National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies Australia

Public Lecture Series 2008:
Pakistani Politics

Speakers: Samina Yasmin, Bill Maley, Shahram Akbarzadeh (NCEIS)
Date: 25 April 2008

Available for Download

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the lecture. The NCEIS cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Samina Yasmin:

Let me try and look at Pakistani politics, the elections that have just been held, from the point of view of all the euphoria that surrounded the elections and then where do we go from there. It's already couple of months – old election – but the results I think are still, they're clear but they're not clear, so the direction is something that we need to start thinking about.

Now what I would like during my discussion is to talk about the context in which the elections took place and how the results came about and then from those results where do we go? Hopefully at the end of the twenty minutes and I'll try and be very quick, you will be able to see my sense of optimism combined with lots of caution. It might go to just my being very cynical about politics, but let me start off with the context in which the elections took place. I think the fact that Pakistan has been ruled by a military dictator since 1999, 12th October to be precise, it's not something that's news to anyone. But where the context changes is, is the 1999 coup had in fact removed Nawaz Sharif from the position of Prime Minister having been elected with quite a landslide majority in the 1997. Effectively therefore what we see is a long period of authoritarianism.

Towards the end of that authoritarianism phase what we do also see is that President Pervez Musharraf having joined hands with the United States in the war on terror, was being forced by the United States and Britain to shift the way he was running the country. So having being the Chief Executive and then the President, Military President and then deciding that he wanted a civilian structure, he was basically talked into working out some arrangement with Benazir Bhutto or the Pakistan Peoples' Party. Now I don't want to spend too much time because I'm assuming that there is a certain level of knowledge about Pakistan, but effectively I guess the way I look at the pre-election arrangement or pre Benazir Bhutto assassination set up is that it was the time in which despite the fate that Benazir Bhutto had been kicked out of politics twice as the Prime Minister, despite the fact that they were cases against her, American and British involvement in fact created a condition in which some form of arrangement was being worked out between her party and the Pervez Musharraf regime.

That had created in fact even before Benazir Bhutto came back into Pakistan, a sense that she was going to be elected as the next Prime Minister. What I would argue is that had she been elected she would have really been given what I would say borrowed legitimacy, and the reason for that is that all the sense of her having engaged in corrupt practices or people having engaged in corrupt practices during her regime had not been taken care of. The fact that an NRO was signed and cleared the way for her to be back in Pakistan in fact contributed to that understanding that maybe she was being allowed to come back into Pakistan after years of being in exile because it suited other countries, and in this case the United States. I think that borrowed legitimacy would have made her government no matter how it came to power, more shaky than has been the case now. What stands out at least in my mind, is that the fact that she was assassinated and again I think that it's extremely sad that in case of Pakistan, and even in case of India, people that carry some promise of change have been removed from the scene so mercilessly. The fact that she was murdered, assassinated, and the way the whole assassination was dealt with in fact shifted Benazir Bhutto into a new sense of being.

The way I would look at is that from the day she was murdered Benazir Bhutto in fact changed into something more than what she was in her lifetime. The symbolic issues that surrounded her after her death are the ones that have turned her into someone who promised and was able to deliver the promise of federation of Pakistan, someone who stood for unity of Pakistan, someone who stood for principles, someone who could have ushered Pakistan into real democratic era. I think in lots of ways, and again you would have to excuse my cynicism in that, I think it goes back to the fact that when nations or communities especially in today's world where you get news so quickly around the world, when they go through traumas, they actually change the way they look at people. Lady Diana went through that process and I think Benazir Bhutto went through the same process. Having been assassinated she's turned up to be a much better politician in that than she was in life. And, I think that really cleared the way, at least in my opinion for the new transition in which elections were held. And again, not everyone was in support of postponing the elections but having been postponed when they were held; it cleared the way for Pakistan People's Party under the leadership of, or co-chairmanship of Asif Zardari to be elected as the dominant party. But, that's just part of the scene. Again, I'm sure that everyone is aware of the fact that while that process was taking place of borrowed legitimacy which could have been given to Benazir Bhutto, there was another change that took place which was against the will of President Pervez Musharraf. Conditions were created in which Nawaz Sharif who had been kicked out by Pervez Musharraf on grounds of really posing a threat to everyone's life came back and he started emerging as the other possible source of power in the country. Now they 18th February elections in fact were held against the background of the links that were being established between PPP particularly Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto prior to the assassination. And, I think Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group really needs to be given the credit that they continued with that understanding, and in fact they built on that. And so, the elections of the 18th February, therefore really brought Pakistan Peoples' Party to power with what I would argue, sympathetic legitimacy or sympathy derived legitimacy and Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif. Also, on the grounds that the government had been dismissed illegally.

Now, the fact that the two parties and again if other parties like the Awami National Party they've emerged as significant partners in this, has changed the way Pakistani politics has been held until now. In the past, especially in the 1990's, the democratic phase, was one where Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz Group was pitted against Pakistan Peoples' Party led by Benazir Bhutto. One would come in and the other one would get out. But it's for the first time in the history of these two groups, that the government is being led by the two previous enemies or previous combatants on the political scene. The fact that I think they got the power actually has created a sense a few weeks ago, that Pakistan somehow is going to be ushered into an era of real democracy. And, I was quite amazed at the number of calls that would be coming in and saying "isn't it great that the elections are being held", and look they're really fair because against the expectations of everyone else, they have not been rigged or at least not so much that you could complain that the results weren't fair. And, so that's the beginning of a new era. I guess where I would like to argue is that even though the elections have been relatively free of any rigging, even though the elections did bring into power groups that nobody really expected for them to be that powerful. The future of democracy in Pakistan is not necessarily one of being smooth and not one of being very positive. Now, what are the sources of my cynicism, or what are the factors that I would try and argue would prevent that from happening and really this understanding being translated into something very good for Pakistan in the long term.

I think the first thing that I would talk about is what I jokingly or not so jokingly refer to as the Chaudhry Complex. Those who know Pakistani context and Punjabi background would understand that a Chaudhry is the one who is the big honcho in a village set up. His relationship or par relationship with those that he controls, are such in which power is not held to be accountable. He is all powerful after God. He is the 'God' with a small "g". And, he has groups of people that work for him and in the process are able to benefit themselves by being the helpers of the Chaudhry.

Now in different provinces of Pakistan the same complex I think gets expressed in different terms. In tribal areas it's called the tribal chiefs, vis-a-vis, the people. In Sindh again you've got big landlords. But I think the Chaudhry Complex in my idea encompasses that sense of power being unaccountable and power being given for people. I would not say that it's only a problem limited to politicians. In fact, if you look at Pakistan's military history, from the 1950's onwards, what we do find is that the sense of power actually permeates no matter which government comes to power. So effectively what we have is a condition where, although democracy has led to the beginning of two groups coming together into power, I don't think that political culture, the underlying Chaudhry Complex has really been taken care of. Now that could express itself in ways which could undermine the success of democracy or democratic experiment in Pakistan. Now I think everyone would probably understand that Nawaz Sharif has got his own opinions on how Pakistan needs to be shaped in the next few years and Asif Ali Zardari and I would insist as a co-chairperson, because the real chairperson who is a lot younger than most of us; I'm not talking about the younger generation, he lives in Oxford. Now I think between these two personalities, the Chaudhry Complex we're going to play out and the reason why I'm saying that is that both of them have got their own ideas. Now at the moment they're willing to share power but I'm not sure the extent to which they would go on sharing this power if their ideas are not implemented in the way they think must be implemented. What is the major issue? I think already in the next week or so we will be able to see the result of that but the major issue that would test that, and it's already testing, is the reinstatement of the judges.

Again, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who depends upon who you are listening to, who is no more the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who was removed from his position last year in March and then again in November. The question of whether or not he should be reinstated and all the other judges who were there on the 2nd November should be reinstated is an issue on which Pakistan was claimedly, the Nawaz Group is very committed. Interestingly, when groups in Pakistan was claimedly Clyde Group, they're also beginning to talk about their opposition to these judges having been removed. But I'll limit my discussion to Nawaz and PPP or Zardari. Nawaz Sharif has come to power on the agenda of really dealing with the authoritarian regime led by Pervez Musharraf who is no more a military leader, but at least he still has at some level the support of the military.

Nawaz Sharif is determined that the understanding that had been given thirty days ago that all the judges would be reinstated in thirty days should be honoured. Now, what we find is that that commitment to reinstate the judges and therefore open up the whole picture again as to whether or not Pervez Musharraf's election to the President is legal or not, is something that is not shared by Asif Ali Zardari. For a number of reasons, I think one reason is that Benazir Bhutto in her lifetime was quite happy to let the scene be unfolded in a way that suited the Pakistan Peoples Party irrespective of what happened to the judges. And again, I think in lots of ways she was probably getting it, I've got no way of confirming that, but I think she was probably getting the blessings of the United States because the US was very openly quiet about the issue.

Asif Ali Zardari I think has not only that background but also his own concerns because if the judges are reinstated and if Iftikhar Chaudhry comes back as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which way the situation would go is something that nobody can really be sure of. Now because of that I think the debate within PPP and PMLN has really centred around, "how do we bring judges back" and if we do, "what is the process?". Should it be just a decision that they would be reinstated or should it be through a parliamentary resolution? Does it require two thirds majority? Now these debates I think have gone on and committed within representing the two groups that has been dealing with that is quite clearly not getting to that point where they can come up with a clear idea.

So I guess the Chaudhry Complex is going to come into play very soon. If in the next four or five days or a week this whole issue of what is to be done with Chief Justice's fate pre 3rd November 2007 is not settled we might see the goodwill being sort of dissipated. That's one of the major issues that I think is going to come into the way.

The second one is the future of the President. Again, Nawaz Sharif picking up from his own experience is very adamant that the President's election is illegal. Whereas Asif Ali Zardari, again given the fact that the arrangements were made which made possible for his wife to come back and therefore for him to come back as well and the co-chairperson, I don't think he's very keen on shifting the whole scene so drastically that the picture changes very quickly. So, that prevents him from totally supporting the idea of getting the President out of the picture. So, this whole debate as to what would happen with the fate of the judges and the future of the President I think is going to bring in to test the will of the two Chaudhrys. Now who wins in the process I think is anybody's guess. But what I really want to point out is that the picture isn't going to be as rosy as we've been seeing it until now.

The second part that I think what I'm very concerned about is the way in which Pakistani politics had been allowed to develop and prosper or not prosper in the last ten or fifteen years, has created a condition where there's a lot of frustration built up among people. Effectively, what's happened is that people have suddenly felt that after being suppressed for so many years, they have every right to express their feeling and their anger. Again, I don't know how many of you are hooked on to the televisions or the channels that actually tell you about Pakistani politics, but I've seen some really sad scenes. Former Chief Minister of Sindhi Assembly coming back, coming out of the swearing in assembly and literally being hit on the face with a shoe which is the biggest insult that you could mete out to anyone. Now it's sad, I mean if you looked at the scene and the way it was repeated again and again, I think it wasn't the best that I would have liked to see, but that was very negative picture.

Then after that a former minister, Federal Minister, he was literally dragged through even the ambulance in which he was trying to run out of the place that he had come in to meet his lawyer and there were all these lawyers against sort of gathered around him, that picture of [Arbab Ghulam Rahim] again as I said again I don't know how many of you are familiar with that, but effectively what I'm really talking about is an expression of anger at a ground level by people in ways which I don't think is very democratic. It comes from the fact that people have really been suppressed and oppressed to the extent that now they think they have come into the democratic phase so anything and everything goes.

Now, how do we put the two together? The fact that Nawaz Sharif and Zardari I think their relationship may not really work out as much as we expected, could create a condition in which people who think that that's the way to express their feeling, might take things into their own hand. I think that would be a risky direction in which Pakistan could go.

Finally, two points, I've got still two minutes? Two minutes. One thing and I'm more than happy building on that, I think the real thing that is going to determine how Pakistan and democracy really unfolds in the next few years, or even in a few months is the food prices. The credit goes to the previous government, or the lack of credit goes to the previous government which made policies in which people made money. But effectively, even before the elections, flour was not easily available to people in Pakistan. The prices had gone up and people were spending days just standing in the queue. That situation hasn't changed, in fact the price of wheat, flour, maize, anything that's all doubled, quadrupled in the last six months. What that does is that it creates a feeling among ordinary people, ordinary citizens, who are coming up with this new language and the new language is that even though we've had elections, nobody really wants this government to stay in power. And, the power outside, they are going to do their best to make sure that the government gets destabilized by making it really difficult for ordinary people to live their lives.

I think increase in oil prices, increase in the food prices, lack of access of real drinking water is something in a country with more than a hundred and sixty million people, I think that's going to come and have its impact being felt very soon. Now it's going to follow the international trends but I think in case of South Asia and definitely Pakistan, because it's also linked with availability of flour across the border into Afghanistan, it's going to make the situation very different from other countries.

Now that, I think, increase in prices, inability to live your life at a very basic minimum level, is going to make ordinary people even more convinced that it is possible for them to react in ways that are not democratic. Now I'm not trying to paint a picture of gloom and doom because I don't think this necessarily means that suddenly we will have people running on the street and trying to kill each other for some food. But, I think in terms of the long term survivability of the present government, the impact of food crisis, and the impact of lack of access of drinking water is something that we have not looked at. We need to think about that.

Finally, the issue of terrorism or counter terrorism is something again that the government has to deal with. Whether or not they can deal with it actually is a huge problem given the fact that the whole notion of counter terrorism has also been mixed with the issue of American imperialism. So taking a stand against militants is not seen always as taking a stand for Pakistan's stability. It is seen as a stand in favour of the United States. That limits the ability of any government. Whether or not the two governments would be able to follow the same route in terms of how to deal with this issue I think is a big question. Again, the two sides are beginning to try some ways, but I think in the long term to what extent they're successful is highly questionable in my opinion. So where do I end? Last 30 seconds. I think elections actually made it possible for PPP to come to power. I think the legitimacy that they have is derived through sympathy. But, it shouldn't be taken as given because the people that have actually come to power do not necessarily share the same ideas on how to run the system. And, both these parties that are actually running the system at the moment are as much victims of the Chaudhry Complex that I think as the previous government was. And, given the fact that ordinary people have been suffering, I think that factor is going to even shape the trend a lot more differently than we've been used to until now. So, don't sit there hoping for a very stable Pakistan or stable region, at least not for the next two years. Thank you.

Shahram Akbarzadeh:

Thank you Sumina. Well, we are following this lecture with Professor Bill Maley looking at the regional implications and the various scenarios of the elections in Pakistan. Professor Bill Maley is the Foundation Director of Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy at Australian National University. He has quite a range of research interests, one of them is international relations and security and this is something that Professor Bill Maley has put together only recently on exploring some ideas for Australia's security in the region. The other area of interest and research excellence Professor Bill Maley is South Asia and Central Asia. He has published extensively on Afghanistan, I think it was two years ago that Professor Bill Maley published a book on rescuing Afghanistan with Hearst in UK and University of New South Wales Press in Australia. So please join me, welcome Professor Bill Maley.

Bill Maley:

Thank you Shahram. Can I begin by thanking the University of Melbourne and the Centre of Excellence for giving me the opportunity to make some comments about Pakistan in the session this afternoon? And, it's also a pleasure to be able to share the platform with my very dear friend Professor Samina Yasmin.

I think however I should mention at the outset that Professor Yasmin and I are a fairly dangerous duo, because twice last year we actually invited the Chief Justice of Pakistan to be a guest lecturer at our Universities. And, on each occasion he accepted the invitation. And, on each occasion he was then subsequently dismissed by President Musharraf. So, I've begun to feel that we are a significant jinx on the more positive figures who appear on the landscape in Pakistan. And, I hope that this afternoon we won't be condemning anymore Pakistani political figures to an awesome fate.

What I'd like to do is begin by making some observations about the elections that were held on the 18th February. I then want to make some comments about both regional implications and implications for the position of the United States and South Asia. And, I want to conclude with some more abstract observations about what some strands of political theory may suggest to us about the prospects for successful trajectory for Pakistan from this point, because whilst there's much in the Pakistani situation that is unique, there are also attributes of that situation which we can analyse by reference to experiences which have been felt in other parts of the world.

Now I agree with all the points that Samina has made this afternoon, particularly in the degree of, I think you could call it constructive cynicism that has underpinned her remarks. I think those of us who have been following the Pakistani affairs for any length of time have learned not to be starry eyed about the prospects for everything to work out in a rosy fashion. And, one of the reasons for that is that the political experience of Pakistan over a very long period of time has been of a kind that has, to some degree discouraged the best and the brightest from aspiring to political leadership. And, I'm using that in a descriptive term not in the way in which David Halberstom somewhat ironically used it when talking about the US administration in the early 1960's.

The military in Pakistan has intervened on a number of occasions, with military rule in effect from 1958 to 1962, 1969 to 1972, 1977 to 1988 and then from 1999 until some point in recent time. Now when military forces intervene with some regularity in politics, that also shapes the character of the civilian political elite that it aspires to involvement. And, the kind of message that is sent by that frequency of intervention is that if you're in politics you may as well use the opportunity to enrich yourself as quickly as possible, because you should expect to be tipped out.

So this de-institutionalization within the political system has actually been quite dysfunctional in terms of the approach to politics that it has also fostered amongst some of the civilian political parties. Now having said that the 18th February election was a very interesting one because according to some reports that the instigation of the new Military Chief General Ashfaq Kayani, the military did not become actively involved in seeking to cook the outcome of the election. And, what we therefore saw was a fairly crushing defeat for the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam Faction which had won a hundred and thirty seats in 2002 in a national assembly of 342, but secured less than half that number of seats in 2008.

It was also a serious set back for some of the religious parties in Pakistan particularly in the North West Frontier Province, where the success of the Awami National Party which is avowedly a secular and nationalist force, very much changed the atmospherics of politics in that rather pivotal part of the country. And, that did set the scene then for negotiations for a coalition between the Pakistan Peoples' Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, two forces which basically had been profoundly adversarial during the 1990's.

One of the factors however, that underpinned this particular development, was that Pakistan over the last year or so had very palpably gone through what the Russians would have called 'a time of troubles' or Smutnoye Vremya. The confluence of severely destabilizing events in 2007 in Pakistan was really striking. Firstly, one saw high levels in violence in the federally administered tribal areas, and to some degree cascading over into the North West Frontier Province as well. One saw the disarray at the level of the political elite reflected in the clash between a judiciary that had begun to show an admirable degree of independence and the President. One saw furthermore, the siege in Islamabad in July around the Lal Masjid, the Red Mosque, which culminated in the seizure of that block of territory by the military with considerable loss of life. No one knows exactly how many people were killed, but to get a sense of what the implications of that might have been atmospherically, it is important to appreciate that the Red Mosque is not out in the middle of nowhere. It's the equivalent of Collins Street in Melbourne. The Red Mosque is in the same street as the Holiday Inn Hotel and it is right in the heart of where significant members of the Pakistani elite actually live. So, to have a military exchange with gunfire echoing around the suburb in this sort of situation is a very unsettling sort of development. And, associated with all these sources of instability were assassinations and attacks on various figures culminating of course, in both the attack on the Bhutto rally in Karachi and then the assassination of Benazir Bhutto at the Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi in December 2007. Ironically, the very same place in which the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan had been assassinated decades earlier.

Now just as the election results in February this year were a set back for the religious parties and for President Musharraf, they were also a very serious set back for the United States which had been promoting the notion of some kind of brokered deal between Benazir Bhutto and President Musharraf as a way of trying to find a way out of the impasse created by the palpable manifest decline in the legitimacy of President Musharraf and military rule throughout the country. And, ironically enough despite the disarray in which the assassination of Benazir left this particular strategy, the United States did not immediately move away from the notion that Musharraf was the person to support. And indeed, this was captured well in a headline in the Independent Newspaper in London three days after the election which headed an article, "Don't sack Musharraf US and UK warn election victors".

Now that very title tells one something about the approach to democratic choice that had come to prevail in Washington. But, I think it more deeply tells us about the degree of detachment from an understanding of the complex realities on the ground in Pakistan that had begun to take grip in the US administration. And, I think this is one of the more serious problems that Pakistan faces, and I'll come back to that shortly.

Now in significant respects there is much that is somewhat hopeful from the emergence of a new government in Pakistan. Certainly I think one could assert that a legitimate and popular government in Pakistan is probably the best placed force to try to deal he sort of radicalism that has both destabilized the federally administered tribal areas and also southern Afghanistan. Whilst the problems which the new government faces are considerable, I think it is better placed than a government of very limited legitimacy to try to address these sorts of problems. And, I mention Afghanistan here because President Musharraf in a very candid moment in Kabul in August last year during a so-called peace jirga, actually said to his Afghan audience and I quote, "The problem that you have in your region is because support is provided from our side". And, this of course, creates a particular type of challenge for the new government of Pakistan because sovereignty in a state imports not just rights but also responsibilities. And, one of the responsibilities of sovereignty is to prevent ones territory from being used for the purposes of armed attack or destabilization on the territory of a friendly neighbouring state.

It's also the case I think, although this is somewhat more debatable that a legitimate and popular government in Pakistan maybe better place to promote more stable relations with India, which in turn is a prerequisite for trying to come to terms with the complex and interlocking security dilemmas in South Asia that have had the effect of promoting instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan and in Kashmir as well. That one of the challenges that South and West Asia faces is this interconnectedness of different problems; the way in which members of the Pakistan military elite at different times in the country's history have seen a compliant Afghanistan as a requirement for security in the event of a conventional conflict with India which could expose Pakistan to fatal risk if a hostile Afghanistan aligned with India and exposed Pakistan to a pincer attack of some sort.

Now if one looks at the policies of the United States, I think with hindsight one of the reasons that they have run into difficulty is that for too long policy has been based on individuals rather than institutions. Instead of seeking to encourage the consolidation of institutions, the diplomatic approach of the United States has been to find friendly individuals, be they such people as Musharraf or Bhutto, and use them as the point of entree to the promotion of a particular type of politics. Now, as the assassination of Benazir showed, but as a lot of political history has showed as well, the problem with focusing on individuals rather than institutions is that if an individual goes down, he or she can take a country's foreign policy down at the same time.

Individuals ultimately are not institutions, they are transient occupants of space in the political firmament and very often they can be cut down in their prime. Now, this kind of approach of backing individuals to the hilt, does run the risk of contaminating the reputation of a foreign power if the behaviour of those individuals is such as to provoke distaste or apprehension within a significant component of the population over which those individuals are ruling. And there, there has been a kind of symbiotic decline in which the performance of President Musharraf has damaged the reputation of the United States and the behaviour of the United States has damaged the reputation of President Musharraf. It's been a kind of downward spiral like two people grasping each other having jumped out of a plane with parachutes where neither has opened. And, to me it remains perplexing that great powers continue to act in this way. But, as General De Gaul once said, "great powers are cold monsters and they can be damn stupid on occasions as well". And, that I think is unfortunate for a country such as Pakistan because it means that the aspirations of ordinary people to see and institutionalise politics has on occasions been derailed by the kinds of incentives towards the personalization of politics which have been generated by the international system.

Now, it's also the case that a greater deal of the investment that has been made by the US, in particular in Pakistan since 2001 has been somewhat misplaced. A lot of resources have been put into the military but as a very instructive report from the Government Accountability Office of the US Congress last week demonstrated, rather than there being a focus on a community building and social development in the tribal areas, a great deal of what's been attempted in terms of dealing with the security threat there has simply been through the transfer of funds to the Pakistan military, which itself has been much more configured for conventional operations against India than the kind of counter-insurgency activities that the security challenge in the front here might seem to require. Let alone the mixed counter-insurgency and social development activities that the situation probably does require. And, the US Congress is becoming somewhat restive.

For example, we have seen the US billed by the Pakistan Navy for road works. And, while that particular invoice was rejected as somewhat implausible, it has raised questions about how seriously the substantial funds which have been contributed to try to support the blocking of radicalisation in Pakistan have actually been used. Whether it has been effective at all is debatable.

And, perhaps most seriously of all we've seen a certain tone deafness in the regional diplomacy of the great powers. There was a very instructive article published shortly after the election in the Australian Newspaper by the South Asia correspondent, Bruce Louden. And, I simply read to you the passage that was contained in his article, and I quote, "A top US diplomat was quoted as telling local journalists that the US has invested more than ten billion dollars in Musharraf. We will not allow anyone to destroy this huge investment", unquote. Now from the point of view of ordinary Pakistanis this is not only deeply insulting, suggesting that political leaders are simply there to be rented, but it is also a sentiment which is really hostile to the implications of democratisation given that this report appeared just four days after an election, which most plausibly would be interpreted as repudiation of that process of purchasing a political leadership. And, more recently still we have seen Nawaz Sharif used the expression "ham-fisted" to describe the approach to Pakistan taken within that country by Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Richard Boucher during a visit to Pakistan. And, this is a pretty strong type of rhetoric to encounter and it does signal the unease of key figures within the new Pakistan political elite about the approach the United States has taken.

Let me conclude therefore with some observations about wider lessons that might be derived from this experience. I've spoken about the importance of institutions and I think that needs to be emphasised. I'd also like to say a little bit from wider experience about the limitations of electoral processes in general. Elections are very good mechanisms for changing governments without bloodshed in consolidated political systems. But, they do create winners and losers, and losers sometimes have spoiler capabilities that can be used destructively in subsequent months or years. They don't necessarily endow a new body of rules with legitimacy because in the particular context of a given country it may be the actual performance of a government rather than the process by which it is constituted that actually becomes the principle source of its legitimacy or lack thereof. It's also the case that the mere holding of an election doesn't guarantee a democratic political culture. It doesn't guarantee a statesman like political elite. It doesn't guarantee that the institutions of the country will be smoothly functioning. And, it doesn't guarantee that they will be institutionalised either. So, there are significant limitations on what electoral processes can deliver, although in a consolidated democracy they remain a fundamental importance.

The last year in Pakistan does point however, to an intrinsic understanding on the part of significant members of the Pakistani population of the importance of the separation of powers, of the emergence of countervailing power to prevent the tyrannical exercise of power when it is concentrated in the hands of a small number of agents within the state. And, I think this is one of the reasons why the legal profession and wider sways of the population actually emerged to support Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and his colleagues when President Musharraf moved against them. That in a country in which access to justice had been meaningless for a long period of time for significant elements of the population, the emergency of an apparently independent judiciary was something not merely encouraging but inspiring. And, the attempt by the political elite around Musharraf to move against this was in a real sense, profoundly de-legitimating this as far as those individuals were concerned.

Now, the separation of powers has long been recognised in liberal political theory as one of the best protections of individual freedom. We can go back to Montesquieu's great work 'The Spirit of the Laws' to get a sense of why that would be the case. Now, in the absence of the rule of law, people find themselves exposed to arbitrary power. And, the different experiences of Military rule within Pakistan have exposed a lot of people to that kind of problem. Therefore, the re-establishment of the rule of law with an independent and competent judiciary is probably something which, in the daily lives of ordinary people, holds out the promise of much more benefit than the mere holding every few years of an election in which members of an existing political elite churn around. The marginalisation of the judiciary on the other hand, very easily opens up the door quite widely to arbitrary exercises of power at the expense of the rule of law and at the expense of the well being of ordinary people.

It's with this point that I would like to close. In February this year I think more than anything else, the people of Pakistan voted against the exercise of arbitrary power and I think it therefore remains to be seen whether their wishes will in fact be vindicated in the months that come. Thank you very much.

Shahram Akbarzadeh:
Well thank you for that constructive cynicism of situation in Pakistan. I would like to open the floor to questions. Please identify which speaker you would like to respond to your question. Please? Go on please.
Question:
This is not so much Pakistani politics but governance, and Professor Maley touched on this a little bit. While all this power struggle nonsense has been going on, what has happened to the effort to develop Pakistan internally and to give people better lives, what's the prospect in the future?
Samina Yasmin:

Okay, I think that's the main problem with governance in Pakistan has been related to that Chaudhry Complex. Once somebody comes to power they have access to resources, but those resources are not really used for the betterment of peoples' lives. In Pakistan population growth rate continued to increase, now it's come down but we still have a hundred and sixty million people. And, in the next ten years Pakistan would be I think in the first seven most highly populated countries in the world.

The problem where it starts is that most of their needs have not really been properly analysed and dealt with in the planning structures in Pakistan. Mainly because I think Bill talked about that, most of the time what happens is that anyone who comes to power they're just dealing with the short time frame and they want to make as much money as they can. Because of that, what's happened is that if you go – and that's really what I was talking about the basic needs of people, they're not being met. Food prices is something that everybody is talking about but you can see that it has been building up for quite some time. Access to shelter is again, something that is not guaranteed. In fact, within Pakistan there's a whole lot of mafia that have been emerging which permit people to occupy land that isn't theirs but they sub-let it to other people who buy it and then once they are kicked out from that land, the money is already taken by the guy who had sub-let the area even though it didn't belong to him. Now, all that process has actually created a lot of instability and lack of sort of, comfort among the people. I think that's really the major problem in Pakistan. Because the conditions of people are so unreal because the educational sector hasn't really dealt with that properly either because the quality of education being provided isn't really good. It's very good for rich upper class brats; it's very bad for ordinary people. It creates I think in the overall sort of long term, a situation where you would have a lot of people but a lot of unmet demands and a lot of unclear ideas as to where Pakistan needs to go. My other problem with this thing is that with lack of resources really going into proper development sector and good educational facilities, you would also create, and we are already seeing the signs of it, two very clear classes in Pakistan. One extremely rich, globalized youth, and one very poor localised youth, unhappy with the situation, and I think that's the one that's really going to create more problems. We're already seeing the signs of that coming up in the last sort of few months. But, governance I think is the issue where we, I mean we can talk about that, but I think that's where Australia can play a very important role.

Question:
Will it be any better?
Samina Yasmin:
It depends on how we use our assistance. I think my problem with American aid programs basically has been, and I know their people have been doing work here, American aid programs are very, they're more in Hollywood style, you know. You can see, there's good music at the background and you do the last drama, and then it's done. Doesn't deliver the goods. You know what I'm thinking is if the former Ambassador, painting walls of primary schools, and I'm just thinking, no these kids need food. These kids need actually places to sit down and study. I think where we can come in is Australia has got very good expertise in food technology. We've got very good expertise at engineering level. At low cost engineering which we can in fact, work with people in Pakistan, and not just Pakistan, I'd even say in Afghanistan and even in India, to find out where local solutions, building on our technology here, can deliver what they need at a low cost. That's really what's needed, not this painting the wall style development. Sorry, it's a long answer, but…
Bill Maley:

Just a couple of observations I've made there. If you look at the structure of the state budget in Pakistan over quite a long period of time, you find that a staggering amount of money is actually spent on either debt servicing or military expenditure. It's been up to 70 per cent at some stages and that leaves only a relatively narrow sliver of funding for anything that might be considered developmental in a meaningful sense; education, health, and those sorts of areas. And, I think one of the stronger arguments in favour of de-escalating the role of military forces in political life is actually also to open up the scope for state expenditure to be redirected towards some of the developmental projects that have suffered by comparison in the past.

I agree very much with what Samina has said about the need for projects to be developed that actually get to ordinary people rather than simply turn up in glossy brochures to advertise the work of aid agencies. There I think it's also important to recognise that the ordinary people of Pakistan have to a significant extent been the victim of a system that has not really been configured to meet their needs. And, the ordinary people, as the election results suggest, are not themselves in vast numbers radicalised. It's the notion that Pakistan is simply a seething cauldron of religious radicalism is a serious misreading of a much more complex environment in which there are significant components of the population that are involved in Sufi practices that the [inaudible] school is very influential within the ordinary population and doesn't necessarily encourage the kind of radical activities that are often associated in popular imagery with the current situation in Pakistan. And, the irony really is that a lot of aid has been going to the military which has had a unhealthy relationship with radical groups over a long period of time, rather than getting down to people at the grass roots of society who are not radicalised.

Question:
There was an article in the Economic Review just a couple of days ago, I got it in my Inbox, it was suggesting that the elections, well in Pakistan and Malaysia were the two examples, in various parts of the world indicated that Islamic parties are losing popularity and losing power - I'm not sure that I agree with that reading of things. But, I worry that as Samina was saying that religious met popular government is one of the best forces to deal with radicalisation, and you were saying that there were concerns that the legitimate and popular government isn't able to meet the needs of the people because of this power struggle between the two opposites. Do you think there's any real long term concern that if there isn't this, the popular expectations aren't met by this legitimate and popular re-elected government, that it could lead to a further round of radicalisation, the young, the what you're saying second class youth, that virtually the runt, if they're expectations are not being met?
Samina Yasmin:

In fact that is one of my concerns. I'm glad Bill said that not everyone in Pakistan is radicalised. Out of hundred and sixty million people this whole image of, you know, terror locale of the world, it's just so whacky when you think about it. But, when you really look at the problems, I haven't mentioned until now a law and order situation in Pakistan. You know, we talked about Chief Justice which is the top end of the spectrum. Try getting caught with the police for any small issue, and if you come out of that with your sanity intact, you're very lucky. If you don't lose everything that you have you are really lucky. There's a huge problem even in law and order situation. But, all of that put together does create a situation where I think, because Pakistan already has these trends in a very militant trend, very progressive Islamic ideas as Bill said, very Sufi ideas, so they are competing with each other. When the general public doesn't really have answers for their everyday problems, as what happened in case of say, Algeria, there is a possibility of people turning to more extreme ideas. And, I'm not going to say because the government won't be able to deal with that, everybody is going to turn into a Taliban. But, I have come across people in my research who are very supportive of Taliban and their argument is, look at what happened in the tribal agencies, because now and it's, you know, you might not agree with the way that they talk about it, but they said "Ah so and so kidnapped someone and guess what the Taliban did? They got hold of that guy and they slaughtered him. Great."

Now if you look at it as human rights you'll say that's not the way to look at it. But, from this person's language, Taliban, Pakistani Taliban are a solution to the problem of law and order. That possibility exists. But, I would still say that my main concern would be not just simply radicalisation, not just if Nawaz, Sharif and Zardari and Musharraf can't manage. But, even other leaders if they can't manage it's not just simply radicalization. It's a simple law and order problem getting worse is another issue, which affects lives of citizens. And, that's something that we, in a country of twenty million people it's very hard to think of a hundred and sixty million people going through that, but I think that's an issue that we need to start looking at. Does that answer your question?

Question:
[Inaudible]
Samina Yasmin:
I'm glad you talked about that. I hope we are not equating my notion of Chaudhry Complex with Chaudhries in the [inaudible]. I think what my, the way I look at Pakistan in political culture is that we have a notion of those at the helm, using power without feeling that they can be held accountable. And, that notion permeates both the civil and the military structures. And, I would totally agree with you that that game actually happens while in Pakistan military dominance is seen. But effectively, the way I would look at it is that whether the military is in power openly, or whether the politically elected leaders are in power, each one of them works on the same principal: "I've got the power I don't need to be held accountable to anyone". Military, when it is in power it uses politicians like the gopher boys or the [inaudible] who can do the job for them so that they can make money. And, the [inaudible] engage in this process because they have got something that they are going to get out. When the politicians comes into power, they hold power to be unaccountable, and they relate to the military slightly on a similar but maybe less of unguarding manner because they know the military can come in and get rid of them anytime that they want to. I'm not denying, but I think my problem is that to be honey when Nawaz Sharif was kicked out in 1999, I thought that was the Chaudhry Complex coming to an end. And, as I started observing Pervez Musharraf and his policies, I just don't know. Power gets to everyone's head in Pakistan because we treat power as given. So, that attitude also needs to be changed which is linked to the idea of education. Without proper educational ideas, I don't think we are getting to the heart of real democracy.
Bill Maley:
If I could add a footnote to that it would be that some comparative work on the performance of states, particularly the work of James Scott, suggests that very often the endeavours of states to deal with complex problems fail because it's in the nature of states to seek simple solutions to problems that deny easy solution. And, Pakistan I think is an example of a country in which the interconnectedness of the different internal problems creates so severe a challenge, that the hope that simply by moving to a new system of governance one can produce more than an incremental improvement is misplaced. And, I think there is a deep problem here of a mismatch between what the state as an agent is capable of achieving in a country with problems like Pakistan, and what people expect a new government will be able to deliver. And, in a way Musharraf discovered the hard way that it is much harder to run a country than run a battalion. And, in the same way I suspect that the civilian political leadership now will also discover that a number of the problems with which it has to deal which have accumulated over the sixty years since Pakistan was established, are also intractable and that the hopes that ordinary people have of a kind of miraculous change in their situation will be disappointed as well. And so, managing expectations from within the mass public about what is achievable in the short term, the medium term and even the long term, I think is a severe challenge for the new government.
Question:
[Inaudible]
Samina Yasmin:

The question of militancy in Pakistan, you're familiar with the history of that, it actually grew out of Pakistan in military regime in the 1980's, supporting the setting up of groups within Pakistan that could go into Afghanistan and rule the Soviets back. It was part of a grand agenda where they were able to get assistance from the United States to keep the military in power in Pakistan. Since then, what's happened is that because of a combination of educational material that had been distributed but is now being changed and a lot of it has been changed, and the legal principles that were introduced, lawlessness and the lack of democratic experiments in Pakistan, the ability of successive governments to control militancy was really restricted. Meanwhile, intelligence agencies and even other political groups that had the ability to promote ideas, they kept operating in the system. What I argue is often in terms of militancy and radicalisation is that Pakistan, like some other countries, has gone through a process of trashy Islamic magazines which give people, I mean I'm sure I'm going to get into trouble for saying this, but it actually gives people very limited ideas of what it means to be a Muslim. It gives them ideas of what it means to engage in jihad and it gives them those ideas in language that they can understand. And, I'm not just saying that it's not in Urdu, even in English it's used in a language that they can pick up. Now, that creates a situation where in a country of a hundred and sixty million, while not everyone is militant, while not everyone is radicalised, there's a greater possibility of them having access to this information.

Now, you can't just look at it again only as a Pakistani phenomenon. After 9/11 the more people have talked about Islam versus the West, the greater the impact of that debate has been within Pakistan as in other areas. And, people have started feeling the need to understand and learn about Islam. So, a lot of very upper class, very rich women, educated in Cambridge and Oxford, living their lives spending time in five star hotels, they've started learning about Islam. A lot of people who don't know anything, that localised uneducated or not well educated class, they are learning about Islam. Once this trashy sources of information are there on the public booksellers list, it's very easy for people to go to them and learn about it. You cannot restrict the access to that knowledge.

Now that creates a problem. That's a problem no matter which government you bring in, can't be managed. The second problem is that I think it's partly because the Pakistan government's inability to manage, but partly which I think we don't given enough credit to that process, the simple fact that people move across the borders. They move across the borders from Afghanistan to Pakistan, back into Afghanistan into Iran, into Dubai, everywhere. These ideas travel and in addition to the groups that actually within the government promote militancy, non-governmental interaction takes place, which contributes to the militancy. That militancy as Bill had talked about is not restricted to the Federal Aid Minister of tribal areas. I think this whole American idea of just focusing on that, is missing the point. Militant streaks are to be found in any and every major city of Pakistan. Even, you could go to areas like Multan where the new Prime Minister comes from. All you have to do is drive into the main city for a little while and you will get really good stuff on Islam that you read, you can enjoy it, it's a good read because you learn about Islam that you don't want to learn about.

Now that availability cannot be controlled by the government. So it's a long answer to say Pakistan's government's ability to manage militancy must be looked at against the background of the historical processes that brought people to the point that they are at the moment. Pakistan's ability to control them must not be over expected. The moment we start demanding Pakistani government to control something that even the militaries, the best militaries around the world can't control, we are undermining the new government. And, if the new government goes out, I'm not sure what's coming after that. We might have another military government, would they be able to control? I don't think so. I think their ability to come up with a political solution would be even more limited. So, I guess it's a very long answer to say, Pakistan can't control militancy. It can, in the long term, provided there's more development. But until then, putting Pakistan in the sort of witness box and say "what have you done until now?", it's counterproductive.

Bill Maley:

I agree with Samina that when the new government in Pakistan should be given an opportunity to deal with the issues of militancy within Pakistan through it's own devices, but that this shouldn't be an open ended opportunity because there has been a long history of trying to use quiet diplomacy with different regimes in Pakistan to deal with the problem with militancy and it's basically got worse and worse. Partly because the signals that have come from the wider world have been mixed that there have been quiet suggestions that this is a problem combined with public statements that there's no more precious ally in the world against terrorism than President Musharraf. And of course, it's natural that a President among those circumstances will hear very loudly the message that he finds palatable and discount the message that is unpalatable. The other reason I think we need to be very careful about a quiet approach is that there is a risk of dealings within Pakistan, particularly between the new government and some militant forces, the effect of which will not be to eliminate the problem of militancy or even muted, but simply displace it across the border into Afghanistan. And, that I think was once of the more credible criticisms of the September 2006 agreement that was struck in Wiziristan because at the time that that happened, the governor of Paktia Province in Eastern Afghanistan, Hakim Taniwal who was actually an Afghan-Australian warned of the danger that this would simply displace militancy across the border into his province. And, five days after his remarks were published in the Washington Post he was killed by a suicide bomber.

So in looking at how militancy will be dealt within the region we do need to recognise the danger of a strategy that may simply amount to displacement rather than dealing with the problem in a synoptic kind of sense. Here I think one of the reasons that Pakistan has difficulty in interacting with the wider world is the sense that for too long it was able, particularly during periods of military rule, to act as a sorcerer's apprentice. Liberating really dangerous forces which it itself could not then control and which surged not only onto the territory of neighbouring countries but also within Pakistan itself. Now, none of this is to suggest that there's a magic solution to the problem of militancy. I think it is actually a complex problem which is an outgrowth of lots of different things. The prosultisation by religious parties within the Pakistan military from the 1970's spin off from the activities of the more radical resistance parties from Afghanistan, such as the Hezb-e-Islami with which the Inter Service Intelligence Director that was associated through the 80's and 90's, and then of course, the entanglement of ISI, Pakistan's Interior Ministry with the Taliban movement. Of course there are unreconstructed figures in Pakistan who still think that the Taliban were hunky dory who are happy about Taliban operating bases in Baluchistan and the Taliban leadership with their headquarters in Quetta. That, I think is what may actually bring this to a head that there are international forces in Afghanistan, particularly in provinces like Helmand, Uruzgan and Kandahar, whose political leaders are having to cope with the problem of body bags coming back and new graves in places like the Arlington National Cemetery and different cemeteries in Australia, where the military on the ground in Afghanistan are telling their own political leaderships that the problems come across the border from Pakistan. And, under those circumstances I think it's unlikely that political leaderships in the wider world will forever be able to commit to a policy of merely diplomatic engagement but we will have to see, really. It's a naked question.

Shahram Akbarzadeh:
I think Samina has a note to Bill's footnote.
Samina Yasmin:

Yes, double foot note. I think with due respect Bill, that's where my problem as I think we have for too long asked Pakistan to deal with the problem. I don't think it's a Pakistani problem you know. It's a problem that was created by a lot more other things than just simply Pakistan. It's a problem that doesn't exist only in Pakistan. When you say it's across the border, what you're saying is there are people in Pakistan who are killing Pakistanis and who are going across the border to kill Afghans. And, the people in Pakistan who are killing Pakistanis are now going across the border to kill Indians. You cannot deal with that question on state level only.

That is the problem. When we give statements and say Pakistan government needs to do this, Pakistan government should be sort of encouraged to take more active action, what we're really saying is, "Gee Pakistan has a magic wand". They can't even handle their own development for goodness sake, how can they handle some problem that's regional. It is a regional government's responsibility. And, I think in that case what I would argue is, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India together need to sit down. I think it's not the time to put the blame on one or another. Pakistanis have done it for too long and saying "Why it's the Afghans that sit here and then go and bomb, and we are ones held responsible?" Afghans say, "Ahh no, no. These are the Pakistanis; they come from the.", Indians say "Ah gee, these are really Pakistanis". They are all moving across boundaries. If we don't accept that today, we will never accept it. But, I think we need to deal with that. You want another footnote?

Bill Maley:
I don't actually disagree with that. In 2000 a group of writers, Ahmed Rasheed, Barnard Rupe and Olivia Wah, did a paper for the Swiss Peace Foundation called "Afghanistan – Peace Building and Development in a Regional Context", which made the point that these sorts of problems of militants are trans-national rather than grounded in any single country and therefore a solution is one that has to recognise the way in which the systemic relations in the region are themselves a factor generating recourse to unconventional proxies and actors of this sort. So, I actually agree with that. But, I don't think that should be a basis upon which the Pakistan government can detach itself altogether from its historical responsibility for stimulating or generating some of these forces. So, I suppose I take the old Russian statement 'trust the verifier'.
Samina Yasmin:
But, that's where my problem, we can't put all the blame on Pakistan. Shared blame and shared responsibilities is where I think I think we need to go.
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