Posted by Tanvir Ahmad Khan


Every war is shrouded in fog. Since the regime is fighting several battles, the fog of war is commensurately thicker but not thick enough to persuade the people that holding the Constitution in abeyance would in any way help retrieve the lost ground

“There is no atonement. Every action in life is final and produces its inevitable consequences despite all the tears and gnashing of teeth.” — Joseph Conrad, in a letter dated September, 1891

While justifying the proclamation of emergency, President Musharraf portrayed Pakistan as a state collapsing under the weight of Islamist insurgencies and a Supreme Court wantonly unaware of the dangerous consequences of its decisions. Since the Baloch struggle for an honourable place in the federation would not have preyed on the already fraught nerves of Western governments grappling with Afghanistan, he did not dwell on it. But precisely with that objective in mind, he risked self-indictment when it came to the tribal badlands and Swat. Pakistan’s chief of army staff suddenly conceded that ungoverned spaces in a highly sensitive region of the country were proliferating. The people knew it to be true and waited patiently for their president to explain why the regime was losing even territory after losing the battle for hearts and minds, and what it proposed to do to turn the tide. What they got was a fuzzy view of the putative complicity of the higher judiciary and the media in preventing a winning deployment of our legions against the terrorists stalking the land.

Every war is shrouded in fog. Since the regime is fighting several battles, the fog of war is commensurately thicker but not thick enough to persuade the people that holding the Constitution in abeyance would in any way help retrieve the lost ground. On the face of it, the barbarians at the gate stand to gain as the project for national reconciliation crumbles. The implicit message that this project would be advanced by sending tens of highly respected judges home and by pulling out the plug of every independent news channel has been interpreted across the globe to mean that the army chief was not thinking of the barbarians at all but of an impending threat to his own absolute power. From the Roman generals packing off Senates to present day military rulers dissolving parliaments and abrogating constitutions, the ploy has acquired a pathetic banality.

Perhaps there wasn’t much of a fog hanging over the real battle. For weeks, rumours of a stern response to a negative verdict by the Supreme Court had swirled around with as much abundance as the leaves shed by trees in the deepening Islamabad winter. But that was the kind of intimidation that Pakistan’s judiciary has always faced; intimidation that sent an elected prime minister to the gallows and inscribed the Doctrine of Necessity as the dominant principle in the legal repertoire of the ruling elite. But there were reasons to hope that this time around, it would not be allowed to become an existential threat to the country. The threats came mostly from inconsequential agents of the regime — shrimps pretending to be whales — retained almost exclusively for unsavoury tasks. The expectation was that at the apex of the political, judicial and legislative systems, there were men who would not strain the body politic to a breaking point.

Even the international context of the unfolding political drama pointed to restraint. Global powers embroiled in the Afghan conflict had worked tirelessly to convince Pakistan’s political class that President Musharraf would not countenance giving up power, while persuading Musharraf that he would be better off with a civilian make-over. He had not been able to construct a polity where he could rule with popular assent. All through the summer of 2007, the powers — often in the person of Condoleezza Rice — had promoted a coalition with Benazir Bhutto that would obviate Musharraf’s dependence on the office of the army chief. This factor alone militated against turning the world upside down.

Musharraf had all the time in which he could remove the constitutional anomaly of combining the august office of the president of the republic with that of the army chief. All that he needed was to overcome a fear of some loss of power as a necessary condition for the restoration of democracy. But he has ended up casting aside all constitutional restraint and virtually re-imposing Martial Law on the country. It has created legal and political complications that by definition are far graver than those arising from the Supreme Court declaring him ineligible for the presidential election already held.

The armed forces do not have a single factor left from the cluster that facilitated the coup d’état of October 12, 1999. Any attempt to re-impose direct military rule will almost certainly lead to fragmentation of the national polity and possibly the state. Musharraf may find it extremely difficult to sustain the present version of emergency. Bhutto returned from exile in the midst of misgivings about her secret understanding with him and was then confronted with the death of nearly 140 of her ardent supporters. She still made only modest demands. The present assault on fundamental rights and civil liberties almost entitles her to demand better terms of engagement for her party.

She is still in the twilight zone so far as resistance to the regime’s latest lurch towards authoritarianism is concerned, but very soon there would be a new demand that Musharraf must step down to enable the people to have a fair and free election. If circumstances push Bhutto into the role of a determined opposition leader, the situation would change radically. A few more weeks of turbulence in the Pakistani street would further reduce the already waning international backing that Musharraf has enjoyed in the past. Governments in the West have to contend with a sense of outrage that grows with every passing day. The Provisional Constitutional Order is a formidable obstacle but Pakistan needs the ingenuity of its legal wizards to enable him to revoke the proclamation of emergency, restore fundamental rights and hold a fair and free election this winter. Pakistan’s survival depends on this ingenuity. It is time to live up to the slogan of Pakistan First.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary