Democracy and Terrorism

Two poignant editorials from the Daily Times, Pakistan

Sunday, August 20, 2006

EDITORIAL: Will 'democracy' end terrorism? The leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), Benazir Bhutto, has stated in an article contributed to the press that "a democratic Pakistan free from the yoke of military dictatorship would cease to be the petri-dish of the pandemic of international terrorism". She considers the connection made by the world between global terrorism and Pakistan as relevant, which she thinks is a "direct consequence of the West allowing Pakistani military regimes to suppress the democratic aspirations of the people of Pakistan". Ms Bhutto rightly blames General Zia ul Haq and his "Afghan jihad" enterprise in response to the US strategy to defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s for being central to our problems today. It also meant the spread of the 'Kalashnikov culture' in the country and the appearance of elements like the Taliban and Al Qaeda, converting the country into an arena for a "political and religious extremist movement". She goes on say that, two decades after General Zia, another general has overthrown the civilian order and is "playing the West like a fiddle", offering token disingenuous support to the agenda against terrorism while exiling Pakistan's opposition leaders. Ms Bhutto, as leader of the country's largest political party, asks the following questions which Pakistan must lend its ear to: "Why is it that the terrorist trail always leads back to Pakistan? Why is it that second-generation Pakistani émigrés all over the world are far more attracted to this pattern of terrorism than other disillusioned Muslims in the West?" Her own answer is that extremism is the child of years of military dictatorship that inculcates the lesson of might rather than right. She thinks that the military dictatorship today "presides over a society that simultaneously fuels and empowers militants at the expense of moderates" and only a return to democracy will "produce citizens that understand the importance of law, diversity and tolerance". Most analysts trace Pakistan's current predicament to General Zia's Islamisation financed by the money extracted from the West for his Afghan jihad. His outward face was that of cooperation with the forces arrayed against Communism, his inward policy was that of social transformation under Islam, much of it clearly fashioned to negate the return to power of the PPP and its liberal-democratic message. But his decade of radicalisation of state ideology with much Saudi help was "internalised" by the Pakistani population far beyond anyone's calculation. Thus it was a different Pakistan to which Ms Bhutto returned from exile in 1986. The Muslim League in power then was less a political party and more a legacy of General Zia. While one may generally agree with Ms Bhutto's diagnosis, one has to see the years after the death of General Zia not as democracy but as governance dominated by army chiefs and the GHQ; also, importantly, as a political arena in which the political parties at times forced the GHQ to be the political judge on the yardstick of Islam and jihad. Ms Bhutto must remember that her 1988 government was made possible only after she accepted a number of COAS General Aslam Beg's "conditionalities". She also had to decorate him with a "democracy medal". In fact, when her government was fired in 1990, one of the charges against her was her "failure to Islamise" and her party endured the "Midnight Jackals" operation mounted by two army-men who were later "absorbed" by the Muslim League. The years of 'democracy' in Pakistan after General Zia were in fact years of military dominance under Article 58-2(b). They were also the period of Pakistan's first blowback from jihad in Afghanistan. (The second, more frightening, blowback is now.) The madrassas opened with Saudi money by Zia now threatened the democratic process with their Kalashnikovs. The attempt made on Ms Bhutto's life (by Ramzi Yusuf) happened in this period. Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996 when 'democracy' was in place in Pakistan just as the high tide of Pakistan-inspired jihad in Kashmir was during the years of 'democracy' in the 1990s. Therefore let us be clear: 'democracy' was not allowed to come into its own during the decade of the 1990s and the politicians were very much a part of the 'democracy' charade, in which the military and its intelligence agencies really called all the shots. That is why some answers may not relate to 'democracy' at all but to the flaws of the state. Ms Bhutto as a liberal-democrat must have felt this often when she ruled. What is needed is not more or less 'democracy' of the sort that we have had in the past with the civilians in front and the military pulling levers behind the scenes, but a paradigm shift from the "mission statement" of the militarised state. It is the ideology of munkiraat (that which is prohibited) that de-legitimises the modern state in general and democracy in particular. So if it is Musharraf and his military predecessors who refused to make a paradigm shift in the past, it is the 'democratic' politicians who today oppose the repeal of the Hudood Ordinance in Pakistan. And if one must look to the West as an arbiter — as Ms Bhutto does — how can our politicians hope to be favoured by it after this? No. The reform must begin at home. * SECOND EDITORIAL: Shame on the politicians! Politicians, both in power and opposition, conspired to keep the Hudood bill out of the National Assembly on Friday. The joint opposition blocked the government's move to table the Criminal Law Amendment (Protection of Women) Bill, by protesting lack of quorum. The bill seeks certain amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and the Code of Criminal Procedures (CrPC), as prescribed in the Hudood Ordinance. The original draft was changed to appease the rightwing ruling PML. The government avoided repealing the Ordinance altogether as recommended by the inquiry commissions and the Council for Islamic Ideology (CII), but still wanted to take rape out of the category of adultery and place it in the Penal Code. According to reports, the opposition claimed that several treasury members had opposed the bill and deliberately absented themselves from the session together with the ARD-MMA members. Those who favour democracy in Pakistan should take a close look at the cleavage between the politicians and the people. A national media debate has favoured repeal-or-amendment of the Ordinance to remove its anti-women bias. But the politicians are clearly interested in keeping the dreaded law on the statute books. How can these politicians then expect us to show any sympathy for them? *