Rajeev’s Almanack

P. Richard’s Almanack

Politicians are despised everywhere. According to most of us, they are corrupt, devious, self-serving, lazy, unprincipled, ignorant and dumb. Not a day goes by that we don’t hear about yet another politician doing something idiotic or getting into legal trouble¹.Yet, we need these rogues.

Every successful country in the world is run by politicians. Not only the country that is the envy of the world, the United States, but also old established countries like UK and France, productive ones like Germany and newly growing economies like Brazil and India; all are run by the same breed of humans that we all despise. Even the dictator running Russia these days is a politician. The party bosses running China are politicians too, of the back room variety.

What happens if we do away with politics? To take an extreme, North Korea is perhaps the only country today that is totally devoid of politics. Its President has been dead for twelve years. It was felt that the Great Leader, who had declared himself President for life, had not ruled long enough. So after his demise, the North Korean constitution was amended to make him President for Eternity. His son,the Beloved Leader, rules merely as the head of the military.

No one holds politicians in greater contempt than Generals. Military training drills into people values like honor, patriotism, loyalty to comrades and obedience to authority. Exactly the virtues apparently lacking in politicians. Armies like their recruits young, especially male teenagers. The basic training given to these recruits are the same in all armies. Their heads are shaved, they sleep in barracks, they all wear the same uniform. The individual is not important. It is the corps that can achieve the objective. They wake up early, they are worked to exhaustion, allowed no time to analyze and question their orders. They are not taught to philosophize in the Athenian mold; Spartan discipline will do. They are given just enough education to make them- at least the officers-think that they are not mere automatons.The best soldiers make it to leadership positions; the best corps commander becomes the chief of staff. Used to having their orders obeyed, it is difficult for Generals to acquire the cynicism and flexibility of thinking needed in a true politician.Countries that have had military governments for any length of time are disasters. They are mirror images of democracies, even worse than dictatorships, only marginally better than anarchies.

A case in point is Pakistan. A recent book² by Husain Haqqani traces the history of Pakistan from its creation in 1947 to the current time. According to him, were it not for rule by the Generals Pakistan might have evolved into a normal third world country instead of the dangerous cauldron of terrorism it is now. Culturally and historically, Pakistan is indistinguishable from North India. The dominant religion is different. Although Haqqani places much of the blame for Pakistan’s problems in the hands of Islamist extremists, Islam is itself is not to blame for the sorry state of affairs in Pakistan.

When India and Pakistan became independent, on Aug 15th 1947, each had about the same abysmal level of literacy: about 18%. Now India is at (a still bad) 65% while Pakistan is only at 35%. By any measure of progress Pakistan lags behind. Although they have been able to develop nuclear weapons, Pakistan does not have an educational system that can compete. It spends 23% of its budget on defense, yet the Pakistani army has lost every war it has ever fought. (The successful guerilla warfare in Afghanistan was not fought by Pakistan army regulars but by the Mujahideen.) The Indian army did not do much better against the Chinese. But luckily for them, all but one of the wars have been against the Pakistani army. It is significant that none of the military misadventures were initiated by politicians³.

Pakistan, unlike India, has been ruled by Generals for the last sixty years. Even the years of civilian rule were, according to Haqqani, `military rule by other means’. The military held the civilian Prime Ministers on a short leash and deposed them as soon as they showed any independence. The longest serving of these Generals are Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq and today’s man of the hour, Pervez Musharraf. Behind the scenes, almost as important, are the men who led the Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan’s secret service) such as General Hameed Gul. They are quite different personalities. While Ayub and Yahya were whiskey sipping commanders who only mouthed Islamic pieties, Zia was a true believer. Hamid Gul presents himself as a strategic thinker, the mastermind of the successful resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Musharaff, in his own mind at last, is a man of destiny. They all claim to have replaced corrupt and incompetent politicians in coups d’etat.

Haqqani’s main theme is that a country as big and complex as Pakistan can only be led by politicians. Generals screw up repeatedly and find a civilian to take the blame for short period of time. The civilian leaders, especially the Bhuttos, did a reasonably good job under the circumstances. Pakistan’s tragedy is that as soon as some semblance of order is established, and the army recovered from its last humiliation, the Generals find some pretext to take over again.

I would go further and assert that, with rare exceptions like Eisenhower, Generals are just too naive to be in charge of anything larger than an army. Precisely because they are brought up in a culture that values honor above all, they are mere newbies in the cutthroat world of international politics. They might be able to depose the politicians in their own country, but then they have to deal with the crafty, devious rogues running other countries. The Generals expect them to keep their promises and return favors. Those guys and gals will swindle them, leaving them hurt and lashing out, leading to disaster for all. Generals are like teenagers who need adult supervision from politicians who alone possess the maturity and craftiness to deal with the complexities of a modern state.

Ayub Khan is quoted in Haqqani’s book:

[Man’s] greatest yearning is for an ideology for which he should be able to lay down his life. What it amounts to is that the more noble and eternal an ideology, the better the individual and the people professing it. Their lives will be much richer, more creative and they will have the tremendous power of cohesion and resistance. Such a society can conceivable be bent but never broken..

For all his posturing, Ayub reveals himself to be a simple-minded individual, vainly seeking certainties in life. Only the dumbest people are happy in following some ideology uncritically. Pakistani Generals have always overestimated their strengths, and underestimated the cohesion of India, born of constant argument. An ideology based on religion could not bind the Bengalis to West Pakistan, any more than it unites the Balochis or Sindhis with the Punjabis. Only the messy process of political haggling can find the compromises needed to hold such a complex society together. This is obvious to everybody except a simple military mind. Ayub was forced out by his own subordinates after defeat in the war of 1965.

General Yahya Khan, who took over, thought that the US owed him their support after he had acted as intermediary in Nixon’s historic opening to China. When repression in East Pakistan turned into war with India, Yahya was expecting his American patrons to intervene and save him from humiliation. Nixon and Kissinger made no more than symbolic gestures of support. Pakistan lost half of its territory to Bangladesh and its army surrendered. Yahya had to resign in disgrace.

The pattern repeated itself over the war in Afghanistan. Robert Oakley, who was ambassador to Pakistan during this period flatly denies that Pakistan and US have ever been allies. Speaking⁴ at the release of Huqqani’s book, he described it merely as a marriage of convenience. That is not the way the Generals of Pakistan view it. In their eyes, the US betrayed them once the Soviets withdrew. Worse, after the cold war ended, the US tilted towards India. Musharraf expresses outrage at this in his auto-hagiography. He doesn’t seem to understand that this is normal. There are no permanent friends or enemies in international relations. Nations follow what is in their best interests. As times change, alliances shift. It is not the job of an American President to do what is best for Pakistan, whether ally or not. Pakistan needs to develop its own political leaders who can balance its different interests and strike a reasonable deal with the superpower. The Generals have made a mess of it.

Here is an excerpt from an interview⁵ with Lt. Gen. (now retired) Hameed Gul:

Q: What turned you against America?

A: Betrayals and broken promises and what was done to my army career.

Q: And what was that?

A: President Ishaq Khan, who succeeded Zia ul-Haq after his plane was blown out of the sky, wanted to appoint me chief of staff, the highest position in the Pakistani army. The U.S., which by then had clipped ISI’s wings, also blocked my promotion by informing the president I was unacceptable. So I was moved to a corps commander position. As ISI director, I held the whole Mujahideen movement in the palm of my hands. We were all pro-American. But then America left us in the lurch and everything went to pieces, including Afghanistan.

How naive can a person be, to think that American politicians would stand by him after they got what they wanted out of him? If in fact he wanted a quid pro quo he should have withheld what he could give until he got what he wanted. A mayor of even a small town would know that much about politics. The problem is not, as one might think at first, that the Generals are power hungry evil geniuses. They seem to be fools. Dangerous fools.

As Haqqani says in his concluding chapter, the Generals of Pakistan need to have their egos deflated. They are not the masterminds they want us to think they are, and we should call attention to their stupidities. Pervez Hoodbhoy’s description⁶ of Musharraf as a wily leader who has survived by balancing many forces sounds too generous. Perhaps Musharraf has survived only because his competitors within the military are even worse than him, and because every other institution in Pakistan has withered under military rule. He has postponed making any difficult decision and closed down all the institutions that could have eased the tensions. The old option of distracting the nation with war against India does not exist anymore.

It is a hopeful sign that the Pakistani Supreme Court, usually a tool of the Praetorian State, is standing up to Musharraf. His `secret’ talks with Benazir Bhutto, aimed at a power-sharing agreement, is a further sign of weakness. Lashing out at the US, by getting his junior minister to threaten jihad, is not going to help. If history is any guide, Pervez Musharraf will end up as disappointed as his predecessors, at his American patrons. He thinks that President Bush is his friend and that this will protect him. He will find out soon enough what this friendship is worth: a bucket of warm spit. The United States will, as always, follow its own interests. The aim should not any more be to work with Musharraf, but to cut him and his army down to size until they submit to civilian authority.

Only a political leadership, even if somewhat corrupt, can make the difficult choices needed.

Endnotes
1. In the news is the senior Senator from Alaska, whose house was raided by the FBI; it seems he got a real good deal from a home contractor for whom he arranged a tax break. Stevens was made famous by the Daily Show for saying on the floor of the Senate that

..the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes..

Yet the Senate committee in charge of the internet (Stevens is a member) has done a reasonable job of regulating it: after all we are communicating through this medium. Also, it is not totally wrong to think of the internet as a series of pipes. If only honest and wise leaders were allowed in politics, Congress and Parliaments would be empty. The aim of politics is the reasonable government of a state by fallible human beings.

2. Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military by Husain Haqqani, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-0-87003-214-1.

3. The Kargill incursion was not sanctioned by the civilian Prime Minister of the time, Nawaz Sheriff. According to Haqqani, it was the initiative of Pervez Musharraf who was army chief then.

4. Daily Times (Pakistan) July 27 2005, Report by Khalid Hasan. Oakley added that Pakistan is “the most dangerous state in the world”.

5. From the Exclusive interview that Hameed Gul gave to Arnaud de Borchgrave, United Press International editor at large: NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE, Sep. 14, 2001. Gul was the director of the Pakistani secret service (ISI 1987-89), leading the resistance to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After 9/11, Gul has been removed from positions of power although apparently he still haunts the salons of Rawalpindi.

6. Pervez Hoodbhoy’s article in Daily Times 22 March 2007

See also Part 2: Politicians and Professors, Part 3: Abusrdistan

Athens vs Sparta , Watandost, The Glass House .

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Religion, Pakistan, Politics, Desi, History, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.