Volume 6, No. 12, December 2024
Editor: Rashed Rahman
Pakistan’s blackest day
Ashraf Jehangir Qazi
The night of October 20-21, 2024 will go down as the darkest moment yet in Pakistan’s sorry history. An unrepresentative parliament and a controversially elected government conspired with the military to savage the Constitution. They have sought to constitutionally legitimate what has, in fact, been and continues to be military rule with all its dire consequences for the people and state of Pakistan. Every military officer of Pakistan has pledged on passing out from their training academies not to take part in politics. Every officer knows how far he and the military have been faithful to that pledge. Every officer, indeed soldier, has a conscience that should keep him on the straight and narrow. The International Commission of Jurists stated that the 26th Amendment “has harmed judicial independence, the rule of law, and human rights protection.” The ICJ added that the Amendment “eroded the judiciary’s capacity to independently and effectively function as a check against excesses by other branches of the state and protect human rights.” It noted how the Amendment was passed “in such a secret manner”.
Not even the fall of Dhaka in December 1971 can begin to compare with the scale of national humiliation involved. The humiliation of 1971 was the result of an enemy military victory even if Pakistan’s utter mishandling of its domestic affairs provided the opportunity for external military intervention. The latest humiliation is largely the result of a domestic military victory over the people of Pakistan abetted by a corrupt and usurped political process. Apparently, the calculation of the Pakistan military is that the majority of Pakistanis do not sufficiently value their freedom, rights, families, compatriots and country to accept the rigours and sacrifices of a sustained struggle for them. The next few weeks will determine whether or not this unfortunate and hostile assumption is justified. Should it turn out to be correct, Pakistan will not survive for long and the people will have lost the country their fathers, grandfathers and forefathers sacrificed so much to make possible. The cynicism in me, accordingly, must give way to the belief that this miserable calculation is mistaken.
While it is always debatable when historical processes actually commence, the degeneration and failure of Pakistan, at the latest, started in earnest with the judicial murder of its controversial Prime Minister (PM) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by General Ziaul Haq in 1979. Ever since, the military – which played no role in the founding of Pakistan and a key role in bringing about the demise of united Pakistan in 1971 under General Yahya Khan – has sought to reduce the unanimously adopted 1973 Constitution to irrelevance although it is the legal and political foundation of the country. The 26th Amendment has rendered the Constitution a mockery of itself. Previous unconstitutional Provisional Constitution Orders were promulgated by the military. The 26th Amendment is an attack by parliament on its own enacted Constitution! How does this square with the pledge made by every Member of Parliament when taking the oath?
Just as the senior command of the Pakistan Army never developed any coherent or realistic strategy for the wars it fought, they never seriously tried to elucidate a political justification or ‘ideology’ for their grabbing of power and political control over the country. They have by and large used the resources of the country, not so much to defend and develop it as much as to politically and economically dispossess the people of Pakistan. Among the people of Pakistan are the vast majority of its soldiers who do not live in the palatial mansions of Defence Housing Societies. This has happened in one of the world’s poorest countries that needed all its actual and potential resources to build a middle income country. Only then would it have been able to cope with the survival challenges of the 21st century. Instead, its Generals, with honourable exceptions, have by and large stood in the way of such a national transformation by prioritising a praetorian security state over a democratic developing state. Budgetary priorities have as a result been corrupted beyond the economy’s capacity to bear.
The threat of India, which was real enough, was made into a justification for such unbalanced, inefficient, elitist and externally dependent feudal/capitalist development. The vast majority of the people were excluded from any real development benefits in terms of education, healthcare, poverty elimination, socio-economic infrastructure and human rights protections. Instead, religion, managed information, underpaid labour, the informal economy, petty crime, minimum expectations and an attitude of resignation perforce comprised the survival strategies of the vast majority of Pakistanis. In the process, the military and civilian elite siphoned off trillions of rupees that were illegally converted and securely stashed abroad. There have been very few instances of such egregious national betrayal. Parliament has now sought to make the Constitution an accomplice in this betrayal.
A whole range of traditional, modern, urban and rural elites have been in cahoots with the Generals. They have been abysmally irresponsible in their social and political attitudes, in their exploitation of the poor, endless corruption and in their prevention of essential socio-economic reforms. They have played a secondary but far from negligible role in transforming Pakistan from a state that had an inviting future into a failing state. It is difficult to imagine how completely bereft of a national, indeed personal, conscience such elements have been.
Even more amazing is how so many of the civilian ‘intelligentsia’ consider such elite misbehaviour in so vulnerable a state as Pakistan to be ‘normal’, ‘unsurprising’ and ‘nothing to get too bothered about’. The relatively decent among them – and fortunately there are many of them – need to read Noam Chomsky’s classic essay on The Responsibility of the Intellectual to realise how completely remiss and derelict they, as a class, have been. If the Shabkhoon (night ambush) of October 20-21, 2024 on the Constitution cannot trouble their conscience, nothing ever will.
Inevitably, as a result of this prolonged moral paralysis, there has never been any sustained attempt to implement longer-term policies for an inclusive, democratic and developing state. Instead, the unstated priority has been an exclusive, extractive, elitist security state that has consistently failed to provide any national security and yet wraps itself in the garb of traditional values and religious and patriotic rhetoric. The fact that the common man and woman today has seen through this blatant hypocrisy has been countered by unprecedented constitutional chicanery and a ruthless intensification of the use of force including assaults on families, which is disgustingly beyond the pale, especially in a conservative Muslim society.
The US is, of course, a master of the art of publicly deploring weakly what it privately endorses strongly. It has applied this art to the Middle East and other countries around the world, not least Pakistan. It is almost certainly going to adopt this infallible diplomatic ploy to the latest developments in Pakistan, including the 26th Amendment that completely undermines the indispensable principle of the separation of powers of the executive, parliament and the judiciary. Interestingly, the US has in the past described Pakistan as a ‘frenemy’, which in truth more accurately describes the view of the US held by most Pakistanis.
Despite the current constitutional and governance calamity, Pakistan may yet enter a more hopeful phase of its political development. If, however, it is prevented from doing so it will almost certainly break up. A Francophile academic likened the current phase to Pakistan’s “third republic.” The “first republic” was from the founding of the country in 1948 to the surrender in Dhaka in 1971. The “second republic” was from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto “picking up the pieces” of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s betrayed and broken Pakistan until the dark midnight of October 20-21, 2024. The current, third phase, is ‘beckoning’ today with the political awakening of the youth, the poor and, yes, the women of Pakistan – and their realisation that their former compatriots in Bangladesh have shown them the way forward.
Arrayed against all of them is the army-led ‘miltablishment’ (military/establishment/comprador elite) that has dominated the political scene for most of Pakistan’s existence. The costs of this domination have finally united the people in implacable opposition to it. Its victims, comprising almost 90 percent of the country, are more aware of their exploitation and of their potential than ever before because of social media, the massive corruption of urban and rural elites, the venal corruption of almost every public dealing institution, climate heating, overpopulation, ubiquitous crime, egregious inequality and injustice, ever increasing numbers from the middle classes falling below the poverty line, and regular national humiliations that produce outrage but no redress.
They know they are confronted with a fateful choice. Either they will resign themselves to complete degradation and demise as a nation, or they will rise up and ensure their survival, prosperity and dignity. In such a situation the ease with which so-called public intellectuals are recruited to astutely defend the indefensible is unconscionable. Once again, after the 26th Amendment, they are weighing the relative costs of conscience and convenience.
This is the milieu in which Imran Khan has achieved an irreducible political salience. He has established a bond with the people. Imran Khan’s steadfastness under relentless persecution has won him a place in the heart of the vast majority of Pakistanis. Today, he embodies their hopes and their confidence. He has imparted a sense of invincibility in them that has confounded his adversaries. The people know of Imran’s mixed record as PM, but attribute it to inexperience and a learning process. Many also believe he has been far too trusting of people unworthy of his trust and that he lacks mardum shinasi, i.e. the ability to assess the moral worth of individuals. The more he and his supporters are harassed, persecuted and vilified by the miltablishment, the more the people repose their faith in him.
The recent gatherings of Imran Khan’s supporters all over Pakistan, despite blatant obstruction, reduced the ruling miltablishment, media barons and business and feudal parasites to pathetic imbecility. The few who prided themselves on being ‘progressive’ were reduced to ‘managed dissenters’. The world witnessed the spectacle of Pakistan’s ‘fin de siècle’ (end of a century/era) during the recent SCO Summit in Islamabad when, to the amusement and bemusement of heads of government and foreign ministers, the capital was reduced to a ghost town with its inhabitants shut up in their homes unable to work, communicate with each other, go to the hospital in case of need, etc. – all in utter trepidation of a solitary political prisoner locked away for the past year!
And this is where the greatest danger lies for Imran Khan and the country. When a powerful but thoroughly exposed institution used to having its way for more than 60 years is for the first time confronted with unmanageable public rejection, it can go crazy as it has demonstrated in recent days. Accordingly, a perception may emerge within it that the rising power of the people rests on the unbending character of a single indomitable leader. His permanent removal, some might assume, will confront the people with a hopeless situation in which after an outburst of fury and outrage, they will perforce have to cool down, survive as best they can, and cope with a renewed reality in which the movers and shakers of old and their foreign masters regain their fatal grip over the country.
Given all of the above, one might ask oneself: why can’t the miltablishment realise we are all Pakistanis and allow our nation’s foundation and basic law, i.e. the Constitution of 1973, including many of its well-intentioned Amendments, to be a living document owned by all our people, instead of a battered and lifeless document to be used as a deadly weapon against them? Unfortunately, the answer to such a desperate question lies in ‘won’t’ rather than ‘can’t’. If the guilty and complicit can somehow develop a human conscience – which lies at the root of every major faith and moral tradition and, arguably, in the breast of every human being – no one need lose, and most everyone can win.
A Justice and Reconciliation process can commence in which criminal oppressors in high places and in offices of public trust refrain from killing their country, confess their misdeeds, and return most of their ill-gotten wealth in return for escape from vengeful punishment. There will be no forgiveness; only justice and mercy. Accordingly, revolution need not be bloody, provided the oppressors can invoke what remains of their conscience and patriotism. The task of rejuvenating and developing the nation and people will still be humongous given the Doomsday Clock challenges that loom over the world, and our region in particular. But it will become a still doable task, which it can never be if the miltablishment continues to fatally set itself against the aspirations of the people.
Imran Khan is an individual with all the limitations of an individual. But for the masses, despite his alleged autocratic disposition, he has come to embody the way towards a better Pakistan. Even his worst enemies by their fear and hatred of him, implicitly concede they cannot compete with him for the trust and affection of the masses.
As for the Pakistani diaspora, especially in the US and the UK, they need to make common cause and press upon their American and British compatriots and their respective American and British representatives, political parties and leaders to respect the choice and aspirations of the Pakistani people, who wish to be friends not slaves of the US, instead of supporting their domestic oppressors. They should, accordingly, press their governments – at the local, state and federal levels – to actively and urgently consider personal sanctions against such oppressors in Pakistan.
As for Imran Khan, he cannot lose, whatever happens to him. He has earned the admiration of Pakistanis in all walks of life – civilian and military. He is truly a prisoner of conscience. If and when he is free again he will need to lead Pakistan towards a national renewal with the support of all its people. He may need a very different team to provide good governance. The last one sank him. No spiritual guides, big brothers, ‘electables’, financial keepers or prima donnas should be needed. They will only frustrate his nation building mission and betray him again. The gargantuan task before him should inculcate the necessary humility and wisdom required to accomplish it.
Young rising leaders like Manzur Pashteen and Mahrang Baloch and many more all over the country need to be assiduously cultivated and encouraged to provide the future leadership. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) needs to be a big house with room for all who are sincerely dedicated to the transformation of Pakistan. There is good reason to believe that Imran Khan realises this. Accordingly, he will, hopefully, fulfil his destiny to be a true servant of the people and nation by preparing the ground for the transformation of the country from a failing state to an enduring and prospering one.
Finally, in the aftermath of October 20-21, 2024, those who choose to remain incorrigibly cynical about Imran Khan, implicitly choose to be incorrigibly cynical about the future of Pakistan. Accordingly, they choose to make themselves irrelevant because, however plausible some of their criticisms of Imran Khan may be, they must acknowledge the moral priority of respecting the wishes of the people of their country – even if they regard them as mistaken. This is what democracy is all about. The black night of October 20-21, 2024, accordingly, needs to made as brief as possible.
The writer is a former Ambassador.