Elections in Pakistan have turned into a huge defeat for the pro-Musharraf PML-Q party and a substantial victory for the Bhutto family's Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party. Beyond what's in the newspapers, I don't have much to add at the moment except the observation that once again the much-hyped fundamentalist takeover of Pakistan seems like a very remote possibility, when people get a chance to register their preferences, PPP and PML-N consistently come out on top.
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Important Developments I'm Not Really Qualified to Comment On
18 Feb 2008 11:19 pm
Comments (14)
I found it kind of bizarre that most of the US media completely ignored Sharif during the Bhutto assasination, even though he had roughly a third of the popular support.
As I was watching people ignorant of Pakistani politics on all the cable news channels, I kept thinking aren't there any experts on this besides Fareed Zakaria.
I found it kind of bizarre that most of the US media...
If you get your news about anything from the american media you don't really know anything. Well, I guess they may be your go-to source for Kelly Clarkson, but if you want news you've got to look outside of the US.
Is there much support for fundamentalism outside the Northwest Frontier region?
In this election, even in the northern region the pro-Taliban local government just got solidly booted out by the PPP, on the grounds that they had been hopelessly incompetent at actually running the place. Pakistan, it appears, is far from unsalvageable, if the US government shows even a minimum of sensible behavior toward it. Of course, that's a very big "if", and the behavior of all three of Bush's would-be successors during the campaign has not done much to shrink it.
The NYT reports that Musharraf is starting to make serious sounds to his friends about that retirement home.
"Pakistan, it appears, is far from unsalvageable, if the US government shows even a minimum of sensible behavior toward it."
Well, so far, U.S. diplomacy has seemed to play a positive role in encouraging Musharraf to:
Not perfect, but things seem to be moving in a positive direction.
None of this is particularly relevant.
Pakistan has been ruled by corrupt governments for generations - and that includes Bhuttos's crowd and Sharif's crowd.
Musharraf, I should point out, is not gone yet - and based on his previous actions last year, I would assess that he will take extreme steps to make sure he doesn't get sent home. He is - or his cronies in the Pakistani military are - still the most likely suspect for arranging for Bhutto's assassination.
More importantly, the Pakistani military and the ISI - and even more importantly, their economic influence on the country - are unaffected by these elections. It is unlikely that anything the incoming parliament can or will do will change that.
It has not been an issue that the radical Islamists could seize power legally in Pakistan now. Everybody knows that isn't likely in the short term. However, support for introducing Sharia law in Pakistan is considerable. Support for the radical Islamist program is less so, but still considerable, mostly due to dissatisfaction with the existing government.
And the longer the corrupt government continues to kill civilians in the process of trying to root out the radical Islamists from the FATA, the more likely they are to radicalize the rest of the FATA population. And if the radical movement expands to the rest of Pakistan, as they fully intend to, and if the government follows that sort of policy elsewhere, the entire country could end up being radicalized.
It's the same old, same old process you see in every Third World country. Government is corrupt, a revolutionary movement arises, government pounds on it, alienating the population in the process, who turn to the radicals even if they didn't initially support them, until eventually the government falls. The radicals take power, rinse and repeat.
This process is under way in Pakistan. There is no indication that anything the US can do will affect that process. There is no indication that anything the Pakistani government can or will do will affect that process, except possible to slow or accelerate it temporarily depending on who makes what decisions when.
This election is just another blip in the process, just as the Iraq election was. One positive element would seem to be that the intent to "massively rig" the elections, which was revealed just recently by Human Rights Watch, appears to have failed.
The religious parties issue here in Pakistan is complicated.
First, they have historically had little support (though what there is disproportionately vociferous), anywhere in the country. When they received support, it was because they campaigned by telling voters to choose between Allah and the Quran (ie them) and those opposed to Allah and the Quran (ie everyone else). For the average moderately pious illiterate Muslim who had very little faith in the political process to begin with, this was very tempting.
Plus, they were seen to resist US involvement in Pakistan. Not necessarily to oppose the eradication of fundamentalism, but in my experience at least, believing that fundamentalism here was a straw man erected by the US for its own, probably nefarious, purposes. "Our people don't do things like that", basically. As suicide attacks spread, this became an untenable position.
As Bruce Moomaw points out, when the religious parties took power in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province) they were utterly incompetent. But I don't think that was the only factor in these elections. The religious parties that lost most badly in the election were those who were pro-Musharraf, and were believed to support the army's operations in the tribal areas and in Islamabad's Lal Masjid case - in practice if not in words. I don't know anyone - even outside my liberal Westernised milieu in Lahore - who didn't think something needed to be done about both situations but also believed (rightly, I think) that the actions had been taken with great brutality and force against civilians.
There's another layer of complication to this of course. No one in this country particularly likes having suicide attacks every few days. I believe that has considerably reduced whatever sympathy the fundamentalists had for standing up against the might of the US and the Pakistan army. And with them, the prating mullahs who didn't do anything to stop innocents getting killed on the streets.
And yet another layer of complication: the Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the major components of the religious party alliance boycotted the elections altogether.
I won't say the US has had an entirely negative role here. But the fact is, today and in the past, anything the US touches is instantly mistrusted as far as most Pakistanis are concerned. The one great exception, I believe, was after the 2005 earthquake, when US aid was perceived to genuinely save and rebuild millions of shattered lives.
Fred, this mistrust applies to even those positive examples you've cited. As for giving up command of the army: sure, but Musharraf illegally legitimised his own presidency for another 5 years, sacked the supreme court and retains curbs on the media. Letting Bhutto and Sharif return from exile - sure, but you will find few who didn't believe that there was some serious backstage dealmaking going on before Bhutto's death about how to keep everyone in power. Hardly democratic.
Certainly, to my considerable surprise, there hasn't been the wide-spread rigging in these elections that would have guaranteed Musharraf's party stay in power (aside from pre-poll rigging which was widely reported). Now, if the former opposition forms a coalition government, Musharraf's presidency is much less secure.
there hasn't been the wide-spread rigging in these elections that would have guaranteed Musharraf's party stay in power
Rigging = riots. The calculation was always how much rigging would be permissible to prevent riots, and the PML-Q appears to have been conservative enough to leave itself the kingmaker.
(Ben Hammersley's blogging from Islamabad for MSN UK.)
"...reason to doubt the organizational efficacy of the PPP and the PML-N..."---It's my impression that these groups have been extremely efficacious in terms of stealing.
In terms of the "who killed Benizir" question, it seems that as usual the best practice is to start with the question, "who benefits?". Clearly Musharif and PML-Q did not. And although the Al Qaeda types are sufficiently nihilistic to kill her for principle, it seems to me that the party which benefits most is that of Nawaz Sharif.
Oz_Lucy, those are good points. The problem isn't the Pakistani people themselves, but organization. After all, if not for collective action problems, Burma and Zimbabwe would probably be real democracies.
And Ari, thanks. It's always nice to hear what is actually going on in countries being talked about.
the tragedy of Pakistan is not that the people don't want or don't how to do democracy- the tragedy is that the people they elect are incompetent at everything except stealing. Frankly, neither of the opposition parties really inspire confidence. maybe they'll get their act together-but it will be one heckuva surprise.
I hate to say it-but the chances are good that we will see more incompetence, more corruption- and in five years another military coup.
Oz_Lucy, those are good points. The problem isn't the Pakistani people themselves, but organization. After all, if not for collective action problems, Burma and Zimbabwe would probably be real democracies.
A good summation of why it frankly terrifies me that Republicans appear to not believe that collective action problems exist.
Powell: "In terms of the "who killed Benizir" question, it seems that as usual the best practice is to start with the question, "who benefits?". Clearly Musharif and PML-Q did not."
The only other benefactor would be the United States. And there are those who believe the US was directly involved in the Bhutto assassination, or at least provided the assurance to Musharraf that nothing would be done about it.
The US in particular was allegedly about to be informed by Bhutto about CIA involvement in rigging the elections as well as the belief she articulated in European media that bin Laden has been dead since 2003 - killed by Mullah Omar. This of course would put the constant CIA confirmations of his subsequent videotapes at some, shall we say, question.
Neither Al Qaeda nor the Taliban have claimed responsibility and most people do not believe they had any real motive for killing her, at least not more motive than usual for their attacks on the government.
The massive security failure on the part of the government clearly points to Musharraf's intention to allow it to happen, in any event (much like 9/11 in the US, in my opinion.)
Not to mention that if Sharif was behind it, it clearly shows how little improvement the new parliament is going to be.
Comments closed March 03, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Quite. From what I can gather, though, the fears of a fundamentalist takeover in Pakistan, such as they are, aren't really based on a (mistaken) conception of Pakistan as a majority-fundamentalist country. It was never about numbers; radical Islamists even now are only a small section of the population. It was more to do with despair at the inability of the non-fundamentalist, non-military groups to get their collective act together. Pakistanis seemingly would like to be governed by democratically-elected, moderate groups, but there has always been reason to doubt the organisational efficacy of the PPP and PML-N, even if/when they are given a popular mandate. That's why the NYT is still reporting dangers of a Taliban/Al Qaeda takeover even in the face of popular support for secular parties. That, and they still kinda heart Musharraf.
At least, that's how it looks to me.
Posted by Oz_Lucy | February 18, 2008 11:52 PM