Pakistan: the struggle within [1st impression ed.] 9788131725047, 8131725049

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PakiSTan

The STruggle WiThin

© Observer Research Foundation

Observer Research Foundation is an independent think tank that develops and publishes policy proposals in the areas of economy, security, politics and goverance. It also arranges seminars and lectures on topical issues as part of its mission to influence policy, both within India and abroad.

PakiSTan

The STruggle WiThin

Edited by

WilSon John Foreword by

Vikram Sood

Delhi • Chennai • Chandigarh Upper Saddle River • Boston • London Sydney • Singapore • Hong Kong • Toronto • Tokyo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pakistan: the struggle within / edited by Wilson John ; foreword by Vikram Sood. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-8131725047 (hardcover) 1. Pakistan--Politics and government--1988- I. John, Wilson, 1960JQ629.A58P355 2009 320.95491--dc22 2008046845

The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author, and the facts are as reported by him. They do not necessarily represent the official position or the views of the publisher. Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd Licensees of Pearson Education in South Asia. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the abovementioned publisher of this book. ISBN: 978-81-317-2504-7 First Impression

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Dedicated to the wisdom and generosity of the ORF Chairman R. K. Mishra

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CONTENTS

Foreword: Caught in Crisis Preface 1.

Does Democracy have a Chance in Pakistan?

2.

Ethnic Conflict and the Future of Pakistan

3.

Pakistan’s Economy in Historical Perspective: Growth, Power and Poverty





4.

Frederic Grare

Selig S. Harrison

Akmal Hussain

Islamic Parties in Pakistan: The Social and Political Impact Kalim Bahadur

5.

Pakistan’s Evolving Strategic Doctrine

6.

Civil–Military Relations

7.

The China–Pakistan Nexus



Feroz Hassan Khan Talat Masood Mohan Malik

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86 118 145 157

The Editor and the Contributors

199

Index

205



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FOREwORD

CauGHT IN CRISIS

It will take several miracles to save Pakistan from Pakistan. Despite the February 18 (2008) elections and the retreat of the Pakistan Army from the civilian political landscape, Pakistan continues to battle multiple challenges to its sovereignty, identity and survival as a nation-state. The assassination of two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on 27 December 2007 typified not only an extremely violent period for Pakistan but also signified the kind of dangerous political impasse into which the country has slipped. The statistics of death and violence alone would suffice to indicate the gravity of the situation. In 2007, for instance, there were 1,442 terrorist attacks and incidents of political and sectarian violence inside Pakistan killing more than 3,000 persons as against 657 similar incidents in 2006 in which 907 persons were killed. These terrorist attacks killed 232 army men, 163 paramilitary soldiers and 71 policemen. Of the 60 suicide attacks, 41 were directed against security forces. These statistics indicate not only anger against the military but also the absence of fear among people. Of the 1,636 persons shown as arrested for terrorist activity, the largest component, 740, was from the restive province of Balochistan where, mostly unknown to the rest of the world, a fierce battle for independence is being fought by Baloch nationalists. All this is blowback — the unintended consequences of unacknowledged actions in another country. One of the most dangerous blowbacks for Pakistan is that there is an incumbency fatigue against the army and it has lost much of its sheen in recent years.



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This has been the cumulative result of decades of incorrect policies adopted by both Pakistan and its benefactors. Pakistan’s leaders, both civilian and military, have not been able to reconcile to the reality that theirs is a smaller country and has fewer resources than India. They have constantly sought to justify the creation of a Muslim homeland on the subcontinent. Insecure against a ‘Hindu’ neighbour, Pakistan’s leaders from very early days, sought security outside the region, and the Pakistan Army, which has ruled the country, directly and indirectly, for most of the period, refuses to give up historical grudges and ambitions —to avenge the creation of Bangladesh that undermined the two-nation theory, and to create more Caliphates in India. There is a very real fear in the ruling circles in Pakistan that a secular democratic India which is also economically successful on its borders would undermine the ideology of an Islamic Pakistan. The so-called jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and terrorism in India were the result of these warped policies. While the Soviets may have left, India could not be wished away. The result is that today Pakistan faces the danger of being consumed by its own creations — jihad abroad and the Taliban at home. Many Pakistanis see President Pervez Musharraf as America’s stooge, and anti-American sentiments are high in the country. Any attempt to roll back the Taliban/Islamic Emirate in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan is being fiercely resisted with an element of the security forces unwilling to engage in battle against fellow Muslims and tribesmen. In several parts of these ‘occupied’ areas (over 30,000 km), Sharia courts have been established and an Islamic taxation system introduced. This movement has spread further inland into other parts of the country. Violence and extremism in the name of religious ideology is now directly linked with the US-led war in Afghanistan and the military crackdown against these forces generates further hatred. The increased targeting of the armed forces by suicide bombers is an indication of this. Yet the hard truth is that the Pakistani establishment, especially the army, has been so deeply involved with the various terrorist

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organizations in their country, and for so long, that it is now difficult for them to disengage. Their jihad is now targeted not only against the ‘infidels’ occupying Afghanistan but also against the ‘infidels’ that rule Pakistan or propagate secularism. The political situation is complicated because in the absence of any stable institutions there are no constitutional shock absorbers to cushion the tremors in a country caught up in internal ethnic and religious turmoil. The other effect has been the outward movement of jihad from centres in Pakistan. Jihad had gone international during the Afghan jihad days and its immediate fallout was seen in India in the 1990s. The time to arrest the growth of this movement has now gone. The events of September 11 in 2001, the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the London bombings in 2005, are all a result of this movement and have shown to have a Pakistani connection. Pakistan has made jihad global. Like never before, Pakistan, a country of 160 million, today is in dire need of miracles—three, at the very least. The first miracle should be the US giving up its policy of mollycoddling dictators in Pakistan. The manner in which Pakistan was allowed to go nuclear, acquire warheads and trade in nuclear technologies by successive regimes, including the present one, is a tragic testimony to the failure of the policies of these regimes or mindless pursuit of self-interest. And almost simultaneously, Pakistan was allowed, or even encouraged, to become jihadi. Pakistan’s hopelessly misconstrued policies have only converted most unemployed young people of Pakistan into terrorists who have now returned as unemployable (Musharraf once called them ‘freelancers’) jihadis to haunt their former masters. This now leaves the world petrified about having Islamist terrorists armed with nuclear weapons. The real and persistent danger is the undeniable fact that the State of Pakistan has systematically proliferated nuclear technology for decades. The second miracle is to let al-Qaeda and the Taliban melt away from the tribal areas. They are deeply entrenched in FATA and actively working to expand their empire into NWFP. Three of the seven districts of the valley of Swat, Pakistan’s idyllic tourist spot, is today under the thrall of Taliban forces.

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Attempts by Musharraf's security forces to oust them have failed. There are fears that this new development marks the arrival of al-Qaeda outside FATA and represents the most potent threat to Pakistan’s security. It is not difficult to see how grave the problem has become through neglect and connivance. The Lal Masjid episode, which was followed by suicide attacks on Pakistan’s armed forces in Tarbela, Rawalpindi and Sargodha, indicates not only the ability of the terrorists to strike at will but also that they had inside intelligence. Even more important — they had access. The situation in NWFP also gets more complicated because of its trans-border connections. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have moved close to Kandahar for the first time since 2001 and have also occupied three other districts in western Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda has been working on Pak-based leaders like Sirajuddin Haqqani to function as a leader within the Taliban. Haqqani’s Pakistani and Arab followers are uncompromising in their goal for a complete victory for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Tribal loyalties, which are quite often trans-border, the Pashtun code of conduct and religious sentiments have become intertwined in the province. Recruitment among the devoutly religious locals is easy for the Taliban. Many of the counter-insurgent forces have remained ill-equipped and inadequately trained in contrast to the insurgents. Their morale is low and they are unwilling to fight fellow Muslims. Desertions are increasing. The Pakistan Army, brought up on a single threat perception, is illequipped to play a counter-insurgency role. Besides, it would need local intelligence, which will not be available to Punjabi troops operating in the absence of Pashtun troops. It will take years for the army to cover this gap and, meanwhile, a Punjabi-Pashtun animus could set in. Finally, as the third miracle, the Pakistan Army must tackle the growing terrorist threat within the country and yet it must retreat not just physically but metaphorically from the lives of the people of Pakistan. General Ashfaq Kiyani’s instruction to the army to pull back from civilian appointments is a beginning. But the military’s multi-billion-dollar corporate interests are far too large for it to pull out soon or completely. Unfortunately,

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if neither the army nor the Taliban retreat, we are staring at an abyss as Pakistan is consumed by its own creations — jihad and the Taliban. A comparison with India becomes essential here, not as a self-adulatory exercise but to act as a reference point. Sixty years after Independence, India and Pakistan are on different trajectories. India is a secular democracy — raucous and flawed — but democracy it is. After years of uncertainties, the fortune graph is now a steady upward curve as India positions itself to become a rising economic power. Pakistan, on the other hand, is on a downward slope, with a thinly disguised military rule threatening to become a theocratic-military rule as its graph dips into a jihadi abyss. While the world applauds India, it increasingly looks at Pakistan with deep suspicion as an irresponsible state. While the Indian leadership of the day set about giving its people a written Constitution, in Pakistan the twin pillars of governance have been the army and Islam. Punjabi feudalism too did not help matters. Over the years, this problem has only accentuated with the mullah, intolerant of any deviation, interpreting the Islamic tenets in a narrow sectarian sense that excludes women — half the country’s population — from equal treatment. He also seeks to exclude other sects from similar benefits, earthly or otherworldly. The army treats any adherence to alternative opinion as disobedience at best and treason most of the time. Equality and dissent are the essential ingredients of democracy but Pakistan’s twin pillars discouraged both. In Pakistan, they shot dead veteran Baloch leader Akbar Bugti because he dared to ask a better deal for his Baloch people. They also banished elected mainstream political leaders. In India, we allow secessionists to avail of the best possible medical treatment. There is another important aspect that is sometimes overlooked. In India, Muslims have begun to realize that the largest number of Muslims who live in a democracy anywhere in the world are here. There is also a realization that this has been possible because of an independent, secular media and a liberal class, most of whom are Hindus. True, there have been horrible slippages but it is this class of Indians that seeks to protect Muslims in India from

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any injustice that is based on religion. The mullahs of Pakistan seek to institutionalize this discrimination and even the moderately enlightened General asserts that there can be no secularism in Pakistan. For anyone to break the Indian equilibrium, he must Wahhabise the essentially Sufi Muslim and radicalize the Hindu by enticing the former and simultaneously provoking the latter. India of the 21st century must guard against such inroads from Pakistan and from al-Qaeda indoctrination. The truth is that the security establishment of Pakistan still treats India and its own nationalists as the biggest threat. Perennially fearful of India’s presence in Afghanistan, the Pakistani establishment not only feels that it needs the Taliban but also nurtures them just as it nurtured elements like the Punjabi Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. It cannot therefore be serious about curbing the Taliban. Musharraf cannot take action against the fundamentalists and extremists and also rely on them for survival. Yet, unless the Pakistan Army moves beyond patchwork solutions to ensure its own primacy and decides to eradicate this menace, a spectre of total radicalism haunts Pakistan. The key question is that after having made defense and foreign policies so India-specific, can Pakistan’s military rulers accept a situation where (a) Kashmir does not provide the army the raison d’etre for their primacy; (b) strategic depth against India is no longer critical; and (c) they can live with a secular, economically successful ‘Hindu’ India next door? For then, the question will be ‘Why Pakistan?’ What Pakistan needs today is not reinvention of the military regime. It needs a strong, fairly elected political leader who thinks of Pakistan first and realizes that India is not a threat to Pakistan; a leader who accepts a secular successful India as an opportunity and not a threat. Unless the peoples’ movement acquires a totem pole soon, like the Myanmar students found Aung San Suu Kyi, and is backed by sustained international pressure, it will wilt and die under the jackboot. The February 18 election gave a fractured verdict and is likely, as rival political parties in the coalition struggle for supremacy, to end up in a political stalemate. This is what the army wanted, a fractured mandate that allowed them to retain control but go back to the

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barracks, refurbish and return after the politicians fail, as they inevitably would. This book by Observer Research Foundation has essays written by some of the well-known scholars and commentators about the state of affairs in Pakistan as they see it from their differing perspectives and knowledge. It is both timely and incisive, and will prove to be of immense value to those who are interested in keeping a finger on the global geo-politics. Vikram Sood

Former Chief, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Vice President, ORF Centre for International Affairs

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PREFaCE

The ideologically driven but often politically orphaned Pakistan has slipped into long bouts of anarchy, time and again, creating an alter ego in an all-powerful Pakistan Army, the only institution of governance that remained coherent to its ethos and traditions. For most part of its life, Pakistan, a federation of multicultural, ethnic and linguistic people anchored by Islam, remained hostage to this omnipotent martial mindset. In 2006, as an important part of the Observer Research Foundation’s innovative project titled ‘Building Scenarios,’ widely respected and perceptive scholars like Dr Selig Harrison were requested to take a close look at these contradictions of identity and politics, which remain sharp and forbidding as the recent events have shown. These assessments, despite the dramatic changes that have swept Pakistan in the past two years, remain as relevant as ever. For instance, at least three of the several fault lines identified and analysed in depth in this volume clearly resurfaced during the recent events that saw Musharraf collapsing with an alarming speed. These are: provincial and ethnic differences, civilian conflict, and military and religious compulsions of the State. Provincial and ethnic fault lines have always been a feature of Pakistan. Since the issue has been dealt with in detail by Dr Selig Harrison, it is much more useful to analyse how Musharraf’s actions either exploited such divisions for personal and military gains or reinforced them. We must begin with the brutal killing of veteran Baloch leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, on 26 August 2006. For decades, Bugti had been leading a small but ferocious and determined band of armed Balochis demanding a share in the country’s politics and economy. Balochis, who people Pakistan’s biggest province, rich in history and natural resources, have had a history of suppression and revolt. Balochistan also happened to be strategically located, home to a new

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naval port in Gwadar, a long border with Iran and a potential hub of a trans-Asian transport and energy network linking Asia to Europe. True to his character, Musharraf swung between peace and conflict, choosing the military option over peaceful negotiations to deal with Bugti and his men. After setting up a parliamentary committee to find a peaceful resolution of issues, he launched an all-out military offensive against Bugti and his ragtag army, cornering the septuagenarian Bugti in a mountain cave and killing him with a bomb dropped from a fighter jet. There was hardly any protest in Pakistan over the brutal murder of Bugti. Balochis have always been a marginalized community with the Punjabi-ruled Islamabad exploiting their home for its rich natural resources. Except for a handful of editorials and op-eds in the English media, the Punjabi middle class remained deafeningly silent; the expat Balochis made some noise in Washington and London but neither the Blair government in UK nor President George W. Bush was enthused about Bugti’s killing. The murder of a staunch nationalist was soon forgotten leaving President Musharraf more arrogant about his dictatorial powers. By putting down the Baloch rebellion, which has been instigated more by Islamabad’s historical neglect of the province than secession, Musharraf managed to neutralize, to a large extent, the negative fallout of Pakistan Army’s disastrous show in countering al-Qaeda and the Taliban terrorist groups entrenched in the tribal areas. The killing also proved his myopic strategy of using military might to quell internal dissension, a tradition which has been the bane of military rulers in Pakistan, like elsewhere. Musharraf had gambled on the deep provincial suspicions and distrust that existed between the rich and influential Punjab and other provinces in Pakistan. What, however, remained largely unsaid in the public discourse was that the Baloch leader’s murder by the Punjabi-dominated State was a pointer that provincial and ethnic cleavages in today’s Pakistan remained as defiant to changes as in the past. Another important incident which, on the other hand, drew widespread anguish was the sacking of Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary on 9 March 2007. It brought lawyers out on the streets, raising slogans and leading marches

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against Musharraf. The protest remained confined to Lahore and Islamabad and hence drew large media coverage. Though the legal community in other provinces came out in support of Chaudhary, it was the street protests in Punjab which triggered panic in Musharraf’s mind. Punjab has historically determined Pakistan’s destiny since 1947. It has supported and sustained authoritarian regimes and has greatly influenced the ouster of unpopular governments. Opinions in the Punjabi-dominated English media during the judicial crisis only reaffirmed this provincial superiority. Commentators like Ayaz Amir, in Dawn, took great umbrage at the Punjab High Court judges not coming out in support of the sacked Chief Justice. Amir went to the extent of calling such behaviour a typical Punjabi’s ‘bootlicking’ character. The editorial indignation reflected the Punjabi mindset which, even in this case, was quite different from what Balochis felt about the humiliated judge. Chaudhary, a Punjabi migrant born and brought up in Quetta, was the Chief Justice of the Balochistan High Court before his elevation to the Supreme Court. Several Balochi intellectuals, despite their animosity towards Musharraf, supported the sacking of the judge, citing the latter’s high-handed and arbitrary behaviour during his tenure as the high court chief justice. To a great extent, even the February 18 (2008) elections reflected and strengthened the overarching influence of Punjab in the Pakistan story. Two of the three most important political parties in Pakistan are Punjabi — Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PMLN) and Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain’s Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PMLQ). Both raised the banner of Punjab during the run-up to the elections to challenge Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) which was dubbed as the Sindhi party. In the riots that took place in Sindh and Punjab after the assassination of Bhutto on 27 December 2007, Punjabi politicians, mostly from the ruling party, PMLQ, blamed Sindhis for the wanton killings. The electoral verdict proved that Punjab was not swept by a sympathy wave for Bhutto as was widely expected, at least outside Pakistan. Great efforts were made to marginalize PPP, perhaps the only political party with a support base across Pakistan, by labeling it as a Sindhi party, an attempt



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which was helped in no less measure by Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, anointing himself as the leader of the party in a flamboyant Sindhi manner. In the midst of all these churnings, a Mohajir General was forced to hand over his baton to a Punjabi General, thus reverting to the pre-1999 political structure where Punjab once again ruled from Rawalpindi–Islamabad and Lahore.1 There was, however, one significant difference in Pakistan of 1999 and 2008. Unlike 1999, when a purblind General took upon himself to launch a secret war on India in Kargil by launching a mixed lashkar (army) of jihadis and troops through its eastern flanks, in 2008, Pakistan faced a serious challenge to its sovereignty on its western frontiers, particularly in Federally Administrative Tribal Areas (FATA) where al-Qaeda and the Taliban have entrenched themselves. The terrorist regrouping undoubtedly posed a grave threat to the world but more immediately to Pakistan as suicide bombings and terrorist attacks of the past two years have shown. The six-year long cat and mouse game in the tribal areas has raised some valid and serious questions about the Pakistan Army’s capability to handle insurgency, the government’s competence to deal with the omnipresent threat of radicalization or Talifanization of Pakistan and the core issue of Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s religious underpinning. General Talat Masood and Brigadier Feroz Hassan Khan have analysed some of these factors in their chapters with considerable depth. Pakistan Army was drawn into the War on Terror under duress from the United States. It was in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that the US launched a blitzkrieg on al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan, particularly the areas bordering Pakistan. The Bush administration also came to Islamabad, seeking President

1 In early May 2008, provincial differences emerged in the newly elected National Assembly when elected representatives from Balochistan threatened to stop power and gas supplies, if Punjab did not release enough wheat for other provinces. Refer to ‘Punjab Blamed for Wheat Crisis in NWFP’, Dawn, 6 May 2008; ‘Punjab Accused of Stealing from Sindh’s Share of Water’, The News International, 6 May 2008.

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Musharraf’s help in cornering the terrorists fleeing from the bombing. The message to Pakistan was simple and stark: either you are with us or with them. But as events subsequently proved, the army and its supporting paramilitary force, Frontier Corps (FC), were hardly prepared for some peculiar contradictions which the conflict posed and greatly undermined their operational capabilities. First, the army had always remained on the border areas of the tribal areas, leaving an old, British system of governance through political agents and tribal maliks (leaders) in place. The FC’s mandate was that of a border police and confined to checking trans-border smuggling and crime. The Pakistan Army and the FC thus became ‘intruders’ rather than ‘saviours’, which at least the army was seen as in the past when it had launched a military offensive that killed scores of men and women in the tribal areas and left thousands of homes razed to the ground. Second, there were officers and men within the army and ISI, some at the decision-making levels, who were sympathetic towards the Taliban, an Islamic militant group drawn from the seminaries of Pakistan to act as the army’s strategic weapon in Afghanistan. These officers and men had largely ignored (or correctly interpreted) Musharraf’s commitments to the US as a strategic ally in the Global War on Terrorism, which facilitated the Taliban, along with al-Qaeda terrorists, to find safe houses in the vast badlands of Waziristan and other areas in FATA which bordered Afghanistan. In the process, it created an expanding swamp of terror straddling Durand Line, a highly contentious border earmarked by the British, primarily to divide the ‘ungovernable’ Pashtun communities into two nations. The Pashtun Taliban thus found a home in the tribal areas while the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan Army found itself faced with an internal uprising which could not be neutralized by guns and weapons alone. The third factor was the predominance of Pashtuns in FC and the number of Pashtun men (20 to 25 per cent) and officers (15 to 20 per cent) in Pakistan Army. The six-year long conflict in the tribal areas not only left at least 1,000 (official figure)

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dead, but also witnessed large-scale desertions and surrenders, mostly in FC; Pashtun troops refused to fire at Pashtun tribes and the Taliban cadre. With successive military offensives failing to defeat a guerrilla force protected by the tribal communities, the army had no other option but to broker peace in the tribal land. The Shakai Agreement of 2004 was followed by another in North Waziristan the next year. On 5 September 2007, the Musharraf government signed the Miramshah Agreement, agreeing to withdraw the security forces from the tribal areas, free the key jailed Taliban and tribal leaders and to compensate the tribes heavily for the damage done to their property during the military operations. Several million dollars, diverted from the 10-billion-dollar US honorarium for fighting their War on Terrorism, were paid to the tribal leaders; important Taliban and tribal leaders were freed (along with several hundred terrorists including Rashid Rauf, a British national of Pak origin, prime accused in the London bombing plot and Harkat-ul-Jihadal-Islami [HuJI] chief, Qari Saifullah Akhtar), and the troops were quietly pulled back. The army had two other more critical compulsions, which determined their action or the absence of it in the battlefield. It had to protect the Taliban from any US military action and safeguard a deeper ideological impulse on which the State of Pakistan was conceived way back in the Lahore Resolution of 1940. Intriguingly, even after the electorate voted out the military-supported government on 18 February 2008, the new Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, saw the army2 as the defender of ‘ideological boundaries’. Professor Kalim Bahadur, elsewhere in the volume, has quite diligently documented and scrutinized the relationship between the military and the religious right in Pakistan, a factor which will have a long-term influence on the country’s future. In 2007, such collusion was clearly evident in what has come to be called the Lal Masjid crisis. A group of women students 2 Gillani says the armed forces will get all required resources, Daily Times, 25 April 2008. The Prime Minister said the Pakistan Army had ‘a unique and delicate responsibility’ to defend ‘ideological boundaries’ along with the geographical ones.

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from the pro-Taliban seminary in Islamabad forcibly occupied a children’s library to protest against the government’s order to demolish illegal encroachments on public land, including madrasas and other religious organizations. The Musharraf government chose to negotiate with the recalcitrant students of Jamia Hafza, an all-girls seminary run within the Lal Masjid compound and called off the demolition orders. This only encouraged the cleric brothers, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, at Lal Masjid to rant and rave about the coming of the Taliban. Instead of cracking down on these Taliban promoters in the heart of Islamabad, the Musharraf government chose to look the other way as the clerics and their students began indulging in random acts of violence and kidnappings in Islamabad. Subsequent events would reveal that Musharraf’s action was driven by a set of compulsions, of which three could be identified without much difficulty: First, a desperate need to divert the public attention from the widespread protests over the sacking of Chief Justice Chaudhary; second, to create a fear psychosis about the possibility of an extremist takeover of Pakistan, especially in Washington where the Bush administration was pushing him hard to make way for a free and fair election, preferably after giving up his uniform; and third, to project himself as the sole guardian of Pakistan in the possibility of a jihadi takeover or nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups.3 The plan, however, backfired as the Lal Masjid students and their supporters (mainly from terrorist groups like Jaishe-Mohammad) kidnapped some Chinese nationals working in an acupressure clinic in Islamabad, provoking China to lean heavily on its ‘all-weather’ friend, General Musharraf, to take immediate and decisive action. Musharraf had no option but to move decisively against the seminary or irk the all-weather friends. In his chapter on Pakistan–China relations, Professor Mohan Malik has discussed some of the mutual strategic compulsions that bind Pakistan and China, and the reason

3 The author has done a detailed analysis of various events and developments in Pakistan for India’s National Security Review 2008, scheduled for publication in late 2008.

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for Musharraf’s prompt action. The Chinese nationals were released in no time and Musharraf, now increasingly under pressure from the West, launched a highly avoidable military offensive on the seminary in July. More than 100 people were killed, many of who were men and women students from the tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), provoking widespread anger and condemnation.4 The most immediate fallout of the military operation was the series of revenge attacks that left more than 750 persons killed across the country, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto was killed by a suicide bomber on 27 December 2007. The terrorist groups summarily called off the Miramshah Agreement which they had signed with the Pakistan government in September 2006. They said the government had violated the terms of the peace agreement and attacked the Taliban in the tribal areas. The terrorist groups also cited the issue of inadequate compensation to the tribal leaders for keeping peace. Suicide bombers targeted security forces and intelligence officials across the country as the Musharraf government moved in more troops and replenishments into the area. Over 120,000 men from various paramilitary units and the army were deployed in and around the terrorist strongholds in South and North Waziristan. Though the security forces achieved initial success in killing two senior Taliban commanders, Ahmed Mehsud and Dadullah, suicide bombers found high-profile targets in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, killing several intelligence and army personnel. At least 40 of the 60 suicide attacks that shook Pakistan in 2007 targeted security forces, killing over 200 men from the army and various paramilitary and police forces. In all, 770 persons were killed in suicide attacks, of which 33 took place in the North West Frontier Province and 11 in FATA and Punjab.

4 The Lal Masjid was back in action with demands for compensation from the government for the destruction. The seminary re-launched its web site (www.lalmasjid.com), after it was pulled down by the Musharraf government in July 2007, with a discussion forum in 2008.

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As civil society elsewhere battled Musharraf’s increasingly dictatorial tendencies, the arc of extremism expanded rapidly across the tribal areas. For the first time, the once-peaceful areas like Mohmand Agency witnessed the rise of local Taliban. Extremists occupied the shrine of freedom fighter Haji Sahib Turangzai in Mohmand Agency and renamed the adjacent mosque as Lal Masjid. In Bajaur, militants led by Maulana Faqir Mohammad gathered strength and vowed to avenge the killings at Lal Masjid–Jamia Hafsa. The Kurram Agency has been witnessing ceaseless sectarian bloodletting for several months. Hundreds of tribesmen died in the clashes sparked by the Sunni al-Qaeda–Taliban group taking revenge against the Shia tribesmen for not helping the fleeing al-Qaeda and the Taliban in 2001 and 2002. Neighbouring Orkazai Agency too witnessed periodic bouts of sectarian strife. The melange of terrorist groups became deeply entrenched in the seven administrative agencies of the tribal areas and began expanding their influence in Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and Swat in NWFP. So audacious and entrenched the terrorist coalition had become that it forced increasingly more men and officers from the Frontier Corps to surrender instead of fighting them. It also looted convoys carrying weapons and ammunition, and oil tankers supplying fuel to NATO forces in Afghanistan and kept the Pakistan Army on the margins of the ‘held’ region. The State under President Pervez Musharraf, thus, lost the final vestige of its authority in most of the areas in FATA and NWFP, enabling al-Qaeda and the Taliban to turn the area into a jihadi sanctuary. The US intelligence agencies, which refused to acknowledge the presence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas for long, finally accepted that ‘al-Qaeda has established a safe haven in Pakistan’. In its latest assessment, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said that the terrorist groups ‘now also pose a threat to Pakistan’. The report said the terrorist assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto could encourage terrorists to strike the Pakistani establishment anywhere in the country. The assessment concluded that these groups had the potential to undermine Pakistan itself. More incisive and telling has been what a well-known analyst in

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Washington, Dr Ashley Tellis, concluded in an April 2008 study of Pakistan’s ‘compromised’ war on terrorism: ….it has bred a cancerous nest of violent extremism inside Pakistan resulting in the rise of new Islamist militant groups (sometimes labelled the Pakistani Taliban) that are either sympathetic to or affiliated with al-Qaeda and committed to waging a holy war against the Pakistani government, the liberal elements in Pakistani politics as well as other foreign adversaries such as India, Israel and the United States.

No less disturbing has been the deafening silence over the Pakistan State’s incestuous relationship with extremist religious ideologies and elements, which have driven the country to crossroads, time and again. A whisper of realization could, however, be discerned in the new prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s op-ed article in the Washington Post, where he said: ‘There are moments in all nations’ histories that divide the past from the future, that divide nations’ souls. This is such a moment for Pakistan …’5 With Musharraf out of the way, can the new President, Asif Ali Zardari, and Prime Minister Gillani, both new on the political horizon of Pakistan, seize this moment and break the vicious nexus in which Pakistan has often been found trapped? Wilson John

5 Yousaf Raza Gillani, ‘Pakistan’s Movement’, Washington Post, 30 April 2008.

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Does Democracy have a chance In PakIstan? Frederic Grare

Whether democracy has a chance in Pakistan has been a recurrent question from the time the country gained independence. Since 1947, Pakistan has experienced no less than four military coups with rare democratic or pseudo-democratic intervals, as civilian regimes were often as authoritarian as military dictatorships. Looking at Pakistan’s recent history, the prospect does not seem any more encouraging, despite Pervez Musharraf’s repeated assertions that ‘Pakistan is a true democracy’. The February 2008 elections marked Pakistan’s return to a formal democracy and civilian power, but it may be no more than a window of opportunity. The question remains as to whether democracy can consolidate in Pakistan. This question can be understood in several ways. It has both a descriptive and a normative dimension. It obviously reflects the telling evidence of decades of military dictatorship and failed civilian governments, but also the hope that something new could emerge from a complex reality fraught with contradictions as well as the deep conviction that democracy represents the aspirations of a vast majority of the population, which need to be articulated. The inherent instability of the country and the stranglehold of the political and religious parties are some of the most frequently mentioned explanations for the failure of democracy in Pakistan. The lack of development, too, is often invoked as a possible reason, and sometimes justification, for the lack of democracy in the country. All these arguments contain an element of truth. Yet, none of them capture the problem in its entirety.



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The topic assumes particular relevance today. Pakistan’s military regime was, until recently, an ally of the United States, even at a time when democracy was one of the pillars of the National Security Doctrine of the American superpower. Pakistan’s general, provincial and presidential elections of 18 February 2008 mark it out as another of these ‘crucial’ years which have riddled the existence of the country since independence, but whether they meet the expectations of millions of Pakistani citizens remains to be seen. What is at stake is not some abstract principle unrelated to the reality of the country — at stake is respect for one of the very few consensual documents in the country’s history, the 1973 Constitution. Whether this can be achieved or not will determine the very possibility of Pakistan departing from a military ideology, which constitutes the main impediment to its development and the main threat to its stability and regional security. First and foremost, for Pakistan to turn into a true democracy the re-establishment of a free and fair electoral process is necessary. Although necessary, this will be just the first step and not a sufficient one. Only then will the people of Pakistan be able to initiate the kind of social, political and economic changes required to make democracy sustainable.

revisiting the explanations of Pakistan’s authoritarianism Arguments to explain the weakness of democratic practices or even justify decades of military power have varied over the years. Traditionally, three main reasons have been put forward to explain the failure of democracy in Pakistan — instability, Islamism and the lack of development. Instability: Mistaking the effect for the cause It is almost a cliche today to say that the army owes its role in the political affairs of Pakistan to the extremely difficult conditions in which the country emerged as an independent entity. The constraints of external security and the scope of immediate

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domestic problems made the survival of the fledgling state the primary concern of Pakistan’s decision-makers. As a matter of fact, at that time Pakistan did present all the characteristics of a developing state likely to favour a larger role for its army: lack of social cohesion, an extremely fragmented class structure, a weak middle class, absence of rallying points likely to favour social and political mobilization, weak institutions, inefficiency of political parties, mediocrity of political personnel and conflict between the Centre and the periphery. The army has exercised power, directly or indirectly, for most of the 60 years of Pakistan’s existence, using the same rationale to explain its sustained presence in power. None of the most divisive issues faced by the country since its independence have been solved. With the eruption of a new crisis in Balochistan, relations between the Centre and the provinces are as tense as ever. Neither the sectarian nor the jihadi violence has been eliminated, and governmental instability is still the rule. Incompetence is certainly to blame in crises such as the one in Balochistan. Fundamentally, in Pakistan, crises are very often not only the unfortunate result of ill-conceived policies but a mode of managing the country. ‘Divide and rule’, always in the ‘national interest’ according to the official motto but, ironically, most of the time at the expense of national cohesion, has been a principle applied in almost every aspect of political life in Pakistan. For example, the willingness of the army to promote a united Pakistan (former dictator Zia-ul-Haq was quoted as saying that he would ‘ideally like to break up the existing provinces and replace them with fifty-three small provinces, erasing ethnic identities from the map altogether’)1 is not so much in question here as its inability to propose an alternative project likely to enable every Pakistani to identify himself with the nation. As a result, the Baloch, and also many Sindhis, feel alienated from Pakistan and resent the central authorities for treating them like second-class citizens. A similar phenomenon has prevailed on the political scene, although in a more subtle manner. The strategy has consisted not in suppressing political parties but, through the rigging of elections and the manipulation of political actors, in gradually emptying



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them from their very substance—weakening not only the democratic process but also, and more importantly, the very idea of democracy in Pakistan. It would be unfair to blame only the military for such a state of affairs. Civilians have often taken recourse to the army to play arbiter against their political opponents, but this phenomenon has resulted in a complete distortion of the democratic process, making it difficult to reverse the trend. Sectarianism is another example of instability engineered by military dictators, though they can’t be held entirely responsible for a phenomenon which has deep social, political and geopolitical roots. There is no doubt, however, that sectarianism emerged as an unintended consequence of Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization policies and was later actively encouraged by the dictator to counter Iran’s influence on Pakistan’s Shia community. Unfortunately, successive regimes did not do any better. Political parties have routinely compromised with sectarian groups and have cynically used sectarian conflicts for short-term political gains. Both the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and the Tehriq-e-Fiqh-e-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) were allowed to engage in electoral politics. They entered into alliances with mainstream parties such as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) or the Pakistan Muslim League (PML). Even Benazir Bhutto, whose party (PPP) and family suffered the most under the policies of Zia-ulHaq, turned a blind eye to sectarian extremism. In her second stint in power (1993–1996), she formed a parliamentary alliance with the Fazl-ur-Rehman faction of the Jamiatul-Ulama-i-Islam (JUI) and provided the SSP an opportunity to pursue its sectarian activities. On 22 January 1995, the Federal Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar announced that the government intended to ban direct funding of all madrasas as well as track down the institutions which were fanning sectarianism. He also gave an assurance that an anti-sectarian bill to facilitate the government’s effort would be passed in the National Assembly.2 The bill, unfortunately, was not even submitted to the Assembly. In 1995, an eminent SSP leader, Sheikh Hakim Ali, even became the Minister of Fisheries in the Punjab government because PPP needed the SSP’s support to cobble a majority in the province.3 It is also reported that SSP leader and a member of the

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National Assembly, Azam Tariq (recently assassinated), enjoyed complete immunity from law enforcement agencies during the entire length of Benazir Bhutto’s tenure, despite his active role in anti-Shia violence. It was attributed to the fact that he was an arch enemy of Syeda Abida Hussain, a veteran Shia leader from Jhang at political odds with Benazir Bhutto.4 Nawaz Sharif was the only prime minister who tried to address the issue with seriousness during his stint in power (1997–1999). In 1997, the Anti-terrorism Act was adopted by the Parliament, reinforcing the role of the army and police in combating sectarian terrorism. On 3 January 1999, Sharif narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by sectarian terrorists. The law was subsequently amended and reinforced by the Antiterrorism Ordinance of July 1999. Even though the successive governments did not necessarily approve of sectarian violence, they were not prepared to actively disband the groups involved in it. Instead they adopted half -hearted measures, encouraging dialogue between the different groups and eventually giving police protection to threatened religious congregations.5 After his military takeover of Pakistan’s reins in 1999, General Musharraf adopted a similar strategy. He banned two groups—the Sunni Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Shia Sipah-e-Mohammad Pakistan—with the warning that other groups—the SSP and TJP—were being watched, but eventually failed to take any decisive action against them.6 Azam Tariq’s example is noteworthy. Although in prison, he was permitted to run for the October 2002 general elections. Having won a seat in the National Assembly, he was released from prison and, thereafter, Tariq supported the government until his assassination on 6 October 2003. To retain Tariq’s support, the government ignored non-bailable warrants issued against him, including those issued under anti-trerrorism laws in July 2000.7 Even after the u-turn of the Pakistani government on its Afghan policy and the fall of the Taliban regime, the authorities felt uncomfortable with the idea of actively fighting sectarian organizations because of their role in the government’s strategy on Kashmir. This role needs to be spelt out more precisely. The



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distinction between jihadi and sectarian organizations is not always clear. The Jaish-e-Mohammad, for example, though essentially a jihadi movement, occasionally participated (or at least some of its members did) in sectarian violence. On the contrary, groups such as the SSP, which are clearly sectarian organizations, cooperated with Pakistan’s intelligence agencies at various key locations in the subcontinent in order to be accepted domestically. The SSP has fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has allegedly sent its men to Kashmir. This strategy has made it difficult for successive Pakistani governments to effectively combat sectarian groups in spite of a strong consensus against the domestic violence they have unleashed across the country. General Musharraf’s policy reflected the same ambivalence. On 15 and 17 November 2003, he banned six organizations which had already been banned 20 months earlier but were now operating under new names: the Tehrik-e-Islami Pakistan, (formerly Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan), the Millat-e-Islami (formerly Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan), Khuddan-e-Islam (formerly Jaishe-Mohammad), the Jamaat-al-Furqan (a breakaway group of the Jaish-e-Mohammad), the Hizbut Tehrir and the Jamiatul-Ansar (formerly Harkat ul-Mujahideen). All these groups, with the exception of the Hizbut Tehrir, had previously been involved in sectarian violence.8 On the other hand, the Jamaat-ulDawa (formerly Lashkar-e-Tayyaba), which had been banned on 12 January 2002, although not involved in sectarian violence, was active in Kashmir. It was simply put on the watch list. Interestingly, the renewed ban on sectarian groups operating under new names has been described by many as a mere ‘window dressing’. As no specific charges had been made against the 600 odd militants arrested in the raids on 130 party offices, it was difficult to keep them in prison for a long time. The government’s move did not alter the Islamists’ confidence that it would soon be business as usual.9 There were now reasons to doubt General Musharraf’s intentions to put an end to sectarian violence. Although he was himself the target of some of the banned organizations, he re-authorized public rallies by the

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Sipah-e Sahaba, raising fresh doubts about Pakistan’s determination to address the festering issue. The argument of development A relatively sophisticated and interesting explanation of the failure of democracy in Pakistan is presented by Anatol Lieven who argues that the lack of democracy in Pakistan cannot be attributed only to the military’s repeated seizure of power because ‘democracy usually reflects not so much “the people” or “the electorate” as the distribution of social, cultural and economic power within a given society.’10 According to him, the nature of society in Pakistan is such that ‘the resulting democracy is not going to be a force for good governance, economic progress, respect for human rights, fair elections or even orderly transitions of elected governments.’11 The lack of democratic culture is demonstrated, according to him, by the lack of modern, mass political parties in a country where tradition, loyalty to family, clan or religion continue to hold sway. Lieven does not deny the role of the Army, which sees itself as a referee, ‘but a referee, it must be said, with a strong personal interest in the outcome of many of the fights and a strong tendency to make up the rules as he goes along.’12 But because civilians often prove no better when in power and show no better performance in the field of human rights, Pakistan demonstrates the ‘frequent irrelevance of democracy.’13 This leads the author to argue in favour of what he calls ‘developmental realism’, a policy which draws upon the strategies of the United States in East and Southeast Asia from 1950 to the 1970s when very large sums directed to Southeast Asian nations not only promoted economic development and strengthened their resistance to communist subversion but also laid the basis for democracy in the region despite significant corruption.14 The merit of the argument is to demonstrate that formal democracy by itself is not sufficient to assert the more or less democratic character of a state. Its sociology and the cultural and economic balance of power between the actors accounts for just as much. Lieven correctly identifies Pakistan’s social structures as one of the main impediments in its democratic development.



Frederic Grare

At the heart of the country’s failure to develop into a true democracy is the monopoly of power enjoyed by a tiny and incestuous elite, military and civilian, whose interests have almost always run contrary to the rest of the population and the international community. Accounting for less than one per cent of the population, this elite has collectively hijacked the State and rigged the markets to capture the benefits of economic growth. The military, moreover, has constantly exploited the country’s insecurity about its identity to retain power. The interests of both military and civilian elites have always partly converged. Over the years, the military has developed a ‘saviour complex’, firm in the belief that not only does it have the professional skills necessary to run an army, but that it is also the only institution capable of running the country. Moreover, the military has always felt entitled to economic privileges that it considers a just and honest reward for preserving the integrity and stability of the country. The civilian elite are motivated by greed and addiction to power that the military is willing to accommodate, provided the civilians play by its rules. Neither the status of the military and civilian elite, nor their impact on society, are identical. The military is the dominant institution, but it has allowed a small constellation of co-opted landlords, industrialists, traders, politicians, civil bureaucrats and some members of the religious oligarchy as well as professional and intellectual groups to dominate affairs under every government. This monopoly has triggered a general decay of institutions, encouraged nepotism and corruption at every stage of every transaction, and caused lawlessness leading to a lack of security among individuals. Even if one does agree with this diagnostic, it is also clear that, given the situation described above, the emergence of a true cultural and economic balance of power cannot be the result of a logical, evolutionary process at the end of which democracy would emerge ‘naturally’. Democracy is both a process in which every step counts as well as the outcome of this process. It cannot be left to chance, especially when some of the actors have every motivation to prevent such an evolution and distort the process at every stage so as to make sure that not only do they remain

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in control of the situation; they also succeed in destroying every institution to perpetuate their interests. Taking for granted that development is the desired outcome of every actor in Pakistani society is a mistake demonstrated by the country’s economic history. Pakistan has not done badly on the economic scene over the past decades. Its per capita income trebled between 1950 and 1999 and, in purchasing power parity terms, was higher than a third of the world’s countries by 1999. Yet, despite a reasonably good, sustained economic performance and a well-educated and entrepreneurial diaspora as well as professional elite within the country, whose level matches that of the industrialized world, Pakistan systematically underperformed in most social and political indicators. The area of education is the most striking example of this situation. According to a World Bank analysis published in 2001, ‘twenty-four percentage points of Pakistan’s population [was] illiterate, more than is normal for a country of its income level’. Pakistan appears stuck at a nascent stage of development, where land is abundant relative to physical capital and ownership of land is highly concentrated. Decades of military rule have done nothing to improve this situation. On the contrary, the socio-economic structures likely to lead to the emergence of a democratic culture, even imperfect, have been blocked. Are religious political parties an obstacle to democracy in Pakistan? Since the end of the Cold War, part of the debate has shifted toward a different explanation for the inability of democratic practices to strike root in Pakistan—Islamism. Many commentators question the compatibility of the Islamic doctrine with more liberal conceptions of democracy. In recent times this view has gained popularity—those supposedly inherent extremist tendencies of any Muslim society, more specifically as they have materialized in Pakistan, due to the dominance of its religio-political parties, have made military dictatorship a regrettable yet necessary option to contain what many commentators see as an Islamic peril. Even in Lieven’s analysis, although it is never mentioned as such, the Islamic threat is present in the form of Islamic parties

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becoming capable of modern, mass political parties. Yet the assumptions on which it is based are questionable. This is because (i) the only Pakistani Islamic party comparable to a modern political organization is the Jama’at-i-Islami, which has refused to transform itself into a mass organization; (ii) Pakistani Islamic parties have historically never been in a position to seize power in the country; and (iii) more importantly, because the relationship that religio-political parties entertain with democracy is one of deep ambivalence. The reasons for this ambivalence are to be looked for in the permanent tension between an ideology which considers that sovereignty rests only with God, and the conditions necessary for the emergence and survival of almost all religious political parties, namely democracy. For Maulana Mawdudi, founder of the Jama’at-i-Islami, one of the leading organizations of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the coalition of Islamist parties currently running Balochistan and the North West Frontier Provinces, the concept of divine sovereignty is central. It constitutes the main difference between the Islamic political system and Western democracy in which sovereignty rests with the people. For him, “every notion of our independence is nothing but sheer deception and misjudgment. God controls every fibre of our being and none can escape his grip.” 16 “Not only is our free will and independence delegated by God but the ‘territory’ in which these are exercised is also determined by God and belongs to Him. In this conception, to acknowledge any other entity as being sovereign or to accept any principle of authority is equivalent to idolatry.”17 Not all Islamist thinkers or political activists in Pakistan go as far as Mawdudi and the Jama’at-i-Islami in the enunciation of the concept of ‘Theo democracy’. However, all concur that the sovereignty of the people is necessarily subordinate to the sovereignty of God. The political history of Pakistan shows a different reality. The Ayub Khan years (1958–1969) were the turning point for most of the Islamist parties willing to exist politically. Like all political institutions, they were banned during the period of martial law. But they continued to function under the cover of their social, educational and religious activities. As the dictator’s economic policies proved successful, the only way the religious parties

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could attack the government was to demand respect for civil rights — in other words democracy. While democracy remained hateful from a theoretical point of view, it constituted the primary condition necessary for their political survival. Defending it was the only strategy they could reasonably adopt. Despite the religious sympathies of General Zia-ul-Haq, they had no other option but to adopt a similar strategy under his regime of martial law. This period was particularly difficult for the Jama’at-i-Islami due to the Islamization campaign launched by the military dictator. Having fought Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on the slogan of ‘Islam and democracy’, the Jama’at-i-Islami had also disapproved of Zia’s coup. But now the Jama’at-i-Islami suddenly had to choose between Islam and democracy. It was on the promise of restoration of democracy, which never materialised, that it accepted the offer from Zia-ul-Haq to participate in the government, only to leave it eight months later when it became obvious that the dictator had no intention of holding the promised elections (1977). Relations only grew worse when Zia, having created a Sharia Federal Court to ensure that existing laws were in conformity with Islam, exempted the decrees of martial law, the tax system and the overall banking system from conformity with Islamic law. Since the death of Zia-ul-Haq, all religio-political parties have existed in permanent tension caused by a series of contradictions. On the one hand, they need conditions of democracy to survive politically, but have been unable to accommodate it during the rare periods of relative political freedom that the country has experienced in the past. On the other hand, their Islamization agenda can only materialize, though partially, with the support of the military, which also provides them an outlet by using their military wings in the hotspots of the subcontinent. In practice, a strong anti-military, religious rhetoric is hardly able to mask the almost constant political and occasional ‘military’ support to the Army. Islamist parties have, therefore, historically oscillated between a potentially totalitarian ideology and a strategy which, in the end, makes democracy theoretically, necessary for their success. It would be too simple an explanation to see

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only hypocrisy in this attitude. Their entire political history is an attempt to overcome this contradiction. Moreover, under Pervez Musharraf, this call for democracy was not made any less ambiguous by the patron/client relationship that the religious parties entertained with the military. Although it did confer to this relationship a credibility which would have otherwise been lacking, it also reinforced authoritarianism.

Pervez musharraf’s Pakistan: transition to Democracy? The evolution of Pakistan during Musharraf’s tenure in power deserves particular attention. Although born out of a military take-over in October 1999, the regime was sometimes considered an unfortunate yet necessary transition towards the establishment of a true democracy in Pakistan. As a matter of fact, the regime presented all the characteristics of a formal democracy with elections at regular intervals (for the first time since the death of General Zia-ul-Haq, the legislature did complete an entire mandate); a largely civilian government and a devolution plan, which was supposed to be an additional step towards the true democratization of Pakistan. A close examination of the facts shows that the Musharraf regime did not reinforce democracy but the role and presence of the army in almost every sector of public life in Pakistan. The army not only controlled key posts in the economy but had also established its grip on the administration regarding admission, training and promotion. The first measures taken by the Musharraf regime did not augur well for institutions. Like every military dictator, he wanted to form a partnership with the judiciary to legitimize the new regime.18 The military government, therefore, required the High Court and Supreme Court judges to swear an oath to uphold the new head of state. Some resigned, others were dismissed. Those remaining finally swore allegiance to the military government.19 Eight years later, a similar effort to control the judiciary precipitated the crisis which led to the downfall of Musharraf’s military regime.

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More interesting, however, was the devolution plan, launched in 2002. The stated objectives of the government were political devolution, administrative decentralization and redistribution of resources to local governments.20 The plan was aimed at transferring administrative and financial power to local governments which were to be elected on a non-party basis. The scheme was to strengthen local control and accountability. The devolution plan did little to minimize corruption but was remarkably effective in further centralizing power — military power. It effectively bypassed the provincial level and thus the political parties, creating, through developmental funds, a new clientele for the military regime, which quickly led to friction between the local and provincial governments. It remains to be seen whether, as stated by the International Crisis Group, ‘by depoliticizing governance the military has reinforced loyalties along the lines of biradari (caste, tribe, sub-region) thus actually aggravating social and political divisions in society,’21 but it certainly did not improve conditions. There is little question that devolution further weakened the political system, making the local bodies an instrument of political control during general and provincial elections. Similarly, rigging of elections undoubtedly reached new levels in Musharraf’s regime. Neither the 2002 provincial and general elections nor the 2005 local elections could be called free and fair. This was particularly obvious in 2002 when the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM), in particular, reported pre-election day manipulations. All parties raised concerns regarding the delimitation of constituencies, accusing the Election Commission of Pakistan of diluting strongholds of parties that opposed the regime while favouring parties supporting the regime.22 Serious concerns were also raised regarding the quality of the voters’ register.23 As noted by EUEOM, ‘the electoral process was marked by the introduction of a new set of qualification criteria for the nomination of candidates, some of which [were] not in accordance with international standards or [were] clearly targeting specific prominent politicians.’24 Of special significance in this regard was the fact that candidates

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required a university bachelor degree qualification but madrasa diplomas were considered equivalent. This measure significantly advantaged the MMA, particularly in Balochistan, where some prominent nationalist leaders were prevented from contesting the election although several had previously exercised the functions of governor and/or chief minister of the province. Additional restrictions included the right to defame or bring into ridicule the judiciary or the armed forces. The local elections conducted in August and October 2005 were also rigged to a large extent to further weaken the mainstream opposition parties. By doing so, Musharraf intended to lay the ground for his supporters in the parliamentary elections scheduled at the end of 2007.25 The local elections were supposed to be the first round of Musharraf’s consolidation in power as they ensured his control over the organization of the forthcoming general elections.

the unforeseen transition Therefore, there was little to expect from the 2007 elections and it was very unlikely that they would present a new chance for democratic processes to strike root. It is in this context that a crisis emerged when it appeared that Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry could not and would not, according to the Constitution, declare the perpetuation of Pervez Musharraf in power as constitutional. His sacking precipitated a mass agitation which soon turned violent, further eroding the legitimacy of the military head of state. Musharraf’s response was to do a repeat of his 1999 operation. He declared a ‘State of Emergency’ understood by all, Pakistani and foreign observers alike, as a second coup. The military dictator ended the Emergency under international pressure and also had to give up his position as Chief of Army Staff and finally hold the long-delayed general elections in February 2008. Not long before that, Benazir Bhutto, a strong prime ministerial contender, was assassinated in circumstances which still remain to be elucidated.

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In the ensuing elections, the relative neutrality of the army came as a surprise. A new Chief of Army Staff, Pervez Kiyani, anxious to restore the morale, prestige and professionalism of the military institution, broke all contact with politics and ensured a relatively smooth election process. The attempt by incumbents to rig the election, yet again, proved unsuccessful. The opposition won by a landslide. The Islamists were wiped out. Government returned to civilian hands.

conclusion: the long road towards democracy This does not mean that the return to a more democratic system is sustainable. It follows from the preceding analysis that making Pakistan a true democracy is unlikely to be an easy process. It will require a series of sustained and profound reforms, spread over several years, of the country’s social economic and structures. Economic growth will have to be sustained, and the education system overhauled. Not only will the culture of hatred currently developed by schools have to end, but schools will also have to become the place where the necessary skills for personal and professional development are taught. Over time, a more educated population is likely to demand a greater share of political power and a more equitable distribution of economic resources. As a consequence, political parties will have to be reformed and professionalized so as to be able to perform their aggregative function and allow all segments of society to see their demands taken into account in government policies. Similarly, developing a true democratic culture will be an essential element of this transition. Apart from the introduction of reforms, this will require a systematic effort from civilians themselves who sometimes are largely accountable for the situation created. Political parties will have to learn how to work together, within and outside parliament, and promote democracy internally, through a reform of their own structures. The task can seem enormous, if not impossible. However, as demonstrated in the previous pages, the present situation results to a large extent, although not exclusively, from the existence of

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a few hangovers which prevent every other sector from pursuing a more positive evolution. Demilitarizing the country, or re-establishing civilian control over the army and ending the interference of the latter in politics, is one step that needs to be taken. This would permit the political process and its actors to mature progressively and make the determination of national interest a truly national process, no longer submitted solely to the will of the army. Enlarging the elite pool is also a long-term key to a sustainable democracy in Pakistan. Diversifying the elite, multiplying the centres of economic and cultural powers through investment is essential to generate a vested interest in the democratic process among social groups which are insufficiently represented and equally among those groups which enjoy a position of monopoly. Today, the path of access to the levers of political, economic and social power runs through military channels. Alternative channels of bringing qualified people into power must be opened if the army is to return to the barracks. In this perspective, diversification is as important as the enlargement. Only an elite whose economic power rests on scientific, technological and other such intellectual activities, or which integrates these elements as essential for the development of the nation, can be expected to favour mass education and help alleviate the abysmal rate of illiteracy in the country. Bringing democracy to Pakistan will ultimately be the responsibility of the people of Pakistan. However, it is necessary for the international community to match its words with acts and provide the necessary support to this process. Democracy will in any case be the result of a deliberate and systematic effort, not the lucky outcome of a ‘natural’ evolution. No country illustrates better than Pakistan the assertion of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, that ‘a country does not have to be fit for democracy; rather it has to become fit through democracy’.

notes 1 Selig Harrison, In Afghanistan’s Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1981), p. 151.

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2 Musa Khan Jalalzai, Sectarian Violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Lahore: System Books 1999), p.74. 3 Maryam Abou Zahab, ‘The Regional Dimension of Sectarian Conflicts in Pakistan’, in Christopher Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation, (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), p. 119. 4 Mumtaz Ahmad, Revivalism, Islamization, Sectarianism, and Violence in Pakistan, Craig Baxter and Charles H. Kennedy (eds) Pakistan: 1997, (Boulder, Colorado:Westview Press. 1992), p. 117. 5 Yunas Samad, ‘Pakistan, Pro-Taliban Elements and Sectarian Strife’, Middle East Report Online, 16 November 2001. Online document available at http://www.merip. org/mero/mero111601.html. 6 The ban hardly changed the reality on the ground because the police were already after the members of the two outfits. 7 International Crisis Group, Unfulfilled Promises: Pakistan’s Failure to Tackle Extremism, 16 January 2004, p. 12. 8 Zaffar Abbas, ‘Inaction replay’, The Herald, December 2003, p. 56. 9 Ibid. 10 Anatol Lieven, ‘A Difficult Country: Pakistan and the Case for Developmental Realism’, The National Interest, April 2006. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Anatol Lieven, op. cit. 15 Anatol Lieven, op. cit. 16 S. Ala Mawdudi, Islamic Law and Constitution, 9th ed. (Lahore: Islamic Publications, June 1986), p. 47. 17 Ibid. 18 International Crisis Group, Pakistan: Transition to Democracy? ICG Asia Report No. 40, 3 October 2002, p. 13. 19 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 20 International Crisis Group, Devolution in Pakistan: Reform or Regression, ICG Asia Report No. 77, March 2004, p. 1. 21 Ibid., p. 26. 22 European Union Election Observation Mission, Pakistan National and Provincial Assembly Election, 10 October 2002, Final Report, p. 31. 23 Ibid., p. 32. 24 Ibid., p. 33. 25 For a complete report on the rigging of the 2005 local elections, see International Crisis Group, Pakistan Local Polls: Shoring Up Military Rule, Asia Briefing No. 43, (Islamabad/Brussels, 22 November 2005).

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Ethnic conflict and thE futurE of Pakistan Selig S. Harrison

If history is a reliable guide, the prospects for the survival of the Pakistani state in its present form, with its existing configuration of constituent ethno-linguistic groups, appears increasingly uncertain. There is no precedent in the history of South Asia for a state consisting of the five ethno-linguistic regions that made up Pakistan as originally constituted in 1947, or even for the truncated Pakistan, consisting of the four regions that remained after Bangladesh seceded in 1971. The ideologians of Pakistani nationalism exalt the historical memory of Akbar and Aurangzeb as the symbols of a lost Islamic grandeur in South Asia. By contrast, for Pakistan’s three ethnic minorities, the Baloch, the Sindhis and the Pashtuns, the Moghuls are remembered primarily as the symbols of past oppression. To be sure, history might not prove to be a reliable guide for assessing prospects in Pakistan now that it is part of an enlarged geopolitical universe, global in its scope. Capitalizing on the Cold War and the post-2003 ‘War on Terror’, successive Pakistani military dictatorships have received some $4.5 billion in US military aid during the past five decades, and the latest of these, established by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999, has used its authoritarian powers to extend military control over many aspects of national economic life.1 Military rule is now so entrenched that the prospects for a change in the status quo through a transition to democratic governance appear remote. To be meaningful, democratization in Pakistan would have to include a return to the 1973 Constitution, which recognizes the

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identity of the minorities and guarantees their autonomy in specified spheres. But the nullification of the 1973 charter has been one of Pakistan Army’s central objectives. In the absence of autonomy, the minorities have been denied what they consider elementary equity in the allocation of economic resources and political power by a Punjabi majority that controls not only the armed forces but also other key levers of national authority. The Baloch have spearheaded resistance by the minorities, rebelling against the existing Pakistani power structure with armed insurgencies, four times since the creation of Pakistan, most notably in a protracted struggle that lasted from 1973 to 1977. The latest armed Baloch uprising started in January 2005, and still persisted in late 2006 despite efforts to quell it by the formidable Pakistani forces consisting of six army brigades, plus paramilitary forces totalling some 25,000 men and air power that included 20 US-supplied Cobra helicopter gunships and four squadrons of fighter planes. The Baloch rebel groups were divided politically in 2006 between advocates of negotiations with Musharraf, on the one hand, and proponents of separation who envisage a sovereign state that would embrace most of the existing Pakistani province of Balochistan, together with adjacent parts of Sindh, where the Sindhi separatist forces allied with the Baloch are based. Even if the separatists would get the upper hand within the Baloch leadership, it appeared unlikely that the Baloch could prevail militarily over Pakistani forces without help from an external power. The prospect at the end of 2006 was, thus, for an inconclusive continuing struggle between the Baloch and the Sindhis, on the one hand, and Islamabad on the other that would increasingly debilitate Pakistan. This essay will examine the roots of Baloch and Sindhi disaffection, the more ambivalent position of the Pashtuns in the Pakistani polity and the nature of the constitutional changes that would be necessary for political stability in Pakistan.

the Ethnic arithmetic The ethnic arithmetic of Pakistan is a subject of bitter controverstituted 44.15 per cent of the population (73.2 million); Seraiki,

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10.53 per cent (17.5 million); Sindhi, 14.1 per cent (23.4 million); Pashtu, 15.42 per cent (25.6 million), and Balochi, 3.57 per cent (5.9 million).2 In political terms, the distinction between Punjabi and its Seraiki variant is not a meaningful one, especially in the eyes of the Baloch, the Pashtuns, and the Sindhis, who view Punjabi and Seraiki-speakers as a single bloc. More important, with the notable exception of the Sindh region, the minorities emphasize the alliance between the Punjabis and elite elements of the Urdu-speaking refugees (Muhajirs), numbering 7.60 per cent (12.6 million), who migrated to Pakistan from India after partition. Baloch, Sindhi and Pashtun leaders all accuse the government of manipulating the statistics for political reasons. For example, in 1998, according to Baloch spokesmen, the 4.21-per cent estimate might have been accurate, but the Baloch population has grown since then and is now well over six million. It is noteworthy that although the Baloch, the Sindhis and the Pashtuns comprise less than 30 per cent of the population, they identify themselves historically with the ethnic homelands that constitute 72 per cent of Pakistan’s territory. To the proponents of Pakistani nationalism, it is galling that the minorities should advance proprietary claims over such large areas of the country despite their numerical inferiority. Islamabad deliberately seeks to stamp out regional and ethnic identities in order to push modernization programs addressed to what is viewed as the greatest good for the greatest number of Pakistanis. But to most members of the minorities, the disparity between their population and their territorial claims is irrelevant, since they equate ‘Pakistan’ with the Punjabis and Muhajirs, who are perceived as an imperial power that occupied and annexed their territories forcibly.

the Baloch The Baloch tribal homeland is a vast area of desert and mountains, bigger than France, stretching for nearly 900 miles along the Arabian Sea. A small slice of the Baloch area reaches up into southern Afghanistan, but the majority of Baloch are native to the Baloch areas of western Pakistan and an estimated one

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million live in eastern Iran. Many have migrated, in recent years, from their arid homeland to seek jobs in other parts of Pakistan and Iran, as well as in the Persian Gulf. Like the divided Kurds, with their dream of a unified Kurdistan, many Baloch nationalists dream of an independent Greater Balochistan that would unite the Baloch in Pakistan and Iran under one banner. Most estimates suggest a literacy rate among the Baloch of 6 to 9 per cent, that is, 360,000 to 540,000 Baloch literates, if one assumes a population of six million. This literate population provides the most volatile raw material for the organized Baloch nationalist movement. But the underlying strength of Baloch nationalism comes from a broad-based sense of Baloch cultural and political identity that cuts across the largely detribalized urban majority and the 17 major Baloch tribes in the hinterland. Deeply rooted in history, Baloch political consciousness has been steadily sharpened in recent decades by the recurring military conflicts resulting from the forcible incorporation of the Baloch into Iran in 1928 and into Pakistan in 1947. In seeking to mobilize a nationalist movement today, Baloch leaders can invoke powerful historical memories of a tortuous struggle for survival, stretching back for more than 2,000 years. The Baloch are passionately absorbed in their past and relive it endlessly in their books, magazines and folk ballads. They debate where and when they originated; hark back to the ‘golden ages’ of powerful rulers; and revel in the glories of thunderous battles against Persians, Arabs, Tartars, Hindus and other adversaries. Politically, the Baloch record is a mixed one, marked by relatively brief interludes of unity and strong leadership amid centuries of fragmentation and tribal strife. In cultural terms, however, the Baloch have been remarkably successful in preserving their separate identity in the face of continual exposure to alien influences. Despite the isolation of the scattered pastoral communities in Balochistan, a relatively homogeneous Baloch language, literary tradition and value system have spread over the vast 207,000 square-mile area reaching from the Indus in the east to the Persian province of Kerman in the west. According to the Daptar Shair (Chronicles of Genealogies) — an ancient ballad popular among most of the major Baloch tribes — the

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Baloch originally came from the city of Aleppo in what is now Syria.3 Whether or not historians will ever be able to trace the Baloch back to Aleppo, there is an increasing consensus among scholars both in Balochistan and in the outside world that the Baloch were living along the southern shores of the Caspian at the time of Christ. This conclusion is based largely on linguistic evidence showing that the Balochi language originated in a lost language linked with the Parthian or Medean civilizations that flourished in the Caspian and adjacent areas in the preChristian era. The limited historical evidence that does exist tends to confirm the view that the Baloch were living either along the southern shores of the Caspian or in the Kavir Desert until the end of the Sassanid dynasty in the seventh century. During the five centuries following the seventh century eclipse of the Sassanids, most of the Baloch gradually moved eastward into what is now Pakistani Balochistan, where they made progressively more ambitious efforts to achieve political unity. To validate their demands today, Baloch nationalists focus on the unification efforts made by two Baloch monarchs who ruled during the three centuries preceding the British Raj. The first nation-builder cited in Baloch historical accounts is Mir Chakar Rind, who, in the fifteenth century, established a short-lived tribal confederacy reaching from the Makran coast to the present-day Marri tribal area south of Quetta. After Mir Chakar’s death in 1511, the Moghul Empire, based in Delhi, made several unsuccessful attempts to incorporate the Baloch, who cooperated militarily and preserved their independence. However, the Baloch tribes were not able to restore even a modicum of political unity until the Ahmadzai tribe established the Kalat Confederacy in 1666 under the leadership of the sixth Khan of Kalat, the dynamic Nasir Khan. Nasir Khan ruled for more than half a century, beginning in 1741, and under him the Kalat Confederacy encompassed an area ever larger than Mir Chakar’s domain. At the height of his power, Nasir Khan asserted claims of sovereignty over the Iranian Baloch areas and sent occasional expeditionary forces to his western borderlands. For contemporary Baloch nationalists, Nasir Khan’s achievements

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remain an all-important symbol, providing some semblance of historical precedent for the concept of a unified Baloch political identity. Nasir Khan’s passing from the scene coincided with the beginnings of the ‘great game’ between Britain and Russia in Afghanistan and British adoption of the ‘forward policy’, designed to push the jurisdiction of the Raj to the Afghan frontier. Determined to establish direct control over the access routes to Afghanistan, the British fought bloody battles with the Baloch for more than 40 years. Playing off rival chiefs against each other during the closing decades of the century, Britain systematically proceeded to divide the Baloch area into seven parts. In the far west, the Goldsmid Line gave roughly one-fourth to Persia in 1871; in the north, the Durand Line assigned a small strip to Afghanistan in 1894; and in British India, the Baloch areas were divided into a centrally administered enclave (known as British Balochistan) guarding a key mountain pass, a truncated remnant of the Kalat Confederacy, and three smaller puppet principalities. In Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s repression kept the Baloch largely under control (with the exception of a brief Iraqisupported insurgency from 1968 to 1973) until the advent of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 led to an erosion of the central authority and an outburst of long-sublimated nationalist feeling. In Pakistan, by contrast, Baloch insurgents have waged an intermittent guerrilla struggle ever since the departure of the British, culminating in a bloody confrontation from 1973 to 1997 with 80,000 or more Pakistani troops, in which some 55,000 Baloch were involved at various stages of the fighting. At the height of the fighting, in late 1974, US-supplied Iranian combat helicopters, some operated by Iranian pilots, joined the Pakistan Air Force in attacks on Baloch camps. The Baloch, lacking any meaningful foreign help, were equipped only with bolt-action rifles and primitive grenades. The indiscriminate use of superior firepower by the Pakistani and Iranian forces, especially the air attack on Baloch villages, left a legacy of lasting hatred that finally exploded when a younger generation of Baloch, better organized and better equipped militarily, resumed the insurgency in January 2005, under the

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leadership of the underground Baloch Liberation Army, a united front of Baloch tribal factions. The Pakistan armed forces have responded both militarily with ground and air forces diverted from the Afghan frontier, and also with more naked repression than in earlier decades. According to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, the police and military intelligence agents have kidnapped suspects indiscriminately without acknowledging they have been arrested and without making formal arrests of suspected insurgents based on specified charges. The communication gap is rapidly widening between the Baloch and Pakistani leaders. Islamabad views the thinly settled expanses of Balochistan as a haven for surplus population, as a source of critically needed raw materials, and above all, as strategic real estate over which the central government should rightfully hold undisputed control. There is an unmistakable note of ethnic arrogance in the Punjabi attitude — a desire to show the ‘primitive’ Baloch tribesmen who is the master and a feeling that the armed forces will eventually suppress the Baloch once again, as they did in the 1973–77 insurgency. This condescending posture is reflected in the almost complete exclusion of the Baloch from the political, bureaucratic, and military power structure of Pakistan. The Baloch charge that their area is neglected economically and that Punjabi-linked big business interests in Lahore and Karachi are milking Balochistan of its resources. They point, in particular, to the natural gas deposits at Sui, which have been used until recently to build up industries outside Balochistan. Evidence abounds to back up these allegations, as well as the parallel charges that Punjabi settlers are grabbing prime farmlands in Baloch areas, and that Punjabi real estate speculators are buying up properties in Quetta, the principal urban centre in Balochistan.

the sindhis Although Greek, Arab, Moghul, and British invaders have annexed Sindh to their empires, Sindhi nationalist writings trace a continuous Sindhi identity in the Indus Valley dating back for more than 5,000 years to the Mohenjodaro and

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Harappa civilizations. Nationalist lore focuses on the persistent struggles waged against the invader and, above all, on the fact that Sindh has been ruled, for the most part, by independent local Muslim dynasties. The exceptions were the period of Arab rule from the eighth through the tenth centuries, the brief interlude under Mahmud of Ghazni in the eleventh century, and the Moghul imperium during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Sindhi golden ages spotlighted in nationalist works were the eleventh century Soomro dynasty and the period of Kalhora rule that lasted for more than a century, between the expulsion of the Moghuls in 1738 and the British conquest of Sindh in 1843. Sindh has a national ‘poet-saint’, Shah Abdul Latif (1690–1750), who chronicled Sindhi history in Shahajo Risalo (Book of Kings), and patriotic epics such as Umar Marin (The Prince and the Shepherdess). Nationalists stress that the Sindhi language has retained its own distinctive flavour, despite the efforts of the Arabs and the Moghuls to infuse it with Arabic and Persian. The nationalist movement has focused much of its energy on the defense of Sindhi as the medium of local education and government, in the face of pressures for the introduction of Urdu. The modern Sindhi nationalist movement began during the later years of British rule with a campaign for the separation of Sindh from the Bombay Presidency. The formation of a separate Sindh province in 1936, with Karachi as its capital, gave the Sindhi Muslims a majority in their province, but the Sindhi Hindus continued to dominate the business and professional life of Sindh. Thus, in 1939, Sindhi Muslim leaders decided to support the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan, hoping to profit economically from driving out the Sindhi Hindus. G. M. Syed and some of the other Muslim leaders involved have acknowledged their failure to foresee that the majority of Muslim Muhajirs from Hindu-majority areas of India would settle in Sindh following partition; that the Muhajirs would make expedient alliances with a newly entrenched Punjabi bureaucratic and military elite to rule over Sindh; and that the central government would foster Punjabi and Pashtun immigration to Sindh to reshape the demographic balance there.

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One of the first acts of the new Pakistani government was to detach the city of Karachi and its environs from Sindh, making it a federal district. This opened the way for the abolition of Sindhi in city governmental affairs, the wholesale replacement of Sindhis in city jobs with Urdu-speaking employees, the shutdown of the Sindhi Department in Karachi University, and a ban on the use of Sindhi in the university as an examination medium. Some of these measures were later reversed, but the memory lingered on, and when Sindh and other provinces were subsumed under ‘One Unit’, embracing all of West Pakistan, the late G. M. Syed launched his ‘Jiye Sind’ (Free Sindh) movement for a sovereign and independent Sindhu Desh (Sindhi homeland). The dissolution of ‘One Unit’ by President Yahya Khan in 1970, and the re-establishment of the provinces moderated Sindhi discontent, especially when a Sindhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, took over the leadership of what remained of Pakistan following the separation of Bangladesh. In 1972, Bhutto’s People’s Party sponsored a successful drive to enact legislation in the provincial assembly making Sindhi the official language of Sindh, and Bhutto became a Sindhi hero. Ironically, in view of the PunjabiMuhajir support that had helped to bring him to power, Bhutto’s removal at the hands of the military and his execution in 1979 made him a martyr to the Sindhi cause. The post-Bhutto atmosphere in Sindh was marked by continuing tension, and the Zia-ul-Haq regime kept a tight grip on the province, installing a more comprehensive network of local military rule there than in any other part of Pakistan. But the Sindhi nationalist movement was poorly organized and divided, reflecting the structural peculiarities in Sindhi society. One was the fact that the pre-partition Sindhi middle class was entirely Hindu and that a Sindhi Muslim middle class was yet to replace it. Another factor weakening the nationalist movement was the confrontation between the powerful Sindhi absentee landlords with large holdings, and a rural lumpen proletariat of some five million landless, nomadic farm workers. This conflict drove the landlords into intermittent alliances with the Punjabis and Muhajirs, leaving the Sindhi nationalist movement mainly in the hands of a variety of leftist factions. Employing economic

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as well as religious appeals, Islamabad was also able to make alliances with some of the tightly organized local Muslim sects that had grown up under the leadership of powerful pirs (saints) in the feudal environment of rural Sindh. Nevertheless, the nationalist movement united its ranks in numerous clashes prompted by the army repression during the Zia-ulHaq regime. In August 1983, at least 300 Sindhis were killed in clashes with some 45,000 Punjabi troops, leading to a consolidation of Sindhi nationalist sentiment and a rapid growth in underground political activity. While sampling Sindhi underground literature, one finds a vacillation between the demands for a sovereign Sindhu Desh; the restructuring of Pakistan as a loose confederation and merger with India. Moderates in nationalist ranks argue that confederal autonomy would enable Sindhis to achieve many of their demands — notably, greater civil service and educational opportunities — and that a struggle for independence would entail enormous bloodshed. Advocates of independence respond that Sindhis can win economic control of their province from the Muhajirs and Punjabis, develop the economic potential of Sindh, and end its exploitation by other provinces only by struggling for full sovereignty with the help from India. It is argued that independence would give Sindh increasing bargaining power in dealing with Punjab over the key issue of the Indus River waters. According to this argument, as a part of Pakistan, Sindh is a lower riparian province and is dependent on Punjab for its water; and hence, has been cheated of its fair share of the Indus waters. However,, as a sovereign state, controlling Punjab’s outlet to the sea, it would be able to safeguard its rights. This argument was carried a step further by G. M. Syed, who declared in a 1987 book — published in New Delhi and banned in Pakistan — that ‘merger with India would maximize Sindh’s bargaining leverage in dealing with the vital waters issue.’4

demographic factors and sindhi-Baloch unity Demographic factors greatly complicate the Sindhi effort to forge a nationalist front against Islamabad. Of the total population

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of 19 million in Sindh in the 1981 census, only 8.5 million were ‘original’ Sindhis, with the balance split among some 6 million Muhajirs and Punjabis, 4 million Baloch, and 500,000 Pashtuns. Though they had initially allied with the Punjabis, the Muhajirs reacted to the continuing growth of Punjabi economic power in Sindh by forming a tightly knit political organization known as Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz (MQM), or Muhajir National Front. The MQM swept a series of local elections in 1987 and emerged as a pivotal force in Sindh politics, alternately allying with Sindhi and Punjabi groups as opportunity dictates. The Baloch in Sindh subdivide into more than 2 million, relatively recent, Balochi-speaking migrants, mainly in Karachi, and 2 million earlier migrants. Most of these 2 million earlier migrants have assimilated into Sindhi life and can speak Sindhi, which accounts for the figure 9.85 million5 for Sindhi speakers in the 1981 sample. They speak Balochi at home and operate as a monolithic ethnic bloc in local politics. However, this Baloch bloc has generally joined with the ‘original’ Sindhis in intra-provincial rivalry with the Muhajirs, the Pashtuns, and the Punjabis. The concept of a Sindhi-Baloch federation has a strong appeal for both groups, especially on economic grounds. Balochistan has more natural resources than Sindh, and Sindh has an industrial base that Balochistan lacks, together with a thriving, established port in Karachi. The case for a federation is also based on the overlap of Sindhi and Baloch populations in the border districts and their resulting interpenetration. Moreover, given the infusion of Baloch, Pashtuns, Punjabis and Muhajirs throughout Sindh, supporters of a federation contend that the idea of a separate Sindhi political identity is unworkable. In 2006, the demand for a sovereign Sindh was championed by three underground groups — the Free Sindh National Front, the Free Sindh United Front, and the Sindh Nationalist Forum — that invoked the memory of G. M. Syed. As in Balochistan, the police and military intelligence agents focused their efforts in Sindh on breaking up these groups by kidnapping suspected supporters without formally arresting them or acknowledging that they had been captured. Leaders of these groups told Pakistani journalists that more than 50 such disappearances had occurred

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between January and August 2006. Open Sindhi political activity on behalf of greater regional autonomy within Pakistan is led by Mumtaz Bhutto, a cousin of the late Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who established the Sindh National Alliance and the Sindh National Congress. Both these groups stop short of demanding full sovereignty and seek to draw the Muhajirs and the Baloch into a common anti-Punjabi front.

the Pashtuns The Baloch and the Sindhis feel more alienated from the Punjabi-Muhajir establishment than the Pashtuns. The Baloch perception is that the Punjabis view them with condescension and contempt, and consider them as ‘primitive’. In contrast, Punjabi attitude toward the Pashtuns, especially toward the Pashtun aristocracy, is more complex. More important, the Baloch have been almost completely shut out of the economic and political power structure in Pakistan, whereas the Pashtuns, albeit bitter over Punjabi — Muhajir dominance, do not feel a comparable sense of complete exclusion. During the British rule, Pashtuns from the more aristocratic, urbanized families were given powerful posts in the army and bureaucracy. Pashtun officers constituted a significant bloc in the upper ranks of the army following Partition, until many of them were pushed out in the late 1950s, when the Punjabis consolidated their power. Even today, however, there are still a significant number of Pashtuns in high places in Pakistan. For the most part, the expansion of the Punjabi influence in the military and the bureaucracy has not been at the expense of Pashtun members of the establishment. Geographically, the Pashtun areas are not as cut-off from other parts of Pakistan as the Baloch areas, which partly explains why these areas are better integrated with the overall Pakistani economy than the Baloch areas. In Pashtun eyes, this integration has its disadvantages, in that it brings what is seen as excessive dependence on Punjab province and makes the Pashtun areas vulnerable to exploitation by big business interests centred in Karachi and Lahore. Pashtun antagonism towards Punjabi domination focuses, in large part, on alleged

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economic discrimination against the North-West Frontier province in allocation of development expenditures in industry and agriculture. Among the standard charges levelled by Pashtun leaders is that Islamabad deliberately holds back on electrification of the Pashtun areas because it does not want them to become industrialized; that even the electricity produced in these areas goes primarily to the Punjab province, and that most of the tobacco and cotton grown in the North-West Frontier province is used to supply cigarette and textile factories located in other provinces. Islamabad even discriminates against the Pashtuns in agricultural development, Pashtun spokesmen argue, channelling funds for the expansion of irrigation primarily to Punjab province, or to areas in other provinces where Punjabi settlers will benefit most. Political scientist Hamida Khuhro, once told me that ‘basically, the Pashtuns want a bigger share of the cake’, while ‘the Baloch and the Sindhis want something more — identity, selfrespect, real autonomy’. This distinction is important, but it does not necessarily follow that the possibility of a resurgent Pashtun separatism can be entirely dismissed. Even if one could assume that Islamabad will make the economic concessions necessary to temper Pashtun discontent, there is likely to be growing resentment in Pashtun areas if Punjabi civil servants continue to play a dominant role in provincial administration, and if Islamabad continues to block Pashtun nationalist efforts to promote the Pushtu language in education. At present, Pashtu is the medium of instruction only up to the age of 10. Thereafter, Pashtun children not only must attend classes conducted in Urdu, and use textbooks written in Urdu, but must also use Urdu when competing in civil service examinations, and in university and graduate school entrance examinations. The language issue is important in Balochistan, Sindh, and the North-West Frontier province alike, but it is more important in the Sindhi and Pashtun areas than in Balochistan. This is because Sindhi and Pashtu are more standardized and better developed as literary languages than Balochi, and thus more readily adaptable for educational purposes. The influx of Pashtun refugees with links to Islamic fundamentalist groups since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979

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has strengthened the Jama’at-i Islami and other fundamentalist groups. With support from Musharraf, these groups have even won control of the North-West Frontier Province Assembly. The Soviet occupation and the events in Afghanistan and Pakistan border areas since 11 September 2001 have resulted in turmoil within the Pashtun society. With this, the idea of a unified ‘Pashtunistan’ linking the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line has become relatively quiescent. By the same token, however, with many of the Pashtun refugees still in the North-West Frontier Province Assembly, pressures are likely to persist for greater Pashtun autonomy within the framework of Pakistan. For this reason, the Punjabidominated regime in Islamabad has been seeking to resettle as many of the refugees as possible in Balochistan, hoping to vitiate the strength of Baloch and Pashtun separatism at one stroke.

an uncertain future The two most likely scenarios for Pakistan’s future are a continuation of direct military rule or a transition to a mongrel political system in which civilian political leaders provide a façade for continued military control of national security and foreign affairs in return for power sharing in other sectors. In either scenario, a return to the 1973 Constitution is unlikely, and a continued political and military stalemate between Islamabad and the Baloch and the Sindhi minorities could continue indefinitely, barring external intervention to support the establishment of an independent state embracing all or part of Balochistan and Sindh. There is also a third possible scenario, less likely, but not inconceivable. As continued ethnic tensions lead to growing instability in Pakistan that affects its economic development, the United States and other aid donors could well put serious pressure on Islamabad to negotiate a political settlement with the minorities providing for increased local autonomy. The sticking point making such negotiations difficult would be economic issues relating to taxation and to the terms for sharing the resulting revenues from the development of oil, gas and other natural

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resources, especially in resource-rich Balochistan. In most proposals for a devolution of power to the provinces, Baloch and Sindhi leaders have argued that taxes collected by the central government should not be allocated as at present, solely on a population basis, which favours Punjab; instead, it has been suggested, half should be allocated on a population basis, while the rest should be distributed in accordance with the amount collected in each province. Since the provinces have equal representation in the Senate, even under the 1973 Constitution, it is argued that the upper chamber should be given greater powers, and the Senate, rather than the president or prime minister, should be empowered to dissolve a provincial legislature or declare an emergency. A more extreme demand is that Balochis, Pashtuns, Sindhis, and Punjabis should have complete parity in both chambers of the National Assembly, as well as in the civil service and military recruitment, irrespective of population disparities. All factions among the minorities give priority to radically upgraded representation in the civil service and the armed forces, and all want constitutional safeguards to prevent the central government from arbitrarily removing an elected provincial government, as Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did in 1973. The issue of safeguards against arbitrary central intervention is likely to be a non-negotiable one for the minorities, since they are seeking not only the substance of autonomy but also the feeling of autonomy. The psychological factor explains their emphasis on the need for a linguistic re-demarcation of provincial boundaries, which would give majority control over a specific territory to each of the minorities, together with constitutional recognition of their respective ethnic identities. For many Punjabi and Muhajir moderates, minority demands for greater representation in the civil service, the armed forces, and the National Assembly are relatively easy to accept. Increased autonomy for the provinces and safeguards against arbitrary central intervention are more controversial issues, and even the moderates are greatly disturbed by the extent of minority demands for economic autonomy. It is in the economic sphere that a constitutional compromise is likely to be most

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elusive, regardless of Pakistan’s future political colouration. The issue of economic autonomy comes to a focus on two key minority demands: for larger royalties on natural resources and for limitations on the role of outside entrepreneurs and central government corporations in exploiting these resources. Compromise may be possible over the terms of royalty arrangements and over proposals for joint development ventures in which the provinces and the central government share the profit. But it is unlikely that any Islamabad regime would surrender the residual authority of the central government over the exploitation of natural resources in all parts of Pakistan. In the final analysis, the possibility of a constitutional compromise in Pakistan is inseparably linked with the overall course of the struggle for democratization. To the extent that the possibility for a stable constitutional compromise exists, such a compromise would presuppose a transition to progressively more civilianized representative government.

notes 1 Selig S. Harrison, ‘Why Musharraf Clings to Power’, International Herald Tribune, 10 May 2002. See also Ayesha Agha-Siidiqa, ‘Soldiers in Business’, in Jörn Brömmelhörster and Wolf-Christian Paes (eds.), The Military as an Economic Actor: Soldiers in Business (2003). (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). 2 Population Census Organization, Statistical Division, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Statistics, Government of Pakistan, Demographics Indicators in 1998. For 1961 data, covering the areas then constituting West Pakistan see Census of Pakistan: Population 1961 (Karachi: Ministry of Home and Kashmir Affairs, 1961), Statement 7-B, p. IV-46. See also, Main Finding of 1981 Population Census (Islamabad: Population Census Organization, Statistical Division, Government of Pakistan, 6 December 1983), p. 13, table 4(c). 3 For the best historical discussion of the Daptar Shair, together with textual extracts, see M. Longworth Dames (n.d.) Popular Poetry of the Baloches. London: Royal Asiatic Society. Vol. 1, pp. 2ff. See also, Mir Khuda Bakhsh Bijarani Marri Baloch (1974). Searchlight on Baloches and Balochistan, (Karachi: Royal Book Company), p. 58. 4 G. M. Syed, Pakistan Hani Tuttan Ghurqi [Time for Pakistan to Cease to Exist] (New Delhi: Lajpat Rai, Sindhu Nagar, 1987). 5 This includes the Sindhi-speaking Baloch, domiciled in Sindh for centuries and largely absorbed into a composite Sindhi bloc socially and politically. This figure becomes 9.85 million, that is, 11.77 per cent of the total population of Pakistan, cited earlier.

3

Pakistan’s Economy in Historical PErsPEctivE: GrowtH, PowEr and PovErty Akmal Hussain

introduction Pakistan’s economy has experienced relatively high GDP growth rates during the last four years after a protracted period of recession during the 1990s. The stability of the new political order may well depend on two aspects of economic performance in the years ahead: (a) The question of the sustainability of high GDP growth, and (b) the ability of economic growth to rapidly reduce poverty. The first question emerges from the recurrent fiscal pressures that constrain growth. The second relates to constraints that prevent the fruits of growth from substantially reaching the poor. Both constraints are rooted in the structure of the economy. This essay traces the emergence of an economic structure that on the one hand constrains the achievement of a high GDP growth on a sustainable basis, and on the other, constrains the poverty reduction capability of GDP growth. The emerging architecture of Pakistan’s economy is examined in terms of the relationship between the processes of institutional decay, deterioration in the structure of the economy and the process of poverty. The analysis focuses on the pattern of growth, fiscal deficits and poverty creation in the context of the politics and economic policy of various regimes from the 1950s to the present.1

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Pakistan began life as an independent State with a balance of payments problem (there was only rupees 200 million worth of foreign exchange in the central treasury2) as it faced the challenge of widespread poverty and inadequate infrastructure. The problem continues to persist today.

the ayub regime (1958–69) Weakening Institutional Structure, Economic Growth and Social Conflict The Constituent Assembly, in 1954, made the first attempt to give a Constitution to the nation. The failure of this attempt signifies the conflict between the greed for personal power of individual leaders and the imperatives of strengthening institutions; a conflict of interest that was to underlie the process of institutional decay in the next five decades. On 28 October 1954, the Constituent Assembly was scheduled to formally vote on the published draft of Pakistan’s first Constitution, a draft that had been approved in the previous session of the Constituent Assembly. On this fateful day, Governor General Ghulam Mohammad who felt that the draft constitution did not suit his power interests, ordered the police to bar members of the Constituent Assembly from entering their meeting room in Karachi.3 The passage of the first Constitution was thus aborted. Subsequently, a weakened form of parliamentary democracy was restructured from the remnants of the first Constituent Assembly until it was terminated by Ayub Khan’s coup d′état in 1958. The significance of this conflict between individuals and institutions was to resonate through Pakistan’s subsequent history. It was summed up in a prescient remark by a social scientist: ‘Once the first constitution is destroyed, it is doubtful that any succeeding one, no matter how successfully drafted, will ever be truly accepted. A tradition which makes it possible for new leaders to replace old documents with others which appear preferable to them not only denies constitutionalism but makes reference to it little more than a sham.’4

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The military coup d′état, which brought General Ayub Khan into power, established the dominance of the military and bureaucracy in Pakistan’s power structure. The associated political system concentrated power in the person of Ayub Khan and gave pre-eminence in the decision-making process to certain sections of the elite in the military-bureaucratic oligarchy. Through a series of political measures, dissent in the civil society was suppressed and the independence of the judiciary undermined. The economic strategy undertaken by this government, while it accelerated GDP growth, sharply accentuated interpersonal and interregional economic inequalities. Thus the foundations were laid for the rise of provincial and class tensions, which were to erupt in a conflict along the rich/poor divide in West Pakistan and a war of independence in East Pakistan. These conflicts led to the downfall of the government and the emergence of independent Bangladesh. Here we briefly examine the political and economic policies of the government that eroded Pakistan’s nascent democratic institutions and created explosive regional and class tensions by marginalizing the majority of the population from the political and economic processes. We indicate how an economic structure emerged in this period that was to lock Pakistan’s economy into a narrow and inefficient industrial base, slow export growth and increasing loan dependence in the next four decades. Political Repression and Popular Revolt The fatal flaw of the political system established in the period 1958–69 was that while its support was drawn from a relatively narrow social stratum through State patronage, it did not have an institutional mechanism for accommodating opposition.5 Power was concentrated in the hands of Ayub Khan who relied on the bureaucracy for running both economic and political affairs.6 The central and provincial legislatures were severely constrained by the narrow scope for parliamentary legislation. The president could also veto any legislation without the legislatures having the power to ‘over-ride’7 his veto.

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The system of Basic Democracy consisted of elected union councillors (called Basic Democrats) from 80,000 constituencies who formed a safe electoral college for electing the president, and they were provided access over State resources. The candidates for election to the position of Basic Democrats (BDs) were selected by the bureaucracy, which also disbursed State resources to elected BDs for a variety of social and economic functions at the local level. Thus, Basic Democrats provided the bureaucracy an institutional mechanism for a patron-client relationship with sections of the rural elite. While the legislatures were subject to presidential veto, dissent from individuals and institutions in civil society was suppressed by a series of administrative measures. For example, in April 1959, a Martial Law Ordinance was promulgated under which the government could take over any newspaper, which in the ‘opinion of the government’ contained material that threatened national security. The government then proceeded to take over the Pakistan Times and Imroze, two of the most influential daily newspapers, in English and Urdu, respectively. Subsequently, control over the press was institutionalized through the establishment of an official body called the National Press Trust. Individuals in academic institutions were prevented from publishing or even verbally expressing dissenting opinions in public. The judiciary, the last remaining institution which could provide a check over governmental authority, was also brought under administrative control. This was done by means of law reforms, which gave the government control over judicial appointments, and subjected judges to political scrutiny.8 In a culturally diverse society when the people of Bengal, Sindh and Balochistan were not significantly represented within State institutions, and political and cultural expression was suppressed, the tendency for assertion of linguistic or ethnic identities was intensified. This was reinforced by growing regional economic inequalities so that, by the late 1960s, political pressures on the State began to explode: in East Pakistan in the form of the assertion of Bengali nationalism and in West Pakistan in the form of mass street demonstrations against the government.

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Economic Growth, Inequality and the Roots of Financial Dependence Following the Korean boom in 1953, the government introduced a policy framework for directing the flow of the large profits of traders in jute and raw cotton into the manufacturing sector. This was done through a highly regulated policy framework for import substitution industrialization in the consumer goods sector. The policy combined tariff protection for manufacturers of consumer goods together with direct import controls on competing imports. It has been estimated that the average rate of effective protection was as high as 271 per cent in 1963–64, and fell to 125 per cent in 1968–69.9 This enabled the emerging industrial elite to make large profits from the domestic market without the competitive pressure to achieve higher levels of efficiency and an export capability. During the 1960s, import substitution industrial growth in the consumer goods sector was more systematically encouraged by the government. This was done by means of high protection rates to domestic manufacturers of consumer goods, cheap credit, and direct import controls on competing imports. At the same time, there was removal of import controls (established earlier in 1955) on industrial raw materials and machinery. In addition to various forms of protection, new incentives were offered for exports. These included the Bonus Voucher Scheme, tax rebates, tax exemptions and accelerated depreciation allowances to increase post-tax profits. The Bonus Voucher Scheme enabled exports of certain manufactured goods to receive in addition to the rupee revenue of their exports, bonus vouchers equivalent to a specified percentage of the foreign exchange earned. The vouchers could be sold in the market (to potential importers) for a price, usually 150 to 180 per cent above the face value. Thus, the exporter not only earned the rupee revenues from exports but also an additional premium through sale of the bonus vouchers. The Bonus Voucher Scheme essentially constituted a mechanism for enabling domestic manufacturers to earn large rupee profits on exports, which brought no gain to the economy in

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terms of foreign exchange. It has been estimated10 that during the 1960s, Pakistan’s main industries (when input costs and output values are both measured in dollar terms) were producing negative value added. It has been argued that the phenomenon of negative value added in industry was an important reason why during the 1960s, in spite of import substitution and large export volumes, foreign exchange shortages persisted.11 This set the ‘mould’ for Pakistan’s narrow export base (concentrated on the low value added end of textiles) and the debt problem that remains till today. For example, far from falling, the share of the traditional textile industry in total exports, in fact, increased from 30 per cent in the 1960s to 50 per cent in the 1990s. In a broader perspective, it can be argued that the government, through a range of protection measures and concessions in the 1960s, enabled the emerging industrial elite to make large rupee profits from domestic and export sales, without the market pressures to diversify into high value-added industries or to achieve international competitiveness. Thus, the experience of the 1960s is illustrative of the nature of both government and the economic elite. In the pursuit of securing its power base, the government by means of subsidies, manipulation of tariffs and the exchange rate mechanism, transferred rents to the industrial elite. This reinforced the tradition-bound propensity of the economic elite for risk aversion, lack of innovative dynamism and dependence on governmental patronage. The economic policies and processes during the 1960s illustrate the sociological propensity of the ruling elite to seek rents from government, which in turn reinforced its power through such patronage. These sociological propensities are rooted in the region’s history stretching back to the eighteenth century.12 These tendencies persisted in varying degrees for the next four decades. Yet, they were at an economic cost that became a growing burden on an increasingly fragile economy. For example, it has been estimated that even in 1990–91, by which time the rates of effective protection had been considerably reduced, the increase in the share of manufacturing attributable to protection amounted to 5 per cent of GNP.

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As we have seen, the government during the 1960s adopted a deliberate policy of concentrating national income in the hands of the upper income groups.13 The economic basis of this policy was the assumption that the rich save a larger proportion of their income and hence a higher national savings rate could be achieved with an unequal distribution of income (the target savings rate being 25 per cent of GDP). In practice, while the policy of distributing incomes in favour of the economic elite succeeded, the assumption that it would raise domestic savings over time failed to materialize. It has been estimated that 15 per cent of the resources annually generated in the rural sector were transferred to the urban industrialists and 63 to 85 per cent of these transferred resources went into increased urban consumption.14 Far from raising the domestic savings rate to 25 per cent, the actual savings rate never rose above 12 per cent.15 The failure of the economic elite to save out of their increased income resulted during the 1960s, in a sharp increase in the requirement of foreign aid. According to official figures, gross foreign aid inflows increased from US$ 373 million in 1950–55 to US$ 2,701 million in 1965–70. The rapid increase in foreign aid was accompanied by a change in its composition from grants to higher interest loans.16 Consequently, the debt-servicing burden rose dramatically. Debt servicing as a percentage of foreign exchange earnings was 4.2 per cent in 1960–61 and increased to 34.5 per cent by 1971–72. The magnitude of this figure did not fall for the next three decades and by the year 2000 it was even higher at 40 per cent. Given the policy of redistributing incomes in favour of the rich, it is not surprising that, by the end of the 1960s, a small group of families with interlocking directorates dominated industry, banking and insurance in Pakistan. In terms of value added, 46 per cent in the large-scale manufacturing sector originated in firms controlled by only 43 families. In banking, the degree of concentration was even greater than in industry. For example, seven family banks constituted 91.6 per cent of private domestic deposits and 84.4 per cent of earning assets. Furthermore, the State Bank compilation of balance sheets of listed companies indicates that the family banks

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tended to provide loans to industrial companies controlled by the same families.17 The insurance industry, although smaller in size than banking, also had a high degree of concentration of ownership. The 43 industrial families controlling 75.6 per cent of the assets of Pakistani insurance companies tended to favour industrial companies owned by the same group.18 The major industrial families and entrepreneurs were a fairly closely knit group. Not only did many of them have caste and kinship relations, but members of the families tended to sit on each other’s boards of directors. For example, about one-third of the seats on the boards of directors of companies controlled by the 43 families were occupied by members of families from within the 43. Not only were the 43 families dominating industry, insurance and banking, but they also had considerable power over government agencies sanctioning industrial projects. Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation (PICIC) was the agency responsible for sanctioning large-scale industrial projects. Out of the 21 directors of PICIC, seven were from the 43 leading industrial families and were actively involved in the public sector financial institutions that directly affected their private economic interests. During the process of rapid economic growth of the 1960s, while an exclusive and highly monopolistic class was amassing wealth, the majority of Pakistan’s population was suffering an absolute decline in its living standards. For example, the per capita consumption of food grain of the poorest 60 per cent of Pakistan’s urban population declined from an index of 100 in 1963–64 to 96.1 in 1969–70. The decline was even greater over the same period in the case of the poorest 60 per cent of the rural population. In their case, per capita consumption of food grain declined from an index of 100 in 1963–64 to only 91 in 1969–70.19 There was an even larger decline in the real wages in the industry: In the decade and a half ending in 1967, real wages in the industry declined by 25 per cent.20 According to one estimate, in 1971–72, poverty in the rural sector was so acute that 82 per cent of rural households could not afford to provide even 2,100 calories per day per family member.21

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In an economy where there were significant differences in the infrastructure facilities available in the different provinces, there was a tendency for investment based on private profitability to be concentrated in the relatively developed regions. Consequently, in Pakistan, regional disparities have widened over time. The Punjab and the Sindh provinces, which had relatively more developed infrastructure, attracted a larger proportion of industrial investment than the other provinces. In Sindh, however, the growth in income was mainly in Karachi and Hyderabad. Thus, economic disparities widened not only between East and West Pakistan, but also between the provinces within West Pakistan. During the 1960s, the factor which accelerated the growth of regional income disparities within what is Pakistan today was the differentialimpactofagriculturalgrowthassociatedwiththeso-called ‘Green Revolution’. Since the yield increase associated with the adoption of high-yield varieties of food grain required irrigation, and since Punjab and Sindh had a relatively larger proportion of their area under irrigation, they experienced much faster growth in their incomes, compared to Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province.22 In a situation where each of the provinces of Pakistan had a distinct culture and language, the systematic growth of regional disparities created acute political tensions. Addressing these tensions required a genuinely federal democratic structure with decentralization of political power at the provincial level.23 Only such a polity and large federal expenditures for the development of the underdeveloped regions could ensure the unity of the country. In the absence of such a polity, the growing economic disparities between provinces created explosive political situations. The failure to conduct an effective land reform in Pakistan has resulted in a continued concentration of landownership in the hands of a few big landlords. Thus, in 1972, 30 per cent of total farm area was owned by large landowners (owning 150 acres and above). The overall picture of Pakistan’s agrarian structure has been that these large landowners have rented out most of their land to small- and medium-sized tenants (i.e., tenants operating below 25 acres).

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Given this agrarian24 structure, when the ‘Green Revolution’ technology became available in the late 1960s, the larger landowners found it profitable to resume some of their rented-out land for self-cultivation. These large farms were managed using hired labour and capital investment. Consequently, there was a growing economic polarization of rural society. While the landlords’ incomes increased, those of the poor peasantry declined relatively, as they faced a reduction in their operated farm area and, in many cases, growing landlessness.25 For example, in the case of farms in the 150 acres and above category, the increase in the farm area during the period 1960–1978, constituted half their total farm area in 1978. In terms of the source of increase, 65 per cent of the increase in area of large farms came through resumption of formerly rented-out land. That this resumption was accompanied by growing landlessness of the poor peasantry is indicated by the fact that in the period 1960–1973 about 0.8 million tenants became landless wage labourers. Of the total rural wage labourers in Pakistan in 1973, as many as 43 per cent had entered this category as a result of the poor peasantry increasingly becoming landless workers.26 The polarization of rural society, the landlessness and dependence of the poor peasantry were associated with increased mediation of agricultural inputs and outputs in the rural markets by large landlords. In the pre–Green Revolution period, the poor tenant relied on the landlord simply for the use of the land but used the government’s canal water, his own seeds and animal manure. In the post–Green Revolution period, however, since the political and social power of the landlord remained intact, the peasant began to rely on the landlord for the purchase of inputs. (e.g., HYV seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, the landlord’s tube-well water, for a seasonally flexible supply of irrigation, and credit). Thus, in many (though not all) cases, the dependence of the poor peasant intensified with the commercialization of agriculture, in the sense that now his very re-constitution of the production cycle annually depended on the intercession of the landlord. At the same time, due to the reduction in his operated area following land resumption, the tenant was obliged to complement his income by working as a

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part-time wage labourer at a wage rate below the market rate in deference to the landlord’s power. (Conversely, the landlord’s management of the owner-cultivated section of his land was facilitated through this tied source of labour supply). This phenomenon, which persists till today,27 was first analysed in 1980.28 Finally, the peasant’s income was further constricted as he was obliged to sell a large part of his output at harvest time when prices were low (in order to pay back loans for input purchase). Near the end of the year, when he ran out of grain, he had to purchase his remaining consumption requirements at high prices from the market.29 Thus, the ‘commercialization of agriculture’ in a situation where landlords and the local power structure controlled markets for inputs and outputs, brought new mechanisms for the reproduction of rural poverty, even though overall agricultural growth accelerated. As we will see, the high rate of agricultural growth during the Ayub regime could not be sustained in subsequent years. Yet, the mechanisms of reproducing rural poverty that had emerged in this period, persisted over the next four decades.

the Bhutto regime (1973–77) Power and Patronage The Ayub regime had instituted policies, which resulted in a concentration of incomes in the hands of a nascent industrial elite while real wages declined and poverty increased. In the resultant social tensions, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto emerged as a champion of the poor to lead a mass movement for overthrowing the Ayub government. Support for the newly formed Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by Bhutto came not only from workers and peasants but also from elements of the urban middle classes seeking reform. Conservative landlords also gravitated to the PPP, because of their antagonism to an industrial elite that was appropriating a growing share of economic resources. The radical stratum of the middle class was dominant in the Pakistan People’s Party until 1972. This was evident from the

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manifesto which was anti-feudal and against monopoly capitalists. The same stratum played a key role in devising a propaganda campaign that aimed to present the manifesto as ‘revolutionary’, thereby mobilizing the support of the workers and peasants. The radical stratum was drawn from diverse social origins and its members, therefore, related with the party leader as separate factions. The inability of these different radical factions to constitute themselves into a united bloc within the PPP facilitated the purges that came later. By 1972, the balance of social forces within the PPP began to shift in favour of the landlord groups. This shift was rooted in the imperatives of mobilizing popular forces on the one hand and the practice of politics within the traditional power structure on the other. In the pre-election period, the dominance of the urban middle class and its radical rhetoric was necessary if the PPP was to get a mass base for its election victory. After the election, the proclivity of the top party leadership to contain demands for radical change within the existing power structure combined with the dominance of the landed elite within the party and led to a purge of radical elements from the PPP. Consequently, there was an institutional rupture between the PPP and its mass base amongst the workers and peasants. This set the stage for economic measures that were socialist in form, while actually serving to strengthen the landed elite and widening the base for State patronage. One of the most important initiatives of the PPP government was the nationalization of 43 large industrial units in the capital and intermediate goods sectors such as cement, fertilizers, oil refining, engineering and chemicals in 1972. Just three years later, the government nationalized the cooking-oil industry and then flour-milling, cotton-ginning and rice-husking mills. While the first set of nationalizations impacted the ‘monopoly capitalists’, the second set of nationalizations in 1976, by contrast, hit the medium-and small-sized entrepreneurs. Therefore, nationalization in this regime cannot be seen in terms of State intervention for greater equity. Rather, the rapid increase in the size of the public sector served to widen the resource base of the regime for the practice of the traditional form of power

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through State patronage. This involved the State intervening to redistribute resources arbitrarily to those who had access to its patronage.30 Investment, Growth and the Budget Deficit Let us now briefly indicate the implications of the economic measures in this period on investment, growth and the budget deficit. Private investment as a percentage of GDP in the Bhutto period (1973–74 to 1977–78) declined sharply to 4.8 per cent compared to 8.2 per cent in the preceding period 1960–61 to 1972–73. The nationalization of heavy industries shook the confidence of the private sector and was a factor in the declining investment. The trend may have been reinforced by a second set of measures during this period. These included a devaluation of the exchange rate, which placed large-and small-scale industry at par with respect to the rupee cost of imported inputs (i.e., the indirect subsidy provided to large-scale manufacturing industry through an overvalued exchange rate was withdrawn). At the same time, direct subsidies to manufacturing units were significantly cut down, import duties on finished goods were reduced and anti-monopoly measures along with price controls were instituted. It is not surprising that domestic manufacturers who had been bred on government support, responded by further reducing investment. It may be pertinent to point out here that the decline in private sector manufacturing as a percentage of the GDP had already begun eight years before the Bhutto period—after the 1965 war.31 So, while the nationalization and subsequent economic measures cannot be said to have caused the decline in private investment, they certainly intensified it. The decline in private sector investment in the post-1965 period as a whole, (as opposed to its sharp deceleration during the nationalization phase), can be attributed32 to three underlying factors: (a) Foreign capital inflows fell sharply after the 1965 war; (b) the manufacturing sector, in a situation of declining domestic demand, was unable to meet the challenge of exports due to high production costs in traditional industries; and (c) entrepreneurs did not diversify into non-traditional industries

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where there was considerable growth potential. Thus, the declining trend in private sector manufacturing investment in the post-1965 period, a trend that persisted right into the 1990s, can be said to be rooted in certain sociological features that characterized most of Pakistan’s entrepreneurial elite: (a) Its reliance on foreign savings rather than its own thrift; (b) its dependence on State patronage and subsidies of various kinds; and (c) its tradition-bound nature, risk avoidance, and in many cases, lack of innovativeness for breaking new ground. We find that unlike manufacturing investment, the decline in the total private sector investment as a percentage of the GDP was more than compensated by an increase in the total public sector investment. Thus, the overall investment/GDP ratio during the Bhutto period reached 15.5 per cent, which was slightly higher than in the preceding period—15.28 per cent (1960–1973). Yet, in spite of an increase in the total investment/GDP ratio, the growth rate of GDP declined compared to the preceding period — 4.99 per cent in 1973–78 as against 6.26 per cent in the 1960–1973 period. This is indicative of a decline in the productivity of investment (i.e., an increase in the incremental capital output ratio). The question is what caused the decline in the capacity of investment to generate growth? The answer lies in the fact that not only was most of the investment in the period emanating from the public sector, but that a large proportion of this investment was going into unproductive spheres: defense and public administration were the fastest growing sectors of the economy (11.4 per cent) while the commodity-producing sector was growing at only 2.21 per cent during the period. Even in the productive sector, the lion’s share of the public investment went into the Steel Mill project beginning in 1973. The project, using an obsolete Soviet design, involved a technology that was both capital intensive and inefficient. Consequently, the tendency of declining productivity of investment was exacerbated. Even in the existing manufacturing industries in the public sector while some industries showed good profits to start with, there was a sharp decline in the rates of return on investment, due to a combination of poor management of existing units and improper location of new units on political grounds.33 Thus, the

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lowering of GDP growth, in spite of an increase in investment in the Bhutto period, occurred because of two sets of factors: (a) Concentration of public sector investment in the unproductive sectors of defense and administration, and (b) economically inefficient investment decisions in the public sector industries based on political considerations, with respect to technology choice, geographic location, and production management. Let us now briefly discuss the implications of the political and economic measures of the government during this period for the budget. The problem of the government’s dependence on financial borrowing, as we have indicated, started in the Ayub period, when the obligation of maintaining a large military and bureaucratic apparatus combined with the imperatives of providing huge subsidies to both agriculture and industry. For agriculture, these came in the form of subsidized inputs (water, fertilizer, pesticides) as part of the elite farmer strategy; for industry, in terms of explicit and implicit subsidies such as an over-valued exchange rate, subsidized credit and tax incentives to an industrial sector that was inefficient and lacked export competitiveness. In the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto period, budget deficits widened further as expenditures on defense and administration increased sharply. Higher defense expenditures were part of the policy of refurbishing the defense establishment. Large expenditures on government administration arose mainly out of the decision to build new paramilitary institutions such as the Federal Security Force.34 The bureaucracy was also enlarged and restructured through the policy of ‘lateral entry’, which enabled loyalists outside the civil services cadre to be appointed at the upper and middle echelons. The attempt to build a demesne of patronage within the State apparatus had huge financial consequences. For example, defense expenditure as a percentage of GDP increased from 2.7 per cent in 1965 to 6.7 per cent in 1974–75. Similarly, general administration as a percentage of GDP increased from 1.1 per cent in 1964–65 to as much as 1.8 per cent in 1974–75.35 Apart from the increased expenditures on defense and administration, the budget was additionally burdened by the losses

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of the public sector industries. The deficits in these industries were generated by their poor performance on the one hand and the pricing policy on the other. Nationalized units, under official pressure to suppress price increases in spite of rising costs, were recovering not much more than their operating costs. Consequently, internally generated funds could finance only 7 per cent36 of the investment undertaken, thereby necessitating heavy borrowing from the government. As government expenditures increased, the ability to finance them from tax revenue was constrained by two factors: (a) The slowdown in the GDP growth, and (b) the government’s inability to improve the coverage of direct taxation. As a consequence, the deficit increased rapidly. The government attempted to control the rising budget deficit by reducing subsidies on consumption goods and increasing indirect taxation. However, even these measures failed to reduce the budget deficit in the face of rising current expenditures. As a result, monetary expansion was resorted to, which resulted in accelerated inflation. The financial constraint following the large non-development expenditures severely restricted the funds available for development and, hence, enfeebled the two initiatives that were designed to benefit the poor—the National Development Volunteer Programme (NDVP) and the Peoples Work Programme. The former aimed at providing employment to the educated unemployed and the latter at generating employment for the rural poor through labour-intensive projects. Both programmes were marginalized due to budgetary constraints.37 The social consequences of these financial measures were to have a profound impact on the political strength of the Bhutto regime. The withdrawal of subsidies on consumption goods together with higher inflation rates squeezed the real income of the middle and lower middle classes. This served to accentuate the resentment that had followed the nationalization of the small-and medium-sized food processing units in 1976. Ironically, these very urban petit bourgeois elements had, in 1968–69, fuelled the anti-Ayub agitation that had catapulted Bhutto into power. They now joined the street demonstrations in 1977 that led to his downfall.

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the Zia regime (1977–1989) The Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism Each regime that came into power sought to legitimize itself through an explicit ideology. While the Ayub regime propounded the philosophy of modernization and economic development, the Z. A. Bhutto regime donned the mantle of redeeming the poor through socialism. Zia-ul-Haq, having come into power through a coup d'état, sought to institutionalize military rule through the garb of a coercive and obscurantist version of Islamic ideology. In the absence of popular legitimacy, the Zia regime used terror as a conscious policy of the government.38 In pursuit of this policy, the democratic Constitution of 1973 was set aside and draconian measures of military courts, arbitrary arrests, amputation of hands and public lashings were introduced. Pakistan’s society, by and large, was historically characterized by cultural diversity, democratic aspirations and a religious perspective rooted in tolerance and humanism. This was one of the reasons why the founding father, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, conceived of Pakistan’s polity as democratic and pluralistic with religious belief to be a matter concerning the individual rather than the State.39 You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State … We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State … Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.

In attempting to restructure such a State and society into a theocracy, the government undertook two kinds of initiatives. First were measures designed to subordinate to executive authority institutions of State and civil society, such as the judiciary and the press, which, if allowed to function independently, could check governmental power. In the case of the judiciary, its

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essential powers to scrutinize the legality of martial law or the orders of military courts were abolished. The judicial protection against arbitrary detention of a citizen embodied in the right to habeas corpus was eliminated for the first time in Pakistan. In the case of the press, an attempt was made to subordinate it to State authority.40 In the pursuit of this policy, press control measures were introduced. The government constituted committees at the district level to ensure that articles repugnant to the ideology of Pakistan were not published. Those members of the press who had refused to acquiesce faced State repression. A number of newspapers were banned and journalists were arrested and given flogging sentences by military courts. The second set of measures towards a theocratic State sought to inculcate obscurantist views and induced a narrowing of the human mind. It involved a suspension of the sensibility of love and reason underlying the religious tradition signified in Pakistan’s folk culture.41 Advocacy for a theocratic social order42 was conducted through the State-controlled television and press.43 Individual and group behaviour in society were sought to be controlled through the enforcement of coercive measures such as the amputation of wrists and ankles for theft, stoning to death for adultery and 80 lashes for drinking alcohol. Apart from this, in 1984, a law was passed to officially give women an inferior status compared to men.44 In August 1984, the government began a national campaign that involved the direct physical intervention of the State into the personal life of individuals. For example, the Nizam-e-Salat campaign was launched through the appointment of 100,000 ‘prayer wardens’ for rural and urban localities. The task of these State functionaries was to monitor the religious activities of individuals and to seek their compliance in religious practices. The institutional roots of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ were laid when government funds were provided for establishing mosque schools (madrasas) in small towns and rural areas. This led to the rapid growth of militant religious organizations. This social process, which later came to be known as Islamic Fundamentalism, was catalysed by the Afghan War. As measures were undertaken to start

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building a theocratic State, and society was brutalized, the isolation of the government from the people as a whole was matched by increased external dependence. Political, economic and military support was sought from the US by offering to play the role of a frontline State in the Afghan guerrilla war against the occupying Soviet army. Accordingly, Pakistan obtained a package of US$ 3.2 billion in financial loans and relatively sophisticated military hardware. Moreover, with support from the US, Pakistan was able to get additional fiscal space by getting its foreign debt rescheduled, and increased private foreign capital inflows. These official and private capital inflows played an important role in stimulating macro-economic growth in this period. They also helped establish a political constituency both within the institutions of the State and in the conservative, urban petit bourgeoisie, for a theocratic form of military dictatorship. As the government under President Zia-ul-Haq engaged in a proxy war, some of the militant religious groups together with their associated madrasas were provided with official funds, training and weapons to conduct guerrilla operations in Afghanistan. While they helped fight the war in Afghanistan, the religious militant groups were able to enlarge the political space within Pakistan’s society, as well as in its intelligence and security apparatus. Since the late 1970s, with the steady inflow of Afghan refugees into Pakistan and its use as a conduit for arms for the Afghan War, two trends emerged to fuel the crisis of civil society: (a) A large proportion of the weapons meant for the Afghan guerrillas filtered into the illegal arms market in Pakistan; and (b) there was rapid growth of the heroin trade.45 The large illegalarms market and the burgeoning heroin trade injected both weapons and syndicate organizations into the social life of major urban centres. At the same time, the frequent terrorist bombings in the NWFP together with a weakening of State authority in parts of rural Sindh, undermined the confidence of citizens in the ability of the State to provide security of life and property. Increasing numbers of the underprivileged sections of society began to seek security in various proximate identities, whether ethnic, sectarian, biraderi (brotherhood) or linguistic groups.46

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From 1987 onwards, sectarian violence mushroomed in the Punjab province (which till then had been relatively peaceful) and later spread across the country. The phenomenon of largescale sectarian violence conducted by well-armed and trained cadres was closely associated with the rapid growth of Deeni Madrasas (‘religious’ schools). While historically such schools merely imparted religious knowledge, in the late 1980s, a new kind of Deeni Madrasa emerged, which engaged in systematic indoctrination in a narrow sectarian identity, and inculcated hatred and violence against other sects. In 1998, there were 3,393 Deeni Madrasas in the Punjab alone and 67 per cent had emerged during the Zia regime and after. In Punjab, the number of Pakistani students in these madrasas were 306,500. Between 1979 and 1994, many of the madrasas were receiving financial grants from Zakat (Islamic religious tax) funds. According to an official report of the police department, a number of madrasas were merely providing religious education. Yet, as many as 42 per cent of them were actively promoting sectarian violence through a well-conceived indoctrination process.47 The students, predominantly from poor families, were given free food and lodging during their term at the madrasas. As poverty increased in the 1990s, the burgeoning madrasas provided a growing number of unemployed and impoverished youths with the security of food, shelter and an emotionally charged identity; a personality that felt fulfilled through violence against the other. As the new kind of sectarian madrasas emerged and grew during the Zia regime so did sectarian violence. Thus, violence against the other became both the expression and the emblem of the narrowed identity. The mobilization of these narrow identities involved a psychic disconnection from the wellsprings of universal human brotherhood within the Islamic tradition. Its liberating elements of rationality and love were replaced in the narrowed psyche, by obscurantism and hatred. Violence against the ‘other’ became an emblem of membership within these identities. Thus, civil society, divorced from its universal human values, began to lose its cohesion and stability.

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Economic Growth and the Prelude to Recession The rapidly growing debt-servicing burden together with a slowdown of GDP growth and government revenues that had occurred at the end of the Bhutto period would have placed crippling fiscal and political pressures on the Zia regime but for two factors: (a) The generous financial support received from the West, and (b) the acceleration in the inflow of remittances from the Middle East, which increased from US$ 0.5 billion in 1978 to US$ 3.2 billion in 1984. These remittances not only eased balance of payments pressures, but also potential political pressures, directly benefiting about 10 million people, predominantly in the lower middle class and working class strata.48 As it was, the easing of budgetary pressures together with good harvests and the construction and consumption booms associated with Middle East remittances helped stimulate economic growth. The GDP growth increased from about 5 per cent during the Z. A. Bhutto period (1973–77) to 6.6 per cent during the Zia period (1978–88). The data show that this acceleration in the GDP growth was induced to some extent by increased investment: The gross fixed capital formation as a percentage of the GDP increased from 15.5 per cent in the Bhutto period to 16.8 per cent in the Zia period. There was a strategic shift from the ‘socialist’ policies of nationalization, and the large public sector in the Bhutto period, to denationalization and a greater role assigned to the private sector in the growth process. In this context, the Zia regime offered a number of incentives to the private sector such as low interest credit, duty-free imports of selected capital goods, tax holidays and accelerated depreciation allowances. These inducements, combined with high aggregate demand associated with consumption expenditures from Middle East remittances, and increased investment in housing, created a favourable climate for new investment. Private sector gross fixed investment increased from 7.1 per cent of the GDP in the Bhutto period to 9.2 per cent under the Zia regime. The public sector gross fixed capital formation as a percentage of the GDP, however, declined slightly from 10.7 per cent in the preceding period to 9.7 per cent

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in the Zia period. The data on the manufacturing sector is also consistent with these findings and show a substantial acceleration in the growth of overall manufacturing from 5.5 per cent in the 1970s to 8.21 per cent in the 1980s. In terms of the composition of investment in the large-scale manufacturing sector, there appears to be a significant acceleration in the investment in the intermediate and capital growth sectors, whose percentage share in the total manufacturing increased from about 43 per cent at the end of the Bhutto period to about 50 per cent in the mid-1980s. (The share fell again in the late 1980s and 1990s). This is consistent with the boom in the construction sector and the secondary multiplier effects in the intermediate and capital goods sectors. Although the GDP growth rate during the Zia period did increase, yet this higher growth rate could not be expected to be maintained because of continued poor performance of three strategic factors that sustain growth over time: (a) The domestic savings rate continued to remain below 10 per cent compared to a required rate of over 20 per cent; (b) exports as a percentage of GDP continued to remain below 10 per cent and did not register any substantial increase; and (c) inadequate investment in social and economic infrastructure. As defense and debt-servicing expenditure increased, the Annual Development Programme (ADP) through which much of the infrastructure projects were funded began to get constricted. The ADP expenditure as a percentage of GDP fell from an average of 7.4 per cent in the Z. A. Bhutto period, to 6.2 per cent in the Zia period. It is not surprising that when the cushion of foreign loans and debt relief was withdrawn at the end of the Afghan War, the underlying structural constraints to GDP growth began to manifest themselves: Debt-servicing pressures resulting from the low savings rates, high borrowings and balance of payments deficits related with low export growth and poor infrastructure, combined to pull down the GDP growth into a protracted economic recession in the 1990s. Similarly, the seeds of social conflict sown with the breeding of religious militant groups began to erupt and feed off the growing poverty and unemployment.

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Politicians, Power and Pelf (1989–1999): the deepening crisis Institutions Undermined: The Pursuit of Power At the end of the Zia regime a new triumvirate of power emerged that came to be known as the ‘Troika’. This was, essentially, an informal arrangement of power sharing between the president, the prime minister and the army chief (chief of army staff) in the actual as opposed to formal conduct of governance. A fundamental feature of the ‘Troika’ was that precisely because the power-sharing arrangement was informal, the contention for increasing the relative share of power by each protagonist was inherent to its functioning. Without precisely specified domains of decision making or even the confidence that each protagonist would pursue a shared perception of ‘national interest’, periodic breakdown of the arrangement amongst a given set of members was a predictable feature. This is in fact what happened, so that between 1988 and 1999, an elected prime minister was dismissed on four occasions, three presidents were changed and one chief of army staff (General Jehangir Karamet) was pressurized into resignation.49 A second army chief (General Pervez Musharraf) faced dismissal. This was the final act in the dramatic conflict within the informal ‘Troika’, that brought the curtain down on the formal democratic structure itself — General Musharraf took over power through a coup d′état on 12 October 1999. The government headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in its second term had come to power with a two-third majority in the National Assembly. This parliamentary strength could have been used to deepen democracy by reviving the economy, establishing transparent governance, bringing extremist militant groups within the law, and ensuring the independence of the judiciary.50 Instead, an attempt was made to enhance the relative power position of the prime minister within the structure of State institutions. A systematic attempt was made to undermine and control institutions such as the presidency, the Parliament, the judiciary,

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the press and, in the end, the army, in order to lay the basis of authoritarian power within the democratic structure. An attempt was made not only to weaken the office of the president and relegate it to a purely ceremonial role but also to control members of the ruling party in parliament. This was done by passing the constitutional amendments 13 and 14. Under the thirteenth Amendment, the dreaded Article 58-2 (b) was withdrawn. (This article of the Constitution gave the president the powers to dismiss the government and hold fresh elections in case of extreme misgovernance). Under the fourteenth Amendment, the ability of elected members of the majority party to vote on or even speak against the official position of the majority party in Parliament, on any legislative issue, was also withdrawn. Conflict between the government and the judiciary soon followed. Tensions between these two institutions began when the government asserted its claim to judicial appointments, a claim that was resisted by the chief justice of the Supreme Court on grounds of the independence of the judiciary.51 A political campaign against the judiciary was launched during which disparaging remarks were made against it, both inside and outside the Parliament. Subsequently, the Supreme Court decided to hear a writ petition for contempt of court against the prime minister and some of his associates, which, if it had been decided against the prime minister, could have resulted in his disqualification. According to independent observers, an attempt was then made to ‘engineer a division within the apex court.’52 In spite of the consequent division and conflict amongst judges of the Supreme Court, the chief justice resolutely went ahead with the trial of the prime minister. On the day fixed by the Supreme Court for the hearing, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) transported thousands of its supporters to stage a protest against the chief justice. The charged mob53 broke the gate of the Supreme Court building and ransacked it, forcing the Supreme Court Judges to abandon the trial and retire to their chambers. The unprecedented mob attack on the Supreme Court by a ruling political party brought in its wake a major constitutional

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crisis. President Leghari accused the prime minister of inciting the attack and warned that ‘he would not allow the law of the jungle to prevail.’54 The prime minister retaliated by moving an impeachment notice against the president in the Parliament and also sending him a summary advising him to sack the chief justice. The president was now faced with the choice of getting impeached or signing what he regarded as an illegal order against the chief justice. In a situation where the army appeared unwilling to step in to resolve the crisis, the president decided to resign.55 Thus, the powers that were earlier distributed between the chief justice, the president and the prime minister, were now concentrated in the hands of the prime minister. After the judiciary, the next target became the press. The government began to harass journalists who had exposed a series of corruption scandals.56 This harassment reached a dramatic stage when the Jang Group of newspapers (one of the largest in the country), which had been critical of the prime minister, was targeted by his regime. The publisher of the newspaper was specifically pressurized to dismiss nine journalists from its staff, whom the government found ‘unacceptable.’57 The press in Pakistan received another shock when the regime abducted the editor of an influential weekly newspaper, the The Friday Times, in a midnight raid on his home.58 After enhancing the power of the prime minister relative to some of the other institutions, focus now shifted to the army. The Chief of Army Staff, General Jehangir Karamet, voiced the army’s concern at the deteriorating economic, political and law and order situation in a letter to the prime minister. As the contention for power within the State structure continued, the underlying crisis worsened. On 5 October 1998, in his annual address at the Pakistan Navy War College in Lahore, General Karamet expressed his worries publicly as a prelude to stepping down rather than initiating military intervention. He argued that Pakistan could not afford ‘the destabilizing effects of polarization, vendettas and insecurity-driven expedient policies.’59 The prime minister responded by indicating his intent to order premature retirement of the army chief. General Karamet chose to leave gracefully and tendered his resignation.60

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Not long after the appointment of the new COAS General Musharraf, tensions between the prime minister and the army intensified. In August 1999, matters came to a head when an attempt was made to appoint a new army chief without consulting with the existing one. Appointment orders were given to a new army chief (General Zia-ur-Rehman) while the existing one (Musharraf) was in Colombo on an official trip. Action was initiated, which turned out to be unsuccessful, to prevent the PIA aircraft carrying General Musharraf from landing in Karachi. This brought to a dramatic head, the confrontation between the prime minister and the army. The army swiftly launched a coup d′état that brought the military government of General Pervez Musharraf into power. It is perhaps indicative of the gravity of the national crisis that there was no significant public protest at the overthrow of the popularly elected government. The supreme court in its validation of the military takeover referred to the crisis explicitly: ‘On 12 October 1999 a situation arose for which the constitution provided no solution and the intervention of the Armed Forces through an extra constitutional measure became inevitable which is hereby validated….’61 In establishing the grounds of its verdict, there were three key elements in the supreme court judgment: (1) ‘…all the institutions of the State were being systematically destroyed and the economy was in a state of collapse due to the self serving policies of the previous government….’62 (2) ‘…a situation had arisen where the democratic institutions were not functioning in accordance with the provisions of the constitution…’ and ‘…there was no real democracy because the country was by and large under one man rule.’63 (3) ‘…An attempt was made to politicize the Army, destabilize it and create dissension within its ranks, and where the judiciary was ridiculed….’64

Governance during the late 1990s intensified to a critical level the three key elements of the crisis that threatened the State: (a) A collapsing economy; (b) the threat to the life and

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property of citizens resulting from rampant crime, and the emergence of armed militant groups of religious extremists; and (c) the erosion of many of the institutions of democratic and effective governance. Given the dynamics of Pakistan’s power structure and the greater strength of the military relative to other institutions within it, when a democratic regime fails to deliver on these issues, power would be expected to flow to the military.65 In spite of the adverse international environment for a coup d′état, in October 1999, power did flow to the military when the crisis of the State had reached a critical level and the democratic government was seen to be exacerbating rather than resolving the crisis. Public Office for Private Wealth: The Macro Economics of Corruption Whatever the institutional weaknesses in the democratic edifice of 1989, it was brought down by the individualized pursuit of power and the use of public office for private gain. The establishment of honest and competent governance and the strengthening of institutions could have preserved democracy. Essentially, the relative strength of the prime minister within the power structure depended on demonstrating that the government was turning the country around from its descent into economic collapse, religious extremism and the break down of law and order. By delivering on these counts, it could have deepened democracy by winning greater legitimacy and space to the undoubtedly constrained democratic structure. As it was, the failure to deepen democracy undermined even its existing fragile form. During mid-1990s, large amounts of funds were siphoned off from public sector banks, insurance companies and investment institutions such as the National Investment Trust (NIT) and the Investment Corporation of Pakistan (ICP). The evidence was found in the non-performing loans, which the State-controlled financial institutions were forced to give to friends of the regime, in most cases without collateral.66 During this period, the NIT and ICP were forced to lend to patently unviable projects which were then quickly liquidated. The purpose of such lending

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apparently was not to initiate projects but to transfer State resources into private hands. The case of an oil refinery in Karachi and a cement plant in Chakwal have been quoted as examples of unfeasible projects funded by the NIT on political grounds and both projects declared bankruptcy.67 Burki and Pasha have estimated that the overall cost to the country of corruption at the highest level of government, was 20 to 25 per cent of the GDP in 1996–97, or approximately US$ 15 billion.68 The estimate includes the losses incurred due to corruption in public sector corporations such as the Pakistan International Airlines, Sui Northern Gas, Pakistan State Oil, Pakistan Steel, Heavy Mechanical Complex, the Water and Power Development Authority, and the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation. The losses of these public sector corporations had to be borne by the government and constituted a significant element in the growing budget deficits. Financing the budget deficits through the banking sector meant reducing the credit available for genuine private sector investment. Occurring at a time when GDP growth had already begun to fall below its historical trend rate, widespread governmental corruption may have been a significant factor in intensifying the slowdown in investment, increasing the economic burden on the poor and perpetuating the inadequacy of basic services during this period. The World Bank in its recent literature has focused on the link between good governance and greater and more equitable development.69 Conversely, it can be argued that widespread corruption in Pakistan during the 1990s adversely affected investment and growth in at least three ways: (1) The uncertainty and lack of transparency in government policy and the loss of time and money associated with governmental corruption would create an unfavourable environment for private sector investment. (2) Widespread corruption implied that following an investment decision, the investor would have had to pay bribes at various stages of project approval and implementation thereby raising project cost. A significant proportion of private sector savings directed at new projects would flow to corrupt government officials rather than into productive investment. The consequent decline

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in the overall productivity of capital in the economy would lead to lower GDP growth for given levels of investment. Evidence shows that such a decline in the productivity of capital did indeed occur in the 1990s. Recent estimates show that in Pakistan’s manufacturing sector, the productivity of capital has been declining since 1992–93.70 (3) Since banks and investment finance institutions were being forced to lend on political grounds and there were substantial defaults as a result, it is clear that a significant proportion of banking capital was being transferred as rents to corrupt individuals. This adversely affected private investment in two ways: (a) There was lesser credit available for investment, and (b) due to the increased ‘transactions cost’ of banks following defaults, the interest rate for private investors would increase. Corruption during the 1990s may have not only slowed down investment and growth but also increased inequality and the economic burden on the lower income groups. This happened in three ways: First, increased corruption and mismanagement in government meant that for given levels of development expenditure, there were fewer and poorer quality of public goods and services. This clearly manifested in the deterioration of the irrigation system with lesser water available at the farm gate,71 as well as in reduced availability and quality of health, education and transport services provided by the government. Secondly, the total development expenditure (as a percentage of GDP) itself fell sharply during the 1990s, partly due to budgetary constraints induced by low revenues. The problem of the narrow tax base was accentuated by the massive leakage in the tax-collection system due to corruption. According to one estimate, this leakage amounted to 3 per cent of the GDP, about twice the level 10 years earlier.72 The consequent low revenues, combined with slower GDP growth and high levels of government’s current expenditure, led to unsustainably high levels of budget deficits. Finally, since the government was unable to plug the leakage in the tax-collection system, or reduce non-development expenditure, it had to resort to increased indirect taxation to deal with the fiscal crisis. Evidence on the incidence of taxation during the late 1980s and early 1990s shows that the tax burden as a percentage

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of income was highest at 6.8 per cent for the lowest income group (less than Rs 700 per month) and lowest at minus 4.3 per cent for the highest income group (over Rs 4,500 per month).73 Thus, the burden of governmental mismanagement and corruption was passed on to the poorest sections of society.74 Economic Growth, Employment and Poverty in the 1990s During the 1990s, political instability, historically unprecedented corruption in governance, and the worsening law and order situation perhaps had a significant adverse effect on private investment and GDP growth. Yet, these factors merely accentuated the tendency for declining growth that was rooted in structural factors, which were manifest even in the 1980s. The failure of successive governments in this period to address the deteriorating infrastructure and the emerging financial crisis further exacerbated the unfavourable environment for investment. The total investment (as a percentage of GDP) declined from 17.9 per cent in the period 1988–93 to 16.3 per cent in the period 1993–98. The decline in the overall investment was due to the fact that while the private sector investment did not increase (it remained around 9 per cent), the public sector investment declined sharply from 8.7 per cent at the end of the 1980s to 5.3 per cent at the end of the 1990s. To an extent, the decline in public sector investment was due to budgetary constraints. Successive governments, unable to reduce their unproductive expenditures, chose instead to reduce development expenditure, which fell from an average of 7.4 per cent of GDP in the Z. A. Bhutto period (1973–77) to only 3.5 per cent of GDP in the Sharif regime (1997–98 to 1999–2000). Development expenditure as a percentage of GDP fell from 7.4 per cent in the Z. A. Bhutto regime to 3.5 per cent in the Nawaz Sharif regime. By contrast, the unproductive expenditure on government remained at a high level. The sharp decline in investment and the GDP growth for such a protracted period in the 1990s, though unprecedented in Pakistan’s history, had nevertheless been predicted. A study in 1987 had argued that the high growth experience of the preceding

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three decades may not be sustainable in the next decade due to structural constraints rooted in the deteriorating infrastructure, low savings rates and slow export growth.75 While GDP growth declined during the 1990s (from 6.3 per cent in the 1980s to 4.2 per cent in the 1990s), employment growth continued to remain at a low level of 2.4 per cent since the 1980s. This indicates that the employment problem persisted during the 1990s. At the same time, the decline in labour productivity was expected to push real wages downwards (see Table 3.1). The available evidence shows that this is indeed what happened in the 1990s; an ILO study suggests that real wages of casual hired labour (which is the predominant form of hired labour in Pakistan) declined in both agriculture and industry, during the 1990s.76 An examination of the evidence on employment elasticities in various sectors shows that the employment elasticity in the manufacturing sector declined sharply from 0.17 per cent in the 1980s to minus 0.10 per cent in the 1990s, while in agriculture it declined only slightly. However employment elasticities in construction and trade increased substantially over the two decades (see Table 3.2). This evidence of declining employment elasticities in agriculture and manufacturing when combined with the evidence of declining output growth in these two Table 3.1

Growth of GdP, Employment and Productivity in Two decades (in per cent) GROWTH

1980s

1990s

1. GdP GROWTH

6.3

4.2

2. EMPLOYMENT GROWTH (TOTAL) (i) Agriculture (ii) Manufacturing

2.4 1.9 1.4

2.4 1.6 -0.4

3. PROduCTIVITY GROWTH (TOTAL) (i) Agriculture (ii) Manufacturing

3.9 2 7

1.8 1.7 4.6

sources: Nomaan Majid Pakistan: An Employment Strategy, ILO/SAAT, december 1997 ( Mimeo). Table A5, Page 58

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sectors suggests a crisis of employment and poverty emerging during the 1990s.77 The fact that there were slower economic growth rates, declining employment elasticities and falling real wages in both agriculture and industry during the 1990s, had an important implication for the mechanism of poverty creation; it meant that, increasingly, the second family member of households on the margins of poverty could not get adequate wage employment. This could have been a significant factor in pushing increasing number of households into poverty. A second important dimension of the dynamics of poverty creation in this period was located in the increased fluctuations in agricultural output which was pointed out in a recent study.78 It indicated that under conditions of declining input productivity, when higher input per acre is required to maintain yields, the subsistence farmers with fewer resources are likely to suffer a greater-than-average decline in yiel ds compared to large farmers. At the same time, due to lack of savings to fall back on, they are relatively more vulnerable to bad harvests under conditions of unstable growth.79 Consequently, slower and more unstable growth during the 1990s could be expected to be accompanied by growing poverty and inequality. The evidence shows that this is precisely what happened during the 1990s; the Gini co-efficient, which is a measure of the degree of inequality, increased from 26.85 in 1992–93 to 30.19 in 1998–99. Similarly the percentage of the population below the poverty Table 3.2

Employment Elasticities of Output by Sectors in Two decades (in per cent) EMPLOYMENT ELASTICITY

1980s

Agriculture 0.49 Manufacturing 0.17 Construction 1.05 Electricity and Gas -0.39 Transport 0.48 Trade 0.37 source: Nomaan Majid, Pakistan: An Employment Strategy, ILO/SAAT, december1997 ( Mimeo). Table A5, Page 58

1990s 0.48 -0.10 1.81 0.32 0.14 1.22

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line (calorific intake basis) was 26.6 per cent in 1992–93, and increased to 32 per cent in 1998–99.80

the musharraf regime and after81 The multifaceted crisis of economy, society and State, as we have discussed, reached a critical point by the end of the 1990s. The collapse of the formal democratic structure within which the the informal ‘Troika’ conducted its contention for power, created the space for yet another military intervention in Pakistan’s politics in October 1999. In view of the gravity of the crisis, the Supreme Court validated the military takeover and gave General (later President) Musharraf the permission to run the government for up to three years, and hold general elections by October 2002. During the extra-constitutional interregnum, President Musharraf’s government formulated a comprehensive set of reforms aimed at addressing the crisis of poverty, reviving the economy and establishing the institutional basis of good governance. At the same time, through a number of constitutional amendments, the political system was restructured. The powers of the president were enhanced and a National Security Council was established to ensure that the newly elected government maintains the ‘continuity’ of reforms initiated by the military government. The new political dispensation signified the institutionalization of military power within the political structure. What was previously an informal presence in the conduct of governance now became formal. It, therefore, embodied a shift in the balance of political power from the civilian to the military domain within the political system. This shift was as much a result of the failure of democratic governments to pursue public interest in the 1990s, as it was of the military continuing to maintain its influence in politics. The Nature and Dynamics of the Musharraf Regime The coup d′état which had brought General Musharraf into power in October 1999, had occurred on the crest of a contention for supremacy within the power structure between an elected civilian government and the military.82 The institutional imbalance,

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wherein the judiciary lacked independence, enabled General Musharraf to get a verdict from the Supreme Court validating his unconstitutional military intervention. Imbalance within the institutional structure between the judiciary, legislature and the executive emanated partly from the tendency of the military to dominate the government with scant regard for institutional balance, and partly by the proclivity of elected civilian governments to undermine judicial independence.83 Both tendencies arose because of the absence of informal norms, which would induce the various protagonists to exercise their power within the formal constraints of the Constitution. The consequent institutional instability was illustrated by the grounds on which the Supreme Court validated the new military government; with reference to the preceding civilian government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the Supreme Court declared that ‘…there was no real democracy because the country was by and large under one man rule…’ and that ‘...democratic institutions were not functioning in accordance with the provisions of the constitution…..’84 It was this institutional imbalance that was to once again result in conflict in March 2007, after a brief period of stable government. As General Musharraf embarked on constructing a new political edifice, he simultaneously acquired the offices of army chief and president. This metaphor of the dual office signified the dominance of the military not only in the power structure but in the institutional framework of governance as well. Furthermore, he created the National Security Council (in which the heads of the army, navy and air-force were permanent members). The NSC was another indicator of the institutionalization of the military’s role in governance. In earlier years, national security policy was conducted by the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, which was headed by the elected prime minister and in whose meetings service chiefs attended by invitation. By contrast the National Security Council now superseded the Defence Committee and became the supreme body for conducting national security policy. Since national security affairs covered a wide range of sectors in both foreign and domestic policy, the NSC effectively acquired oversight functions over the government.

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In the October 2002 elections, the government engineered the exile of the leaders of the two mainstream moderate political parties, Benazir Bhutto of the PPP and Nawaz Sharif of the PML-N, and, thereby, constrained the prospects of success of these parties. By contrast, the government facilitated the participation of the religious parties such as the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazlur Rehman [JUI (F)] and the Jama’at-i-Islami. The religious parties came together in an alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Alam (MMA), which was able to win the election in the NWFP, and formed the provincial government. In the centre, the ‘king’s party’, the PML (Q) acquired a majority with the support of an ethnic party which had a stronghold in the major cities of Sindh. The federal government, through the support of the MMA, was able to pass the seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution. This Amendment enabled General Musharraf to hold the dual offices of army chief and president for a limited period and concentrated power in the office of the president rather than the prime minister, as envisaged in the parliamentary democratic framework of the 1973 Constitution. Thus, a new political structure was created within which the military acquired a dominant role and the role of the prime minister and the Parliament was restricted. The Search for Legitimacy: Security and the Economy President Musharraf sought legitimacy for his political structure through two strategic initiatives: (a) The decision to join the US-led coalition in the War on Terror and (b) using the fiscal space afforded by this action, to achieve domestic political support through a strategy of ‘Growth with Poverty Reduction’. Both these strategic initiatives, however, met with only limited success. The MMA government in the NWFP, which had been expected to politically defuse the burgeoning influence of militant extremists, in fact, began to provide a protective political umbrella to them. In a dramatic demonstration of their power and outreach, the Taliban and al-Qaeda elements provided the military support to enable Abdul Aziz, the Khateeb of Lal Masjid (located in the heart of Islamabad), to convert the mosque into

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an armed fortress. From this redoubt, Abdul Aziz and his gang of militants and the madrasa students challenged the State—they gave an ultimatum to the federal government to impose Sharia Law in Pakistan. At the same time madrasa students from Lal Masjid formed vigilante groups and began to coerce and intimidate shopkeepers to stop selling CDs and videos, and women to stop going to work, to cease driving and observe purdah. They also started kidnapping women who they thought were engaged in immoral activities and placed them in detention within the Lal Masjid compound. When security officials attempted to restrain this vigilante action a number of them were also kidnapped and imprisoned in the Lal Masjid. After protracted negotiations with the Lal Masjid militants, the government finally launched a military operation against an enemy who turned out to be battlehardened, highly skilled and well equipped. They were defeated through the heroic action of Pakistan’s elite commando group (SSG) from the 111 brigade. However, the militants were able to give a spectacular display of their military power and political outreach — as the sound of automatic gun fire and explosions shook Islamabad, the battle was covered by world media. The al-Qaeda appears to have formed an alliance with the domestic Taliban, and have turned their attention to Pakistan. As the scale and intensity of their guerrilla attacks increased, they began to enlarge their territorial control over Pakistan’s periphery; first in the tribal belt of Waziristan, and then in the settled towns of Swat and NWFP. They simultaneously began to launch suicide attacks against military personnel and installations as well as political leaders in the heartland of the country. These suicide attacks were apparently designed to demonstrate the outreach of the al-Qaeda–Taliban and at the same time to undermine the people’s confidence in the ability of the government to protect its soldiers and citizens. The growing success of militant extremist groups who had emerged as rival powers to that of the State within its territorial domain, created a crisis for the State authority. This crisis reached a new level of severity and acquired a tragic dimension with the assassination of the charismatic Benazir Bhutto. She was a symbol of courage and

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the hope of successfully combating the militant threat within a democratic polity. Her assassination sparked sustained and widespread rioting across the country with a breakdown of law and order in a number of towns in the Sindh province. The crisis of State authority has deepened in three ways: (a) The ability of the al-Qaeda–Taliban to kill the key political leaders they choose to target and to destabilize the country has been demonstrated dramatically; (b) the credibility of the State apparatus to provide security to the country’s leadership and to maintain order has been further undermined; and (c) the political structure constructed by President Musharraf and the war against al-Qaeda –Taliban was to be conducted, has been weakened to a critical level. Economic Growth and Poverty: 1999–2007 The most important feature of economic performance during the Musharraf regime was that in spite of relatively high GDP growth rates during the period 1999 to 2005 there was no significant reduction in poverty. In the subsequent years, as food inflation accelerated sharply, so did poverty. For the period 1999–2007 as a whole, the evidence suggests that even though the GDP growth rate was relatively high (averaging at 5.8 per cent), the percentage of population living below the poverty line in fact increased from 30 per cent in 1998–99 to 33.8 per cent in 2007–08.85 Here the issue of growth sustainability is examined and evidence provided for the poverty trends during the Musharraf period. the Question of Growth sustainability It was observed in 2006 that the high GDP growth seen in the preceding three years was not likely to be sustained in the future because the strategic parameters and the institutional structure that sustain GDP growth were not favourable.86 Unfortunately, this prediction proved correct and Pakistan’s GDP growth began to decline in 2007. Pakistan’s pattern of GDP growth is historically characterized by a stop-go pattern, with about 6 per cent GDP growth achieved during periods of military governments when there were large and concessionary foreign capital inflows that filled the gap between the low domestic savings rate and the target

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investment rate. During periods of elected civilian governments, the GDP growth rate has been much lower as foreign capital inflows declined. With an incremental capital output ratio (ICOR) in Pakistan at 4, to sustain a GDP growth of 6 per cent would require an investment rate of 24 per cent (investment as a percentage of GDP). In the Musharraf period, the investment rate averaged at 17 per cent. At the same time, the domestic savings rate in Pakistan has averaged at around 12 per cent, which means that the large gap between savings and investment has to be financed through loans, official development assistance or foreign private capital inflows. The second strategic parameter for growth sustainability is an export structure that is capable of an export growth high enough to finance the high import expenditures associated with high GDP growth rates. In Pakistan’s case, the export structure is still predominantly dependent on the textile industry at the lower value-added end of the manufacturing spectrum. With low income elasticities of demand, the textile industry in Pakistan has historically proved incapable of bearing the burden of generating the foreign exchange earnings necessary to finance the import requirements of high GDP growth.87 Consequently, each period of high GDP growth in Pakistan has ended with intense balance of payments pressures, which have forced a slowdown in the subsequent period. The same pattern has recurred during the Musharraf period in which, after a period of high growth, severe balance of payments pressures have slowed down GDP growth in 2007–08. The inadequacy of social and economic infrastructure, characterized by 91.7 per cent of the labour force being unskilled and poor physical infrastructure in both the rural and urban areas, has now emerged as a significant constraint to sustainability of both agriculture and industrial growth.88 The institutional structure is primarily oriented towards rent generation and rent appropriation by an exclusivist elite which prevents most of the population from participating in the process of economic growth. This factor, combined with the inherent instability of the institutional structure of governance, is another important factor that constrains growth.89

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the Question of Poverty reduction The Musharraf government claimed that it had reduced the percentage of population below the poverty line, from 34 per cent in the year 2000–01 to 23 per cent in the year 2004–05, i.e., a reduction of 11 percentage points. If true, this would mean that almost one-third of Pakistan’s poverty problem had been eliminated within a period of four years. We will examine the Musharraf government’s claim of a huge poverty reduction by first analysing the sources of GDP growth during the period and then putting the government’s poverty estimates to scrutiny, on the basis of a recent study done by Haris Gazdar, Asad Sayeed and Akmal Hussain.90 An analysis of the sources of growth, according to this study, during the period 2000–01 to 2004–05 shows that the composition of growth during the period was pro-rich rather than propoor. It was fuelled mainly by the services sector (particularly banking and communications), which contributed 60 per cent of GDP growth during the period, and the manufacturing sector (primarily, manufacture of automobiles, luxury consumer electronics, cement and textiles), which contributed 30.4 per cent of GDP growth during this period. It is clear that GDP growth during the period was overwhelmingly pro-rich since none of the sectors that mainly constituted the growth was either producing goods for the poor or directly providing employment to them. In fact, the labour force survey data of the government shows that unemployment rates rose sharply from 6.1 per cent in 1999 to 8.3 per cent in 2004.91 Therefore, the nature and composition of GDP growth during this period could not be expected to have substantially reduced poverty. Let us now scrutinize the poverty estimates of the government. With respect to the estimation procedure it is important to understand that the magnitude of change in the incidence of poverty depends on two factors: (a) The base year used for comparison at two points in time, and (b) the inflation rate used as a deflator to estimate changes in the consumption over time at constant prices. Now, regarding the first factor, the government’s estimate of poverty reduction uses the year 2000–01 as the base year, which is a year of bad harvest, and compares it to the year 2004–05, which was a good harvest year. Clearly, comparing a

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drought year with a good harvest year will, ceteris paribus, exaggerate the magnitude of poverty reduction. It is, therefore, more appropriate to compare the year 1998–99 with the year 2004–05. With respect to the second factor, the government’s poverty estimate uses an inappropriate inflation rate based on the consumer price index, which only covers 16 urban centres. It does not take account of prices in the rural areas where the majority of the poor reside. Indeed, inflation rate data based on both urban and rural areas was available from the Pakistan Living Standard Measurement (PLSM) survey. The PLSM date, of course, shows a much higher inflation rate. The government instead chose the CPI index for inflation, which would yield an artificially low inflation rate and, thereby, a much higher magnitude of poverty reduction. Talat Anwar, in an earlier study, has attempted to correct the biases in the official poverty estimates by using the year 1998–99 as the base year and the inflation rate drawn from the PLSM data. His estimate shows that during the period 1998–99 to 2004–05 poverty declined by only 1.8 percentage points, from 31.1 per cent in 1998–99 to 29.3 per cent in 2004–05.92 Another estimate by Dr Haris Gazdar, Dr Asad Sayeed and Dr Hussain, which excludes the Sindh sub-sample on grounds of serious inconsistencies, yields a poverty reduction estimate of only 0.6 percentage points, with poverty declining from 31.3 per cent in 1998–99 to 30.7 per cent in 2004–05. The World Bank poverty estimates, which also use the PLSM data for the inflation rate, yield a poverty reduction of 0.8 percentage points over the period 1998–99 and 2004–05.93 One can conclude, therefore, that there has been no significant poverty reduction during the period 1998–99 to 2004–05. This conclusion is consistent with the sources of growth analysis based on national income data. Let us now consider the incidence of poverty in the subsequent period, 2005–08. Table 3.3 provides, for the first time, an estimate of the incidence of poverty in the post-2005 years together with projections for the period 2008–12.94 The table shows that in the year 2005–06 poverty continued to decline slightly as high GDP growth was maintained and food inflation was kept under control. However, after 2006, poverty begins to

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increase gradually as food inflation increases. The upward trend in poverty accelerates subsequently as GDP growth slows down and food inflation rises sharply. By the year 2007–08, the poverty level reaches 33.8 per cent, which is about the same level as the high point of 2001–02. The absolute number of poor increased from 40.35 million in 1998–99 to 56.55 million in the year 2007– 08. Thus, about 16 million people were pushed into poverty during the Musharraf regime. Table 3.3

Incidence of Poverty (1999–2012) Year   1998–99 2001–02 2004–05 2005–06 2006–07 2007–08 2008–09 2009–10 2010–11 2011–12

Head Count Ratio World Bank Estimates (%) 30.00 34.40 29.20            

Impact of Food Inflation on Poverty Head Count Ratio Number of Poor (%) Million  30.00 40.35  34.40 50.21 29.20 45.48 28.68 45.74 29.47 48.12 33.81 56.55 36.11 61.84 38.41 67.35 40.71 73.10 43.01 79.08

sources: (i) Incidence of poverty figures (Head Count Ratios) for the period 1998–99 to (ii)

(iii) (iv) (v)

note:

2004–05 are given in the World Bank Report, Pakistan: Promoting Rural Growth and Poverty Reduction (World Bank, 2007), p. 9. Incidence of poverty figures for the years 2005–06 to 2007–08 have been estimated by Akmal Hussain and Ahsan Shah, as are the projections for the years up to 2008–12. The food inflation used for estimating poverty in the future (2008–12) is the average for the years 2004–05 to 2007–08. The food inflation rates for the years 2004–05 to 2006–07 are obtained from the Pakistan Economic Survey 2006–07. Population estimates are made on the basis of the population growth rate given in World Development Report, Equity and Development (World Bank, 2006), p. 293. The number of poor for the years 1998–99 and 2001–02 are based on the population figures given in the Pakistan Economic Survey 1999–2000 and 2001–02. The poverty elasticity with respect to food inflation is obtained from Sajjad Akhtar and Mansoor Ahmed, Modeling Poverty Trends in Pakistan: Some Additional Empirical Evidence (Karachi: Social Policy and development Centre, 1999). Estimation by Akmal Hussain and Ahsan Shah. The estimation procedure for the levels of poverty in various years assumes no change in the distribution of income in the period 2005 to 2008. To the extent that income distribution in this period has become more unequal, the poverty levels would be higher than those given in Table 3.3.

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On the basis of evidence presented in Table 3.3 it can be concluded that the poverty reduction achieved during the period 2001–02 to 2004–05 was neutralized by the high food inflation rate and the slowdown of GDP in the later years. For the Musharraf period as a whole, 1998–99 to 2007–08, the incidence of poverty has increased by 3.8 percentage points from 30 per cent in 1998–99 to 33.8 per cent in 2007–08, with an additional 16 million people entering the category of poor over the period. The economic strategy of the Musharraf regime did achieve high rates of GDP growth. However, the pro-rich nature of the GDP together with high food inflation rates resulted in increased poverty, inequality and unemployment. Furthermore, the services of health and education, which are crucial for the welfare of the poor, could not achieve adequate coverage or quality in the absence of adequate service delivery mechanisms. Thus, the high GDP growth in the Musharraf period was perceived to have brought affluence to a few without benefiting the poor significantly. Consequently, just as the Musharraf government was celebrating the success of its economic policies, there was growing resentment amongst the middle classes and the poor, as in the period at the end of the Ayub regime.95 In the elections that followed, the ‘king’s party’, the PML (Q), which Musharraf was supporting, was routed. The people had given their verdict on the Musharraf government’s claims of economic success and substantial poverty reduction. Power dynamics and institutional instability96 As elections approached, an institutional crisis erupted in March 2007 following the attempt by President Musharraf to remove Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from his office in order to secure a second term for himself. There was an unprecedented citizens’ protest movement led by lawyers. It culminated in the re-instatement of the chief justice by the judiciary on 20 July 2007 following a historic assertion of independence by a battered judiciary. However, the success of the citizens and the judiciary in establishing the institutional balance envisaged in the Constitution, was short-lived. By the end of October 2007, the government began to fear that the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice

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Iftikhar Chaudhry was likely to give a judgment disqualifying General Musharraf from being a candidate for the presidential election. On 3 November 2007, Musharraf, in his position as army chief, issued a proclamation suspending the Constitution, withdrawing the fundamental rights of citizens and initiating draconian measures to gag the media.97 At the same time, General Musharraf gave himself powers as president to amend the Constitution by executive order. He subsequently modified the Army Act as a result of which civilians could be court-martialled with charges of sedition for offences such as expressing an opinion. In a historic suo moto judgment, the Supreme Court, on the day of the proclamation of the emergency, declared it unconstitutional and without legal effect. The judges of the Supreme Court were promptly sacked and placed under house arrest. As in March 2007, once again the unconstitutional action of General Musharraf was met with countrywide protests by lawyers, journalists and small groups of citizens, including human rights activists, academics, professionals, and (for the first time in the citizens’ movement), university and high school students. General Musharraf had established his political structure on the basis of an initial suspension of the Constitution following the coup d′état of October 1999. He dismantled the political structure through a second suspension of the Constitution in November 2007. The first suspension was triggered by a conflict with an elected civilian executive, while the second was triggered by a conflict with the judiciary. The recurrent suspension of the Constitution dramatically demonstrates the disequilibrium within the power structure. While the military seeks to achieve pre-eminence within the power structure and dominance over governance, the Constitution stipulates the subordination of the military to the elected civilian authority. It is this incongruence between the formal rules of the Constitution and the internal dynamics of the power structure that generates institutional instability, as is seen in the recurrent conflict between the military, the executive and the judiciary. Achieving institutional stability and enforcing the formal rules embodied in the Constitution will require the establishment of the necessary informal norms. Such a change in the institutional set would be based on

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a political process in civil society through which a balance in the underlying power structure can be achieved.

conclusions In this chapter, we have traced through various political regimes, the dynamic interaction between the processes of deterioration in the institutions of governance on the one hand and the structure of the economy on the other. The purpose was to understand the emergence of the process of increasing poverty, the tendency for loan dependence and unstable GDP growth. The Ayub regime was characterized by denial of political rights to the people and economic policies that induced acute social and regional economic disparities. The resultant political tensions exploded into a civil war and the emergence of independent Bangladesh. We saw how the mechanisms of rural poverty observable even today, were rooted in the increased peasant dependence on the landlord, and asymmetric markets for inputs and outputs that resulted from a particular form of agricultural growth during the Ayub period. The analysis also showed how the tendency for the economy’s loan dependence so manifest today, may have originated in the policies of the Ayub regime. By providing State subsidies, the government locked the economy into an industrial structure, which was dominated by low valueadded industries, incapable of generating adequate foreign exchange for the country. The structural constraints to fiscal space were exacerbated as successive governments engaged in financial profligacy, and allocation of State resources based on considerations of political patronage rather than economic efficiency. Nationalization of industries during the Z. A. Bhutto period enlarged the domain of power and patronage for the regime. However, the consequent growing losses of nationalized units laid the basis of subsequent fiscal haemorrhaging of the government. The sharply rising budget deficits during the Z. A. Bhutto period were accentuated by a huge increase in expenditures on the State apparatus as part of the attempt to build a domain of patronage and power within the State structure.

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The military regime during 1977 to 1987 sought to establish dictatorial rule by means of an obscurantist and retrogressive version of religious fundamentalism. State resources were used for the first time to foster armed groups of religious extremists and to finance religious seminaries (madrasas) many of which systematically indoctrinated young minds to hate and kill. The politics of the Zia period, therefore, laid the basis of the emergence of armed militant groups in society as well as the rise of sectarian violence, which was to undermine the process of investment and growth as much as the institutions of governance. During the Zia regime, State funds were directed to establishing a theocratic State instead of towards urgently needed investment in the maintenance of the irrigation system and technical training of the human resource base. Consequently, when the cushion of foreign financial assistance was withdrawn after the Afghan War, investment and growth declined, budget deficits increased sharply, and poverty intensified. The decade of the 1990s was marked by democratically elected leaders using public office for private gain. The resultant misallocation of national resources during this period accentuated the fiscal crisis. We have analysed how the widespread corruption during this period was an important factor in not only reducing private sector investment, but also reducing the productivity of capital, thereby sharply slowing down GDP growth. During this period, the structure of GDP growth also underwent further adverse changes as both capital and labour productivity fell sharply, together with declining employment elasticities. A reduction in capital productivity led to slower growth, while reduction in labour productivity led to falling real wages. As both GDP growth and real wages fell, poverty tended to increase. This tendency was reinforced by declining employment elasticities. Thus, bad governance and associated adverse changes in the structure of the economy, in this period, laid the basis for a rapid increase in poverty and unemployment. We have seen how the military regimes of Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq laid the structural basis for the deterioration in both the polity and the economy of Pakistan. We have also seen that the democratically elected regimes, in various periods, not only

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sought authoritarian forms of power within formally democratic structures, but also accelerated the process of economic decline. The crisis of poverty and human development in Pakistan, therefore, is located as much in the deterioration of institutions and the economy, as it is in the failure of individual leaders to pursue public interest rather than their own. The military regime of President Musharraf institutionalized the role of the military in the political structure. Musharraf sought legitimacy through a strategy of growth with poverty reduction and establishing law and order through the War on Terror. Both these attempts met with inadequate success. While the law and order situation worsened dramatically, so did the poverty levels, even though GDP growth rates were high. Rising poverty, high rates of food inflation, growing unemployment and shortages of basic items such as wheat, gas and electricity combined to undermine the political structure constructed by the Musharraf regime. Pakistan’s moment of crisis is pregnant with the potential for civil society and political parties to, together, reconstruct a democratic order based on subordinating the military to elected civil authority, and thereby establish constitutional stability and the rule of law. It is within such a democratic polity that both political and economic stability can be achieved to enable development for the people and by the people.

notes 1 Some of the research for this paper was used by the author in Chapter 2 of his work embodied in the Pakistan National Human Development Report. Sub sections I. 2, II.2, III.2 and IV.3 in Chapter 2 of the Report are also included in this paper. See, UNDP, Pakistan National Human Development Report 2003, UNDP, Islamabad. Poverty Growth and Governance (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2003). 2 Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 37. 3 Allen Mc Grath, The Destruction of Pakistan’s Democracy (Karachi: OUP, 1996), p. x. 4 Lawrence Ziring, The Enigma of Political Development (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980), p. 220. Cited in Allen Mc Grath, 1996, op. cit. 5 Omar Noman, The Political Economy of Pakistan, 1947–85 (London: Routledge Kegan and Paul, 1988), p. 28. 6 S. J. Burki, Pakistan: Fifty Years of Nationhood (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1999), p. 32. 7 See S. J. Burki, op. cit., p. 32.

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8 All Pakistan Legal Decisions (PLD) 1963, XV, cited in Omar Noman, op. cit., p. 29. 9 Dr A. R. Kemal, ‘Patterns of Growth in Pakistan’s Industrial Sector’, in Shahrukh Rafi Khan (ed.), Fifty Years of Pakistan’s Economy (Karachi: OUP), p. 165.1998. 10 Soligo and J. J. Stern, Tariff Protection, imports substitution and investment efficiency (Islamabad: The Pakistan Development, 1965), pp. 249–70. 11 Sikander Rahim, ‘Myths of Economic Development’, Lahore School of Economics, Occasional Paper No. 10, February 2001. 12 Pakistan NHDR, UNDP, Government Patronage and Rent Seeking Elites: A Longer Historical View (Karachi: Oxford University Press, pp. 48–9. 13 ‘It is clear that the distribution of national production should be such as to favour the savings sectors,’ Government of Pakistan, Planning Commission, The Third Five Year Plan, 1965-70 (Karachi: Government of Pakistan, 1965), p. 33. 14 K. Griffin, ‘Financing Development Plans in Pakistan’, in K. Griffin and A. R. Khan, Growth and Inequality in Pakistan (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 41–2. 15 Ibid., p. 133. 16 For example, during 1950–55, grant and grant type assistance constituted 73 per cent of total foreign aid. By 1965–70, this type of assistance had declined to only 9 per cent of total foreign aid. See Economic Survey (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, Finance Division, 1974), p. 133. 17 L. J. White, Industrial Concentration and Economic Power in Pakistan (Priuceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 63. 18 Ibid., pp. 74–5. 19 N. Hamid, ‘The Burden of Capitalist Growth, A study of Real Wages in Pakistan’, Pakistan Economic and Social Review, Spring 1974. 20 K. Griffin and A. R. Khan, op. cit., pp. 204–05. 21 S. M. Naseem, ‘Rural Poverty and Landlessness in Asia’, ILO Report (Geneva: 1977). 22 Naved Hamid and Akmal Hussain, ‘Regional Inequalities and Capitalist Development’, Pakistan Economic and Social Review, Autumn 1974. 23 Akmal Hussain, ‘Civil Society Undermined’, in Strategic Issues in Pakistan’s Economic Policy: Technical change and Social Polarization in Rural Punjab (Lahore: Progressive Publishers, June 1988), op. cit., p. 374. 24 Akmal Hussain, ‘Impact of Agricultural Growth on changes in the Agrarian Structure of Pakistan, with special reference to the Punjab Province’, D. Phil. Thesis, University of Sussex, 1980. Also see chapter 4 of Akmal Hussain, Strategic Issues in Pakistan’s Economic Policy: Technical Change and Social Polarization in Rural Punjab (Lahore: Progressive Publishers, June 1988). 25 See Akmal Hussain, D. Phil Thesis, op. cit. 26 See Akmal Hussain, Strategic Issues in Pakistan’s Economic Policy, op. cit., p. 187. 27 For the latest survey evidence see Akmal Hussain, et. al, Pakistan National Human Development Report, 2003 (Karachi: UNDP, Oxford University Press, 2003), chapter 3, section IV. 28 See Akmal Hussain, D. Phil Thesis, op. cit.

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29 For a more detailed analysis of the squeeze on poor peasant incomes see Akmal Hussain, ‘Technical Change and Rural Polarization’ in Strategic Issues in Pakistan’s Economic Policy, op. cit., pp. 150–156. 30 Omar Noman, The Political Economy of Pakistan, op. cit., p.79. 31 See A. R. Kemal ‘Patterns of Growth in Pakistan’s Industrial Sector’, in Shahrukh Rafi Khan (ed.), Fifty Years of Pakistan’s Economy, op. cit., p. 158. 32 Ibid., p. 158. 33 Omar Noman, The Political Economy of Pakistan, op. cit., p. 80. 34 For a more detailed discussion on the nature of changes within the State structure see A. Hussain, Strategic Issues in Pakistan’s Economic Policy, op. cit., pp. 378. and 379. 35 Hafiz Pasha in Shahrukh R. Khan (ed.) Fifty Years of Pakistan Economy: Traditional Topics and Contemporary Concern (Karachi: OUP, 1999). 36 Omar Noman, op. cit., p. 82. 37 Ibid., p. 122. 38 President Zia-ul-Haq publicly stated that ‘Martial law should be based on fear’. In the same vein, Brigadier Malik wrote, ‘Terror struck into the hearts of enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself’. See Omar Noman, op. cit., p. 122. 39 Speech of Mohammad Ali Jinnah as president of the Constituent Assembly, 11 August 1947, cited in Muhammad Munir, From Jinnah to Zia (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1979), pp. 29–30. 40 President Zia-ul-Haq declared ‘Democracy means freedom of the Press, Martial Law its very negation’, The Daily Dawn, 12 July 1977, cited in Omar Noman, op. cit. p.124. 41 The hero Ranjha is celebrated as the synthesis of love and reason. See Najam Hosain Syed, Recurrent Patterns in Punjabi Poetry (Lahore: Punjab Adbi Markaz, 1986), second edition. 42 In the absence of a popular mandate, Zia claimed that his mission to bring an ‘Islamic Order’ in Pakistan had a divine sanction, ‘I have a mission given by God to bring Islamic Order to Pakistan’. Omar Noman. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 According to an estimate, which is really in the nature of a ‘guesstimate’, the narcotics trade amounted to US$ 3 billion, See the weekly The Economist, London, 10 April 1985. 46 Akmal Hussain, ‘Civil Society Undermined’, in Strategic Issues, op. cit., p. 386. 47 Zia-ul-Hasan Khan, ‘Rise of Sectarianism in Pakistan: Causes and Implications’, Research Paper [Mimeo] (Lahore: Pakistan Administrative Staff College, 1995). 48 As many as 78.9 per cent of emigrants to the Middle East were production workers See Jillani et. al., ‘Labour Migration’, PIDE, Research Report No. 126. 1981, Islamabad, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. 49 The contention for power expressed itself, in some cases, in terms of the appointment and dismissal decisions of key positions in the military. The

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contention also occurred on the issue of the legally correct application of Article 58 2(b) under which the president could dismiss the government and dissolve the National Assembly ‘if in his opinion a situation has arisen in which the government of the Federation cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution’. 50 As the UNDP Human Development Report 2002 points out ‘Whether the judiciary can maintain its independence is often the litmus test for whether democratically elected rule can avoid turning autocratic’. 51 The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time, Sajjad Ali Shah, later stated ‘the independence of the judiciary can be maintained only when the chief justice has some kind of control over the appointment of judges…the appointment of judges should not be made by executive for political reasons…’. See his interview, published in the monthly Herald, January 1998, p. 48. 52 Cover story in the monthly Newsline, December 1997, pp. 24 and 25. 53 The mob attack was evidenced in the video record of the court. This was also widely reported in both the international and national press. See, for example, the monthly Newsline, December 1997, p. 26. 54 Newsline, op. cit. P. 26. 55 The indication that the army had decided to stay aloof came when the army ignored requests by both, the chief justice and the president, to provide physical security to Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah following the mob attack on the Supreme Court. 56 The editor of The Friday Times, a respected liberal weekly newspaper, Najam Sethi reported that his printers were served with notices threatening closure. Thugs were sent to soften him up, and his wife and children were intimidated with threats of rape and kidnapping. See The Friday Times, 9–15 October 1998. 57 Income tax notices were served, the Jang Group’s bank accounts were frozen, newspaper godowns sealed, its journalists threatened and sedition cases were lodged against them. That the government’s conflict with the Jang Group did not hinge merely on the non-payment of income tax became apparent when an audio tape of a telephone conversation between Nawaz Sharif’s top aides dealing with the press and Mir Shakil ur Rehman (the Jang Group’s chief editor) was revealed. One of the government’s aides issued clear threats on the phone and the policy that his newspapers should follow. This audio tape was played to a public audience at the Lahore Press Club. Also see Ejaz Haider, ‘Press, Government or State-Society Struggle?’, and the editorial, ‘Well Fought Shakil-ur-Rehman’, The Friday Times, 5–11 February 1999. 58 The editor’s bedroom was broken into, at 2:45 a.m., by a security agency of the civil establishment, and he was handcuffed, dragged out of bed and taken away without a warrant of arrest’, The Daily News, Tuesday, 11 May 1999, front page. The democratic elements in civil society were outraged both by the manner of Sethi’s ‘arrest’ and the subsequent failure of the government to bring him to trial before a court of law. Apart from Sethi’s case, which got wide publicity, there were other less famous cases of journalists being persecuted for expressing a dissenting opinion. In spite of attempts at intimidation and illegal detention of the journalists, the press withstood the pressure and emerged a stronger institution. 59 Quoted in the article by Zafar Abbas, ‘General Discontent’, in Herald, October 1998, p. 44.

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60 Zafar Abbas, op. cit., p. 45. 61 Text of the Supreme Court verdict in the Military Takeover Case published in the Dawn, 13 May 2000, p. 5. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 For an analysis of these dynamics, see Akmal Hussain, ‘The Dynamics of Power: Military, Bureaucracy and the People’, in K. Rupasinghe and K. Mumtaz (eds.), Internal Conflicts in South Asia (London: Zed Books, 1996). 66 S. J. Burki. Pakistan: Fifty Years of Nationhood, op. cit.. p.174. 67 S. J. Burki, op. cit., p. 175. 68 S. J. Burki, op. cit., p. 174. 69 Governance and Development (Washington DC: World Bank, 1993), p. 3. 70 See Nomaan Majid, Pakistan: An Employment Strategy, (ILO/SAAT, December 1997). 71 Out of the 93 MAF of water extracted from the rivers as little as 31 MAF reached the farmer, i.e., 67 per cent of the water was lost due to deterioration in canals and water courses. 72 Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Governance, Corruption and Development: Some Major Obstacles to Growth and Development’, The Banker, Lahore, Spring 1998. 73 See ‘Overcoming Poverty’, Report of the Task Force on Poverty Alleviation, May 1997. 74 Corruption by successive governments during the 1990s was not only a factor in undermining the economy, and intensifying the deprivation of the poor, but also in eroding the very legitimacy of the political system. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s government in August 1990, and Nawaz Sharif’s government in April 1993 were both dismissed by President Ishaq Khan under Article 58.2(b) of the Constitution on charges of corruption and economic mismanagement. In July 1997, during her second tenure as prime minister, Bhutto’s government was dismissed on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari who had been her close political associate. President Leghari, in his dismissal order, charged that the corruption under Benazir Bhutto’s government had seriously damaged State institutions. Furthermore, he believed that mismanagement and corruption had brought the entire political system ‘close to collapse’, cited in S. J. Burki, Pakistan: Fifty Years of Nationhood, op. cit., p. 171. 75 Akmal Hussain in his 1987 study predicted ‘…if present trends continue, we may be faced with the stark possibility that high GDP growth may not be sustainable over the next five years...’ [Emphasis added]. See Akmal Hussain, Strategic Issues, in Pakistan’s Economic Policy (Lahore: Progressive Publishers, 1988), p. xviii. Declining growth in the next decade could be predicted because ‘… the strategic variables and sectors through which growth is sustained over time seem to show a declining trend: For example the growth rate of fixed investment, the domestic savings rate, the growth rate in the value of exports, and finally the weight of the commodity producing sectors in the economy...’, Akmal Hussain, op. cit., p. 4. 76 Nomaan Majid, ILO/SAAT, op. cit., pp. 34 and 35.

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77 Agriculture and manufacturing have historically absorbed the bulk of the employed labour force in Pakistan. For example, in 1969–70, 72.6 per cent of the total employed labour force was employed in these two sectors. By mid-Nineties this percentage fell, but was still over 60 per cent. 78 Akmal Hussain, ‘Employment Generation, Poverty Alleviation and Growth’, in Pakistan’s Rural Sector: Policies for Institutional Change, ILO/CEPR [Mimeo], 1999. This study analyses the structural factors that slowed down agricultural growth and increased its variability from year to year. 79 Ibid., p. 4. 80 Federal Bureau of Statistics [Mimeo], Government of Pakistan, April 2001. 81 This section is drawn from the author’s work embodied in two of his recent research studies: (a) Power Dynamics, Institutional Instability and Economic Growth: The Case of Pakistan (Islamabad: The Asia Foundation [Mimeo], 14 April 2008). (b) Institutional Imperatives of Poverty Reduction (Lahore: Institute of Public Policy, Beaconhouse National University [Mimeo], 17 April 2008). 82 See Akmal Hussain, Power Dynamics, Institutional Instability and Economic Growth: The Case of Pakistan (Islamabad: The Asia Foundation [Mimeo], 14 April 2008), chapter 2, section VI. 83 Ibid. 84 Text of the Supreme Court verdict in the Military Takeover Case published in the Daily Dawn, 13 May 2000, p. 5. 85 Akmal Hussain, Institutional Imperatives of Poverty Reduction, op. cit., p. 25. 86 Akmal Hussain, ‘Is GDP Growth Sustainable’, The Daily Times, 1 May 2006. 87 For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Akmal Hussain, Power Dynamics, Institutional Instability and Economic Growth, op. cit. pp. 89–100. 88 Ibid. 89 Akmal Hussain, Power Dynamics, Institutional Instability and Economic Growth. 90 Haris Gazdar, Asad Sayeed and Akmal Hussain, ‘Growth, Poverty and Conflict: 1999–2007’, in Akmal Hussain, Power Dynamics, Institutional Instability and Economic Growth, op. cit., ch. 3. 91 See Akmal Hussain, Institutional Imperatives of Poverty Reduction. 92 Talat Anwar, ‘Measurement of Absolute Poverty and Governance in Pakistan: 1998–99 and 2004–05’, paper presented in the PIDE-PSDE, 22nd Annual General Meeting and Conference,19–21 December 2006. 93 Akmal Hussain, Institutional Imperatives of Poverty Reduction. 94 Akmal Hussain, Institutional Imperatives of Poverty Reduction, op. cit pp. 24–25. *Note: The poverty estimates for the period 2005–08 have been made using the figure for elasticity of poverty with respect to food inflation made by Sajjad Akhtar and Mansoor Ahmed in Modeling Poverty Trends in Pakistan: Some Additional Empirical Evidence (Karachi: Social Policy and Development Center, 1999). 95 Akmal Hussain, Power Dynamics, Institutional Instability and Economic Growth, op. cit. p. 114.

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96 This sub-section is drawn from Akmal Hussain, Power Dynamics, Institutional Instability and Economic Growth, op. cit. pp. 114–15. 97 See the Daily Times, 4 November 2007, p. A4, for the texts of ‘Proclamation of Emergency’, ‘The Provisional Constitutional Order’ and the ‘Press Ordinance’ respectively.

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IslamIc PartIes In PakIstan: the socIal and PolItIcal ImPact Kalim Bahadur

the origins of Islamic Parties Religious parties in India were the product of colonial rule and the rise of the anti-imperialist movement. In the early eighteenth century, the East India Company began to substitute its own rules and laws in place of Islamic laws, which were in force during the Moghul rule. A leading scholar from Delhi, Shah Abdul Aziz (1746–1824), son of Shah Waliullah (1703–62), protested against this violation of the Holy law and declared north India as the Dar al Harb (the abode of war). This encouraged Saiyyad Ahmed Barelvi (1786–1831) to give a call to fight in defense of the Islamic way of life. This later evolved into the famous Wahabi movement. The rise of this movement in the early nineteenth century was also inspired by the teachings of Shah Waliullah and the Muslim response to the impact of British rule.1 Another important factor was the inability of the Muslims to accept the introduction of English, suspected to be a means to convert Muslims to Christianity, which was seen as a threat to Islam.2 Saiyyad Ahmed Barelvi was killed in 1831 at Balakot, in a battle against Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army. Many survivors of Barelvi’s army in Balakot later fought against the British during the 1857 revolt. In 1867, two followers of Saiyyad Ahmed Barelvi3 founded the Deoband seminary. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1889–1958) through his writings in his journals before the First World War (1914–18) had been stressing for the creation of

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an organization as a vehicle of Islamic revivalism.4 According to Azad, patriotism demanded from Hindus that they should struggle for the country’s independence but for Muslims this was a religious duty, a jihad.5 The Deoband Ulama stepped in to fulfil this duty and played a leading role in the freedom movement.6 It was the Deoband Ulama and those of the Farangi Mahal who, in November 1919, founded the first Islamic political party in India, the Jamiatul Ulama-i-Hind, as distinguished from the Muslim League. There were some reservations in some sections of the Ulama on the wisdom of setting up a political party exclusively of the Ulama. Some even suggested joining the Muslim League. Jamiat’s objectives were, among others, to protect the religious and national rights of the Muslims, to guide them in political as well as non-political matters from a religious point of view, to establish friendly relations with other communities and to fight for the freedom of the country.7 The first organization of the Barelvi Ulama, the All India Sunni Conference, was set up in Moradabad in March 1925. Only orthodox Sunnis could become its members. Even the definition of ‘Sunni’ was given in the Constitution of the party. The followers of the Barelvi School believe in miracles, the power of saints and pirs, and worship at shrines, which is considered against the tenets of Islam by the Deobandis. The Barelvi beliefs also appealed to the peasantry. Apart from criticizing the policies and programmes of the Jamiatul Ulama-i-Hind, the All India Sunni Conference also appealed to the Muslims not to join the Congress. After the Muslim League adopted the Pakistan Resolution in 1940, the Sunni Ulama decided to work for the establishment of Pakistan. During the 1946 election, the Barelvi Ulama issued fatwas in favour of the Muslim League.8 Another important Islamic movement of the first quarter of the 20th century was the Khilafat movement. The Khilafat movement was launched in India in defence of the Caliphate in Turkey, which was under attack from Western powers. This pan-Islamic movement stirred the vast masses of Indian Muslims and brought them into the anti-imperialist struggle.9 It temporarily united the Muslims and Hindus into a common anti-colonial front. Many Muslims leaders who participated in the movement later played significant role

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in the freedom movement. Some of the theories propounded by selected leaders of the Khilafat movement were later adopted by the fundamentalist parties.10 The All India Muslim League set up earlier in 1906 had its objectives explained by Nawab Waqarul Mulk: ‘God forbid if the British rule disappears from India, Hindus will lord over it… The only way for the Muslims to escape this danger is to help the continuance of British rule’. The Constitution of the Muslim League was passed at its annual session in Karachi in 1907; one of its objectives, among others, was to promote among Indian Muslims the feeling of loyalty towards the British Government.11 Three other important Muslim political parties, which emerged during the 1920s and 1930s were the Majlis-i- Ahrar, Khudai Khidmatgar, and the Khaksar Tehrik. The Majlis-i-Ahrar, founded in 1929, came into prominence during the Kashmir agitation of the same year when some leaders in Punjab led a march into the state in protest against the atrocities committed by the Maharaja of Kashmir. It was on the advice of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad that this organization of the Ulama had been set up. It was a party led by some of the well-known Ulama.12 The Ahrar were with the Congress and against the Muslim League. Their leaders were known for their virulent speeches against Jinnah and the Ahmadis, a breakaway Islamic group, members of which are not considered ‘true Muslims’ by either Shias or Sunnis. They played a prominent role in the agitation against the Ahmadi sect during the early fifties.13 The Khudai Khidmatgar was set up in the North Western Frontier Province in 1929. It was a well-organized party with branches in each district of the province. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan believed that the only way to liberate the Pathans from the oppressive rule of the British was to align their objective with that of the Congress.14 The organization swept the polls in the NWFP in 1937 and in 1946. However, it suffered a setback in 1947 when the Congress agreed to the partition and, after a referendum, the province opted to go with Pakistan. The Khaksars were less a political party and more of a paramilitary organization. Allama Mashriqi set up the Khaksar Tehrik in 1931, following a brilliant educational career in the UK. The organization

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was devoted to the revival of the glory of Islam and restoring its lost prestige. How those objectives were to be achieved was not clear though the ideology of Hitler was very prominent in the party’s programme.15 Its organizational structure was modelled on military units with strict discipline. It was the first organization in India to have trained suicide squads for political action.16 During the 1930s, it was the most popular Muslim party. They were anti-Congress but flirted with the Muslim League, though the man who made an attempt on the life of Jinnah was reported to be a Khaksar.17 The party became defunct after 1947. For the purpose of this study our focus will be on those Muslim political parties, which aimed at the enforcement of the Islamic system and Islamic laws in the state of Pakistan. The post-Khilafat years were a period of confusion for the educated and politically conscious Muslims. The growing gulf between the Hindus and Muslims was inducing a section of Muslims to search for some separatist solutions to India’s political problems. This was diminishing the numbers of Muslims in the Indian National Congress. The Congress started the famous Muslim mass contact movement to mobilize Muslims back to the Congress. The Muslim parties, particularly, the Muslim League, was defeated in the 1937 election but Muslim communalism got a fillip. It was against this background that Maulana Abul Ala Mawdudi set up the Jama’at-i-Islami in August 1941. The organization was founded on the belief that Muslims should return to pure and unadulterated Islam, reject Hindu ascendancy and continue to claim the whole of India.18 Mawdudi claimed that while other movements took up a part of Islam or some worldly aim of Muslims, the Jama’at had the entire Islam as the object of its movement. During early 1930s, Mawdudi’s seminal work Al Jihad fil Islam (1931) had been noticed in the circle of Indian Muslim. In this work, he had analysed the self-made principles of war by Western countries and those principles given by God. Mawdudi recommended to Muslims to adopt aggressive adherence to Islamic principles.19 In his journal, Tarjuman ul Quran, he had been writing extensively against the concept of composite nationalism as propounded by the Indian National Congress and the nationalist Ulama of Deoband.

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Islamic Parties and the demand for Pakistan The Pakistan Resolution of the All India Muslim League was passed at the Lahore session in March 1940. The Deoband Ulama of the Jamiatul Ulama-i-Hind opposed the resolution at its 1940 Jaunpur session. They also provided a justification for their support to the Congress and issued fatwas legitimizing the concept of composite nationalism.20 Mawdudi opposed secularism because he thought it to be anti-religion, and opposed democracy as it meant the dominance of Hindus in the Indian context. He opposed Pakistan because he believed nationalism, particularly Muslim nationalism, was against Islam. According to his definition of nation, all those who accepted Islam were one nation and those who did not were a different nation.21 He went on to say that he was not at all interested in whether Muslim governments are formed in areas where Muslims are a majority. For him the most important question was whether in Pakistan the system of government would be based on the sovereignty of God or on popular sovereignty. According to the then head of the Deoband seminary, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani, if the supreme power in a country lies in the hands of non-Muslims but Muslims also have a share in power, they are free to perform their religious rituals and full respect is paid to their religious places and feelings, then that country is Dar-ul Islam; it is incumbent upon Muslims that they should take it as their own country and always think and wish well for it.22 The nationalist Ulama failed to successfully oppose both Jinnah and Mawdudi because of their rigid interpretation of Islam. Without a clear concept of what a nation is, they could not oppose the case for a separate Muslim nation. They also did not fully realize that religion alone could not be the basis of nationhood. They opposed the demand for Pakistan because of their traditional conception of Islam, and also because the leadership of the Pakistan movement was in the hands of some members of the western-educated elite.23 The leaders of the Jamiatul Ulama-i-Hind and Majlise Ahrar were opposed to Pakistan because Pakistan was essentially a territorial concept, which was alien to the philosophy of Islamic brotherhood.24 Mawdudi

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was opposed to both the Pakistan movement led by the Muslim League and the freedom movement led by the Congress. In contrast to this, some of the leading Ulama like Mahmudul Hassan, Ubaidullah Sindhi, Kifayat Ullah, Abul Kalam Azad, and Hussain Ahmad Madani believed that fighting for the freedom of the country was their religious duty, the real aim of Islamic politics, and spent their lives securing this objective. For Mawdudi, these objectives and the struggle for them was Kufr (falsehood) and Shirk (polytheism). He continued to oppose Pakistan and his opposition became shriller with the approaching possibility of the partition of the country.

the Islamic state When Pakistan came into being, some people rationalized the post-Partition massacres and killings as the birth pangs of a free nation. Mawdudi called them the birth pangs of a monster and not that of a human being.25 Mawdudi, who had established an Islamic research centre in Pathankot, arrived in Lahore in late August 1947 in a military truck. His virulent opposition to Pakistan was certainly a great disadvantage in the new country. In Pakistan, Mawdudi donned the mantle of the ideology of Pakistan and started a campaign for turning Pakistan into an Islamic state. The Islamic political parties in India were in disarray for some time. The Jama’at-i-Islami split into two, with those who were in Pakistan forming the Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan and those who remained in India forming the Jama’at-i-Islami Hind. Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam (JUI), under the leadership of Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, had already set up a separate party of Ulama only in November 1945. It comprised the Ulama who had been supporting the demand for Pakistan. The Ulama of the JUI were very close to the Pakistan Muslim League and Pakistan government. Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani was the member of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. Usmani set up the office of the Markazi Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam in December 1948 in Karachi. Usmani’s foremost priority was the transformation of Pakistan into an Islamic state. He had even prepared

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a draft of the Islamic Constitution.26 The proximity of the Deobandi Ulama to the Pakistani establishment was not acceptable to the Barelvi Ulama. In March 1948, the Sunni Ulama of Pakistan met in Multan and decided to rename the All India Sunni Conference as the Markazi Jamiatul Ulama-i-Pakistan, and to continue their activities in Pakistan. They alleged that the Deobandi Ulama were not sincere in their demand for an Islamic Constitution and were working to usurp the rights of the Ahle Sunnat.27 Similarly, smaller parties like the Ahrar, whose following was confined to Punjab, had no problem in shifting to Pakistan as they did not have any organization in India. Soon after independence, Pakistan was in the throes of political, economic and social crises. This was a consequence of the partition of the Indian subcontinent which saw hundreds of thousands of refugees migrating between India and Pakistan. The major questions the new government faced were the rehabilitation of the refugees, national reconstruction and nation building. These issues, however, did not interest the Ulama and certain sections of politicians. For them, the issues of an Islamic Constitution, the sovereignty of the people, Islamic laws, jihad, the rights of the non-Muslims in Islamic state, among others, were the basic questions that concerned the people of the country. Also, there was no consensus either on the outline of a Constitution for the country, particularly on the role of Islam in the polity, or on the federal formula, which would be the basis of the Constitution among the politicians in Pakistan. The Muslim League leaders had run the Pakistan movement on Islamic slogans and had not made any intellectual effort at any level to spell out the details of the political system of Pakistan. The great debate that might have done justice to the price and cruciality of Pakistan never happened.28 This helped the Islamic parties set the agenda for an Islamic state. It is a different issue that there was disagreement among the Ulama about the details of an Islamic state. Mawdudi set off his campaign for an Islamic state in Pakistan in early January 1948. He claimed that Pakistan had been achieved exclusively with the object of becoming the homeland of Islam. He went on to say that the people of Pakistan were

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committed before God, Man and History for the promulgation of an Islamic Constitution.29 The establishment of the Sharia rule was not possible without the State being controlled by the people well-versed in Islamic law, i.e., the Jama’at leaders. Mawdudi’s Islamic state was meant to be a coercive state for defending Islam and to enforce good behaviour, etc.30 Mawdudi repeatedly denigrated democracy in an Islamic state. Democracy was good enough for helping the Jama’at to come to power, but once in authority, the common man would have little say in the affairs of the state.31In fact, his Islamic state was for the learned Ulama of the Jama’at, something akin to the Vilayat Faqih of Ayatullah Khomeini.32 Through his constant refrain about the Islamic state, a hazy ideal of generations of Muslims, Mawdudi forced all parties, religious and others, to take positions on the issue. Shortly before Mawdudi’s campaign, the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, in his presidential address of 11 August 1947 to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, declared the founding principles of the new state, which had nothing in common with what Mawdudi or the Ulama envisaged. Jinnah declared, You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state … we are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of the State… I think that we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that, in course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.33

The speech stunned the Ulama. There were attempts to prove that Jinnah did not mean what he said, ‘That it was the solitary instance of its kind’, ‘It was loose thinking and imprecise

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wording’,34 and that ‘He was not too well-acquainted with the Islamic legal system’. According to Muhammad Munir, it was clear from the statement that Jinnah was opposed to a theocratic government; that he wanted a secular and democratic government and that there would be one nation, the Pakistani nation, regardless of the individual’s creed, religion, and sect; that religion would be the affair of the individual and will have nothing to do with the state. Since the majority of the people of Pakistan would be Muslims, the State would naturally be influenced by Islam and the Islamic way of life.35 References in Jinnah’s speech to religion having no role in the business of the State were deleted from its later versions. 36

the Islamic constitution The Ulama thought it prudent to keep quiet and wait for their chance to resume their campaign for an Islamic Constitution and an Islamic state. This came sooner than they expected. Since all Islamic parties agreed that Pakistan should be an Islamic state, few paid any attention to the difficulties of arriving on a consensus regarding the details of an Islamic state. The first task of the new rulers was to frame a Constitution for the new country. The Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League had not mentioned Islam anywhere in the text. In fact, during the 1946 election for the Constituent Assembly in undivided India, the Muslim League had used the religious pirs and sajjada nashins during the election campaign. Some of the pirs were political leaders with dubious pretensions to piety.37 Jinnah had throughout been very vague about the Islamic character of the State. He never used the term ‘Islamic state’ and had in several statements denied that Pakistan would be a theocratic state and that it would be run by the mullahs. The Constituent Assembly passed the Objective Resolution on 12 March 1949 supported by all Muslim members, but opposed by the Hindu members. All Islamic parties welcomed it as a great achievement. The details of the Islamic state were not spelt out in the Objective Resolution and Jinnah’s statement that religion had nothing to do with the business of the State

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was thrown into the dustbin.38 Even Liaquat Ali Khan’s speech in the Constituent Assembly was not in accord with Jinnah’s ideals. After the death of Jinnah, the government of Liaquat Ali Khan, an Urdu-speaking migrant, was challenged by Punjabi, Bengali and Sindhi regional politicians. There was a polarization between the refugee politicians who were dominant in the power structure and the regional leaders who wanted to end the dominance of the refugees. In this situation, Liaquat Ali Khan found it convenient to use the idea of the Islamic state to subdue the parochial elements.39 The leadership attempted to accommodate the Islamic leaders by offering them concessions like the Objectives Resolution. Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani of the Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam, who was close to the government and had been given the status of Sheikhul Islam, declared that an Islamic state could only be run by those who believe in those principles. Those who do not subscribe to those ideas may have a place in the administrative machinery of the state, but cannot be entrusted with matters vital to its safety and integrity.40 The committee of Ulama, also called the Board of Talimat-i-Islamia, appointed after the passing of the Objective Resolution, recommended the establishment of a Caliphate, on the lines of someone like Mulla Omar, the Amirul Momineen of the Taliban.41 The efforts of the political parties and the Talimat-i-Islamia Committee were in vain. On 24 October 1954, Governor General Ghulam Mohammad dissolved the Constituent Assembly. It happened not because the Ulama and others could not agree on the Islamic provisions of the Constitution but because there was an ongoing struggle between the various factions of the Muslim League; the various regional groups were advancing their respective agendas. This was reflected soon thereafter when the ‘One Unit’ scheme was implemented, which effectively deprived the Bengalis the advantage of their majority. Politically, it was aimed at weakening the alliance of the Bengali, Sindhi, Balochi and Pashtun nationalists against the Centre. Economically, it allowed the centre to freely exploit the natural resources of the smaller provinces.42 During this period, the Islamic parties used the Islamic issue to mobilize the Muslim masses and win back the credibility they

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had lost by opposing the demand for Pakistan during the struggle for independence. The provocation was provided by the Ahrar, who took objection to a speech by Sir Zafarullah Khan, the then foreign minister of the country and an Ahmadi. An all-Islamic parties meeting at Karachi in 1952, presided by Maulana Abdul Hamid Badayuni, demanded that the Ahmadis be declared a non-Muslim minority, Zafarullah Khan be removed from the office of Foreign Minister and that Ahmadis be removed from all key posts. The Ahmadi movement has been the most controversial of all movements ever since it appeared in 1889. Founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in 1880, his followers have been most active in propagating their faith among Muslims and non-Muslims, not only in the Indian subcontinent, but in many countries around the world. Their publicity machinery is always actively producing material about their faith.43 Mirza Ghulam’s claim that he was entrusted with the crucial role in the spiritual history of mankind was the cause of controversy. He claimed to be mujadid (renewer of religion), muhaddath (a person frequently spoken to by God) and mahdi, (the messiah). These claims, and the way he interpreted the Islamic idea of prophethood and its finality, were unacceptable to mainstream Muslims.44 The crux of the issue was the cardinal point of Islam, according to which Prophet Muhammad was the last messenger of God and there shall be none thereafter. From the early days of independence, in Pakistan, the question whether Ahmadis could be included in the Muslim fold was a bitterly argued issue. The Majlise Ahrar, from its inception in 1929, had made the Ahmadis the target of its virulent attacks. In 1949, the Ahrar again raised their demand to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims. Maulana Shabbir Usmani, leader of the JUI, had written in a pamphlet in 1924 that Ahmadis were apostates. The All-Muslim Parties Convention at Lahore, in 1952, repeated the demand made earlier and decided to form a Markazi Majlis-i-Amal. The then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Khwaja Nazimuddin, believed that the Ahmadis were not Muslims. However; his education had taught him that religion had nothing to do with the business of the State. He, therefore, refused to concede the demands of the All Parties Conference to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims.

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The agitation was mainly confined to Punjab, partly also because the Ahmadi population was confined to that province. The Chief Minister of Punjab, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, was sympathetic to the anti-Ahmadi agitation but for factional reasons wanted the agitation to be redirected towards the central government. Since non-Muslims cannot inherit the property of their fathers, the feudal families in Punjab wanted the Ahmadis to be declared non-Muslims, as it would discourage Muslims from converting to the Ahmadi religion. The agitation gradually became violent. Ahmadis were attacked, killed and their property destroyed. Chief Minister Daultana failed to take strong action and soon other parties, including the Muslim League and the Jama’at-i-Islami, had also jumped into the fray. Martial law was declared on 7 March 1953 and the agitation was snuffed out in a few hours. Most of the Ulama leaders were arrested. Maulana Mawdudi was put on trial before a martial law court, which sentenced him to death. The sentence was later commuted to 14 years of imprisonment and he was released after two years.45 The Ulama had failed to get the Ahmadis declared non-Muslims, for which they had to wait for over two decades. Maulana Mawdudi’s attitude towards the anti-Ahmadi movement was initially ambivalent. He did not want any other group to take the lead in championing a cause which it imagined to be dear to the Muslims. Mawdudi had threatened to disassociate himself from the movement several times.46 Several leaders of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Pakistan did not want to participate in the movement. Some others were against Maulana Mawdudi, who they thought was not a Hanafi (one of the four Islamic schools of thought) and considered it dangerous to cooperate with him.47 The religious parties were under a cloud after the agitation and they remained subdued for some years. The government of Punjab appointed a two-member committee to investigate the causes of disturbances in the province. The Munir Committee, as it was called, comprised two judges of the High Court, Justice Mohammad Munir and Justice M. R. Kayani. They invited almost all the Ulama representing the different sects and sub-sects and schools of lslamic thought. In the concluding part of their report, they dealt with the political

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and ideological factors of the anti-Ahmadi controversy; there the commission went into the nature and character of the Islamic state, the right of the minorities in the Islamic state and, above all, to define who is a Muslim, etc. The committee debunked the claim that there is anything like the ideology of Pakistan. It asserted that for 15 years after the establishment of Pakistan, the ideology of Pakistan was not known to anybody until, in 1962, a solitary member of the Jama’at-i-Islami for the first time used the words, ‘ideology of Pakistan’. The committee said that Pakistan was accepted by the common man, though not as an Islamic State. This belief was encouraged, since the establishment of Pakistan, by the ceaseless clamour from all quarters for Islam and an Islamic state.48 While the JUI and its leaders led the movement, the president of the Markazi Jamiatul Ulama-i-Pakistan (MJUP) and the leader of the Markazi Majlis-iAmal did not want any other group to hog the credit for leading the movement. However, the Markazi Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam (MJUI), with an array of Deobandi Ulama, outnumbered all other religious parties.49 The president of the MJUP, Maulana Abul Hasnat Qadiri, who was also the president of the Majlisi-Amal of the anti-Ahamdi movement, was reluctant to participate in the direct action. It was only after great and passionate persuasion by some Ahrari Ulama that he agreed to actively support the movement.50

Islamic Parties and the military General Ayub Khan launched his coup d'état on 7 October 1958. The Constitution was abrogated and all political parties were banned. Both the MJUP and the MJUI set up new organizations under different names and carried on their activities. The Jama’at-i-Islami, however, suspended its political work, while the MJUP was engulfed in factional differences. Political parties were revived after the promulgation of the Political Parties Act, 1962. Most Islamic parties found themselves at odds with the military regime of Ayub Khan. They did not agree with the new name of the country given in the new Constitution promulgated by Ayub Khan in 1962. The country was now called the

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Republic of Pakistan and not the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Further, in the preamble to the Constitution, all references to the Quran and Sunnah had been replaced by one word, Islam. Most Ulama, except the MJUP, objected to it. General Ayub had to accept the objections and he amended the Constitution within a few weeks of its promulgation. Another controversy which provoked the Ulama was Ayub’s Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961. It was a progressive reformist measure which would have brought great relief to women. The Ulama opposed the ordinance calling it anti-Islamic and against the divine law. The government responded with harsh measures against the Ulama. Many of them were arrested and others were called to police stations and asked inconvenient questions. The Jama’at-i-Islami had also come in for harsh treatment by the Ayub regime. It was banned by Ayub Khan in 1964 and the entire Majlise Shura imprisoned. However, the religious parties were still divided over extending their support to General Ayub Khan during the 1965 presidential elections. The opposition parties had decided to support Miss Fatima Jinnah, sister of Mohmmad Ali Jinnah. The JUI decided not to support either of the candidates.51 The MJUP not only decided to oppose Miss Jinnah but many of its Ulama issued fatwas against her.52 The Jama’at-i-Islami opposed General Ayub and supported Miss Fatima Jinnah, in spite of the fact that in one of his major books Mawdudi had written that under Islam a woman could not be a head of an Islamic state. Mawdudi was in prison at that time. He argued that it was preferable to support a woman as the head of state rather than a military dictator. The Islamic prohibition of women being ineligible for top political office was only a non-absolute prohibition.53 Ayub Khan also mobilized many Ulama who issued fatwas in his favour. Mawdudi showed similar pragmatism later when he attempted to approach Ayub Khan for some sort of an understanding with the Jama’at, which would have at least reduced the regime’s hostility to it. A Jama’at organ stated that the Ayub government was a right-wing government and the Jama’at too was a right-wing party. Therefore, it was rather strange that a right-wing government was damaging its right-wing supporter. The advantage of such a short-sighted policy by a right-wing government always went to the extreme

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left-wing elements.54 However, Ayub was not secular. He kept a distance from the Ulama but was inclined towards a statesponsored ideology which, after the 1971 Bangladesh trauma, evolved as the ideology of Pakistan.55 The Ayub regime collapsed in 1969 and was replaced by the regime of General Yahya Khan. In 1970, General Yahya Khan conducted the first free and fair election in the country’s 23-year history. However, the political crisis, which led to the collapse of the Ayub regime, was not resolved by the election conducted by General Yahya Khan. The six-point programme put forward by the Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was a major issue in the election. The slogan of Islamic socialism advanced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was also being hotly discussed by the Islamic parties, which were wrought with factionalism. Across the country, 113 Ulama gave a fatwa declaring that socialism was apostasy and any cooperation with the socialist forces was haram (forbidden) in Islam. Another group of Ulama delivered a counter fatwa saying that if socialism meant Islamic unity it was in accord with Islam.56 All three major Islamic parties, i.e., the JUI, JUP and the JIP fared poorly in the 1970 election, both in the National Assembly and the provincial assemblies. Islamic parties won only 18 out of the 300 seats for the National Assembly. The JUI and JUP got seven seats each while the Jama’at got only four, all from West Pakistan. The Jama’at-i-Islami had adopted a hostile attitude towards the Bengali autonomy movement even before the outbreak of the East Pakistan crisis. They had been saying all along that Bengali Muslims were under the influence of the nationalists, Hindu professors and the communists. The other two Islamic parties wanted to reach some negotiated settlement for the Bengali demands. The discontent of the Bengalis had begun with the language question in early l948, when Urdu was sought to be imposed on them to the detriment of the Bengali language. Over the years, the economic gap between the two wings continued to widen. The launching of the six-point programme represented the aspirations of the people of East Bengal. Hence, it was no wonder that the Jama’at-i-Islami did not win any seat from East Pakistan for the National Assembly and only one in the provincial

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assembly. Though the Islamic parties had not won many seats, their participation in the first free and fair election had given them the status of an important political force since they were part of the governments in two provinces. In West Pakistan, the Jama’at-i-Islami supported Pakistan’s military action against the Bengali nationalists. They had organized two armed militant groups, al-Badr and al-Shams, which, in coordination with the army, killed Bengali freedom fighters. In fact, this was the beginning of the mullah-military alliance. During the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime (1972–77), the Islamic parties were involved in fighting against Bhutto’s Islamic Socialism. Towards the end of his tenure, Bhutto diluted his socialist rhetoric and took several steps to upstage the Ulama — like the declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims and the imposition of prohibition, etc. Later, in 1977, it was the Islamic parties, which led the movement against the rigging of the elections by the Bhutto government. The movement they were leading was given an Islamic name, the Nizame Mustafa movement. This changed the democratic demand for fair elections into a religious movement. The rigging the 1977 election was not the only factor for the movement against the Bhutto regime; it was the accumulated grievances of Pakistan’s middle classes over the economic policies followed by the regime. Bhutto not only nationalized rice mills and flour mills but also monopolized fodder distribution.57

Islamic Parties and Islamization Pakistan entered a new phase with the military coup launched by General Zia-ul-Haq on 5 July 1977, which toppled the first ever elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His military rule lasted for 11 years and it was his policies in the name of Islamization that led to the rise of militancy, jihadi culture, radical sectarianism and the use of terrorism against India and Afghanistan as an instrument of foreign policy. He had no legitimacy whatsoever, and therefore, used the Islamic plank from the first day to win over the religious groups. It was the first time a regime was using Islam for its legitimacy. He claimed that Pakistan had been created as an Islamic state for the Muslims of India.

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While taking over, Zia promised to hold elections within 90 days. He later postponed them on the pretext of holding them after the culture was reformed (Islahe Muashra), which ultimately stretched to 900 days. The State in Pakistan had repeatedly assumed the role of the custodian of Islam, ensuring control over every aspect of the lives of its citizens. During Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization programme, the State took over several functions of religion.58 It was under General Zia that the Federal Ministry of Religious Affairs came into its own. It had been responsible for managing the Zakat and Ushr since the early 1980s. The ministry wrote and distributed the material for sermons for Friday prayers as well as Islamic material on different subjects, managed the training of Ulama and lecturers for mosques, and controlled madrasa education and Islamic preaching, i.e., dissemination of Islamic knowledge.59 It may be pointed out here that care was taken that the people involved in these activities belonged to the ‘acceptable’ Ulama parties. In his drive to Islamize the country, General Zia-ul-Haq’s first victims were women. The first law to be passed was the Hudood Ordinance, which dealt with murder, theft and adultery. In case of rape or consensual sex, the Hudood Ordinance provided for stringent Islamic punishment. These laws were highly discriminatory against women. The Blasphemy laws were also used against minorities and weaker sections. The Sunni Deobandi Ulama, associated with JUI, Jama’at-i-Islami and Ahle Hadith, were associated with several state institutions. The government-controlled Auqaf department handed over mosques controlled by Barelvi mullahs to the Deobandi mullahs. The same discrimination was followed in the distribution of Zakat funds. Regular prayers were imposed and arrangements for the same were made in public places. All interest-bearing financial instruments were made zero-interest and Zakat tax was deducted from bank deposits, etc. The land reforms implemented in 1965 and 1972 were reversed. Prohibition was also strictly enforced. Sharia benches were provided as a parallel to normal judicial process. Interestingly, all matters relating to the Constitution, personal laws, procedures of courts and tribunals, fiscal laws, taxes and fees, and insurance were out of the jurisdiction of the Sharia benches. A later amendment to

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this law provided that no Sharia court could make an order relating to any decision or any regulations or orders of the Child Marital Law Authority (CMLA). Thus, what concerned an individual was beyond the jurisdiction of the Sharia benches. During the Afghan jihad (1979–88), the JUI and the Jama’at-i-Islami were able to get their hands on the huge funds coming from Saudi and other Arab sources. It is estimated that during this period Saudi Arabia gave $ 3.5 billion to the Pakistan military, which was used to strengthen and arm the Sunni groups on both sides of the Afghanistan–Pakistan border.60 These funds were also used to set up numerous madrasas by the both the Fazalur Rehman and the Samiul Haq factions of the JUI and the Jama’at-i-Islami. General Zia-ul-Haq encouraged the setting up of madrasas by the Islamic parties. The madrasas produced jihadis for the war in Afghanistan with funds from Zakat, wealthy Pakistanis and from the Gulf and Saudi sources.61 The madrasa students are reported to be the most intolerant of all student groups in Pakistan. According to a survey by Pakistani scholar Tariq Rahman, 59.86 per cent of madrasa students and 70.3 per cent of their teachers favoured open war for taking away Kashmir from India. The students studying in jihadi schools are totally brainwashed right from the beginning. Text books have been authored to provide only a unidimensional world view and restrict the independent thought process of children.62 In line with his Islamization programme, General Zia-ul-Haq began to claim that Islam does not allow for political parties, opposition, canvassing, etc. In August 1978, he decided to civilianize the government and included several political leaders from the Jama’at-i-Islami and the Pakistan Muslim League in the cabinet. General Zia was also keen to mobilize the Ulama, Mashaikhs (Islamic doctors) and pirs (mendicants). The Jama’at-i-Islami had been close to the regime from the very start. It was for the first time the Jama’at had a regime which was going to implement the Islamic system of its dreams. In 1981, Zia-ul-Haq nominated an entire National Assembly and called it Majlise Shura (consultative assembly). It was claimed that it was in accordance with the Islamic tradition. It included Ulama, priests of all kinds, big

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landlords, big businessmen and many traditional politicians who could have never won an election. The success of the opposition parties alliance, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), forced General Zia-ul-Haq to hold the election for the National Assembly in 1985 on a non-party basis. The political parties were neither allowed to nominate any candidates, nor were they permitted to conduct an election campaign, canvas or issue election manifestoes. The voters gave a shock to the military regime as most of the pro-Zia candidates were defeated and a large number of candidates who won belonged to the MRD parties. Since there were no parties in the National Assembly, a little-known Sindhi politician, Mohammad Khan Junejo, belonging to the Muslim League was elected prime minister. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan came as a godsend for General Zia-ul-Haq. His military regime was accepted by the Western countries as he agreed to cooperate with them in the fight against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The Islamic parties were also the military’s partners in the Afghan jihad. The regional and international climate of the 1980s favoured Zia-ul-Haq’s orthodox Islamization and the alliance with the West served the military’s institutional interests.63 The Jama’at-i-Islami and the JUI led by Maulana Fazalur Rahman played a leading role in mobilizing the jihadis from the Afghan refugee camps and the madrasas, which these parties had set up along the Pakistan — Afghanistan border. Pakistani volunteers to fight the Soviet forces in Afghanistan also came from these madrasas. Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), was in full control of Pakistan’s Afghan policy. In the beginning, the Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan was responsible for the distribution of weapons and funds to the Afghan Mujahideen.64 The Jamiatul Ulamai-Islam and the Jama’at-i-Islami had been given free leave to visit the Afghan refugee camps to mobilize Afghan young men to their madrasas and later send them back to Afghanistan. The ISI and the Jama’at-i-Islami had set up reception centres to welcome, house, and train the arriving militants and then encourage them to join the mujahideen groups, usually the

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Hizbe Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.65 Funds from the Saudis and weapons from the United States were distributed by the ISI to the mujahideen groups.66 Instead of unifying the Muslims in Pakistan, General Zia-ulHaq’s Islamization programme led to sectarian strife. The General had made no secret of the fact that he was a Sunni and had sympathies for the Deoband school of thought. The Shias had immediately protested against the promulgation of the Zakat ordinance. According to Shia fiqh, Zakat and Ushr are voluntary and not compulsory. Shias set up their own organization, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqh-i-Jafria (TNFJ) to fight Zia-ul-Haq’s impositions. It was the TNFJ which in 1980, sponsored an agitation against the Islamic tax, Zakat. General Zia-ul-Haq had to accept their demand and exempted them from the payment of this tax and it was declared that Shias would only be governed by their own fiqh.67 The official sponsorship of jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir, the involvement of Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan and Jamiat Ulama-i-Islam of Pakistan and the availability of vast amounts of funds signalled that waging war in the name of jihad was a legitimate activity. This encouraged all sorts of jihadi organizations and groups, mostly associated with the religious parties in Pakistan, to emerge and fight the enemy.68 Pakistan’s war in Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir has been called a jihad by the Pakistani state. The Pakistani jihadis fighting in Jammu and Kashmir claim that jihad could be declared even if there is no Islamic state. In that case, people can wage jihad on their own. This could only mean that Muslims would be in a permanent state of jihad. Some of the well-known madrasas of Pakistan promoted this extremist view of jihad.69 The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Pakistan-supported militancy in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir began at the same time in the early 1980s. The Pakistani sponsorship of jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan also promoted sectarianism in Pakistan. Most of the militant groups active in Kashmir were Deobandi Sunnis. They cooperated among themselves and shared facilities with Sunni militants. The JUI helped setting up the Sipah-e-Sahaba

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Pakistan (SSP) and later the Harkat ul-Mujahideen. Jaish-e-Muhammad was also born out of Harkat in 2000.70 The mid Eighties saw the proliferation of militant groups of Pakistani origin and most of their cadres belonged to Pakistan. In 1986, Ahle Hadith, a dormant group in Pakistan, became active and set up an institute in Muridke near Lahore called the Markaz-i-Dawat-walIrshad, of which Lashkar-e-Tayyaba was an offspring. Funded by Saudi donations, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is one of the most organized militant groups. Ahle Hadith is a nineteenth century Islamic reformist group which aimed at purging Islamic society of foreign accretions. The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) was reorganized in the late 1980s with Amanullah Khan as its leader; later the Srinagar branch of the JKLF was set up. In 1989, after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan, bloody fighting broke out among the mujahideen groups and warlords. Several attempts by the Pakistan agencies and the religious parties, JUI and the Jama’at, to get Afghan mujahideen to form a consensus government in Kabul failed. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was the favourite of Islamabad and the Jama’at-i-Islami. However, Hekmatyar’s personal ego was so great that he could not work with anybody. It was in this situation that the Taliban emerged on the scene. Though the origins of the Taliban in Kandahar could have been due to some local reasons but the local truck mafias, Pashtun military and political officers, Pakistan agencies and JUI helped them in the early stages.76 Maulana Fazalur Rahman, leader of the JUI and an ally of the Benazir government, played an important role in establishing links between the Taliban and the Benazir government.77 The Taliban version of Islam was hard line Deobandi Islam combined with tribal Pashtun traditions. This mixture was unacceptable even to the leader of the Jama’at-Islami, Qazi Husain Ahmad who did not accept the credentials of the teachers of the Taliban madrasas. Most Taliban leaders have been educated at Akora Khatak seminary run by Maulana Samiul Haq (with his own faction of the JUI) in the North Western Frontier Province.78 However, Qazi Hussain Ahmad never distanced himself or his party from the un-Islamic practices of the Taliban.

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The Mullah — Military Alliance General Zia died in an air crash in August 1988. In the 11 years until 1999, four elections were held. Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif formed governments twice, alternately. During Benazir Bhutto’s governments, JUI, led by Maulana Fazalur Rahman, was very close to the establishment. He was the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly. During his second tenure (1997–1999), Mian Nawaz Sharif attempted to pass the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, also called the Sharia Bill, which would have set aside the Constitution and given him almost authoritarian powers in the name of Islam. Eventually, the Islamic parties were not taken in by the ruse and opposed the amendment. Luckily, the government did not have the requisite majority in the senate and the motion was put off for the next session. But for the coup by General Musharraf, the Sharif government would have secured a majority in the senate in the next elections and would have certainly enacted the amendment with serious consequences for the country. During the period from the election in 1970 to the one held in 1997, and notwithstanding the Islamization and the patronage by the Zia regime, the Islamic parties’ share of vote had come down from 21.5 per cent in 1970 to 6.5 per cent in 1997. In the 1993 election all Islamic parties had combined in three groups to contest the election and their total votes amounted to 1.2 million, or 6.5 per cent.79 The post-Zia democratic phase came to an end on 12 October 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf launched his military coup and dismissed the elected government of Mian Nawaz Sharif. The Nawaz Sharif government had won the election in 1997 and had two-thirds majority in the National Assembly. Musharraf gave the old arguments for his coup citing corruption, maladministration, subversion of democracy, etc. The immediate cause of the coup was his dismissal by the constitutionally established government of Mian Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf, however, did not abrogate the Constitution or ban political parties and political activities. He initially gave the impression of being a liberal Muslim who wanted to clean the Augean stables of

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Pakistan. The Supreme Court gave him permission to hold elections within three years and to amend the Constitution for this, if needed. Musharraf used the Supreme Court’s permission to amend the Constitution to entrench himself in power. The Legal Framework Order 2002 allowed him to strengthen his hold on power. Musharraf had taken care to drive into exile the leaders of the two mainstream political parties, Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif of the PPP and the PML(N), respectively, and had manipulated the dissidents of the Muslim League to defect and form the Pakistan Muslim League(Q). The Islamic parties had never had it so good even under General Zia-ul-Haq. Musharraf knew well that he needed the Ulama parties’ vote bank if he had to get a government which would support him. In the run-up to the 2002 election, several qualifications for candidates were changed. One of the major surprises of the 2002 election was the emergence of a united front of major Islamic parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a first in the history of Pakistan. The MMA, a conglomerate of six major Islamic parties of Pakistan, comprised Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam (Fazal), Jamiatul Ulamai-Islam (Sami), Jamiatul Ulam-i-Pakistan (JUP), Jama’at-i-Islami, Ahle Hadith, and Tehrik-i-Islami-i-Pakistan. The MMA had emerged from the Pakistan — Afghanistan Defence Council of 35 parties, which had been formed in the wake of the US attack on Afghanistan.80 Most of the MMA parties were involved with the Taliban regime. Maulana Fazalur Rahman (Jamiatul Ulama-iIslam [Fazal]) is the son of late Mufti Mahmud, chief minister of NWFP in the JUI–ANP government in the early 1970s. Following the anti-secular politics of his father, his own opposition to all military regimes and his participation in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy against General Zia gave the Maulana a standing in the politics of Pakistan. The JUI (Sami) is led by Maulana Sami-ul-Haq who runs the largest seminary in Akora Khatak and is proud of the fact that many of the Taliban leaders were educated in his seminary. It is interesting that the three important leaders of the MMA parties, i.e., Fazalur Rahman, Sami-ul-Haq, and Qazi Husain Ahmad of the Jama’at-i-Islami all belong to the NWFP and are Pashtuns. The Ahle Hadith is

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a Wahabi umbrella group comprising 17 organizations of whom six take part in politics and three participate in jihad. There is a central Markazi Majlis-i-Amal which guides these organizations; Dawat-wal-Irshad, which has given birth to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is one of them.81 Among the MMA parties, Jama’at-i-Islami is the best organized and disciplined party but its influence is limited to urban areas. The JUP comprises mainly the Barelvi Ulama. Though a majority of the people of Pakistan are Sunni Barelvi, the influence of the JUP is limited. Pakistan’s Shia community renamed its main political party (formerly TNFJ) as the Islami Tehrik Pakistan. The Shias are a minority and they constitute about 15–20 per cent of the population.82 For all practical purposes, the MMA is dominated by three parties, i.e., the JUI (Fazal), JUP and the Jama’at-i-Islami. The 2002 election result showed that the PPP had secured the largest percentage of votes (25.9) with 62 seats. The PML (Q), which had got 25. 6 per cent of votes, had got 77 seats. On the other hand, while the MMA had only 11.5 per cent votes it was able to get 45 seats. These were the results of the directly elected seats. These parties later got additional seats from special constituencies for women and the minorities.83 In 2002, the Islamic parties benefited from the open support of the government agencies. The local authorities helped the pro-government parties, including the MMA. The ISI worked against the opposition parties, the PPP and the PML (N). The requirement of a bachelor’s degree for candidacy debarred almost 96 per cent of the population from contesting the election. In case of MMA candidates, their madrasa degrees were accepted as equivalent to graduation, contrary to the decision of the University Grant Commission of Pakistan, which helped a large number of them. Many candidates of the PPP and PML(N) were also disqualified by the accountability bureau for non-repayment of government loans, etc.84 This institution favoured the pro-government candidates and it is quite clear that the unexpected gains by the MMA could not have been possible without the support of the government. The MMA was able to get a majority in the NWFP and formed the government in the province. In Balochistan, it joined the coalition with PML(Q). The Islamic parties had, for the first time,

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got an opportunity to form a government in a province on their own strength. In Islamabad, too, the MMA was in a position to tilt the balance to one side or the other. Maulana Fazalur Rahman was keen to become the prime minister. He was willing to switch his support to the opposition if they agreed to support him for the post. Ultimately, he was appointed the leader of the Opposition by the establishment, contrary to all the rules. The PML(Q) formed the government only after manipulating defections from the PPP. Even then, it won by only one vote. The MMA was helped by the widespread anti-American sentiments among the urban middle classes and conservative sections, and in the Pashtun areas, where the Pashtun ethnic factor helped Maulana Fazalur Rahman. It is suggested that the MMA victory was the result of the State power and the appeasement policy adopted by successive rulers towards religious parties, which had strengthened their base.85 Pakistan’s conservative voters in the urban areas also helped the MMA. According to an exit poll, electoral support for the MMA was the highest from the educated middle and upper classes as compared to the PPP and the PML(Q), who did better amongst the illiterate and very poor voters.86 The MMA parties had been the ideological mentors of the Taliban, which also meant that their understanding of Islam and their worldview was the same as that of the Taliban. As expected, the MMA government in NWFP passed the Sharia Bill soon after forming the government, claiming that it was the supreme law of the province. Later, the Hisba Bill was passed, which was a copy of the Taliban’s vice and virtue police. This was condemned by human rights activists as a gross violation of citizen rights and personal liberties87 and the Hisba Bill was rejected by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The MMA government announced that it would present the Bill once again. The MMA has created no problems for General Musharraf so far. For that matter, Musharraf has also not created any problems for the MMA. On the contrary, the MMA has helped Musharraf by supporting the Legal Framework Order and the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment to the Constitution also enabled the general to hold two offices—that of the chief of the army and the President. Musharraf knows that he could count on the

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support of the MMA in his confrontation with the two major parties, the PPP and the PML(N), in the next election. On its part the MMA knows that its government in the NWFP would not last a day in case of a confrontation with the General. After he took over, Musharraf had given the impression that he was a moderate Muslim with enlightened views. He gave hints that he would amend the Blasphemy ordinance and the Hudood laws. These two laws have been used against women and minorities. He went back on these assurances on the first sign of opposition from the religious parties. The National Assembly had almost decided to dismantle the vicious Hudood laws in the second week of September 2006. The PPP, MQM and the PML(Q) had also agreed to the amended form and called the diluted version as the Women’s Protection Bill. All of a sudden, the ruling party chief, Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain, decided to consult the MMA leader Maulana Fazalur Rahman and this signalled the demise of the diluted ordinance. It was the nexus in the views of the conservative PML chief and religious parties which killed the reform process.88 The MMA has been threatening it would not allow the amended bill to be passed if presented again in the next session of the National Assembly. The importance given to the religious parties in the legislative process points to their crucial role in the political set up. While General Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime strengthened the mullah—military alliance, General Musharraf’s military regime entrenched them in the power structure.

the social and Political Impact of Islamic Parties In 1947 when Pakistan came into existence it had almost no infrastructure of the State or of governance. The two-way migration of the population from and to Pakistan had totally disrupted the economy of the country. The influx of the refugees needed immediate rehabilitation and relief. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people had been disrupted. It was the right time for the Islamic parties to use their resources and influence to unite the diverse people, bring peace and contribute to nation-building. Instead, they started a divisive campaign for an Islamic state

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and demanded the Ahmadis to be declared as non-Muslims. This sectarian campaign was later blown up during the Zia regime and has now come back to haunt Pakistan, when hundreds of Pakistanis are being killed in sectarian violence every year. In 1988, General Zia had unleashed Sunni fanatics on the Shias of Gilgit and had later shrugged off the assassination of Arif Hussaini, the then leader the Shia Tehrik-i-Nifaze Jafria.89 It is ironical that the first president of the All India Muslim League, Agha Khan, and the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, were also Shia. The local leaders of the Islamic parties usually harass members of the minority communities for blasphemy. The Jama’at-i-Islami’s youth wing, Shabab-e-Milli, acts as storm troopers of the Taliban-like moral police. Even before the Hisba law was passed by the NWFP Assembly, this group went berserk in Peshawar tearing up cinema posters that portrayed pictures of women, breaking videos and music CDs, setting fire to TV sets, attacking theatre artists and folk musicians, etc., alleging that they spread obscenity.90 This organization attacked and injured women participants in mixed races conducted mostly for charitable purposes. The student wing of the Jama’at-i-Islami and Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) has been opposing the opening of a department of music in Punjab University at Lahore on the grounds that it would promote obscenity and was against Islam and the ideology of Pakistan.91 The Islamic parties have been stout defenders of the Hudood and Blasphemy laws and call the former as divine laws. However, a large section of the Ulama claim that the Hudood laws are contrary to the Quranic teachings, which is why Pakistan’s three major parties — the PML(Q), PPP and the MQM — agreed to amend the laws but the move was sabotaged by the JUI leader Maulana Fazalur Rahman. The Islamic parties have been trying for total separation between the sexes in the country. In 1983, when a group of women gathered outside the Lahore court protesting against the Law of Evidence, which aimed at making the evidence of two women equal to that of one man, they were brutally beaten by male and female police. A section of the Ulama demanded death penalty for these women, who according to them had committed apostasy by demonstrating against the

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Quranic injunctions.92 The Islamic parties have never protested against such un-Islamic practices as Karo Kari (honour killing) and Vani (trading daughter or sister as part of an agreement to solve family or tribal dispute). The Saudi influence on Pakistani culture is increasingly becoming apparent. The segregation of sexes and an increase in the number of women in veils show the effectiveness of Islamic parties. Incidents of religious violence like attacks on mixed races, burning of the Punjab Assembly and other properties in protest against the Danish cartoons are becoming common. The Taliban ideology is not confined to the NWFP alone, it is now spreading to Punjab. The promotion and growth of jihadi culture in Pakistan emanated from the ideologues of most Islamic parties in the country. Islamic parties and militant groups promote the extremist views of jihad The concept of jihad is controversial because it has been interpreted differently by different scholars, sometimes with even diametrically opposite meanings. Some madrasas run by the Islamic parties have been called jihadi factories. One Pakistan minister declared that anybody who did not believe in jihad was neither a Muslim nor a Pakistani.93 The Islamic parties have denigrated democracy and secularism as un-Islamic. They attack secularism as atheism and anti-religion. Islamic leaders have announced that there is no place for secularists in Pakistan and denounce any sign of liberalism or moderation as secularism. The threat of an Islamic takeover of Pakistan has been blown up by Musharraf to secure support for himself and Pakistan’s military and economy. Islamic parties provide Islamic rationale for Pakistan’s intervention in Afghanistan and in Kashmir. Most jihadi and sectarian groups are small and wholly dependent on the military’s agencies for their activities. Secular institutions are getting depoliticized. There are almost no demonstrations against such issues as Iraq, Palestine or Iran.94 The agitation by Islamic parties against the Musharraf’s U-turn did not succeed. Osama bin Laden is the most popular leader in Pakistan now. It was the army, and not the mainstream political parties, which allowed the Islamic parties to entrench themselves in state institutions. Islamic parties will continue to enjoy important position

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in the politics of the country if democracy is not restored and the military continues to rule. The military has now developed strong economic interests. It is estimated that the military controls millions of dollars worth of economic assets.95 It has now entered every walk of life. They are selling everything from an egg to a tank and are in every business, except the beauty parlour.96 It would not be in the military’s corporate interests for a strong democratic movement to take roots in Pakistan.

notes 1 P. Hardy, The Muslims of British India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 51. 2 Madan Gopal, Indian Muslims: A Political History, 1858-1947 (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1964), p. 19. 3 www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0.27709-2075332.00.html Online document accessed on 2 October 2006. 4 Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, ‘Organization in Islamic Revivalist Movements’, in Charles H. Kennedy and Rasul Bakhsh Rais (ed.), Pakistan: 1995 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 62. 5 Khalid Bin Sayeed, Pakistan the Formative Phase: 1857–1948 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1992), second edition, p. 43. 6 Abdul Hamid, Muslim Separatism in India (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 110; also see www.darululoom-deoband.com/english/aboutdarululoom/ freedomfight.htm Online document accessed on 2 October 2006. 7 M. Rafique Afzal, Political Parties in Pakistan, 1947–1958 (Islamabad: National Institute of Historical and Cultural Society, 1976), pp. 33–34. 8 Mujeeb Ahmad, Jam’iyyat’Ulma-i-Pakistan: 1948–79 (Islamabad: National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, 1993), p. xxii. 9 Sharif Al Mujahid, Quaid-i Azam Jinnah, Studies in Interpretation (Karachi: Quaid-i-Azam Academy, 1981), p. 346. 10 Hardy, n. no. 1; p. 191. 11 Gopal, n. no. 2; p. 102. 12 Mehdi Hasan, Pakistan ki Siyasi Jamaatein (Lahore: Kilasik, 1975), p. 169. 13 K. K. Aziz, Party Politics in Pakistan (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1976), p. 160. 14 Syed Nur Ahmad, From Martial Law to Martial Law; Politics in the Punjab, 1919–58 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press Inc., 1985), p. 100. 15 Mehdi Hasan, n. no. 12; p. 181. 16 Rafique Afzal, n. no. 7; p. 29.

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17 Sharif al Mujahid, n. no. 9; p. 612. 18 Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama’at-iIslami of Pakistan (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1994), p. 5. 19 Naqi Ali, Saiyyid Mawdudi ka Aahad (Lahore: Al Badr Publications, 1981), p. 22. 20 Sayyid A. S. Pirzada, The Politics of Jamiat Ulama-i-Islam Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 9. 21 Kalim Bahadur, The Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan; Political Thought and Political Action (New Delhi: Chetna Publications, 1977), p. 36. 22 Zia-ul-Hasan Faruqi, Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1983), p. 124. 23 www. ghazali.net/book.1/body_chapter2.htm Online document accessed on 15 October 2006. 24 Tarjuman-al Quran, Volume 31, No. 2, Lahore, pp. 59–60. 25 Pirzada; n. no. 20; p.13. 26 Mujeeb Ahmad, n. no. 8; p. 2. 27 Kenneth Cragg, Counsels in Contemporary Islam, Islamic Survey 3 (Edinburgh: University Press, 1965), p. 25. 28 Abul Ala Mawdudi in Khurshid Ahmad, (ed., trans.), Islamic Law and Constitution (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1960), p. 44. 29 Ibid., p. 53. 30 Abul Ala Mawdudi, The Message o f Jama’at-i-Islami (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1955), p. 45. 31 Sohail Mahmood, Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan, Egypt and Iran (Lahore: Vanguard Books Pvt. Ltd., 1995), p. 110. 32 Sharif al Mujahid, n. no. 9; p. 248. 33 Ibid., pp. 249, 251. 34 Muhammad Munir, From Jinnah to Zia (Lahore: Vanguard Books Ltd., 1980. second edition), p. 32. 35 www.dawn.com 5 October 2003. 36 Khalid Bin Sayeed, n. no. 5; p. 203. 37 Leonard Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Los Angeles:University of California Press, 1961) p. 153. 38 Ishtiaq Ahmad, The Concept of an Islamic State: An Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 217. 39 Aziz, n. no. 13; p. 60. 40 Leonard Binder, n. no. 38; p. 164. 41 Ishtiaq Ahmad, n. no. 39; p. 218. 42 Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 1–5. 43 Ibid., p. 49.

116 KALIM BAHADUR 44 Allen MacGrath, The Destruction of Pakistan’s Democracy (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 93–94. 45 Kalim Bahadur, n. no. 21; p. 71. 46 Mujeeb Ahmad, n. no. 8. p. 37. 47 Munir, n. no. 35; p. 49. 48 Pirzada, n. no. 20; p. 21. 49 Mujeeb Ahmad, n. no. 8; pp. 12–13. 50 Pirzada, n. no. 20; p. 27. 51 Mujeeb Ahmad, n. no. 8; p. 25. 52 Kalim Bahadur, n. no. 21; p. 106. see also Vali Raza Nasr; n. no. 19; p. 41. 53 Ibid., p. 119. 54 Husain Haqqani, Pakistan; Between Mosque and Military (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2005) p. 43. 55 Pirzada, n. no. 20; p. 32. 56 www.dawn.com.pk/ on 3 November 2006. 57 Mullahs and the Military, 20 March 2003, ICG Asian Report, No. 49, p. 22. 58 Ibid. 59 The State of Sectarianism in Pakistan, 18 April 2005; ICG Asia Report, No. 95, p. 12. 60 Jessica Stern, ‘Pakistan’s Jihadi Culture’, Foreign Affairs , Vol. 79, No. 6, New York, pp. 118–19. 61 Tariq Rahman, Denizens of Alien Worlds: A Study of Education, Inequality and Polarization in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 93–95. 62 Pakistan: The Mullahs and the Military; n. no. 58; p. 3. 63 Hassan N. Gardezi, ‘The Politics of Religion in Pakistan: Islamic State or Sharia Rule’, 14 April 2003. Online document available at www. sacw.net/new/ Gardezi140403.html. 64 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 2000), p. 130. 65 Husain Haqqani, n. no. 55; p. 142. 66 Anwar H. Syed, ‘Sunni–Shia Conflict in Pakistan’, in Hafeez Malik, Pakistan Founders Aspirations and Today’s Realities (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 254. 67 Hassan N. Gardezi; n. no. 64. 68 Zaigham Khan, ‘Allah’s Army’, Herald, January 1998, Karachi, pp. 123–33. 69 Amir Mir, The True Face of Jehadis: Inside Pakistan’s Network of Terror (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2006), p. 48. 70 Ibid., pp. 73–84. 71 K. Santhanam, et al., (eds.), Jihadis in Jammu and Kashmir: A Portrait Gallery (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002), p. 25.

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72 ia.rediff.com/news/2004/dec/28spec1.htm Online document accessed on 17 October 2006. 73 Khaled Ahmed, ‘The biggest militia we know nothing about’, The Friday Times, 20 May 2002, Lahore. 74 Yoginder Sikand, The Origins and Development of the Tablighi Jama’at (1920–2000), (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002), p. 264. 75 Husain Haqqani, n. no. 55; p. 239. 76 Hasan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2005), p. 154. 77 Kamal Matinuddin, The Taliban Phenomenon: Afghanistan 1994–1997 (Karachi: Lancer Publishers and Distributors, 2000), p. 40. 78 www.hrcpelectoralwatch.org/partyprofiles.cfm Online document accessed on 18 October 2006. 79 The Tribune, 9 January 2002, Chandigarh. 80 The Friday Times, 10 July 2002, Lahore. 81 Dawn, 24 October 2002, Karachi. 82 Andrew Wilder, ‘Election: 2002: Legitimising the Status Quo’, in Craig Baxter, Pakistan on the Brink: Politics, Economics, and Society (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 116. 83 Ibid., p. 115. 84 www.thenews.com.pk/ Online document accessed on 24 October 2002. 85 Andrew Wilder; n. no. 83; p.117. 86 www.boloji.com/wfs/wfs193 htm online document accessed on 23 October 2006. 87 Herald, October 2006. 88 The State of Sectarianism in Pakistan; n. no. 60; p. 12. 89 www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/south_asia/2968588.stm Online document accessed on 31 October 2006. 90 http://archives.gulfnews.com/articles/06/09/11/10066636.html Online document accessed on 31 October 2006. 91 Omar Asghar Khan, ‘Political and Economic Aspects of Islamisation’, in Asghar Khan, The Pakistan Experience: State and Religion (Lahore: Vanguard, 1985), p. 147. 92 www.sacw.net/peace/Hoodbhoy2407006.htm Online document accessed on 31 October 2006. 93 Ibid. 94 Ayesha Siddiqa estimates that Pakistan’s military controls assets worth Rs 1 trillion. See www.ppp.org.pk/dfc/multimillionaires.html Online document accessed on 31 October 2006. 95 www.dawn.com.pk/2006/11/02/nat3.htm Online document accessed on 2 November 2006.

5

Pakistan’s Evolving stratEgic DoctrinE Feroz Hassan Khan

introduction The evolution of a nation’s strategic doctrine is an outcome of three key factors. First and foremost is the nation’s evaluation of structural and geophysical vulnerabilities compared to the threat perceptions of existing and potential adversaries, its self-image as a nation-state and sense of historic grievances within the national polity. Second, strategic responses are determined on the calculus of shifting military balance with adversaries, systematic changes in the regional and international system and national resource potential. Developing nations have inherent constraints, especially allocating resources for defence expenditure, which is invariably a high proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Third, a strategic doctrine will look at the prospects for conflict resolution or negotiated settlement of regional issues that could pave the way for structural arms control and agreements for restraint, with its principal adversaries and neighbours. If the prospects are low, the strategic doctrines and force goals (military objectives) will fundamentally alter the security calculus. South Asia has existed in a state of imbalance since its independence from the Great Britain. Beset with intractable conflicts and chronic rivalries, its historical and social contexts defy simple structural generalizations. At the heart of the South Asian disparity are its two nuclear powers — India and Pakistan—whose relationship is characterized by the fusion of deep-seated religionbased animosity and unresolved political, strategic, and economic disparities. Consequently, in six decades since independence, given

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its size and resources, the South Asian subcontinent has not risen to its potential. As witnessed in recent times, in such an emotionally charged rivalry, the region is frequently driven into crises and often to a dangerously high level. Pakistan was born out of the traumas of its independence. It was surrounded by giant neighbours. Key adjacent countries seemed to be unreconciled to the founding of Pakistan. Afghanistan was the only nation to question Pakistan’s entry into the United Nations and verbally quarreled with the new nation over the contours of the Pakistan–Afghanistan border. India was always wary of the Partition, primarily out of a concern that Pakistan might inspire other minority groups to seek secession. Doubtful that the new Muslim nation would survive without national institutions and the infrastructure of government, India questioned Pakistan’s very survival then and continues to do so even now in some circles. This has remained the primary concern of all policy makers in Pakistan. The story of Pakistan’s security perspective is centred on this search for security to ensure the permanence of the Pakistan dream. There are two categories of nation-states in contemporary times. The first category does not have to worry about the status quo especially where smaller states are assured of security from large powerful neighbours, and thus have a stake in the system that preserves their strategic and economic independence. The second category of states is those that live in fear of dominance, perceive threats to their national security and, for historical reasons, are sceptical of the intentions of their larger neighbours. Such nation-states will have national doctrines with a high premium on preservation of national sovereignty and independence. To them, rise of power in the neighbourhood will not be assumed to be benign. Pakistan finds itself in the second category. This essay will outline Pakistan’s security perspective today. It will examine the evolution of the India–Pakistan rivalry, and elucidate how that rivalry shaped Pakistan’s views of its neighbour, India. This has led to a security competition that Pakistan’s founders did not anticipate. It will explore how Pakistan has coped with strategic trajectories that often did not favour its national interests and how, under President Pervez Musharraf,

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the country has shifted strategic priorities from narrow military security mindset to a broader national security perspective. Finally, it will conclude by briefly describing Pakistan’s security policy today, and in particular will discuss the role of nuclear weapons in that broader policy.

Historic roots of insecurity The rivalry with India came about as an unexpected consequence of the partition of the subcontinent. By creating a Muslim homeland, the founders of Pakistan expected an end to the communal disharmony as witnessed throughout the first half of the 20th century. As Hasan-Askari Rizvi has noted in his excellent treatment of Pakistani strategic culture, Pakistan’s founders thought that the new state would protect, and not threaten, India.2 Muhammad Iqbal, in his famous address at Allahabad in 1930, said that Pakistan should not trouble India, because ‘the North-West Indian Muslims will prove the best defenders of India against a foreign invasion, be that invasion one of ideas or of bayonets.’3 These comments were echoed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the early 1940s, when he stated, ‘We join together as good friends and neighbours and say to the world, “Hands off India.”’ Instead, India and Pakistan immediately clashed over three issues. The first was over the boundaries created through the partition process that were viewed as neither fair nor just. Second, the division of civil and military assets was seen as inequitable. Last, and most importantly, the accession of princely states was improper. The most glaring injustice was created by the accession into India of the state of Jammu and Kashmir — a Muslim majority state under a Hindu ruler, or maharaja.4 Pakistan’s relations with India, thus, began with basic distrust, compounded immediately in 1948 with the first of several wars. Over decades, Pakistan found itself in a strategic competition with India in a situation where trajectories consistently favoured India. Geographically larger, India was more powerful militarily, and possessed the state apparatus left over from British colonialism, while Pakistan had little to work with. Another important

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factor was that India was guided by Nehru for nearly two decades after its independence whereas Pakistan’s founder, Jinnah, died within a year of Pakistan’s creation. Pakistan’s security policy sought to contain threats on three fronts. Internally, Pakistan faced serious ethnic divisions and questions about the proper role of religion in the public sphere. Externally, Pakistan faced threats on its north-west border with Afghanistan, and at times the Soviet Union as well. Most importantly, Pakistan was divided into two wings by a hostile India. These external and internal threats often interacted in ways that exacerbated Pakistan’s insecurity. Lesser dangers included the Pashtun militants sponsored by Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. The most visible and traumatic danger manifested itself in 1971. Pakistan’s suspicion of India’s cognitive bias came to fruition with proactive Indian involvement in the training, and sponsoring of Bengali guerrillas (Mukti Bahini). This traumatized a nation that was struggling to maintain its national unity just as India was consolidating its nationhood in its ‘most dangerous decades.’5 When Pakistan’s army cracked down on the violent masses in East Pakistan, a long political crisis followed in the 1971 War. Vivid in the memory of many historians in Pakistan are the remarks of Indian senior analyst and scholar K. Subrahmanyam. Subrahmanyam’s role and influence on India’s decision to intervene were manifested in his note that the situation in East Pakistan provided India with ‘an opportunity the like of which will never come again.’6 India’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the shape of assaults in conjunction with tens of thousands of ‘Mukti Bahini’ guerrillas against the beleaguered garrison in East Pakistan, is remembered as the Pakistani equivalent of ‘Dien Bien Phu’ (the decisive battle in the first Indo–China war) and not simply a loss due to its flawed discriminatory internal policy against its eastern half. To India, however, Pakistan’s loss of East Pakistan was a failure of religion as a source of national cohesion and implied an end to the concept of the two-nation theory.7

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Pakistan signed the Simla Agreement in 1972, under duress but also with a hope that this would bring an end to insecurities and bring in a new era of peace and amity between the two neighbours. However, for Pakistan, the Indian security threat did not end with Simla. In 1974, India conducted a ‘peaceful nuclear experiment’ jostling Pakistan out of its nuclear complacency and converting a nascent nuclear option into a strategic compulsion. In the following decades, India continued a forwardleaning policy along the Line of Control in Kashmir, most visibly evident in the operation to seize the Siachin Glacier in 1984 and plans for preventive strikes at Pakistan’s centrifuge plant at Kahuta. In 1987, the large-scale Operation Brass-tacks caused real concern in Islamabad about India’s possible hostile intent, especially since Pakistan was engaged in dealing with the Soviet threat on its western border with Afghanistan. From their experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, the decision makers of Pakistan were increasingly convinced that if India was presented with an opportunity to weaken Pakistan, it would seize it. The Kashmir uprising in 1989 and 1990 surprised Pakistani policy makers. The Kashmir dispute, unresolved but dormant once again, took centre stage in the India–Pakistan relationship, fostering a series of crises of increasing intensity since then. A nation’s evolving strategic concept is an amalgam of its own perceptions, combined with the image of its adversary and historical experiences—sense of injustice, grievance, threats to survival—which evolves into a national strategic culture.8 Pakistan’s creation was based on the notion that Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, given their historical interaction with the Hindus, have a distinct way of life that could not be preserved in a Hindu-dominated united India. Therefore, the prospects of a strong, prosperous and a successful separate Muslim state are an anathema to India’s definition of itself as a secular state. This friction of ideas has not disappeared even after 60 years of Partition, and in some ways, continues in different forms.9 It is the ideological nature of rivalry, on top of these structural issues between India and Pakistan, which perpetuates the rivalry.10 There were shared myths about ‘the other’ that still

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complicate attempts at communication and conflict resolution. At the foundation of the two-nation theory has been the notion that India would never emerge as a truly secular democracy that will protect the rights of the Muslims. India, on the other hand, also denied that a non-theocratic Pakistan would exist and if a successful breakaway Muslim state from India prospers, it would be anathema to Indian unity. The combination of structural problems with an added ideological layer not only propels the dispute, it creates cognitive biases and complicates the rivalry even further. For six decades, such notions have hardened. This has created national identities that mirror ‘enemy-images’ of each other, allowing strategic elites in each country to finger-point the faulted nature of each other.11 The next section examines Pakistan’s threat perceptions that are the fundamental drivers of its strategic choices and responses.

Pakistan’s security Policy: a realist Perspective Political scientist Peter Lavoy surmises that to understand the intrinsic military insecurity of a nation, especially for states like Pakistan that eventually possessed nuclear weapons, a logical starting point is to examine realism, or balance-of-power theories. Realism explains that balance of power is a recurring phenomenon in international politics. States strengthen themselves in the face of external military threats, that is, seek balance by conducting a repertoire of strategies and alliances.12 Pakistan’s responses to redress its national security and motivation to build nuclear weapons are manifest in such broader explanations. When weak states confront stronger states, they have two fundamental options. They can either ‘bandwagon’, by accepting the dominance of the stronger state or find a ‘balance’ against the emerging threat. The option to bandwagon requires the weaker state to forego its sovereign policy options and essentially place its safety in the hands of the stronger state. Such a policy option is feasible, especially if there is a history of acrimony, but often acquiescence puts the nation on a slippery slope of relentless concession, gradually eroding its independence. In the case of Pakistan, such fears dominate security thinking and Islamabad

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refuses the perceived slow evolution into a ‘West Bangladesh’. The second option is to find a balance against a security threat. Such balancing can be done through the involvement of international institutions, the pursuit of alliances, or through the development of internal military capabilities. National security planners generally prefer internal balancing because it leaves less to chance and less to the will of others. In the early decades of its existence, Pakistan faced a dilemma when the nation barely had its feet on the ground. It was confronted with a war with India over Kashmir. The splitting of the British Indian Armed Forces into the Indian and Pakistan Armies left the latter suffering the consequences of great disparities. As allocation and transfers of military assets to the two dominions were stalled, India dragged its feet on military issues as well as transfer of financial assets to Pakistan. This added to the misery of the partition.13 External balancing, therefore, became a realistic imperative. The onset of the Cold War and exigencies for ‘containment’ of the communist threat in Eurasia brought into Pakistan the interests of Western powers. The geographic proximity to Eurasia propelled Pakistan into geopolitical significance. For a country facing immense problems, this was a window of opportunity, which Pakistan could not have missed. In its desire to find the balance against growing Indian power, Pakistan has pursued all of these potential options. Its hopes of finding a just and durable resolution of disputes with its powerful neighbour with the aid of international institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank and other organizations were capricious at best. Pakistan’s experience with alliances was even worse. Pakistan’s most powerful ally, the United States, proved to be unreliable in extreme crises. The United States refused to countenance Pakistan’s security perceptions vis-à-vis India, and in the 1960s placed an embargo on its ally, especially in the 1965 War. The United States was equally unresponsive in saving Pakistani dismemberment in 1971, despite the US presidential directive to ‘tilt’ in Pakistan’s favour.14 Later, in the 1990s, Pakistan was left to itself to deal with the socio-economic fallout of an asymmetric war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The outcomes of the 1971 War with India, the abandonment by the US in the 1990s,

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and subsequent shifts in the international system after 2001 are indelible landmarks that affected Pakistan’s security thinking. Pakistan is convinced that its security can be ensured only by matching India’s conventional and nuclear development. Notwithstanding uncertainties about its allies, Pakistan’s security policy has been shaped by strategic partnerships with the United States and China. The Cold War provided Pakistan an opportunity to seek a formal alliance with the United States. But the security interests between Pakistan and the United States only had marginal overlaps. Pakistan found US security guarantees of little value when it faced Indian forces in 1965 and 1971. In the later decades, Pakistan drifted from being the ‘most favoured ally’ to an ‘ally of strategic convenience’. In marked contrast, Pakistan forged an all-weather friendship with China. Though China provided Pakistan with military, technological and diplomatic support for decades, in intense crises Pakistan did not get the support it had needed and hoped for. Together, these political relationships did yield some dividends. The Kashmir issue remained alive on all international fora and Pakistan’s military relationships with the United States and China provided it with the much-needed equipment and technology in its race to maintain a conventional and nuclear deterrent against India.15 Driven by fear and concerns over its ultimate survival, Pakistan’s case is analogous to another state, Israel. As Stephen Cohen has argued: Like Israel, Pakistan was founded by a people who felt persecuted when living as a minority, and even though they possess their own states (which are based on religious identity), both remain under threat from powerful enemies. In both cases, an original partition demonstrated the hostility of neighbours, and subsequent wars showed that these neighbours remained hostile. Pakistan and Israel have also followed parallel strategic policies. Both sought an entangling alliance with various outside powers (at various times, Britain, France, China, and the United States), both ultimately concluded that outsiders could not be trusted in a moment of extreme crises, and this led them to develop nuclear weapons.16

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threat Perceptions Pakistan’s threat perceptions are a cumulative result of several structural handicaps, real threats, history of wars and crises, and geo-strategic imperatives. From the outset, the armed forces of Pakistan have faced increasingly sophisticated conventional forces coupled with a lack of geographic depth. Pakistan’s elongated geophysical shape and border alignments are such that major cities and communicating lines are perilously close and nearly parallel to the border with India. Unless defended upfront, the terrain allows easy interdiction with a simple thrust of mechanized forces. Pakistan’s strategic handicap is compounded when it finds nearly two-thirds of the Indian armed forces organized, structured and predisposed against such vulnerabilities. From Pakistan’s standpoint, the Indian force deployment and postures are clearly threatening. Given the crises-prone relationship between India and Pakistan, these cannot be dismissed by Pakistan’s security planners. The Indian Army is structured around five regional commands comprising of 12 corps. Out of these 12 corps, nine are either deployed along the Line of Control (LOC) or poised against mainland Pakistan. At least three strike corps are built around armoured divisions, mechanized divisions and the Reinforced Army Plain Infantry Division (RAPID), divisions that are ideally suited and organized to fight in the plains and deserts in Pakistan. Furthermore, India has the ability to move forces from the Eastern and Southern Commands to the western front against Pakistan within one to two weeks. The known positions of forces on the Eastern Command are at Siliguri (West Bengal), Dimapur (Nagaland) and Tezpur (Assam).17 Pakistani planners perceive that India does not face standing Chinese forces poised against disputed territory, and if it did, it would take several months to build up against India, enough for India to react. Further, with the ongoing Sino–Indian rapprochement and agreement to resolve the border dispute with dialogue, there is no possibility of India being taken on by surprise. Pakistan, on the contrary, cannot have that satisfaction or draw that conclusion, therefore includes in its threat calculus, the Indian forces located on the

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northeastern front to be moved against Pakistan in the event of war with Pakistan. The Indian Navy has three main Commands: Western (headquartered at Mumbai), Southern (headquarters at Cochin), and Eastern (headquarters at Vishakhapatnam). Besides these, it also has a Far-eastern Sub-Command with headquarters at Port Blair and the Naval Aviation with headquarters at Goa. The locations of the bases suggest that the Indian Navy’s area of concentration is the western coast. The Indian Navy is operationally divided into two fleets: Western and Eastern. Reports suggest that the Western Fleet has around the same number of vessels as the Eastern Fleet, if not more.18 In several wars and crises, the Indian Navy has clearly demonstrated its intentions of blockading Karachi — Pakistan’s only port. Besides larger geopolitical issues between the two, there are unresolved maritime issues as well, including the delineation of a maritime boundary, the Sir Creek issue and the near daily occurrence of fishermen treading into each others’ waters. Given these, and a ratio of 1:5 between the naval forces of India and Pakistan, Pakistan feels its maritime vulnerabilities must be redressed. The Indian Air Force is organized into five Commands: Northern, Central, Southern, South-western and Eastern. It has around 72 bases across India.19 The concentration of bases in the west and north-west under the Central, Western and South-western Commands indicates that over two-thirds of the Indian Air Force is positioned near Pakistan.20 The allocation of air force wings and squadrons to these bases along with the bulk of India’s most modern aircrafts, the Su-30 MK, Su-30 MKI, Mirage 2000, Jaguar, MiG 29, and MiG 27, point to the strategic advantage these bases provide from an Indian perspective. With India’s huge modernization plans, which include the purchase of aircrafts such as the F/A Super Hornet or equivalent, the gap will only grow further. Pakistan’s global aspirations are not as broad as India’s, and hence its plans for its Air Force focus largely on a medium-tech fighter base complemented by a good ratio of hi-tech western fighters. But even on this score the technical

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gaps would widen. The Air Force imbalance is even more critical in terms of crisis stability. Given Pakistan’s geophysical vulnerability, with the proximity of its lines of communication as well as major cities such as Lahore to the international border, the strength and technological superiority of the Indian armed forces pose a serious threat to Pakistan in the event of a conventional war. With bitter memories of its defeat in 1971 and the lack of US and Chinese resolve in preventing Pakistan’s break up, India’s growing conventional military superiority has forced Pakistan to look for other options to restore the strategic balance with India.21 On the Indian side, the US–India strategic relationship is a major milestone for India’s nuclear, conventional and industrial potential. Under this relationship, which includes the transfer of nuclear technology to India, the transfer of US arms usually gets less international attention in the shadow of the nuclear deal.22 Over time, India has become more capable of generating sufficient numbers of its conventional military forces near Pakistan for offensive operations. India could threaten and jeopardize Pakistan’s infrastructure, major industries and command centres, in addition to blockading access from the sea as well as the rivers, which flow from Indian Kashmir. Unless matched by Pakistan, India’s modernization will lower the nuclear threshold. It is for this reason Pakistan keeps its so-called red-lines — loss of space, significant destruction, economic strangulation, and threat to internal stability — vague.23 As India’s conventional force, especially the Indian Air Force, improves in capability, it enhances the probability, in Pakistan’s calculus, of India attempting decapitating strikes at the onset of a conventional war. The growing US –India strategic relationship is seen with concern in Pakistan, though, as of today, India does not have the capability to translate its numerical superiority into a victory over Pakistan without triggering Pakistan’s nuclear threshold.24 To the west, Pakistan’s western provinces — the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan—are often volatile. Since independence, Afghanistan has laid an irredentist claim over the western provinces, has questioned the borders and has remained

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a source of malfeasance in the tribal regions. More troublesome for Pakistan is that Afghanistan has often worked in collusion and even provided sanctuary to the Soviet Union, India and Iran, powers that have been hostile to Pakistan from time to time. Pakistan’s forward policy of supporting favourable tribal factions, including the Taliban, was aimed at preventing a hostile government in Kabul and ensuring a friendly government that does not act on the behest of other powers.25 Today, fears within Pakistan are exacerbated given that Afghanistan is now under increased influence of the traditionally hostile Northern Alliance, which has been an ally of India throughout the 1990s. Since the Alliance’s return as power brokers in Kabul, Afghanistan has backed Pashtun and Baloch nationalists operating across the Durand Line in Pakistan’s western provinces and border areas.26 These circumstances make it imperative for Pakistan to keep professionally trained armed forces in a near-ready state to respond to the sudden emergence of any crises and military build-up. Several times in the past 20 years, the situation in the region rapidly shifted from the normalcy of peace time to an escalating and deepening military crises. In 2001, at a time when Pakistan’s western border was under tremendous pressure from US-led coalition forces against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, India mobilized its armed forces in response to an attempted terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. This led to the 2002 military stand-off, which came close to breaking out into a major conventional conflict on at least two occasions.27 The above strategic anxieties impel Pakistan to have standing armed forces of the existing size and quality. This, in turn, overshadows other civil national institutions and consequently, causes resentment over the military’s share of national resources. In any potential crises or conventional war, Pakistan must respond quickly if it is to ensure that these key centres of gravity are protected. This lack of strategic depth requires speed, quick reaction and unity of command. This is also true for nuclear weapons. Though Pakistan would never be rash in its use of nuclear weapons, it feels that the integration of nuclear and

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conventional forces is necessary to create a credible deterrent. This also does not necessarily mean that Pakistan is considering elaborate nuclear war-fighting scenarios. Instead, Pakistan’s command system at the highest level believes that the ‘conventional hand’ should know what the ‘nuclear hand’ is doing, and vice versa. Policy makers feel this conventional and nuclear integration will give them a better picture of the strategic situation in any prospective conflict. Pakistan’s civil and military leadership operates jointly at the Joint Services level under a unified civil–military command system. As a consequence, Pakistan has placed great emphasis in explaining the roles that civil and military leaders will play in the National Command Authority. The following section examines how Pakistan seeks to maximize its security in a crises-ridden environment.

Pakistan’s strategy for survival Pakistan security policies stem from the basic notion of surviving with dignity and maintaining sovereignty and independence at all costs. This centrality of ‘separate entity’ and ‘existing threat’ resonates within all segments of Pakistan’s security establishment. A strategic doctrine is essentially derived from this basic premise. It normally refers to a set of principles that a country employs to conduct its security strategy in pursuit of its national objectives.28 Henry Kissinger surmised that the essential task of a doctrine is to ‘translate power into policy’ by defining ‘what objectives are worth contending for and determine the degree of force appropriate for achieving them.’29 A doctrine performs many useful functions: it spells out the rationale for a country’s security objectives and policies. It clarifies the circumstances under which a country will go to war; explicitly states the parameters for employment of use of force; removes ambiguities from strategic planning and thinking; creates possibilities for self-correction through scrutiny and critique; and proffers guidelines for force structures.30 One argument, often proffered, is that Pakistan views India exclusively through the lens of narrow military interests. This is only marginally true.31 Such views are also often cynically

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couched by parochial interests, who over-simplify issues and gloss over the existing, very real, threats such as the ones analysed above. At times, giving vent to disdain against military rule in Pakistan is more a product of the frustration arising from the perennial civil–military divide in the domestic polity of Pakistan, rather than as part of an objective assessment of the real nature of the country’s security conundrum.32 The prime reason for the dominance of the military security factor over other facets of national security, such as economic security, is the prevalence of existing military threats and not perceptions of hypothetical enemies alone. Perceptions of national threat are based on consistent and well-recorded observations of the intentions and capabilities of adversaries, and their aims and objectives. These observations, from both classified and unclassified national and international sources, are professionally collated and systematically analysed. India’s intentions, force postures and capability trajectories are available in open sources in myriad security publications, print and electronic media in India. There are clear signs of hostile intent and consistent propaganda against Pakistan, which any objective regional security study could easily discern. National leadership in Pakistan is privy to periodic classified briefings and the highest political and military leadership are integrated in the national command system for optimal security decisions. Pakistan’s strategy is, therefore, to maintain sufficient conventional and nuclear forces to deter an Indian attack. If this deterrence fails, Pakistan will hold off Indian conventional attack long enough for the international community to intervene.33 However, based on its experience, international intervention to save Pakistan from external aggression is no longer a reliable factor. Pakistan does not expect its external allies—the United States and China — to help by intervention during crises or wars. External alliances only help bolster the country’s defense through arms purchases and supplies that can foster self-help and self-reliance.34 At various periods in its history, Pakistan has sought to engage in supporting insurgencies in Kashmir (1948 and 1965) and in Afghanistan (1980s through 2001), as a means of bolstering

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security. This strategy gained attention especially after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, which coincided with the resurgence of indigenous crises in Kashmir in 1989–90. By then, Pakistan had a decade of experience in waging a successful asymmetric war against the Soviet Union, with the full backing, support and networking of Western powers. With the Cold War over, and against the backdrop of previous stand-offs with India in the 1980s—Brasstacks and Siachin—the renewed Kashmir crises in 1990 put immense pressure on Pakistan. The Afghanistan mess was now morphing into an intra-tribe civil war. Against the backdrop of this intra-tribe civil war, the Kashmir crises eventually took shape as an insurgency. Abandoned by its allies, and suffering the imposition of military and economic sanctions by Western nations, Pakistan was a fledgling democracy governed by weak civilian governments. The country found anarchy surrounding its borders—Afghanistan, Punjab (Sikh insurgency in India), and Kashmir—with serious repercussions for its national security. It was not possible for the armed forces of Pakistan to handle such a chaotic situation that would have mired it in issues of internal security and drawn it away from its principal purpose and role — to defend the state and prepare to fight against India’s armed forces. Pakistan found a cheap strategy of supporting insurgencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir. On Kashmir, Pakistan has had a long-principled position but the insurgency of 1990 was different from before. It was indigenous and widespread, and coincided with the availability of thousands of demobilized warriors from the Soviet jihad. It was not forgotten that India had succeeded in the East Pakistan insurgency, or that it was the same mujahids who had defeated the Soviets in a protracted struggle.35 Pakistan’s strategy in Afghanistan briefly succeeded in creating a friendly space (often referred as ‘strategic depth’) but it soon found that the Taliban were an extremist and uncontrollable creed, much less a puppet of Islamabad in Kabul. Also, with the return of the Arabs and al-Qaeda sanctuaries, Pakistan’s security objective—of having a friendly government in Kabul—was backfiring with serious implications for its domestic situation. Pakistan

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abandoned this strategy after the catastrophic events in September 2001 and the commencement of the US War on Terror. It soon became clear that while such asymmetric means of strategy can be sustained, they are counterproductive as a security policy and cannot yield results other than violence and anarchy. Pakistan’s volte-face with the Taliban has alienated the warriors, who have turned against Musharraf and the Pakistan Army.36 Many have turned their aggression against the Pakistani military; there have been suicide attacks against the military leadership and soldiers as recent as October 2006—the terrorist suicide attacks killing soldiers in Dargai (a frontier province in Pakistan).

Pakistani security Policy Under Musharraf Under President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan has followed a four-pronged security policy. The most important component of that policy is the economic recovery of Pakistan, a task he has been committed to since he first took office in 1999.37 Since then, he has closely worked with Shaukat Aziz, initially the finance minister and now the prime minister, which in effect demonstrates the emphasis of economics over military security as the highest national objective. The other components of his security policy are designed to provide Pakistan with space in which it can reconcile its domestic instabilities. This is a frustrating and time-consuming process, but it requires a break from external crises to focus on strengthening national civil institutions. To achieve this, the importance of deterring threats to Pakistan through the maintenance of sufficient conventional and nuclear capabilities is critical. The second component of Musharraf’s security policy is to create deterrent forces — comprising nuclear and conventional forces integrated at the highest level — to ensure the prevention of war from external threats, making rapid growth in the economy and the development of domestic infrastructure. The third component of the president’s security policy is to seek conflict resolution with India with the hope of resolving substantive issues, notably Kashmir. Resolving disputes with India serves two major national objectives. First, it keeps at bay certain

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aggressive elements of the Indian strategic enclave from pretexts of waging war with Pakistan, and secondly, it unlocks the immense economic potential of the India–Pakistan relationship. Finally, the last prong of Musharraf’s security policy is to maintain friendly relations with Afghanistan and provide positive assistance to its reconstruction efforts. Afghanistan’s stability has a direct and positive impact on Pakistan, especially in its western provinces. Pakistan hopes that one day Central Asian trade and energy resources can transit easily through Afghanistan to Pakistan’s ports at Karachi and Gwadar, and extend to India, bringing the fruits of stability and peace to the wider region. Pakistan’s reorientation of its Afghan and Kashmir policies has made domestic security (and economic revival) the most pressing issue for the national security of Pakistan. This formidable challenge, however, will take time and perseverance. President Musharraf has emphasized repeatedly that internal security is the most pressing challenge facing Pakistan. In 2004, Musharraf put it vividly, saying that the ‘only threat is sectarian and religious terrorism, which is eating us like termites, and it is Islam and the Muslim Ummah (community) which is paying the high cost. We all have to fight against it.’38

nuclear Force Postures Pakistan has not formally articulated an official nuclear declaratory doctrine, spelling out the rationale for its nuclear weapons, as a national policy. However, there exists today a significant body of official decisions and statements that provide important clues to Pakistan’s strategic doctrine as a nuclear-weapons state.39 Essentially, Pakistan has an operational doctrine, which is ambiguous because it contains operational details that cannot be revealed publicly. As Pakistan operationalizes its nuclear deterrent by integrating nuclear and conventional forces into its war-fighting plans, it does not imply that it is considering the use of nuclear weapons as a war-fighting instrument, but simply to translate ‘power into policy’ as Kissinger put it. If the

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national objective is to survive with dignity it must place appropriate force to back that objective. As Michael Quinlan has noted, ‘Pakistan’s rejection of nofirst-use seems merely a natural refusal to lighten or simplify a stronger adversary’s assessment of risk; it implies the retention of an option, not a positive policy of first-use as a preferred course.’40 It is precisely for this reason that Pakistan has neither explained red-lines (threshold) nor articulated a public nuclear doctrine. As US President Dwight Eisenhower said to his Vice President, Richard Nixon, in 1958, ‘You should never let the enemy know what you will not do.’41 For the past seven years, Pakistan has been in the process of integrating nuclear and conventional forces, which the strategic planners believe is necessary to ensure the credibility of deterrence. This does not necessarily mean that Pakistan is considering elaborate nuclear war-fighting scenarios. Nuclear weapons are not integral at the operational level—at the Corps and Divisions level — in the Pakistan military; the nuclear forces are separate and planned at the strategic level and its planning is conducted at the highest national level. Conventional force war-fighting contingencies do not include the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Battlefield tactical weapons such as artillery guns, rocket units or atomic demolition mines are not the kind of arsenals in the inventory of the military forces of Pakistan.42 Nuclear deterrence would go a long way to prevent an outbreak of major wars in the region and that would provide stability to revive and strengthen the economy. Nuclear deterrence, however, does not assure crises stability in the region. Growing belligerence and the rise of extremism in both India and Pakistan are unhealthy signs. Some right-wing elements in Pakistan do not believe India would ever provide this respite to Pakistan. Therefore, despite facing the erosion of its conventional forces due to the denial of high-tech upgradation, Pakistan continues to make the best of its strategic forces (nuclear and missile) to counterbalance Indian superiority in conventional forces. Should a conventional war break out between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, there is no assurance that it will not escalate.

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Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not viewed as a status-granting instrument to their international political standing. Pakistan’s external diplomacy essentially is to defend the legitimacy of nuclear weapons, which are critical to its national survival. Internally, nuclear weapons are a component of national consolidation and domestic politics. Pakistan desires the nuclear factor to positively affect various domestic sectors and hopes to seize an opportunity to pull itself out of the economic quagmire that it was in, due to a decade of mismanagement. The outbreak of a conventional war between India and Pakistan could destabilize the region bringing socio-economic chaos to both countries, though admittedly Pakistan would suffer the most.

Future trajectories Pakistan’s nuclear force posture was recessed — opaque and non-weaponized — until the late 1990s. Pakistan had no immediate plans to go operational with its force postures. It did envisage rapidly weaponizing and being able to deploy on short notice. Subsequent crises after 1998 forced Pakistan to weaponize its arsenals, yet nuclear weapons were neither mated to delivery systems nor were they inducted into the armed forces during major crises. Pakistan has now gradually inducted nuclear weapons into the armed forces but does not deploy or keep arsenals in alert status, as was the case during the Cold War in Europe. Pakistan’s force requirements and capabilities, in the short to long term, would be contingent upon regional developments, strategic alignments and threat perceptions. The nuclear force requirement of every state is largely a classified secret. Islamabad’s public position is to have a credible minimum deterrence. This is based on Pakistan’s assessment of India’s inventory, targeting requirements and unspecified future adversaries. In addition, force requirements must also cater to targeting redundancies and survivability requirements. Like most nuclear powers in the world, Pakistan retains ambiguity about its actual stockpile, and its quality and quantity, which will always remain a national secret.

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Unlike other nuclear powers, Pakistan has to be careful in its force goal requirements and always keep an eye on the affordability factor. It is not a major industrial power with unlimited resources. Pakistan (like India) has immense socio-economic issues to tackle and its planners are conscious that it would be forced into a debilitating arms race that could cripple its economy and bring a national downfall, or ‘Sovietization’ of Pakistan. It is for this prime reason that Pakistan prefers having a low nuclear posture that is complimentary to its minimum deterrent. This low force posture will suffice with a limited number of aerial vehicles and a combination of liquid fuel and solid fuel ballistic missiles that can maintain a balance with India. The nuclear weapons are in a non-deployed state (i.e., they are demated: the warheads are separated from their delivery systems, and each is stored separately). However, owing to a series of crises in 1999 and 2001, Pakistan fears that keeping these too recessed could risk exposing nuclear assets to a preventive strike. Pakistan would then have to make a choice: it could either go in for a semi-deployed state in peacetime, thereby upping the level of readiness and increasing command and control challenges, or alternatively, increasing the force posture a notch higher — a medium state — and keeping it recessed.43 In the next four to five years, unless the security environment deteriorates, Pakistan is likely to maintain a low-to-medium force posture (i.e., missiles and warheads will remain in a semi-deployed state and in a low level of readiness). Pakistan is likely to focus on improving its command and control system and operational deterrent forces. Since 1999, Pakistan has systematically created nuclear forces in two of its services—land and air. In the next five years, naval arms are likely to appear as well. Though it is unlikely that Pakistan will opt for a high nuclear posture, there are many variables that could determine its choices, and most likely, these will be a result of a drastic deterioration in the security situation or crises, wars and alliance exigencies. The driving force in this regard will be external factors and it will not be Pakistan’s choice. The Pakistan military, in the foreseeable future, is likely to have a limited capability and possibly follow a policy of a flexible

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response. Rather than lowering the nuclear threshold, it will exercise the choice of increasing the robustness of conventional fighting to offset India’s superiority in conventional and limited war and Cold Start doctrines. Islamabad is not likely to go into a high force posture, which would imply greater sophistication and targeting abilities as it does not have offensive power projection ambitions.44 The aforementioned force postures are based on the assumption that there is no negotiated peace structure in the region, nor is there any prospect of conflict resolution between the two nuclear neighbours, India and Pakistan. Conversely, in the next 10 to 15 years, a more robust nuclear posture by Pakistan in reaction to India’s modernization and force goals, could well be conducive to strategic stability as long as the two neighbours remain mutually vulnerable. However, the absence of peace treaties and the propensity of crises in South Asia, makes crisis stability a challenging prospect in the near future. A fortunate aspect of South Asia is that the nuclear forces of India and Pakistan are not deployed in a manner as they were in Europe during the Cold War. However, India and Pakistan have neither a treaty nor any formal restraint arrangement. The two countries have poised their conventional forces against each other and a series of military crises have occurred in the past two decades, even after the demonstrated nuclear capability. At best, the two countries only have non-verifiable confidence building measures (CBMs) that work well during peacetimes but there is little confidence in the CBMs in the event of crises and wars. Further, nuclear CBMs, though better than none, do not replace structural arms control and conflict resolution. With no prospects of a durable peace structure and arms control between India and Pakistan and no restraint on conventional force use, India’s insistence on selective nuclear restraints, such as a bilateral agreement on ‘no first use of nuclear’ is seen in Pakistan as disingenuous. By implication such an agreement ties the nuclear hand of the weaker side and allows the conventional hand of the stronger side to ‘box on—This clearly makes a mockery of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent. Pakistan instead proffers ‘no first use of force’—conventional or nuclear—and a bilateral

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agreement on the non-deployment of nuclear forces and mutually agreed restraints as the best means of preventing nuclear use. Pakistan first proffered the notion of a Strategic Restraint Regime in 1998 as a sequel to the US-led strategic dialogue after the nuclear test. This was rejected by India.45 India’s consistent rejection of any proposal by Pakistan that restricts use of conventional force has created an impression that India wants to retain the option of use of force as an instrument of policy. During the nuclear age early on, Bernard Brodie had surmised in his monumental work (The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order, Ayer Co Pub, 1946) that nuclear weapons represented a revolutionary development requiring a fundamental rethinking of how political and military affairs should be conducted. Nuclear weapons have altered the very nature of warfare, and Brodie questioned the efficacy of nuclear weapons as an instrument of war.46 India’s policy apparently retains war as an instrument of policy with the emergence of concepts such as ‘limited war’ and Cold Start. Should New Delhi and Islamabad decide to change their security thinking, the best way is to change course is to seek conflict resolution and work towards structural arms control and strategic stability in the region. A cooperative security architecture is better than a confrontational model and could well begin a new approach to security in South Asia and direct both countries’ energies to national welfare than military postures. There are two categories of arms control measures particularly applicable in the regional construct. First, the traditional measures that aim at crises avoidance and build on restraints — essentially CBMs and risk-reduction measures that can be formalized either in the form of agreements or regimes. Second, the category of arms control that imposes limits on numbers and kind, and is in the realm of imposing mutually acceptable developmental constraints that can be extended to disarmament. Past experience suggests that South Asia may not yet be amenable to the second category. At the same time, there has been a desire to come to some sort of agreement that can make a case of cautious optimism in constructing arms control regimes at some point in the future.

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On its part, Pakistan is showing remarkable flexibility in shifting the direction of its security policies in recognition of systematic shifts in regional and global circumstances. Pakistan’s former Army Chief and Ambassador to the United States, Jehangir Karamat explained this broad strategic reorientation, which reflects the rationale of Pakistan’s security policies. Instead of interfering with and destabilizing Afghanistan, Pakistan now supports a stable and friendly western neighbour. From a policy of appeasing domestic radicals, Pakistan has moved to confronting them in the interest of social harmony and stability. From a clandestine nuclear network with proliferation consequences, Pakistan is moving into a regime of assured command and control and international cooperation. With India, Pakistan is moving from a policy of confrontation to one based on dialogue and conflict-resolution. This reorientation has come at some cost for Pakistan. Ambassador Karamat noted, ‘In all such strategic turnarounds, there is a price to be paid. This price is paid in terms of the blowback, the resistance and the retaliation to the changes.’47 India and Pakistan need to co-exist as sovereign neighbours. Both, being de facto nuclear powers, are required to exercise restraint and limit their actions. It is incumbent not only on them, but also for the international community to seek early conflict resolution. It will be foolish to expect that arms control and restraint measures will work unless meaningful and substantive measure moves forward on core issues. Nevertheless, to prevent nuclear accidents and formal nuclear and conventional force deployments, the need to establish a ‘restraint’ regime in this region is urgent — perhaps more critical than in any other place in the world.

acknowledgements The author would like to thank Adam Radin and Robin Walker, Research Associates at the Naval Postgraduate School for their research and editorial assistance on this paper.

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notes 1 Hasan-Askari Rizvi, ‘Pakistan’s Strategic Culture’, in Michael R. Chambers (ed.), South Asia in 2020: Future Strategic Balances and Alliances (Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania: US Army War College, November 2002), p. 309. 2 Ibid. 3 Stephen Philip Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 46–7. 4 I borrow this term from Selig Harrison’s famous book on India with the same title. (India: The Most Dangerous Decades, Princeton, 1960). 5 K. Subrahmanyam, National Herald, 5 April 1971, Delhi, quoted in Dennis Kux, United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000: Disenchanted Allies (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2001), p. 206. For his role in India’s decision to intervene, see Sumit Ganguly, ‘Conflict Unending: India–Pakistan Tensions since 1947’, ibid., pp. 62–64. 6 For a detailed account of the Bangladesh crises, see Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, War and Session: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Also, for an argument on dead twonation theory, see Sumit Ganguly, op. cit., pp. 5–6. 7 Hasan-Askari Rizvi, op. cit. Also, for an explanation of the identical reasoning of Israeli strategic culture, see Avner Cohen, ‘Nuclear Arms and Crisis Under Secrecy: Israel and lessons of 1967–73 wars’, in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan and James Wirtz (eds.), Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers will Use Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 105–07. 8 See, for example, a detailed overview of India’s views about Pakistan in the discussions between Jaswant Singh and Strobe Talbott in the series of talks held in the aftermath of nuclear tests. To impress the US, India pitched its case with a two-pronged strategy. The first prong expressed India’s credentials such as secularism, democracy and an emerging market. The second prong was used to demonize Pakistan in every possible way, and to establish India as a counterweight to China. See Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb (Washington DC: The Brookings, 2004), pp. 84–85, 118–21. 9 For an examination of enduring rivalry read T. V. Paul, ‘Causes of India–Pakistan Rivalry’, in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India–Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 3–24. 10 See Vali Nasr, ‘National Identities and the India–Pakistan Conflict’, in T. V. Paul (ed.), op. cit., pp. 178–201. 11 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 128. I am indebted to Peter Lavoy for this reference and discussion. 12 For details see Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, Pakistan’s Defence Policy, 1947–58 (New York: St Martin Press, 1990), pp. 67–104. 13 Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan 1947–2000: Disenchanted Allies (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001), pp. 178–214.

142 FEroz Hassan kHan 14 See Feroz Hassan Khan and Christopher Clary, ‘Dissuasion and Regional Allies: The Case of Pakistan’, Strategic Insights III, No. 10, October 2004, online document available at http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2004/oct/khanOct04.asp. For comprehensive treatment of US–Pakistan relations see (Dennis Kux, United States and Pakistan 1947–2000: Disenchanted Aelies, Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For analysis of Pakistan–China relations, see John Garver, ‘The Future of the Sino–Pakistan Entente Cordiale’ in South Asia in 2020, (Dr Michael Chambers, Strategi Studies Institute, US, 2002) pp. 385–447. 15 Stephen Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), p. 204. 16 The International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance for 2002–03 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, October 2002), p. 129. 17 Bharat Rakshak, Indian Naval Squadrons in the Navy Today, November 2003. Online document available at http://bharat-rakshak.com/NAVY/Squardrans.html accessed in December 2003. 18 The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 130. 19 Bharat Rakshak, Air Force Wings and FBSUs, November 2003. Online document available at http://bharat-rakshak.com/NAVY/Squardrans.html accessed in 2003. 20 Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, The Armed Forces of Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford Printing Press, 2002), p. 169. 21 US Department of Defense, ‘Defense Department Statement on India Partnership’, news release 2 March 2006. Online document available at http://www.defenselink. mil/releases/2006/nr20060302-12590.html accessed in November 2006. 22 John H. Gill, ‘India and Pakistan: A Shift in the Military Calculus’, in Ashley Tellis and Michael Wills (eds.) Strategic Asia 2005–06 Online document available at http://www.nbr.org/publications/chapter.aspx?ID=e0cc207d-24b3-4253-8b31caad5f804325. Accessed in November 2006. 23 Ibid. 24 Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 2006), p. 203. 25 See Barnett R. Rubin, ‘Saving Afghanistan’, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007, p. 73. Also see Pervez Musharraf, ibid., p. 203, 211. 26 Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, ‘US Crisis Management’, in Henry L. Stimson Center, Report 57, South Asia’s Twin Peak Crisis (Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, September 2006). 27 I am indebted to Dr Syed Riffat Hussain for this definition in July 2005 in Monterey, California. 28 Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), pp. 7–8. 29 Military doctrines though provide clear signals of a country’s strategic intent; declaratory doctrines have inherent problems that could easily lead to ‘commitment traps’, internal discord and false expectations at home and abroad. Further, doctrinal precepts may not be followed at all under battlefield conditions. The well-known

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problem of fog of war is suggestive of this tendency and a detailed review from an organizational theory perspective is done by Scott Sagan in ‘The Origins of Military Doctrine’ in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 16–46. 30 John H. Gill, ‘India and Pakistan: A Shift in the Military Calculus’, in Ashley Tellis and Michael Wills (eds.), ‘Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty’, Strategic Asia 2005–06. Online document available at http://www.nbr.org/ publications/chapter.aspx?ID=e0cc207d-24b3-4253-8b31-caad5f804325 accessed in November 2006, p. 253. 31 For a subjective criticism of the military in Pakistan, see Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and the Military (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2005). Also see Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, The Army and America’s War on Terror (New Haven, Connecticut: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2005). 32 John H. Gill, ‘India and Pakistan: A Shift in the Military Calculus’, in Ashley Tellis and Michael Wills (eds.) Strategic Asia 2005–06, op. cit. 33 Pakistan’s ally, the US, did not come to help in 1965 and 1971 and instead, placed an arms embargo. In 1999 and 2001–02, US intervention turned out to be unfavourable, and China did not countenance the diplomatic support as Pakistan had expected. The prime minister of Pakistan was subjected to tough handling on 4 July 1999. 34 In the 1980s, India was mired in the Sikh insurgency for an independent ‘Khalistan state’. This crisis had a spill-over effect on Pakistan. In 1989, following rapprochement between the Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto governments, Pakistan helped India bring an end to the Sikh crises by sharing information. 35 Peter R. Lavoy, ‘Pakistan’s Kashmir Policy After Bush Visit to South Asia’ Strategic Insights, Vol V, Issue 4, April 2006. Online document available at http://www.ccc. nps.navy.mil/si/2006/Apr/lavoyApr06.asp accessed on 4 December 2006. 36 President Pervez Musharraf placed economic revival at the apex of his seven-point agenda in his first address to the nation on 17 October 1999. This policy position has remained the top security priority throughout his tenure. 37 President Musharraf, Address to Armed Forces, Navy Dockyards, Karachi, December 2003. For details, see ‘Pakistan: Threat is Internal’, March 2004, Online document available at http://www.news24.com/News24/World/ News/0,,2-10-1462_1458842,00.html. 38 As noted by Zafar Iqbal Cheema, a leading security expert from Pakistan, Islamabad’s ‘decisions to assemble a small nuclear force rapidly, to diversify weapons by using designs that rely on both uranium and plutonium, to develop comprehensive missile programs, and to take steps to miniaturize nuclear warheads suggest the outline of an emerging nuclear doctrine’. Zafar Iqbal Cheema, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Use Doctrine and Command and Control’, in Lavoy, et. al. (eds.), Planning the Unthinkable, p. 159. 39 Michael Quinlan, ‘How Robust is India–Pakistan Deterrence’, Survival 42, No. 4, Winter 2000–01, pp. 149–50. 40 McGeorge Bundy, ‘The Unimpressive Record of Atomic Diplomacy’, in Robert Art and Kenneth Waltz (eds.), The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politic (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004, sixth edition), p. 89.

144 FEroz Hassan kHan 41 Paolo Cotta-Ramusino and Maurizio Martelleni, ‘Nuclear Safety, Nuclear Stability and Nuclear Strategy in Pakistan’, Landau Network-Centro Volta, Online document available at http:// www.mil.infn.it accessed on 11 February 2002. 42 See Feroz Hassan Khan, ‘Challenges to Nuclear Stability in South Asia’, Non-Proliferation Review, Spring 2003, Center for Non- Proliferation Studies, California. 43 Force postures of India and Pakistan are in response to a cascading effect of strategic modernizations and involvement of external actors as well. Chinese modernization surely accelerates India’s nuclear program, and the evolving US-India strategic partnership is bound to cause concern in Beijing and Islamabad. India’s force modernization, in turn, will force Pakistan into increasing its minimum deterrence requirement. Pakistan will then seek deeper military cooperation with other powers to redress the imbalance. For low, medium and high nuclear force postures in South Asia, see Andrew C. Winner and Toshi Yoshihara, Nuclear Stability in South Asia (Boston: Institute of Foreign Policy Analysis, 2001), p. 48. 44 The author has personal experience of nuclear diplomacy with India (and the US) in the aftermath of nuclear tests. The Strategic Restraint Regime proposal was originally presented in 1998 to India as well as the US. The proposal was essentially a confidence-building measure with a potential of developing into a structural arms control in the region. 45 See comments on Bernard Brodie’s original work in T. V. Paul, Richard J. Karknett and James Wirtz (eds.), The Absolute Weapon Revisited: Nuclear Arms and the Emerging International Order (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2000), pp. 5–6. 46 Ambassador Jehangir Karamat, ‘The Pakistan–US Relationship: Next Steps’, Speech delivered at the Brookings Institution, 15 December 2004. Online document available at http://www.embassyofpakistan.org/news120.php.

6

Civil–Military relations Talat Masood

During the 60 years of Pakistan’s independent existence, the military has directly ruled the country for half the period, and for the remaining half, it held an indirect dominating sway over it. As a result, normal democratic evolution of Pakistan suffered enormously and, today, the political structure and authority of the State stands weakened. The performance of the civilian governments, especially during the 1990s, was also dismal which further weakened the structures of the State. Moreover, the impact of military rule on the judiciary and civil society has been equally damaging. With all state institutions in such disarray, the military remains the most dominant and powerful institution in Pakistan, overshadowing every other organ of the State and maintaining its hold on power. It thus becomes a circular self-serving logic ‘to the emaciated, corrupt, inefficient political parties’ that the State would collapse if the army were to abandon power. Notwithstanding this, it is observed that the involvement of the military in civilian affairs can have a deleterious effect on its professional competence and institutional cohesion in the longer term. Political leaders claim that in the past, during periods of civilian governments, military leadership has interfered and undermined the authority of elected governments, creating political instability and economic decline. Currently, Pakistan is passing through a major judicial crisis, wherein the judiciary, lawyer community and civil society are together asserting the need to establish the rule of law instead of the rule of power. Pakistan’s judiciary has a long record of subservience to the executive, but from the recent protests and the extraordinary

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unity being shown by the legal fraternity, the indications are that they are serious about struggling for the independence of their institution.

Challenge of legitimacy President Musharraf’s exclusion of the two main political leaders and the unfavourable attitude towards their parties, PPP and Muslim League (N), has been a major factor undermining the legitimacy of the present power structure. It has also led to the vacuum being filled by religious parties, especially in the two provinces of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The political future of Pakistan will greatly depend on the extent of space provided to the mainstream parties to grow and develop. There is no doubt that a significant number of people, particularly businessmen and liberals, find Musharraf acceptable, and even preferable to the exiled leadership. Yet, they disapprove of the way he is perpetuating his hold and his lack of emphasis on institutions. President Musharraf’s insistence on continuing to remain president and army chief has led to a serious stand-off as the opposition parties do not accept his claim to power as legitimate. The rationale for retaining the uniform is that the president does not want to lose control over the outcome of the elections and his hold on power. However, for President Musharraf to acquire true legitimacy, he will have to vacate the office of the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and fight the presidential elections on an even playing ground. This could also provide an opportunity for transiting to a stable democratic dispensation. If the president insists on retaining the status quo and gives little space to genuine political parties and their leaders, the political downslide would continue.

President’s strategy President Musharraf unabashedly pursues a policy in which the military institution is the dominant player in national life, be it security, development or crisis management. The military

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perceives itself as the guardian of internal stability and protector from external threats. It is under the overarching role of the military that economic growth and infrastructural development is visualized. In their calculus, the economy comes first while political institutions can be developed over a long term. The question arises: Is it really possible to place the economy on a sound and sustainable footing without political institutions? An uncertain political future discourages investment and makes it difficult for second generation economic reforms to be implemented. Rule of law, regulating mechanisms, accountability and a society based on merit rather than patronage are prerequisites for ensuring sustainably high economic growth. Even if it is conceded that the political parties are in disarray and are undemocratic in character, and their last 11 years of rule was marked by poor governance and corruption, it cannot form the rationale for depriving the country of democratic governance and a genuine evolutionary political process. There is no doubt that the basic failure of political leaders in the past was due to their autocratic rule, blatant undemocratic practices coupled with frequent interference from the military hierarchy, and not a consequence of a systemic failure. The PPP, the PML, and other political parties, notwithstanding their past failures and current state of disarray, can indeed be a national asset provided they are given the freedom to develop and evolve. National plans and crucial national decisions can never be implemented without strengthening the political process and the political parties. Pakistan is already an internally fragile State with excess security. What is required is to gradually dismantle the extra-constitutional security structures and to promote the growth of civil society and political institutions, not the other way around. Unless the country develops the normal system of checks and balances, the decision-making process, and by implication national policies, will always remain skewed. The future political strategy of the government should be to build a stable democratic system based on strong institutions and a dynamic political process. Politics, even in mature democracies, is a messy business where politicians seek to widen

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their power and influence through dispensation of favours and patronage, but are kept under check through effective institutions. For democracy to function, Pakistan too needs a robust parliament with effective committees, an independent judiciary, a strong and unbiased election commission, a fair and forceful auditor general, prudent and autonomous governor of the state bank and a free press.

other Factors Weakening Democracy Undoubtedly, there are other factors that have affected the democratic development in Pakistan such as the socio-economic conditions, ethnic and sectarian tensions, a disturbed neighbourhood and adversarial relations with arch rival India. Deep hostility with a powerful neighbour and the perception that important leadership in India is not reconciled to the creation of Pakistan, directly and indirectly, facilitated the military to emerge as a powerful institution. Hopefully, with the peace process moving forward, an equitable and just resolution of the Kashmir dispute would be found. This can bring about a qualitative change in the relationship between the two countries and, apart from other benefits to the region, facilitate the democratic process within Pakistan. A substantial part of Pakistan’s budget is spent on defense. In the last few years it has ranged from 18 to 24 per cent of the government budget and approximately 4 per cent of the GDP. Any reduction in defense expenditure can be utilized for the development of the neglected social sector. Moreover, good relations with India will, in due course, facilitate Pakistan moving away from being a security state to a normal welfare state. The highly disturbed situation on the western front is another factor that enhances the importance of Pakistan’s security forces at the regional and global level. Furthermore, protracted conflict in Afghanistan, from the times of the Soviet occupation to date, is destabilizing both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and promoting Pashtun ethnicity, which goes against the spirit of Pakistan’s federal character. Ironically, the overt nuclearization of South Asia also indirectly expands the influence of the military. The authoritarian

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attitude of political leaders, the lack of democratic culture within political parties, their corrupt practices, and a disregard for developing and implementing programmes around issues that directly affect the lives of the people has had a negative effect on the development of democracy. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, the key to stabilizing society in Pakistan lies in developing political institutions that promote a merit-based society and shun political polarization, religious bigotry, ethnic and sectarian factionalism, and incorporate checks and balances. A military, which is engaged in acquiring and retaining political power, invariably resorts to manipulation and becomes partisan, thus, losing credibility among the masses, who could deny their support during wars and conflicts. The military uses intelligence and other state agencies for gaining political insight as well as oversight. Moreover, the all-pervasive engagement in the affairs of the country is a major distraction that could weaken the professional competence and discipline of the armed forces in the longer term. The primary role of defending the country in a vastly technological and complex environment is a challenging task for any armed force. For this reason, any additional responsibilities, even if indirect, handled by the Pakistan military can prove onerous and, in the long run, a professional distraction.

Military’s involvement in the Political economy When the military ventures into non-professional fields, it takes measures to protect its corporate interests, further expanding and deepening its hold on the country. This was true for the Chinese PLA and certain armies in Latin America. Over the years, Pakistan’s military has also established a network of commercial, financial and industrial enterprises covering a wide range of economic activities, from manufacturing cement, sugar and fertilizers to generating power, operating banks and leasing companies, owning and managing real estate, constructing bridges and roads, and running transport services. Some of these organizations are being run on sound lines and contribute to the national economy, but some face financial problems and need

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restructuring and reforms. There is, nevertheless, a demand for greater transparency and accountability for building confidence in the public about the efficacy of these organizations. The military’s enhanced engagement in civilian tasks has acquired a momentum of its own and seems to be widening, impacting the entire political economy of the country. Obviously, this has a serious flipside, in the shape of affecting civil–military relations; it stunts leadership in the civil sector and affects its morale. The most crucial issue in creating a stable and balanced relationship between the military and the rest of the society is the all-important question of accountability of the armed forces at the institutional and personal level. Defense resource management can effectively be applied only if the armed forces of a country are genuinely subservient to the civilian authority and not the other way around. Historical experience has also shown that democracies in the long run appear to enjoy comparable advantage to military dictatorships with respect to military power.

strengthening the Federation Organically, Pakistan is a federal state but in reality it has mostly been governed as a unitary state. Both civilian and military governments have tried to run the affairs of the smaller provinces from Islamabad, but during military rule the tendency is even more pronounced. Insurgency in Balochistan and discontent in rural Sindh and a few other parts of the country is primarily the fallout of an over-centralized governance, both by the civil and the military regimes. Ethnic divisions have also affected the development of mainstream political parties— Pakistan Muslim League and Pakistan Peoples Party. The former is primarily Punjab-centric, and though the latter has a national following, it is perceived to have greater influence in Sindh. Moreover, the military, by virtue of its demographic composition, has already a preponderance of representation from Punjab, which further marginalizes the smaller provinces and gives their people ground for alienation.

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The government claims that during the last seven years of its quasi-democratic rule, governance has improved and macroeconomic management is relatively better. This is partly true, but the other reality is that certain areas in Balochistan, pockets in Sindh, and especially the tribal belt, through years of neglect, have turned their anger inwards, challenging the writ of the State and refusing to shed their tribal or feudal character. This has had serious implications for the economic development and social cohesion of the State. At a broader national level, the government’s failure to dispense justice and provide basic elements of governance at the grassroots level has resulted in fuelling violence. The reliance on the military to perform functions of the State outside its realm of responsibility and, in addition, coping with internal armed conflict, puts great demands on it and is also not helpful in promoting a stable civil society. The centralized and unitary approach towards governance gives rise to mistrust between provinces. The centre and the provinces develop an adversarial relationship, making it difficult to achieve consensus on any major national issue, be it the construction of dams, or division of water and other natural resources. Mere religious slogans or empty rhetoric of enlightened moderation and narrow self-serving nationalism has failed to respond to the genuine political and material demands of the people. The incidence of violence and acts of sabotage are likely to subside and calls for greater autonomy could diminish over a period of time when the Balochis engage in the political process, especially if the incoming civilian government would allow both, the Balochis and the Pashtuns, to manage their provincial and local affairs. By giving them a greater sense of participation, residual Balochi frustration could be overcome. Clearly, interprovincial harmony and a stable Balochistan is a key requisite for sustained development and social cohesion of Pakistan. The trilateral Iran–Pakistan–India gas pipeline could become a more feasible and attractive proposition if peace would return to Balochistan. Similarly, it would be relatively easier for a civilian government to handle the misunderstandings about the development of the Gwadar port among the Balochi nationalists.

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Moreover, the growing influence of the Taliban and reactionary orthodox forces can be more effectively countered politically by mainstream and regional nationalist parties.

ensuring Free and Fair elections On the question of democracy and fair elections in Pakistan, the attitude of the Western powers, especially the US administration, has been ambiguous, notwithstanding the oft-repeated rhetorical support for it. What the US fails to appreciate is that it is equally in its strategic interest to have viable democratic institutions in Pakistan. The US needs to alter its individualcentric policy of placing all its eggs in one basket, in this case President Musharraf, rather than dealing with a strong institutional Pakistan where the president too has an important role to play, but he is not the only player. No doubt, some of President Musharraf’s policies are laudable, especially regarding promoting moderation, improving the economy, and in the foreign policy field, engaging with India in the peace process and taking a pro-active role in raising issues facing the Muslim countries. But for these policies to be faithfully implemented, a national consensus is crucial, which is possible only in a stable political environment. As a matter of broad principle, and as empirical experience has shown, free and fair elections have a salutary affect on turbulent societies. They unify a country to face external threats, and facilitate the resolution of internal strife and insurgencies. Much would, therefore, depend on how the elections are conducted, as there is a high level of distrust about the fairness of the government’s conduct. Political parties remain apprehensive about the impartiality of the present government and the possibility that, in the event elections are manipulated, it could have a destabilizing effect. Already voices are being raised against the government about pre-poll rigging. If this continues, tension in civil society will increase, which is not helpful for any government.

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Freedom of the Media The present military–civilian dispensation has allowed a fair amount of press and media freedom to criticize the government as well as the president. However, the dispensation would not tolerate any practical steps in the form of public demonstrations or rallies that could lead to dislodging the government or threatening its corporate interests. The brighter aspect is that the explosion of media has contributed to a wider and richer political debate on national issues and has brought greater clarity in the thinking of the people. There are clear signs within the polity of Pakistan of acknowledging the inevitability of adopting democratic norms and it will not be that easy for the rulers to take the people’s submissiveness for granted. Bringing about tactical liberalization through reservation of seats for women in parliament, limited relaxation in freedom of press or the half-baked devolution of power at the local level will not suffice. The litmus test of Pakistan’s democratic maturity would be when civilian institutions will oversee and hold the government accountable for national budget expenditures and security-military policies.

need for Peaceful transition Indeed, there is a real opportunity before President Musharraf to build a self-sustaining democratic system by strengthening institutions in which the military acts as a non-partisan entity rather than being associated with a particular party or group. The fact, however, is that the military elite are unwilling to return to barracks and there are no indications that President Musharraf would vacate the office of the Army Chief. Moreover, the military’s withdrawal from power is a complex affair. It is rare that the military surrenders power voluntarily. At the same time, it is in the interest of the country to have a peaceful transition to democracy. If this goal is realized then it will set in motion the dynamics that would loosen the hold of the army, provide it an honourable exit strategy and move the country towards a better democratic future.

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In Pakistan’s checkered history, the 2007 elections could be a landmark event that has the potential of changing the future course of the nation’s destiny. It is not merely a question of whether the exiled leaders will return home or that the embrace of the army would get tighter; the future of the State is at stake. The question on everyone’s mind is whether Pakistan is going to move toward becoming a democratic, pluralistic, multicultural and multi-ethnic society with a happy blend of Islamic values and ethos that can peacefully coexist with itself and the rest of the world? Or, will Pakistan be overtaken by the ‘self righteous’ Islamists who take a doctrinal view of life and drag the country into the obscurantist world of the Taliban; signs of which are already manifest in the tribal belt and its adjacent settled areas. Or, will the society be politically immobilized by the military elite that perceives itself as the authentic guardian of the State and holds on to power with the help of a civilian clientele. Unless the people are able to define their destiny among these competing visions, in clear terms, through a transparent and honest political process, Pakistan will continue to have a fractured identity and be perceived by the rest of the world as a troubled State. What direction the country will take would depend on the choices made by the ruling elite, especially the president, in the coming months.

Challenges ahead Despite Musharraf shedding his uniform and calling for free and fair elections or, for that matter, political parties signing the Charter of Democracy, no one should start believing that democracy would blossom overnight. Undoubtedly, these are major steps forward in the march to democracy, but it would need a sustained commitment on the part of the major stakeholders to make the process irreversible. The process of democratization brings the contradictions in a society to the fore and could even aggravate tensions within it initially. Democracy, by bringing about a change in the prevailing power structure, will undoubtedly reduce the gains of those who are, currently, privileged.

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They will, thus, try to sabotage the process and may even align with forces that are likely to destabilize the State, as has been Pakistan’s experience in the past. Moreover, many of its political leaders do not have a democratic culture and are feudal in their behaviour. Despite this failing, democratic governments, howsoever poorly run, have distinct advantages over military or authoritarian regimes. Firstly, because institutions enable power to be shared and democratic regimes are more responsive to the needs of the people, otherwise they are voted out. By contrast, we find that authoritarian regimes cater to their own narrow clannish interests or promote their clientele’s fortunes. In mature democracies there is no place for any one man’s rash decisions, as we have witnessed in Pakistan so frequently, both during military and civilian governments. The tragedy is that it is the poor who have to suffer, silently, the consequences of these decisions. During his over seven years in office, President Musharraf has made honest efforts at improving the economy, undertaken development projects in smaller provinces and enhanced the image of the country. However, over-concentration of power in his hands and his desire to retain both the offices has mutilated the spirit of the constitution and created a wrong precedent. And now Pakistan’s greatest problem is the uncertainty about succession, because there is a widespread perception that the president will use extra legal means to retain power. President Musharraf has to realize that if he wants to acquire legitimacy in the eyes of the public, he has to shed the uniform and contest a free and fair election. Unless he acquires legitimacy, there is no way that the rule of law can be established in the country. Without this legal and moral foundation of the State, it cannot aspire for durable political progress or economic development. President Musharraf’s policy of drawing strength from the army and acquiring legitimacy through economic development will not work any more because what we have witnessed is that political monopoly leads to economic monopolies, both at the individual and at the institutional level. Similarly, low priority to education and health sectors has resulted in a serious knowledge deficit as well as exploitation of the weakest segments of the society, be it

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women, minorities or the poor. It is indeed a matter of grave concern that the educational system of Pakistan is classified among the least developed in the world with literacy rates appallingly low and educational opportunities very limited, notwithstanding contrary claims by the government. Prudence demands that this time around President Musharraf should flow with the mood of the people and not resist genuine devolution of power to the parliament, cabinet, judiciary, election commission and other organs of the State. Indeed, President Musharraf’s maturity would lie in, and his legacy measured by, how he and the military will contribute to strengthen the democratic institutions and democratic culture in Pakistan in the future. Surely, this would also be the best way of strengthening the country and narrowing the institutional divide.

7

The China–PakisTan nexus Mohan Malik

China’s relations with Pakistan outweighs and overlays all its bilateral reations with other Asian neighbours. The Beijing–Islamabad ‘special relationship’ is part of China’s grand strategy that moulds the South Asian security environment. Despite a recent thaw in China–India relations, Pakistan remains the linchpin of Beijing’s South Asia policy. In fact, Beijing has long been the most important player in the India–Pakistan–China triangular relationship. The China–Pakistan relationship is akin to the US relationship with the United Kingdom or the US–Israel relationship.1 Beijing’s entente cordiale with Islamabad continues to flourish, underpinned by military, economic and infrastructure development and diplomatic cooperation.2 Chinese leaders regularly visit Islamabad (and other South Asian capitals) to reassure them that improvement in China–India relations would not be at their cost. No one put it better than Chinese President Hu Jintao himself during his November 2006 Pakistan visit: ‘We can give up gold but we cannot give up our friendship with Pakistan… Pakistan and China’s relationship is higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the Indian Ocean and sweeter than honey.’3 Rhetorical flourishes aside, the reality is that the China–Pakistan relationship has not only survived the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union but has also thrived in the era of China–India rapprochement, Pakistan’s re-emergence as a frontline ally in the US-led War on Terror, and the growing US–India strategic convergence. 

The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect the policy or position of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies or the US Department of Defense.

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Current strategic and economic trends indicate that South Asia’s importance in general and Pakistan’s role in particular in China’s national security calculus is increasing in the 21st century. This long-standing alliance was formalized in 2005 with the conclusion of the China–Pakistan ‘Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation and Good Neighbourly Relations’, whereby both countries committed that ‘neither party will join any alliance or bloc which infringes upon the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity’ of either country, while simultaneously positing that both parties ‘would not conclude treaties of this nature with any third party.’4 This chapter traces the psychological, ideological, historical, political and strategic roots of the China–Pakistan nexus and its implications for India. It argues that their alliance has now expanded into a global partnership that encompasses non-traditional security issues (terrorism, safety of Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOC), safety, economic development and energy security) as well as the traditional geopolitical issues of containing India and countering US hegemony. None of Pakistan’s bilateral relationships are as robust and strong as its China tie nor can they match the scope and depth of the strategic benefits that flow from it. It concludes by saying that the China–Pakistan nexus has been the anchor of Islamabad’s national security strategy for nearly five decades and will remain so in the future as well. For Islamabad, China’s rise as a global superpower in general, and Beijing’s challenge to American unilateralism and the reemergence of bipolarity in the international system in particular, are welcome and positive developments that work to the advantage of a middle power like Pakistan. Islamabad hopes to continue to benefit not only from the intensifying China–India geopolitical rivalry in Asia but also from the coming showdown between China and the United States, which will further increase the significance of Pakistan’s strategic ties with China.

eyeing india Every major event in history has unintended consequences. Historians will record an unintended (and unsettling, from India’s

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standpoint) consequence of two unrelated but major events in the middle of the 20th century. The first was the 1947 Partition of India that created the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and broke up the geostrategic unity of the subcontinent. The second was the Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1950. Together, these two developments brought two erstwhile warring Islamic and Chinese nations into a solid compact against India. These two developments have allowed China to extend its reach and influence into a region where it had historically and civilizationally exercised no influence at all. Recognizing India as one of its major strategic rivals, in the early 1960s, China decided to firmly align itself with Pakistan to contain the common enemy. Since then, this tactical alignment has turned into an ‘all-weather’, time-tested, multidimensional strategic alliance that is set to shape the geopolitics of the 21st century as well. In other words, Beijing’s gradual but subtle penetration deep into Southern Asia since the middle of the 20th century has thus been primarily at India’s expense, making China the largest beneficiary of the partition in a manner that its authors would have never anticipated or imagined. To grasp the real meaning of China’s entente cordiale with Pakistan, an understanding of psychological and ideological roots is as important as its geopolitical and strategic motivations. At the psychological level, both the Chinese and the Pakistanis are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West, on the one hand, and the Chinese and the Islamic world, on the other. Imbued with a belief in the superiority of their race and religion, respectively, China and Pakistan (or, more specifically, Islam) both share ‘dual psychology’ in which they want both ‘domination and victimhood’. The Pakistani apprehension about India’s hidden agenda of undoing the Partition shares space with a grandiose dream of Muslims once again ruling the entire subcontinent, as before the British. Likewise, the Chinese are paranoid about India’s hidden agenda in Tibet, believing that India wants to split their country by supporting Tibet’s independence. Chinese textbooks emphasize their country’s victimization at the hands of foreign powers during ‘the century of humiliation’ (but carefully omit or

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underplay Imperial China’s long history of domination of and wars against its neighbours). While China’s carefully cultivated sense of victimhood combined with a deep-rooted sense of cultural superiority breeds an ‘inferiority-superiority complex’ and a siege mentality, its spectacular economic success over the last quarter century has contributed to the rise of hyper-nationalism.5 In contrast, a series of military debacles coupled with the growing power imbalance between an economically booming and assertive India and a politically dysfunctional and economically bankrupt Pakistan since the early 1990s has added to Islamabad’s sense of insecurity and vulnerability. These two contradictory feelings of ‘fear and hope’ and ‘domination and victimhood’ account for the China–Pakistan alliance and their hostility towards India. Ideologically, China—an atheist state ruled by the Communist Party — and Pakistan — an Islamic state — do not seem to have much in common. However, in reality, their belief systems share some striking commonalities. Much like other global ideologies, Islamists divide the world into two regions: the world of believers, Dar-ul Islam or the House of Islam, and Dar-ul Harb, or the House of Infidels and non-believers containing all territories ruled by non-Muslims. According to this, a no-holds-barred jihad (holy war) is to be waged by the believers (true followers of Islam) against the non-believers over whom they are destined to dominate and rule.6 In their purest form, both Communist and Islamic ideologies yearn for Utopia. The Islamist division of the world into two blocs is similar to the one made by the followers of other totalitarian ideologies — communism and fascism — which ruled out peaceful coexistence with other belief systems. Such concepts promote the idea of ‘us versus them’ and generate hatred, hostility, enmity and a permanent state of war. Interestingly, this concept of continuous struggle (jihad against non-believers) bears remarkable resemblance to Chairman Mao’s concept of permanent revolution against his perceived enemies — rightists and capitalists — during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1967–76) in China. Similarly, the long-term objective of Islamists is to spread the frontiers of Islam eastward to the whole continent of Asia and beyond. As Cathy Young observes: ‘Perhaps every belief system that lays

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claim to the ultimate truth carries the seeds of violent fanaticism and intolerance. This is true not only of religions but of secular ideologies such as Communism.’7 The masses in China and Pakistan have been fed on a staple diet of aggressive nationalism (in the form of Han racial superiority) and Islamization, respectively. Pakistan has built a self-image of itself as a state that defeated a superpower (Soviet Union) through jihadi means and as the first Islamic country to build nuclear weapons by outwitting the international community. Such a worldview has given rise to grandiose ambitions and grievances that result in great expectations. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Khalid Rahman, executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies at Islamabad, noted that ‘[a] feeling is emerging in Pakistani society that we have a special role to play in uniting Muslims all over the world.’8 For its part, China claims a historical entitlement to superpower status, publicly enunciating its ambition to be a ‘world power second to none’. Interestingly, Pakistan’s ‘enlightened moderation’ concept or repeated assurances to the international community about being a ‘moderate Islamic country’ is not much dissimilar from China’s ‘peaceful rise’ concept.9 Both have authoritarian regimes where the military plays the most important role in key decision-making processes. Politically, Chinese security analysts perceive the emerging multipolar world strikingly similar to that of the Warring States era (475–221 bc) when wars were common, as were conferences, treaties, shifting alliances, betrayals, assassinations, and the rise and extinction of some of the contending states. This period was characterized by power rivalries, with some competing to become a hegemon and others forming alliances to prevent any state from attaining that dominant status.10 This outlook necessitates a distrust of strong, powerful neighbours and a preference for small, weak and subordinate buffer states. If they are run by corrupt, insecure dictatorships (such as Myanmar, North Korea and Pakistan) where the military is paranoid of its neighbours, and are thus heavily dependent on China for weapons, training and support, that is even better.11 Believing that Indian power contradicts Chinese power, the Chinese certainly do not

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want to see India raising its power, stature and profile regionally or internationally. Likewise, many Pakistanis recall their founding father M. A. Jinnah’s warning in 1947 that a strong and prosperous India would spell the end of Islam in the subcontinent. What India sees as its strengths — democracy and secularism—are, in fact, seen as its greatest weaknesses by the Chinese and Pakistanis for they perpetuate political and religious fault lines within the country. Chinese strategists caution India against using the War on Terror as a pretext to isolate and subdue Pakistan.12 The Chinese may be paranoid about Islamic separatism in their Muslim-majority Xinjiang province and concerned over the spill-over effects of the growing Talibanization of Pakistan, but they are not averse to finding cause to cooperate with Islamist opponents of India’s secular democracy.13 For one, China’s ‘Muslim problem’ has never been as serious as India’s in Kashmir or Russia’s in Chechnya. Being an autocratic state, the Chinese communist regime has often resorted to strong-arm tactics and mass executions without worrying about critical media scrutiny or public opinion fallout that democracies like India and Russia have had to contend with. Besides, assured of cooperation from Pakistan and other Islamic countries, the Chinese remain confident of dealing with the Uighur Muslim problem with an iron hand. With Pakistan acting as a bridge between the Islamic world and China, Beijing today has better relations with key Islamic states — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Egypt — than any other great power, including the United States. Apparently, the historical memory of defeats of Muslim invaders at the hands of Imperial China has undoubtedly built into the Muslim psyche a grudging respect for communist China. The Chinese and Pakistani interpretations of history are also similar in the sense that both see India as an artificial construct put together by the departing British colonialists in 1947. In other words, unlike China, the united country of India never existed before the British came. This stance influences the Chinese and Pakistani negotiating position on their territorial disputes with India, which are quite identical: ‘Whatever we have is ours to keep, whatever you have is open to negotiated settlement’. To

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both, a border settlement with India that freezes the status quo is unacceptable. Whether it is Arunachal Pradesh or Kashmir, Beijing and Islamabad make territorial demands, conditioning progress in bilateral talks to Indian concessions, whereas New Delhi favours freezing the territorial status quo. Faced with coordinated strategic moves by China and Pakistan, India often finds itself on the back foot and unable to dispel the popular perception in many quarters that Indian failure to make territorial concessions is holding up progress.14 An influential section of the Chinese national security bureaucracy and an overwhelming majority of the establishment in Pakistan entertain serious doubts about the prospects of India’s survival as a nation-state over the long term. They see it as a ‘soft state which cannot sustain its unity for long’ since it is ‘characterized by religious, linguistic and regional fault lines’, and caution against any initiative that will augment India’s power.15 In their bilateral meetings with other countries, the leaders of China and Pakistan constantly bemoan India’s ‘big brotherly’ and ‘hegemonic attitude’. The security agencies of China and Pakistan cooperate to nurture and support anti-India activities and movements in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.16 Many Pakistanis are convinced that India, like its erstwhile friends, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, is doomed to further partition and Balkanization.17 As one Australian journalist has remarked: ‘There are elements within Pakistan’s military and intelligence circles who subscribe to the devilish theory that once Kashmir is wrested away, the whole edifice of multi-ethnic, multi-religious India will collapse into a chaos of warring fiefdoms over which Pakistan will somehow prevail.’18 To this end, jihadi (Islamic) and extremist (Maoist) organizations are instruments in the larger stratagem to weaken India by striking at its perceived regional and religious fault lines and provoking communal confrontations, engineering terrorist attacks, and recruiting soldiers for a pan-Islamist jihad in pockets of Muslim populations across India.19 This ‘India disintegrating’ school has lately received a boost from many Bangladeshis who speculate about ‘the coming break-up of India’ at international forums. Pointing to the projected doubling of India’s Muslim

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population to 300 million (along with 300 million each in Pakistan and Bangladesh) by the middle of the 21st century, they predict ‘the inevitable break-away of India’s north-eastern states to form a greater Islamistan in another 30 to 50 years.’20 Thus, Pakistan and China share an interest in keeping India’s north-east in turmoil — albeit, for varying reasons: ‘The interest of Pakistan and Bangladesh is in facilitating the emergence of a Muslim-majority State and its ultimate secession from India. The interest of China is in weakening the Indian capability to protect Arunachal Pradesh in the likelihood of the unresolved border dispute over Arunachal Pradesh one day leading to a confrontation between India and China.’21 Beijing and Islamabad closely monitor India’s activities to expand influence and gain advantage in the wider Asian region, and attempt to fill any perceived power vacuum or block India from doing so. In their writings, strategic analysts in both countries express concern over India’s growing military power and its ability to defend itself and assert its influence in the Indian Ocean region. In particular, they are increasingly uneasy about India’s evolving ties with the United States and Japan. Concerned over the growing talk in Washington’s policy circles and in New Delhi, of India emerging as a counterweight to China, on the one hand, and the fragile, radical Islamic states of West Asia, on the other, Beijing views a potential US–India alignment and the India–Japan global partnership with horror.22 Despite protestations to the contrary, from India and the United States, that New Delhi is unwilling and unlikely to play the role of a closely aligned US ally as Japan, China’s Asia strategy is based on the premise that the US, Japan and India would eventually form an informal trilateral strategic alliance to contain China. As one commentary noted: ‘In the eyes of the US, India holds an important strategic position linking the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. In Washington’s calculus, a new link with India could not only help the US expand its strategic presence in South Asia but also squeeze Russia’s and China’s strategic clout out of the region.’23 China’s global strategy is to pursue a competitive relationship with the three powers aimed

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at checkmating them, while avoiding a direct confrontation. Just as Pakistan pursues asymmetric warfare vis-à-vis India to ‘tie down [the regional] Gulliver’ through low-intensity conflict, China pursues a similar ‘containment through proxies’ strategy vis-à-vis the United States to ‘tie down [the global] Gulliver’ through economic, diplomatic and military (nuclear and missile) assistance to its allies and anti-US forces worldwide, while maintaining a semblance of cooperation with Washington.24 The growing US strategic ties with India have soured their willingness to assist Washington in its War on Terror. Neither country wants the US to succeed in its military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, the China–Pakistan partnership, hitherto limited to South Asia, has now acquired the contours of global partnership.25 Claiming India’s rise would undermine China’s role and stature as the pre-eminent power in Asia, China’s India-watchers warn that ‘China should not take India lightly’. Most Chinese strategic analysts, however, argue that ‘India can be easily contained’, and advocate strengthening Beijing’s strategic relations with ‘India-wary’ countries.26 Beijing has been busy making significant inroads into India’s backyard through cross-border economic and strategic penetration of Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The lateral roads from China into Pakistan and Myanmar, along with access to the ports in Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and possibly, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, are designed to put India in pincers. By helping Pakistan with the nuclear bomb and the missiles, Beijing has kept India in a constant conflict situation with its neighbour and achieved, to a large extent, its own purpose of preventing India from rising fast as China’s peer competitor. Repeated military engagements with Pakistan have had a debilitating impact on India’s economy and kept foreign direct investments away. Many believe that the military and economic balance of power has already decisively shifted in China’s favour after 16 years of double-digit growth in military expenditure and with the completion of major infrastructure projects in Xinjiang and Tibet. They doubt the staying power of India or the United States. For example, many Pakistanis are certain that they will be back in Afghanistan sooner rather

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than later. They believe that ‘India always ends up aligning itself with the losing side. During the Cold War, it was the Soviet Union, and now it is the United States’. Post Iraq War, the US is widely perceived in Islamabad and Beijing as a declining superpower.27 Many India-watchers are convinced that India’s ‘great power dreams’ are unlikely to be realized as it is faced with ‘triple containment’: Chinese, Islamic and Western.28 As one Chinese commentary recently noted: The United States’ assurance to India to make the latter a world power in 21st century is only a lip service. The US has not helped India in becoming a UN Security Council permanent member. Washington’s civil nuclear cooperation agreement with New Delhi is meant for limiting India’s strategic nuclear capabilities. Japan’s support to India has the aim of containing China, but as India rises economically, Japan’s own economic influence in the region would diminish.29

In short, both China and Pakistan subscribe to the view that the US and India must be tied down on multiple fronts. Both coordinate in employing a two-faced strategy that aims at placating the US and India while continuing to deploy a multiplicity of strategies and tactics designed to weaken, contain, limit or thwart their rivals’ game plans. They believe that the growth of Chinese presence and capabilities on India’s flanks will eventually force the Indian leadership to accept China as Asia’s dominant power instead of squandering scarce resources on counter-balancing strategies with Washington or Tokyo.30 Opinion polls show that Chinese and Pakistanis view each other much more positively than Americans and Indians who are seen as untrustworthy, arrogant, and unfriendly.31 Chinese diplomats and South Asia experts see Pakistan in a markedly favourable light as an ‘old friend’ which gave China a ‘helping hand during the difficult Cold War years.’32 During his November 2006 visit to Pakistan, Chinese President Hu Jintao recalled and thanked Pakistanis for extending their help in the 1960s and the 1970s by opening an air corridor linking China to the

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outside world, and serving as a bridge for the normalization of China’s relations with the United States. Despite billions of dollars of economic and military assistance from the United States over the last 60 years, ‘many Pakistanis see the United States as a fickle friend’. From Islamabad’s perspective, Pakistan’s friendship with the United States has always been one-sided, driven primarily by American security concerns at a given time. Despite the post-9/11 re-engagement, Pakistanis cannot forgive Washington for abandoning them after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the imposition of sanctions because of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and more recently, the denial of a nuclear energy deal similar to that of India. In contrast, China has proven to be a consistent and steadfast ally and a military partner over the last five decades. The reason more and more Pakistanis appear to be virulently anti-American, according to Tarique Niazi, is that ‘China is the only country, when it comes to the national security of Pakistan, which Islamabad trusts. No one else. Pakistan does not trust the United States as much as China, and the reason for that is India. Pakistan’s defense policy is India-centric. Who is going to support Pakistan when it goes up against India? Of course it is going to be China.’33 For Pakistan, China has always been the most important security guarantor vis-à-vis India, the most important source of conventional and nuclear weaponry, and a vital source of trade and investment. A senior Pakistani military officer remarked: ‘The Chinese don’t use and dump their allies like the Americans. North Korea is an instructive case study. China will be the last country in the world that will give up on Pakistan.’34 For their part, many Americans are now questioning the durability of Washington’s ties with Islamabad, despite the granting of Major non-NATO Ally status since 2004. According to Robert McLean (‘China Leads West’, FrontPageMagazine.com, 2 March 2006) ‘As military and economic cooperation grows, Washington may soon find that it cannot match the “all weather friendship” offered by Beijing.’ He wants Washington to ‘be prepared for the entirely possible eventuality that one day Pakistan may not be an ally at all.’35 Beijing indeed looms very large in Pakistan’s alliance calculations and the pendulum of Islamabad–Washington

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relations is likely to swing back and forth between appeasement, accommodation and acrimony. Furthermore, the Chinese and Pakistanis analysts tend to be dismissive and contemptuous of India’s pretensions as ‘the world’s largest democracy’. By and large, they remain unconvinced of ‘India’s rise as a superpower’. Many see the media hype about India as ‘nothing but hot air’. They contend that India plays the ‘democracy’ and the ‘second-largest market’ cards primarily to gain US support for a greater Indian role in world affairs and to make ‘India a potential junior partner in a US global strategy to contain rising China.’36 What is usually left unsaid is that democratic India’s economic rise undermines China’s advocacy of the ‘development without democracy’ model. Mainland Chinese visitors to India are appalled by the widespread poverty and dilapidated/non-existing public infrastructure. Most maintain that ‘there is no China–India race because China has already won’. Last but not least, geopolitically speaking, India’s size, strategic location, power and ambitions represent an existential threat to the national security interests of China and Pakistan. Their military establishments see India as an ambitious and formidable but overconfident power with whom they may eventually have to face a day of reckoning in the future. Therefore, neither China’s nor Pakistan’s defense planners rule out the possibility of a renewed confrontation with India either over Tibet, Kashmir, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar or in the Indian Ocean in the long run. For both countries, all diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. The Chinese–Pakistani perspectives on India centre mainly around three major themes: ü

ü ü

India is a hegemonic power that intends to undo the 1947 partition as a prelude to re-establishing India’s dominance over the entire subcontinent and impose an Indian version of the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in southern Asia. India aspires to become a great world power in league with the US, Russia and China armed with nuclear weapons and a UN Security Council veto.

The Indian navy wants to dominate and control the Indian Ocean.

This analysis of the psychological, ideological, historical and geopolitical perspectives and worldviews explains why,

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despite their seemingly different political systems, dissimilar religious beliefs and divergent cultural aspects, Pakistan and China have had such a close relationship without any disagreement or divergence.37

The Ties That Bind: Containing india The convergence of interests and identical worldviews, especially with respect to India, explains why the China–Pakistan partnership has not only survived but thrived during the ups and downs and numerous twists and turns in China’s foreign relations since the 1950s. Despite steadily improving relations with India since the early 1990s, China has not become less friendly to Pakistan, primarily because the combined strategic and geopolitical advantages China receives from its relationship with Pakistan (and, through Pakistan, with other Islamic countries) easily outweigh any advantages China might receive from a closer relationship with India. From Beijing’s perspective, Pakistan is vitally important to China on many fronts: First, in terms of its grand strategy and geopolitics, given Pakistan’s geostrategic location at the intersection of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Second, in terms of China’s national unity and territorial integrity, in helping maintain control over Tibet and Xinjiang. Third, for military security, by keeping India’s military engaged on its western frontiers. Fourth, for maritime strategy and energy security, by providing access to and bases in the Persian Gulf. And, lastly, as a buyer and supplier of conventional and unconventional weaponry, as a staunch diplomatic ally (in regional and international fora, including the Islamic world), and above all, a bargaining chip in China’s relations with India and the United States. Grand Strategy and Geopolitics First of all, China’s geostrategic objectives and military security concerns vis-à-vis India, coupled with territorial disputes and the need to protect its ‘soft strategic underbelly’ — Tibet and Xinjiang, underpin Beijing’s Pakistan policy. Within months of

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the Dalai Lama’s flight to India following a failed uprising in Tibet, Chinese ambassador Pan Tzu-li wrote to Prime Minister Nehru in May 1959 warning that China would make common cause with Pakistan, thereby forcing India to face military and diplomatic pressure on two fronts.38 To this end, Beijing found in Islamabad an only-too-willing partner.39 Since the China–Indian border war of 1962, China has aligned itself with Pakistan, and made heavy strategic and economic investments in that country to keep the common enemy, India, off balance. Through Pakistan, China also retains the option of creating momentums that sap India’s military power. In 1965, Beijing was ready to fight India on behalf of Pakistan. In 1971, the Indo–Soviet Friendship Treaty and domestic convulsions caused by the Cultural Revolution constrained China’s military ability to directly intervene to save East Pakistan. During the 1980s and 1990s (at the height of the China–India rapprochement), it was the provision of the Chinese nuclear and missile shield to Pakistan that emboldened Islamabad to wage a ‘proxy war’ in Kashmir without fear of Indian retaliation. During the Kargil War in 1999 and the military confrontation of 2001–02, China made a ‘demonstrative [military] support’ to Pakistan and its forces almost sparked off a stand-off on the China–Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh.40 Differences over the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are used to periodically demonstrate China’s superior military capability to assert its border claims. New infrastructure projects in Pakistan-held Kashmir and in Tibet will bolster its military strength and enhance China’s military intervention options against India should another war between regional rivals threaten the very existence of Pakistan. Furthermore, China’s military expenditure is four to five times more than that of India. In the event of a direct conflict either over Tibet or their disputed borders, Beijing could also count on an armed insurrection by the jihadi networks that are being put in place by Pakistan (and Bangladesh), which could strike at Indian military bases in the north-east, the western seaboard, Kashmir, and even in the heartland of India, thereby, significantly undermining the potency of India’s military offensive against China.

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From Beijing’s perspective, New Delhi’s preoccupations with subcontinental security concerns seriously undermine India’s pretensions about being China’s equal. The Chinese believe that as long as the one-million-strong Indian army is preoccupied with Pakistan on its western frontier and fighting insurgents in various parts of the country, it will not stir up trouble on the Tibetan border. A secure and stable India at peace with Pakistan would, on the other hand, allow New Delhi to focus its diplomatic energies and military against China and in East Asia. From Beijing’s perspective, that would be an unwelcome development. John Garver has succinctly summed up China’s Pakistan policy: China’s overriding strategic interest is to keep Pakistan independent, powerful and confident enough to present India with a standing two-front threat…Were India able to dissolve this two-front threat by subordinating Pakistan, its position against China would be much stronger…[This would amount to] conceding South Asia as an Indian sphere of influence. Such a move would spell the virtual end to Chinese aspirations of being the leading Asian power and would greatly weaken China’s position against Indian power.41

Though a certain degree of tension in Kashmir and Pakistan’s ability to pin down Indian armed forces on its western frontiers is seen as enhancing China’s sense of military security, neither an all-out India–Pakistan war nor Pakistan’s collapse would serve Beijing’s grand geostrategic objectives. In short, the fear of losing control over a restive Tibet coupled with the geostrategic imperative to balance Indian power, explain why China’s efforts to improve ties with India are always accompanied by parallel efforts to bolster Pakistani military’s nuclear and conventional capabilities vis-à-vis India. Since Pakistan is the only country that stands up to India and prevents Indian hegemony over the region, Islamabad thereby fulfils the key objective of China’s South Asia policy. The China– Pakistan relationship also provides a good example of using China as a counterweight to what smaller South Asian countries

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(Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives) perceive as India’s attempts at bullying them. It demonstrates that much like Pakistan, other South Asian countries can ü ü ü ü ü

follow an ‘independent’ policy; benefit from China’s economic and military largesse; enjoy China’s diplomatic protective umbrella (via UN Security Council veto); safeguard their sovereignty from interventionist policies of major powers (read, the US); and counter Indian attempts to influence their decisionmaking.

In addition to containing India, China’s ‘all-weather’ relationship with Pakistan is also aimed at containing the separatist threat it perceives in its western Muslim-majority Xinjiang province. The current leadership in Beijing has placed a premium on integrating China’s western regions into the booming economies of its east. Beijing believes that Uighur militants and activists are a threat to this integration, and maintaining good relations with a neighbouring, Islamic, nuclear-armed state on its western border will remain an important aspect of its efforts to deal with this perceived threat. The spill-over effects of rabid Talibanization of Pakistani society over the last two decades have been a cause for worry. Beijing apparently feels that engaging Pakistan’s government, and even its fundamentalist religious parties, is an important part of keeping control in its own restive Muslim north-west. For its part, the Pakistani government has bent over backwards to cooperate with China in putting down the Uighur separatist movement. Maritime Strategy and Energy Security Resource scarcity in the 21st century could see nations engaged in intense competition, and perhaps conflict and the navy will be called upon to protect vital sea routes. China’s defense planners believe that China cannot be a truly global superpower unless ‘its navy can operate in two major oceans’ and has the capability to protect the country’s vital trade and energy routes.42

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With an increasing dependence on imported oil from the Middle East and Africa, Chinese strategists are talking about creating a blue-water navy to secure Beijing’s energy supply lines. China’s emergence as a global trading power explains Beijing’s concerns regarding security of shipping routes in crisis situations through the Indian Ocean to the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, and the need to increase its naval presence along the expanse between the Persian Gulf and East Asia.43 In other words, China — unlike Japan and South Korea — does not want to rely solely on the SLOCs provided by the US Navy. Beijing knows that the growing energy needs of Asian economies can be used both as an instrument of coercion and as a means of consolidating regional dominance. In this context, allies such as Pakistan and Myanmar can play an important role in fulfilling China’s ambitions of regional supremacy, and in thwarting the ambitions of China’s rivals (the United States, India and Japan). Therefore, as a major trading nation and a growing global power, China is now laying the groundwork for a naval presence along maritime chokepoints in the South China Sea, the Malacca Straits, the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf through acquisition of naval bases in Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan to protect its long-term economic security interests. China’s future naval operations would thus be undertaken with a view to securing the country’s oil supply and trade routes. The Pentagon has identified this as China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy in which a network of bases along sea lanes is being set up.44 Given its location on the Arabian Sea, Pakistan’s value as Beijing’s steadfast ally has increased and so has China’s stake in that country over the last decade. Pakistan provides China with a secure access to naval bases (Karachi, Ormara and Gwadar) close to the entrance of the Persian Gulf, allowing Beijing to extend its sphere of influence to the Middle East and Central Asia. During his February 2006 visit to China, the President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf told his hosts that the ‘Chinese side can fully use Pakistan’s geographic advantages and use Pakistan as a trade and energy corridor in the region’ to meet Beijing’s energy requirements.45 Of particular significance

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is China’s provision of technical assistance, personnel and funding for the construction of a deepwater Gwadar port in Balochistan province at the mouth of the strategically important Strait of Hormuz. Nearly 40 per cent of the world’s oil and about 60 per cent of China’s energy supplies pass through this chokepoint, and China worries that the US and/or India could choke off these supplies to China in the event of a conflict. A feasibility study is underway for an oil pipeline from Gwadar port to western China to transport China’s oil and gas imports from the Persian Gulf — a route that will not only cut freight costs and supply time but also lower China’s reliance on US-policed shipping lanes through the Malacca and Taiwan Straits. Beijing wants to fund an oil refinery, oil-reserve depots and a pipeline to Xinjiang. These would turn Gwadar into a transit terminal for Iranian, Saudi and African crude-oil imports. The port will also give the landlocked Central Asian states access to the Arabian Sea for commercial shipping purposes.46 As John Garver (Professor of International Affairs, The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs) puts it: ‘The Gwadar port, combined with the modernization of Pakistan’s rail system, will substantially enhance China’s ability to move goods and people between its western regions via Pakistan to the Arabian Sea — and as importantly from Gwadar to Central Asia.’47 The total Chinese investment so far comes to about $1.15 billion but could more than double once all the subsidiary projects (the Chinese-aided Dalbandin–Gwadar railway, which connects with the Karakoram highway and another highway that links Gwadar with Karachi) are completed. China insists that its interest in the Gwadar port is purely commercial. However, its strategic importance is no less significant than Beijing’s construction of the Karakoram highway in the 1960s and its arming of Pakistan with nuclear and missile capabilities in the 1980s and 1990s. A presence in Gwadar provides China with a ‘listening post’ from where it can monitor US naval activities in the Persian Gulf, Indian activities in the Arabian Sea, US–India maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean, and patrol the Indian Ocean sea lanes, as well as an alternative land-based route for crude-oil imports.48 For Pakistan, the Gwadar port provides its navy strategic depth along its coastline and the tactical

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benefits of having a new port as an alternative to the vulnerable Karachi port, which the Indian Navy has blockaded during past conflicts.49 In 2002, Musharraf had observed that Pakistan would benefit from China’s involvement in the port because ‘as and when needed, the Chinese Navy would be in Gwadar to give befitting reply to anyone’. The government of Pakistan has designated the port area as ‘a sensitive defense area.’50 It is the western-most pearl in China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy, which envisages building strategic relations with several countries along the SLOCs from the Middle East to the South China Sea to protect China’s energy interests and other security objectives. The other ‘pearls’ are naval facilities in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and the South China Sea.51 The Gwadar port, like other Chinese-developed ports in Cambodia and Myanmar, will eventually allow the Chinese navy to hedge against the US (and Indian) control over major sea lanes. It is indicative of the growing military and economic collaboration between Pakistan and China and it is bound to have a strategic-multiplier effect. The China–Pakistan naval collaboration is now being watched closely in India, Iran and the United States. With Pakistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh already forming part of China’s strategic circle, Beijing is now looking to complete this arc around India by integrating the vital closing point in Sri Lanka and establishing a naval base on a Maldivian island by 2010.52 John Garver explains the strategic rationale underlying China’s gigantic infrastructure development projects in the west and east of India: Development of robust over-land transportation systems between Yunnan and the Bay of Bengal, and between western Xinjiang and Gwadar could substantially strengthen the PLA’s ability to sustain intense military operations in the eastern and western Indian Oceans…[In the event of a conflict with India,] [i]f the PLA-N [People’s Liberation Army-Navy] could obtain bases on the Indian Ocean littoral (perhaps at Gwadar and Kyaukpyu), and link those forward bases to China by robust road and rail lines, India’s geographic advantages would be substantially diminished to the PLA-N’s advantage.53

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In return, China is set to play a central role in Pakistan’s plans to increase its nuclear energy to 8,000 megawatts (MW) by 2030, more than 10 times the 770 MW yielded by its two existing Chinese reactors and a smaller Canadian one. Failing to secure the same exemption from the US laws banning nuclear cooperation with non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that India has been granted, because of the role played by Pakistan’s top scientist, A. Q. Khan, in the nuclear proliferation scandal involving Libya, Iran and North Korea, Pakistan is now looking to Beijing to fill the void.54 China has, in fact, long played a lead role in Pakistan’s nuclear adventures. The Chinese do not buy Washington’s argument against extending nuclear cooperation to Pakistan on the grounds that India and Pakistan are ‘different countries, with different histories and different needs.’55 The US–India nuclear deal particularly rankles them because it fulfils two of India’s key strategic objectives that are vociferously opposed by Beijing — breaking the nuclear parity with Pakistan and establishing strategic equivalence between India and China.56 Seen from Beijing’s standpoint, if India is a ‘unique case’ for the US, then Pakistan is a ‘special case’ for China in the nuclear sector. In a scathing commentary on 26 October 2005, the People’s Daily accused Washington of being soft on India and warned if the US made a ‘nuclear exception’ for India, other powers (i.e., China) could do the same with their friends (read Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar) and weaken the global non-proliferation regime. Pakistan has asked China to build it up to six reactors of 600 MW or more, at least twice the size of the 300 MW reactor China built at Chashma in Pakistan’s Punjab province. An MoU on nuclear energy cooperation was signed during President Musharraf’s February 2006 visit to China. To mollify the pique its client state feels about the US–India deal, President Hu Jintao was supposed to conclude a nuclear energy deal during his November 2006 visit to Pakistan.57 However, the agreement was put on hold at the eleventh hour after President Bush reminded President Hu of China’s obligations as a member of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) at the APEC Summit in Hanoi on 20 November 2006, days before Hu Jintao flew to India and

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Pakistan.58 However, the Pakistan–China nuclear energy deal will eventually come to fruition. Military Hardware: Buyer and Supplier In addition to assistance with strategic infrastructure projects (such as the widening of the Karakoram highway and increasing cooperation in the energy sphere), China is also Pakistan’s largest arms supplier, selling everything from aircraft to missiles to naval vessels. To maintain a favourable balance of power, Beijing remains committed to providing Islamabad with every weapons system that India has (and will have) and more.59 China has assisted Pakistan in augmenting its military with the joint development of the F-22P frigate, the Al-Khalid tank, Land Attack Cruise Missile and JF-17 Thunder combat aircraft. In a meeting with General Musharraf on 22 February 2006, Chinese Defence Minister Cao Ganghuan expressed his hope to expand defense production and development arrangements with Pakistan. A week prior to President Bush’s visit to India and Pakistan in March 2006, Beijing hosted General Musharraf and concluded new deals on advanced conventional weaponry and nuclear power plants. This prompted Musharraf to boast at a press conference in Islamabad that ‘they [India and the US] should be ready for worse times coming...we have substitutes and they know why I went there [China] before his [Bush’s] visit.’ During President Hu Jintao’s November 2006 visit, Beijing made firm commitments on specific items of defense equipment, while assuring a continuing cooperation on a number of projects, including a fighter aircraft and an airborne early warning radar system (AWACS).60 They also agreed to set up a Defence Electronics Complex that will develop electronic equipment and communication technology for military use. With its growing satellite and intelligence capabilities, China is offering the C4ISR (command, control, communications, computing, intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance) umbrella to Pakistan. China also remains involved in upgrading Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capabilities. Beijing has not only provided Islamabad with nuclear bombs, uranium and plants (all three of Pakistan’s nuclear plants—Kahuta, Khushab and Chasma—have been built

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with Chinese assistance) but also their delivery systems: readyto-launch M-9 (Ghaznavi/Hatf), M-11 (Shaheen), and a number of Dong Feng 21s (Ghauri) ballistic missiles. An article by Zhang Weiwei in Guoji Guanxi [International Studies, 6 February 2006] of the China Institute of International Studies affiliated to Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledges that ‘Pakistan enjoys an edge over India in the nuclear sector’—a feat difficult for Islamabad to accomplish without Chinese inputs. However, this is not to say that the China–Pakistan military relationship is a one- way street. The Chinese have also benefited over the decades from partnering with the armed forces of Pakistan that possess and operate advanced conventional military hardware.61 Pakistan has served as a conduit for Western technology to flow into China, particularly military technology related to avionics, radar systems, sidewinder missiles, tanks, fighter aircraft, Stinger shoulder-fired missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles and uranium enrichment technology that was stolen by Dr A. Q. Khan from Holland in the late 1970s.62 China has also used Pakistan as a front in the arms trade with several Middle Eastern states where Beijing seeks to project itself as an ally against US–Israeli domination of the Middle East. A close military-to-military cooperation with recipients of advanced weaponry helps the Chinese undermine the arms embargo imposed by major western suppliers in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. This strategy helps China earn goodwill, advanced technology, foreign exchange and access to energy resources in the oil-rich Gulf States. Some Chinese strategists worry about the destabilizing consequences of a prolonged US military presence in Pakistan on the future of China–Pakistan ties, as well as on Pakistan’s domestic stability. The US military presence in Pakistan is said to have sharpened the divide within the military in Pakistan into pro-West and pro-Beijing factions. Since the conclusion of the ‘China–Pakistan Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good-Neighbourly Relations’ in April 2005 — which binds the two nations to desist from ‘joining any alliance or bloc which infringes upon the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the other side,’ — the military relationship seems

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to be acquiring anti-US overtones. The Chinese believe that ‘a Treaty of this sort with Pakistan could mean that in any eventuality in future of China-US strategic competition in South Asia becoming acute, Islamabad would be treaty-bound in not supporting the US.’63 That Islamabad does not disagree with this interpretation is evident from the statement made by Pakistan’s Information Minister Rashid Ahmad in an interview with Chinese television on 20 February 2006, during his recent trip to Beijing. According to him ‘Pakistan will stand by China if the US ever tries to “besiege” it.’64 This signals a preference for China over the United States if Pakistan is ever asked to choose between the two. Both sides have recently decided to step up their bilateral cooperation in military training and conduct joint military exercises. In August 2004, China and Pakistan organized their first ever joint military exercise on Chinese soil. The PLA’s elite forces conducted their second joint military exercise, called ‘Friendship 2006,’ with the Pakistan Army in Pakistan in December 2006.65 A joint China–Pakistan search-and-rescue Navy drill was conducted in November 2005. The two allies plan to base their naval strategy around a large submarine fleet and possess a variety of ballistic and cruise missiles in large numbers in their arsenals. The net effect of the ongoing and planned co-development and co-production projects may well be to make Pakistan an integral part of China’s fast-expanding military-industrial complex in the decades to come. Economic Integration and Infrastructure Development A stable, powerful and prosperous Pakistan balancing India’s growing power serves China’s grand strategic objective while a weak, failing and isolated state of Pakistan is detrimental to Chinese security interests. Recognizing that Pakistan was in an economic mess, China has stepped in since 2000, in a major way, to provide massive economic assistance and to invest heavily in different sectors of Pakistan’s economy. Beijing also welcomed the post–September 11 (2001) US re-engagement with Pakistan that has resulted in billions of dollars worth of economic and military assistance to its ally. Pakistan is one of the major beneficiaries

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of Chinese aid, loans and grants. For China, the primary focus has been on upgrading railways, ports, highways, mining and agricultural sector. Nearly three dozen Chinese companies are operating in the oil-and-gas, information technology, telecommunications, power-generation, engineering, automobilemanufacturing, infrastructure and mining sectors. China’s hunger for raw materials to fuel its own economic growth has led to large investments into the Saindak copper and gold project in Chaghm, and the lead-zinc mining project in Balochistan’s Lasbela district. The proposal to build a railroad and lay an optic-fibre cable along the strategic Trans-Karakoram highway is under consideration. In 2004, Islamabad granted ‘free market economy’ status to China, and Beijing pledged to provide $150 million for the Chasma Nuclear Power Plant (Phase II). Scores of formal agreements have increased the total trade volume between Pakistan and China from less than $1 billion in 2000–01 to about $5 billion by the end of 2006.66 In February 2006, China reportedly agreed to invest $12 billion in various projects and industrial zones meant exclusively for Chinese businesses in Pakistan.67 In November 2006, China and Pakistan signed a free-trade agreement (FTA), which is expected to boost bilateral trade nearly four times to $15 billion in the next five years. Under the FTA, Pakistan will gain access to the vast Chinese market, while China will sell Pakistan more and more goods, as well as get cheap raw materials and the use of Pakistan’s ports for the onward export of its goods to world destinations at reduced freight rates.69 The FTA and the setting up of special economic zones for Chinese businesses, the Gwadar port and other infrastructure projects are expected to closely integrate Pakistan into western China’s economy by outsourcing low-tech, basic labour-intensive production and manufacturing jobs, turning it into a giant factory floor for China. Though the two sides have signed several agreements in the areas of agriculture, manufacturing, mineral, energy, information and communication technology, service and education and technical cooperation, a big question mark still hangs over their implementation. Political violence and instability could still unravel these economic arrangements if China and Pakistan fail to pacify and stabilize Xinjiang and Balochistan respectively.

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Furthermore, the balance of trade remains in China’s favour. China lags far behind Pakistan’s major export destinations in the US, European Union and the Gulf states. Beijing’s mercantilist foreign policy could also create trade tensions. There is some opposition to the large-scale dumping of Chinese goods in Pakistan’s markets and China’s cheaper textile exports compete against Pakistan’s textile manufacturers in the developed world.69 To lure Chinese investments, the government in Pakistan, however, has no option but to provide free market access. In short, the Chinese investments are part of a wider strategy to draw South Asia into China’s economic orbit. These investments include: the strategic Trans-Karakoram highway and the Gwadar port in the west of India; the construction of the Lhasa railway that will enhance Chinese transport links with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and north-eastern India; and the building of the Irrawaddy Corridor (involving a combination of road, river, rail and oceanic harbour infrastructure) linking Yunnan province with ports in Myanmar on the Bay of Bengal in the east of India. According to John Garver, China’s great western development effort bears analogy with the opening of the North American west in the second half of the 19th century which created a large market and a superpower. Similarly, ‘[t]he opening of China’s west — construction of modern lines of transportation, exploitation of western resources, and acceleration of rates of development to achieve levels more nearly approximating China’s east—will be crucial to China’s successful “rise” in the 21st century.’71 Since, China, unlike America, has no western ocean, Beijing is applying ‘modern transportation technology…to link western China to the oceans, transforming the significance of the lands in between.’ These new lines of transportation will be bearers of Chinese influence to Central, South-west and South Asia. Trade flows and inter-dependencies will develop…and China’s role in the regions to its west and south-west will increase. From China’s point of view, south and so uth-western Eurasia constitute a littoral giving China’s western regions access to the high seas highways of the global economy…As South Asian

182 Mohan Malik economies become closely interlinked with the larger Chinese economy, China will be better able to offer rewards for cooperation, and negative incentives for opposing it on key issues. Greater Chinese presence will create Chinese interests that will require protection.71

The key point is that the China–Pakistan economic dimension, hitherto weak, is growing in importance. And it has the potential to decisively restructure the regional balance of power in favour of China and Pakistan. Global Institutional Partnership At the United Nations and other regional and international fora, diplomats from China and Pakistan consult and coordinate their policy stances on all global and regional issues in order to advance their interests jointly. Both strive hard to mould international institutions, laws, norms and treaties to serve their objectives. Pakistan has long given support to China at the international stage on all issues (especially those related to Taiwan, Tibet, human rights and UN Security Council reforms), while China backs Pakistan’s views on Kashmir, Afghanistan and Islamic terrorism, weapons proliferation and the US–India nuclear energy deal. For example, in 2005, both worked closely as members of the so-called ‘Coffee Club’ at the United Nations to successfully sabotage the ‘Group of Four’ (India, Japan, Brazil and Germany) proposal for expansion of the UN Security Council’s permanent membership category. Taking a leaf out of the US diplomacy book of briefing key allies (Britain and Japan) after each overseas presidential visit, President Jiang Zemin started the practice of briefing leaders from Russia and Pakistan after each of his foreign tours in the mid-1990s. Both help each other gain membership of regional organizations. Pakistan, for example, facilitated China’s observer status at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 2005 (much to the consternation of India) while China was instrumental in gaining Pakistan a seat at the ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia-Europe Summit, and Observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The Pakistan– China Consultations on Arms Control and Disarmament issues

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are held regularly to coordinate their common approaches to issues of disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. At the UN Security Council, China has long used its position as a permanent, veto-bearing member to protect unsavoury regimes which provide Beijing with commodities and raw materials, or strategic advantage and to keep Taiwan and Tibet off the agenda. The notable examples are Pakistan under General Yahya Khan and Cambodia under Pol Pot during the 1970s, and North Korea, Eritrea, and Myanmar since the early 1990s and Sudan, Zimbabwe and Iran since 2000.72 Whether it is Iran’s nuclear weapons programme or genocide in Darfur (Sudan) or the internal situation in Myanmar or the growing Talibanization of Pakistan, China’s UN ambassador Wang Guangya and Pakistan’s Munir Akram work in tandem to keep these issues off the UN Security Council’s agenda and/or dilute the effectiveness of any Security Council action. Over the last decade, China has repeatedly used its UN Security Council membership to ensure that no harm comes to Pakistan for using terrorism against India. For example, China recently opposed a UNSC resolution at Pakistan’s behest demanding a ban on the militant Jamat-ul-Dawa, which is listed on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. In return, Pakistan has ensured that the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) does not pass any resolution condemning China’s ‘strike hard’ campaign against its Uighur Muslim minority. Pakistan also acts as a contact point for China’s engagement with the Islamic ummah (community).

implications for india Despite some improvement in the rhetoric and atmospherics, India’s ties with China remain fragile and as vulnerable as ever to a sudden and rapid deterioration. The combination of internal issues of stability and external overlapping spheres of influence forestall the chances for a genuine China–India rapprochement. Economically, China and India have done well for themselves (the former more than the latter) in spite of each other. Though both sides are working to expand and deepen economic cooperation,

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there is as yet no strategic congruence between the two Asian giants because they have different positions in the international system, contrasting strategic cultures, world views and political systems, and competing geostrategic interests. In the power competition game, China has clearly surged far ahead of India by acquiring potent economic and military capabilities; the existing asymmetry in power and status serves Beijing’s interests. Therefore, China strongly resists any Indian attempts to narrow the power gap. As India’s power grows, Beijing is devising new strategies to keep its southern rival in check. This resistance takes several forms: strategic, economic and diplomatic; and in turn, underpins the structural dynamics of the China–Pakistan–India triangular relationship. Strategic Strangulation China has long viewed India as its strategic rival that needs to be contained and balanced. In fact, aiding ‘India-wary’ countries in South Asia to ‘concircle’ (contain and encircle) India has long been an integral part of China’s strategic calculus. Beijing wants to see a powerful and well-armed military in Pakistan as that helps it mount pressure by proxy on India. While China’s policy is to use Pakistan as a foil against India, rather than do anything negative frontally, Pakistan’s strategy is to use the vast Islamic jihadi infrastructure to wage terrorist wars while avoiding direct military confrontation with India. The dramatic increase in Chinese military build-up, the incursions along the LAC during the 1999 Kargil War and the 2001–02 Pakistan–India standoff crisis contradict Beijing’s assertions in recent years that its Pakistan policy is totally independent of its relations with India or that its relations with Pakistan would not be at the cost of India. Most war-gaming exercises on the next India–Pakistan war end either in a nuclear exchange or in a Chinese military intervention to prevent the collapse of Beijing’s most allied ally in Asia. Anything that weakens or constrains India is welcomed by Islamabad and Beijing even if it is detrimental to their security over the long term: Talibanization and nuclear proliferation are two good examples of such short-sighted policies pursued by Pakistan and China.

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Persistent suspicion among hawks on each side, unresolved border disputes, intensified competition for resources such as oil, gas and water, and above all, ‘the US factor’ would limit China–Indian cooperation. Large swaths of mountainous territory remain in dispute between Beijing and New Delhi. For Beijing, an unresolved territorial dispute also provides an effective way of putting military pressure on India. Whenever China wishes to demonstrate support for Pakistan, or express anger over Indian policies, PLA embarks upon threatening moves and incursions along the LAC. The Chinese intransigence in resolving the border dispute can be attributed to the rapidly shifting military balance of power in Beijing’s favour on the Tibetan plateau. From the PLA’s perspective, the Xining–Lhasa railway is expected to play the same role in a future punitive war against India that the Tibet–Xinjiang road played in the 1962 war. This railway will also facilitate the fast deployment of short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles from China’s Fujian province to the Indian border. In other words, with or without a resolution of the Taiwan problem, Chinese military deployments can now be altered in the south-western provinces of China with speed, agility, mobility and secrecy. Furthermore, China remains determined to deny any international legitimacy to India’s nuclear weapons programme. Failing that, the Chinese might step up nuclear proliferation in India’s neighbourhood (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and perhaps, Bangladesh and Myanmar). China’s belated offer of nuclear energy assistance to India is a classic case of ‘join them if you can’t beat them’. It is aimed as much at softening India’s opposition to a similar deal with Pakistan as at getting a finger in the Indian nuclear pie and benefiting from India’s prowess in fast-breeder reactor technology. Should China decide to provide civilian nuclear technology to Pakistan, either overtly or covertly, outside the ambit of the non-proliferation regime, the US–China and China–India strategic competition would be elevated to a higher level of nuclear rivalry. As a global maritime trading power, Beijing is once again seeking to project force into the Indian Ocean in the manner of the fleets sent out nearly 600 years ago during the Ming Dynasty

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under the command of Admiral Zheng He (also called Cheng Ho). A Chinese maritime challenge from the south will emerge once the Chinese navy positions itself along sea lanes critical to India’s security and economy. The Gwadar project coupled with Chinese military and technical assistance to Myanmar to develop naval ports on the Arakan coast and the defense cooperation agreement with Bangladesh aimed at modernizing Chittagong port epitomize the way China is encroaching on India’s strategic backyard by assembling a ‘string of pearls’ in the form of ports, listening posts and naval agreements in the Indian Ocean region.73 Not surprisingly, India perceives China’s military alliances with Pakistan and Myanmar as two crab-claws aimed at containing it. Nor is the strategic pressure on India from the China–Pakistan nexus going to diminish in the foreseeable future. Pakistan is likely to remain China’s ally in most scenarios.74 The China–US–Taiwan standoff and India–US relations are likely to bring China closer to Pakistan. Sooner rather than later, China’s military alliances and forward deployment of its naval assets in the ports of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar would leave India with no option but to respond in kind by seeking access to the Vietnamese (Cam Ranh Bay), Taiwanese (Kao-hsiung), Japanese (Okinawa) and Russian (Vladivostok) ports for the forward deployment of Indian naval assets to protect India’s shipping and trade routes in the Pacific Ocean and access to energy resources from the Russian Sakhalin province. A robust counter-containment strategy would also involve establishing ‘all-weather’ relationships with ‘Chinawary’ Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam and upgrading military ties with Taiwan. New Delhi’s adherence to the ‘one China policy’ could also be made conditional upon a non-aggression commitment by Beijing on the China–India border. Economic Enticements China’s foreign policy has shifted from its Cold War era export of Maoist ideology to a more single-minded pursuit of national self-interest in the form of access to raw materials, markets and spheres of influence through investment, trade and military ties, so much so that it now bears remarkable resemblance to the

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classical exploitative approach to developing countries pursued by the 19th and early 20th century imperialist great powers. No major region of the world is untouched by China’s growing economic presence. Similar to the US ‘hub and spokes military strategy’ in the Asia-Pacific, China has embarked on promoting a ‘hub and spokes economic strategy’ on the Eurasian continent. As per this geo-economic strategy, China aspires to be the hub of all economic development in the Asia-Pacific region. Toward this end, its various railroad and highway transportation networks linking China with Central and South-west Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia will serve as the spokes or arteries bringing in raw materials and energy resources while exporting Chinese manufactured goods to those regions and beyond. Economically, China’s strategy is to integrate South Asia’s natural resources and markets into China’s national development effort. For example, China is interested in entering into a ‘natural gas for capital goods’ deal with Bangladesh, which is similar to the energy-for-goods swap with Iran. As Beijing plans to divert the Brahmaputra to feed its arid north and generate some 40,000 MW of electricity, it would want to have Pakistan and Bangladesh on its side to neutralize India’s criticism of water scarcity. This will have the twin effects of depriving India access to natural resources and markets lying in its vicinity while enhancing China’s ‘comprehensive national power’ vis-à-vis India. The imprint of China is everywhere in Pakistan and Myanmar.75 Interestingly, Chinese writings on economic development and foreign policy priorities reveal that Pakistan and Myanmar have now acquired the same place in China’s grand strategy in the 21st century that was earlier occupied by Xinjiang [meaning ‘New Territory’] and Xizang [‘Western Treasure House’, that is, Tibet] in the 20th century. Put simply, following the assimilation and integration of the outlying ‘autonomous provinces’ of Xinjiang and Xizang [Tibet] into mainstream China, Pakistan is now being perceived as China’s new ‘Xinjiang’ [new territory] and Myanmar as China’s new ‘Xizang’ [treasure house]. Over the last decade, China has made significant inroads into India’s backyard through cross-border economic and strategic penetration of smaller South Asian countries. As C. Raja Mohan

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has pointed out, ‘Beijing’s economic presence all across India’s frontiers — from Pakistan in the West, through Nepal in the North and Bangladesh in the East to Sri Lanka in the South — will soon be a powerful reality.’76 Beijing’s main objectives are said to be access to raw materials, commodities, natural resources and access to South Asian markets for Chinese goods and to expand China’s influence in the region. However, China’s support for India’s smaller neighbours suggests that gaining access to markets and natural resources is not the only reason behind Beijing’s South Asia policy: Beijing also wants to make a point on the limits of Indian power. Chinese strategic analysts believe that major infrastructure projects like the construction of the Qinghai–Tibet railway and a network of roads on Tibet’s borders with Bhutan, Nepal and India would make Tibet, Nepal and the bordering states of India part of the larger Chinese economy.77 This would lead to a dramatic increase in Chinese goods, investment, migration and tourism in these Himalayan fringe lands. ‘A Tibetan economy tied more closely to China will significantly increase China’s ability to provide a viable economic alternative to India in the event of another Indian embargo akin to the 1989–90 embargo against Nepal.’78 The Indian government has responded, albeit belatedly, by focusing on economic development and infrastructure development in the border areas and in neighbouring countries. New Delhi needs to be alert to demographic subversion, economic penetration and Sinification of neighbouring countries. India also needs to guard against becoming a mere raw material supplier for China. In the energy sector, China is unlikely to give India space to secure strategic supplies, notwithstanding occasional cooperation and joint investments. India will have to create suitable incentives and interests through trade, aid and military support accompanied by strenuous diplomatic efforts that could create economic and security dependencies in the supplier states. Diplomatic Delusions As China’s power grows, Beijing is seeking to limit US dominance worldwide and prevent the emergence of a hostile US-led coalition against it. Therefore, a major part of Chinese diplomacy is

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directed at foiling India’s efforts to counter the growth of Chinese power and presence in India’s immediate neighbourhood by reaching out to ‘China-wary’ powers. This concern has made Beijing more careful in how it manages its ever-expanding ties with Pakistan without provoking or angering India. A desire for stability on its south-western flank and fears of an India–Pakistan nuclear arms race have also caused Beijing to take a more even-handed approach, while still favouring Islamabad. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the growing trade volume between India and China will not lead to any dilution in China–Pakistan relations. In fact, it would be an illusion to think that China will forsake Pakistan in the interest of its relations with India. As Rasul Bakhsh Rais of the Lahore University of Management Sciences opines: ‘At the moment, India has no levers to change the basic structure of the [Pakistan-China] relationship.’79 Chinese rhetoric of Third Worldism or multipolarity and solidarity against US hegemony, which resonates well in India’s leftist circles, is aimed at sowing domestic discord and divisions within India’s polity. While Indians believe that Asia is too large for two powers, the Chinese believe that it is too small for the ambitions of both. Despite its rhetoric endorsing a multipolar world order, China is working towards a bipolar world dominated by the US and by itself. Its ‘peaceful rise’ rhetoric notwithstanding, Beijing will not abandon or compromise its claims to Arunachal Pradesh, Taiwan, the Spratlys, and Senkakus, nor its hopes for a leading role in Southeast Asia, a decisive role in Northeast Asia, and establishing a military presence in the Indian Ocean. China is also unwilling to share the leadership role in either of these sub-regions with any other Asian power, be it Japan or India, because the main objective of China’s Asia policy has always been to prevent the rise of an Asian rival or a peer competitor. As an old Chinese saying goes, ‘one mountain cannot accommodate two tiger’s. Or, as the old Marxists would say, ‘Indian power contradicts Chinese power.’ To sum up, China’s courting of India has a limited objective of ensuring that New Delhi does not join any anti-Chinese political arrangement, including a closer relationship with Washington. Beijing’s ultimate game plan is to seek India’s capitulation, and persuade New Delhi ‘to live

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comfortably under China’s benevolent protection,’80 thereby forcing its southern rival to play second fiddle to superpower China.

Conclusions It is because of the geopolitical fault line, which links Pakistan with Tibet that China–India relations have seen so many false dawns. The Pakistan–China alliance relationship that came into being in the early 1960s with the specific purpose of containing India has now expanded into a global multi-dimensional partnership that encompasses the trans-national issues of terrorism, SLOCs safety, economic development, resource security, as well as the old geopolitical threats (India) and new geopolitical equations (the United States and China). The improvement in India–China relations does not make Islamabad insignificant in Beijing’s calculus because Pakistan is located at the tri-junction of Central, Southwest and South Asia where the national security interests of China and the United States intersect in so many ways. China’s mercantilist foreign policy driven by hunger for natural resources and access to markets has placed Pakistan securely in China’s orbit. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to view each and every action that China takes vis-à-vis Pakistan as being aimed at damaging Indian interests. Nearly all Pakistanis welcome China’s rise. At the same time, they hope and pray for the US decline and bemoan India’s rise. Apparently, South Asia and the Indian Ocean region is where China’s growing power and presence will be felt most as Beijing looks to assert its regional and global leadership and superpower role. Just as Pakistan was a frontline state during the Cold War, and is now the battlefield in the global War on Terror, it is also emerging as the playground for a much larger geopolitical contest between the rising superpower (China) and the reigning superpower (the US) in the 21st century. As the US gravitates towards India, Pakistan will tilt heavily towards China. As India’s strategic competition with China intensifies in this century and becomes almost as fundamental a part of the global order as the China–US contest, Pakistan’s value for China as a geostrategic tool or a bargaining chip in the China–US–India triangular relationship will

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inevitably increase. Put it simply, Pakistan has become geopolitically more—not less—important to the Chinese leadership, as Beijing seeks global influence in the international community. In a nutshell, the intensifying China–India and China–US geopolitical rivalries are likely to increase the significance of China’s strategic ties with Pakistan. Islamabad sees itself as uniquely placed to benefit from the ‘Chinese Century’ in the 21st century just as it benefited enormously from the ‘American Century’ in the second half of the 20th century and the US-Soviet and Soviet-Chinese rivalries of the Cold War era. A global power, China would value the support of powerful regional allies like Pakistan in the great game of the 21st century. Therefore, China’s ‘allweather’ relationship with Pakistan is likely to remain the most important factor in Beijing’s South Asia policy; and this will hinder a genuine China–India rapprochement. Indian policy makers’ hopes of driving a wedge between Pakistan and China via closer China–India economic ties are a sign of wishful thinking. For, if Beijing downgrades ties with Islamabad, Pakistan may get destabilized or completely slide into the American camp or come to terms with Indian predominance — all three outcomes are detrimental to China’s vital national security interests. From Beijing’s perspective, while India is just a friend (and friends are dispensable), Pakistan is the most valued and indispensable ally. Unless Pakistan descends into total chaos and anarchy, and/or is seen as posing a serious threat to China’s vital national interests, Beijing will not give up on its most allied ally in Asia. At the same time, China’s and Pakistan’s mutual interest in keeping India down would be tempered by Beijing’s strategic imperative to avoid a policy of open confrontation with New Delhi, because that would only push India closer to the US and Japan in a ‘contain China’ drive.

nOTes 1 However, the China–Pakistan-type nuclear/missile cooperation, in particular, is unprecedented in the history of post-World War II international relations. The United States never shared such a relationship with Britain or Israel. 2 Robert T. McLean, ‘China Heads West,’ FrontPageMagazine.com [online document]. Available at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadA...le.asp?ID=21487 (2 March 2006).

192 Mohan Malik 3 Mariana Baabar, ‘Pakistan: Hu Jintao Visit: Who, Me, Worry?’, Outlook.com [online document]. Available at http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061211&f name=China+%28F%29&sid=1 (11 December 2006). 4 ‘Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighbourly Relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China [online document]. Available at http://fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao>3602/3604/default.htm (5 April 2005). 5 While the Chinese dream about restoring their country’s status as ‘the Middle Kingdom,’ the Pakistanis dream of restoring the Moghul empire over the entire subcontinent. Discussion in this section is based on informal conversations and discussions with scholars and policymakers from Pakistan and China since 1998. 6 Yossi Klein Halevi, ‘Islam Must Challenge Its Dark Doctrines’, Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2001. 7 Cathy Young, ‘Does Islam Foster Extremism?’ Boston Globe, 19 August 2002, p. 11. 8 Quoted in Los Angeles Times, 2 July 2005. 9 The phrase ‘moderate Muslim countries’ says it all. There is no parallel with ‘moderate Christian country’ or ‘moderate Hindu country’ or ‘moderate Buddhist country’. Likewise, China’s notion of ‘peaceful rise’ is an indirect acknowledgement of its neighbours’ legitimate concerns about China’s past aggressive behaviour. 10 See Michael Pillsbury, China Debates the Future Security Environment (PLACE: National Defense University Press, 2000). This study provides the most comprehensive portrayal of Chinese strategic thinking on the nature of the threats and opportunities facing their country. 11 Hamish McDonald, ‘Beijing content with the devil it knows, despite Pyongyang’s nuclear threat’, Age (Melbourne), 14 January 2003. 12 Yang Jirui and Sun Jin (eds.), Zhongguo Xibu da kaifa yu Nanya [China’s Western Development and South Asia], (Chengdu: Sichuan Publishers, 2004); Laio Yameng, ‘Expert Analyzes the “Balancing” Strategies of China, India and Pakistan,’ Wen Wei Po, 7 Nov 2003, FBIS-CHI-2003-1107, 13 November 2003. 13 At Pakistan’s behest, China recently opposed a UNSC resolution demanding a ban on the militant Jamat-ul-Dawa, which is listed on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. 14 In the same week in mid-November 2006 when Chinese ambassador to India Sun Yuxi reiterated China’s claim over Arunachal Pradesh, Pakistan’s foreign minister Kasuri called on India to be flexible on finding a ‘solution’ to the Siachen dispute. 15 Pillsbury, China Debates the Future Security Environment, op. cit., pp. 70–73. 16 Nepal’s Maoist leader Prachanda recently acknowledged that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, had offered help to his party through ‘direct or indirect’ means. See ‘ISI had offered help to Nepal Maoists’, Indian Express, 20 November 2006; Apratim Mukarji, ‘ISI’s main source of funds is now China’, Hindustan Times, 22 February 2001. 17 Pakistan’s military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq ‘had dreamed like a Mogul emperor of “recreating” a Sunni Muslim space between infidel “Hindustan”, “heretic” [because Shia] Iran and “Christian” Russia. He believed that the message of Afghan Mujaheddin would spread into Central Asia, revive Islam and create a new

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Pakistan-led Islamic bloc of nations,’ writes Ahmed Rashid in Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000), ch. 14, p. 195. 18 Christopher Kremmer, ‘Sub-continent fights forces of darkness’, Age, 29 December 2001, p. 1. 19 ‘India’s superpower ambition will see strained relations’, Times of India, 2 April 2001. 20 Remarks by a senior military officer from Bangladesh, Honolulu, 19 October 2006. The Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid declared recently: ‘We [Muslims] were rulers here for 800 years. Inshaallah, we shall return to power here once again’. ‘Shahi Imam “absolves” LeT, blames RSS for Mumbai blasts’, Rediff.com [online document]. Available at http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/India/20060718/394446. html (18 July 2006). At the time of the 1947 partition, the Muslim population in undivided India was about 70 million. Since then there has been a seven-fold increase in the combined population of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan over the last 60 years touching nearly half a billion mark. Over the last 35 years, the world Muslim population has multiplied several-folds from approximately 340 million in 1970 to 1.2 billion in 2005. 21 B. Raman, ‘India–China: Hype & Reality: Part III & Last-China Monitor’, Paper No. 3, No 2047 [online document]. Available at http://www.saag.org/papers21/ paper2047.html (1 December 2006). 22 Srikanth Kondapalli, ‘The Chinese Military Eyes South Asia’, in Andrew Scobell and Larry Wortzel (eds.), Shaping China’s Security Environment: The Role of the People’s Liberation Army (Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2006), pp. 197–245; ‘Is India China’s Imaginative Rival?’ People’s Daily Online, 2 March 2005. 23 Lu Jianren, ‘Is this Asia’s century?’, Beijing Review, 21 April 2006, p. 18; ‘US dreams of Asian NATO’, People’s Daily Online, 19 July 2003. 24 For details, see Mohan Malik, ‘The Proliferation Axis: Beijing–Islamabad– Pyongyang’, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. XV, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 57–100. 25 Agencies, ‘Pakistan will stand by China against US “siege”, says Rashid’, Daily Times (Lahore), 23 February 2006; Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘The View: Hu’s Visit’, Asian Age [online document]. Available at http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page =2006%5C11%5C27%5Cstory_27-11-2006_pg3_4 (27 November 2006). 26 For a commentary on the need to strengthen the infrastructure in China’s southwest border region and forge closer ties with Pakistan and Myanmar, see http://bwl.jschina.com.cn/war_cw/India.htm 30 October 2006; D. S. Rajan, ‘President Hu Jintao’s Visit to India–Domestic Media Opinion’, Saag.org, Paper No. 2024 [online document]. Available at http://www.saag.org/papers21/ paper2024.html (14 November 2006). 27 Conversations with Chinese and Pakistani officials, October 2005. Following the passage of the US–India nuclear deal in the Congress, an editorial in The News (11 December 2006) cautioned India against falling into Washington’s trap, citing Islamabad’s own example to ‘learn from the numerous US double standards with regard to Pakistan’.

194 Mohan Malik 28 ‘Pakistan: Dangerous threat, great opportunity’, Rediff.com [online document]. Available at http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/aug/22spec1.htm (22 August 2006). 29 http://bwl.jschina.com.cn 30 October 2006; cited in D. S. Rajan, ‘President Hu Jintao’s Visit to India–Domestic Media Opinion’, op. cit. 30 John Garver, ‘Development of China’s Overland Transportation Links with Central, South-west and South Asia’, The China Quarterly, No. 185, March 2006, p. 21. 31 According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) survey, 68 per cent of Chinese say they do not trust India to ‘act responsibly’ in the world. Agence France Presse, 12 October 2006. 32 Reuters, ‘Pakistan trusts China more than US,’ Dawn, 23 November 2006; Fu Xiaoqiang ‘Sino–Pakistani ties usher in a vast room for development,’ People’s Daily Online, 24 November 2006. 33 Cited in Reuters, ‘Pakistan trusts China more than US,’ The News, 23 November 2006; Dileep Padgaonkar, ‘Pakistan a natural ally for China’, Times of India, 7 October 2002. 34 Conversation with a Pakistani military officer, 30 August 2006. 35 Robert T. McLean, ‘China Heads West,’ FrontPageMagazine.com [online document]. Available at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21487 (2 March 2006). 36 Kondapalli, ‘The Chinese Military Eyes South Asia’; ‘The Solid Foundation for SinoPakistani Friendship’, International Strategic Studies (Beijing), No. 1, Serial 71, January 2004, pp. 25–27; Pan Zheng, ‘Build mutual trust in Sino–Indian relations’, China Daily, 30 May 2006. 37 Maj. Gen. (R) Jamshed Ayaz Khan, ‘Coming of Hu Jintao is sweeter than honey,’ Pakistan Observer [online document]. Available at http://pakobserver.net/200612/01/ Articles01.asp (1 December 2006). 38 Steven A. Hoffman, India and the China Crisis (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), p. 60. 39 Though China is not responsible for the India–Pakistan hostility and animosity, Chinese strategists early on recognized the enduring nature of that enmity and have exploited it to China’s advantage, writes John W. Garver, ‘Could it happen again?’ Rediff.com [online document]. Available at http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/ nov/02chin.htm (2 November 2002). 40 See V. P. Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (PLACE: HarperCollins, 2006). 41 John W. Garver, ‘China and South Asia’, Annals of the American Academy of Politics & Social Sciences, Vol. 519, 1992, pp. 80, 83, 85. 42 Inside China Mainland (Taiwan), April 1993, p. 67. According to Hua Di, China cannot claim to be a truly global superpower unless it has the capability to dominate two oceans, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. He argues that the cases of the Soviet Union and the United States show that to claim to be a superpower, an essential prerequisite is the ability to dominate at least two oceans — the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Conversation with Hua Di, November 1989. 43 This naval competition ‘would make the Chinese navy the first since the Cold War to compete for sea control with the United States,’ writes Dan Blumenthal, ‘Get Serious About China’s Rising Military’, Washington Post, 25 May 2006, p. 29.

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44 AFP, ‘US, China, India flex muscle over energy-critical sea lanes’, Yahoo.com, 4 October 2006. 45 See Pervez Musharraf’s interview in ‘The Will to Cooperate’, Beijing Review, 2 March 2006, p. 10. 46 Syed Fazl-e-Haider, ‘China’s growing stake in Pakistan’, Asia Times Online [online document]. Available at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK30Df01.html (30 November 2006). 47 John Garver, ‘Development of China’s Overland Transportation Links with Central, South-west and South Asia,’ p. 10. 48 China was initially reluctant to help with the construction of the port, agreed to fund it only after it obtained ‘sovereign guarantees to the port facilities. Tarique Niazi, ‘Gwadar: China’s Naval Outpost on the Indian Ocean’, China Brief, Vol. 5, Issue 4 [online document]. Available at http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details. php?volume_id=408&issue_id=3232&article_id=2369262 (15 February 2005). 49 According to Energy Futures in Asia (2005), Beijing has already set up electronic eavesdropping posts at Gwadar which monitor ship traffic through the Arabian Sea. ‘Pak offers China monitoring facilities on Makrana Coast’, Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye [Independent Military Review] (Moscow) [online document]. Available at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadA...le.asp?ID=21487 (29 June 2002). 50 Niazi, ‘Gwadar: China’s Naval Outpost on the Indian Ocean’, op. cit. 51 Yukteshwar Kumar, ‘Hu, Pakistan and the “string of pearls”’, Rediff.com, 28 November 2006; Brahma Chellaney, ‘Imperial China’, Hindustan Times, 30 October 2006. 52 China’s recent entry into the oil exploration business in Sri Lanka, development of port and bunker facilities at Hambantota, strengthening military cooperation and bilateral trade with Colombo worry Indian policy makers. See Chellaney, ‘Imperial China’, op. cit. However, the best laid plans might come unstuck if Pakistan fails to pacify and stabilize Balochistan province, where Gwadar is located. The growing Balochi independence movement, which has targeted Chinese engineers twice since 2004, makes the Chinese nervous about their massive investments. 53 John W. Garver, ‘China’s South Asian Interests and Policies’. Prepared for panel on ‘China’s Approaches to South Asia and the Former Soviet States’, US–China Economic and Security Review Commission [online document]. Available at http:// www.uscc.gov/hearings/2005hearings/written_testimonies/05_07_21_22wrts/garver_ john_wrts.htm (22 July 2005). 54 Jo Johnson, Richard McGregor, and Farhan Bokhari, ‘India May See Slight in Hu Tour’, Financial Times, 23 November 2006. 55 Mohan Malik, ‘China Responds to the US–India Nuclear Deal’, China Brief, Vol. 6, Issue 7 [online document]. Available at http://www.jamestown.org/publications_ details.php?volume_id=415&issue_id=3670&article_id=2370926 (29 March 2006). 56 C. Raja Mohan, ‘End of Long Nuke Winter’, Indian Express [online document]. Available at http://www.indianexpress.com/iep/sunday/story/18275.html (10 December 2006). 57 Reuters, ‘China Set To Offer Pakistan Nuclear Deal’, Indian Express [online document]. Available at http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=77221 (16 November 2006).

196 Mohan Malik 58 B. Raman, ‘India–China: Hype & Reality-China Monitor Part II,’ Saag.org, Paper No. 2042 [online document]. Available at http://www.saag.org/papers21/ paper2042.html (30 November 2006). 59 With the help of China, Pakistan Navy will have as many frigates as India by 2015. Should India acquire a nuclear-powered submarine or submarine-launched ballistic missile capability, Beijing will make sure that Pakistan will also have one. 60 Xinhua ‘Chinese president’s visit to further cooperation with Pakistan’, People’s Daily online, 22 November 2006. 61 Ahmad Faruqui, ‘The Complex Dynamics of Pakistan’s Relationship with China: Scenarios of the Future’, 16 November 2001; Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘The View: Hu’s visit’, The Asian Age [online document]. Available at http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default. asp?page=2006%5C11%5C27%5Cstory_27-11-2006_pg3_4 (27 November 2006). 62 Given Dr. Khan’s close links with and numerous visits to the Chinese nuclear establishment, it is inconceivable that Chinese security agencies were unaware of Pakistan’s nuclear dealings with North Korea, Iran and Libya. See Mohan Malik, ‘Dr Khan’s China Connection, China Brief, Vol. 4, Issue 9 [online document]. Available at http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_ id=395&issue_id=2939&article_id=23663 (29 April 2004.). 63 D. S. Rajan, ‘China: Revisiting the 2005 Friendship Treaty with Pakistan’, Saag.org, Paper No. 2058 [online document]. Available at http://www.saag.org/ papers21/paper2058.html (10 December 2006 ). 64 Agencies, ‘Pakistan will stand by China against US “siege”, says Rashid”. DATE PLACE?? 65 ‘Joint military exercises begin’, Dawn, 11 December 2006. 66 Information here is based on Syed Fazl-e-Haider, ‘China’s growing stake in Pakistan’, Asia Times Online [online document]. Available at http://www.atimes. com/atimes/South_Asia/HK30Df01.html (30 November 2006). 67 ‘China will invest US$12 billion in Pakistan’, Shanghai Daily, 9 March 2006. 68 Critics claim the FTA was signed in a bit of a hurry and has the potential to benefit China more than Pakistan. The only other county with which China has signed an FTA is Chile. Syed Fazl-e-Haider, ‘China Digs Pakistan Into a Hole’, Asia Times Online [online document]. Available at????, 5 October 2006; and ‘China’s growing stake in Pakistan’ op. cit. 69 On the challenges facing China–Pakistan economic relations, see Fazal-ur-Rahman, ‘Pakistan–China Economic Relations: Opportunities and Challenges’, Strategic Studies (Islamabad), Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 53–72. 70 John Garver, ‘Development of China’s Overland Transportation Links with Central, South-west and South Asia’, The China Quarterly, No. 185, March 2006, p. 1. 71 John Garver, ‘Development of China’s Overland Transportation Links…’ op. cit., pp. 2, 18–19. 72 James Traub, ‘The UN’s bêtes noires: China and America,’ New York Times, 1 September 2006. 73 Yukteshwar Kumar, ‘Hu, Pakistan and the “string of pearls”’, Rediff.com, 28 November 2006; Chellaney, ‘Imperial China’, op. cit.

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74 Ahmad Faruqui, ‘China-Pakistan: Fraying Ties?’ Far Eastern Economic Review, 18 January 2001. 75 Fu Xiaoqiang ‘Sino–Pakistani ties usher in a vast room for development’, People’s Daily Online, 24 November 2006. 76 C. Raja Mohan, ‘With SEZ, Hu brings Lahore in Chinese economic orbit’, Indian Express [online document]. Available at http://www.indianexpress.com/ story/17274.html (25 November 2006). 77 G. Parthasarathy, ‘China remains a challenge’, The Pioneer, 14 December 2008. 78 Garver, ‘China’s South Asian Interests and Policies’, op. cit. 79 Baabar, ‘Pakistan: Hu Jintao Visit Who, Me, Worry?’, op. cit. 80 Garver, ‘China’s South Asian Interests and Policies’, op. cit.

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the editor Wilson John is Senior Fellow with Observer Research Foundation. His areas of research include Pakistan, India’s neighbourhood policy and terrorism. He has authored three books—An Admiral’s Fall (1999), Karachi: An International Terrorist Capital in the Making (2004) and Pakistan’s Nuclear Underworld (2005)—and has co-edited Terrorism in Southeast Asia (2005), with Swati Parashar. His articles are regularly published both in India and abroad. He has recently contributed a chapter, ‘Pakistan Under Islamist Siege’, in India’s National Security: Annual Review 2004, edited by Professor Satish Kumar. His chapters on extremism in Bangladesh and terrorism in Pakistan have been published in Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities, published in 2005 by The Jamestown Foundation, Washington. His latest publication is a chapter titled ‘Terrorism in South Asia: Trends and Challenges’ in South Asia Defence and Strategic Year Book 2007, edited by Colonel (Retd) Harjeet Singh, and published by Pentagon Press.

the contributors Professor Kalim Bahadur retired as Professor of South Asian Studies from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is a defence expert and has specialized in Pakistan-related issues. His publications include Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan: Political Thought and Political Action and Democracy in Pakistan: Crisis and Conflicts. Some of his numerous research papers and articles published in journals on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh include ‘Regional Implications of the Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia’ in Strategic Analyses (Jan–March 2006), ‘The Turmoil in Balochistan’ in Akrosh (July 2005), ‘India–Pak Composite Dialogue’

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in Indian Journal of Foreign Affairs (April–June 2006), ‘Politics of Earthquake in Pakistan’ in Himalayan and Central Asian Studies (October–December 2005) and ‘Political Dimensions of Jehad’ in Akrosh (October 2001). Dr Frederic Grare, a leading expert and writer on South Asia, was a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. With Ashley J. Tellis and George Perkovich, he led a project assessing the U.S. and European policies toward Pakistan. Grare’s research focuses on the tension in Pakistan, including challenges of democratization, sectarian conflict, Islamist political mobilization and educational reform. Grare has served in the French Embassy in Pakistan and, from 1999 to 2003; he was the Director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, in New Delhi. He has written extensively on security issues, Islamist movements, and sectarian conflict in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also has edited the volume India, China, Russia: Intricacies of an Asian Triangle. Dr Selig S. Harrison, Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, is a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Director of the Century Foundation’s Project on the United States and the Future of Korea. He has specialized in South Asia and East Asia for fifty years as a journalist. He served as South Asia Correspondent of the Associated Press from 1951 to 1954, based in New Delhi, and later as South Asia Bureau Chief, followed by an assignment as Northeast Asia Bureau Chief, of The Washington Post. From 1974 to 1996, as a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Harrison pursued investigative assignments in a variety of countries, such as India, Pakistan, China, Japan, and the two Koreas. He has authored six books on Asian affairs and US relations with Asia, including Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, published by Princeton University Press in May 2002. Professor Akmal Hussain received his Ph.D. in economics from Sussex University. He is Senior Fellow at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, and a member of the Syndicate of the

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Government College University and the Board of Governors of the South Asia Centre for Policy Studies. He is the lead author of the UNDP’s Pakistan National Human Development Report 2003. He is also the author of Strategic Issues in Pakistan’s Economic Policy and Poverty Alleviation in Pakistan, and the co-author of Pakistan: Problems of Governance. He has edited The Challenge in South Asia: Development, Democracy, and Regional Cooperation and Participatory Development: Learning from South Asia. He has published articles in numerous journals and has written over 100 newspaper articles on economic and social issues. Professor Hussain has made important contributions to academia, government policy, and civil society in Pakistan. He was member of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Poverty Alleviation and Employment Generation in 2004, member of the President’s Economic Advisory Board during 1999–2002, and member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Affairs Committee prior to 1998. He was Chairman of the working group on poverty alleviation for the preparation of the Ninth FiveYear Plan in Pakistan (1998–2003). He has, in addition, addressed the Pakistan National Assembly on issues of poverty and economic policy. Brigadier General (Retd) Feroz Khan has served with the Pakistani Army for 30 years. His numerous assignments included serving also in the United States, Europe, and South Asia. He has experienced combat action and command on active fronts on the Line of Control in Siachin Glacier and Kashmir. Most recently, he held the post of Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs, within the Strategic Plans Division, Joint Services Headquarters. Since the mid-1990’s, General Khan has been making key contributions in formulating and advocating Pakistan’s security policy on nuclear and conventional arms control, and in strategic stability in South Asia. He has represented Pakistan in several multilateral and bilateral arms control negotiations. Gen. Khan has participated in several security-related national and international conferences and seminars. He is also a visiting faculty at the Department of the Defense and Strategic Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. In the past two

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years, he has held a series of visiting fellowships at Stanford University’s Center for International Studies and Arms Control, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratory. General Khan is now a Visiting Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. Dr Mohan Malik is Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A. He is the author of The Gulf War: Australia’s Role and Asian-Pacific Responses, co-editor of Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia, and editor of Australia’s Security in the 21st Century, The Future Battlefield, and Asian Defense Policies. He has contributed numerous book chapters and published more than 150 articles on Asian security issues in journals like Asian Affairs, Asian Survey, Arms Control, Australian Journal of International Affairs, China Quarterly, China Report, China Brief, Comparative Strategy, Contemporary Security Policy, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Issues and Studies, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Orbis, Pacific Affairs, Pacifica Review, Parameters, and World Policy Journal. He has also written for the International Herald Tribune, The Japan Times, The Australian, Asia Times, YaleGlobal Online, and Honolulu Star-Bulletins. Dr Malik has provided consultancy to the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Australian Department of Defence (Army), and the UK-based Jane’s Information Group. Lt. General (Retd) Talat Masood served in the Pakistani Army for 39 years and retired in 1990 as Secretary for Defence Production in the Ministry of Defence. In this position, he served on a number of government advisory boards dealing with military, industrial and technology matters. From 1981 to 1988, Gen. Masood was the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories Board where he oversaw the modernization and expansion of military technologies. He was a senior member of the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament for over two

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years and has also served on the board of some multinational corporations. Gen. Masood is a graduate of the Pakistan Command and Staff College and the National Defence College of the Armed Forces. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and master’s degree in Defense and Strategic Studies. Vikram Sood was the Chief of India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), till January 2003. With his wide experience of leading the country’s prime intelligence agency through some of the most challenging moments of India’s strategic maturity, Sood brings to his analyses and comments deep knowledge of events and people. He is widely known for his incisive comments on subjects that are at once topical and critical. He writes a fortnightly column for Hindustan Times covering issues relating to the South Asian region as well as global issues like terrorism, energy and resources. Currently, he is the Vice President, ORF Centre for International Affairs.

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INDEX

Afghanistan, 5–6, 20, 23, 30–31, 101, 103–6, 108, 113, 119, 121–22, 125, 129, 132, 134, 140, 148, 163, 165–7, 182 ‘great game’ between Britain and Russia in, 23 Northern Alliance, 129 Pakistan-sponsored insurgencies, 132 Soviet invasion of, 30–31, 47, 52, 104–6 Taliban regime in, 6 fall of the, 5 US attack on, 108 withdrawal of the Soviet forces from, 106, 132, 167 Afghan jihad, 103–4 Afghan Mujahideen, 104, 106 weapons and funds to, 104 Afghan War, 51–52, 55, 78 Ahle Hadith, 102, 106, 108–9 Ahmad, Qazi Hussain, 106, 108 Ahmadis, 88, 96–7, 101, 112 Ahmadi movement, 96–7 declared non-Muslims, 96–7, 101, 112 Ahmadzai tribe, 22 Kalat Confederacy, 22–3 Akora Khatak, 106, 108 Al-Qaeda, 69, 70, 129, 133 All India Muslim League, 88, 90, 112 Pakistan Resolution, 87, 90 All India Sunni Conference, 87, 92 APEC Summit, Hanoi, 176 Arabian Sea, 173–4 ASEAN Regional Forum, 182 Asia-Europe Summit, 182 Autonomy, 19, 27, 29–33 Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam, 86–8, 91 Aziz, Shah Abdul, the Khateeb of Lal Masjid, 69, 86 Balochistan, 3, 10, 14, 19, 21–4, 28, 30–32, 37, 42, 129, 146, 150–1, 173, 180 Baloch, 18–24, 27–32, 95

armed uprising, 19 Baloch nationalist movement, 21, 129 cultural and political identity, 21 proponents of a sovereign state, 19 unified political identity, 23 Baloch insurgents, 23 Baloch Liberation Army, 24 Baloch tribal homeland, 20 British Balochistan, 23 crisis in, 3 ill-conceived policies, 3 Greater Balochistan, 21 Gwadar port, 173–5, 180–1 Punjabi settlers in, 24, 30 Bangladesh, 18, 26, 36, 77, 100, 162–5, 168, 170–1, 173, 175–6, 181, 185–7 Mukti Bahini, 121 war of independence, 36 Barelvi, Saiyyad Ahmed, 86 Barelvi beliefs, 87 Barelvi mullahs, 102 Barelvi School, 87 Bhutan, 163, 171, 181, 188 Bhutto, Benazir, Prime Minister of Pakistan, 4–5, 14, 68, 70 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, Prime Minister of Pakistan, 11, 26, 29, 32, 44, 100–101 execution in 1979, 26 expenditures on defense and administration, 48–49 Islam and democracy, 11 policy of ‘lateral entry’, 48 Punjabi-Muhajir support, 26 biradari, 13, 52 Britain, 22–5, 29, 118, 126, 157, 182 British colonialism, 121 The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order, 139 Bush, George, President of United States of America, 176–7 Cambodia, 173, 175, 183

206 index Cam Ranh Bay, 186 Central Asia, 169, 173–4 Chaghm, 180 Saindak copper and gold project, 180 Chasma, 176–7, 180 Chasma Nuclear Power Plant, 180 Chaudhry, Iftikhar, Chief Justice of Pakistan, 14, 75 Chief Justice of Pakistan, 14, 57–58, 75 China, 121, 125–6, 131, 157–91 ‘string of pearls’ strategy, 173, 175 Cultural Revolution, 160, 170 global strategy, 164, 168 infrastructure projects in Pakistan-held Kashmir, 170 infrastructure projects in Tibet, 165, 170, 176, 180, 188 LAC, see Line of Actual Control Line of Actual Control , 170, 184, 185 military expenditure, 165, 170 Ming Dynasty, 185 Muslim problem, 162 Pakistan policy, 169, 171, 184 People’s Liberation Army, 175, 179, 185 People’s Liberation Army-Navy (N), 174–5, 185 PLA, see People’s Liberation Army Sakhalin province, 186 South Asia policy, 157, 171, 188, 191 Taiwan problem, 185 Uighur Muslim problem, 162, 172, 183 Xinjiang province, 162, 165, 169, 172, 174, 175, 180, 185, 187 Islamic separatism in, 162 China–Pakistan–India relationship, 157, 184 China and India, 157, 164, 168, 170, 176, 183, 185–6, 189–91 1962 war, 121, 170, 185 Arunachal Pradesh, 163–4, 170, 189 rapprochement, 157, 170, 183, 191 China and Pakistan, 157–61, 163–6, 168–69, 171, 175, 178, 179–80, 182–4, 186, 189, 191 all-weather friendship, 125 anti-India activities, 163

C4ISR, see command, control, communications, computing, intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance China–Pakistan Treaty of Friendship, 178 command, control, communications, computing, intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance, 177 Dalbandin–Gwadar railway, 174 Defence Electronics Complex, 177 diplomatic cooperation, 125, 157 economic cooperation, 125, 157, 175, 179 energy security, 158, 169, 172 entente cordiale with Pakistan, 159 free-trade agreement, 180 Friendship 2006, 179 global institutional partnership, 182 infrastructure development, 26, 157, 179 Irrawaddy Corridor, 181 joint military exercise, 179 Karakoram highway, 174, 176, 180–1 maritime strategy, 169, 172 military cooperation, 125, 157, 175–6, 178, 186 hardware, 176, 178 national security interests, 168, 190 nuclear cooperation, 167, 176–7, 182 Pakistan–China Consultations on Arms Control and Disarmament issues, 182 perspectives on India, 168 psychological, ideological, historical, political and strategic roots, 158 raw materials, 180, 183, 186–8 technological cooperation, 125, 157 territorial disputes with India, 162 China Institute of International Studies, 177

index

Civil war, 132 Cold War, 9, 18, 124–5, 132, 136, 138, 157, 166, 186, 190–1 Daptar Shair, 21 Dar-ul Harb, 160 Dar-ul Islam, 90, 160 Dargai, 133 Daultana, Mian Mumtaz, Chief Minister of Punjab, 97 Dawat-wal-Irshad, 106, 109 Deeni Madrasa, 53 indoctrination of sectarian identity, 53 democracy, 1, 8, 12, 16, 35, 37, 56, 59–60, 67, 90, 93, 107, 113–4, 123, 132, 148–49, 152–4, 162, 168 failure in Pakistan, 2, 7 federal, 42, 68–9 parliamentary, 35–6, 56, 68 secular, 123, 162 sustainable, 2, 15–6 democratic culture, 7, 9, 15 democratic process, 4, 16 Deobandi mullahs, 102 Deoband seminary, 86, 90, 105 East Pakistan, 36–7, 42, 100, 121–2, 132, 170; See also Bangladesh European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM), 13 Fatwa, 100 Ganghuan, Cao, Defence Minister of China, 177 Garver, John, 174–5, 181 Gilgit, 112 Group of Four, 182 Hanafi, 97 Haq, Maulana Samiul, 103, 106 Haram, 100 Harappa civilization, 25 Harkat ul-Mujahideen, 106, see Jamiat-ul-Ansar Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 105–6 Hitler, 89 Hizbe Islami, 104 International Labour Organisation, 64–5 Imroze, 37 India, 20, 23, 25, 27, 86–92, 94, 101, 103, 112, 118–32, 134–40, 148, 151–2, 157–60, 162–79, 181–91 1857 revolt, 86 China–Pakistan nexus, 157–8, 183, 186

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diplomatic delusions, 188 economic enticements, 186 strategic strangulation, 184 China policy, 186 Chinese presence and capabilities on Eastern flanks, 166 East Pakistan insurgency, 132 first Islamic political party in, 87 freedom movement, 87–8, 91 Indian Air Force, 127–8 Indian Army, 126 Indian Navy, 127, 168, 174 India–Pakistan War, 171, 184 Islamic movements, 87 jihadi (Islamic) and extremist (Maoist) organizations, 163 Khilafat movement, 87–8 Line of Control in Kashmir, 122 media in, 131 nuclear weapons programme, 122, 183, 185 Operation Brass-tacks, 122, 132 Pakistan-supported militancy, 105 pan-Islamist jihad in, 163 partition of, 159 propaganda against Pakistan, 131 religious parties in, 86–7, 105, 111 Islamic political parties in, 87, 91 role in world affairs, 168 seizure of Siachin Glacier, 122 Sino-Indian rapprochement and agreement, 127 strategic relationship with US, 128 supporting Tibet’s independence, 159 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, 129 ties with the United States and Japan, 164 US-India strategic relationship, 128 India–Japan global partnership, 164 India and United States, 157, 164, 174, 176, 182, 186, 190 maritime cooperation, 174 nuclear energy deal, 176, 182 strategic convergence, 157 Indian National Congress, 87–91 Indian Ocean, 157, 164, 168, 172–5, 185–6, 189–90 Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty, 170 Institute for Policy Studies, Islamabad, 161 International Crisis Group, 13

208 index Inter Services Intelligence Directorate, 104–5, 109 Investment Corporation of Pakistan, 60 address at Allahabad, 120 Iran, 4, 21, 23, 113, 129, 151, 162, 175–6, 183, 185, 187 Baloch population in, 20–21 influence on Pakistan, 4 Iraq-supported insurgency, 23 nuclear weapons programme, 183 Iraq, 113 Islam, 4, 6, 11, 86–7, 89–96, 98–108, 110, 112, 134, 159–60, 162 interpretation of, 90 role in the politics, 92 Taliban version of, 106 Islamic doctrine, 9 Islamic fundamentalism, 50–51 Afghan War and, 51–2, 55, 78 Islamic ideology, 50 Islamic laws, 86, 89, 92 Islamic parties, 86, 90, 92, 94–6, 98, 100–101, 103–4, 107–14 Islamic politics, 91 Islamic revivalism, 87 Islamic separatism, 162 Islamic socialism, 100–101 Islamism, 2, 9 Islami Tehrik Pakistan, 109 Islamization, 4, 11, 101–5, 107 Israel, 125, 157 Jaish-e-Mohammad, 6, 106; See also Khuddan-e-Islam Jama’at-i-Islami, 10–11, 31, 68, 89, 91, 97–106, 108–9, 112 Jama’at-i-Islami Hind, 91 Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan (JIP), 91, 100, 104, 105 Jamaat-ul-Dawa, 183; See also Lashkar-e-Tayyaba Jamiat-ul-Ansar, 6 Jamiat Ulama-i-Pakistan, 97 Jamiatul Ulam-i-Pakistan (JUP), 100, 108–9 Jamiatul Ulama-i-Hind, 87, 90 Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam (JUI), 4, 91, 95–6, 98–100, 102–9, 112 Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam (JUI) (Fazal), 68, 108 Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam (JUI) (Sami), 108 Jammu and Kashmir, 105–6, 120 Pakistani jihadis fighting in, 105

Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), 106 Japan, 164, 166, 172–3, 182, 186, 189, 191 jihad, 87, 92, 103–5, 109, 113, 160, 163 extremist view of, 113 jihadi culture, 101, 113 jihadi movement, 6 Jinnah, Miss Fatima, 99 Jinnah, Muhammad Ali, Quaid-e-Azam, 50, 88–90, 93–5, 99, 112, 162 presidential address of 11 August 1947, 93 Jintao, Chinese President Hu, 157, 166, 176–7 Pakistan visit, 157, 166, 176 Junejo, Mohammad Khan, 104 Kabul, 106, 129, 133 Kandahar, 106 Karachi, 24–6, 28–9, 35, 42, 59, 61, 74, 88, 91, 96, 127, 134, 173–4 all-Islamic parties meeting in 1952, 96 annual session of Muslim League in 1907, 88 Karachi University, 26 ban on the use of Sindhi language, 26 shutdown of the Sindhi Department, 26 Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, 61 Karamet, General Jehangir, Chief of Army Staff, 56, 58, 140 address at the Pakistan Navy War College, Lahore, 58 resignation of, 56 Kargil War, 170, 184 Karo Kari, 113 Kashmir, 6, 88, 103, 105–6, 113, 120, 122, 124–5, 128, 132, 134, 148, 162–3, 168, 170–1, 182 insurgency of 1990, 132 Pakistan-sponsored insurgencies in, 132 uprising in 1989 and 1990, 122 Khaksar Tehrik, 88 suicide squads for political action, 89 Khan, Dr A. Q., 176, 178 Khan, General Ayub, 10, 35–6, 79, 98–100 coup d’état in 1958, 35, 98

index

Khan, General Yahya, President of Pakistan, 26, 100, 183 six-point programme, 100 Khan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar, 88 Khan, Liaquat Ali, 95 Khan, Nasir, 22–3 Kalat Confederacy, 22–3 Khan, Sir Zafarullah, 96 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 23, 93 Khudai Khidmatgar, 88 Khuddan-e-Islam, 6 Khuhro, Hamida, 30 Khushab, 177 Kissinger, Henry, 130 Kufr, 91 Laden, Osama bin, 114 Lahore, 24, 29, 90–91, 94, 96, 106, 112, 128 All-Muslim Parties Convention, 1952, 96 Pakistan Navy War College, Lahore, 58 Punjab University, Lahore, 112 department of music, 112 Lal Masjid, 69, 86 Sharia Law in Pakistan, 69 Lama, Dalai, 169 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, 5–6 ban on, 5 Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, 6, 106, 109 Latif, Shah Abdul, 25 Shahajo Risalo, 25 Umar Marin, 25 Lieven, Anatol, 7–8, 10 Los Angeles Times, 161 Madani, Maulana Hussain Ahmad, 90, 91 Madrasa, 4, 51–3, 69, 78, 102, 103–6, 109, 113 Majlis-i-Ahrar, 88, 90, 92, 96 inception in 1929, 96 Majlise Shura, 99, 103 Maldives, the, 163, 165, 171 Markaz-i-Dawat-wal-Irshad, 106 Markazi Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam (MJUI), 91, 98 Markazi Jamiatul Ulama-i-Pakistan (MJUP), 92, 98–9 Mawdudi, Maulana Abul Ala, 10, 89–93, 97, 99 Medean civilization, 22 Middle East, 54, 169, 172–3, 175, 178 Millat-e-Islami, 6 Moghul imperium, 18, 25

209

expulsion of, 25 Moghul rule, 86 Mohammad, Ghulam, 35, 95 Mohan, C. Raja, 187 Mohenjodaro civilization, 25 Muhajir, 20, 25–9, 32 Muslim Muhajirs, 25 Punjabi-Muhajirs, 26, 29 Muhajir National Front, 28 Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz, 28 Muhammad, Prophet, 96 Mujadid, 96, 132 Mulk, Nawab Waqarul, 88 Musharraf, President General Pervez, 1, 5–6, 12–5, 18–9, 31, 56, 59, 66–8, 70–72, 75–6, 79, 120, 133–4, 146, 152–6, 173–4, 176–7 declared State of Emergency, 14 military take-over of Pakistan’s reins, 5, 12, 56, 59–60, 66–7, 76, 107 relations with Afghanistan, 134 Muslim communalism, 89 Muslim homeland, 120 Muslim League, 25, 87–92, 94–5, 97, 103–4, 108, 112 ‘One Unit’ scheme, 26, 95 Pakistan Resolution, 87–8, 90, 107, 111 Constitution of, 88 Lahore Resolution, 94 loyalty towards the British Government, 88 Pakistan movement, 90–92 Muslim nationalism, 90 Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, 10, 14, 68, 96, 98, 108–111 conglomerate of six major Islamic parties of Pakistan, 108 Myanmar, 161, 165, 168, 173, 175–6, 181, 183, 185–7 Chinese military and technical assistance to, 186 nation-states, 119 nationalism, 89–90 national sovereignty, 119 Nehru, Jawaharlal, Prime Minister of India, 121, 169 Nepal, 163, 165, 168, 171, 181, 187–8 North Korea, 161, 167, 176, 183 North West Frontier Province (NWFP), 10, 30, 42, 52, 68–9, 88, 106, 108–13, 129, 146

210 index North-West Frontier Province Assembly, 31, 112 Hisba Bill, 110 Sharia Bill, 107, 110 victory of Islamic fundamentalist groups in, 30 nuclear deterrence, 135 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, 175 Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, 176 Omar, Mulla, Amirul Momineen of the Taliban, 95 Organization of Islamic Countries, 183 Pakistan 1973–77 insurgency, 24 ADP, see Annual Development Programme, 52, 55, 68–9 Afghan policy, 5, 101, 104–5, 113, 120, 125, 132, 134 agricultural growth, 42–4, 77 airborne early warning radar system, 177 alliance between the Punjabis and Urdu-speaking refugees, 20 Annual Development Programme, 52, 55, 68–9 armed insurgencies in, 19 assertion of Bengali nationalism, 37 assertion of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, 16 banking and insurance in, 40–41 ban on political institutions, 10 ban on sectarian groups, 6 ban on direct funding of madarsas, 4 Bengali autonomy movement, 100–101 budget deficit, 46, 48–9, 61–2, 78 bureaucratic and military power structure of, 24 capital inflows, 46, 52, 71 Child Marital Law Authority, 103 civilian governments in, 1 civil society, 36–7, 50, 52–3, 77, 79 conflict between the government and the judiciary, 57 conflict resolution, 118, 123, 134, 138, 139–40 Constituent Assembly, 35, 91, 93–5 1946 election for, 94 Objective Resolution, 94–5 Constitution, 2, 14, 35, 50, 57, 67–8, 76–7, 87–8, 92–5, 98–9, 102, 107–8, 111

13th Amendment, 57 14th Amendment, 57 15th Amendment, 107 17th Amendment, 68, 110 1973 Constitution, 2, 18, 31–2, 50, 68 Army Act, 76 Article 58-2 (b), 57 Hudood laws, 111–2 Islamic provisions, 95 Legal Framework Order 2002, 108, 110 Martial Law Ordinance of 1959, 37 Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961, 99 Political Parties Act, 1962, 98 Sharia Bill, 107, 110 Women’s Protection Bill, 111 corruption in, 7–8, 13, 58, 60–63, 78 cultural and economic balance of power in, 7–8 democratic institutions, 36, 59, 67 democratic process in, 1–2, 4, 7, 9–10, 12, 15–6, 18 promise of restoration of, 11 dependence on financial borrowing, 48 development expenditure, 62, 63 developments in, 1–2, 7–9, 15–6 disputes with India, 134 domestic savings rate, 40, 55, 71 Durand Line, 23, 31, 129 duty-free imports, 54 economic and military assistance from the United States, 18, 125, 167, 178 economic disparities, 42, 77 economic growth in, 8, 34, 36, 38–9, 41–2, 47, 52, 54, 56, 59–60, 62, 65–6, 70, 72, 77–79 Ayub regime, 35, 44, 48, 50, 75, 77 Bhutto regime, 44, 46–50, 54–5, 63, 77–8 Musharraf regime, 66–7, 70, 75, 79 policies and processes, 34–5, 39–41, 48, 50, 72, 77–9 resources, 37, 40, 44, 46, 65, 77–8 Sharif regime, 63 Zia regime, 50, 53–6, 78 economic policies, 9, 18, 36, 45–6, 48, 92, 131–3

index

decentralization of, 42 implications of, 46, 48 Election Commission, 13, 148, 156 elections, 1–3, 5, 7, 11–5, 28, 68, 99–101, 107–9 1965 presidential election, 99 1970 election, 100 1977 general election, 11, 101 1987 local election, 28 1997 general election, 107 2002 general election, 5, 68, 108, 109 2005 local election, 13–4 2007 general election, 14 2008 general election, 1–2, 14 emergence as a frontline ally in the US-led War on Terror, 157 enforcement of the Islamic system and Islamic laws in, 89 entry into the United Nations, 119 establishment of the Sharia rule, 93 ethnic identities in, 3, 20 ethnic minorities, 18–9 Bonus Voucher Scheme, 38 Federal Security Force, 48 financial institutions, 41, 60 foreign exchange, 35, 38–40, 71, 77 Goldsmid Line, 23 governmental mismanagement, 63 Gross Domestic Product rate, 34, 36, 40, 46–9, 54–5, 61, 62–4, 70–72, 74–5, 77–9, 118 slowdown of, 54, 75 sustainability of, 34, 71 Gwadar Port, 134, 173–5, 180–1, 185 High Court, 12, 97 human development in, 79 illegal arms market in, 52 import controls, 38 imposition of military and economic sanctions, 132 imposition of sanctions, 167 incremental capital output ratio, 71 India’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ with ‘Mukti Bahini’, 121 industrial growth, 38, 71 infrastructure facilities, 42 manufacturing sector, 38, 40, 46, 55, 62, 64, 72 nationalization, 45–6, 49, 54 textile industry, 39, 71 wages, 41, 44, 64–5, 78

211

inefficiency of political parties, 3 inequalities, 38, 62, 65–6, 75 economic, 36–7 ethnic, 37 inflation, 49, 70, 73–5, 79 informal ‘Troika’, 56, 66 insecurity and vulnerability, 120–1, 123, 128, 160 investment, 42–3, 46–9, 54–5, 60–63, 71, 78 private, 46, 62–3 productivity, 47, 62, 64–5, 78 public, 47 Islamic Constitution, 92–4 campaign for, 91–2, 94, 112 Islamic parties in, 86, 94–5, 98, 100–101, 103–4, 107–10, 112–4 Islamic threat to, 10 Islamist thinkers in, 10 jihadi violence, 3 judiciary in, 36–7, 50, 56–9, 67, 75–7 Kashmir policies, 5, 105, 120, 124–5, 132, 134, 170 linguistic identities in, 37, 52 martial law, 10–11, 50, 97 middle class in, 44–5, 54, 101, 110 Middle East remittances, 54 militant religious organizations, 51–2, 55 military-bureaucratic oligarchy, 36 dominance of, 36, 45, 67 military action against the Bengali nationalists, 101 military coups in, 1, 5, 35–6, 50, 56, 59–60, 67, 76, 101 arbitrary detention, 51 control over judicial appointments, 37, 57 military courts, 50–51 press control, 37, 50–51, 57–8 military dictatorship in, 1–2, 4–5, 7–9, 11–6, 18, 131 theocratic form of, 52 military intervention in politics, 66 military security, 120, 131, 133 military take-over, 5, 12, 35, 56, 59–60, 66–7, 76, 98 mullah-military alliance, 101, 107, 111 Munir Committee, 97 National Assembly, 4–5, 32, 100, 103–4, 107, 111 National Command Authority, 130

212 index National Development Volunteer Programme, 49 National Investment Trust, 60 National Press Trust, 37 National Security Council, 66–8 Nizame Mustafa movement, 101 NSC, see National Security Council nuclear and conventional capabilities, 120, 123, 126, 130, 133–7, 139, 171 Pakistan Air Force, 23 Pakistan Army, 19, 133, 179 Pashtun militants sponsored by Afghanistan, 121 Peoples Work Programme, 49 political affairs of, 2–4, 10, 12, 36, 45–6, 48 Ayub Khan years, 10 Musharraf regime, 12–3 politically dysfunctional and economically bankrupt, 160 political parties in, 3–4, 7, 9–11, 13, 15 political repression, 36 political system of, 92 poverty in, 34–5, 41, 44, 53, 55, 65–6, 70, 72–5, 77–9 power structure of, 36, 44–5, 60, 67, 76–7 pressure from US-led coalition forces, 129 proxy war in Kashmir, 170 public sector, 41, 45, 47–9, 54, 60–61, 63 refugee problem, 92, 95, 111 regional issues, 20, 36, 42, 118 relations with India, 120, 124, 148 religious parties, 1, 9–11 assumptions of, 10 coalition of, 10 respect for civil rights, 11 rights of the non-Muslims in Islamic state, 92 role of the custodian of Islam, 102 royalties on natural resources, 33 rural society, 37, 40–41, 43–4, 49, 51–2, 71, 73, 77 polarization of, 43 Saudi influence on, 113 security policy, 120–1, 123, 125, 131–4, 158 Musharraf regime, 133 security threat, 122, 124

separation of Bangladesh, 26 Shia community in, 4 Iran’s influence on, 4 shifting military balance with adversaries, 118 Sikh insurgency in Punjab, 132 Simla Agreement in 1972, 122 social and economic infrastructure, 55, 71 social and political divisions in society, 13 social conflicts, 8–9, 35–6, 55–7, 76, 92, 137 Soviet threat, 122 Strategic Restraint Regime, 139 structural and geophysical vulnerabilities, 118, 123 evaluation of, 118 struggle between the Baloch and the Sindhis, 19 suicide attacks, 69 Talibanization of, 162, 172, 183–4 threat perceptions, 118, 123, 126, 136 uncertainty and lack of transparency in, 61 unemployment, 49, 55, 64–5, 72, 75, 78–9 use of nuclear weapons, 130, 135 war against the Soviet Union, 125, 132 willingness of the army, 3 Pakistan Human Rights Commission, 24 Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation, 41 Pakistan International Airlines, 61 Pakistan Living Standard Measurement, 73 Pakistan Muslim League, 4, 57, 91, 103, 108, 147 Pakistan Muslim League (N), 68, 108–09, 111, 146 Pakistan Muslim League (Q), 68, 75, 108–9, 111–2 Pakistan People’s Party, 4, 26, 44, 45, 68, 108–12, 146–7 radical stratum of the middle class, 44 Pakistan State Oil, 61 Pakistan Steel, 61 Pakistan Times, 37 Palestine, 113 Parthian civilization, 22

index

Partition, 119–20, 122, 159, 163, 168 consequence of the, 120 Pashtun, 18–20, 25, 28–32, 95, 106, 110, 121, 129, 148 Pathankot, 91 Islamic research centre, 91 Pathans, 88 Patriotism, 87 People’s Daily, 176 poverty, 34–5, 41, 44, 53, 55, 65–6, 70, 72–5, 77–9 PPP, see Pakistan People’s Party Punjab, 132, 150 Punjab Province, 27, 29–30, 32, 42, 53 Qadiri, Maulana Abul Hasnat, 98 Quetta, 22, 24 Quinlan, Michael, 135 Quran, the, 99 Quranic teachings, 112 Rahman, Maulana Fazalur, 4, 103–4, 106–8, 110–12 Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur, 100 Rais, Rasul Bakhsh, 189 refugee politicians, 95 religious parties, 9–10 obstacle to democracy, 9 religious terrorism, 134 Rind, Mir Chakar, 22 tribal confederacy, 22 Rizvi, Hasan-Askari, 120 Russia, 162, 164, 168, 182 Sassanid dynasty, 22 Saudi Arabia, 103, 162, 185 Sea Lanes Of Communication, 158, 173, 175, 190 secularism, 90, 113, 162 security, 2, 8 Sharia, 93, 102–3, 107, 110 Sharif, Nawaz, Prime Minister of Pakistan, 5, 56, 63, 67–8, 107–8 assassination attempt on, 5 Shirk, 91 Siachin, 122, 132 Siliguri, 126 Sindhi, Ubaidullah, 91 Sindh Province, 19–20, 24–31, 37, 42, 52, 68, 70, 73 ‘Jiye Sind’ (Free Sindh) movement, 26 Baloch in, 21, 28 British conquest of, 25 demands for a sovereign Sindhu Desh, 26–7

213

Free Sindh National Front, 28 Free Sindh United Front, 28 golden ages, 21, 25 introduction of Urdu, 25 post-Bhutto atmosphere in, 26 Punjabi and Pashtun immigration to, 25 separation from the Bombay Presidency, 25 Sindhi, 19–20, 24–32, 91, 95, 104 Sindhi Hindus, 25 Sindhi language, 25 Sindhi minorities, 31 Sindhi Muslims, 25 Sindhi nationalist movement, 25–6 demographic factors, 27 Sindh National Alliance, 29 Sindh National Congress, 29 Sindh Nationalist Forum, 28 Singh, Maharaja Ranjit, 86 Sipah-e-Mohammad Pakistan, 5 ban on, 5 Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan , 4–7, 105 SLOC, see Sea Lanes Of Communication socialism, 50, 100 Soomro dynasty, 25 South Asia, 118, 138–40, 148, 157–8, 164–6, 169, 171, 178, 181, 184, 187–8, 190–1 China-US strategic competition in, 178 India-Pakistan rivalry, 119–20, 123, 134 1965 and 1971 Wars, 121, 124–5, 128 Kashmir dispute, 5, 105, 120, 122, 124–5, 132, 134, 148, 170 Sir Creek issue, 127 nuclear powers, 118, 137, 140 South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, 182 South China Sea, 172–3, 175 Soviet jihad, 132 Soviet Union, 23, 30–31, 47, 52, 104–6, 121–2, 125, 129, 132, 148, 157, 161, 163, 166 collapse of, 157, 184 Sri Lanka, 163, 165, 171, 175, 187 Srinagar, 106 Strait of Hormuz, 173 Straits of Malacca, 172–4 superpower, 158, 161, 166, 168, 172, 181, 189–90

214 index Supreme Court of Pakistan, 12, 57, 66–7, 76, 108, 110 12 October 1999 judgement, 56, 59 Syed, G. M., 25–8 Syria, 22 Aleppo city, 22 Taiwan, 174, 182–3, 185–6, 189 Taiwan Straits, 174 Taliban, 69–70, 95, 106, 108, 110, 112–3, 129, 133, 152, 154 Taliban ideology, 113 Taliban madrasas, 106 Talimat-i-Islamia, 95 Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan; See Tehrik-i-Islami-i-Pakistan Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqh-i-Jafria (TNFJ), 105, 109, 112 Tehrik-i-Islami-i-Pakistan, 6, 108 Tehriqe-Fiqh-e-Jafria Pakistan (TJP), 4–5 terrorism, 5, 101, 158, 182–3, 190 The Friday Times, 58 The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, 174 Tibet, 159, 165, 168–71, 182–3, 185, 187–8, 190 Turkey, 87 Caliphate in, 87 Ulama, 87–95, 97–105, 108–9, 112–3 Ahrari, 98 Barelvi, 87, 92, 109 fatwas in favour of the Muslim League, 87 Deoband, 87, 90, 92, 98, 102 leading role in Indian freedom movement, 87 Sunni, 87, 92 work for the establishment of Pakistan, 87 Ullah, Kifayat, 91 United Nations, 119, 124, 166, 168, 171, 182–3 Security Council, 166, 168, 171, 182–3 United States, 2, 7, 31, 52, 68, 105, 108, 124–6, 128–29, 131, 133, 135, 139–40, 152, 157–8, 162, 164–69, 172–80, 182–6, 188–91 attack on Afghanistan, 108 global strategy, 168 permanent membership, 182 post-9/11 re-engagement, 167, 179

strategies in East and Southeast Asia, 7 transfer of nuclear technology to India, 128 US Navy, 173 University Grant Commission of Pakistan, 109 US–Israel relationship, 157 US hegemony, 158, 189 Usmani, Maulana Shabbir Ahmad, 91, 95–6 status of Sheikhul Islam, 95 Vani, 113 violence, 3, 5–6, 53, 78, 133 Wahabi movement, 86 Waliullah, Shah, 86 War on Terror, 18, 68, 79, 133, 157, 162, 165, 190 Waziristan, 69 Weiwei, Zhang, 177 Guoji Guanxi, 177 West Bengal, 126 West Pakistan, 36–7, 42, 100–101 mass street demonstrations, 37 World Bank, 9, 61, 73–4, 124 analysis in 2001, 9 World War, First, 86 Xinjiang, 162, 165, 169, 172, 174–5, 180, 185, 187 Yunnan, 175, 181 Zemin, Jiang, President of China, 182 Zia-ul-Haq, President General, 3–4, 11–2, 26–7, 50, 52, 79, 101–5, 107–8, 111–2 Blasphemy laws, 102, 112 creation of Sharia Federal Court, 11 death of, 11–2 foreign policy, 101 Hudood Ordinance, 102 Islamization campaign, 4, 11 military takeover of Pakistan’s reins, 101 Nizam-e-Salat campaign, 51 policies of, 4 religious sympathies of, 11 use of terrorism against India and Afghanistan, 101 Zakat (Islamic religious tax), 53, 102–3, 105 Zakat ordinance, 105 Zimbabwe, 183