Pakistan: A Hard Country (13 page)
Ayub’s land reform in turn helped spur the successful ‘Green Revolution’ in the area. However, this commercialization of agriculture, and the spread of mechanized farming, also led to new unemployment and dispossession among agricultural workers and marginal tenants.
These moved to the cities and swel ed mass unrest against Ayub.
In 1962, Ayub created the Convention Muslim League as a political party to prop up his rule in the face of political pressure that he could not crush through repression (because of his own character, the weakness of the Pakistani state, and the fact that the opposition adoped as its presidential candidate the iconic figure of the Qaid-e-Azam’s sister, Fatima Jinnah). Ayub’s ‘party’ was an al iance of independent local notables and bosses, and in no sense either a mass movement or a modern political party staffed by ful -time professional officials and volunteers.
The Convention Muslim League was therefore part of the familiar pattern whereby would-be reformist administrations have to depend on traditional – and strongly anti-reformist – power-holders to maintain their rule. This has always inevitably involved turning a blind eye to their corruption, and rewarding them with patronage which has undermined good government and the state budget. This was just the same with the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam), or PML(Q), the ‘King’s Party’ that Musharraf put together to support his rule and contest the elections of 2002. This party was made up chiefly of defectors from Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League (N), and was a typical grouping of opportunist landowners and local bosses. Musharraf was therefore also forced to fol ow the old pattern.
Thus in his first years in power Musharraf pursued anti-corruption and revenue-raising strategies which won praise from Transparency International and international financial institutions. In advance of the parliamentary elections of 2002, however, a whole string of cases for corruption, non-repayment of loans and tax evasion were dropped against politicians whose support Musharraf needed.
In consequence, tax col ection, which had edged up to 11.4 per cent of GDP in 2001, fel again to its historic rate of around 10.5 per cent – low even by the standards of the developing world. Given Musharraf’s need for the courts to legitimize him and elected politicians to support him, it seems questionable whether he should real y be cal ed a military dictator at al . He was certainly a very weak one by international and historical standards.
Musharraf fol owed Ayub in attempting to increase the power of local municipal bodies elected on a non-party basis. In both cases, this strategy had both an opportunistic and an honourable side. The opportunistic element was the desire to weaken the opposition political parties by reducing the powers of the national and provincial parliaments, and reducing their access to local patronage.
However, these moves also addressed a very real problem, which exists in India as wel as Pakistan. This is that in both countries local elected bodies have traditional y had very weak powers. Real local authority has remained where it was established in British colonial days, in the hands of unelected civil servants whose powers are vastly more sweeping than those of their Western equivalents (including not just powers that in the West belong to elected municipalities, but some of those of the judiciary as wel ). Even under ‘democracy’, as far as most of their citizens are concerned, the Pakistani and Indian states therefore function more like ‘elected authoritarianisms’. The weakness of local government is especial y damaging in the cities, where it hinders the development of new kinds of reformist urban politics.
On the other hand, whereas in British days these civil servants were at least independent of politics and in a position to guarantee minimal y honest administration, today they are not just responsible to the national and provincial governments, but are subject to endless pressure from elected politicians at the national and provincial levels.
This gives tremendous powers of patronage and harassment to these politicians and their parties, but is extremely bad for honest and effective administration. One consequence is the constant transfers of officials on political grounds, meaning that very few have the chance ever to get to know their districts or areas of responsibility properly.
Ayub’s ‘Basic Democracy’ scheme, and Musharraf’s ‘Devolution’
were both meant to address these problems by giving real power to local elected bodies. In Musharraf’s case, he also tried to strengthen the position of women by reserving a third of elected municipal seats for them. However, in both Ayub’s case and Musharraf’s, after they fel from power their civilian successors simply swept away these reforms, with no attempt to distinguish the good from the bad sides, in order to restore their own power and patronage.
In Musharraf’s case, however, his devolution was also widely criticized because he had weakened the police, contributing to several embarrassing col apses of local police forces in the face of Taleban attack. Musharraf had done this by removing the police from the authority of the District Commissioner (the old British ‘Burra Sahib’, now renamed in rather political y correct Blairite fashion the ‘District Coordinating Officer’), and placing them under the elected councils.
This was meant to address a terrible problem in Pakistan (and stil more in India): the extreme unaccountability of the local police, which has contributed to so many ghastly atrocities against ordinary people.
The problem was that the local councils proved whol y incapable of taking responsibility for the police. In consequence the latter, with no one to force them to take action, developed a strong tendency when faced with any crisis simply to do nothing – not only because of natural somnolence, but out of fear that they would have to take the responsibility if something went wrong. In other fields of administration, too, the newly elected politicians proved too weak and inexperienced to exercise their powers properly – though they might have learned to do so given more time.
There is something therefore both strange and tragic about Musharraf’s devolution and its abolition: strange that a ‘military dictator’ should actual y have weakened the state’s powers of repression; tragic that elected ‘democratic’ governments should have undermined democratic progress by weakening local democracy; but above al tragic that a reform with some truly positive democratic and modern aspects should have foundered on the traditional hard realities of South Asian society. Local government reform was therefore part of Musharraf’s declared spirit of ‘Enlightened Moderation’, which, though never systematical y developed or implemented, nonetheless stood in the direct tradition of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. Some of Zia’s Islamization measures were rol ed back, and, as noted, a strong attempt was made to improve the political role of women.
Until 9/11 Musharraf continued to support Islamist militants fighting in Kashmir against India, but at the same time confirmed his secular credentials by taking tough action against Sunni extremist groups which in previous years had conducted a savage campaign of sectarian terrorism against Pakistan’s Shia minority. In 2008 – 9 these groups al ied with the Pakistani Taleban, and extended their terrorism from the Shia and Ismailis to Sunni Muslims from the Barelvi and Sufi traditions, as wel as attacking state targets.
Musharraf’s administration differed from Ayub’s in two ways – one good, one bad. The good one was that – once again, very surprisingly for a military dictatorship – Musharraf introduced a radical liberalization of the media, something that he was to pay for heavily when the media turned against him in 2007. This reflected the fact that, as a great many senior Pakistanis who dealt with him personal y have told me, until things began to fal apart towards the end of his rule, Musharraf was a far more open personality than either Ms Bhutto or Mr Sharif, and was genuinely committed to a form of liberal progress.
The bad difference from Ayub lay in the field of economic policy, and was perhaps a matter of Western influence as much as bad judgement on the part of Musharraf and his economic team. In Ayub’s day, Western development thinking was focused on the need to build a country’s industrial base; and Ayub responded with a very successful programme of industrial growth. By Musharraf’s time, however, the Washington Consensus and the capitalist triumphalism that fol owed the fal of Communism had shifted Western attitudes to a blind faith in market liberalization and an increase in mass consumption. So while Musharraf’s economic boom did lead to real growth in the economy and a real rise in state revenues, it was also much more shal ow than growth under Ayub and left a much smal er legacy.
Musharraf’s finance minister and (from 2004) prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, nonetheless conducted for several years what seemed to be a strikingly successful economic policy. GDP growth, which when Musharraf took over had stood at 3.9 per cent (only a percentage point or so over the rate of population growth), from 2003 to 2008 stood between 6.6 per cent and 9 per cent. Shaukat Aziz’s strategy, however, failed to deal with the underlying problems of the Pakistani economy.14 In 2008, the advent of the world economic crisis led to a sharp drop in the economy, while acute electricity shortages revealed not only incompetence by the new PPP government but also the failure of the Musharraf administration to develop the country’s energy infrastructure.
Given Musharraf’s personal honesty (in marked contrast to most of his predecessors) and progressive credentials, it is in fact depressing to note how little his administration achieved in nine years in terms of changing Pakistan; though perhaps just helping to keep the country afloat in such times should be considered an achievement in itself.
ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO
Bhutto’s government from 1971 to 1977 marked the only time a Pakistani civilian administration has sought to bring about radical changes in the country. His most enduring legacy was the creation of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), one of the dynastic parties (with populist trappings) that continue to dominate South Asian politics. By contrast, Bhutto’s attempts at radical reform largely met the same fate as those of his military counterparts – though with far more tragic personal consequences for Bhutto.
Bhutto’s combination of intense ‘feudal’ and familial pride with an often vindictive hatred of the Pakistani upper classes has been attributed by many to the fact that his mother, Sir Shah Nawaz’s second wife, was a convert from a Hindu family, inevitably – though probably wrongly – al eged by his enemies to have been a dancing girl. The miseries resulting from this for a sensitive child in an intensely snobbish and anti-Hindu milieu can easily be imagined. Later, the scurrilous and mendacious viciousness with which the anti-Bhutto press used his mother’s origins against him must surely have increased his own savagery towards his critics and opponents.
Bhutto was, however, also a child of his era, one in which left-wing nationalism was at its height in the ‘Third World’. When Bhutto founded the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in 1966, Nasser was in power in Egypt, Sukarno in Indonesia, Nkrumah in Ghana, and Mao was the darling of the left-wing intel igentsia in much of the world. In neighbouring India, Mrs Gandhi was preparing to break the hold of the old Congress bosses on her father’s party by a populist campaign much of which was very close to that of Bhutto. Bhutto’s slogan of ‘roti, kapra aur makan’ (‘bread, clothes and housing’) was echoed by Mrs Gandhi’s of ‘gharibi hatao’ (‘abolish poverty’). So Bhutto seemed to himself and others to be riding the wave of the future – though even before he took power Nkrumah had fal en and Nasser had been crushingly defeated by Israel.
The basic dynamics of Bhutto’s strategy were simple enough, and familiar enough from many such regimes elsewhere in the developing world. The intention was to bring about a socio-economic revolution from above in Pakistan, and to create rapid economic growth through the nationalization of industry and state-directed development. In the process, the support of the Pakistani masses for Bhutto and his party would be consolidated, and the PPP would become the permanent party of power, with Bhutto as the lifetime charismatic national leader who would then pass on this power to his descendants. Unlike the military rulers, Bhutto was therefore a would-be ‘sultanistic’ dictator, personal and dynastic rather than institutional.15 For Bhutto to achieve his goals, the grip of the existing elites on politics, the economy and the bureaucracy would have to be broken, when necessary by ruthless means.
It was highly unlikely that this programme could ever have worked in terms of developing the country – as so many other international examples demonstrate. However, as these examples also demonstrate, Bhutto’s approach might have worked much better when it came to consolidating his own power and that of his party; he could have ruled for a generation, instead of fewer than six years.
The two differences between Pakistan and more successful examples of authoritarian nationalist populism are that for such regimes to succeed in gaining a real, semi-permanent grip on power they have to create powerful, organized parties staffed by new men and not the old elites; and, even more importantly, they have to control their armies. Very often indeed, like Peron, the populist leaders come from the ranks of the army themselves. Bhutto did not come from the military and, as wil be seen, the military itself does not al ow personal dictators from its ranks to establish dynastic rule. Nor was Pakistani society capable of generating a true mass political party, independent of kinship loyalties and local power elites.