Survival without military & mullah

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/16-survival-without-military-and-mullah-hs-07

On March 24 The Washington Post quoted a Centcom adviser as saying that Pakistan could collapse within six months and if that happened it would ‘dwarf all the crises in the world today’. The comment caused some disgust but not much alarm.

But then just eight weeks later, Prime Minister Gilani told parliament that the military campaign in Swat was launched not under US pressure but for ‘the survival of the country’. The Centcom adviser and the prime minister both were thus on the same grid regarding the threat to the existence of the country — only their perceptions of the outcome differed.

If the adviser is proven right, the collapse is just 19 weeks away. For the conclusion of the military campaign on which the prime minister has staked the survival of the country he is prepared to set no date. The Centcom forecast of imminent extinction is gloomy indeed. But the prime minister’s hope for survival pinned on a military victory hardly dispels the gloom. And to admit that only the military can save Pakistan from falling apart is a troubling thought. The high and still mounting cost in human terms however is enough to fill every citizen with shame and grief even if it does not give rise to apprehensions of a second secession.

After the East Pakistan experience no assurance really holds. Physical distance was then blamed for the defeat. Geography admittedly went against Pakistan. The commanders blamed the ‘logistics’ more than the widespread popular resentment and India’s armed intervention. But it was known from the very birth of the idea to its culmination that Pakistan would not be a consolidated or homogenous state. Reliance was placed, almost entirely, on a common religion to unite diverse races and regions into a single nation-state.

When after the last-minute rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan by Pundit Nehru (that plan was to keep India together with a centre administering only defence, foreign affairs and communications) partition became inevitable, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a great Muslim and a greater exponent of India’s unity, stuck to his conviction that it was ‘one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically, linguistically and culturally different. It is true that Islam sought to establish a society which transcends racial, linguistic, economic and political frontiers. History has however proved that after the first few decades or at the most after the first century, Islam was not able to unite all the Muslim countries on the basis of Islam alone.’

Ironically, at that very time Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a staunch opponent of partition, turned into a supporter hoping that Pakistan would not last and the seceding provinces would one day return to the fold of Mother India. The thrust of Azad’s argument against partition was that two areas separated by 1,000 miles could not form one viable country by ‘religious affinity’ alone. Perhaps he would have been less strident in his opposition if Pakistan were to be one compact area as it is today with lingual and cultural differences smoothly merging into each other.

However in the present situation of insurgency in vast swathes and ethnic discontent and religious strife all over, Azad’s view that a common religion alone does not make a viable state has since won many adherents. If it were to be so, the military would not have been in action as it is now in Malakand division and was in Balochistan more than once. Nor would there have been recurring martial laws and sectarian mayhem.

For national cohesion Pakistan’s successive civil and military regimes have relied, besides the bond of Islam, on passion for Kashmir, hatred of India, friendship with China, aid from America and, when the chips are down, on the armed forces. All these props are now falling apart. The Islamic sentiment, in the current conflict, is being invoked by the Barelvi group in support of the armed forces and by the Deobandis to justify militancy.

Passion for Kashmir is giving way to realism and hostility for India to envy for its democracy and spectacular economic growth. China no longer feels compelled to pamper Pakistan as it mends fences with India and Russia. And, finally, the sectarian colour given to the campaign against the Swat militants is sure to persuade the military commanders to tell the government to solve political problems politically and seek a fresh mandate from the people if it cannot.

Henceforth no party in Pakistan, it seems, would be able to win at the polls nor perpetuate itself in office by exploiting religious sentiments, nor by leaning on America or China, nor by inciting hatred against India nor by summoning the armed forces to its aid. Every political party shall have to rely on the support of the people at large and of the state institutions and the provinces by sharing benefits and responsibility with them. Most crucial is the place of the provinces in the federal power structure. At present, they are no more than subordinate units of the centre.

The imperial rulers and Indian statesmen led by Jinnah and Nehru had agreed in 1946 (though Nehru later retracted) that India could be held together by a central government exercising control only on defence, foreign affairs and communications. The stresses caused by global conflicts and the economy would now require the centre to have some more functions. The arch confederalist Mumtaz Bhutto is prepared to cede currency to the centre as well. Dr Mubashir Hasan’s independent commission is inclined to cede foreign trade, income tax, citizenship and immigration too.

Transfer of powers from the centre to the provinces is bound to be a troublesome exercise but is necessary to keep the country united which, we have learnt to our cost, religion, America and the army no longer can.

In the new dispensation, for the tribal areas and Balochistan the state should be more suzerain than sovereign in the conventional sense. That was the imperial way of working when things were better and, as a political agent in the 1960s, this writer can testify it worked even after independence. The all-important question of provincial autonomy however has to be settled first.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com