South Asia Terrorism Portal
Ajai Sahni Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management
Nine months ago, the Pervez Musharraf dictatorship in Pakistan rigged an election to scuttle the prospects of established political parties - including the exiled Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the exiled Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) - and to give the Islamist extremist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) an overwhelming majority in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), largest single party status in Baluchistan, and an unprecedented fifth of the seats (53/272) in the National Assembly. The elections were widely criticized by civil society and democratic elements within Pakistan, as well as by a range of independent international observers - including the European Union's Group of Observers - as being unfair and stage-managed by the military regime. A rare and crucial exception to this assessment, however, was the United States, which accepted the manipulated Pakistani mandate as valid, in part because it felt - and continues to feel - obligated to the Musharraf dictatorship for its apparent assistance in tracking down Al Qaeda and Taliban survivors, and partly because of an entirely flawed assessment that this sham democracy could eventually create the basis of a transition to real democracy in Pakistan. Democracy, however, is a culture that evolves through practice, not a system that can be imposed on a people by a dictator and his puppets - with or without external support. The 'electoral success' of the MMA has not only placed a crucial border province entirely at the disposal of Islamist extremists directly linked to the Afghani Taliban, it has also given them a central role and exaggerated presence in the national political order - elements that the fundamentalists have exploited to the hilt. Concomitantly, the skewed National Assembly has resulted in the progressive marginalisation - indeed, virtual neutralization - of legitimate democratic forces, leaving the entire arena to the Islamist extremists or to featureless puppets of the Musharraf dictatorship. In all, prospects - indeed, the very possibility - of a functioning democracy re-emerging in Pakistan have been destroyed by the outcome of the rigged elections of October last year. The consequences are the more disastrous in the NWFP, where the MMA Government, on June 2, 2003, passed a Bill enshrining Sharia (Islamic Law) as the supreme authority in the province. It is significant that the Bill was passed 'unanimously', without any criticism or resistance from the Opposition parties - including the 'liberal' PPP - in the NWFP Assembly. The brand of 'Sharia' that is to be imposed is already visible in the creation of a 'department of vice and virtue' on the pattern of the Taliban's notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Discouragement of Vice in Afghanistan, as well as in the fact that the MMA leadership comprises many of the primary patrons and associates of the erstwhile Taliban regime in that country. If any doubt remained, it was cleared up by MMA Member of Parliament, Hamid-ul-Haq, who declared: "MMA had been given the mandate to implement Sharia… The blood of (the Afghan) Taliban has borne fruit and Sharia has been implemented in NWFP." Soon after its introduction in the provincial Assembly - and well before the Bill had been passed - the MMA had demonstrated its intent and power in the streets, when party thugs went on a rampage through Peshawar (the provincial capital) defacing or destroying hoardings that showed women, smashing satellite cable TV equipment, and attacking commercial establishments linked with foreign multinational companies. Musicians and dancers have been driven out of the province and all 'women' over the age of 12 are being forced into purdah (complete social segregation and the head-to-toe veiling in public places). The Chief Minister of the NWFP, Akram Khan Durrani, has backed action with ominous rhetoric: "We are a force now. Nobody can ignore us. We have nothing to lose." The enormity of these developments cannot correctly be assessed simply by focusing on the NWFP, and the MMA's visible constituency. The fact is, no political entity in Pakistan - and this includes the Musharraf dictatorship and the Army - can effectively resist calls for Islamisation and imposition of Sharia in the country, or any part of it. Indeed, the language of the MMA's Sharia Bill is only a reflection of existing national legislation. Article 2 of the Pakistani Constitution declares Islam to be the 'state religion', and Article 227 and 228 mandate that no law in contravention of the Sharia can be enforced in the country. Article 227 requires that all existing laws be brought into conformity with the 'injunctions of Islam', and that no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such injunctions. Crucially, moreover, whenever laws in the name of Islam have impinged on political, social and cultural freedoms - as they first began to do so in the Zia-ul-Haq era - no government has ever been able to reverse the consequent trends. It is in the nature of the political discourse in Pakistan - with oppressive blasphemy laws, enormous and armed street power in the hands of the Islamist extremists, overwhelming illiteracy, a vast network of social and 'educational' institutions controlled by Islamist fundamentalists, and an entirely emasculated democratic political constituency - that no effective opposition can be mounted, or even voiced, to anything, however irrational or unfounded, that is claimed to be in the 'interests of Islam'. It is, moreover, not entirely clear that, even if this were possible, there is any will or intent to create such an opposition among those who currently control Pakistan's destiny. Pakistani sources confirm that the Army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) continue to support the MMA's political consolidation and have, as the Friday Times notes, "worked overtime to pave their forceful entry into the corridors of power." The Islamist parties have, certainly since Zia's time, been seen as the 'natural allies' of the Army, as against the democratic forces in the country, and this is an alliance that is yet to be questioned under the Musharraf regime. The political scenario in Pakistan, consequently, remains extraordinarily murky. While the military regime proclaims its support for the US war against terrorism, and helps 'hunt' al Qaeda and Talibansurvivors with US Forces, it is widely believed to continue to shield the top leadership of these entities, many of whom are known to be in Pakistan; the ISI and elements in the Army, moreover, continue to give clandestine support to Taliban elements still operating in Afghanistan's border regions, and to terrorism in the India, particularly in the province of Jammu and Kashmir; within the country, while limited initiatives to contain sectarian strife have borne some fruit, the gradual consolidation of Islamist extremist forces in national politics has been continuous. There is some speculation that the MMA's increasing belligerence receives tacit encouragement from the Musharraf regime - on the presumption that, at a stage when the Islamists cross the line of international tolerance, this will give the Army an excuse to dissolve Parliament and the State Assemblies, and regain absolute control of the political space. Such a projection would be consistent with the Pakistani military leadership's past record, to the extent that the threat of a collapse into fundamentalist anarchy has constantly been held out to the world as justification for the continuation of authoritarian rule by the military. This is, however, a double-edged weapon, and the gradual consolidation of the Islamist extremist constituency, not only in the country's political firmament, but within the military rank and file as well, creates the danger that those who seek to play with this fire may, eventually, be consumed by it.