Three weeks into the siege, thousands of groupie followers of the cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri and cricketer Imran Khan continue to hold Islamabad hostage. Local business and governmental functions have been disrupted, and the area around the parliament resembles a war zone. Three people have been killed, and scores wounded. Qadri, a fiery Islamic cleric who flew in from Canada, and Khan, a former cricketer with high political ambitions, claim that the national elections held 15 months ago were rigged and must be redone. Both want to morally cleanse Pakistan, and promise to make milk and honey flow. Neither has a plan, but their followers don’t seem to care.
Pakistan is seeing a new level of instability. Hapless citizens, glued to their television sets, watched Pakistan’s heavily fortified capital fall to the protesters. Privately hired cranes tossed aside concrete barriers and shipping containers, while razor wire was cut through by professionals. A demoralized police was initially too afraid to follow attack orders.
From the shadows, the Pakistan Army – an institution known all too well to the Baluch and Bengalis for unlimited violence and ethnic cleansing – has, with uncharacteristic calm, watched Pakistan’s state institutions taken over by violent thugs and cult followers. But rather than restore law-and-order, it has chosen to confer legitimacy upon them by advocating negotiations. The brief takeover of Pakistan Television by the duo’s men did not result in any subsequent punitive action; the occupiers left shouting “Long live the Pakistan Army”.
This behavior has an explanation: the army and prime minister have had an uneasy relationship ever since General Pervez Musharraf overthrew the government and declared martial law in 1999. Ever since his election in May 2013, Nawaz Sharif has been trying to settle scores with Musharraf by attempting to try him for treason. The army made its unhappiness known clearly, but Sharif ignored the warning signs.
What’s the game plan behind the siege? Cricketer Khan’s is clear enough: create enough chaos so that Sharif’s elected government can be forcibly overthrown. Subsequently, it will not be difficult to find a pliant Supreme Court judge who would favor mid-term elections. Then, perhaps with a little reverse rigging, Khan would be hurled towards what he sees as his rightful destiny – becoming the next prime minister of Pakistan. The goals of the mercurial Holy Man from Canada are less clear; keeping the pot vigorously stirred is all that we’ve seen so far.
Now for the good news: the people of Pakistan wisely refuse to support this violent destruction of government, even if they don’t like it very much. There is already too much chaos that they can see in the rest of the Muslim world – Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia. Popular opinion today roots for stability and calm. In an unprecedented display of unity, the PML-N and PPP, Pakistan’s two largest political parties, announced they are on the same page. Although Pakistan’s Left is small and has little national influence, the Awami Workers Party and Women’s Action Forum share the same bottom line with the right-wing JUI party of Maulana Fazlur Rahman and the Jamaat-e-Islami – no to yet more chaos!
Of course, the consensus goes no further. Justifiably, there is criticism of prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s naked nepotism and the appointment of his family members to important posts. Justifiably, people dislike the Sharif brothers’ style of personalized governance. And, justifiably, there is a call for electoral reform, as well as to protest last year’s partially rigged elections.
This is clearly a right-versus-right tussle. But, while we on the Left don’t have a dog in the fight, it is one that requires progressive Pakistanis to think through the consequences. I would argue that the government of Nawaz Sharif should not buckle in and should not resign.
First, allegations of rigging appear to be over-amplified by the losers. In the 2013 elections, national and international observers saw nothing extraordinary. Nor did I, while standing in line to vote. Moreover, the outcome was consistent with pre-election polls. But this clearly did not flatter the cricketer’s super-sized ego. He had hoped for more than just a provincial government. Now, through means fair or foul, he wishes to capitalize upon the army’s distaste for Nawaz Sharif and refuses to take his chances at the ballot box four years away.
It shall be a grim day for Pakistan should Cricketer Khan ever become Prime Minister Khan. Handsome, educated at Oxford, and courted by celebrities like Princess Diana, Khan has proved to be a man of unlimited and unprincipled ambition. He openly supported the Taliban as they brutally occupied Swat in 2009, and refused to condemn the shooting of 14-year old Malala Yusufzai in the head for wanting to go to school. Khan went off into a frenzied fit after the killing of Taliban supremo Hakimullah Mehsud by a US drone, making it clear that he would rather shoot at drones than terrorists. Whether out of a serious perceptual disorder or political ambition or to atone for his playboy past, year after year he has sided with those who have been blowing up our children’s schools, killing Pakistan’s citizens, police, and soldiers. This is why the Taliban chose him as one of their representatives in the failed peace talks, and why he carries the nick-name of Taliban Khan.
Pakistan’s two wannabe messiahs promise a new Pakistan, and their gullible followers have swallowed it all. Protesters interviewed on TV channels speak of a utopia where electricity is free and plentiful, all have jobs of choice, corruption has disappeared from public life, and education is available to all. They have never asked how he plans to do this (impossible) feat. In actual fact, Khan’s provincial government has delivered little in spite of a year long stint in power.
Worse yet, Khan has had nothing to say about the horrific targeting of Pakistan’s religious minorities, or the use of the blasphemy law to terrify them into abject submission. Pakistan’s Christians cannot forget his callous remarks after the Peshawar church bombing one year ago that killed a hundred Sundaychurch goers. The Khan-Qadri duo is silent about the hundreds who have either gone missing in Baluchistan, or were later found in mass graves.
For lack of the hoped wide-spread support, it is likely that the present agitation will peter out. But the bad news is that the city’s vulnerability now stands twice exposed. The first time was in 2007 when Islamabad’s Red Mosque clerics went on a rampage, declared rebellion against the state, kidnapped women who they alleged were prostitutes, and imposed their brand of sharia on Islamabad’s population. Hundreds died as heavily armed Islamic militias squared off against the army. More significantly, it began a new era of suicide attacks on Pakistan’s marketplaces, public squares, police stations, and army installations. Since then, this has claimed over 30,000 lives.
Can Islamabad again be taken hostage? A year ago it did not seem that the cleric-cricketer duo could create such disruption. But a year or two from now they may become irrelevant, overtaken by better armed and better trained rivals. Instead of the groupies singing and dancing, as they do now, there would be a very different, joyless, crowd seeking to bring down the state and create a new one.
Hard-line Islamic clerics, disaffected with the army’s perceived betrayal and recent military operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas could make the call for insurrection. The marching orders could also come from Caliph Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIS or some other radical Islamist leader. It gives me a queasy feeling as I sit in this city and hear such literature is already being circulated around here and Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s sister city. Thereafter, from the hundreds of madrassas in the area, charged mobs could sally forth to fulfill their holy duty. The Red Mosque experience tells us they would be armed to the teeth. Nuclear Pakistan would have the world sitting on edge.
The author teaches physics in Islamabad and Lahore.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate