Green shoots

September 18, 2007 | by David Steven | More on Conflict and security, Global system, Influence and networks, North America | No comments

Over at Foreign Policy, there’s an interesting debate about Pakistan’s army. Sameer Lalwani, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation (and a democracy promotion sceptic) kicks it off with a love letter to President Musharraf and the military:

Despite all the talk of elections and civilian rule, meaningful democracy will not emerge in Pakistan anytime soon, nor will the military abandon its grip on government. Pakistan’s military possesses much greater staying power than most U.S. analysts assume, and it will remain the most potent and important political institution in the country for the foreseeable future.

Lawlani disses Pakistan’s democratic pretenders, Nawaz Sharif (on whose abortive return from exile we blogged from Pakistan last week) and Benazir Bhutto (still manoeuvring towards a deal with Musharraf that could leave him President, her Prime Minister):

Far from building democratic institutions, their governments—bereft of competence and riddled with corruption—consistently undermined them. Bhutto was run out of the country for skimming millions off the top of government contracts; Sharif orchestrated the storming of the Supreme Court by street thugs as he was being tried for contempt. In an effort to efface their legacies, both former prime ministers are hoping to duck the legal charges that await them upon their return.

Lalawani’s piece has provoked an angry response from Benazir’s party - the PPP (the letter comes via their US public relations company):

True that democracy has been weak in Pakistan, largely because it has never been allowed to flourish in the country. The answer lies not in dictatorship but in more democracy. Every democratically elected official has been overthrown by the military, not out of the army’s sense of loyalty to the state, as Mr. Lalwani suggests, but because of the army’s thirst for power… The military regime has destroyed the very fabric of society for its political survival.

Comment: There’s plenty to disagree with on both sides of the argument. Deep down, the PPP knows that the army is a much-loved institution in Pakistan. Why else would Benazir be risking her democratic credentials in the current tortuous negotiations?

But I think Lalwani is wrong to be quite so dismissive of the country’s other institutions, some of which are improving rapidly, albeit from a worryingly low base.

This is a country where lawyers have recently taken to the streets and where a vibrant media now rivals the army in popularity (at least according to this latest IRI poll). Conditions for democracy are improving, even though many political institutions remain terribly weak.

Should Benazir end up as PM, she will return to a country that is quite different from the one she left for exile in the UK. As Musharraf has also found, media and legal scrutiny have greatly reduced a leader’s latitude for arbitrary action.

The changing country is affecting the army too, with signs it is becoming a tad uncomfortable with its political role. There are three reasons for this. First, it too finds life harder in the modern media environment. A military crackdown will never be a cheap and easy option in a wired Pakistan.

Second, it faces growing pressure from religious radicals. Pakistani soldiers are now told not to wear their uniforms off duty in some parts of the country. At dinner last week, there was much head shaking around the table about soldiers being chased down the street by angry mobs. The army can no longer expect adulation.

Third, the army now has extensive economic interests to protect. Lalwani is too blasé about army corruption. Like a mafia going legit, the army has invested heavily in the civilian economy and is believed to control private assets worth $10bn. Political instability – or worse martial law – would be very bad for business (for background, see the penultimate page of this pdf).

And therein lies the rub. It is unfair to claim, with the PPP, that that the army ‘has destroyed the very fabric of society’ since it took over in 2001. Lalwani is right - there wasn’t much worth destroying by the time Musharraf came to power.

But should the army take over again, perhaps incensed by a weak Musharraf (now out of uniform) and a PPP dead set on using the reins of power to make life hard for its rivals, then the destruction really would begin. If it crushed the green shoots of institutional revival, and it would probably have to, then the country would really be set back to square one.

Lalwani is also much too simplistic in his recipe for US meddling in Pakistan. He is for institution building (good, if outsiders can achieve it), but urges US policy makers to ‘resist their democratic impulses’ by cosying up to the military and freezing out the civilians. Charges of hypocrisy, he says, should be damned.

But hypocrisy is not so easily ignored. This is not a government-to-government stitch up, but power politics conducted in the cold light of day. Pakistanis are not blind. They can see what John Negroponte is trying to do, when he breezes into town to pat Musharraf on the back and provide the President with a carte blanche to throw anyone he likes into exile.

Unsurprisingly, they don’t like it.

So the US tries to propping up Musharraf by…making him more unpopular. Even Benazir is now widely seen as an American stooge. It’s a cock-eyed plan.

What the US needs to do is to bring together its private and its public diplomacy. It has to harmonise its short and longer term goals for the country. It also needs to find a more effective message for the Pakistani people than, ‘we’re hypocrites, get over it.’ And surely, somewhere, consistent and patient support for Pakistan’s democracy has to be added into its diplomatic mix.

Related posts

1. Standing by Musharraf
2. Pakistan’s Black Hole
3. Five hours in Pakistan
4. Polling Pakistanis
5. Musharraf steps over the edge…

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