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2015-08-17 India-Pakistan
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A post-Zia Pakistan?
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[DAWN] INFLUENTIAL leaders continue shaping national fate posthumously through concrete legacies. Viewed so, unfortunately Gen Zia ul Haq
 ...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
arguably emerges as Pakistain's most influential leader ever, whose legacies still haunt Pakistain decades later.
Time and health did not allow Mohammad Ali Jinnah to bequeath a definitive legacy which could clarify his vision for Pakistain given his contrasting speeches about state and religion. Ayub Khan's legacy of a centralised polity and lopsided elitist development was quickly dismantled by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Continued from Page 4
...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent...
's socialist democracy project. Bhutto himself partially demolished this legacy later during his rule, while Zia demolished it even further.
Although Ayub and Bhutto's legacies were not completely demolished, it is Zia's legacies, however, that loom large over Pakistain today. His vision included maintaining a feeble democracy under establishment control; using hard boyz extensively to achieve foreign and domestic goals; promoting Salafist Islam to control society; and radicalising society through madressahs and mosques. Subsequent elected governments were too weak to seriously challenge these legacies. Even  Pervez Perv Musharraf
... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ...
only slightly reversed the promotion of Salafist Islam and in fact strengthened policies regarding a controlled democracy and the use of hard boyz for achieving state goals. Thus, among Pakistain's long-ruling powerful leaders, Musharraf is the only one unable to craft a unique national vision.
Of late, Pakistain has taken bold steps which raise hopes about the emergence of a post-Zia Pakistain. However,
there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly...
it is important to carefully review the extent to which the current steps are actually dismantling Zia's four critical legacies listed above. Firstly, the events over the last one year have actually cemented the establishment's grip over the elected regime and the security policy, thus reinvigorating the vision of Zia and other dictators. Secondly, the most visible step has been the crackdown on a wide range of bully boy groups which had emerged under Zia and Musharraf, often with tacit state support. However,
there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly...
the concomitant strengthening of establishment control over security policy creates doubts whether such a crackdown really represents a complete break from the tactic of using hard boyz as tools of state policies.
During Musharraf's rule, Pakistain became infested with numerous bully boy groups, which coordinated logistically and financially, but pursued different goals. These included the West-focused Al Qaeda; the Afghanistan-focused Taliban; the India-focused Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned , always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
; the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
; the Pakistain-focused TTP; and the Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
-focused Lion of Islams. The current crackdown largely targets internally-focused sectarian, TTP, Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
and Baloch groups but spares India- and Afghanistan-focused groups. Thus, the current operation is perhaps less about abandoning the use of hard boyz completely, especially for foreign policy goals, and more about shielding Pakistain from the boomerang effects of using hard boyz for this purpose.
True, Afghan-focused groups are being nudged towards peace talks while India-focused groups are probably being kept on a tight leash against undertaking major attacks. But this represents changing tactics rather than strategy. So long as the bully boy use policy is not completely abandoned, Pakistain will remain vulnerable to attacks by new splinter groups of externally-focused bully boy groups and covert retaliation by foreign countries. But abandoning externally-focused groups completely would go to the core of the Pakistani establishment's worldview. As of today, there is no concrete evidence that it is willing to make such huge changes, for doing so would undermine its ability to dominate Pakistain.
Thirdly, the goal of imposing Salafist Islam on Pakistain has been abandoned completely by both the establishment and the PML-N. However,
there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly...
some madressahs and mosques continue to spew radical thought without meaningful check by the state, even if it is not supporting them aggressively now. Thus, it seems premature to celebrate a complete national break from Zia's devastating legacies. A complete break is also hampered by the non-emergence of new groups with fresh ideas and the backing of large sections of society to implement them. Thus, Bhutto's strong, though partially flawed, ideas quickly demolished Ayub's legacy; Zia's strong, and even more flawed, ideas further demolished Bhutto's remaining legacies. Today, the Pak political landscape is bereft of such strong new visions.
The landscape is dominated by the PML-N, the true heir of both Ayub's economic conservatism and Zia's social conservatism legacies, from whom fresh, strong ideas are as likely to emerge as the sun is likely to emerge from the west tomorrow. The PTI's vision of change is unclear and seemingly limited in scope. The PPP is in irreversible decline. Thus, until new, powerful ideas emerge from society, the establishment will likely continue to implement a scaled back version of Zia's vision.
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Posted by Fred 2015-08-17 00:00||
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