Some strategic errors

Shahid Scheik
Dawn, 5 November

FOR those who believed that Ms Bhutto’s return would promote national reconciliation and calm the political temperature, there has been a rude awakening. The gap between the promise and the reality of her return is occasioned by certain strategic errors, the first being the policy of confronting the ruling Muslim League.

The charge that the attack on Ms Bhutto’s procession was master-minded by ‘remnants of the Ziaul Haq regime’ and the barrage of return invective from the PML-Q suggests there is little possibility that a meaningful working relationship can develop between the PPP and the civil and military authorities with whom the party negotiated amnesty and terms of return to power. Indeed, the Zia-Bhutto polarisation of the 1980s has little relevance for today’s Pakistan; any rekindling of this feud can only result in strengthening undemocratic forces and drawing a new generation into old confrontations, without, in any way, advancing political stability.

Of course, the strategy of involving key government functionaries as abettors of terrorism, an issue on which Gen Musharraf is very much on the defensive in his management of external relations, may well be designed to sever the PML-Q’s existing links with the army and to place the US-backed PPP as the military’s principal power-sharing partner. Such an approach, however, overlooks the fact that a significant portion of the national political space is now occupied by others such as the MMA, the MQM and the Baloch nationalists, not to mention the extremists, who, despite a narrow political agenda, are able to use their electoral and supra-political abilities to wield disproportionate influence on national affairs.

Many of Gen Musharraf’s governance problems arise from his unsuccessful attempts to balance the demands of these actors within overall national policy objectives without at the same time aggravating the increasingly intrusive foreign policy concerns of Pakistan’s allies and neighbours.

The PPP, which during its three earlier terms in government has shown a marked aversion to accommodating any divergent viewpoints, is known to have serious differences on major issues with all of these actors and it is difficult to visualise that Ms Bhutto, handicapped by the party’s mindset, can succeed in an area where Gen Musharraf, despite full army backing, has failed.

A second strategic error is the disregard by the People’s Party of the important aspects of demographics, economic compulsions and culture change in civil society. Pakistan’s youthful voters, more politically sophisticated due to the outreach provided by satellite television, look for corresponding sophistication from their political leadership.The saga of the Chief Justice’s suspension has shown that people take a stand on issues, not personalities, and it was a disappointment for many that the PPP launched its electoral return not through a dynamic manifesto but via a personality cult-based mass demonstration that showed scant respect for the pursuit of normal civic life and economic activity.

Granted that Ms Bhutto, in the wake of her controversial agreement with Gen Musharraf, needed to demonstrate, both to doubters within her party and to opponents, that the core of PPP supporters and workers remained loyal to her person. Nevertheless, the choice of street power as the medium for her message remains questionable, and not just from the security perspective.

In the first place, since it remains unclear whether the crowds that welcomed Ms Bhutto view her as a supporter or opponent of Gen Musharraf, other parties may be tempted to similarly test the field, leading to intolerable dislocation of public life.

Secondly, it is well known that recent mass rallies have not yielded positive results, the one organised for Gen Musharraf on May 12 in Islamabad sullying rather than enhancing his political stature and the bloody standoff in Karachi the same day neither advancing the reputation of the MQM nor of those that planned to generate a mass turnout in support of the Chief Justice.

The greater disappointment and confusion emanates from the PPP’s response to the attack on Ms Bhutto’s procession, the party steadfast in its view that the bombing was an attack to derail the upcoming elections and that it was not the work of terrorists linked to religious extremism. Both assessments are questionable and an answer may be found in the fact that the attack was targeted pointedly at Ms Bhutto’s heavily-protected vehicle, rather than elsewhere along the procession where the poorly-guarded, packed-to-capacity crowds presented a far greater casualty probability.

The attempt on Ms Bhutto’s life may, in fact, be a continuation of the chain of attacks directed at high-profile targets that have included the president, the prime minister, the corps commander in Karachi, the federal interior minister, the US consulate in Karachi, defence ministry personnel in the vicinity of GHQ Rawalpindi, commandos within an army base in Tarbela, the residence of the chairman joint chiefs of staff committee and, most recently, air force personnel outside an airbase in Sargodha. If there is a connection, it is that they are all maximum-security sites, and the prominent personalities targeted are perceived as promoters of the US position on external and internal Pakistani issues relating to terrorism.

While such attacks demonstrate the ability and resources of the perpetrators to penetrate our most secure installations, they do not indicate any aversion to democracy or the election process. What they do achieve is the generation of reactions that work to the advantage of the terrorists, such as further curtailment of direct contact of high-level policymakers with independent persons, increasing their reliance on second- and third-hand memoranda as their principal sources of information.

Widening of external security and the forced closure of business establishments and major transport arteries result in magnifying in the public mind the territorial spread, numerical strength and penetrative ability of the terrorists.

Viewed against this backdrop, Ms Bhutto’s call for increased security measures for political leaders is likely to heighten the public sense of insecurity and aggravate the siege mentality already created by the terrorists. Inviting western experts to augment internal security will increase the polarisation with the extremists without solving the problem, because these experts, efficient in their home territories, have no success to their credit in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, despite full cooperation from the occupying powers for use even of extra-legal procedures to identify and bring the culprits to justice.

While sympathising with the outrage felt by Ms Bhutto, it has to be said that the solution to achieving peaceful political activity does not lie in the increase of security around political leaders but in destroying the terrorist cells. This is not likely to happen overnight; neither are the terrorists likely to curtail their sabotage simply because the military is poised to change its civilian camouflage.

The value propositions that Ms Bhutto brings are her personal charisma, the PPP’s horizontal and vertical voter outreach and the party’s liberal outlook as the bastion of civilian support to anti-terrorist measures. Ms Bhutto’s plan to vanquish all her political opponents before she extends that support may prove to be counter-productive for her party and deadly for the body politic.