Ayaz Amir

President Musharraf spent time at a students’ convention in Islamabad and delivered a lengthy speech. Take his call for reviewing the Hadood and blasphemy laws. Stirring stuff except that after four and a half years in the saddle it might not be unreasonable to expect the Generalissimo to do something about these laws instead of repeating for the hundredth time the need to “review” them.

The rest of the Generalissimo’s speech too was notable for the usual suspects. He called for rejecting extremism and for making Pakistan a “tolerant, moderate and progressive nation.” Fine but who’s given Pakistan its image problem as a jihad-friendly nation? Who espoused jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir? The army in command of politics or the people with zero input in decision-making?

All right, times have changed and the army, under the impact of the attacks of Sep 11, has moved on, from jihad to a new state of blessedness called “enlightened moderation”. But when you are responsible for a mess in the first place, isn’t some humility in order? Straighten this one out too. How on earth do you make any nation “progressive” when the army barricades democratic space and insists on running the show itself?

Lest memories be short, this is a radical advance over the Zia years when no one could criticise the army directly, much less the ISI. Which leads to a strange paradox. Even as the military spreads its wings, it stands stripped of its holy cow status. The demystification of the army was long overdue. But it has accelerated under Musharraf, in part owing to the army’s involvement in too many things. For over 20 years the Pakistan army, especially the ISI, was involved in various forms of jihadi activity: against the Soviets, then in support of their favourites like Hekmatyar, then in support of the Taliban. At some point this activity also spilled over into Indian-occupied Kashmir. With the ISI as its auxiliaries were various jihadi organisations like the Lashkar-I-Tayyaba and, later, Jaish-I-Muhammad. When this culture of jihad was in full bloom, it was considered the greatest thing happening in Pakistan. Indeed, right until the eve of Sep 11, Musharraf subscribed as strongly to this orthodoxy as any of his peers. His change of heart and that of the army command only came about the morning after when America piled on the pressure and it became clear that there was no way of avoiding a reverse gear on Afghanistan. From jihad Pakistan swung suddenly to ‘moderation’. What fed the sense of betrayal, however, was not simply the fact that Pakistan was renouncing old policies. The u-turns could be explained and justified by reference to Sep 11. Harder to explain was the blind passion with which Pakistan became a convert to the US cause.

This, I suspect, was the emotion which produced Pakistan’s own crop of would-be Islamboulis. It can be argued that whatever the stimulus, it is a good thing Pakistan has turned its back on the past. But, in any real sense, has it? Jihad may have ended but the disequilibrium in the form of another version of military rule remains.

Moderation was something forced on Pakistan. What Pakistan must seek for itself is ‘modernism’, a modern, forward-looking outlook on life which, if the past is any guide, it won’t achieve as long as the army retains its stranglehold on politics and refuses to allow democracy to take hold. Ayaz, a cloumnist for Dawn, writes for THT from Islamabad