). Legislative seats go from 217 to 342 in thelower house and 87 to 100 in the Senate. Non-Muslims and women areguaranteed seats, and the voting age drops from 21 to 18.

In addition to its legal and constitutional machinations, the regimessteps on behalf of the PML-Q have included gerrymandering, using stateresources for partisan electioneering, and threatening opposition andindependent candidates with prosecution for corruption if they refuse toswitch loyalties. As a result, opposition political parties have barelymanaged to stay in the electoral arena. For instance, the PPP has had torename itself the PPP-Parliamentarians to avoid disqualification fol-lowing a ban on the holding of any party office by Benazir Bhutto.Moderate parties campaigns also suffered badly from severe restrictionson freedoms of expression and assemblyrestrictions that were less rig-orously enforced and less effective in the case of the Islamist parties.Musharraf had banned political activities in the wake of his 1999 coup,and lifted the prohibition on 1 September 2002, less than forty daysbefore polling day. Even then, processions and rallies remained subjectto official approval and could only be held in predesignated places.

When the PML-Q fell short of expectations and had to enter coali-

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tion talks with the PPP and the MMA, Musharrafs lieutenants resortedto high-pressure tactics, facilitated by the suspension of the constitu-tional ban on floor-crossing, to gather enough votes to form agovernment. Within a month, several senior PPP leaders had cast votesof conscience for the PML-Q and were handed key ministries includ-ing interior, defense, and petroleum. Similar bribe-and-threat tacticscaused defections from the PPP and the PML-N in the Punjab, the mostpopulous of Pakistans four provinces, while in Sindh, where the PPPwon the highest number of seats, military maneuverings barred it frombeing able to form the government.

How the West Was Won?

The rise of the MMA represents a new and ominous turn in Pakistanipolitics. Formed in January 2002 and spearheaded by the Jamaat-e-Islami(JI), the largest and best-organized Islamist party, and the Jamiat UlamaIslamFazlur Rehman (JUI-F), the MMA notched unprecedented gains,especially in the NWFP (plus the adjoining Federally Administered TribalAreas [FATA]) and Baluchistan. While no one could have predicted thescale of the MMAs electoral victories, I warned in these pages in Janu-ary 2002 that the militarys systematic targeting of moderate politicalparties, plus public anger at the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, couldwork to the Islamists benefit.6 The politicized Muslim clerics of the MMAadroitly deployed a mixture of vitriolic attacks on the United States,allegations of high civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and promises of anIslamic welfare state to woo voters frustrated with the traditional politi-cal elites and the mainstream parties. Continually urging Pakistanis tosave Pakistan from the dangers posed by American troops on oursoil, the U.S.-Jewish conspiracy to take out our Islamic bomb, and soon, the clerics turned fear and frustration into an electoral windfall.

While religious parties have often used anti-Americanism for politi-cal gain in Pakistan, the strategy has never really paid off until now(and still has not paid off in Sindh or the Punjab, where voters continueto prefer mainstream parties). In the early 1990s, for instance, Islamistparties waved the bloody shirt of the first Gulf War and yet never madeany serious headway unless they could form a coalition with one of themainstream, secular political groups.

Among the reasons for the new strength of the Islamist appeals, onecannot discount the widespread anger in the NWFP (and Pushtun-speak-ing areas of Baluchistan) over U.S.-led military operations inAfghanistan. The 2002 voting also saw the virtual elimination in thetwo western provinces of the center-left Awami National Party (ANP)and other Pushtun-nationalist forcesthe clerical parties traditionalrivals, which had split further with the clerics over the Talibans ouster.Also helping the MMA in NWFP was a military-generated PPP spinoff


that siphoned away a share of that partys voter base. With help like thisfrom the khaki corner, the Islamists took 53 of the 99 seats in the provin-cial assembly and 29 of the NWFPs 35 seats in the national assembly.In the adjoining FATAwhere a curious mixture of tribal and state lawrules and where religious conservatism is strongnominally indepen-dent candidates who made no secret of their loyalty to the MMA (theirnames appeared on the ballot under its symbol) bagged 7 of the 12allotted national assembly seats. The 14 provincial assembly seats thatthe MMA won in the mostly Pushtun areas of Baluchistan left that Is-lamist formation almost even with the PML-Q, which won 15 elsewherein the province. Even in Sindh (whose major city is Karachi, Pakistanspremier seaport), Islamist parties managed to pick up 6 national and 8provincial assembly seats, thereby partly regaining ground lost over thelast decade or so. For the first time, moreover, an MMA candidate fromthe JI won a national assembly seat from Islamabad. In January 2003national assembly by-elections, the MMA exploited anti-Americanismin order to retain a pair of NWFP seats and win one in Rawalpindi, anorthern city long dominated by the two traditional major parties. Is-lamists reacted to U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan by holdingmassive protest rallies in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar.

Clearly, the militarys relentless undermining of the moderate oppo-sition parties, particularly the PPP and PML-N, handed the Islamists agolden opportunity. The MMA also inadvertently benefited from Gen-eral Musharrafs constitutional engineering. His bachelors-degreerequirement, for instance, disqualified nearly half of all those who hadheld national and provincial legislative seats at the time of the 1999coup, yet the Islamists stood unscathed as the Election Commission ofPakistan swiftly ruled that their madrassah (religious school) degreeswould count as B.A. equivalents.7

Official bans on political activity meant little to Islamist parties longaccustomed to using mosques and madrassahs as platforms for mobili-zation. Even so, the regime did little to interfere with public rallies byreligious factions even as it ruthlessly suppressed secular oppositiongatherings. In June 2002, for instance, baton-wielding policemen as-sailed and arrested several senior PML-N leaders before a public rally inRawalpindi. Just two days earlier in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, 20,000Islamistsincluding members of extremist groups nominally bannedby Musharrafhad congregated unhindered to hear speakers castigatethe general for selling out Afghanistan and Kashmir in return for fa-vors from Washington.

Islamist parties have formed into ballot coalitions before, but alwayswith secular parties in the mix. Not so the MMA: It is an exclusively andaggressively Islamist formation, albeit one cobbled together across vari-ous sectarian and doctrinal cleavages that in the past had never provedbridgeable.8 In interviews that I conducted with senior MMA leaders in

Aqil Shah 31

early 2003, some insisted that their alliance flowed from their acuteshared awareness of how counterproductive it was for their respectiveparties to be competing against one another.9

Critics charge that the military engineered the creation of the MMA aspart of an overall move against the PPP and PML-N. The regime appearsto have calculated that the lions share of the right-of-center vote (whichis always reliably anti-PPP) could be diverted to the military-sponsoredPML-Q, with the MMA picking up the rest and thereby squeezing out thePML-N. Indications are that the militarys political managers had con-ceived the idea of such a religious-party coalition even before 9/11, theU.S.-led operation in Afghanistan, and the formation of the Pak-AfghanDefense Council (the body that morphed into the MMA after the Talibanfell). There is plenty of historical evidence to suggest that the Pakistaniarmy has long been active in arranging alliances at the rightward end ofthe political spectrum. For instance, knowledgeable observers agree thatthe Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)which functions as a wingof the military, commanded by a serving general and staffed by active-duty officers who rotate through its billets as part of their regular careertrajectorydid precisely this before the 1988, 1990, and 1993 elections,in each case putting forward an Islamic front under one name or an-other to compete for the votes of the religious right.

The Military-Islamist Complex

The military and the religious right share a set of illiberal attitudes, adeep hostility to India, and an aversion to political moderation. Theyhave been closet political allies since the 1970s. In 1971, the JI stronglybacked the armys brutal effort to prevent the secession of East Pakistan(as todays Bangladesh was then called). The JIs student wing providedmost of the recruits for army-sponsored counterinsurgency operationsin that strife-torn province. The JI also did the armys bidding by lead-ing the agitation against Premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Benazirs father,executed in 1979) for signing the 1972 Simla Agreement with India andrecognizing Bangladesh. Under military dictator General MuhammadZia ul-Haq, who ruled from 1977 until his plane exploded mysteriouslyin midair in 1988, the military expanded its stable of Islamist allies.During the decade of fighting that followed the Soviet invasion of Af-ghanistan in 1979, Pakistani religious parties received ample militarytraining and funding, strengthening their ties to the army and broaden-ing their support within and outside the government.

The green-and-khaki nexus of mullahs and officers may well havesurvived the sudden U-turn on Afghan policy that Musharraf announcedafter 9/11. How else can one explain cases like that of Maulana AzamTariq, head of a banned anti-Shiite group known as the Soldiers of theProphets Companions, who was released from the jail where he was


awaiting trial for murder and allowed to run for parliament at a timewhen moderate-party candidates were being disqualified for misdemean-ors? And why else would the military regime instruct provincialauthorities to drop criminal cases against several MMA leaders andparty workers just weeks before the election?

Religious parties are also important to the militarys external agenda.Belying his putative distaste for religious extremism, Musharraf has of-ten praised militant groups as Pakistans first line of defense in anywar with India. The military prizes fundamentalist parties and their jihadimilitias as sources of both public support and officially deniable man-power for the religiously charged low-intensity war that the army runsacross the Line of Control in Indian Kashmir. At the same time, suchlargely covert ties leave the military free to play the other side of itsdouble game by pointing publicly to the existence of a large and noisyhomegrown Islamist movement when the soldiers want to angle for dip-lomatic and economic support from an international community thatfears the prospect of a Talibanized Pakistan run by atomic mullahs.

Some observers now fear that, thanks in good part to the militarysdivide-and-rule machinations, the Islamists have gained enough mo-mentum to escape the militarys orbit, and may be heading off on atrajectory all their own.10 For now, at least, these fears are exaggerated.The MMA nay not like either the role that Musharraf has committedPakistan to play in the global war on terror or all his constitutionalchanges, but the Islamist leaders know that they have little to gain atpresent from antagonizing the generals and are focusing instead on ex-tending their newfound clout beyond the NWFP and Baluchistan. So theMMA leaders too play a double game, staging million-man marchesto denounce Musharraf as George W. Bushs lackey while tacitly assur-ing the military that the MMA will stick to noisy rhetoric while steeringclear of any serious campaign to destabilize the PML-Q government.

Knowing the immediate context for the MMAs rise is important, butso is understanding the deeper historical roots of Islamist influence.Throughout Pakistans troubled history, various figures and factions inits ruling elite have exploited religion to push certain agendas anddivert attention away from this or that set of ethnic, linguistic, regional,and sectarian cleavages. Is it any wonder, then, that Islamic symbols canbe wielded with such manipulative power in Pakistani politics?

To make matters worse, long interruptions of democracyPakistanhas had four military coups in less than 60 years of independencehavecombined with the states ambivalent or even supportive attitude towardIslamist groups to make extremist politics attractive. Where functioningdemocratic institutions and secular political parties should be, therestands a vacuum that radical religious movements are now threateningto fill. In a country whose constitution bans the enactment of laws in-compatible with sharia and mandates that only a Muslim can be prime

The MMA may not like either the role that Musharraf has committed

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minister or president, it is little surprise that the religious right has gradu-ally risen to political prominence.11

Since independence in 1947, the Pakistani state and political elitesgenerallynot just the militaryhavesought to accommodate and manipu-late Islamists. Yet just who has beenusing whom has not always been clear:The Islamists reaction, by and large,has been to press their demands evermore boldly and violently while mostlyrefusing to abide by the rule of law. In1974, the elder Bhuttos PPP govern-ment declared members of the Ahmadisect non-Muslims in order to placate

the JI. This was in keeping with other steps that Bhutto took to coopt hisaggressive Islamist opposition through a policy of preemptive surren-der: He was the liberal premier who banned alcohol and gambling.The mullahs, of course, were not satisfied with some shuttered night-clubs, and pressed Bhutto, by now desperate to stay in power, to beginformally Islamizing the state. This he pliantly did, though it availed himlittle when the nonpolitical General Zia toppled him and sent him tothe gallows. Zia himself fed the Islamist tiger amply and well beforemeeting his own murky and untimely end amid the detonative clat of adoomed C-130. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif too played their owngames of capitulation and cooptation with the mullahs. Both these formerpremiers now find themselves banned from politics and banished fromPakistani soil, while the mullahs have their own provincial governmentand a big bloc of seats in the national assembly.

What hope is there of moderating this kind of state-cultivated ex-tremism? The democratic political process remains the best bet, thoughthe odds are not great in the NWFP, where the MMA government has avirtual free hand. Since coming to power there, the MMA has crackeddown on the media and aired plans to enforce sharia through a Saudi-style ministry for virtue promotion and vice prevention. As if thiswere not worrisome enough, the MMA has also signaled a desire to endcoeducation, segregate women in public places, and Islamize public-school curricula. As a sop to Islamabads Western allies and funders,MMA leaders say they want gradual Islamization of society. Federallegislation can override provincial laws, but no Pakistani governmenthas ever stood up to the religious parties in this way, and Musharrafappears willing to keep turning a blind eye as long as the MMA sup-ports the PML-Q governments in Baluchistan and Islamabad. There arelimits to this alliance of expediency, though, for Musharraf remainswary of international concerns about Talibanization. On the eve ofhis June 2003 visit to Washington, for instance, Musharraf publicly

Since independence in1947, the Pakistanistate and political elitesgenerally have sought toaccommodate andmanipulate Islamists.


crit icized the MMAs Islamization campaign in NWFP asnarrowminded. Against the backdrop of the continuing government-opposition deadlock over the LFO, Musharrafs verbal sally was meantboth to assure the West of the militarys moderation and to warn theMMA to drop its complaints against the LFOs sweeping constitutionalchanges and get with the program.12 In the likely event that themullahs and the generals reach an agreement on the LFO, the militarywill then probably cite the MMAs democratic mandate in the NWFP(and even Baluchistan) in order to overlook the minor inconvenienceof that partys provincial-level Islamization campaignssuitably mod-erated for international consumption, of course.

Military Rule and Party Politics

Whenever a military regime comes to power in Pakistan, its first goalis to neutralize any political parties that might oppose it. The logic iscynically simple: Weaken and scatter your adversaries, and you can en-joy a longer and easier stay in power. Divide-and-rule tactics are a favorite.Their tools are new-founded and purpose-built kings parties designedto provide civilian cover plus nonpartisan local bodies to depoliticizegovernance and take pressure off the center, where the generals sit. Thesuppression of partisan loyalties brings tribal, ethnic, linguistic, and sec-tarian affiliations to the fore. Party politics gives way, at least temporarily,to the easier-to-manage, personality-driven politics of patronage. Gen-eral Muhammad Ayub (195869) disqualified hundreds of politicians,created a Basic Democracy system to circumvent popular aspirationsfor real democratic rule, and started the Conventional Muslim League, abreakaway faction of the Muslim League, to broaden his base beyond themilitary. General Zia banned political parties, coopted the religious rightand anti-PPP forces into his government, and created a new political elitethrough his local-bodies system. These budding politicians would laterform the core of Zias rubber-stamp parliament.

During the decade of flawed democracy between Zias death in 1988and Musharrafs coup in 1999, power had gone back and forth betweenBhuttos center-left PPP and Nawaz Sharifs center-right PML-N. What-ever may have been the shortcomings of both these parties and theirrespective leaders, the nature of their competition was coming to reflecta gradual structuring of political affiliations into fairly stable pro- andanti-PPP camps, with minor variations along regional, ethnic, and reli-gious lines. Since assuming power, Musharraf has used the old strategyof divide and rule to reshape the countrys political landscape. Hecobbled together the PML-Q with PML-N leaders who resented Sharif,who could not withstand intimidation, or who were simply willing to dothe militarys bidding in return for power. He carved away some PPPleaders with similar tactics, jailed several others on trumped-up corrup-

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tion charges, and used discriminatory legislation to ban Bhutto and herhusband Asif Zardari from contesting elections.

Like his predecessors, Musharraf quickly seized upon the idea of localgovernment. Within a month of his coup, he had set up a National Recon-struction Bureau under a retired general to develop a schema for devolu-tion. Drafted with technical assistance from the UN Development Program,Local Government Plan 2000 called for the reestablishment of electedcouncils at the subdistrict and district levels. Sweeping as it looked, thenew systems telltale detail was its mandate that local elections be party-less. Local governments proved key instruments in the militarys political-manipulation schemes. District nazims (mayors) used public monies andother state resources to stage rallies backing Musharrafs April 2002 presi-dential referendum and the PML-Qs parliamentary candidates that autumn.

Musharrafs political and constitutional distortions have failed tocripple the mass appeal of his principal political adversaries, the PPPand PML-N. Election results confirm the continued popularity of thesecivilian opponents, belying Musharrafs tireless claims that there is noplace for corrupt politicians (an obvious reference to Sharif andBhutto). The PPP, after all, actually polled more votes than the PML-Q,even though the latter won more parliamentary seats thanks to army-mandated gerrymandering. The PPP also bagged 51 out of 130 seats inthe Sindhi provincial assembly, a traditional stronghold. There is littledoubt that Musharrafs anticorruption campaign against his civilianopponents has done more to damage his credibility than theirs.

This is not to say that the militarys systematic suppression of themoderate parties has done no damage. In fact, these parties are weak-ened, marginalized, and hard-pressed to retain their traditional supportbases and whatever shreds of programmatic and organizational coher-ence they can salvage. With the military still using bribes and threats tosplinter the parties, their ability to structure democratic compromiseor mediate political conflict is bound to suffer serious damage.13 ThePPP, its cadres frustrated and its leader exiled, wanders in the wilder-ness. Sharifs PML-N, once Pakistans most popular party, is now inutter disarray. The PML-Q spinoff is less an organized political forcethan a collection of opportunists. Only the Islamist parties of the MMAseem to have come out ahead. Arguably, the MMAs electoral clout isstill a political aberration. On a level playing field, the secular partiesmight still be a match for the forces of politicized Islam. If the militarycontinues to patronize the religious parties, however, liberal-democraticsections of civil and political society are likely to become casualties.

The 1973 Constitution stipulates that any amendment requires thetwo-thirds vote of an elected parliament. Before he lifted martial law in1985, General Zia crafted the Eighth Amendment to indemnify all hisactions through a rubber-stamp parliament. General Musharraf, lackingthe required majority, has refused to seek parliamentary ratification for


the LFO. Declaring his amendments irreversible, Musharraf has pub-licly claimed that he introduced the military-dominated NSC and otherconstitutional innovations in order to erect a system of checks andbalances that will ensure democratic stability. Or as he puts it, If youwant to keep the army out, bring them in.14

In empowering Musharraf to amend the constitution, the SupremeCourts May 2000 decision had declared off-limits such salient featuresof democratic governance as judicial independence, federalism, andparliamentarism. Critics say that the LFO has gone far beyond the boundsthat the Court envisioned (by allowing the president to dissolve an electedlegislature at will, for instance) and turned parliament into a joke. TheNSC, moreover, effectively subordinates civilian to military authority.

Musharrafs insistence on retaining the illegitimate powers claimedthrough the LFO has galvanized a rare confluence of opposition alli-ancesthe Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (or ARD, whichcomprises the PPP and PML-N) and the MMA. The lines, it seems, arebeing drawn for what could become the decisive battle over the futureof state authority in Pakistan. If we dont oppose [the LFO], the veryexistence of the federal parliamentary system is at stake, argues PPPparliamentarian Shah Mehmood Qureshi.15 The combined oppositionargues that the LFO is a set of proposednot actualconstitutionalamendments, and as such needs the approval of two-thirds of parliamentas the 1973 Constitution stipulates. Opposition politicians mainly ob-ject to three clauses of the LFOpresidential power to dissolveparliament; Musharrafs unelected, uniformed presidency; and a mili-tary-dominated NSCand they reject these as intrinsically antitheticalto parliamentarism. The PML-Q counters that the LFO is already part ofthe constitution and the opposition can amend it, if it so wishes, with atwo-thirds vote. Defending the LFO before a divisional bench of theLahore High Court, Attorney General Makhdum Ali Khan recently notedthat the current parliament itself was chosen under the LFO, so if theLFO is not in force, then neither can parliament be.16

As of this writing in late August 2003, parliament remains dead-locked. The continuing impasse has generated fears that Musharraf mightdeclare parliament dissolved.17 As long as the opposition sticks to peace-ful protest, however, the general will be hard-pressed to find a pretextfor such a move. Nor will outright martial law be an easy sell at home orabroad, and the legal and constitutional questions it would raise wouldbe thornier even than todays quandaries. The biggest imponderable iswhether the high command will go along with Musharrafs determina-tion to throw his weight around publicly when the armys institutionalinterests can be so readily protected from behind the scenes. IsMusharrafs vaunted unity of command so strong that the whole mili-tary will abandon its parliamentary cover for his sake?

The generals constitutional and political maneuvers have placed

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immense pressure on Pakistans fragile polity. Centralization, denial ofprovincial autonomy, and the absence of effective political institutionsfuel intense resentment, especially in the smaller provinces, against thePunjabi-dominated officer corps. But there is as yet no sign of discordbetween Musharraf and his most important constituency, the nine armycorps commanders.18 The army is cohesive enough as an organization tojustify considerable skepticism toward analyses which claim that a splitin its upper ranks is nigh.

Given the slenderness of any prospect that the officer corps will ini-tiate a withdrawal from politics, what can be hoped for from the civilianside? Here the picture may be brighter. The refusal by many civilianpoliticians to accept a uniformed officers claims to extraconstitutionalauthority may reflect the gradual maturation of a democratic consensusamong the political elite. And yet here again, the MMA seems to beshaping up as a disturbing exception. The clout that this Islamist groupnow wields in NWFP and Baluchistan is a bad sign, as is its willing-nesssuggested by talks that it held with representatives of the federalgovernment in the summer of 2003to angle for its own separate peacewith Musharraf behind a screen of oppositionist rhetoric.

Democracy and Governance: Perils and Prospects

Pakistan is a living laboratory of the chronic instability wrought bya politically autonomous and overbearing militarythat much is sure.But any pacted transition or other solution based on an elite settle-ment will have to pass the test of performance legitimacy. For this,there will need to be credible economic policies and effective manage-ment of political conflict. Otherwise, democracy will never beconsolidated, and the lurch from one crisis to the next will be the bestfor which one can hope.19

One part of this difficult equation that outside actors can hope toinfluence is the conflict with India over Kashmir. A settlement of thisproblem, the end of the low-intensity war, and a general thaw in Indo-Pak relations would rob the Pakistani military of its favorite pretext forconsuming so much of the national budget and being so ready to inter-vene in politics in the name of national security. Many observersagree that the active presence of an honest broker third party such asthe United States offers the best hope of finding a way to stanch thebleeding from this running wound. And a settlement might also allayanti-U.S. resentment and thus make terrorist recruitment more difficult.

Alternatively, if Kashmir is not pacified, the United States will re-main an easy target for demonization, while Pakistan will at best continueto reap the bitter fruits of a distorted civil-military configuration and allthat aggravates it, or is aggravated by it: unsustainably high militaryexpenditures, endemic corruption, rampant poverty, an inefficient pub-

NaveedHighlight


lic sector, an organizationally weak civil society, and violent sectarianstrife. Contrary to their reformist rhetoric, authoritarian regimes haveproved poor at instituting sustainable structural reforms. Reforms re-quire the building of consensus and coalitions in order to create crediblepolitical, constitutional, and legislative guarantees that will safeguardreform in the long run. Representative, constitutional government thusoffers the best hope for the consolidation of democratic governance inPakistan. Otherwise, the MMAs utopian rhetoric about an Islamic wel-fare state is likely to become more and more enticing.

For now, soldiers, entrenched in key structures of governmentalpower, retain a de facto veto over key policy actions of elected officials.Even after the election of a civilian government, General Musharrafcontinues to rule by decree. In 2002 alone, he promulgated 150 ordi-nances and orders. In this praetorian situation, the critical question isnot whether the military will stage a coup, but whether the civilianpolitical elite can prevent or preempt direct or indirect interventions.

Given the international consensus on democracy as the most prefer-able form of government, even in these days of fighting terror, thePakistani military clearly sees that it can best serve its own interests bygoing through the motions of formally transferring power to a civiliangovernment that the generals can claim is democratically elected, evenas the soldiers retain their iron grip on the levers of state power. Cageyabout the importance of keeping up electoral appearances in the postCold War world, the generals have fobbed off the thankless task ofday-to-day governance on elected officials who must stand naked intheir responsibility and relative powerlessness, even as the true (mili-tary) rulers cloak themselves in the prudish vestments of formalrespectability and democratic compliance.20

Absent a full restructuring of civil-military relations, democratic tran-sition will never stick in Pakistan. The 1973 Constitution makes civilianauthorities nominally supreme over the military, but this has never beensufficient to stop the generals from derailing the political process. De-mocratization and its consolidation will require in the first instancecivilian control over the insulated realm of defense and national secu-rity policies, traditionally excluded from the purview of elected officials.

For too long, elected leaders have dealt with civil-military relationson an ad hoc basis, conveniently accepting limited powers in foreignand security matters while leaving the military a free hand. Successiveprime ministers, finding themselves thus boxed in by the top brass,have often tried to extend subjective civilian control by politicizingthe appointments of senior military officersa trick that has almostalways backfired. Once out of power, political leaders have never hesi-tated to cut a power-sharing deal with the military, even if that hasmeant legitimating its institutionalized political role. This brand ofexpedient politicking, senior opposition leaders claim, is changing.

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Aqil Shah 39

Political maturity is gradually seeping in, asserts the PPPs Qureshi,and with it the realization that an interventionist military is at theheart of Pakistans democratic failure.21

Whether this realization will lead the political elite to confront themilitary is an open question. On the one hand, democratization willrequire that opposition parties deny General Musharraf the constitu-tional legitimacy he needs to institutionalize military tutelage overnational political life. On the other hand, a persistent legacy ofauthoritarianism and the lack of a firmly institutionalized party systemmake the political regime vulnerable to dissolution by the military. Ifthe opposition parties can sustain their anti-LFO campaign within andoutside parliament, they might force a compromise that could scale backthe militarys tutelary powers and its ability, if not its desire, to inter-vene in politics. But this is easier said than done. For the time being, atleast, Musharraf can count on international backing and the militaryscoercive power to prolong the political status quo. The resurgent alli-ance between mullahs and generals also bodes ill for any futureinstitutionalization of civilian supremacy. And if the MMA (or any otheropposition group) were to strike yet another untenable power-sharingarrangement with the generals that lets them keep their veto over civil-ian politics, democratic hopes are sure to be swiftly dashed.

NOTES

1. The EU Observer Missions final report is available at www.eueom.org.pk/finalreport.asp.

2. Human Rights Watch Background Briefing, Pakistan: Entire Election ProcessDeeply Flawed, 9 October 2002, www.hrw.org/press/2002/10/pakistan-1009.htm.See also Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Pre-Poll Rigging, at www.hrcp-web.org.

3. After all the postelectoral dealings were completed, the final lower-houseseat tally was: PML-Q (117), PPP (80), and MMA (60).

4. The Grand National Alliance includes the National Alliance and the SindhDemocratic Alliance as well as the PML-Q.

5. General Zia introduced Article 58(2)B into the 1973 Constitution. The PML-N government repealed this clause in 1997.

6. See Aqil Shah, Democracy on Hold in Pakistan, Journal of Democracy 13(January 2002): 6775.

7. State TV coverage of the election campaign also tilted in favor of the PML-Q and the MMA, each of which received more air time than the PPP. The PPP alsoreceived negative coverage. See Media Monitoring: Elections 2002, PakistanLiberal Forum, Islamabad, October 2002.

8. In addition to the JI, a religious revivalist movement that follows a distinct


philosophy traceable to the writings of Maulana Maududi (190379), a nationalist-turned-Islamist intellectual, the MMA contains one large and four smaller parties.The most prominent and electorally the most successful is JUI-F, a spinoff from theJamiat Ulama Islam (JUI). The JUI-S or Samiul Haq group is the smaller faction ofthe JUI. Both follow the teachings of the Deobandi sect, a nineteenth-centurySunni-militant movement. The Jamiat Ulama Pakistan (JUP) represents the Barelvisect, a Sunni movement that draws inspiration from Sufi saints. (Deoband andBareli are towns in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where these movementsoriginated.) The smaller Islami Tehreek claims to represent the minority Shiitecommunity. The other small party, the Jamiat-e-Ahle Hadith (Followers of theProphets Tradition) is inspired by the Wahabis of Saudi Arabiaa country which,according to one source, may be spending more than US $1 billion per year to fundmadrassahs and other vehicles of Islamist militancy in Pakistan. See Alex Alexiev,The Pakistani Time Bomb, Commentary, March 2003, 4652.

9. Background interviews with author, January 2003, Islamabad. In the 1970elections, for instance, the JI, JUI and JUP all did poorly in both East and WestPakistan partly because they had run separately and thus split the Islamist vote. SeeSeyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jamaat eIslami of Pakistan (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), 168.

10. Mohammad Waseem, Turning the Wheels, Dawn (Karachi), 16 October2002 .

11. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution.

12. Musharrrafs verbal assault came backed by pressure tactics that includedthe removal of top provincial administration officials, mass resignations by pro-Musharraf NWFP nazims (mayors), and legal efforts to strip MMA legislators oftheir seats.

13. See Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Toward Consolidated Democracies,Journal of Democracy 7 (1996): 1433.

14. Faraz Hashmi, Amendments Irreversible: Musharraf, Dawn (Karachi), 22August 2002.

15. Interview with author, Islamabad, 12 March 2003.

16. Turmoil if LFO Is Struck Down, Says AG Dawn (Karachi), 28 March2003.

17. Aziz Malik, If LFO Goes, So Does Parliament, says Musharraf, Dawn(Karachi), 27 August 2003

18. Ihteshamul Haq, Commanders Back COAS [Musharraf] on Uniform, Dawn(Karachi), 8 August 2003.

19. Larry Diamond et al., eds., Politics in Developing Countries: ComparingExperiences with Democracy (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990), 9.

20. Kees Koonings and Derk Kruijt, eds., Introduction in Political Armies:The Military and Nation Building in the Age of Democracy (London: Zed, 2002),32 .

21. Interview with author, Islamabad, 12 March 2003.

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