Daily Times

In the world around us, the most heated debate on religion revolves around creationism versus evolution. Whichever side of the debate one may be on, one thing is certain: people on both sides agree there is some set of rules that makes life go round. And since life is a system, the debate can also extend to socio-political systems. Why am I thinking of creationism and evolution right now? Well, I have been thinking about the political system of Pakistan and somehow this kind of dissection has led me to the basic question of rules governing a certain system. For the understanding of any system, one needs to understand the rules that govern it and, like the system of life, there exists a debate on which rules govern the system. So, which rules govern this system?

One will have to understand how the Pakistani system evolved. When the state was created, powerful vested interests turned it into a minority-ruled, non-representative political system. Once a system turns non-representative, ultimately the strongest muscle dominates it. Thus, the country’s power structure became dominated by the army. So profound was the domination of the army that the first military takeover was not resisted at all; in fact, it was cheered. However, the military takeover took away any semblance of representative rule and soon those segments of society that were left out started developing resentment. The two fault lines comprised one between the majority Bengalis (who were left out of a Punjabi dominated military rule) and Punjab, and the second was between haves and have-nots in a system that was non-representative, relying on crony capitalism. This led to a period of chaos that ended with the secession of East Pakistan and emergence of the PPP’s socialist government in West Pakistan.

West Pakistan inherited all the old power centres and a powerful army. It also had another force in the form of the PPP, which was Pakistan’s first federalist political entity having a support base across the country. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government, despite its popular support, could not survive in the power equation against the old power centres and then came the martial law of General Ziaul Haq. Like any event, Zia’s martial law also triggered new socio-political reactions. One was the move of the country towards Islamisation. The religious clergy that had gradually been gaining strength since the creation of the Islamic Republic became even stronger. For reasons domestic and global, armed militancy entered the country. And since Zia was up against a popular and federalist PPP, he patronised regional parties to counter the threat. Sindhi nationalist parties, Pashtun nationalists and the Urdu-speaking polity all were supported by the pre-dominantly Punjabi Zia regime to counter the threat of the PPP. In reaction, the PPP that was opposed to decentralisation in the 1970s started portraying itself as an entity sympathetic to devolution. The Zia era ended in the country, which had to go back to a democratic setup in which the military remained dominant and the PPP remained the only popular political entity.

To counter the PPP, the country’s establishment cobbled together the alliance of all others and with some nudging managed to keep the PPP in check. However, in the process emerged strong regional power players with little or no national appeal. For instance, in Punjab and Hazara we had Nawaz Sharif with his PML-N. In NWFP, there was the JUI-F and ANP, in Balochistan a host of regional parties and in urban Sindh there was the MQM. Of all of them, Nawaz and the army moved in unison till either Nawaz realised that he was too powerful in the home base to be dictated to by the army or the army realised its junior partner was becoming too strong, or both. Then came October 1999. The country was again pushed into a non-representative rule and with 9/11 the army was pushed to confront the Islamist militants. Non-representative rule led to regional grievances afresh, most amplified in the province of Balochistan. The crackdown against militant organisations led to an insurgency-like situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA. The state, led by Musharraf, used a heavy hand against the Baloch resistance where demands were primarily around rights and economic share. The czar decided to go two-way on the Islamists. As a result, by 2006, the Baloch insurgency had engulfed almost the entire province; FATA and parts of Dera Ismail Khan were effectively controlled by the Taliban. With such a mess and Pakistan being critical for Pakistani power brokers and the international order, the czar had to go. Therein emerged a new system that had its contours designed. The system had to give provinces more rights. The army had to agree to remain in the background while having a considerable say in security affairs. The state was to demilitarise the country and the system had to be made reasonably representative.

The new system received a major blow with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the last federal leader this country had. Sans Benazir, the PPP (the only federal party) won the elections. To be fair to Benazir’s heir (Asif Ali Zardari) he did deliver on the fundamental contours of the system. However, he did not have the outreach of a national leader needed to inspire different factions to come on board. He faced resistance from vested interests including the Punjabi business class and elements within the security establishment. For instance, the courts, media and PML-N had his regime strangled. Elements within the army resisted decisive action against the Taliban. In the end, strangled by the courts, security establishment and Taliban, the PPP was reduced to Sindh after which emerged a mandate totally regional in nature. If this system was crafted, either the creators did not look at the interests that could undermine it or by choice let it lurk in a state where it would be sans national political entity. Thus, we are left with a centrifugal state of affairs. Will a national political entity emerge, will the new equilibrium be around regionalism or will the khakis jump in again with disastrous consequences? It is anybody’s guess now.

The author can be reached on twitter at @aalimalik