Western Myths and Pakistani Realities

In the storm over President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency in Pakistan, a number of critically important things have been overlooked -- important not only in themselves, but in what they say about the ways in which Pakistan works and doesn't work.

The first is that as coups go, this has been a pretty genteel kind . The comparisons being made between this and events in Burma or Uzbekistan are false. At the time of this writing, no one has been killed. Most of those arrested have not been sent to prison but placed under house arrest; and since they are members of the Pakistani elite, we can be sure that their houses are comfortable ones.

Some lawyers have been tear-gassed and beaten, but at the time they were themselves throwing rocks at the police. Television channels have been disrupted, but to date the print media remains free to publish the strongest attacks on Musharraf and his actions.

By Pakistani standards, Pakistani elite politics are usually genteel -- especially when compared to the latent savagery of mass ethnic and religious politics in that country, and of the army and police when they are really turned loose to suppress unrest.

The elites, including those in the military, are closely interrelated and share a common set of basic assumptions and interests -- including not allowing their rivalry to reach the point where they would start killing each other.

Musharraf's intentions to date have been relatively limited. His declaration of a state of emergency was a move on the political chessboard, not an attempt to kick over the whole table. It took place in the context of a process of negotiation with Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), aimed at the creation of a PPP-led government under Musharraf's continued presidency.

Musharraf's declaration was a pre-emptive counter to an apparently imminent move by the Supreme Court to tilt the terms of that compromise radically in favor of the PPP by declaring Musharraf's re-election as president illegal.

However, Musharraf's offer of a deal to the PPP still seems to be on the table. He presumably hopes that it can still be struck on his terms rather than hers.

Elements of the deal may include, for example, Musharraf being able to pick another PPP leader as prime minister, rather than being forced to change the Constitution and accept Bhutto herself in this role. Musharraf apparently still intends to hold elections once he has re-established his own prestige, and therefore his chances of being able to influence those elections.

There is no point in being too high-minded about these things. Pakistan is a hard country to govern, and the United States gives equal support to far more oppressive regimes elsewhere in the Muslim world.

As for the leading civilian politicians who hope to take over from Musharraf, every one of them when in office proved corrupt, autocratic and incompetent. If Musharraf's actions are illegal in terms of the Pakistani Constitution, according to that same Constitution many of his opponents ought to be in jail.

Building a true democracy in Pakistan will take a generation of socio-economic progress and cultural transformation. In the meantime, the country must be governed, and the growing threat from Islamist violence has to be countered.

Any government that hopes to do this successfully will need three things: a majority in Parliament, a degree of mass support, and the backing of the army, which has to do the actual fighting against the militants.

A parliamentary majority means building a coalition. The PPP is the largest single party, but no analyst or poll I know of suggests that it can win more than 30 percent of the vote.

Since the other parties have good reason to distrust the PPP, and each will demand a disproportionately large share of the government cake, Bhutto would also need military support to keep her coalition together.

Alternatively, a parliamentary coalition could be put together against the PPP. Such a move would be completely democratic and constitutional. It would also have to include the moderate and not-so-moderate Islamist parties. What, one wonders, would the U.S. administration make of this product of Pakistani democracy?

If Musharraf's latest move fails, and unrest spreads, then sooner or later he will be removed by the military high command itself. The generals will then manage a "transition to quasi-democracy." One of the civilian politicians will lead a coalition government, with the army exercising a more veiled but still dominant influence from behind the scenes.

Such an administration will then confront the same dilemmas and challenges as Musharraf's government: Islamist violence, political instability, and U.S. demands that Pakistani governments observe democracy while supporting U.S. strategies which most Pakistanis detest.

Pakistani-style "democracy," as presently constituted, may mitigate some of these dilemmas, though even that is doubtful. It cannot possibly solve them.