Daily Times

Double trouble Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Allama Dr Tahirul Qadri of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) is still camped outside parliament’s doors. Their hordes have dwindled but their narrative has become increasingly ominous. The two demagogues are clearly targeting not just the elected Prime Minister (PM), Mian Nawaz Sharif, his government or even parliament, but democracy as a form of government. Using religious references, both men are framing it as a battle between good and evil and deriding democracy with a vengeance. The plot is not merely regime change but one to upend the system. What initially came across as a hard reset in the civil-military relationship through a soft coup appears now to be a much more sinister design. The plotters are down but not out. Their goal seems to be not just a minus-one formula but going the whole hog towards an Egyptian model with a civilian technocratic veneer if needed.

Some ostensibly pro-democracy liberal writers are blaming the current impasse on an “arrogant and stubborn” Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and PM Sharif who are not conceding the PTI/PAT demands. The PM is under attack for taking a principled position by pro-establishment analysts masquerading as ‘realist’ liberals. They are selling an odious concoction in a supposedly liberal package. Yes, Mian sahib has a certain tenacious streak but his current stance is morally and constitutionally just. Are the ‘boys’ — euphemism deployed for the establishment by these realists — angry because Mian Nawaz Sharif is hardheaded? Heck, no! They are livid because they are the pigheaded ones who just cannot take no for an answer. The two most mild-mannered and benign Pakistani prime ministers in recent history were the late Muhammad Khan Junejo and Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali. One need not look any further than their ouster at the hands of the military brass to understand who is the most unreasonable and obstinate among the power players. Junejo’s relative independence in negotiating the Geneva Accords to resolve the 1980s Afghanistan crisis and his insistence on investigating the Ojhri ammunition dump explosion that killed hundreds became his undoing. Mr Jamali was shown the door for his tepid opposition to the military operation that the dictator General Pervez Musharraf had unleashed in Balochistan.

Chairman Mao Zedong famously said, “The party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the party.” The crux of Pakistan’s perpetual civil-military imbalance is that those wielding the guns clearly believe no political party, including the assorted king’s parties that they sired themselves, should ever be allowed to command the gun. The current recrudescence of the squabble between the civilians and military is but a manifestation of the continued disdain the latter holds for politicians. The narrative that Imran Khan and Dr Qadri are building and the establishment-friendly media is magnifying is essentially going for democracy’s jugular. Imran Khan mocking politicians, berating democratic institutions and disparaging dissenting sections of the media is perhaps the most vulgar display of populism Pakistan has ever seen. What makes Imran Khan’s base tirades even more sordid is the pretence of being the ‘outsider’ while flanked by the politicians who have been the perennial pawns of the military establishment.

The only beneficiary of the nonstop character assassination of politicians and assailing parliament is the establishment, and the ultimate victims will be the people at large. The Khan-Qadri duo’s thinly veiled appeals to the third force or the so-called neutral umpire — the army — to intervene could not have been possible without a nod and a wink from at least some sections of the military itself as has been pointed out by none other than the president of the PTI, Makhdoom Javed Hashmi. An Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) communiqué has since rejected Hashmi’s claims without naming him.

The ISPR that is rather Twitter-happy these days has, however, failed to deny a recent story by Reuters that asserts that five out of the eleven corps commanders wanted martial law imposed but “the army chief, Raheel Sharif, decided the time was not right to overthrow the civilian leadership, and moved to quell any disagreement in his ranks by overruling the hawks and declaring the crisis must be solved through politics, not force.” One may ask what exactly would be the right time to overthrow the civilian leadership that the brass had in mind! Needless to say, the five generals allegedly seeking a coup d’état have not received as much as a rap on the knuckles. Instead, the ISPR’s press release after that corps commanders’ conference has effectively put the government in a straightjacket, saying: “While reaffirming support to democracy, the conference reviewed with serious concern, the existing political crisis and the violent turn it has taken, resulting in large-scale injuries and loss of lives. Further use of force will only aggravate the problem. It was once again reiterated that the situation should be resolved politically without wasting any time and without recourse to violent means.” The press release flies in the face of Article 245 under which the government had deployed the army to protect the federal capital and smacks of the establsihment taking sides in the conflict if not being an outright dishonest broker.

General Sher Ali Khan Pataudi, a military Chanakya of sorts, had once outlined in detail the pitfalls of a hands-on army involvement in politics. The establishment and its lackeys seem to ignore that the more directly the military becomes involved in political matters the harder will be the civilian pushback. This is not 1977 or even 1999 when a coup would be a cakewalk. The response from within and outside Pakistan will be swift and sterner than the coup mongers have calculated. The two stooges have already failed to muster enough street power to barge into the Bastille as the original plot had envisaged yet the establishment is propping them up. The military establishment has tried ruling directly four times and has ended up needing a fig leaf of civilian legitimacy in each instance. Another adventure would not produce different results but what it would do is erode the legitimacy of the state, already being gnawed at by jihadists sired by the military establishment. Western nation states have a cushion of a couple of hundred years of history to absorb shocks like the Tea Party populists. Pakistan’s federal state structure may not be able to withstand the frontal assault that the security establishment has unleashed through its civilian proxies. Deriding democracy without any viable alternative has effectively put the state in peril. The establishment, not Mian Nawaz Sharif, will have to back off.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki