The AL, BNP and PPP
These political parties have common features. First, their chairpersons are women who took power on the coattails of their fathers (Hasina and Benazir) and husband (Khaleda). Second, all became prime ministers, Khaleda and Benazir twice and Hasina once. They performed perfunctorily. To be fair, the trio faced formidable challenges but didn't rise above them. Benazir was dismissed twice, had corruption charges leveled against her that Musharraf amnestied under US pressure. As Minister of Investment under the second Benazir regime, her spouse Asif Zardari was reviled as Mr. Ten per cent. PPP followers claim that no charges proved judicially is true but disingenuous. Where there's smoke, isn't there fire? Khaleda won twice. She left office the second time inauspiciously, plagued by concerns of the shady activities of Hawa Bhavan and her two sons. Both children and mother are imprisoned on various charges. Hasina was elected in 1996 but lost to Khaleda in 2001. She's also in jail, accused of various crimes. Under all three PMs, state institutions e.g. bureaucracy, judiciary and election commission were politicized and lost whatever confidence people had in them. Finally, all three were autocrats within their parties, de facto or de jure leaders for life, tolerated no challenge or dissent and scotched alternative leadership. In this, they mirrored their fathers or husband. The party was a family fief, not a public trust. The result: no viable successor for Benazir, despite the fact that PPP is the only Pakistani party with a reasonable political manifesto. This problem was "solved" invoking Benazir's "will," resulting in Zardari being made PPP's Co-Chairmenthe Zia-Khaleda situation in gender reversealong with her 19 year-old son Bilawal. These retrograde steps equate PPP with the Bhuttos, the Party's endemic weakness. They could reduce the PPP to mainly a Sindhi party since the controversial Zardari's acceptance beyond Sindh is not assured. By the time Bilawal takes up politics full time after graduation, conditions in Pakistan could make him an anachronism. AL and BNP's positions are rickety; both are tormented by reform and status quo factions. Their claims and counter-claims of fidelity to Hasina and Khaleda are becoming increasingly fractious, shrill and laced with black comedy. The AL, BNP or PPP believe their Chairmen are indispensable. The manner PPP chose Benazir's successor hold lessons that AL and BNP should avoid as they try to reconcile the need for change with the debilitating features of dynastic leadership. The AL and BNP should seriously consider some contingency planning assuming various scenarios. While Bangladesh's domestic politics is evolving, it is not as critical as Pakistan's whose problems preceded Benazir's return but sharpened since her death. National unity will come under stress. To Islamabad's uneasy relationship with Baluchistan and NWFP will be added the simmering volcano of Sindhi-Punjabi discord. Rural Sindh, some of its urban parts such as Karachi and Hyderabad and Saraiki region of southern Punjab (Saraikistan) appear to be PPP's strongholds, with pockets of support elsewhere. But PPP's current hold in Pakistan's heartland of Punjab appears to be less strong compared to that enjoyed by her father in 1973 or Benazir in 1988. Two examples corroborate this. First, violence in Lahore and other urban areas in Punjab except Multan have been muted. Second, media reports suggest that the crowd in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh on the day Benazir was murdered was around 4,000 or 5,000, a small turnout for a South Asian populist. The crowds at Benazir's funeral were mainly Sindhis. They are upset at their champion being killed under circumstances that suggest that the Punjabi ruling castethe army and bureaucracy are Punjab-dominated --or an element thereof could be involved. This could lead to insurrectionary outbreaks in rural Sindh, require mobilizing the Punjabi army or para-military for its suppression and heighten Sindhi-Punjabi tensions. If so, then there will be disturbed conditions in three out of Pakistan's four provinces, not a prospect Islamabad relishes and neither should GHQ. It unhinges the Army's order of battle, turning its focus inwards from its traditional eastern deployment. The western, especially US media's claim of Benazir as the carrier or restorer of democracy in Pakistan overlooks two points. First, Benazir's record while in power in promoting democratic practices, transparency in government and womens' rights (dealing with the Hudood Ordinances) is hardly inspirational. Second, autocracy is institutionalized in Pakistan, not least due to Washington's support of a long line of dictators from 1958Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf. For the US to talk of democracy in Pakistan is to speak simultaneously from both sides of the mouth. Having invested US$10 billion or somainly in military aidto Pakistan since 2001, the US and its western allies' abiding concern is the fate of the so-called "war on terror," especially the fighting around Kandahar. But this fixation overlooks the impact on Pakistan's domestic politics of the Pakhtun question. The Afghan Taliban and their FATA co-religionists are Pakhtuns. Historically they owe little loyalty to Islamabad (neither did they to Delhi pre-1947), regard Musharraf as a US puppet and see Kabul dominated by their enemy, The Northern Alliance backed by anti-Pakhtun powers: US, Russia, India and Iran who are not necessarily Pakistan's friends. In other words, the Pakhtuns believe they face an existential threat. CIA's exploitation and abandonment of Pakhtun Mujahideen against the Red Army in the 1980s rankles, with the turmoil in Afghanistan and FATA a blowback of that stormy decade. These developments, among other things, have splintered the powers-that-be including the ISI in Pakistan about the wisdom of adhering to US policy lock, stock and barrel. In practical terms this ambivalence had a negative impact on Pakistan Army personnel. They saw themselves combating fellow-Muslims and/or their own people to serve external interests, fought poorly and incurred heavy casualties. This propelled Musharraf to sign the Waziristan Agreement in September 2006. Pakistani generals in Quetta confessed to journalists that their operations to capture wanted figures invariably fail because most of the population sees them as American agents, undermining their work. Ex-UK high commissioner to Pakistan Hillary Synnott describes this conundrum as "…the gratification of American, coalition interests in Afghanistan involves a political price in Pakistan." US policy over the years, especially since 9/11, has created pervasive anti-Americanism in Pakistan. So long as the US/NATO continues its six years policy of the mailed fist in Afghanistan, Pakistan can't escape its reverberations. Was Washington too optimistic in envisaging a Musharraf-Benazir entente could and bring the "war on terror" to a favourable conclusion? We'll never know now. But Benazir faced heavy odds. Her open pro-Americanism and cagey flirting with Musharraf aroused misgivings amongst many liberal and moderate Pakistanis and in PPP. With domestic support divided and cautious, her efforts may have proved less than efficacious, even abortive. Paradoxically, her murder may rally the forces of democracy and moderation in Pakistan against obscurantist theologians and their patrons. Her death then may not have been in vain. The author is a free lancer.
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