The skyline changeth

Islamabad diary
Oh, ever so subtly it changeth. A week ago, give or take a few days, no man had more reason to be self-satisfied than Mr Nawaz Sharif, virtually master of all he surveyed. Suddenly the landscape before him looks altered…not threatening which would be an exaggeration, but more clouded and less sparkling than before.
Not because of any great event but because of just two lines in an army statement, the army chief vowing to protect the honour and dignity of his institution. These few words have dominated the headlines this past week. Of such strength is our democracy made. A gust of wind from an unexpected direction and the whole sturdy structure starts to shake, the smile vanishing from hopeful faces – and dark hints thrown of coups past and history lessons forgotten.
A strange phenomenon is at work here. The army was hostile to the PPP, often openly so, sometimes foolishly so. But Benazir Bhutto, fully aware of this sentiment, never goaded the army. She even pinned a medal of democracy on its collective breast, the irony of this perhaps lost on the recipient. The PML-N and Nawaz Sharif are products of army rule, protégés of Gen Zia, beneficiaries of his iron and reactionary rule. Yet for reasons no doubt embedded in deep and mysterious psychology Nawaz Sharif finds it impossible not to prick the army.
He did this with Karamat, the decentest chief anyone could have, and he did it with Musharraf and we know the consequences. And while the present chief hasn’t exactly been goaded, something has happened to make him go public with his discontent.
This was a dead political landscape before, the PML-N dominant and nothing really to cross its purposes. Suddenly there are stirrings of life on this checkerboard, the MQM coming out more openly than before in Gen Musharraf’s support, Allama Tahirul Qadri emerging from his hibernation and scattering a few thunderbolts and Ch Shujaat Hussain recovering the use of tongue in his take on the government. (The PPP looks more and more of a lost cause. Whatever Bilawal’s tweeting, Zardari is effectively standing with the PM.)
What used to be the traditional political equation stands reversed. Time was when the PML-N used to take cover behind the army and secret services while attacking the PPP. Now minus the PPP it is other elements, disparate and weak as they are, taking advantage of the slight slip showing between the PML-N and the army.
Not that the army has become anti-Nawaz. Far from it. After all both army and the PM, for the most part, represent the same heartland, holy Punjab. It’s just that, as in his last stint, the prime minister (unwittingly perhaps) is trying to push his luck. This on two issues: Taliban talks and the Musharraf trial.
As far as the talks are concerned the government has successfully given the impression that it is trying to appease the Taliban. Indeed, the key Taliban demands – release of prisoners, heavy compensation for losses real or imagined and army withdrawal or thinning down in Fata – can only be fulfilled if the state embraces a cult of appeasement. No Oracle of Delphi needs to tell us that the army will scarcely be amused.
On the Musharraf trial the army has gone along with the government expecting the government to show some latitude. But the prime minister has been all rigidity and high principle, leading serving and retired officers to raise their eyebrows especially when they remember Musharraf’s latitude towards the Sharifs in their exile. As part of their deal they were expected to stay put in the holy land for ten years. But their passports kept for safe custody in our embassy were returned, smoothing their passage to London. Earlier Shahbaz Sharif with his strategic backache – flaring up at critical times – was allowed to go to New York for treatment.
Nawaz Sharif would have spared himself much trouble if Gen Musharraf had been allowed to go to Dubai after his formal indictment. The situation has now taken a turn for the worse. If the government relents it will be read as a sign of weakness. If it persists with its present course the army command won’t fire any shots in the air but its eyelids will narrow – and it will be that much harder to talk other matters over with the army chief. Communications will not break down but a strain will have entered the conversation.
It is a sign of the danger the government itself is feeling that out of the blue a high concrete wall is being raised around Musharraf’s Chak Shahzad farmhouse – a clear recognition of the danger that if anything happens to the former tin-pot dictator (no ironman he), it will be curtains for the government. This bomb-proof wall will cost quite a bit. A Dubai exit would have been a less expensive proposition.
(While on this subject, can we please be spared lectures on rule of law and the supremacy of the constitution? Who comes with clean hands to read us these lectures? Certainly not our various political parties with their chequered pasts…or their collaboration with dictatorships far worse than anything Musharraf imposed. Supremacy of the constitution indeed.)
We are being told, however, that the tension signified by the chief’s statement is a minor irritant which will disappear once the prime minister and the army chief meet. All will then be well. Perhaps. But what about the Taliban talks and the Musharraf trial, which lie at the heart of this irritation? Are they too likely to disappear?
Leaving the trial alone, which is of secondary importance in this setting, what about the talks? Pakistan and the Taliban represent two different worlds. The Taliban can make peace with Pakistan if they change themselves. Pakistan can make peace with the Taliban if it changes its face and complexion, and the army commits collective suicide. There is no halfway house, unless capitulation is the new meaning of a halfway house.
The Taliban know this. That is why for them the talks are a short-term exercise, in which to gain time and squeeze maximum concessions from government and army. The army too knows this, which is why its reservations. The government resembles nothing so much as a pigeon, closing its eyes and hoping that through some miracle it will escape the moment of truth. And it wants Gen Raheel Sharif and his generals to be pigeons like it.
Ch Nisar says there is no deadlock in the talks and things are moving in the right direction, his stock phrase. His pronouncements should be taken with a pinch of salt. Professor Ibrahim Khan of the Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the persons representing the Taliban in these talks, is not given to outlandish statements. He says the talks are not going well. His words have a greater ring of truth about them.
The contradiction between the government and GHQ on the talks issue has to be resolved first, before the tension between them will go away. Otherwise it is hard to see how this matter is settled, unless we take the prime minister and the army chief to be schoolboys who’ve had a momentary falling out over something passing. And Musharraf’s case, while not the main issue, is a shadow at the table, Banquo’s ghost who refuses to go away.
Pakistani leaders, it’s perhaps something to do with the climate, are good at scoring own goals. Musharraf all-powerful in March 2007 soon self-destructed. A like tendency Nawaz Sharif has never been able to resist. And the price for this a hapless nation has to pay.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com