Fighting to the End

by C Christine Fair

  While the government has moved forward by leaps and bounds in the last few years, progress might be slower in the ones ahead despite the sweeping electoral mandate that Pakistan’s current prime minister, Sharif, secured in the May 2013 election. While much of the durability of the 13th National Assembly can be attributed to Sharif’s maturity and commitment to ousting the PPP through constitutional elections rather than conspiring with the military to pro-rogue the government, it is not obvious that the PPP will have such forbearance while it is in the opposition. The early signs are not positive. Both the PPP and the Awami National Party boycotted the July 2013 presidential elections, which foisted Mamnoon Hussain of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) to the now largely ceremonial post.1 Not only is the forbearance and patience of the opposition parties a looming question, but it is also far from obvious that the army will make a quiet retreat to its barracks to permit democracy to take deeper root.

  Even if Pakistan were to undergo a permanent democratic transition in which civilians shape foreign and domestic policies, as discussed in Chapter 2, it does not obviously follow that the civilians would abandon the policy of persistent revisionism with respect to India. This is because of the deep presence of the army’s strategic culture, based on the ideology of Islam and the two-nation theory, within Pakistan’s civil society, political culture, and bureaucracies. It is certainly reasonable to posit that such a democratic transition is a necessary but insufficient condition for Pakistan to move away from its persistent revisionism, but a democratic transition is unlikely to lead to a change in the preferred policies of the state without a fundamental evolution in the ideology of Pakistan. Under what conditions are the Pakistani state and its citizens willing to jettison a national ideology, rooted in religious and civilizational terms that would permit any meaningful accommodation with India, which is also defined in religious and civilizational terms?

  CIVIL AND UNCIVIL SOCIETY: IMPETUS FOR CHANGE?

  A second possibility is that Pakistani civil society will force the army to alter its strategic culture and the policies it motivates. However, this is not terribly likely because many components of the army’s strategic culture are deeply assimilated in Pakistan’s civil society and sustained through the public and private media, through public education, and in the country’s bureaucratic and political institutions. Such change is not entirely impossible over a longer time horizon. Pakistan’s media, while compromised, is vibrant and diverse. Some observers even argue that the “army’s hegemony of the intellectual discourse has weakened, if not completely disappeared” (Farooq 2012a, 40). While I do not share this view, it is certainly true that although right-wing, army-backed ideologues dominate Pakistan’s media landscape, there is also an increasing number of media personalities champion “the cause of unqualified liberalism and unconditional secularism” (ibid.). Although illiberal forces have shown themselves past masters of social media and Pakistani liberal civil society remains in disarray, events of recent years prove that civil society, while weak, is not dead (Cohen 2011).

  Perhaps the most important demonstration of the complexity of Pakistan’s civil society is the so-called lawyers’ movement, which first crystallized in 2007. The country’s lawyers, exhausted with Pervez Musharraf’s authoritarianism, staged national protests to secure the reinstatement of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a popular Supreme Court justice who had been ousted by Musharraf. International media reported with great excitement that Pakistan’s civil society was standing up to praetorianism. This exuberance was short-lived. In January 2011, the governor of Punjab, a noted opponent of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, was assassinated by his bodyguard. The same international media that had been so impressed with the lawyers’ movement was repelled when this ostensibly “liberal” movement mobilized to defend the killer (author fieldwork in Pakistan during the assassination). The movement’s tight association with the Islamist political party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, and controversial figures such as Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Hamid Gul, a well-known Taliban apologist and supporter of Pakistan’s varied Islamist militant groups, further undermined any semblance of the movement’s liberal credentials. Siddiqa (2012), in an analysis of the lawyer’s movement, remarked shrewdly that “it can be concluded from the socio-political nature of the legal community and its behavior after the end of the 2007–2009 protest that a strengthening of the system of justice for the benefit of the common man was certainly not the core purpose.” Instead, she suggests that the movement was really a means to increase the legal community’s “nuisance value and membership as a secondary partner of the powerful [military-dominated] establishment” (ibid.). Siddiqa was surely correct.

  Part of the problem with Western hopes that “civil society” will rescue Pakistan is that most Westerners seriously misunderstand what civil society means in Pakistan. Whereas in the West civil society conjures up images of liberals and others challenging the state, in Pakistan civil society is populated by a diverse set of actors and includes those who want more authoritarianism or even theocracy as well as those who want greater separation of mosque and state, liberalism, and robust democracy. Zaidi (2006) notes that whereas Western literature on civil society suggests some inherent opposition to the state this is not the case in Pakistan. Rather,

  for civil society in Pakistan, whether of the westernising/modernising kind or of the more fundamentalist Islamic kind, the question has not been one of democracy versus non-democratic norms, but of “liberalism” against the perceived and variously interpreted Islamic symbols and values. Unlike in the traditional (western?) notion of civil society, the pursuit of democratic ideals is not a necessary and defining condition. Not only is this a fundamental difference, but so too is the necessary distinction of the autonomy from the state, so integral to the meaning of civil society, in theory. If sections of civil society are expected to challenge the state, in Pakistan many of them are the state’s partners, acquiring mutual benefits of some kind or the other (3556–3557).

  There is as much—if not more—opposition among the varied elements of Pakistan’s civil society as there is between these civil society organizations and the government, whether civilian or military. It is simply too early to say how this conflict will be resolved and whether the proponents of democracy and liberalism will prevail over those who want more autocracy, a more pronounced role of the military, or even a greater role for Islam and Islamism in Pakistan’s governance.

  ECONOMIC SHOCKS—FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE

  A third plausible endogenous shock is the further erosion of Pakistan’s ramshackle economy. This may drive the Pakistan Army to acquiesce to some degree of economic liberalization as regards India. Over time an economic rapprochement could transform the nature of the relationship from conflict to cooperation. Since 2011, Pakistan and India have steadily deepened their economic ties, a development that has given rise to optimism about a potential resolution of the enduring rivalry. In 2011, Pakistan gave India “most favored nation status,” finally reciprocating a move India had made in 1996 (Ahmed 2011; Lal 2012). Despite the initial enthusiasm about this initiative, as of early 2014 there has been very little progress in implementing this status. In late 2012, Pakistan and India also signed an unprecedented visa liberalization agreement (Pattanaik 2012). Some authors have mused that given the “massive economic challenges, a burgeoning population, energy and water shortages, and huge and growing numbers of unemployed workers, especially youth, Pakistan needs to look for ways to move itself out of the economic hole into which it has fallen. Greater trade with India offers an immediate and rich possibility of economic growth for both Pakistan and India” (Hussain 2011, 1).

  But even this guarded optimism assumes that the Pakistan Army approves of such developments. After all, the Pakistan Army, not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, currently sets the limits of what is possible in Pakistan’s relations with India. And in fact, it appears that Rawalpindi has given its tacit but tentative approval to this course. Some analys
ts attribute the army’s willingness to consider this to the fact that “the Pakistani army has watched, with some concern, as Pakistan’s macro-economic indicators have dropped and India has managed to sustain its economic performance despite a worldwide recession. … The Generals in the Army can see that if this goes on for much longer, the disparity between India and Pakistan will be unbridgeable” (Malhotra 2011). Numerous author interviews with US Department of State and UK Foreign Office personnel show that this optimism is widely shared in Washington and London. But the observable trends do not warrant unbridled enthusiasm. Any serious rapprochement with India would weaken the army’s political position within Pakistan. Thus, the army will seek to limit the relationship, achieving economic gains while ensuring that the rivalry remains intact.

  In the past, the army has acted to sabotage the peace process, either through army actions (e.g., the Kargil War) or the deployment of jihadi proxies who undertake attacks in India. In January 2013, just as both sides were moving forward to enact a landmark visa regime, a scuffle took place on the Line of Control. While both sides dispute the other’s narrative of who trespassed first, what is clear is that Pakistani armed forces killed two Indian soldiers, one of whom was beheaded. This sent the relationship into a tailspin. India predictably “decided to ‘pause’ the implementation of the liberal visa regime on ‘technical’ grounds” (Pattanaik 2013). This has left many Indians wondering—again—whether an India–Pakistan peace process is sustainable; whether it can be delinked from ongoing conflict, especially in Kashmir; and whether, given the army’s opposition, Pakistan’s struggling democracy can be a partner in forging a path to peace (ibid.).

  The materials examined in this volume suggest that three changes must take place before the Pakistan Army will accept normalization with India. First, the army would have to abandon its practice of describing the rivalry with India in civilizational terms. This would likely require the Pakistan Army to revise its ideological commitment to the two-nation theory. Second, the army would have to accept a less privileged, even subordinate, position with Pakistan’s governance institutions. Peace with India would deprive the army of its status as the single institution capable of protecting Pakistan from India’s destructive designs and consequently its claims to political and financial resources and to the right to take control of the government when it deems necessary. Finally, peace would require that the civilian bureaucratic and political elites develop preferences that diverge starkly from those of the army. There is no evidence to suggest that this is likely to occur anytime soon. Given the degree to which the army’s understanding of India as an existential threat permeates government institutions and the popular imagination, it is difficult to imagine what endogenous events could bring about these changes. For purposes of fairness, it is important to also consider that far less likely possibility that Pakistan’s economy can be rectified through sagacious political leadership with or without varying degrees of international support. Should this occur, it would be unlikely to change the preferences of the Pakistan Army in a way that would diminish its conflict proneness and persistent revisionism. If anything, the additional revenue would strengthen the army’s hand by expanding the resources it may use for conventional and nuclear investments while decreasing its vulnerability to international actors who consider the army’s revisionism to be a serious obstacle to peace in South Asia.

  CHANGE FROM WITHIN THE ARMY?

  Perhaps the most important sources of endogenous change may be the military itself.2 As Fair and Nawaz (2011) show, the Pakistan Army has struggled since independence to expand its recruitment base. Given that the army has long dominated the political process and has also established a robust system of perquisites for its members and their families, it has become increasingly important that the majority of Pakistanis feel that they can access this system. The army has relaxed its recruiting standards in Sindh and Balochistan, hoping that increased recruitment of Pakistan’s more reluctant ethnic groups will entice them to support the national project and diminish their resistance to the state.

  Analysis of district-level recruitment data for the officer corps between 1971 and 2005 (Fair and Nawaz 2011) demonstrates the dramatic success the army has had in changing the geographic distribution of new recruits. Figure 10.1 converts district-level recruiting data into shares of total recruits by dividing the number of officers recruited in a given district by the total of all officers recruited that year. In 1972, the figure shows, recruitment was concentrated in a few districts in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP); in fact, most of Pakistan’s districts produced no officers. But by 2005 most of Pakistan’s districts were producing officers. Of course these data show only geographical diffusion and cannot confirm the ethnicity of the new recruits. While the army claims that it has made strides in recruiting ethnic Baloch and Sindhis, it is possible that the army is recruiting Punjabis, for example, from Balochistan and Sindh.

  Survey data suggest that even if the army’s geographic expansion does not translate directly into ethnic diversity, greater regional diversity in the officer corps may have important implications for the attitudes of incoming officers. In 2009, the author (along with Jacob N. Shapiro and Neil Malhotra) fielded a 6,000-person survey among a nationally representative sample of Pakistanis (Blair et al. 2013). The survey queried respondents about their views on Islamist militancy, beliefs about governance structures (including civil–military relations), preference for sharia, and opinions about the aspirations of India’s Kashmiri Muslims. The size of this sample and the fact that it was drawn to permit robust province-level analysis means that it provides important insights into how the evolving recruitment base may result in a corps of officers with different views on key issues facing Pakistan. The sample includes 2,508 respondents from the Punjab, 1,488 from Sindh, 1,128 from KP, and 876 from Balochistan. The data also include information about the ethnicity of the respondent (proxied by the respondent’s mother tongue).

  Figure 10.1 Share of officer recruits by district: 1972, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2005.

  Source: In-house manipulations of army officer recruitment data.

  For purposes of this discussion, I focus on seven key questions that cast light on a respondent’s views on jihad, Islamism, governance, and civil–military affairs. These questions and their response categories are given in Table 10.1. Using these data, I compare Punjabis living in the Punjab to Punjabis elsewhere in Pakistan. (Punjabis are the largest ethnic group in the army, and most of the army’s infrastructure is located in the Punjab.) I examine differences in responses to the questions listed in Table 10.1 using the Pearson chi-square test to determine whether the distribution of responses is statistically significant for the groups of people compared. (Not all response categories and only relevant sample sizes are presented in the tables.)

  Table 10.1 Survey Items Analyzed

  * * *

  Q50. Some people say jihad is a personal struggle for righteousness. Others say jihad is protecting the Muslim umma through war. What do you think? A) Jihad is solely a personal struggle for righteousness; B) Jihad is both a personal struggle for righteousness and protecting the Muslim umma through war; C) Jihad is solely protecting the Muslim umma through war.

  * * *

  Q60. How much do you think Pakistan is governed according to Islamic principles (sharia)? A) Completely; B) A lot; C) A moderate amount; D) A little; E) Not at all.

  * * *

  Q150. Seeing the current situation in Pakistan, do you think that sharia should play a A) Much larger role; B) Somewhat larger role; C) About the same role; D) Somewhat smaller role; E) Much smaller role.

  * * *

  Q180. If sharia were given a greater role in Pakistani law, how much more or less corruption would there be? A) A lot more; B) A little more; C) No change; D) A little less; E) A lot less.

  * * *

  Q310. How much do you think Pakistan is governed by representatives elected by the people? A) Completely; B) A lot;
C) A moderate amount; D) A little; E) Not at all.

  * * *

  Q370. The 1973 Constitution of Pakistan says civilians should control the military. This means the military cannot take action without orders from civilian leaders. In your opinion, how much control should civilians have over the military? A) Complete control; B) A lot of control; C) A moderate amount of control; D) A little control; E) No control at all.

  * * *

  Q400. Thinking about the political preferences of Muslims in occupied Kashmir, please tell us which statement you agree with the most: A) In occupied Kashmir the majority of Muslims want to be part of India; B) In occupied Kashmir the majority of Muslims want an independent state; C) In occupied Kashmir the majority of Muslims want to be part of Pakistan.

  * * *

  Source: For additional information about this survey, see Blair et al. (2013).

  First, I examine differences between Punjabis living within (2,015) or outside (136) the Punjab. As Table 10.2 shows, Punjabis in and beyond the Punjab differ markedly in their responses to several questions. For example, Punjabis living outside of the Punjab are less likely than those in the Punjab to view jihad as a militarized struggle and more likely to see it as a struggle for righteousness. They are also somewhat less likely to say that Pakistan is “not at all governed” by Islamic principles, much less likely to want sharia to play a larger role in governance, and are less confident that there would be “a lot less corruption” were the role of sharia increased. Punjabis outside of the Punjab are also less likely to share the belief that the government is controlled by elected representatives than are Punjabis living in the Punjab; however, Punjabis outside of the Punjab are also less supportive of complete civilian control over the army. Finally, Punjabis beyond the Punjab are less likely to believe that Muslim Kashmiris living in Indian Kashmir would prefer to join Pakistan. These data suggest that ethnicity is not the single most important predictor of views on these issues.