The Activist

The following article is a brief examination of the political situation in Pakistan, its historic roots, the need for a progressive party of the people in Pakistan and the way that US aid should be redirected to help the fortunes of the multitudes of Pakistanis toiling in systemic poverty.

After almost a decade of uninterrupted rule, a rare accomplishment for any Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf suffered an electoral setback this week. The election and its aftermath will have important consequences within Pakistan and will alter U.S.-Pakistani relations and our efforts in the war on terror. The election represented a significant defeat for the Islamist Right in the western frontier provinces of Pakistan, yet assuming that the new government is even allowed to convene in parliament by Musharraf, it is highly unlikely that this election will aid Pakistan economically, push Musharraf from the executive or help to establish a lasting liberal democracy in that country. In order to assess the situation in Pakistan clearly and to offer solutions that will benefit the people of Pakistan and U.S.-Pakistani relations we must first examine the historic roots of Pakistani political instability and economic distress.

Pakistan was borne out of the conspiratorial schism of the Indian subcontinent fueled by Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League and British imperialist forces. The Muslim League was forged by the elites of the Indian Muslim minority who feared submission under the tyranny of the Hindu majority that they had historically ruled over. Pakistan in Urdu and Persian means “land of the pure” and although Jinnah intended the young nation to be a secular one it was reincarnated, more fitting to its name, as an Islamic Republic in 1956. Not surprisingly, Pakistan, a nation borne not out of a secular cultural identity, but rather from religious sectarianism, suffered from ethnic disputes within West Pakistan and between the downtrodden Bengalis of East Pakistan and the ruling West Pakistani elite. Political problems within Pakistan were accentuated by economic woes that had roots in the legacy of centuries of British imperialist plunder and underdevelopment. The dispute between East and West Pakistan eventually culminated in the 1971 Bangladeshi War of Independence and the death of an estimated 2 million innocents.

Pakistan, like other failed states, has also suffered from military interference in the public sphere, to such an extent that Pakistan has not even enjoyed a peaceful transition of power in decades. In Pakistan the military oligarchy that has dominated the political landscape since independence is so entrenched it is known by Pakistanis as simply “the establishment”. The defeat of General Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League Party–which seized power in 1999 through a military coup that ousted Nawaz Sharif–can be seen as a setback for this ruling class, but it is unlikely that it will result in a more equitable and just society for languishing Pakistani citizens. Musharraf’s party lost ground in February’s election to the parties of the late Benazir Bhutto and resurgent Nawaz Sharif. The opposition parties plan to form a coalition at the next National Assembly and claim that they can field at least 171 seats out of 242. The opposition leaders believe that they will soon have the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Pakistani constitution or impeach Musharraf who is currently serving a five year term as Pakistan’s President. Under the current Pakistani constitution the executive has the power to dissolve the parliament unilaterally. Further complicating matters pro-Musharraf parties have managed to retain a slim majority in Pakistan’s legislative upper house, the 100-seat Senate. It remains to be seen whether or not a civilian government will actually come to executive power, but if opposition forces do seize power, how will they transform Pakistan and will the transformation be beneficial to the Pakistani people and the U.S. “War on Terror”?

The defeat of the Islamist parties in the recent election takes away legitimacy from and dispels myths of popular support for the radical movement. Yet when Islamists are unable to project influence within the political system they will not merely disappear, they will attempt to work outside of the framework of electoral policies and reincarnate themselves perhaps as a paramilitary movement. The government of Pakistan,regardless of who is leading it, will need to attempt to bribe and win over those they can within the movement and then attack the isolated hardliners with unrelenting force. Failed states like Pakistan must not be afraid to use vigor against hardliners who cannot be otherwise swayed. Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont writes that between 1976 and 2004 there were 400 terrorist attacks in India, yet only 18 in China, despite the growth of Islamist movements in the western frontier provinces of China. This is an example that democratic and open societies are often even more prone to right-wing fundamentalism than authoritarian societies. The next Pakistani government should keep this in mind and use any means necessary to suppress and destroy reactionary fundamentalist tendencies, a democratic and secular Pakistan will need to be even more diligent than a despotic one.

In addition to confronting terror, ideally a stable civilian collation government will return judges impeached by Musharraf to the bench, attempt to yield legal control over the military and amend the constitution to balance the power of the legislative and restore balance to the Pakistani political system. Normalizing the relationship between the different political institutions in Pakistan based upon legal grounds is paramount to restoring Pakistani stability. It does remains to be seen if the military will actually fall into line and follow the orders of a new civilian government. Several failures in military operations in the western frontier provinces of Pakistan could turn the military against the civilian government and culminate in the reassertion of military power.

The prospects for a functioning future government are not good however as the alliance between the opposition parties will be tenuous at best. The parties have traditionally been adversaries and the only bonds they seem to hold in commonality are mutual hatred for Musharraf and shared legacies of corruption, unfulfilled promises and repression. The Pakistan Peoples Party was founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on progressive, socialist principles arguing for “Roti, Kapra, Makan” (Bread, Clothes, Shelter) for the masses of Pakistan. The elites of Pakistan were threatened by the popular support enjoyed by Bhutto and executed him after a show trail. Yet the late Benazir Bhutto upon taking power of the party and the government of Pakistan in the late 1980s betrayed the legacy of her martyred father by pushing towards the United States, embracing World Bank-endorsed neoliberal policies and supporting the reactionary and misogynistic Taliban in Afghanistan. After several years of non-continuous rule Bhutto was pushed out of office on charges of extra-judicial killings and well-documented corruption. Unlike the PPP, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League is a conservative party, but similarly Sharif’s tenure as Prime Minister in the 1990s was characterized by corruption, political repression and extra-judicial killings. The characterization that Musharraf transformed Pakistan from a stable and legitimate democracy into a repressive dictatorship is one grounded in Western oversimplification, not in reality. None of the major characters involved in the struggle for Pakistan represent the interest of the working men and women of Pakistan. If history is any example they merely want to seize, hold on to power and handout favors to the parasitic elites that dominate the commanding heights of Pakistani society. Pakistan lacks a truly progressive left-wing response to both the failures of mainstream Pakistani parties and the lunacy of Islamist fatalism. The growth of a left-wing workers’ party independent of the corruption and demagoguery of the PPP will help restore balance to Pakistani policies and provide an alternative for the impoverished underbelly of Pakistani society.

Pakistan’s foreign policy has been highlighted in recent years by its odd-couple relationship with the United States and its assistance in the War on Terror. The next American government and the future Pakistani government must reconsider their current treaties and the nature of their relationship. It was reported on February 27, 2008 in the Guardian that up to 70 percent of the 5.4 billion dollar U.S. aid package to Pakistan had been “misspent”, Pakistani officials used 30 percent of the funds to fund food, fuel, ammunition and maintenance needed to sustain the fight against militants along the Afghan border. The remaining 70 percent of the expenses were invented. These funds were not given to suffering Pakistani workers, but rather to the oligarchy of military and political elites that have dominated Pakistani politics since its very conception in the years leading up to independence. Instead of wasting tax money while over three million Americans are homeless, almost fifty million Americans are without adequate healthcare and 36 million Americans experience hunger on a monthly basis, America needs to cut military aid to Pakistan. Some of these funds should be diverted domestically to repair American infrastructure and help launch a housing initiative, while most of these funds should be reinvested in building high quality public goods to the Pakistani people and building state-industries that can reduce the perpetual unemployment that have turned millions of educated Muslims from Egypt to Pakistan towards radical Islam. U.S. economic aid must come without forced structural adjustments that push the developing world towards dependency and the decay of public goods. When analyzing the effects of this economic stimulus the emphasis should not be on GDP growth, but rather on the availability of basic needs and services for the Pakistani masses. The fight against radical Islam should be fought on two fronts, the military front and the economic front. By devoting the majority of our aid towards the meeting of the basic needs of citizens in nations prone to Islamism and adopting a more defensive and less abrasive stance on the “War on Terror,” America can improve its image in the Muslim World. The Islamic World should be shown that there is indeed an alternative to hegemonic, corporate globalization with all its inequalities and vice, and the repression and backwardness of Islamic fundamentalism.

While pursuing this intervention list role in Pakistan, politicians in the United States must also be very aware about the legacy of imperialism in the developing world and must avoid continuing the George W. Bush tradition of gun-slinging, “cowboy diplomacy”. Unfortunately, the candidate who seems most likely to take the reigns of America in 2009, Barack Obama, has shown a tendency to submit to the interest of concentrated power and to continue the legacy of neoconservative American foreign policy. This summer Obama made a speech in which he showed an almost giddiness about the possibility of bombing Pakistan if the need arose, without the consent of the sovereign government of Pakistan. Respected intellectual and Pakistani native Tariq Ali, responding to this statement, said “I mean it’s grotesque that the so-called big hope of the Democratic Party is such a pathetic figure. Let’s assume he were to become president and he sent planes to bomb Pakistan—your ally—it’s a method ensured to drive people into the arms of the jihadis.” The United States needs to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan and the pride of a people with a long and storied cultural history. If this posturing and action continues even the secular governments of Islamic World will take an anti-imperialist stance against the United States and its European client states.

The future for Pakistan, like that of much of the Islamic World, does not look promising. The defeat of the Islamist parties in the latest election should be welcomed, but it should also be acknowledged that the actors that dominate the political landscape of Pakistan are almost equally nefarious. The only hope for a death blow to Islamic fundamentalism is the growth of liberal, socialist and other progressive elements in Pakistani society. To facilitate this development U.S. aid should be switched from misallocated military assistance to progressive political parties and economic aid that can offer a better life and a future for the people of Pakistan. Building McDonalds across the Middle East will not end terrorism, but aiding Pakistan in developing an economy and a government that works for the benefit of Pakistani people will. The end of U.S. aid to the apartheid regime in Israel will also help win the support of the people of Pakistan and restore the image of America as a beacon of hope, democracy and progressive ideals worldwide. Ultimately, however, it will be up to the people of Pakistan to take advantage of the chaos of Pakistan today and build the Pakistan that they deserve.