A debate is on in the US as to whether the President, Mr.Bill
Clinton, should visit Pakistan when he comes to South Asia (India and Bangladesh) early
next spring and, if not, should he go ahead at all with the visit to India and Bangladesh
lest the exclusion of Pakistan damage US interests there.
Amongst the aspects which need to be examined in this regard are
the continuing lack of political and legal legitimacy of the military government headed by
Gen.Pervez Musharraf, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) and the Chief Executive, and his
failure so far to clearly indicate his plans for the future.
After the initial public euphoria, questions are already being
raised on these issues. Gen. (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, former COAS, has expressed his
disquiet over the lack of legitimacy and over the attempts of Gen.Musharraf to condemn the
entire political class and disturb the constitutionally-established institutions because
of the perceived misdeeds of some political leaders.
He would seem to prefer that the Chief Executive re-convene the
suspended National Assembly and provincial Assemblies and restore an elected Government
under a new political leader on condition that the re-convened National Assembly would
accord ex-post-facto legitimacy to his actions since October 12 and that the National
Security Council, with a strong military presence, would supervise the performance of the
elected government.
Apart from repeatedly ruling out the restoration of what he calls
the hitherto-practised sham democracy and making vague references to his plans for setting
up a genuinely independent Election Commission, revision of the electoral rolls and
weeding out corrupt politicians, Gen.Musharraf has not indicated what kind of a political
structure he has in mind for the future.
After his initial statement about the Turkish model provoked the
ire of the Jamaat-e-Islami, he has carefully avoided any further reference to it.
Recently, there have been odd references in the media (not emanating from him directly) to
his possible preference for the Indonesian model, with the military constitutionally
guaranteed a role not only in policy-making through its being represented in the
executive, but also in policy legislation through representation in the elected National
Assembly and in implementation through a monitoring responsibility over the civilian
bureaucracy.
His repeated criticism of the present political class and
political formations has also given rise to speculation of his having in mind the possible
encouragement of the formation of a new political party similar to the Golkar of
Indonesia, representing various interests such as those of the civil society, the civilian
bureaucracy and the military establishment.
In the meanwhile, the manner of his handling of the case against
Mr.Nawaz Sharif, the dismissed Prime Minister, has also raised suspicions of subtle
attempts by the COAS to keep the alleged misdeeds of Mr.Sharif continuously in the
headlines in the hope of thereby diverting public attention from his own inadequacies and
actions that could prove controversial. Misgivings have also been expressed over the
fairness of the trial following the refusal of the prosecution to hand over to the defence
a copy of the purported recordings of the cockpit voice recorder of the aircraft by which
Gen.Musharraf travelled from Colombo to Karachi to enable the defence seek independent
technical opinion regarding its genuineness.
The Pakistan Muslim League has already filed before the Supreme
Court a strongly-worded and convincingly-argued petition against the October 12 actions of
the COAS and it is expected to come up for hearing only in February. One does not know
whether the court would give its ruling before the proposed visit of Mr.Clinton. Even if
it does and upholds the actions of the COAS, there are likely to be suspicions and
allegations of the army having brought pressure on the court to give a favourable ruling
in order to pave the way for a Clinton visit.
Thus, the only result of a Presidential visit would be to lend a
cloak of respectability to a Government, whose legitimacy is still in question and to
enable the military Government to exploit this seeming respectability to influence the
judicial pronouncements and silence the critics of Gen.Musharraf, inside the military
establishment itself as well as outside.
Gen.Musharraf's actions and policy pronouncements on other
matters too should be a cause for concern for the future. Two, in particular, need to be
highlighted.
The first relates to the ubiquitous role being given to military
officers in all layers of administration down to the lowest under the pretext of effective
monitoring of the performance of the civilian bureaucracy and the creation of a new
intelligence set-up to report to the army headquarters on the functioning of political
leaders and civilian bureaucrats. This has been in violation of his initial assurance to
his people ("You will not see the army except me"). The newly-created monitoring
and intelligence set-ups have been placed directly under Lt.Gen. Mohammed Aziz, the
controversial Chief of the General Staff (CGS).
This is nothing but the revival of the former Political Division
of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) set up by Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto and strengthened
by Zia-ul-Haq, which came to be hated for blackmailing and bribing politicians and
distorting the political process. Now, instead of making it part of the ISI, it has been
constituted into a separate intelligence set-up and placed directly under the CGS. Thus,
the COAS has, in advance, armed himself with an instrument with which he could keep the
politicians in order if and when he restores the democratic political process.
The second relates to foreign policy. In contravention of his
initial assurance that there would be no change, he and his Foreign Minister, Mr.Abdul
Sattar, have started diluting the sanctity of past commitments---whether they be relating
to India in matters such as the Shimla Agreement, the Lahore agreements and the Nawaz
Sharif-Clinton statement of July 4 at Washington or to the US on Pakistan signing the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
While the Chief Executive has taken the initiative for improving
relations with Iran and has dissociated himself from the controversial actions of the
Taliban such as its protecting Osama bin Laden, he and his Foreign Minister have rejected
any Pakistani role in pressurising the Taliban to moderate its policies and actions to
oblige the US.
The only positive aspects so far are the attempts being made by
Gen.Musharraf to dissipate the image, particularly in India, of his being close to Islamic
fundamentalist parties and certain changes of style vis-à-vis India.
Amongst such changes, one could highlight his action in
retaining, at least till now, Mr.Jehangir Ashraf Qazi, reportedly a Balochi, as the High
Commissioner to India despite the latter's alleged past proximity to Mr.Sharif, and the
moderation shown by the army after the recent allegations of the mistreatment of the
Pakistani Military Attache in New Delhi by the Indian intelligence and after the Islamabad
and Lahore blasts.
Some observers have attributed the retention of Mr.Qazi to the
COAS' belief that the Indians feel more comfortable dealing with a soft-spoken and
amicable Balochi than with others.
In the past, Pakistani allegations of such mistreatment used to
be followed by retaliatory attacks on Indian diplomats in Islamabad. According to
available indications, this has not happened now. While the police voiced the usual
allegations of the involvement of the Indian intelligence in the blasts, the army itself
seems to have played it down.
Apart from these, there is hardly anything positive about the
external policies of the military government.
Keeping all these factors in view, there is unlikely to be any
policy gains for the US from a presidential visit to Pakistan. On the contrary, it could
further damage the chances of an early restoration of a genuinely democratic political
process and encourage the military establishment to further tighten its hold on the
country and continue on its hardline foreign policy, which is not conducive to regional
peace.
Those arguing that if the President decides not to go to
Pakistan, he should postpone his proposed visits to India and Bangladesh as well are being
extremely short-sighted as explained below:
* It will seriously damage the increasing goodwill for the
US in India, particularly after its benign role during the Kargil conflict.
* Equating democratic India with authoritarian Pakistan and
refraining from saluting the greatest success story of democracy in a developing country
during this century through a Presidential visit in response to the sensitivities of a
dysfunctional, anti-democratic and theocratic state would expose the hollowness of the
claims of the Clinton administration about the promotion of democracy world-wide as being
one of its objectives and achievements. How can the US boycott the perceived
anti-democratic regimes in Belgrade, Baghdad and Yangon and fraternise with an
authoritarian regime in Islamabad?
* The US policy-makers would once again be falling a prey
to the blackmailing argument that every Pakistani ruler uses with the US--"After me,
the fundamentalist deluge".
It is to be hoped that in the long-term interests of democracy in
South Asia and of US-India relations, the short-sighted views of the pro-Pakistan lobby in
the US do not prevail and that Mr.Clinton sticks to his plans for his visit to India and
Bangladesh.
B.RAMAN
(17-12-99)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com)
