Deciphering Pakistani Politics
Children may draw with crayons, the cartoon balloon, and the odd expressive noun, but adults burdened by greater responsibilities have rather to perfect their penmanship and both draw and write with fine sharp points.
Dr. Tariq Masood's note in NaiTazi [1], an online publication reached through the workings of the Pakistan Muslim League, may well strike to the heart of the Rubic's Cube that belies Pakistani politics.
First, the problem, according to Dr. Masood: "Due to domination and control of opportunists, hypocrites, and power as well as money hunger persons in Pakistani politics, public are seriously hit by administrative victimization and judicial injustice along with economical disaster and social polarization."
The solution, according to Dr. Masood: "It is the need of time that the Political Parties of Pakistan should be organized properly by considering the necessity of Cadres at Union Council, Taluka and District as well as Provincial and National level." In the letter, there are several reasonable thoughts on the underlying concept of governance by cadre, provided one accepts that notion as reasonable on its face.
Moving on with the one letter . . . .
"Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity. [3:104]."
And there you have one facet of Pakistan's Fall 2007 emergency and the nearly intractable structure, language too, that maintains an insensible struggle between the divine and profane, the corrupt and holy, the ideal in living in community and the plain human, pragmatic, practical, and responsible nature of contemporary national administration involving globally integrated industrial, scientific, and trade systems.
The Big Military-Industrial Complex Bogey
This dimension of Pakistani politics, so embroiled in anti-American sentiment, may be one to which most Americans can relate: what to do with the generals who, and if they're anything like their American counterparts, are fairly minted to produce upper-echelon executive leadership services, first to defense contractors, and then to every entity from banks to shopping malls?
I think there's both more and less to the ascendence of martial personalities in capitalist circles, and truth to tell, many don't fare well out of the service. Still, there's business to be had and money to be made in one's late 50's, 60's, and 70's and those boys (I'm sure there are some girls out there too) know how to do it.
For Pakistan, the military dictatorship headed up by President Musharraf has meant stirring the pot, subtracting inredients, usually, and generally trying to formulate a benevolent political society where discension, jealousy, and rivalry may well be considered a part of the language.
Anne, not to drift too far off-topic, had the telltale experience one Sunday morning of hauling her Lutheran self off to a more conservative denomination where, in casual social exchange, she was told she hadn't been baptized "the right way". The business of degrading others along the lines of spiritual belief and practice may be as universal a thing as religious sentiment itself, but here in the good ol' USA, such opinions are more likely to drive personal affiliations from one denominational roof to another: the broad impact on national politics exists but goes only so far--certainly not far enough to grow and activate Christian or other militias without severe consequences from local, state, and national law enforcement. About Pakistan, for those of us dipping into the news out of Pakistan, we're not so sure of what the state's response might be given any number of changes in regime.
Still, and ask any Burmese student you happen to know, politics at the end of a gun barrel, anyone's gun barrel, suffers from an illegitimacy all its own.
For Haider Mehdi, publishing in the Indust-Asia Online Journal, the military is the bogey: "Unless remedial steps are taken to absolutely roll back and completely block future military interventions in the political process of the country, the prospects of this nation’s survival remain despairingly bleak." [2]
Mehdi goes on to provide a plan for neutralizing the Pakistani military in relation to the internal politics of the state. In the fourth point of ten declarations, he writes, "From now on, Pakistan’s armed forces will not take part in any military operation in which citizens of Pakistan or the civilian population is targeted."
And "woe to the wicked" sings Don Quixote de La Mancha, for with that, the heavily armed fortess that students and their guides made of Lal Masjid would most certainly by now have acquired the nuclear part of its arsenal.
In the treason committed against King George of England, Ben Franklin addressed his peers at the Declaration by saying, "We shall all hang together or we shall most assuredly all hang separately."
From the cursory glance, and I will try to grow that over time, Pakistan's many leaders face a similar challenge in terms of developing sufficient common ground--animosity toward a leader is not enough--to garner and secure one another's cooperation in the development of a contemporary politics.
Even though Al Qaeda may have little interest in other than theocracy, others may, but producing a positive social binding, that is, finding the common things to be in favor of rather than the obvious few to be against, proves a mighty challenge.
1. Tariq, Masood. "Problems and Political Parties of Pakistan." NaiTazi.com, December 14, 2007.
2. Mehdi, Haider. "Re-Inventing the COAS." Indus-Asia Online Journal, December 13, 2007.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
