Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1998, pages 52, 90

The Subcontinent

Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif Leaves U.S. Empty-Handed But Successfully Faces Down Military Commander

By M.M. Ali

A lot of hopes were attached to the visit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the United States in the third week of September. That President Clinton had agreed to receive him, while at the same time not receiving Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee during the latter’s U.N. visit, was quoted as a sure sign that the United States was willing to befriend Pakistan (and not India) again, provided Sharif signs the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

On the night after his meeting with the U.S. president, Sharif told Pakistanis at a dinner in New York: “I am glad to state that there has been a meeting of minds today. President Clinton understands the compulsions under which we tested the nuclear weapons last May. I explained to him the excruciating 17 days that we spent following India’s nuclear blasts. We did not rush with our decision although my government was under severe pressures to go ahead. We waited to watch the reaction of the world powers to New Delhi’s defiance, seeing none coming, and in the face of India’s literal threats to us, we were pushed into testing our own nuclear devices.”

The Pakistani prime minister added: “I expressed my disappointment to President Clinton that the U.S. did not make any distinction and clamped sanctions on both India and Pakistan. We are paying for the sins of others, I told him.”

Nawaz Sharif was aware of the fact that the number one issue for the elite Pakistani gathering he was addressing at the New York Hilton was the acute economic crisis facing Pakistan. Since it was obvious that he did not have any breakthrough to announce on the subject, he skillfully skirted it and kept harping on the nuclear tests, saying, “We have better than matched India’s score.” (India detonated five nuclear devices and Pakistan reacted with six explosions.)

When someone from the floor asked him about “accountability in the country,” he discussed reports that his political rival and predecessor as prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, had fat bank accounts in Switzerland. He spoke of the Kashmir dispute that was the bone of contention between Pakistan and India. Then he went on to speak about the shariah (Islamic code) legislation that his government had introduced in the Assembly.

“Islam is the genesis of Pakistan,” Sharif declared. “We have decided to keep a promise that has been delayed for over 50 years...We owe this to the people of Pakistan.” He also spoke of the centerpiece project of his current administration, construction of a major Islamabad-Lahore highway.

Change in the Army Command

Gen. Jehangir Karamat, Pakistan’s army chief of staff, in a forceful Oct. 5 speech, strongly criticized the Nawaz Sharif government for its failures and asked that military personnel be included in policymaking and in the administration of the country.

“We cannot afford the destabilizing effects of polarization, vendettas, and insecurity-driven expedient policies,” the general said. Within hours Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had consulted with President Tararr and his cabinet and summoned General Karamat to his office for an explanation.

The meeting ended with Karamat requesting early retirement, which was immediately granted by the prime minister. Nawaz Sharif named Gen. Pervaiz Musharaf to replace Karamat.

Removal, resignation or retirement of a military general may be a routine exercise in most countries, but in Pakistan this one took on immense significance. Until now, elected governments in Pakistan have largely operated at the pleasure of the military, which also has ruled overtly for half of Pakistan’s half-century of existence. Therefore, when Gen. Karamat, instead of the prime minister he criticized, bowed out, it made history.

Clearly General Karamat miscalculated the political fallout of his speech (see the Oct./Nov. Washington Report p. 35 for advance analysis on the subject). Now, having politically vanquished some major opponents and potential threats to his regime, Nawaz Sharif has an achievement to boast about, and one of great significance in the political evolution of Pakistan.

However, he cannot bask in the glory for too long. Although he has found a friend in General Musharaf, the threatening economic prospects can change loyalties. It is the absence of a natural political alternative that should worry Pakistanis, many of whom are hoping for a radical change to salvage the country from economic disaster.

No Immediate Financial Rescue

The unwillingness of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) to provide an immediate rescue package has posed serious problems for Pakistan. Its request for debt rescheduling has been turned down, and its appeal for emergency assistance to help it tide over debt servicing has also been ignored.

New IMF-WB conditions for any such action not only call for major devaluation of the Pakistani rupee but also decentralization of the country’s power structure. The two international lending agencies, it appears, are going far beyond just ordering financial discipline and are getting into micro-management of economies as well as the politics of the countries seeking help. The Washington Post reported on Oct. 24 that the World Bank is looking into corruption within its own ranks vis-ö-vis Pakistan and other countries.

In the face of all this, Nawaz Sharif has to look for other avenues, both external and internal, to meet the crisis. He has no time to sit back and relish the taste of winning an unprecedented victory against the generals at home.

President Clinton invited Sharif to visit Washinton in the first week of December. If this opens the doors of desperately needed economic aid, Nawaz Sharif will gain some breathing space. However, a lasting solution is still not in sight.

Ominous Signs of Change

Almost all of the succession of governments in Pakistan, including the present one, have been guilty of ignoring the need for good education in the country. Pakistan is among the very few countries in the world where the literacy rate has gone down. Over 70 percent of the people are illiterate.

With the national birthrate above 3 percent, Pakistan’s population will double in less than 20 years and the poverty index, already appallingly low, will go down further. Quasi-quality education is provided by just a handful of private schools in urban centers like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad where only the very rich can afford to enroll their children.

Universities, miserably few in number, also are faced with serious problems like lack of support services, paucity of good instructors and decaying physical structures. The two or three private institutions of higher learning that have risen in recent years, one in business administration, another in management sciences, and the third, a university, charge tuition fees that are way beyond the reach of even the middle class.

Therefore, most children of the rich and the connected study in England or in the United States while schools and colleges in the public sector within Pakistan are an apology for academic learning.

Besides the problems of educational quality, the shortage of educational institutions for a population of over 130 million means that only a small number of urbanites benefit from them.

A feature of the developing world is that the majority lives in rural areas. Pakistan is no exception. Consequently, a large vacuum exists in the hinterland which is being filled by the religious madrasas (schools) that have cropped up in recent years. It will do well to remember that the Taliban of Afghanistan, with their extreme interpretations of Islam, are products of such madrasas.

If current educational trends continue for another decade or so, there will be two clearly distinguishable Pakistans. One, a small urban and semi-Westernized group that thrives on its material accomplishments. The other, a large deprived rural population of Islamic zealots.

This chasm is growing by the day. The country is run by the urban groups, backed by vested interests like the feudal landlords, who have been assisted by the civil bureaucracy and the military.

If the composition of the two institutions changes, as seems to be slowly happening with the army, the disappointments of the rural population may find a powerful ally. This could give birth to an Algeria, an Iran, or an Afghanistan.

Thoughtless introduction of shariah laws for narrow political purposes in an environment that is not ready for it often feeds into the ambitions of ill-prepared right-wing radicals and can unleash an uncontrollable string of events culminating in a political sea change.

Religion is not at fault. It is extremism that gives it a bad name. Unfortunately, it is action and reaction between disparate elements of deeply polarized populations that lead to the destabilizing of societies.

Thus far the socio-political and religious gaps between rural and urban Pakistan have not narrowed because of the internecine conflicts that have engaged the full attention of the country. These have led to artificially created misgivings between different provinces. These include the deliberate hatreds injected into Sindh province, particularly in Karachi where deadly vendettas are carried out routinely, and the sectarian riots between Shi’i and Sunnis in Punjab. A frightening development has been the cold-blooded murder of the highly respected Hakeem Mohammed Saeed, a former governor of Sindh and chancellor of Hamdard University. It appears someone is upping the ante. If that should be the case, from now on no one will be safe.

All this distracts from the more profound underlying rural-urban dissonance. But this may jell into a permanent feature in a not-too-distant future, as anyone who cares can see. Sadly, everyone is so preoccupied seeking short-term solutions that no one is paying attention to long-term needs.

Governments in Pakistan, especially in the last two decades, have paid scant attention to the disappointments and the disillusionments of the common man. As a result, the system has been corroded and the society has been corrupted at the cost of the country.

Mian Nawaz Sharif, enjoying a clear majority in the National Assembly in spite of the economic worries surrounding his administration, has an opportunity to turn the tide to the benefit of the nation. Individual, group, party and national priorities have to be changed. He must recognize that what is missing is integrity and what is lacking is credibility. On the other hand, if he restores those two elements, everything else will fall into place.