Pakistan: Theatre of the absurd

What begins with a mess often ends in a mess. Bluntly stated, this is what has happened in Pakistan post the general elections. Every political party claims it has won, though in fact democracy has lost in the country, yet again. Never mind the endorsement of the United States, which called the elections free, fair and ‘competitive’. Internet was shut down; mobile phone operations stood disrupted; Army personnel were reportedly stationed in polling booths; the main Opposition leader was put behind bars; and, his party was divested of its election symbol (it, therefore, backed independent candidates).

We have been treated to the theatre of the absurd. Leader X comes to power with the patronage of the Army, which helps depose the incumbent, Y, who in turn repairs to a safe haven abroad. X begins his tenure with great elan, promising to deliver a Naya (new) Pakistan. He says and does what his patron wants, not forgetting the usual sabre-rattling against India. Somewhere along the way, though, either he gets too big for his boots or the Army feels the old itch to reassert itself, the relationship between the leader and the Army begins to sour. Suddenly, X discovers warts and moles in the Army, all of which he had miraculously missed seeing only months ago. Friction turns into a full-blown conflict. It’s time for X to be shown the door.

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Almost overnight, X’s majority evaporates. Opposition parties gang up and defeat him in Parliament. A new government comes along, with the Army’s blessings, led by the brother of the Y, the very same leader whom the Army had conspired to depose and who had been sent packing abroad. A few months later, elections are held, the exiled leader returns home to contest—both the Army and Y show admirable mutual large-heartedness in a spirit of forgive and forget.

But the results come as a shocker. Despite the Army throwing its weight, Y’s party fails to get a majority. Worse, the independents backed by X, who had minced no words in castigating the Army, emerge victorious in large numbers; taken together, that number is more than the seats won by either Y’s party or by another, main mainstream outfit, which too had in the past done business with the Army.

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This is an embarrassment for the Army. Damage control is called for, and that means Y and other parties opposed to the jailed leader have to come together and form a government to prevent X’s men from gaining power. Y, the leader who has returned from exile, is the natural candidate to helm the new government, but he politely refuses, sensing the unstable nature of the potential coalition; instead, he forwards the name of his brother, until recently the Prime Minister. But was it just political astuteness, or was there something else at play? We don’t know.

Welcome to yet another round of ‘democracy’ in Pakistan. A country in which no direct general elections were held in the entire first decade since it came into existence. A country, which has had many constitutions, quite a few military coups, and where no prime minister has completed his or her full five-year term.

To take the most recent incident, here is how the farce unfolded: Imran Khan loses power in a no-confidence vote in Parliament and his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, is ousted; he is arrested, literally dragged from the court and dumped into prison; he receives various jail terms in multiple cases; the National Assembly is dissolved and a caretaker prime minister and his government is installed; once deposed Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan after a four-year self-imposed exile abroad; his earlier convictions and sentences are overturned; the Supreme Court scraps a lifetime ban on politicians with criminal convictions from contesting polls. All of a sudden, Nawaz Sharif becomes squeaky clean and fit to take part in elections as the head of his party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

Perhaps no other people have followed the developments in Pakistan as excitedly as those in India. That is understandable, given the shared history and the divided geography. But for all the enthusiasm, the bare fact is: The more things change in Pakistan, the more they remain the same for India. As long as the Pakistan Army remains invested and entrenched in the politics of its country, India-Pakistan relationship will continue to be in deep freeze.

The Pakistan Army’s attitude towards India has been shaped over the decades by a set of perceptions that can only be termed as ridiculous, though they have resulted in tragic outcomes for Pakistan—consider the wars of 1965 and 1971 and the Kargil conflict—and for India, which bore the brunt of Pakistan-backed terror attacks. Essentially, those perceptions are: ‘Hindu India’ has not reconciled to the creation of a Muslim Pakistan; the Hindus, being the ‘weaker’ race compared to the Muslims, understand only the language of force; the Hindus are ‘devious’ and must be ‘cut to size.’

If this sounds like an exaggeration, read former Pakistani diplomat Husain Haqqani’s book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military. He provides excerpts from a research paper authored by Javed Hassan (who wrote it as a Lt Colonel and was later elevated to the designation of Lt General) for the Pakistan Army’s Faculty of Research and Doctrinal Studies. Lt General Hassan wrote that India ‘had a historical inability to exist as a single unified state’; that the Hindu was ‘presumptuous, persistent and devious’; and, that ‘India has a poor track record at projection off power beyond its frontier and what is worse a hopeless performance in protecting its own freedom and sovereignty.’

The Pakistan Army believed—and believes—that Kashmir can be snatched away from India through such machinations.

The Pakistan Army’s other key collaborator in the anti-India campaign has been radical Islamists. Since the Army could not for obvious reasons dirty its hands, the ground execution of terrorist strikes was left to Jihadists of various kinds, trained, armed and financed by the Pakistani deep state, which includes the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). There are numerous instances of Pakistan Army personnel stationed at the Line of Control, providing cover fire to terrorists who try to sneak into or enter India.

But well before Lt General Hassan formally presented his doctrinal idea, they were part of the Pakistan Army’s mindset. Every single Army chief in Pakistan seemed to believe in them; and, every single action that they took, was sought to be justified on the strength of those thoughts. The use of terrorism to bleed India with a thousand cuts, has been the most favoured of the strategies that flowed from that ingrained doctrine. Civilian governments were also goaded by the Army to follow that track—not that they needed much persuasion, since they were in power due to the Army’s munificence.

So, whether it is Shehbaz Sharif or Nawaz Sharif or Imran Khan, the story has been the same. Most certainly, it was the same when Army Generals (Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf) directly governed Pakistan. And, it will remain the same.

Let us, therefore, in India, sit back and keep an eye on the unravellings across the border—and be prepared for the worst, because hoping for the best in the given circumstances would be a delusion.

The writer is an author and a public affairs analyst. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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