http://www.mosharrafzaidi.com/2009/05/26/a-window-of-opportunity-for-reform/
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=179498

A window of opportunity for reform

Tuesday, May 26, 2009
by Mosharraf Zaidi

Since the assassination of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, the world has watched in awe and fear, as terrorist intrigue, state incompetence and religious insecurity have helped Pakistan climb higher and higher on the global barometer for instability and danger. With every new incident of terrorism, the questions asked have almost always been around the specific security and economic interests of the folks asking the questions. The folks asking the questions have invariably been named Bush, Rice, Miliband, Brown, Clinton, Holbrooke and Obama. These are not traditional Pakistani names. Simply put, there has been very little debate around terrorism in Pakistan that is organic, mainstream and invested. The little debate that has existed has been among those that are invested. On the one side have been the Pakistani elite — clinging desperately to the plots, bulletproof cars and Naib Qasids that the state affords them. On the other have been diplomats, politicians, and journalists — most often representing the two countries that were most deeply scarred by 9/11, the United States and Britain.

The interests of the Pakistani elite have largely been safeguarded as this debate has raged. From the days when President General Musharraf was blaming young women for using rape as an instrument of international migration, to today, where the crassness of the PPP’s so-called secular and progressive credentials are on display all around the world. From the display of respect for the rule of law at Lahore Airport, to the display of respect for those struggling to make ends meet, while dollah, dollah bills were thrown everywhere Minister of Information Qamaruz Zaman Kaira went in New York and New Jersey recently.

The interests of the United States and Britain, however, have not been met. There is an increasing, rather than decreasing sense of insecurity that emanates from Pakistan for these two countries and their people. Losing a debate will trigger all kinds of irrational responses. As American and British diplomats struggle to keep up with the well-choreographed two-step demonstrated by Pakistan’s military and political elite, it is only natural that the New York Times and the Guardian would begin to sound shriller and more desperate with each headline.

Fortunately, those headlines do not reflect the reality of Pakistan. Especially in the context of the May 8 army offensive into Swat, immediate and urgent concerns of Pakistan ‘falling’ to the Taliban have been pushed back into the oblivion they belong in.

The underlying problem, however, is not yet solved. The collectively held breath of the world has long awaited Pakistan’s 9/11 moment. That moment, the theory has been, would finally deliver the hearts and minds that are so desperately required to really win the war on terror, against Al Qaeda and to secure the geography now being referred to as Af-Pak.

The trouble is that there will in fact never be a 9/11 moment in Pakistan. There are of course good reasons to celebrate the fact that there will never be a 9/11 moment. 9/11 transfixed a great nation on a path of revenge whose bloodlust made the people of Iraq suffer scars that are only slowly even coming to light. The cost of Iraq, closing in on $700 billion, and anywhere between 92,000 and 100,000 dead civilians, not counting the over 4,000 American servicemen and women, is so great that the mere thought of another country experiencing a ‘9/11’ should be a crime.

The reasons why Pakistan is unlikely to ever experience a 9/11 moment are varied and complex. The easiest is because there is no physical symbol quite so catastrophically grand as the World Trade Centre was. Another is because sixty years of incompetence and greed by governments of all stripes have stripped Pakistan of the kind of cohesiveness that was so amply evident in the wake of 9/11 both within America and between America and allies such as Britain. And finally, because no matter what the problem, the diversity of Pakistan almost guarantees that there are no easy or quick solutions to anything.

That diversity (and what it should remind anyone who knows anything about South Asia of) is one of the keys to the Pakistan puzzle. Pakistan will always have a Muslim identity that is wrapped in Madhuri Dixit’s cholee, and covered by Saudi abayaas. The identity matrix for Pakistan is exactly that. It is a matrix, and it will not tolerate being shoved into a juice-maker so that the Kool-Aid tastes better for whoever wants to drink it. What should a comfortable diversity remind Pakistan-watchers of?

Of course, India. India has managed diversity by constructing a state that is not exactly Sweden, but not Afghanistan either. It is reasonably and demonstrably competent enough to keep the barbarians (separatist terrorists — both religious and secular) at bay, and incompetent enough to keep the businesses and private enterprise growing. The source code for managing India’s breathtaking diversity has been a constitution that allowed constituent states and communities to express themselves.

That source code was given to Pakistan by the framers of the 1973 constitution. In it, a strong, competent, small and flexible centre was conceived as a protector and enabler of fundamental rights, a facilitator of the provinces, a regulator of the big-picture issues and a product of provincial consensus. Military dictatorships since 1973 have never really started firing on the streets of Pakistan. Pakistanis have never witnessed a truly bloody coup. The Pakistani dictator is smarter than that. He doesn’t spill the blood of people. He spills the blood of the constitution. Killing the constitution, as both Zia and Musharraf did, enables the weakening of political institutions. Those institutions needed to be strong, so that they could absorb the greed, patronage and self-interest of politicians and generate some degree of reasonable governance out of them — the same way that political institutions do in all functioning democratic societies.

The May 8 offensive into Swat is not Pakistan’s 9/11 moment, nor were Sufi Mohammad’s wild and radical pronouncements about democracy, the constitution, and by extension the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The flogging video and Sufi Mohammad’s attack on Pakistani institutions were, however, the spark that ignited an awareness thus far lacking in the Pakistani mainstream. Terrorists cannot deliver functional governance. There has still not been a real and organic discourse around terrorism. Nor around any of the core issues that confound terrorism and make Pakistan a petri-dish of violent extremism. It is not revolutionary or transformational, but the realization that terrorists cannot deliver governance is a spark.

That spark has opened a narrow window. It is through this window that the Pakistani military is firing a lot of ammunition onto enemy positions. It is this window through which more than a million Pakistanis have been made homeless overnight. It is this window that the marginalised and desperate Pakistani right-wing is watching like a hawk.

The humanitarian response to the IDP crisis has once again proven the thesis proposed by Ijaz Shafi Gilani in his PILDAT paper, that Pakistan is a weak state, governing a strong nation. But Pakistanis helping Pakistanis is nothing new. The real news here is that Pakistan is as close as it will ever be to a 9/11 moment. The window is narrow and time is short. Pakistanis will not tolerate a long war. This window affords Pakistan and its partners the opportunity to begin to retake the narrative and deliver functional governance. Nothing less will do, and failure this time will result in problems much bigger than Swat and Buner. Beginning with the restoration of the 1973 constitution, the stripping of dictatorial fiat from the office of the president, and the reinvigoration of parliament, cabinet, and the office of the prime minister, Pakistan must change.