Readers who remember their high school history lessons (one must perforce exclude the sadly forsaken minds for whom history was replaced by Social Studies and then by Pakistan Studies) may recall the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919. The ‘Montford’ Reforms, as they were dubbed, were introduced by Mr Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India, and Lord Fredric Thesiger Chelmsford, the viceroy of India, to bring a measure of democracy into the administration of the Raj. They brought about a system of dual government, known as diarchy, for the provinces of British India.
Under diarchy, the executive branches of each provincial government were divided into authoritarian and popularly responsible sections. The first was composed of executive councillors, appointed by the Crown. The second was composed of ministers chosen from among the elected members of the provincial legislative assemblies. The various subjects of administration were divided between the councillors and the ministers, as reserved and transferred subjects, respectively.
Despite many developments between 1919 and independence, some of the habits associated with diarchy remained in place, at least in the regions that came to form Pakistan. Here, independence had burst upon us, with the attendant partition bloodbath and the massive dislocation of the two-way migrations. The early years of nationhood saw the emergence of what the late Hamza Alavi identified as the dichotomy between the highly developed and organised civil and military institutions created by British rule in the subcontinent, the “steel frame of the administration”, and the much lower levels of development of other power groups.
In India, the Congress Party, crafted by Nehru and Patel into the powerful political instrument of the national bourgeoisie, succeeded in establishing the primacy of democratic political institutions. In Pakistan, where the national bourgeoisie was weak and lacked an effective political organisation, this did not happen. Here, political parties, peopled in the main by representatives of the administratively backward rural elite or by populist spellbinders of dubious intellectual depth, failed to gain control over the real wielders of power. The civil-military oligarchy therefore assumed an autonomous role, independent of the interests of the dominant local classes, resulting in a dichotomy between a weak political structure of control and a stronger administrative structure.
Thus, a new kind of diarchy of an especially paralysing type emerged in Pakistan. This dual government stumbled along, minus an effective viceroy to settle issues and turf lines. In 1958, the army struck, under Ayub Khan, and ended this de facto diarchy by solidly establishing the supremacy of the administrative oligarchy via the military-bureaucratic establishment.
The eventual collapse of Ayub’s regime in 1969 and the subsequent disintegration of Pakistan in 1971 brought the political structure under Bhutto into the driving seat. But Bhutto made too many enemies and his government was brought down in 1977. An extraordinary kind of political seesaw was seen to emerge, with now the administrative structure (Zia, Ghulam Ishaq, Musharraf) on the ascendant and now the political structure (Benazir, Nawaz, Zardari). The smooth, democratic transfer of power in 2013 from the PPP to the PML-N governments (despite media-amplified sore loser noises from the PTI) signified that the locus of power had for once remained where it constitutionally belonged.
However, it seems that circumstances – and temperaments – have contrived to once again bring about a condition of diarchy. As anyone can observe, the administration of the state of Pakistan today is proceeding along two parallel but separate tracks: economic development and national security. Driven by two separate leaders, both these tracks have transformational goals.
The first of these two leaders is, of course, the Prime Minister (PM), Mian Nawaz Sharif. Now, I believe it is perfectly apparent that Nawaz Sharif is one of only three Pakistani heads of government with a transformational economic vision and the determination to drive towards it. The other two, albeit in entirely different ways, and with fundamentally different ideological underpinnings, were Ayub and Bhutto. No comparison, approval or preference is implied but it is clear that Nawaz Sharif intends to transform Pakistan into a much wealthier country. He also sees that this transformation does not only need Chinese and Saudi megabucks, it requires an end to the plagues of terrorism, criminality and extremism unleashed by his political godfather, Ziaul Haq. He, therefore, needs to suppress the pugnacity he demonstrated in the 1990s when he came on a collision course with the establishment on three occasions: twice against Ghulam Ishaq and once against Pervez Musharraf, suffering shipwreck each time. He needs to let the army get on with the national security project they have initiated while he concentrates on the economy.
The second transformational leader is the other Sharif, not Shahbaz but Raheel. Our politicos had incredibly sought to engage in entirely farcical negotiations with some of the most egregious mass murdering criminals the world has ever known, or they found excuses for them and called them “stakeholders” and “misunderstood brothers”, or they just plain did nothing. We observed a federal minister practically weeping on the television over the death of a deadly, declared enemy of the state. It had clearly come down to the army, whose strategy of arming non-state actors got us into this mess in the first place, to do something. It stands hugely to the credit of General Raheel Sharif that he has led the army into firm and committed action against this deadly insurgency even as the electronic media crudely distracted public attention towards a prolonged series of publicity-seeking dharnas (sit-ins) in Islamabad.
It appears that there have been highly significant successes in this campaign. A statement from the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) notes the army chief emphasising the “continued precision targeting of terrorists squeezed in isolated pockets” in FATA and directing “all concerned to intensify intelligence based operations against criminals, terrorists and their abettors in urban areas for enduring peace in the country.” From what little news filters out from North Waziristan, it appears that Operation Zarb-e-Azb has the terrorists fragmented and cornered into pockets of FATA. It is unfortunate that the media does not have access to the region to highlight the military’s spectacular achievements.
So, these are the twin tracks on which the twin transformational projects are moving: economic transformation, with the PM calling the shots, and the security of the nation, with the army chief in command. However, although there may well be a tacit understanding to let each side alone to get on with its job, the question remains whether this kind of diarchy can work for long without, sooner or later, frictions between the two kinds of leadership leading to overheating and even some kind of flare up. Some major sparking points are already visible, particularly in Karachi and, perhaps, in Balochistan.
After all, lest it be forgotten, the diarchy of the 1919 Montford model was heavily loaded in one direction: that of the Raj.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet