by Shuja Nawaz
‘Why should I do that?’ responded Ahsan.
‘Your concerns might be addressed by the PM,’ said Kayani, listing the concerns:
1. No ‘Minus 1 Formula’ and the Chief Justice to be reinstated. [Minus 1 referred to the idea being floated around that the senior judges would be restored minus the Chief Justice].
2. Reinstatement should take place without requirement of taking a fresh oath.
This was crucial, Ahsan thought, to ‘our position since some judges had been taken back by Zardari on a fresh oath. This restored the status quo ante. I said, “You are right.” He [Kayani] said again, “If it is expedient, please stop and listen [to the PM’s speech].” Kayani said, “I know where you are and how many are with you.”’
Ahsan said that he had managed to build up a massive army of supporters across the country with his call for protests in every city centre. Supporters of the judiciary had even blocked the Karakoram Highway for fourteen hours, he claimed. He said he had 50,000 persons with him on the march to Islamabad. Another 150,000 were waiting to join the procession in Gujranwala, and his plan called for a drive through Rawalpindi down the busy Murree Road to Islamabad, instead of taking the Islamabad Highway directly from Rewat to Islamabad, which was the preferred route of the army if the march had continued. He would have picked up a huge crowd inside Rawalpindi on the final leg of the march on Islamabad. (It is difficult to verify the crowd sizes. All politicians tend to magnify such numbers.)
Interestingly, Ahsan’s party leader Zardari never called him during the march. Nor did the prime minister. Zardari called only a week after the Chief Justice was reinstated. Ahsan regretted that Zardari had not called, and believes that the president had been fed ‘stories’ by Rehman Malik of smaller crowds than was the case. Ahsan represented the Old Guard of the PPP, the committed workers who had joined the party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and remained loyal to the Bhutto family and the original progressive message of the party. Malik was a relative newcomer and more loyal to Zardari than the PPP of old.
Ahsan thought the army could have taken over, but he did not fear an army takeover since the lawyers’ movement had been bolstered by its success in forcing Musharraf from the presidency. ‘We could have changed “Go, Musharraf, Go!” to “Go, Kayani, Go!”’ said Ahsan. (Kayani on the other hand later confided to me that if he wanted to he could have taken over during this crisis since the public had lost faith in the government and disruption caused by the lawyers’ movement had created a backlash in the public mind. But he stayed his hand.)
With these calculations racing through his mind, Ahsan found a large farmhouse near Gujranwala and pulled in. A puzzled Sharif asked Ahsan, ‘Whose phone call was that?’ He was surprised when Ahsan told him it was Kayani because Sharif said Ahsan had not used the respectful term ‘General Sahib’ when speaking to the army chief. The break allowed them to hear the prime minister’s announcement.
‘I announce today that Iftikhar Chaudhry and all other deposed judges will be reinstated from March 21,’ Gilani said in a televised address to the nation.
‘The current Supreme Court Chief Justice will retire on that date, allowing Chaudhry to take over,’ the premier said.
He directed provincial governments to release all those arrested during a stringent government clampdown aimed at foiling a so-called long march organized by lawyers and political activists, due to reach Islamabad on Monday.
He also immediately lifted Section 144, a nineteenth-century British law, put into effect in the capital and the provinces of Punjab, Sindh and North West Frontier Province, outlawing public gatherings and demonstrations.
‘I order all the provincial governments to release political workers, lawyers and all those arrested during the long march,’ he said.
‘I want to congratulate the nation. Let us celebrate this with dignity . . . This was the promise made by our late leader Benazir Bhutto that the chief justice will be restored and I had also made the promise after I took over as prime minister,’ said Gilani. 58
Civil society had won a major victory over both the government and the military, using mass media and a committed and cohesive movement to achieve its objective. The PPP government had to make the best of a bad thing, as the prime minister’s speech indicated. But they were not entirely out of the woods. And the military–civil divide had been merely papered over again.
The US ambassador reported back to Washington DC on the outcome on 16 March 2009 as divulged via WikiLeaks:
16. (C) None of the Pakistan Army units alerted to support civil authorities during the march were deployed, and all other Pakistani Army units were restricted to their cantonments throughout the protests. Pakistani military officials highlighted the fact that Army units, not placed on alert, were deliberately ordered to remain in their cantonments in an effort to telegraph the military’s neutrality during the crisis.
17. (C) There is a growing consensus among mid-grade Pakistani military officers that the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Kayani, was the primary interlocutor responsible for convincing President Zardari to restore the Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice, and end governor’s rule in Punjab Province, thus averting the potential chaos that would have resulted if the marchers had reached Islamabad. USDAO [US Defence Attaché Office] reporting also indicates that the COAS dispatched ISI officers to meet with Nawaz Sharif to explain the Army’s role in mediating between the government and the PML-N and to advise him to call off the march if the President acquiesced to the PML-N’s and lawyers’ demands.
18. (C) ODRP [Office of Defence Representative in Pakistan] discussed situation with Director General of ISI (Pasha) and DGMO (Javed Iqbal) and found that both were relieved at the outcome. Pasha remarked that there is still much to be done. When ask [sic] for his comment regarding winners and losers, he commented diplomatically that everyone won. When ODRP commented that it appeared Zardari had lost popularity, Pasha merely chuckled. PATTERSON 59
Pasha the Soldier would have responded sharply and verbally. Pasha the Spymaster was learning to be guarded and circumspect. He had mastered the act of the Cheshire Cat by hiding behind his enigmatic and polite smile to shield his thoughts!
More Governance Challenges
Natural events beyond his control further showed up the weakness of the Central government of Zardari. Floods ravaged Pakistan while he was visiting France and the UK with his young son Bilawal, a student at Oxford, in July and August 2010. The juxtaposition of photographs of his helicopter landing near his French chateau and more than 20 million Pakistanis flooded out of their homes was damning. He chose not to return to Pakistan. From France he proceeded to the UK and a reported visit with the British Prime Minister David Cameron at the PM’s country residence at Chequers. 60 Facing severe criticism at home and from others around the world, the best he could do was to return and accompany the UN Secretary General on an aerial survey of the damage. In the aftermath of the 2010 floods, the Saudis offered no help till the Army Chief Gen. Kayani called them. He was told they would only give money since the army chief had called, and that too via the United Nations, not to the Zardari government. 61
The US did its best to help Pakistan cope with the floods that inundated an area roughly equivalent to the Eastern Seaboard of the continental US. The damage was estimated at 5.9 per cent of GDP. The US rushed aircraft and supplies, and its intrepid new Ambassador Cameron Munter was seen everywhere trying to help out, even to the extent of offloading bags of grain from an airplane. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had been set up after the earthquake of 2005. In 2010 it was being run by an army general, Nadeem Ahmad. The NDMA had produced a report in 2009 that promised a proactive approach. The 2010 report, among other things, predicted the possibility of a massive flood, but the new devolved governmental structure meant that the provinces were unprepared. The full report was not published till April 2011, delaying implementation. Hence, aid was slow in reaching the people.
Civil society groups leapt up to help, including the social services arm of the jihadi groups. The army was the principal actor in flood relief, rushing equipment and manpower into the most seriously affected areas and deploying in aid of civil power up and down the country. Its performance tended to put the civil authorities in a bad light relative to the speed and efficiency of its relief efforts.
US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) Richard Holbrooke immediately flew to Pakistan and wanted to visit the affected areas and refugee camps. This forced the prime minister also to act and visit the displaced persons’ camps. International aid also began arriving. UN Special Envoy and famous actress Angelina Jolie flew to Pakistan, and she and her partner Brad Pitt together donated $1 million. 62 The US also helped set up a group to provide multilateral and multinational aid to Pakistan under the rubric of Friends of Democratic Pakistan. Surprisingly, participation and contributions were spotty. China only sent its UN envoy to the meeting in New York. The Saudis, as mentioned earlier, failed to contribute until the army chief intervened. As usual, pledges were hard to fulfil.
Ambassador Holbrooke was struck by the need to act quickly and saw an opportunity to show the Pakistani public how much the US cared for them. He fought hard to get $500 million released from the US bureaucracy from the $7.5 billion programmed for the Kerry–Lugar–Berman (KLB) funds for Pakistan over five years. That cash infusion allowed the US to assist Pakistan in meeting the immediate needs of the flood-affected population.
Throughout this period, the civilian government was generally seen as missing in action. At the provincial level, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was operating at full throttle. Sindh was a battleground for publicity between the PPP and the MQM, as the latter even hijacked general public donations and labelled train shipments with the MQM banner. The more successful flood relief efforts were organized privately by groups of individuals and local foundations, such as the Jehangir Siddiqui Foundation that rushed supplies to the interior of the country. Other relief workers belonging to the social service units of the Islamic militant organizations, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other Islamic charities from overseas also quickly established their presence in the flood-affected areas, much to the discomfort of the government.
Again, the military was doing its own thing, autonomously, while the civilians were trying to play to the public gallery with photo ops for ministers seemingly parachuting into the flood-affected areas, distributing supplies and leaving. In some cases, groups of locals were posed as victims of the floods and tents set up to show that they were being housed and well looked after. As a detailed series of reports from Scientific American showed in a camp near Nowshera:
Salma Begum, 32, fumes when asked what the government and international community have done for her family in the weeks since the disastrous flooding here. The only support she has seen comes from the local branch of the Ummah Welfare Trust, a UK-based Islamic charity.
Many in Pakistan are in the same position, but the people in the Ummah camp are especially furious, as their tents sit right next to a much-better-provisioned camp that has received extensive UN and government help. Other camp residents speak of a federal government relief operation just 15 minutes down the road that has been set up as something of a Potemkin village, used for tours to show celebrities and top-ranking non-governmental organization (NGO) officials. 63
US flood aid was welcomed, but not for long. Neither the civil nor the military wished to allow the US to be seen as a major benefactor. As often happens, the incumbent Central government failed to fully liaise with provincial authorities or the military. Aid was thus delayed or diverted for political purposes. This left a lasting negative impression of the Zardari government on the country’s mind and he suffered its consequences in the following elections in 2013.
Internal Situation Deteriorates
The internal security situation continued to deteriorate, as the Taliban and their allies established a strong foothold outside FATA. Incidents of suicide bombings continued to rise in the heartland. As the Department of State’s annual report on terrorism stated:
In 2010, Pakistan continued to experience high levels of terrorism and Pakistan-based terrorist organizations continued to threaten internal, regional, and global security. Violence resulted from both political and sectarian conflicts throughout the country, with terrorist incidents occurring in every province. While government authorities arrested many alleged perpetrators of terrorist violence, few convictions resulted. The Pakistani military continued to conduct operations in areas with known terrorist activity but was unable to expand its operations to all areas of concern. Increased sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shia communities and against religious minority communities also resulted in numerous attacks with high casualties. These attacks continued the trend of employing suicide bombers and remotely detonated explosives to perpetrate violence. Attacks using similar methods were also carried out against government and police facilities. 64
The 2010 report from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) of the US showed that Pakistan had suffered 2,150 deaths from terrorist attacks. 65
Meanwhile, Karachi too fell into a renewed and downward spiral of sectarian and ethnic conflict, as did FATA. The new US administration upped its use of drone attacks. Each public complaint by the Pakistani government (despite its private support for such attacks) raised public anger against the US and its Pakistani allies. Terror struck the heart of Islamabad soon after Zardari became president on 10 September 2008. An explosive-laden truck rammed the gate of the Marriott in Islamabad on 20 September, reducing much of the famed hotel to a heap of rubble and ashes. Zardari claimed the attack was aimed at him because he was supposed to attend a celebration at the hotel after his inauguration. The owner of the Marriott, Sadruddin Hashwani, with whom Zardari had allegedly had some run-ins over business deals, claims Zardari was behind the attack and that Hashwani was the likely target since he was supposed to attend a family celebration at the hotel. Hashwani also says there was no official booking for any event at the hotel that evening, so Zardari could not have been the target. He also writes about earlier attacks on his office and the Pearl Continental in Peshawar. 66 None of these claims was proven.
Zardari struggled to reshape the political system of Pakistan, to alter the constitutional balance between the president and the prime minister on the one hand and between the Centre and the Provinces on the other. He had a vision of change that he felt would be true to the original plan of the elder Bhutto as spelled out in the 1973 constitution. 67 This involved reducing the powers of the president in favour of the prime minister and returning Pakistan to the original federation that was envisaged, with greater devolution of portfolios to the provinces. For a man who had inherited an all-powerful presidency, this appeared to be politically suicidal. But he recognized his pre-eminence in the power structure of the PPP, and the fact that he would retain total control of the party even if the prime minister had titular power under the changed constitution. Zardari played his cards well. Many of these objectives were consonant with the Charter of Democracy that Sharif had signed. Sharif publicly vowed to work towards the implementation of the charter even though he was sitting on the Opposition benches. In quick order, Zardari succeeded in the passage of the 18th Amendment that reduced his own powers and strengthened the prime minister’s hand, in effect removing the possibility of summary dismissal of a prime minister by the president.
Continuous infighting within the government and competition between the government and the military created separate centres of gravity for action against terrorism and militancy. Pakistan tried to assist the US’s CT efforts, especially drone strikes in FATA from bases in Afghanistan, within boundaries established by both sides. Map grids defined where the drones could attack. But the collaboration was spotty and not whole-hearted. The civilian government was desperately trying to keep its head above the choppy political waters, even as it faced econo
mic challenges.
The next few years were marked by tumult and challenges to the security of the country and to its economy. Pakistan had become truly ‘ungovernable’. The need to constantly satisfy the needs of hungry coalition partners made it impossible for the PPP to pass economic reforms. It had some extensive ones in mind aimed at reordering Centre–Periphery relationships and restoring fiscal stability and growth to the economy, but these ambitions far outstripped the PPP’s fragile capacities. So try as it might, the PPP government failed to reduce the fiscal deficit, to reform tax policy, or to streamline tax administration in line with its own promises to, and the demands of, the IMF. That, in turn, meant that Pakistan was unable to draw the last two tranches (totalling $3.5 billion) of its $13 billion IMF loan.
The PPP government lacked a clear vision of what it wanted to achieve. It could have supported the new technocratic economic team it put in place in 2010 without much new legislation, if it had a clearer set of goals. As a result, by year’s end, it sought and received a nine-month waiver from the IMF with a promise to meet the Fund’s stringent conditions in 2011 that included full implementation of a reformed GST involving a broader base, reduced exemptions and input crediting, both at the federal and provincial level; parliamentary passage of the amendments to the State Bank Act and the Banking Companies’ Ordinance; agreement on measures to achieve the revised fiscal deficit target, including a realistic envelope for energy subsidies in 2010–11 based on a plan that was yet to be endorsed by the Asian Development Bank and World Bank staffs; and third-quarter fiscal performance that would be consistent with achieving the full-year target.
None of this has happened, effectively killing the IMF Programme.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani state’s Titanic steamed toward the economic iceberg. President Zardari appeared to be relying on the relatively large cushion of Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves of $16.7 billion, disregarding the fact that most of these reserves were themselves borrowed. His government was also dependent on Western aid donors, primarily the US, to come to Pakistan’s rescue if its economy tanked. The false premise was that if defence spending had to rise to meet US demands to fight the Taliban, the US would pay for the increase. False, because if the Americans became convinced that Pakistan was playing a double game they would back out of aid to Pakistan. Pakistan believed it had to play that double game of condoning or abetting some Afghan Taliban to protect itself against the day when the Americans would leave Afghanistan. 68
