Saturday’s edition of The Nation included an article that claims that
President Zardari has been misusing foreign aid from the 2005
Earthquake. The story has now been picked up by Express Tribune, Dawn,
and others. But where did this story come from, and is it reliable?

The story originated with Dean Nelson, the Telegraph’s South Asia
Editor based in New Delhi, when he wrote for the British newspaper on
Friday that Zardari ‘misused’ over £300 million in foreign aid for
victims of the 2005 earthquake. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
worldnews/asia/pakistan/7944792/300m-earthquake-aid-misused-by-
Zardari.html)

The first observation that must be made is that the Telegraph’s
headline is so misleading that one must wonder if the newspaper is
being deliberately untruthful for the sake of sensationalism. The idea
that Asif Ali Zardari misused any earthquake relief funds is supported
by absolutely nothing in Dean Nelson’s article.

Actually, what Dean Nelson writes is problematic on its own right.

First, Mr Nelson’s claim is based on statements by “senior Pakistani
officials”. As if taking a cue from our own media, Mr Nelson does not
reveal who these supposed officials are – not even what office they
allegedly hold.

Second, nowhere in Mr Nelson’s article is there any evidence presented
for misuse of funds. What the reporter writes is that some anonymous
“officials” (and we’ve seen how reliable anonymous officials can be -
http://pakistanmediawatch.com/?s=anonymous+officials) have told him
that their office suffered budget cuts.

But even Mr Nelson’s own article contradicts this fact when the only
named official, Finance Secretary Salman Siddique explained that the
issue is not foreign aid money being diverted, but that ERRA had
requested extra funds that were not available due to the country’s
fiscal deficit. As for foreign aid funds, “No cuts were imposed last
year,” the Finance Secretary stated.

Mr Dean Nelson, who goes by the name, ‘DelhiDean’ on Twitter (http://
twitter.com/delhidean), is a curious fellow. His recent Twitter feed
takes swipes at Pakistani politicians, saying Salmaan Taseer is
“sucking up” and calling Zardari “toast”. Reading his off-the-cuff
statements and the sensational headline that is not supported by his
reporting, one one cannot help but think that Mr Dean Nelson has a
political angle.

In fact, reading past articles by Mr Dean Nelson leaves one with the
distinct impression that he cannot write objectively about Pakistan –
certainly not about Zardari. Mr Nelson’s article of 5 August is
titled, “Bilawal Bhutto Zardari: Born to rule Pakistan, but destined
to fail” that repeats a string of anti-PPP talking points including
the old story that Zardari “purged” Benazir supporters from the party
leadership (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/deannelson/100049711/
bilawal-zardari-bhutto-born-to-rule-pakistan-but-destined-to-fail/).
Much like his Pakistani colleague Shaheen Sehbai, Mr Dean Nelson seems
to have traded his press pass for a political badge and a crystal
ball. (http://pakistanmediawatch.com/tag/fortune-telling/)

DelhiDean, as he calls himself, has a much different attitude towards
India (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/deannelson/100049027/what-
have-the-indians-ever-done-for-us/), though, writing that:

“To succeed, Britain will need to be reminded how much we already owe
India, the part it played in making us what we are, and why the
“shared history” we have is much more equally shared than those who
obsess about immigration realise.”

It is sad to see a reporter of Dean Nelson’s stature resort to
blatantly political posturing in a nation which he does not live and
has no connection. While he writes that the UK ‘owes’ India, he
discourages people from helping flood victims in Pakistan because of a
personal dislike of the nation’s president. He let his own political
feelings cloud his judgment, and he called attention to
unsubstantiated rumours with sensational headlines to ensure that he
got more attention than those who are suffering.

But there is one thing more sad than this, which is that our own media
has picked up this story and repeated it without asking the obvious
questions. Who are these “officials” that claimed funds have not been
released? Where are these funds that were supposedly misused? And why
is a British reporter based in New Delhi writing sensational political
articles to discourage humanitarian relief in Pakistan?

That’s the real story.

Outside Zardari’s appearance at the PPP rally in Birmingham, England,
a crowd of protesters gathered to express their opposition to the
president and his message. Inside, crowds chanted their support for
the president. But there was another story that was missed by the
press altogether.

This is a perfect example of how even reputable foreign and Pakistani
news services can misreport stories about Pakistan when they do not
receive the facts from the Pakistani media. Also, it shows how all
media sometimes miss important facts when reporting a story.

BBC released a video about the protests at President Zardari’s rally
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10905129), and noted that it was
indicative of the political divide in the Pakistani public. The video
featured a couple of men speaking in English and saying that they
think that the president would have been better to stay in Pakistan
during the floods, and a clip of Bilawal fundraising for flood victims
in London.

But that wasn’t all.

The video shows scenes from the protests outside the rally filled with
signs that say, “Save Pakistan from America” and “Khilafah Only Way to
Stop America”. One might ask, what does America have to do with
Zardari speaking to a PPP rally in the UK, or with the floods that are
devastating the country? In fact, several shots from the video clearly
show protesters waving Khilafah flags.

A commenter on this blog recently asked “Do the British Broadcasting
Corporation and The Guardian not check simple verifiable facts that
they report…And what possibly makes you think that these news services
rely on Pakistani media sources, without any verification?”

Actually, there is a quite simple explanation. Many Western reporters
may not be aware of such concepts like caliphate or even of
organizations like Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Even our own reporters get caught
up in a particular narrative – “People protesting Zardari decision” –
and miss the evidence that there is perhaps another story there.

The fact the protests outside the rally were largely organised and
manned by members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir was largely overlooked by the
press, despite this organization being banned by a large number of
countries including Egypt, Turkey, and Bangladesh. The group was
banned in Pakistan by Gen. Musharraf until a decision by the Lahore
High Court reversed the proscription.

In fact, Hizb-ut-Tahrir has orchestrated protests at previous
appearances by President Zardari since he was elected, arguing that
Pakistan’s government should be overthrown and replaced with Khilafah.

[VIDEO: Hizb-ut-Tahrir protest against Zardari]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy_arwD8s6c&feature=player_embedded

So while there is certainly a story about Zardari’s decision to attend
diplomatic meetings in Europe during the flood crisis – a story that
President Zardari himself has addressed (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/
0/8ec3998c-a3b7-11df-a100-00144feabdc0.html)  – there is another
important story that was largely missed by both the foreign and
Pakistani media: The protests outside Zardari’s speech in Birmingham
largely had nothing to do with Zardari’s decision to attend the rally,
but more to do with a highly controversial jihadist group that opposes
the concept of democracy and is working to overthrow the Pakistani
government and install a new Caliphate.

The latest PEW research institute’s survey on the attitudes in Pakistan has brought out some very interesting facts that reflect the difference of world view that the support base of PML-N voters has with the rest of the country.

The survey has found out that while there is till a very high number of Pakistanis that see US as an enemy, anti-US feelings are strongest in Punjab and among PML-N supporters.

About six-in-ten Pakistanis (59%) see the US as an enemy of their country that has been down from 64% in 2009. Only 11% now consider the US as a partner and 16% say it is neither a partner nor an enemy.

In a nation like ours where politicians and media both have only tried to strengthen already held perceptions in order to

gain votes or win media ratings this is nothing surprising. Hardly there is any attempt to educate people with facts and most perceptions are built through drawing room conspiracy theories and outlandish claims.

What should worry educated and well-informed Pakistanis is the figures that come out of Punjab in such surveys. Those who live in Punjab are far more likely than those in other regions to consider the US as an enemy of Pakistan; about sixty-nine (69%) in that province express this opinion, compared with 52% in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 40% in Sindh.

Interestingly the view that the US is an enemy of Pakistan is also much more prevalent among Pakistanis who are affiliated with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) than among those in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). About seven-in-ten (72%) in the PML-N, Pakistan’s opposition party, consider the US an enemy; just 9% say it is a partner and 12% say it is neither. While fewer than half (46%) in the PPP see the US as an enemy, 15% consider it a partner and 21% say it is neither.

Punjab is the largest province of the country hence it has very large presence too in the country’s institutions that wield power. Additionally Punjab’s middle class that forms the vote bank for PML-N holds a very negative view of the US. The Pew survey findings thus are very important indicator showing that PML-N, a party that hopes to win the right to govern the country in the future, has a vote base that is anti-US. We have witnessed in the past that such sentiments have often only succeeded in isolating Pakistan as a country. The cost of isolation in the modern world is manifold though romantics often project isolationist states as a role model. Rarely an insight into the suppression and economic plight of the common citizens in such states is focused in the narrative developed by romantics. This very narrative also has used nuclear chest thumping as away of raising national sentiment and then a byproduct of this emotionalism has acted as an apologist argument for the terrorist.

The most worrisome aspect of the survey findings is that Punjab has a very divergent worldview than the rest of Pakistan. There is very wide gap between Punjab and Sindh when it comes to their looking at USA and by extension to the developed world. Mostly such surveys have a heavy representation of the urban centers. Punjab’s urban centers are dominated by middle class trading communities. It is then no wonder that PML-N finds it difficult to articulate its policy on terrorism. Although sometimes the top leadership tries to make right noises on the question of terrorism, its parliamentarians often express views that exactly are reflective of their support base.

It is also interesting to note that currently PML-N does not enjoy any close relationship with any representative party of the smaller provinces. The PML-N’s policy on terrorism is one of the major reasons for its distance from other parties that have a very bold and open stance on the issue. What should worry PML-N is that as it

pushes for more active role in any future governance setup it has to understand that it cannot

govern the country merely on a majority won in Punjab’s urban centers.

The worldview that is held by majority of Pakistanis (represented by Punjab’s heavy presence in any sample size) will ultimately start influencing the state’s relationship with the outside world and that in turn will lead us to isolation. If the rest of the provinces of the country did not agree to such isolationism and its cost then there will be an unbridgeable gap between Punjab and the rest of the Pakistan. Last time Punjab had gone its own way in determining the course of the state and its institutions and we had witnessed the debacle of 1971. Then the media and political

classes of Punjab had erred in sensing the sentiments of the Bengalis and the smaller provinces and we could not handle the resulting chaos.

Can we in Punjab be more sensible in our worldview or we would continue to drag the state to troubled waters?

Often, I am asked by readers or friends abroad what the Taliban want. Why, they ask, are they slaughtering hundreds of innocent people wherever they can? What is their purpose? What is their agenda?

The short answer is power. Other excuses for their murderous excesses are a fig-leaf: demands for the Sharia and the expulsion of foreign forces from the region are no more than window-dressing.

These terrorists realise that they cannot achieve power through peaceful, democratic means as they have no support. Even relatively moderate Islamic parties have been repeatedly trounced at the polls in Pakistan. So extremists reject democracy as it does not give them access to power.

Established religious parties in Pakistan have exploited the repeated bouts of army rule to further their agenda. So far, they have been remarkably successful. But while jihadi groups might cut secret deals with intelligence agencies, even our army is reluctant to enter into open, formal agreements with them.

This leaves only the path of terrorism open to them. Pakistani extremists watched enviously as the Afghan Taliban under Mullah Omar were propelled to power with help from our army. Seeking to replicate this success, they have mounted a sustained campaign of destabilisation against the government.

Another thing Islamic extremists oppose vehemently wherever they are operating is modern, scientific education. Educated only in the scriptures, they have little understanding of the physical and social sciences. While they may have many operatives who are highly educated, the top ideologues are seminary-trained zealots. Although they use Islamic rhetoric and rationalisations, their true goal is to seize and wield absolute power.

In Nigeria, an obscure Muslim sect recently launched a deadly campaign under the banner of ‘Boko Haram’, meaning that modern education was haram, or sinful. Hundreds died as they went on a rampage before being ruthlessly crushed. Nevertheless, their primitive credo lives on.

In Pakistan, the Taliban and their murderous partners have destroyed hundreds of schools. They have focused on girls’ schools, issuing threats to those they haven’t yet demolished. Underneath their theocratic justifications for their violent opposition to rational education lies the knowledge that they are not equipped to compete in the modern world. They are thus locked in a battle to tear down a system that marginalises them, and to force everybody else to obey their diktat since, according to them, only they are qualified to interpret the scriptures.

Their apologists — and they are legion in our ruling classes as well as our media — demand that we must negotiate with them. What they do not say is how this should be done. How do you talk to ruthless killers who saw off their victims’ heads and gleefully post the videos of their acts on the Internet? Or force young boys to gun down tied and blindfolded prisoners? Or flog young girls screaming for mercy?

Hakeemullah Mehsud of the Pakistani Taliban and his cohorts want nothing short of absolute power. The only thing they are willing to discuss are the terms of surrender of the Pakistan government. If we cede territory to them — as we did earlier in Swat — we are consigning our citizens to the kind of nightmare the people of Swat had to undergo.

The first thing Fazlullah did when he was handed Swat was to shut down the schools that had not been blown up earlier. Barber shops and video shops were ordered to follow suit. All forms of entertainment were effectively banned. Is this the kind of life we wish to condemn our countrymen to?

Remember that we have a model of this kind of barbaric society: under the Afghan Taliban, our neighbour was rapidly pushed back to the dark ages. Women were flogged for the crime of showing an inch of their ankles as they walked wearing all-enveloping shrouds. Male doctors could not attend to them, even in life-threatening cases. They were not allowed to leave their homes to work, and girls were forbidden from going to school.

Those urging the government to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban need to be clear whether they want their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters to lead the lives their Afghan counterparts had to not so long ago. To the Taliban, these are non-negotiable conditions to their stated desire to impose their version of the Sharia on the rest of us.

Largely due to the shrill voices that have crowded out reason from media debate, there is a lot of confusion and ambiguity about what the Taliban want, and how far the government should go in meeting their demands. Some argue that their excesses are the result of the western presence in Afghanistan, and our government’s military anti-Taliban operations in the tribal areas. How the extremists hold school-going children responsible for these policies, and destroy schools is something their apologists in the media have failed to explain.

What sustains this mindset is the steady inroads madressahs have made in Pakistan during and since the Zia era. The decades since the 1980s have witnessed a rapid erosion of modern, secular values. The voices of reason have been muted, and we are caught in the grip of a mindless anti-West hysteria that pushes even moderates into the Taliban camp.

As the threat of the Taliban looms larger over Pakistan, schools in Karachi and Lahore have come to resemble armed camps. The fear of terrorist attacks unsettles children and parents alike. Ever the enemies of education, the Taliban will stop at nothing in their quest for power.

How should the government respond to this deadly threat? The voices of appeasement clamour for concessions. But the Taliban have repeatedly said they will halt their campaign of terror only when their version of the Sharia has been imposed, the army withdraws from the tribal areas, and the Americans cease their drone attacks.

Even if the first two demands are conceded, it is unlikely the Americans will stop using the only weapon that is proving effective in this conflict. Should our army actually pull out, it is more than probable that American troops will partially replace them in fighting the Taliban on our side of the border. There is no way they will allow the jihadis in Fata to target them without retaliating.

So much as I wish it were otherwise, I fear a military solution is the only one currently available. Negotiating from a position of weakness is a sure recipe for disaster.

The National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) was a dead duck the moment the National Assembly refused to have anything to do with it. If it still needed another shot in the head, a division bench of the Supreme Court (SC) could have done the needful, no extraordinary issue of constitutional theory being involved in the outcome.

But we have not been that lucky, all 17 of their SC lordships hearing the NRO case whose detailed judgment — written by My Lord the Chief Justice — is now out, and about which the shrillest comments are coming from the already committed or the already biased.

This judgment is not for the fainthearted because it doesn’t make for easy reading. This is not syntax at the point of a rapier; more a sledgehammer driving home its many obvious points.

Discrimination — favouring a certain classification of people, to the exclusion of others — was enough of a touchstone by which to fell the NRO and make short work of it. But in its wisdom — and I readily confess there may be reasons for doing so not readily accessible to untrained legal minds like mine — the SC chose to traverse a longer route, to arrive at much the same conclusion.

In so doing the SC has pointed the way, in part, to a quaint realm of thought. It says the Constitution has a conscience which nothing must violate, a point of view likely to sound strange to the many cynics inhabiting the Republic who are convinced that anything by way of both innocence and conscience the 1973 Constitution lost long ago at the hands of such conscience-keepers as Gen Ziaul Haq.

Zia’s greatest collaborators were superior judges, as were Pervez Musharraf’s when he seized power many years later. It is a sobering thought that all the 17 pillars of wisdom now in the SC took oath under Musharraf’s Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) in 2000. The Constitution may have had a conscience even then but it wasn’t strong enough to deter baptism in the waters of the PCO.

Nor was this all. Just as earlier coups had been validated by the superior judiciary, Musharraf’s coup was validated too in 2000 in the famous Zafar Ali Shah case. Among the luminaries on that bench headed by Chief Justice Irshad Hasan Khan was an up and coming judge by the name of Iftikhar Chaudhry.

By which I do not mean to say that people remain always the same and do not change. They change all the time. Some of us as we grow old become worse, leaving the idealism of youth behind. Some of us grow better, leaving behind the thoughtlessness or follies of our younger days. But the least that should come with the remembrance of past omissions or mistakes is a measure of humility.

How well has Ghalib put it: Mein ne Majnoon pe lark pan mein Asad, Sang uthaya tau sar yaad aya. When I thought of casting a stone at Majnoon, I thought of my own head — meaning my own follies.

In his note to the detailed judgment written by CJ Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad Khawaja writes as follows: “At the very outset it must be said, without sounding extravagant, that the past three years in the history of Pakistan have been momentous, and can be accorded the same historical significance as the events of 1947 when the country was created and those of 1971 when it was dismembered.” He goes on to say: “It is with this sense of the nation’s past that we find ourselves called upon to understand and play the role envisaged for the Supreme Court by the Constitution.”

Without sounding extravagant? There’s a touch of hubris about this declaration which almost amounts to saying that caught as we are in the midst of great events, it is history which calls upon us to make great decisions. A judiciary best fulfils its functions if it is faithful to the letter of the law and if it is honest in interpreting it; and if it doesn’t play second fiddle to dictators and doesn’t bend the law to suit their purposes. A sense of historical mission, which is what is suggested by Justice Khawaja’s observation, is best left to the people and their chosen representatives.

And if it is history we should consider, it must be history in its entirety and not slices of history susceptible to selective interpretation. Nowhere is the judgment’s take on recent history more evident, and perhaps more startling, than in its analysis of the meaning of the word ‘reconciliation’. It says that the NRO was a deal between two individuals — Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto — for their personal objectives.

“We are of the opinion,” says the judgment, “that the NRO was not promulgated for ‘national reconciliation’ but for achieving the objectives which absolutely have no nexus with the (sic) ‘national reconciliation’ because the nation of Pakistan, as a whole, has not derived any benefit from the same.”

In attesting to the subjective nature of the NRO, the judgment quotes this from Benazir Bhutto’s book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West: “The talks with Musharraf remained erratic. He didn’t want us resigning from the assemblies when he sought re-election. There wouldn’t be much difference in his winning whether we boycotted or contested, but we used this to press him to retire as army chief. He cited judicial difficulties. It was a harrowing period. After many, many late-night calls, he passed a National Reconciliation Order, rather than lift the ban on a twice-elected prime minister seeking office a third time, which he said he would do later.”

Is this an individual talking or a major political leader discussing the when and how of a democratic transition? The keystone, the flagstone, of Musharraf’s rule was his position as army chief. And here when Benazir Bhutto is negotiating the removal of Musharraf’s uniform — in which she eventually succeeded — their lordships are of the opinion that this deal between the two was just confined to their two selves and had no wider significance whatsoever.

This is a selective reading of the past three years which in Justice Khawaja’s estimation have been as momentous as anything in our past. There were many things which came together to pave the way for the transition from Musharraf to the present order. Different chapters were written by different authors.

The lawyers’ movement wrote one chapter, arguably the most important in weakening the mainstays of the Musharraf dispensation. CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry and the judges who stood with him wrote another chapter when they defied Musharraf. This was a first in Pakistani history. Judges had been collaborators of military strongmen. They had never stood up to them before, at least not in this manner.

There was a third chapter written by Benazir Bhutto and, much as we may dislike the notion, by our American friends when in tandem they prevailed upon Musharraf to shed his uniform. The judiciary and the lawyers’ movement had an indirect hand in this in that they had created the climate in which Musharraf had become an enfeebled ruler. But this should not detract from Benazir Bhutto’s role who played her cards shrewdly and engaged with Musharraf in a manner which persuaded him to hand over the army baton to a successor.

The fourth chapter was written in Benazir Bhutto’s blood when she was assassinated in Liaquat Bagh. The lawyers and the judiciary had weakened Musharraf. They hadn’t destroyed him. Benazir Bhutto’s death rocked the Musharraf order by bringing the latent anger of the people to the surface. There was nothing that could save Musharraf thereafter, Benazir Bhutto proving more powerful in death than she had been in life.

And it was only with the coming of democracy that the judges detained by Musharraf were freed. And only with the so-called long march led by Nawaz Sharif that, after many travails, they were eventually restored. In other words, it was the political process and the climate of the times which led to their historic restoration. How can their lordships see themselves in isolation from all this history?

The NRO was a bad law and there can be no cavil with this. But it was part of a larger picture of which there is scarce a mention in the entire judgment.

We have a developed talent, honed over the years, for counting the trees and missing the larger picture. We see things in one dimension and forget that there may be other sides to reality. This leads to false conclusions and the begetting of great tragedies.

Let us for argument’s sake accept that Asif Ali Zardari, the luckless president of a luckless country, is the author of a thousand villainies, the darkest thing to have happened to the Islamic Republic. But let us at least weigh his real or presumed infamy in the scales of history before coming to a judgment about what he deserves.

Has Zardari done anything which comes close to the unbeatable folly of the 1965 war? If anything undid us it was that foolish call to arms. We had set out to conquer Kashmir. At Tashkent we ended up lowering the casket of the Kashmir cause into the ground.

Do Zardari’s alleged crimes measure up to the folly of General Yahya Khan who presided over the break-up of Pakistan? If ever the larger picture escaped anyone it was that latter-day Muhammad Shah Rangila, caught up in circumstances beyond his control or comprehension. We couldn’t stand the notion of meeting East Pakistani aspirations half-way, just as we are having a hard time now understanding Baloch aspirations.

The frenzied crowds which poured out in 1977 to protest the alleged rigging of the elections by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto called for the establishment of Nizam-e-Mustafa (the dispensation of the Holy Prophet). Like the supposed reformers of today who think they are battling corruption, the enthusiasts of 1977 were convinced the promised kingdom was just a step away if only that incarnation of evil, Bhutto, was taken care of.

Bhutto was taken care of and eventually hanged but the frothing crowds were no nearer Nizam-e-Mustafa or anything like it. Instead, for their pains, they got General Ziaul Haq and the long night of his dark tyranny. Zia first proclaimed his aim as Islamization. Then it was accountability. These were pretexts for suppressing democracy and perpetuating his rule. Zia was perhaps the greatest disaster to befall Pakistan. We are still living with the consequences.

Nothing in our history has been more dangerous than the simplicity and innocence of our good intentions. Riding on their back we have stood before not the pearly gates promising everlasting bliss but the gates of hell. It is scarcely an accident that many of the voices now earnestly urging the Supreme Court to embrace an ever-widening agenda of reform were early supporters of Musharraf’s military rule. Such contradictions bestride our history.

Khan Roedad Khan hailed Musharraf as a messiah come to rid the country of its woes. Khan Imran Khan, to his lasting chagrin, was also part of the Musharraf-welcome crowd. At least Imran has the decency to say he was wrong. Others are not so coy. There was indeed a time when prominent media pundits, now in ultra-reformist mode, conducted themselves virtually as Musharraf spokesmen. Humein yaad hai zara zara, tumhein yaad ho keh na yaad ho.

Zardari may deserve all the pejorative adjectives in the dictionary but has he committed any crime which comes close to the enormity of the disaster that was Kargil? That adventure was meant to seize advantage in Kashmir once again. It ended up exposing Pakistan to fierce international criticism and giving birth to the term cross-border terrorism, the stick with which Pakistan has been regularly beaten ever since. Are we calling for a national commission to investigate Kargil, as we should? No, we are into other things.

Talking of Musharraf’s military rule, what was the role of our present lordships when Triple One Brigade, our highest constitutional authority, reinterpreted the Constitution once again on the long afternoon of Oct 12, 1999? A few judges — Chief Justice Saiduzzaman Siddiqui comes to mind — did not take oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) issued two months later. But if imperfect memory serves, all of their present lordships, at one time or the other, took oath under the PCO.

Not only that, some of them were on the bench which validated Musharraf’s takeover. A few, including My Lord the Chief Justice, were on the bench which validated Musharraf’s takeover for the second time in the Zafar Ali Shah case (2005).

Of course, we must let bygones be bygones and deal with the present. But then this principle should be for everyone. We should not be raising monuments to selective memory or selective condemnation. If the PCO of 2007 was such a bad idea, in what category should we place the PCO of 2000? And if in this Turkish bath all are like the emperor without his clothes, the least this should inculcate is a sense of humility.

And if we accept the logic that there can be a transformation in the nature of things, that people who did questionable things once-upon-a-time can undergo a conversion on the road to Damascus (or anywhere else) and become knights in shining armour, dispensing light and so on, should not some of the same indulgence, the same benefit of doubt, be extended to others?

Zardari cut deals and earned commissions and for his talent in this field earned the sobriquet Mr Ten Percent. You reap what you sow. So if Zardari is haunted by the ghosts of his past, and if his past keeps popping up in conversation and national discourse, he has only himself to blame. But now, whether we like it or not, he is something more than a mere replica of his past. He is the constitutionally elected President of the Republic.

For his failings in government, for his mistakes as President, for incompetence or inadequacy — if these are the charges brought against him — he can be pilloried and even ridiculed. This is part of democracy, part of the political process.

But when hidden forces with their hidden agendas go about manipulating things, pulling strings from behind, and if elements in the media or other distinguished places become witting or unwitting partners in this game, then it is not democracy being served or strengthened but intrigue and conspiracy.

The Supreme Court judgment on the vires of the 2007 PCO came on the 31st of July, 2009. But the knives were out for Zardari much before that. Zardari of course heads a team with no shortage of incompetents on board. In a land even otherwise dedicated to mediocrity they seemingly outshine all competitors. (Keen for a doctorate myself, I am still trying to discover the location of that celebrated seat of learning, Montecello University.)

President Zardari can also be his own worst enemy. Who told him to deliver the speech he did at Naudero on BB’s second death anniversary? There were things in it which were best left unsaid. Those whom the gods would destroy they first push into such speech-making. But it is also true that Zardari has been driven into a corner. The mandate he got — constitutionally it bears remembering — is being nullified by other means.

Their lordships are all men of honour and rectitude who stood up to Musharraf’s dictatorship and gave hope to the country. But their lordships are just one part of the national spectrum. If they are men of honour it doesn’t automatically follow that everyone else in the equation is also playing by the same rules.

There is thus a need for caution, a need to draw a line between past and present. Let us study our past and draw the correct conclusions. But let us not, wittingly or unwittingly, destabilise democracy. Cleansing the national stables is a laudable aim and makes for a heady slogan. But as our history demonstrates, good intentions, unsupported by a sense of reality or a sense of proportion, lead to unforeseen consequences.

The temple of democracy is a cohesive whole. There is no such thing as smashing one pillar and hoping the rest of the structure will survive. It won’t. And when the slabs come crashing down, we will be the losers while those who have always operated in the shadows will have the last laugh. So Happy New Year. Our curse is to live forever in interesting times. May the new year be a bit less exciting than the one which has just gone by.

The fact that in its response to the Supreme Court judgment of Dec 16 the nation is divided cannot be denied, and prudence demands that the causes of this division should not be brushed aside without careful scrutiny.

A large section of society believes that Pakistan has become a corruption-free entity and a judicially controlled democracy while a none-too-small section feels deeply hurt. Much can be said for and against both sides.

The hailers are largely guided by their desire to wipe off the shame of becoming one of the most corrupt states in the world. They appear full of zeal for righteousness. However, they will do their cause enormous harm if they fall for the universally repudiated view that the ends always justify the means. The people of Pakistan paid a heavy price for taking this route when they welcomed the usurpation of power by Ayub Khan, Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf.

The wailers are largely moved by the apparent setback to their group. They think the law has been used for a political purpose. They have strong memories of the Tamizuddin and Nusrat Bhutto cases and the judgment against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. They could be wrong. However, they will do themselves enormous harm if they appear to be defending corrupt persons or practices.

Somewhere between the two extremes stand those who wish to make sure that good intentions do not lead to the dreaded hell. Some of them have a longer record of denouncing corrupt rulers and condemning the NRO than the born-yesterday anti-vice squad. They believe the NRO was a bad law, that it should not have been made, that no one claiming public support should have sought to benefit from it and that those who made this obnoxious law as well as its beneficiaries should pay for their lapses.

According to them the Supreme Court verdict has two parts: one dealing with the NRO, the other with broader themes. They have no quarrel with the first part. They only want to have their fears of the long-term implications of some of the assumptions underlying the court order duly and properly addressed.

The NRO was such an easy target that a single shot (Articles 4, 8 and 25 of the constitution) was enough to demolish it. A fusillade from heavy cannons (Articles 62 (f), 63 (i and p), 89, 175, and 227) has created problems.

The clauses of Articles 62 and 63 cited now constitute part of Ziaul Haq’s arbitrary amendments. They have never been debated by a representative assembly and have been consistently denounced by democratic opinion. It has often been said that the legislatures have not touched them. But this argument should be examined in the context of the circumstances in which the post-Zia assemblies have been elected and the conditions under which the democratic regimes have been allowed to function. Invoking Ziaul Haq’s interpolations in the 1973 constitution, whose revival in its original form is the battle cry of all democratic parties, is like quoting a PCO judge’s ruling before today’s independent judiciary.

Further, reference has again been made to the ‘salient features of the constitution, i.e., independence of the judiciary, federalism, parliamentary form of government blended with Islamic provisions’ and ‘no change in the basic features of the constitution is possible through amendment’. The argument was last heard in May 2000 when 12 judges of the Supreme Court had not only upheld the Pervez Musharraf coup of October 1999 but also allowed him the power to amend the constitution.

Now, the debate over certain parts of a national constitution being outside parliament’s authority to amend them has been going on in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh for over 40 years (Indian Supreme Court verdicts of 1967, 1973 and 1975; Pakistan Supreme Court verdicts of 1963, 1997 and 2000). Professor Conrad, the German scholar who has done much to promote this principle, has succinctly put it thus: ‘Any amending body organised within the statutory scheme, howsoever verbally unlimited its power, cannot by its very structure change the fundamental pillars supporting its constitutional authority.’

An essential question is: are courts the sole forum for determining the basic or fundamental or salient features of a constitution? In many countries (including Canada, Germany and India) the provisions that cannot be routinely amended by parliament are identified in the constitution itself. This is an issue that calls for a thorough debate.

In any case the issue before the Supreme Court was not an amendment to the constitution that would have attracted the basic features theory. The issue before it was an ordinary presidential ordinance. And for laws and ordinances that conflict with the constitution clear remedies are available.

By invoking Article 227 in the present case the Supreme Court seems to have put Islamic injunctions in command of the whole constitution. Quite a few lawyers argue that this amounts to overruling the court’s judgments in the Hakim Khan (1992) and Kaneez Fatima (1993) cases.

The position as far as a lay writer can understand is this: the power to strike down a law for being repugnant to Islamic injunctions lies with the Federal Shariat Court and no other court. Article 227 only allows the Council of Islamic Ideology to recommend changes in laws on the ground of repugnancy to Islam. The article does not empower any forum to strike down any law. When 17 judges of the highest court invest Article 227 with the power to nullify a law it could amount to constitution-making. It is necessary to dispel the fears that the courts could start striking down any law they consider violative of Islamic injunctions.

Besides, the matter is not one of law alone, it is essentially political. The ‘salient features of the constitution’ theory has no answer for conflicts between these features — between a parliamentary form of government and Islamic injunctions, for instance. And what will happen to the independence of the judiciary if one accepts the view propounded by many Islamic scholars that in an Islamic order the ameer is the head of all state organs — the executive, the legislature and the judiciary?

One cannot forget the case started by Mr Kaikaus, a former Supreme Court judge, in a Shariat appellate bench but which was dismissed by the Federal Shariat Court on a technical ground. He appealed to the bench but withdrew his plea because he did not think the judges on it were Muslims! Mr Kaikaus had branded the parliamentary form of government, the system of elections, and the existence of political parties as un-Islamic! Fears of many such cases coming up are not groundless. The people of Pakistan have every right to ask whether Ziaul Haq’s agenda has been revived.

President Obama’s Dec. 1 address to the nation correctly listed a partnership with Pakistan as a crucial foundation of policy toward Afghanistan. Sustaining that partnership may be his most formidable challenge.

The Achilles’ heel of our past alliances with Pakistan has been both countries’ unwillingness to confront the discrepancies in their goals. This time, we need to be clear on where our goals do and don’t coincide, and what we are prepared to do about them.

Calculus after 9/11

When Pakistan signed up for the US-led campaign against terrorism in the anxious days following 9/11, the two partners, as in the past, had objectives that overlapped – but only in part. Pakistan, like the United States, saw Al Qaeda as a danger to the world. But its other objectives were not shared by the US.

As it had when it worked with the US during the cold war, Islamabad hoped to bolster its rivalry with India through US power. Pakistan wanted to enhance its influence, and eliminate India’s, in Afghanistan. These goals were more important for Pakistan than the US objective of ending the Taliban regime and putting extremist groups out of business.

The collapse of Afghanistan’s Taliban government late in 2001 highlighted the difference. For the US, it was the first big success of the war against terrorism; for Pakistan, it looked like a strategic disaster. Pakistan was losing an embarrassing but pliant ally, and Kabul would now be under a government billed as friendly to India.

By early 2007, the disconnect between the two countries’ objectives was obvious. The regrouped Taliban threatened both the NATO military forces and the Karzai government, and US officials publicly expressed concern about the support they enjoyed from Pakistan’s intelligence services.

Pakistan’s official policy favored strengthening and stabilizing the Afghan government. However, Pakistani decisionmakers, with uniformly low expectations of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s attitude toward Pakistan and his government’s capacity, had strong motives for keeping their ties with the group they had helped install in Kabul in the mid-1990s. 

First things first

Countries defend their own interests first, before worrying about those of their friends, so it is unrealistic to expect that Pakistan’s goals will be fully in sync with those of the US. But Islamabad’s record this past year is heartening.

It has deployed the Army against domestic Taliban insurgents both in the “settled areas” of Pakistan like the Swat Valley, and in the ungoverned tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border like South Waziristan.

Its recognition that these will be long-term campaigns vital to the state indicates that there is a greater degree of congruence between US and Pakistani perceptions of the threat of terrorism than many Pakistanis had previously accepted.

Window of opportunity

This represents the “window of opportunity” that Obama administration officials refer to. But it does not mean that US and Pakistani priorities are fully aligned.

If we want to build a long-term partnership, we need to recognize both its potential and its limitations. Pakistan has a long history of manipulating its American ally by calculating the minimum necessary action to lower Washington’s anxiety. The Obama administration needs to be clear on the “price of admission” for a long-term partnership.

Mr. Obama’s speech suggested two “must haves”: action against the Afghan Taliban’s sanctuaries in Balochistan Province, and putting the extremists that operate in other parts of Pakistan, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, out of business. Neither can be accomplished in one go, but unless clear-eyed analysis indicates that Pakistan is truly moving ahead on both, the US will not have enough of a partnership to carry it through the Afghan mine fields. Americans have deluded themselves before; they must not do so again.

The importance of staying power

What does the US need to contribute to the partnership? The key is staying power. Pakistanis view the US as an unreliable partner that has used Pakistan when it was convenient and abandoned it when the moment passed. The 2011 exit ramp for US troops in Afghanistan risks reinforcing this perception.

To counteract it, we have already offered long-term aid. We need to bolster this with real support for Pakistan’s internal security –

 capacity-building, funding, and recognition of the challenges Pakistan faces.

Finally, always provided we are on track toward our primary goals, we should find an opportunity to have the US-Pakistan relationship “countersigned” by the Congress, which the Pakistanis see as the “gold standard” in determining whether the US is serious.

This is the basis for a serious long-term partnership – but not an unlimited one.

Pakistan will still consider India its major threat, consuming the lion’s share of its defense resources. The US will also have major interests in its partnership with India, and will work with India’s growing power in the Indian Ocean and emerging role in East Asia.

But if Pakistan can stop providing space for terrorist organizations to operate, and the US has the grit to stay with this effort as long as it is genuinely moving ahead, we can work together in spite of goals that diverge in other respects. In the process, we will make an important down payment toward regional peace and stability.

Teresita C. Schaffer is Director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is a retired US diplomat who served in Pakistan and is currently working on a book about US-Pakistan negotiations.

It was in Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran that America was labelled The Great Satan. Judging from current trends, the day is not too far off when America will be given the same moniker in Pakistan. Ever since the US resorted to carrying out drone attacks against terrorist suspects inside Pakistan, vocal condemnations of America have been widespread. The furore over the Kerry-Lugar foreign aid bill brought matters to a head.

 At issue, the corps commanders explained, was the affront to national sovereignty. The nation’s honour had been attacked became the rallying cry. So what if the challenger was the globe’s only superpower? And so what if it was simply trying to strengthen Pakistan’s civil institutions? Their crumbling at the hands of the military had been of great concern to civil society.

Lost on the anti-Americanistas was the fact that the US was not obliged to provide $7.5bn over the next five years to Pakistan. If the Pakistanis did not like the conditions that came with the funds, they could simply decline the aid. As Senator Kerry put it, the US had plenty of other places on which to spend the money.

When it comes to anti-Americanism, there is little doubt that Al Qaeda and the Taliban lead the pack. But the rightwing parties are not too far behind. At a recent demonstration in Pakistan, bearded men held up placards that flaunted the Yankees in no uncertain terms: ‘Crush, Crush, America.’

Anti-Americanism has also picked up converts in the mainstream print and electronic media. Conspiracy theories involving America are aired with increasing frequency. Even some leading figures from the diplomatic establishment have joined the fray.

The latest is Shamshad Ahmad, a former foreign secretary and former UN ambassador.

Speaking at a seminar in Karachi on state sovereignty, he went beyond the usual recital of grievances. That well-known list includes three major items. First, the US did not come to Pakistan’s aid during the 1965 war with India. This overlooks the fact that the war was initiated by Pakistan and that US arms were never meant to be used against India.

Second, it did not come to Pakistan’s aid in the 1971 war with India. This overlooks the fact that the war was triggered by the military’s ambitions to negate the results of the general elections and to rule in perpetuity.

Third, it abandoned Pakistan once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989. This overlooks the fact that the US had not guaranteed Pakistan’s security for all times to come against enemies of all stripes.

The former foreign secretary, a strong proponent of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons but by no means a firebrand Islamist, stated: ‘The US had used us as a spy in the past to fulfil its motives, while now it is using us as a mercenary.’ And then came the clincher: ‘It is the US intervention, not the Russian intervention which has kept everything on the boil in the region.’

Some political analysts continue to indulge in conspiracy theories about the attack on Pearl Harbour on Dec 7, 1941 and the attacks of Sept 11, 2001. But Ahmad put himself in a class of one by saying that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve in 1979 was engineered by the US.

He said, ‘The Americans think and plan about things they want to achieve in 50 or 60 years. They created a vacuum in Afghanistan. So after the political manoeuvring in Afghanistan, the US created a way for the Soviet Union [to be] sucked in[to] that vacuum.’

The former senior diplomat, who knows the country’s history better than most, went on to say that the Americans got the Pakistanis on their side by saying that the Soviets were out to fulfil the czarist dream of building a warm water port. This is revisionist history. Right after the Soviet invasion, Gen Ziaul Haq put in a plea for the West’s help, saying that the Evil Empire was about to make a run for Gwadar. He famously rejected President Jimmy Carter’s $400m aid package by calling it peanuts. But when President Ronald Reagan offered him a $3.2bn package, he was all smiles.

Ahmad goes on to say that the US forced the Pakistanis to fight the jihad in Afghanistan to fulfil their Cold War agenda. And what did Pakistan get in return? All that came, he says, was ‘drugs, arms and ammunition which still plague our society’.President Zardari, much reviled in Pakistan for his pro-Americanism, has been forced into a retreat. In a carefully crafted op-ed in the New York Times, he says that twice the US has manipulated and exploited Pakistan, once when it supported radical elements against the Soviets who morphed into the Taliban and Al Qaeda and second when it supported the Musharraf dictatorship despite its curtailment of civil liberties.

An ultranationalist theory that is rapidly gaining currency in Pakistan is that there was peace in the region until the US arrived in October 2001. Several of the ultranationalists also subscribe to four ‘booster’ theories.

First, that the US engineered the 9/11 attacks on itself. It needed an excuse to invade Afghanistan and control access to Central Asian natural gas. Second, that Osama bin Laden did not carry out the 9/11 attacks, that he is an American agent trained and armed by the CIA and that he was killed in December 2001. Third, that Al Qaeda does not exist. And fourth, that the Taliban are simply freedom-loving people trying to free their country from foreign occupation. The obvious theory about 9/11 has no vocal adherents in Pakistan. This argues that the attacks were carried out to draw the US into the region, inflame interfaith relations and provoke a holy war that would result in the revival of the caliphate.

With every passing week, Pakistan continues to inch towards the brink. Given the frequency of the Muslim-on-Muslim attacks that are now being mounted, it is moot whether Pakistan is a failing state or a failed state. Neither prognosis is good.

The US is not perfect. It has made its share of mistakes, domestically and internationally. A common charge levied by the anti-Americanistas is that the US acts in its own interests. That should be cause for celebration and not denigration. If only Pakistan would do the same. Instead of demonising America, it should turn on its own demons.

My recent trip to the United States has been an enriching experience, during which I had a very healthy discourse with the American public and an opportunity to understand their concerns about the war in Afghanistan. One question I was asked almost everywhere I went was, “How can we stop losing?”

The answer is a political surge, in conjunction with the additional troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Quitting is not an option.

A military solution alone cannot guarantee success. Armies can only win sometimes, and at best, create an environment for the political process to work. At the end of the day, it is civilians, not soldiers, who have to take charge of their country.

After decades of civil war and anarchy, the Taliban established control over 95% of Afghanistan in 1996. Unfortunately, the Taliban imposed their strict interpretation of Islam on the country. Nevertheless, I proposed to recognize the Taliban regime, in the hope of transforming them from within. Had my strategy been enacted, we might have persuaded the Taliban to deny a safe haven to al Qaeda and avoided the tragic 9/11 attacks.

Another golden opportunity to rescue the Afghan people emerged after the United Nations sanctioned international military operation launched after 9/11. Having liberated Afghanistan from the tyranny of al Qaeda and Taliban, the U.S. had the unequivocal support of the majority of Afghans. The establishment of a truly representative national government which gave proportional representation to all ethnic groups—including the majority Pashtuns—would have brought peace to Afghanistan and ousted al Qaeda once and for all. Unfortunately this did not happen.

The political instability and ethnic imbalance in Afghanistan after 9/11 marginalized the majority Pashtuns and pushed them into the Taliban fold, even though they were not ideological supporters of the Taliban. The blunder of inducting 80,000 troops of Tajiks into the Afghan national army further alienated the Pashtuns.

Meanwhile, Pakistan forcefully tackled the influx of al Qaeda into our tribal areas, capturing over 600 al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders, some of them of very high value. We established 1,000 border checkposts and even offered to mine or fence off the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but this never came to pass. The Afghan government, led by President Hamid Karzai, had no writ outside of Kabul, and the insufficient ground troops of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) allowed the Taliban to regroup. The 2004 invasion of Iraq shifted the focus and also contributed to the Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda terrorists who fled from Afghanistan came to Pakistan and settled initially in South Waziristan. Through successful intelligence and law-enforcement operations, we eliminated al Qaeda from our cities and destroyed their command, communication and propaganda centers. They fled to the adjoining North Waziristan, Bajur and Swat regions.

From 2004 onwards, we witnessed a gradual shift in the terrorist center of gravity. The Taliban started to re-emerge in Afghanistan and gradually gained a dominant role. They developed ties with the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas, especially in North and South Waziristan. With a grand strategy to destabilize the whole region, the Taliban and al Qaeda established links with extremists in Pakistani society on the one hand and with Muslim fundamentalists in India on the other. They pose a grave threat to South Asia and peace in the world.

We now have to deal with a complex situation. Casualties suffered by our soldiers in the line of duty will not go wasted only if we are able to fully secure our next generations from the menace of terrorism. The exit strategy from Afghanistan must not and cannot be time related. It has to ask, “What effect do we want to create on the ground?” We must eliminate al Qaeda, dominate the Taliban militarily, and establish a representative, legitimate government in Afghanistan.

The military must ensure that we deal with insurgents from a position of strength. The dwindling number of al Qaeda elements must be totally eliminated, and the Taliban have to be dominated militarily. We must strengthen border-control measures with all possible means to isolate the militants on the Afghanistan and Pakistan sides.

The Pakistan military must continue to act strongly. Operationally, we must raise substantially more forces from within the tribal groups and equip them with more tanks and guns. On the Afghan side, the U.S. and ISAF troops must be reinforced. All of this must be done in combination with raising additional Afghan National Army troops, with significant Pashtun representation. Exploiting tribal divisions, we should also raise local militias.

On the political front, we need an invigorated dialogue with all groups in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. Afghanistan for centuries has been governed loosely through a social covenant between all the ethnic groups, under a sovereign king. This structure is needed again to bring peace and harmony. We have to reach out to Pashtun tribes and others who do not ideologically align themselves with the Taliban or al Qaeda. I have always said that “all Talibans are Pashtun, but all Pashtuns are not Taliban.” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia can play pivotal roles in facilitating this outreach.

Pakistan and Afghanistan were shortsightedly abandoned to their fate by the West in 1989, in spite of the fact that they were the ones who won a victory for the Free World against the Soviet Union. This abandonment lead to a sense of betrayal amongst the people of the region. For the sake of regional and world peace, let us not repeat the same mistake.

Mr. Musharraf is a former president (2001-2008) and chief of army staff (1998-2007) of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.