PAKISTAN’S political crisis gets reported and discussed extensively all over the world. Some of us were in Singapore for “track two” consultations with a distinguished Indian group when the BBC began one evening to lead its hourly bulletins with Benazir Bhutto’s statement made to it that day that she was within a cat’s whisker of a settlement with President Musharraf and that only a point and a half remained to be resolved.

Some of the Indian participants were keen to know as to how it would impact on the India-Pakistan dialogue, in particular on what they claimed is a secret agreement on Jammu and Kashmir already arrived at in the back-channel diplomacy. A narration of the elements of that deal and their analysis from a Pakistani perspective can await another day as our Indian friends expect no movement till Pakistan’s politics settles down. One ended up explaining to them that the unresolved point and a half represented a gap that Benazir Bhutto would not find easy to bridge and that the BBC optimism might have been a trifle premature.

This was a painful fact to point out as many of us had advocated over several months that the turmoil in Pakistan was qualitatively different especially after March 9 and that it needed a grand political bargain or, better still, national reconciliation.

Even before the fateful attempt to deprive the Supreme Court of its head, the Musharraf regime had seen its moral authority sink into the credibility gap that had opened up in every sector of national life. The regime’s plan to depoliticise Pakistan had succeeded so well that legitimate sub-national movements aiming at a greater share in national governance and allocation of resources were being fast overtaken by armed insurgencies started by their more radical supporters. There were no signs of the government moving towards a national compact to save the situation. It was sheer inertia of unchallenged power.

The pace at which the events triggered by the coup of March 9 repoliticised the state and the society was breathtaking; not many people had calculated the extraordinary contribution to this process that the media would make. The government plan to stimulate economic activity through lavish consumer credit had polarised the society but the greater mobility of transportation and communication by itself assisted repoliticising; it whipped up the right of assembly and information-sharing. The ‘sms’ has turned out to be a more effective tool for eroding governmental authority than anything that the traditional political parties have been able to deploy against it.

The present state of uncertainty comes partly from the notable failure of the mainstream parties to establish a grip on the strong forces of dissent unleashed by the movement for the independence of the judiciary. They were understandably not ready for this spontaneous episode of our history. But it was not just because a military ruler had battered them for more than seven years; they were institutionally incapable of reading the meaning of a mini-cultural revolution that had swept the country and worse still, they were fearful of it. It challenged them to go beyond their penchant for Byzantine intrigues and lead the people upfront.

The ‘charter for democracy’ was an elegant document and raised hopes for a while that it would bring about a radical change in the modus operandi of the political parties through a shared adherence to a set of time-honoured principles. The association of sub-regional nationalist movements with it provided hope that the wanton damage done to the federation during the last seven years was not irreparable.

It did not take the people long to discover that the mainstream parties were not only structurally too weak to sustain a popular upsurge, they were also unable to resist the lure of separate manoeuvres for advantage over one another.

The regime read it correctly and, as claimed triumphantly by its leaders, fractured the Charter of Democracy. Major international powers with an agenda of their own soon got into the act to harness the winds of change to suit their strategic designs. Pakistani politics returned quickly to its traditional modes of palace intrigue. The media that had fuelled a nationwide quest for the supremacy of law became vulnerable to exploitation by the major and minor actors in these games.

At least three ministers set themselves up as specialists in disinformation and deception and before long the national political discourse got dominated by reports of stratagems and counter-stratagems. The book of deliverance of which the Charter of Democracy was just a preamble was never written. The nation was once again invited to forget questions of a grand political and economic strategy for their salvation, and instead, admire the audacity of tactical moves by professional politicians.

A new kind of race is now on with parts of it clouded in mystery. Benazir Bhutto’s plan to bring about a peaceful transition through a viable compromise with President-General Pervez Musharraf undergoes kaleidoscopic changes in public perception as it comes under predictable and, on a similar number of turns and twists, unpredictable stresses from the wily managers of political bargaining in the regime and the political platform it created after 1999.

To her credit, she battles on to invest the package with value. This is courageous as she has not paid much attention to mobilising popular support for whatever end-product she considers as irreducible. Failure has obviously not been an option as no visible preparation for it exists. It tends to become a choice between getting bruised while trying to board a fast-moving bus or missing it altogether.

Sensing her dilemma, Nawaz Sharif has donned the mantle of a messiah willing to risk much when he, along with his brother, lands in the capital where he was once humiliated time and again. He is relying heavily on creating a tide of people from Islamabad to Raiwind, something reminiscent of what the people did for the Chief Justice of Pakistan during his thoroughly undeserved ordeal.

Such a tide can change the dynamics for the regime as well as for Bhutto. It is probably a measure of desperation that the government is so assiduously trying to involve Saudi Arabia in Pakistan’s internal power play which with the sole exception of China has been entirely above controversy in Pakistan.

Meanwhile propaganda mills churn out several versions of Plan B ranging from martial law to the scuttling of the present “dialogue” in favour of pushing through the present minefield on the shoulders of the political vehicle designed solely for this purpose. In fact, the vehicle has registered itself by now as a formidable obstacle in the path of a deal by dialogue.

Since it is a question of political life and death, the likely collateral damage to the national polity is not even being talked about. A well-educated representative of minorities in parliament told us in Singapore that a highly promising alternative exists under which Maulana Fazlur Rahman becomes the prime minister and Mr Shaukat Aziz moves down as deputy prime minister and finance minister in the larger national interest. End of the political crisis!

It is not fair to blame the regime alone for this dismal state of affairs; the mainstream political parties have simply not been able to connect with the people. They have allowed a political moment that could have had a deep bearing on the destiny of the nation to be turned into a parlour game. Nawaz Sharif has obviously decided to play it with much higher stakes. Naturally, the main focus now is Sept 10 at the Islamabad airport — the time, the place and the future direction of Pakistan’s great game of power and pelf.

THE next few weeks will determine the future of the democratic movement in Pakistan. It has received a major boost from the successful struggle of the legal fraternity, but it is not certain if it will succeed in its broader objective of the revival of a more meaningful democratic order. Islamabad is rife with all kinds of rumours.

In the current geopolitical scenario, Pakistan cannot be ignored by major powers with stakes in this resource-rich region. They continue to play their hand to pursue their own interests in this country. But in this game for power internal factors relating to the political structure of the country are more decisive.

One of the factors that has historically been pivotal in the country’s political development is the role played by the middle class in tandem with the working classes. This is the case even today. When President Musharraf visited Karachi in August he acknowledged tacitly the support he had received from the middle class in this metropolitan city. He expressed his appreciation for the ‘role of the MQM in national and provincial politics’, thereby implying the party’s success in preventing the Chief Justice from addressing the bar association in the largest city of Pakistan at a time when h was being enthusiastically received by all other cities, big and small.

Not that the Karachi lawyers were lukewarm in their backing for the movement that was at its height then, but the street support available to advocates in other cities was absent in Karachi. It is another matter that the so-called street support to the president cost more than 50 lives on May 12.

The president’s pronounced leaning towards the MQM points to the numerous dilemmas he faces. In Islamabad he finds his well-entrenched concept of national security being challenged by the votaries of an alternate strategy of social security. This threatens to undermine some of the major planks of the state structure as devised by him. But the most important immediate dilemma is the break-up of the military-judiciary nexus that has put the survival of his government at risk.

In the past the judiciary did not provide legitimacy but it definitely provided legal cover to authoritarian regimes. Without a pliant judiciary the regime may be forced to make the situation more complex by imposing an emergency. Thus it will burn its boats and no avenue of retreat will be available to Musharraf.

The president is also trying to destabilise the political parties and the bar. He spoke of “dheel” instead of a “deal” with Benazir Bhutto. He thus indicated that he is not ready for a give-and-take dialogue. The attorney-general Malik Abdul Qayyum is actively sowing the seeds of dissension among the lawyers. Many funds have been discovered which are being distributing left and right.

In this scenario the really vital issue is that of the masses — the plurality of the lower classes led by the middle class, which is emerging as the defender of national sovereignty, stability and democracy worldwide.

Authoritarianism has had an easy sailing in Pakistan where no land reforms were enacted as was done in Bengal before Partition. Unlike the eastern wing of the country where the best known Bengali leader, Mujibur Rahman, belonged to the middle class being an employee of an insurance company, West Pakistan was ruled by the civil and military bureaucracy, with men like Z.A. Bhutto, G.M. Syed, the sardars of Balochistan and the Khans of the NWFP dominating the scene.

Way back in the fifties the federal government wanted to be sure it could govern East Pakistan before taking a leap towards democracy. To test the mood of the Bengalis a general election was held in East Pakistan in 1954. The ruling Muslim League was able to bag only nine seats, (three per cent), while the opposition United Front (Jagto Mahaz) won 97 per cent of the seats.

The federal government panicked. The Fazlul Haq provincial ministry was dismissed, Iskander Mirza was sent out as governor, the Communist Party was banned. The federal government started planning its response to the electoral insurgency of East Pakistan. The formula of parity was evolved, (East Pakistan’s population was 54 per cent of the total) and the units of West Pakistan were herded into one.

It was hoped that with this balance between the two wings, East Pakistan would be controlled. But when in 1969 the Bengali masses raided the court hearing in the Agartala conspiracy case, freed Shaikh Mujibur Rahman and made the court authorities run for their lives, Ayub Khan realised that he had been beaten by the Bengali middle class. Ignoring the provision of his own constitution, Ayub passed on power to the new commander-in-chief, Gen Yahya Khan, and stepped down.

Thus the Bengali middle-class was responsible for the ouster of Ayub. General Yahya Khan took no chances. Realising that the Bengalis were not ready to be coerced into accepting military hegemony, Yahya resorted to the alternate strategy of shooting them out of Pakistan. He thus devised a seemingly democratic programme of dismantling One Unit, promising concessions to the West Pakistan provinces, restoring the one-man one-vote principle and holding fair general elections, all aimed at subduing or getting rid of East Pakistan. Bangladesh was born in 1970-71.

In the Pakistan that remained the grip of the elites was much strengthened at the expense of the middle class. When Gen Ziaul Haq seized power, the elites were haunted by the tremendous populist power that the PPP had unleashed in Sindh. The middle class and the working class had been conscientised. The elites were determined to foil the power of this combine in the Pakistan that Zia was shaping.

The middle class like other classes is a universal phenomenon. It is very hardy; the more it is pruned the more it grows. The elites succeeded in finding a weak link in the massive but rootless middle class of Karachi. They depoliticised this huge force and brought it under their hegemony. This paid dividends. When the Chief Justice was denied the privilege of speaking in Karachi on May 12, Karachi stood out as the sole exception in the country. This was a clear demonstration of the disempowerment of the middle class of Karachi.

It has now been established beyond doubt that the middle class makes or breaks a government. Like a wild flower it can flourish in all climes. In recent decades it is prospering all over Pakistan. It is especially booming in the quasi-urban and urban cities of Punjab. It provided massive street support to the lawyers’ movement all over the country. Regrettably, Karachi was the only one to break ranks. The middle class has toppled earlier dictators such as Generals Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. Containing its power, therefore, is the biggest challenge that Musharraf faces.The only viable course available to the regime is to rein in its arrogance and provide some breathing space to civil society by taking on board some well-entrenched political parties like Benazir’s PPP. There is no other way for healing wounds and restoring stability. Aristotle once said that a society may have its very rich and very poor but stability to the polity is provided by the golden men of the middle classes. In political terms what is being said is that the very rich should be curbed and the very poor must be elevated to achieve the stability of plurality.

For democracy to take root in Pakistan the forces struggling for it must enlist the support of the massive middle class of Karachi.

I WAS invited last week to the Pentagon to brief the US Air Force’s Strategic studies group – known as `Checkmate’ – on the Middle East and Southwest Asia. As a journalist, I try to avoid having anything to do with governments.

But on rare occasions, I do participate in academic-style briefings and conferences when I feel my half century of experience in the Middle East and Asia can be used to benefit. Particularly so in Washington, after the Bush Administration has gone so badly and dangerously astray in its foreign and military policies.

The US Air Force has always been the most progressive, forward-thinking of the services. Among `Checkmate’s’ jobs are innovative strategy, thinking ahead, and evaluating different strategic viewpoints. My briefing was aimed at explaining the sources of the Muslim World’s anger at the West and ways in which America could lessen it and improve currently terrible relations.

There is a high level of concern in the Pentagon over what new problems and threats a US retreat from Iraq will create. Pakistan’s increasingly uncertain future is also causing anxiety in the Pentagon, which worries its 30,000 troops in Afghanistan could be isolated if there are political convulsions in that nation.

The USAF is fizzing with new ideas, but it is also not happy. The US Army and Marines are getting most of America’s sympathy and support for their role in Iraq. The Air Force, without which these wars could not be waged, and which provides decisive, 24/7 top cover for the troops with almost instant response, gets far too little credit.

Ironically, the USAF is a victim of its own success. No US ground troops have been attacked by enemy aircraft since 1953. The USAF has no enemies because it has shot them all down.

The over-stretched USAF has been in non-stop combat for the past 17 years, mostly in Iraq and the Balkans. Its aircraft are getting dangerously old. B-52 heavy bombers are now 60. One B-52 pilot I met, knick- named `Boomer,’ must have been near half his bomber’s age.–– Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

THE windfall gain received by the political parties from an independent judiciary, in the rebirth of which they played only a marginal role, is in danger of being squandered through a rat race for filling the power vacuum created by the continuing reverses in the fortunes of the incumbent regime, for which it has itself to blame.

The crass opportunism being displayed could land them in serious trouble, undoing the achievements of the lawyers-led movement thanks to which they have the political space that had been totally pre-empted so far.

The main beneficiary of this egregious, if rational, behaviour on the part of the two main political prima donnas of our land, will be the current regime which is banking on the repetition of their past follies to bail it out. It has accordingly sent a strong contingent of military and civilian negotiators to meet the two leaders in London to persuade or intimidate them to acquiesce in Musharraf’s re-election as president by mid-September.

Although he has very weak cards in his hand, Musharraf could well bluff his opponents into winning this highly important poker game.

Had the regime somehow managed to avoid the confrontation with the judiciary as it did by overplaying its hand on the Chief Justice issue, it is unlikely that it would have provoked such a vigorous response from the judiciary — one that upset the well-laid legal applecart prepared by its counsels to usher it into another five-year term of unquestioned military rule.

It tried to remove all the obstacles in its way, firing the first salvo at the septuagenarian leader of Baloch nationalism a year ago, more by way of warning others who would dare to confront it in a similar fashion. It had already banished two main political leaders (Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif) from politics and had co-opted two others (Altaf Hussain and Maulana Fazlur Rahman) by giving their parties a share in the spoils of power and had induced the rump of the main political elements into its fold through the largest expansion of the federal cabinet.

However, the fragile and spurious foundations of the myths it had spun, such as those about its indispensability, neutrality, even-handedness, modernity, including freedom of the press and independence of judiciary, as well as the loudly-trumpeted economic growth record, began to unravel, as it fell into a faltering mode. The Chief Justice episode opened the door to expose the legal and moral validity and viability of this contrived structure.

The contradictions inherent in the system, cobbled to hold together divergent predatory interests, turned the country into a lawless jungle. The state began to lose its writ in vast areas of the country and the rights of ordinary citizens came under increasing threat, while a small section of society, including important decision-makers, especially in the military, remained above the purview of accountability and the law.

While the political parties remained dormant or ineffective in defending the citizens’ rights, both inside and outside parliament, the Supreme Court was forced to take up suo motu proceedings and public interest litigation where it found the state to be violating or incapable of defending the rights of the people. The adjudication of landmark cases on privatisation, environment and human rights, notably the missing persons case, enhanced its prestige greatly among the people, while inevitably leading it on a collision course with the executive.

Emboldened by the rising discontent among the common people at the deteriorating economic conditions of the majority of the population, which did not benefit from the elitist policies of macroeconomic stability and growth, and the increasing independence shown by the judiciary and civil society, the political parties started to explore avenues to stop the regime’s runaway train before the 2007 elections.

Notwithstanding the many political obituaries of democracy in Pakistan, which some believed lacked a credible constituency, the ARD managed to get its act together and produce a remarkable document called the Charter of Democracy, which was duly signed by major political party leaders in May 2006. It laid out, in considerable detail, the broad contours of the roadmap to the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, which surprised many cynics, while sending some shudders down the spine of a fairly well-ensconced regime.

What surprised most observers was that the two arch rivals of Pakistani politics were willing to break bread together and join the common cause of dislodging the military and clear the road for democracy through a mechanism of free and fair elections.However, the honeymoon between the two leaders was short-lived and rumours of a split began circulating soon after, based on secret liaisons and deals with the military leader. While in the beginning these rumours were highly discounted as an attempt to create misinformation and sow discord in the ARD ranks, the smoke thickened to make the existence of fire credible.

Ms Bhutto’s desperation to get the past off her back and to look forward to returning to power was understandable to some extent. The US, the Bush administration more so, was convinced that Musharraf was indispensable in the war on terror and managed to persuade her to strike a workable deal with him. But a Musharraf-Benazir alliance had a surrealistic touch and never sounded credible.

Even if a deal is finalised through a sleight of hand, the terms are unlikely to seem a victory for either side. Both would be able to repudiate it if things turned sour, on the basis that it was done “under duress”. The “deal”, at the minimum, would require Benazir to accept Musharraf as president for five years, with the sword of Damocles of the Fourteenth Amendment hanging over her head.

More importantly, it would let Musharraf and his cabal go scot-free for what they have done in the last five years. The disillusionment that this would cause in the PPP’s rank and file would be incalculable. At best, this can have a stillbirth.Two weeks ago, it seemed as if Nawaz Sharif would be left high and dry and spend at least another two years in exile, while his arch-rival would be basking in the glory of power soon. However, the Supreme Court dramatically turned around his fortunes and dealt an almost fatal blow to the Benazir-Musharraf deal. But he now faces an even bigger challenge — to dare the present regime by returning home on Sept 10 as he has announced.

He, as well as Benazir, can take a leaf from the book of the Chief Justice who defied his tormentors in the Camp Office on March 9 and withstood the full psychological onslaught of the authorities for more than four months.

The duo will have to adopt the same steadfastness in calling the government’s bluff of arresting them on arrival and of imposing martial law. Similar rumours were spread during the Chief Justice’s trial, threatening a second reference and other dire measures in case the Chief Justice was reinstated.

In the end, the regime had to swallow its pride. No doubt the lawyers and the general public fully supported him in his just struggle. If the two political leaders adopt the same stance, there is no way the present regime can stop them from achieving their goals. Military dictators can never face the fury of street crowds once their leaders can relate to them and are ready to take their destinies into their own hands.

Both Benazir and Nawaz Sharif, who have much more political synergy with each other than with Musharraf, must stay clear of engaging in a zero-sum game of self-aggrandisement.

The stakes today are much higher but if they join hands, they can aspire to a much more coveted place in history than by merely becoming prime minister for a third time. Their main goal should be to lay a new foundation for democracy, which would make it invulnerable to unconstitutional Bonapartist onslaughts and shed for ever the myth that Pakistan is unsuitable for democracy.

They have to work together to evolve a new consensual polity of tolerance and people-oriented governance. Instead of trying to rock each other’s boat, as in the past, they have to learn to swim or sink together for the greater glory of the country. If they fail to do so, it is unlikely that the country will give either of them another chance.

smnaseem@gmail.com