Doomsday Delusions

On January 16, hundreds of radical Islamist fighters overran a military fortat Sararogha in south Waziristan, apparently facing mixed resistance from thetroops stationed there. Seven soldiers of the Pakistan Frontier Corps arereported to have been killed, while 15 fled to the safety of a nearby militarypost, and another 20 were reported missing. Just a day later, 'dozens' ofPakistan troops are said to have simply abandoned another post along thePakistan-Afghanistan border, after receiving threats from the same Talibanforces that had earlier overrun the Sararogha Fort.

Abruptly, doomsday scenarios are being conjured up, with commentatorsquestioning the 'central government's ability to control the border area'. Asuccession of terrorist and suicide attacks across the country has also added tothe sense of crisis: There were as many as 56 suicide attacks in 2007, ascompared to just seven in 2006, and January 2008 has already witnessed three;further, 2007 saw 3,599 terrorism related fatalities in Pakistan, as compared to1,471 in 2006. Predictably, the vision of a Pakistani meltdown is now takinghold of the imagination of many outside commentators.

But this is, in fact, far from the Pakistani reality. The Pakistan Army hascertainly taken something of a beating over the past over a year -- andparticularly after the Lal Masjid assault in July 2007 -- but its collapse isfar from imminent. Indeed, despite the recurrence of jihadi violence inthe shape of a rising number of frontal attacks in the Waziristan Agencies andthe North-West Frontier Province, and the bombings and suicide attacks in otherareas as well, including some at the very heart of the Army's power in Islamabadand Rawalpindi, the crisis appears far more acute from a distance than it wouldbe on the ground. This is the case despite credible reports of significantdemoralisation and rising dissensions in the lower ranks in the Army, and anumber of incidents, such as the 'surrender' of more than 300 troops to a gangof some 20-odd Taliban in August 2007, that will deeply embarrass the Armycommand and President Pervez Musharraf. Such incidents are, no doubt, the moreincomprehensible and disgraceful in a situation in which the Army has virtuallybeen deified over the entire period of the country's existence. They are not,however, an accurate index of the projected 'collapse' of the Army's power inPakistan.

Indeed, notwithstanding the seriousness of each of these incidents, or oftheir cumulative impact, the real crisis in Pakistan is not the psychologicaland physical havoc each such attack, bombing or debacle provokes. Pakistan'sreal crises are, on the one hand, the steady erosion of the Army's moralauthority and the systematic and unprecedented challenge that is being raisedfrom jihadi ranks in the country and, on the other, the Army's sustainedand devastating, albeit gradual, assault against the institutions of civil anddemocratic governance in the country.

As the Army loses prestige and looks, inevitably, for some credible politicalpartnership to share the burden of the nation's destinies, it is confronted withthe political and administrative wasteland that it has itself created over thepast decades, and the rising graph of institutional despoliation that theMusharraf regime has inflicted on every non-military organisation and agency. Itis here that the gravest of vices of an authoritarian regime manifest themselves- by the time the despots begin to realise their own mistakes and limitations,they have already enfeebled, crippled or destroyed any popular or democraticalternative that could assume charge of the reins of governance.

This is the Pakistani dilemma today -- and it is the dilemma that inevitablyconfronts all non-democratic societies at some stage or other. Regime change orthe transition of power frequently threatens to aggravate existing crises, asdeeply debilitated successor systems would be forced to grapple with escalatingproblems -- thus providing a justification for the preservation of theincreasingly burdensome and ineffective despotism. The TINA ('there is noalternative') factor becomes the core of the destructive dynamic thatprogressively erodes systemic capabilities.

This, indeed, is the greatest virtue even of immensely imperfect democracies-- such as India's own: Democracy restrains the greatest excesses of parties inpower, prevents the assault on constitutional institutions from escalatingbeyond a certain threshold, creates a quantum of continuous public feedback thatno junta of corps commanders can replace, and provides for a smooth transitionfrom one regime to another, without the traumatic dislocations moreauthoritarian systems experience.

The crisis in Pakistan is precisely the manifest lack of a mechanism for thenecessary transition that could secure a reversal of the hurtling decline of thepast over eight years of Mr Musharraf's disastrous rule, even as the imperativesof a change are widely recognised. The more Pakistan sinks into chaos andviolence, the more crucial will be the role of the Army in preserving a modicumof order and control. And yet, the more the Army exerts itself in fulfillingsuch a role, the more it escalates and deepens the destructive dynamic that hasthe country in its stranglehold.

There is, in this, the appearance of a terminal deadlock, unless the countrydiscovers in itself the capacity to abruptly and completely reverse the patternsof the past; to reject the radical Islamist mobilisation that has not only beenthe principal tool of extremist and terrorist recruitment, but also of politicalmanagement by all state agencies -- military, civil and democratic; and, toembrace the fullest democracy, with all its flaws and its apparent propensitiesfor delay and inefficiency. This will not, of course, automatically andimmediately restore order and justice to Pakistan -- and may, indeed, see somemeasure of short-term escalation in prevailing disorders. It would, however, setinto motion processes of corrective accommodation of various apparentlycentrifugal forces in the country, install a more responsive political system,and address many of the underlying inequalities and inequities that manifestthemselves in apparent Islamist extremism, but that are more accurately sourcedin a range of enduring social and political disparities.

Slow, painful and frustrating as such a pathway may appear, in contrast tothe 'commando quick fixes' that the Army and Mr Musharraf promise, this is theonly realistic avenue for Pakistan to escape the increasingly existential crisisthat threatens to envelop the state and its militarised agencies. The sooner thepeople of Pakistan, but more importantly, the country's military leadersthemselves, realise this, the greater the hope and possibility that Pakistanwill survive the present century with its integrity intact.