Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Post Zia BB-Nawaz musical chairs-Musharraf




I have used the term musical chairs advisedly. Though Benazir (BB) and Nawaz Sharif (NS) took turns in occupying the PM’s office for eleven years between Zia and Musharraf, yet except for the two year interlude when NS managed to sack a head of the Navy and force the resignation of the army chief, (Naval chief was dismissed on corruption charges that he received a kick back and army chief for suggesting that a Turkish style national security council comprising the President, PM, joint and service chiefs be constituted). Real power remained in the hands of the Quad (army-feudal-bureaucratic-mullah combine). They controlled the band and made the politician dance to their tune.
Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Aslam Beg and the Lt General’s committee allowed Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK), a grizzled old bureaucrat, senate chairman under Zia to take over the President’s office. . (Pakistan army is top heavy. It has too many officers that could be justified by the number of soldiers they command. Lt General is one rank below a full general of which rank Pakistan mercifully has only two, one is the army chief and the other is chief of the joint staffs committee. At the last count there were eighteen Lt Generals. Presided over in their deliberations by the COAS they recommend promotions above the rank of a brigadier to the defense minister. Other promotions are in their own hands. Since Zia they have been the real power brokers. No one could become PM/President in Pakistan with out their approval and civilian governments were dismissed on their say so). The political cell of the intelligence wing of ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) established by Bhutto keeps tabs on all prominent persons and uses the information against the opposition and ministers in the government (GIK had reportedly kept Zia abreast of the negotiations between Zulfiqar Bhutto (ZAB) and the opposition, and had encouraged the army to strike during the night the two camps had come to an understanding and had been rewarded with chairmanship of the senate, which made him, first in line to become the President). He inherited all the “constitutional” powers Zia had acquired for himself. That included the right to designate a person as PM who in his opinion would command the support of the majority of the national assembly. The person would, after nomination, have to seek a vote of confidence of the assembly but would have the built in advantage of an incumbent. Favor of the President was therefore very important. The President could also dismiss the PM-cabinet and the assembly at will, on whatever pretext he chose. Only the upper less powerful house, the senate was inviolate.
After Zia’s death in 1988, the new President and both houses of the parliament got to together and amended the constitution to provide for party based elections. The President though, made sure that he kept the reserve power to sack the PM, and the assembly. Elections were announced, prepared for and held at the end of 1988.
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by BB won the largest number of seats. They were just shy of overall majority. The party had done well in the Punjab where the unnatural coalition of progressive elements and feudal lords cobbled by ZAB had got together again1.
Provincial elections followed a few days after the general elections. The government agencies and relics of Zia used all legitimate and not so legitimate means to keep PPP from doing as well in the Punjab as it had in general elections. They made crass parochial appeals. A popular refrain was “ Punjabi tere Turre Te Laga Daagh” ; it had been dishonored. But more effective were ballot stuffing, change of ballot boxes, and sundry other mal-practices. Led by NS the party controlled by protégés of Zia won in the Punjab. It did not do too well in other provinces. Mohajir Qaumi Movement MQM swept the “Mohajir”seats in the central and Sindh provincial assemblies.
MQM holds a special position in the musical chairs and merits analysis of its antecedents. Pakistan inherited hundreds of thousands of civil servants, businessmen, teachers, professionals and artisans from the Muslim minority provinces in India. Muslim majority provinces had been in nearly total cultural, financial, educational, industrial, and commercial control of non-Muslims. All cotton, cement, sugar, agricultural and other industries were run by non-Muslims. All the owners and managers to the lowest levels were Hindus and Sikhs. The Muslims in the provinces, which came to constitute West Pakistan, could only offer Army officers and soldiers, corrupt politicians, decrepit feudals, and their subservient peasants. The Eastern wing was no better of. They lost even the feudals who were by and large Hindus. Jute was produced in East Pakistan. It was processed in Calcutta, in India. Out of eighty-three senior civil servants inherited by Pakistan only one was a Bengali. Two thirds of the other eighty-two had migrated from minority provinces. There was one from NWFP, none from Sindh or Baluchistan. The rest were from the Punjab.
Bitter hegemonistic wars broke out between the “sons of the soil” (NSOS)- a term used for those born in the Punjab, Indian as well as Pakistani- bureaucrats and the others. Turf wars simmered at all levels and in all branches of Government service. Sons of the soil had the weaker hand. They were far less in number. They could dominate only the army. In 1951, when we arrived in Pakistan, practically all the heads of Government departments were non-Punjabi immigrants. (The situation was rather reminiscent of Taiwan after Chiang Kai Shek had fled there after the rout of his armies at the hand of peasants led by Mao. But there was a significant difference. Chiang had the only armed forces in the Island. Immigrants had none). Pathans constituted about fifteen percent in armed forces and had worked out a modus vivendi with the Punjabis. Sindhis, Baluchis and Bengalis had little representation in any sphere of national activity and had been alienated from the main stream, practically from day one of Pakistan. NSOS had more representation in the officer corp. than their percentage in the population would justify.
This situation obtained till the advent of Ayub’s take over of the Government. Ayub sacked all the NSOS senior immigrant bureaucrats, except for one who had married the only sister of three Punjabi senior civil servants. (The lone survivor was actually from my neck of woods in India. I have mentioned him previously as the person who gave me a scholarship when I joined the medical college). The wholesale dismissal broke the back of immigrant bureaucracy. His successor Yahya did more of the same. A statement attributed to Ayub, that if immigrants did not behave they will be consigned to the Arabian Sea, accelerated the alienation of the hitherto dominant immigrants from the mainstream.
After the debacle of East Pakistan, Bhutto took over. He promoted dissension between all sections of the society as a deliberate policy. (For all his socialist slogans he was an ethno-nationalist. The axe of nationalization, except or a few Punjabi businesses fell on Mohajir industrialists. Out of The twenty-two oligarch families made famous by the Harvard trained Pakistani Economist, only three were Punjabi). Worst affected were Sindhi-Immigrant relations. The two linguistic-cultural groups had had an uneasy co-habitation. Immigrants controlled all the cities, cultural, social, educational, commercial, industrial, financial and administrative modes. Sindhis were relegated to the villages. The latter had resented it, but were unable to do any thing about it.
Before he assumed power, leading feudal clans had not accepted Bhutto as one of their own. He had actually won more seats in the Punjab and diehard Sindhi nationalists openly derided him as a tool of Punjabis. On assumption of the highest office in the land, they belatedly and reluctantly embraced him. He hankered after legitimacy in people of his own kind and had made them promises of restitution of their rights. He was beholden to Punjabi interests and therefore all he could do was to deflect Sindhi unrest to the immigrants. Immigrant left wing students had given him a leg up in his dog days but felt no compunction in ditching them. He introduced a quota system, a sort of affirmative action. Sindhis would be given preference to immigrants in all government jobs. That was not much help. There were not many jobs to give away.
Immigrants already reeling under the after effects of Ayub/ Yahya dismissals, had to face another mass wave of dismissals from Government service. Bhutto reached the bottom of the barrel. He also “nationalized” large chunks of industry and business, further emasculating the immigrants. (Ayub too, it must be made clear, was not fully accepted by the higher ranks of Pathans. He was from a hybrid Pathan-Punjabi district. Their local dialect was also a mixture of the two languages. He also served the interests of the Punjabis, rather than his own ethnic group). Bhutto, except for cosmetic help to Sindhis, also served Punjabi interest.
I must insert a disclaimer. When I say Punjabi interest, I do not mean the interest of the ordinary mortal living in the land of five rivers (Punj Aab-five rivers-actually three in our case. Two have “gone” to India). I mean the interest of the landlords, whose level of control over their peasant would be the envy of Russian nobles in Czarist days.
Student political groups, most active in Karachi, were split along ideological lines. Radical/progressive/ liberal groups (left) were dominant; they generally found recruits among the poor but literate classes. Opposing them in a rather feeble way, were the so-called nationalist/conformist groups, which hailed from the more affluent classes, progeny of officials and of the powerful and the rich. There were, of course exceptions, which rather proved the rule. Conservative religious elements (right) were vestigial; as mentioned earlier, up to as late as 1959, the only member of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Dow Medical College, the hub of all political activism of all of Pakistan, was the son of the founder of the party!
Students, unlike their seniors in age, however, did not let their ethnicity intrude on their political consciousness. The progeny of immigrants cheerfully accepted the leadership of one of the sons of the soil. I have made special mention of Sher Afzal Malik in the chapter on student movement. He was a true blue Punjabi. Born in the province, he had been brought up among NWFP Pathans, and sent to Karachi for medical education. . At the time the province of his domicile did not have a Medical college. The evil of ethnic consciousness was introduced during Ayub regime when students started congregating in their ethnic/linguistic groups. Zia effectively put an end to secular non-ethnic politics in Pakistan. Paying lip service to religion, he engineered dissension among all the groups. When I visited Dow Medical College during his rule, I was stunned to see banners of Sindhi, Punjabi, Mohajir, Baluchi, and Pushtoon and yes, Jamiat Islami flags draped over the buildings of that citadel of progressive thought. I immediately left in utter dismay and disgust.
Altaf Husain, the founder of MQM, had founded an immigrant Students Organization, and had used the platform to unite the progeny of the NSOS. That comprised mainly the Urdu and Gujerati speakers. He had touched a sensitive nerve, and had gathered considerable support. He was not a particularly upright character and was not above using his clout for personal gain. The founder Head of The Department of Pharmacology (His younger brother Dr Hoda lives in our nook of woods. I met the professor at his residence a few years ago) in The University of Karachi told me that when Altaf applied for admission in his department, he had not been selected as he had inadequate grades. He, with his cohorts, proceeded to picket the department, till the Vice Chancellor of the University fearing a riot on the campus, prevailed upon the professor to give in and offer him admission.
During his time at the university, Altaf distinguished himself by not attending classes, or taking tests and but by being disrespectful to his teachers. He managed to pass the final examination, and obtain a degree in Pharmacy, or was allowed to do so. (It was common knowledge that troublemakers were given a degree with out too much hassle. A friend once asked me to get a copy of the degree his wife had misplaced. I approached the relevant department head. He apologized but offered that for a small facilitation fee a new degree with higher grades could be obtained. I had misplaced my Punjab domicile certificate obtained courtesy of my first wife and over the years lost track of it. I needed the document to apply for a federal government job and asked my friend Rizvi to get it. He was given the run around. I knew a sessions judge in Lahore and called him. He swore at the concerned officer. I got a brand new certificate). Academic institutions would do any thing to get such elements out of their hair. Soon after graduation he left for the USA. To support himself he drove a cab in Chicago for a while. I do not think there is any thing objectionable to driving a cab. It is an honest living. But at the time there was an acute shortage of Pharmacists in the USA. After passing the requisite licensing examination, they usually found a lucrative job, or business. I have a lingering suspicion that he was unable to pass the tests. He obviously lacked the essential knowledge of the subject.
Not much is known about his whereabouts and activities in the next few years. During the mid eighties, he surfaced back in Pakistan, and proceeded to launch MQM. He met immediate, though moderate, success. But he had acquired a core of devout followers. One of them, an employee of the Pakistan Newspaper “Dawn”, hailed from my ancestral village in India. We had organized an association of the immigrants from the village. At one the bi-weekly meetings of the group held at his home, he asked us if we planned to attend a meeting to be held in a public Park two days later. Altaf would address it. We had not heard of the man. He told us of Altaf’s antecedents, how he was trying to organize Mohajirs, to get a voice for them in the country and that he was a spellbinding orator etc. I hold my secular and radical leftist beliefs sacrosanct and despise ethnic politics, so I declined the invitation. Others did too for their own reasons.
The day before the meeting I, as was my routine, drove to my clinic (office) at about 5.00PM. There was no unusual activity on the streets. When I was returning from my office about three hours later, the whole city was festooned with colorful banners. I sent my driver to enquire of a tobacco vendor, about what the flags were about. He returned with the information that it was something called MQM.
I learnt later that a veritable swarm of well-led enthusiasts had worked in a very organized and disciplined manner and had draped all exposed surfaces of the city with Altaf’s proclamations. This was terribly unusual in a generally indolent and near anarchic society. Prominent in the display was a picture of Altaf, richly mustachioed (sporting a large mustache), and wearing dark glasses. The photo was eventually to become his trademark. Many questions were to be raised and vocalized on the source of MQM financing. Detractors openly expressed the idea that it was underwritten by the Inter services Intelligence (ISI) a rather notorious secret service agency of the Armed Forces of Pakistan. Some pointed their fingers at the American CIA. (This organization is at least as well known in Pakistan as it is in the USA, and is the favorite whipping boy of all left and nationalist elements. It was blamed for financing the destabilization of Bhutto regime too. That the opposition at the time was flush with funds cannot be doubted). In an attempt to sow dissension among the politically inclined, Zia was believed to have spawned many ethnic/linguistic groups. Besides MQM, Jeay Sindh, and Punjabi-Pushtoon Mohaz were widely believed to be his creations. ISI was the mid-wife. If that were true, MQM was his biggest success.
The meeting was held per schedule, on time. (For an invitation wedding for 7.30 pm people start getting ready at 10.00pm). This was different too. We in the East do not lay great store by punctuality. A reported hundred thousand people attended it. The number was not extraordinary. It was actually a moderate number for Karachi, a city of many million souls. With little to amuse themselves with, time heavy on hands, and a large number of the unemployed, people look for opportunities to participate in processions and attend meetings of all kinds. But what was striking was the discipline of the crowd. It rained buckets during Altaf’s speech. Not a person fled the downpour.
A few days later MQM announced a meeting in Hyderabad, a town about a hundred miles from Karachi. In an ostentatious display of solidarity- detractors would have it that Altaf was apprehensive the crowd would not be impressive enough, it was announced that a large contingent of Karachi people would be bussed to the meeting. The route of the buses passed through a Pathan drug mafia dominated area which was widely perceived as the nerve center of drug/arms dealing and export from Pakistan. It was popularly believed that the enterprise was presided over by the Lt General who administered the province of Sindh for Zia.
The main bulk of the motorized procession was let through with out hinder or molestation. Gangster mobs attacked the tail end and stragglers. Several hundred were killed. It is doubtful if this was simply an opportunistic assault. No doubt bad blood had been growing between Urdu and Pushto speakers. (The genesis of the conflict was complex. Unusually though, it was not rooted in direct economic competition. The two groups had different sources of income. Mohajirs were small shopkeepers, office workers, and industrial laborers. Pathans did all the hard construction work on roads, and buildings. They drove trucks, haulage tankers and buses. The two groups did not interact socially. They lived in fairly segregated settlements. Urdu speakers resented Pathans for their “crude” mode of speech, cultural differences, rash driving, liaison with “Punjabi” police and their rough and ready ways. Pathans despised the Mohajirs for their lax, in their opinion, observance of the Islamic code of behavior, effete manners, uppity ways and relative affluence). The organized manner in which the dastardly deed was perpetrated led many to believe that it had been an officially abetted aggression. The Pathan governor of the province was widely believed to have intimate connections with the under world. The odds are that it was a well thought out plan. How else would so many well-armed hooligans be around at a particular time? The natural reaction of people of the neighborhood would have been to stay away from the area, to keep out of harms way when a large number of exuberant political activists were to pass through. The tragedy proved to be a tremendous boost to MQM.
In 1984 a speeding bus had crushed a college girl named Bushra Zaidi. In itself that was not an uncommon incident. What made it distinct was that it occurred at a time of the day when colleges let out students. Thousands of them had witnessed the accident. The bus driver had sped away. The victim was of immigrant origin; the driver and conductor of the bus were Pathans.
Tension between bus drivers/conductors and the general public of Karachi was endemic. It was partly for cultural reasons. The bus employees spoke a rather rough and ready, some would say, harsh language. Denizens of Karachi were soft spoken in comparison. Like any large city, people of Karachi were also on an edge most of the time; they simply do not have time for niceties. Most of the buses were owned by Police officers. To get as many fares as possible, they raced through busy streets with reckless abandon. They rushed past other traffic, and were blatantly scornful of traffic rules. Police looked the other way. Drivers worked long hours too, trying to make as much money as possible to send to families back home. (Karachi because of job opportunities attracted millions of immigrants from “North” Pakistan who lived in shantytowns with even less civic amenities than other denizens of Karachi did. They spent little, lived a dozen or more to a thatched hut and kept the family in their villages and naturally enough did not owe allegiance to the town. During religious festivals literally scores of hundreds of buses would leave for “up-north). They had little family life. This added to the stress they worked under. Common perception was that they fortified themselves with drugs, Charas, Hashish and Bhang, derivatives of opium and marijuana. Accidents were consequently common. Passers by would surround the scene. There would be a few scuffles in the aftermath. Divers would seek shelter in the nearest police station.
But this was different. The victim was a young girl; she had died in the sight of hundreds of college students. The police had been complicit in keeping the culprits under wraps.
Widespread looting, and stoning of buses through out the city, followed the incident. But much bigger ethnic riots broke out in an area called Aurangi. This was a huge shantytown, which provided shelter to the mostly Pathan migrants from the North of Pakistan. A large number of refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan had also settled there. The latter had passed through a civil war in which they had supported the losing side. They were quite militant. Pakistan army had used them to fight the Bengali militia and had trained them in the use of small arms and in concocting “Molotov” cocktails. (For the uninitiated, this is a homemade incendiary bomb named after the soviet foreign minister under Stalin). Pathans and these Urdu speaking people lived in uneasy proximity. In the first round Pathans were apparently taken by surprise. Scores were killed, and their huts put to torch. A few days later they retaliated. There was widespread mayhem. Hundreds lost their lives. A larger number were maimed. Large swathes of the region were burnt down. Police, who gave the excuse of lack of foreknowledge of the previous riots, were conspicuous in their absence this time too. Veterans of the independence period riots claimed that Hindus/Muslims/Sikhs had not got at each other with such ferocity; as Pathans and Mohajirs did in Aurangi.
Riots spread to other parts of the city. Large areas of town were put under curfew. Commercial, educational and all other activities came to a stand still. Rumors were rife. I lived in a locality not far from the affected area. A large shantytown of Pathans was only a street behind us. It was not a “legal” colony in the sense that the civic amenities like electricity, water supply and sewerage disposal were not officially offered to the people there. But as elsewhere in the town, indeed in the country, illicit connections of all the services were available. They were a self-sufficient community and had their own shops, stores, restaurants, motor repair shops, tailors and bakeries. My driver lived there. So did many other domestic servants. Mohajirs and Pathans shared a mosque. On a Friday I would visit a bakery to buy freshly baked “Naan bread” .
We had alarms, false luckily, that Pathans were going to attack at night and spent many sleepless nights, with doors barricaded. This near civil war condition continued for many years. Neither the Military Government of Zia, nor the Civilian dispensations of Benazir/Nawaz Shareef were able to control the situation.
Altaf soon grew bigger than life. Public poured funds into the coffers of MQM. The party enjoyed massive support among Mohajirs. By the same token, the “sons of the soil” hated it, though the latter were envious of the unity and discipline in the ranks of the party. (My close friend and erstwhile class mate in Dow Medical college Saleh Memon was a professor of Ophthalmology in Karachi. He is a devout Muslim in the true sense of the word and did no indulge in ethno-nationalism though his sympathies naturally gravitated to Sindhis. I one remarked that Altaf had been instrumental in bringing the latent Sindhi-Mohajir divide into the open. Saleh wistfully expressed the hope that some on could unify Sindhis in the fashion). In the municipal elections held after Zia died in a plane crash, MQM swept the polls for the city council in Karachi. The city was transformed into one huge festive, ebullient and harmonious carnival. We drove around to observe the festivities. The very social norms seemed had changed. Pakistan is a sexually inhibited society. A conversation with girl who is not related to you can compromise her honor and name. It was worse twenty years ago. But on that day total strangers, men women, boys and girls greeted each other with the salutation “Jeay Mohajir-Long live Mohajir”. For many weeks, the novel and secular avant-garde salutation actually supplanted the venerated and official/religion sanctioned Asalam-o-Alalikum. Detractors of MQM had prudently kept out of sight.
Veteran traditional politicians thought that they would be able to buy the votes of the councilors and win the office of the Mayor .One of them offered 500,000 Rupees for a vote. A ward politician announced that while one vote would cost so and so 500,000, it would cost us only 5. That was the cost of a bullet to kill the councilor who would vote for a non-MQM candidate!!
MQM nominated Dr Farooq Sattar, a member of the minority with in minority Gujerati business community as its candidate for the Mayors post. The man was a political novice and like all MQM leaders came from a modest background. He was a medical graduate of a few years standing, and had been a mid-level activist in his college days. All MQM councilors voted for him. Farooq Sattar lived in a two bedroom “town house” in a modest settlement, P.I.B colony, the first such facility built in Karachi for the homeless immigrants. To his credit, he kept on living in the same humble abode, shunning the pomp and show of the official Mayoral residence.
National and provincial assembly elections were to follow. I attended a fundraiser for MQM addressed by Altaf. The host was a former member of the “Brahmin” class of Pakistan, the coveted Senior Civil Services. The man had been my contemporary in the university. He was actually quite brilliant and had topped the list of successful candidates in the competitive superior service examination for the year. On the basis of his high ranking, though he was from Karachi, he had been able to join the highly prized administrative services. (Many more than existing slots “passed “ the examination. Karachi with its high literacy offered a larger number of candidates than its percentage in the country’s population would merit. With “affirmative” action of provincial quotas Sindh had about 20% slots. Bhutto had further divided the quota into rural and urban thus tilting the balance much more to Sindhis. Zia had sacked the man, as he had attended a meeting, while the worse for drink, presided over by the dictator). Several hundred persons attended the moot. All the “hereditary” and proletarian Mohajir leaders (The only leaders of any significance absent from the gathering were Fatehyab Ali Khan who was too high principled to cater to Altaf and Mairaj Muhammad Khan. Both find mention in the chapter on student movement) the progeny of the founders of the country were in attendance. They were hoping to be noticed by Altaf who had nominations for the elections in his gift and all with out exception eulogized him extravagantly, one even calling him the savior of Mohajirs. To no avail. Altaf was to give nominations only to the faithful, all from middle and lower classes.
He is a spellbinding orator and enthralled us with a graphic description of how Mohajirs had given their blood for Pakistan, how the country survived because of them, how they were betrayed, sidelined, and discriminated against. He then turned to the veteran power brokers. Raising his voice to a crescendo, he asked them what had they done for Mohajirs when they had all the levers of power in their hands. They had done nothing. They had simply run after power like dogs!! Now calling some one a dog in the Indian sub-continent is a mortal insult. I expected, one or two at least, to protestor to walk out. Not one blinked an eye. They all clapped their hands rapturously. Even the prospect of power corrupts the soul .
MQM was organized on fascist lines. Altaf’s cult of personality rivaled that of Hitler, with a dash of oriental superstition thrown in. He was universally addressed as Bhai, roughly big brother. Supernatural happenings were attributed to him. His pictures were reported to have materialized in the tiles of the floors of Mosques and inside vegetables!! He was frequently called Pir Sahib, sort of live saint. Questions like “where was the Quaid-e-Tahreek, Leader of the movement born, or what was his mother’s name” etc figured prominently in the formal doctrinal examinations held for the rank and file. He was to maintain the iron grip on the organization for a long time, even from the UK where he lived in luxury in a self-imposed exile. MQM votaries claim that he was forced out on the pain of death.
Every one who was any one in Pakistani politics, Benazir (BB) and Nawaz among them, visited Altaf in his tiny townhouse. BB gave him a copy of the Quran. Only the President and the COAS stayed away. BB and Altaf arrived at a power sharing agreement. Some independent members and splinter parties also pledged support for her and were duly rewarded
MQM and PPP soon fell out. MQM had had no prior Government experience and were new to diplomacy and political bargaining. Their negotiators, not one of them had been in politics or even in the main stream before, were out classed and out maneuvered by the seasoned PPP representatives. They bargained away their critically important support for form rather than substance and were given a few ministerial portfolios in Sindh, but were regarded as little more than a nuisance by the bureaucrats, fellow ministers and the governor of the province. In my neighborhood, a police constable beat up a sitting MQM member of the provincial assembly. (For a while MQM members of the assemblies kept up their “Awami’ easily approachable, lower middle class appearances. This particular member of the assembly was driving a scooter with out any licenses-driving or vehicular. Incensed that a mere policeman dared to stop him, he had sworn at the official who not cognizant of the rank of his victim manhandled him and took him to a police station where the inspector had to apologize and let him after a minister called and identified the people’s representative). They realized too late that PPP had given them oral assurances which they had no intention of honoring. MQM ministers in the province of Sindh, and at the center, were held hostage to the whims of the Chief minister in the province and Benazir’s cohorts at the center They had no actual executive authority and their departments were starved of finances, which were controlled by the Sindhi Chief minister of the province. PPP frustrated all efforts of MQM ministers at the center. The Mayor of Karachi was similarly made impotent. Civil servants ignored the whole lot with impunity. Sindhi hatred of Mohajirs extended even to the sole Mohajir PPP minister Amir Haider Kazmi . I have mentioned him at greater length elsewhere. He was the health minister in BB’s first government.
Besides corruption, jobbery, nepotism and inefficiency, BB’s first term was marred by persistent riots between Mohajirs and Sindhis. Karachi and Hyderabad cities were often under prolonged curfew restrictions. Mohajir and Sindhi workers fought a gun battle in the steel mill. The army mediated the conflict. Police surrounded Purana Qila, a locality in Hyderabad, which housed about half a million Mohajirs. The government severed the Gas, water and electric connections to the area. The siege continued for several days and would have resulted in unprecedented carnage, if the COAS Aslam Beg, a Mohajir himself, had not intervened. BB had lost control completely, even over her party functionaries.
Elections followed. This time Nawaz Sharif’s party, Muslim League was able to garner a working majority. MQM were again in the Government, this time with more clout.
In the run up to the new elections, Altaf had demonstrated his complete control over the Mohajirs. Attended by all the leading lights of the opposition, which besides Nawaz, included such redoubtable luminaries as Wali Khan, he was once about to address a mammoth crowd of more than a million in Lalookhet, (officially named Liaquatabad after the first PM of Pakistan. Liaquat is an icon among Mohajirs but almost a non-person for others in the country). This is an area in Karachi where artisans, small traders and other members of the lower economic class live. They were discussing discipline. Altaf asked them if they would like a demonstration. They nodded their heads. He addressed the crowd. Brothers and sisters, our guests from North Pakistan would like to see how organized we were. I am going to count to three, and I want pin drop silence. He counted, one, two and three. An uncanny silence followed.
Altaf accompanied the opposition leaders on a tour of Pakistan. He mesmerized the crowds in the heartland of the Punjab. He made them cry and laugh at will. That gave him ideas. He could rule over the hearts and minds of not just the people of Karachi, but the Punjab as well. He was to change the name of his party from Mohajir Qaumi movement to Muttahda Qaumi Movement (immigrant National movement to United National movement). That sealed his fate in Pakistan. Army and feudals felt that if this man managed to capture the imagination of the whole country, as Jinnah had done at one time, they would be at his mercy. They created a dissident wing in MQM. The dissident leaders accused Altaf of betraying Mohajir cause by changing the name and character of the party. Army supplied them with arms. They moved against the mainstream group.
This internecine tussle went on through the Nawaz and the following BB tenure. It cost the lives of a lot of supporters from both sides. Under BB, a retired general named Naseerullah Babar was in charge of security. He was the pocket edition of the butcher of Dhaka. He sent in the army, and tried to destroy MQM infrastructure. Altaf was spirited out of the country. His principal assistants went under ground. Armed forces unleashed a reign of terror with the same ferocity they had in East Pakistan. A whole generation of young men was killed or maimed .
BB did not honor her pledge of redressing the wrongs actual and perceived done to Mohajirs by the previous regime. (The term connotes non-Punjabi immigrants. A majority spoke Urdu as mother tongue, but a substantial number were Gujerati speakers. Even the ones born in Pakistan were slightingly branded as such by natives. They turned the tables on the natives and adopted it as a badge of honor). Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) controlled by MQM was never given promised powers. The chief and revenue ministers of the province starved it of funds, so it could barely function and was rendered ineffective.
Sindhi-Mohajir riots restarted with a vengeance. There were armed skirmishes in Karachi the industrial, commercial and financial capital of the country; the steel mill on the out skirts of the town was the site of open warfare. Police looked on as disinterested observers. They would not be much good any way. The partisans were better equipped. I was on the staff of Liaquat National Hospital, a large non-government facility that catered to the steel mill patients. The MQM chief of the workers union was admitted in the hospital with a bullet in his back and paralysis below the waist. The hospital was soon crawling with Klashnikov toting MQM bandits who would stop and interrogate all visitors. MQM had street power. BB had the police. Street prevailed. Army mediated the dispute and arranged a cease-fire in due course. PM was powerless or could not care less; take your choice.
BB’s anointed goon had reportedly been the godfather of Taliban. He had reported been indoctrinated in counter insurgency techniques by the best CIA could offer in its Asian training grounds and American schools. Armed “security” personnel would suddenly surround localities. House to house search would follow. Young men and some young girls who took the fancy of the marauders would be picked up and taken away to police stations. They would be mercilessly beaten in full sight of parents who would beg for reprieve. If they could pay adequate amount of bribe the victim would be released. For less money level of torture would be reduced. If they could not pay at all torture would continue unabated.) Scores of thousands of young men became victims of extra-judicial killing (prisoners held in police stations are tortured to death. Another method is to release the prisoner and to gun him down as soon as he starts to move. Police in the orient are very cruel. Deaths, rapes and other violations are frequent incidents police stations)
For all the trappings of office civilian rulers to pay homage to the army. General Aslam Beg threw a party for his daughter’s wedding in an open and large area, which in good old days was a polo ground, and had in the earlier years been used for public meetings and could accommodate a crowd of a million people. The President, PM, all the ministers, members of the assemblies of the government as well from the opposition benches, senior bureaucrats, officers of all the services, and notables of the city joined a feast, which in opulence would shame the ones thrown by Caliphs of Baghdad. After he retired, the self same chief was asked to appear as a witness in front of the supreme court in a case of government corruption-kick back, illicit funding of some political parties and subversion of others. He told the Chief justice (CJ) boldly, nay sneeringly, that yes he had collected and diverted a fabulous amount of money to prop up favorite groups and under cut the opposition. The CJ spluttered incoherently and was on the point of exploding but subsided when Beg glared at him.
BB indulged in unprecedented jobbery. All government offices, nationalized industries, businesses and banks had to find a berth for people presenting themselves with a “chit”, a note from BB or one her senior minions ’ . Her ministers followed suit. The minister of health was from Karachi. He was the younger brother of a close friend. We had been together in the Lumumba and Jabalpur agitations in 1961 (described in the chapters on student movement). I had done him some favors when he was in wilderness. After assumption of office he took to calling me and offered me all kinds of jobs. The staff of my hospital was very impressed that the minister called me frequently. Once he called and asked me which job would I prefer; one was grade 19, the other 20? I said naturally 20. He said no the grade 20 was in public health. The 19 one would make me the co-director of a large government hospital. I could do what I wanted. I told him that I had just started making money and what would I want a salaried job for? He could not believe his ears “what are you talking about”, the whole hospital, supplies, drugs and employees will be under your control! You could do what you wished.
BB had married a man of shaky reputation and shakier finances. He was reported to owe seven million to banks and private lenders. A prominent Sindhi feudal-politician was to call him a camel driver’s son. Another grandee of feudal Sindh recalled that the man’s father used to travel in a bullock cart. His only assets were a decrepit house and a cinema theatre
She had been told that public would like her to get married. An unmarried girl was not suitable for the top job in the government. Scandals, I could not say true or false, were swirling around her head. She had apparently chosen a former PPP minister in the Punjab. It would be a match made in political heaven. But the head of the man’s clan vetoed it. She questioned her father’s antecedents (I have described the juicy scandals in the Chapter on ZA. The redoubtable lady actually belonged to BB’s opposition. Her own husband belonged to BB’s party. But in a clan-tribe ridden society that was of no consequence. All the major feudal houses in Pakistan treat political parties as investments and keep all the major power brokers in their portfolio). BB was getting impatient. She came across the stepmother of her future husband in London who proposed the match. BB got married.
Ministers and high officials paid court to her husband. All foreign and major domestic contracts went through him. He became known as Mr. 10% percent, after his reported facilitation fee. International press reported that he had commandeered a national airline plane to transport racehorses from Argentina. The couple bought a mansion in Surrey County in England. It boasted a heli-pad. He and BB were to be named in money laundering and other such cases in international court. These are some of the illustrative stories. Several thick volumes would be required to give details.
BB’s government was never stable. She was looked down upon by high brass openly. A Lt general publicly snubbed her during a meeting presided over by her! The President was not a fan. He had been the secretary general (SG) of the government under ZAB. (SG is the titular head of the civil service and coordinates all appointments in higher echelons of bureaucracy. ZAB had curbed the civil service. He had nominated BB very reluctantly. N.S, the chief minister of the Punjab was another spawn of Zia. He was snapping at her heels. Altaf was disgruntled. Minority provinces were restive.
MQM left the Government. Opposition parties got together to move a resolution of no confidence in the parliament against BB. She was able to fight it off by the good old method of bribing and purchasing votes. But she had been weakened. The President had judiciously kept himself above the fray, held his hand but became more assertive. BB won’t play ball. There was an evitable clash. The President dismissed her and the assembly on the tried and tested, though time worn grounds charges of incompetence, corruption etc and ordered new elections. She had served only twenty months of her five-year term. BB had been in office for twenty months out of a projected five years. (As a precaution the army had surrounded the PM house and the assembly building before the announcement was made on the state TV). My friend the health minister had seen the writing on the wall, and had sent his family to London a few days ahead of the dismissal, and followed them expeditiously. He was a Mohajir and was in fact the only one of the ethnicity to get elected on PPP ticket. MQM regarded him as traitor to the cause. (A few months prior to the event he had made a particularly violent speech against the Mohajir group. Altaf had authorized a ‘contract” on his head. I had sent him a message through his elder brother. With out armed police escort, he would not live long).
Nawaz Shareef was a total creation of Zia’s martial law. His father was a friend of the general who governed Punjab for the army. In fact the latter hailed from the same city in India as Sharifs did and had appointed him finance minister in the province . The family patriarch was his father (commonly known as Abba Jan-dear father) who ruled the family as a benevolent dictator much like President Kennedy’s father and was equally ambitious for his children. Nawaz himself implicitly obeyed his father’s instructions. Opponents made fun of him in a fashion rather reminiscent of Khwaja Nazim of yester years, that he consumed a whole tray of yogurt in addition to kebabs, Parathas, Pulao, chargha and desserts at breakfast .
But for all his faults and mental deficiencies and unlike BB, NS was a polite person. One of my friends, a staunch supporter of BB, and at the time head of the national airlines trade union, was on the same flight as NS. The whole first class cabin had been reserved for him and his entourage. NS made a public relations foray into the economy class cabin and asked my friend if he liked the government’s performance. My friend told him that he belonged to PPP, and would rather have BB back in power. NS sat down with my friend and tried to convince him of the merits of his policies.
NS was the president of Muslim league. The party won the elections and he became the PM in 1991. His first tenure was marked by enhanced corruption; this time presided over by his younger brother Shahbaz. They bought four luxury apartments in the poshest of all London localities, the Park lane in the west end. Each apartment was, reportedly, worth 2.5 million pounds . They went into steel re-rolling and ship breaking and other industries in a big way (BB had stopped several of his ships bearing junk iron for several weeks). A beach just out side Karachi became a huge broken ship graveyard, the second largest in the world as Pakistanis put it with pride. In an effort to promote the family concern they tried to sabotage the works of the national steel mill. (Further volumes would be required to detail the techniques of accumulation of wealth by the Sharifs. They too boast of several cases in international courts against them).
He also launched wild welfare schemes. One of the more outlandish was customs duty free import of Taxis. The loan to finance the individual deals was provided by government agencies. Only a few vehicles were used to develop new jobs. Most were used for private transport. Few beneficiaries of the scheme returned the loans. The loss of precious and scarce foreign exchange was enormous.
N S had tried denationalization in good faith but the industries and businesses had taken so much loan, their staff had been so bloated and the balance sheets so much in the red that there were no takers. Capital, whatever there was of it, had flown overseas. Conversion of foreign currency deposits to local currency had made expatriate capital shy of the country (post nuclear 1998 explosion and before imposition of international sanctions N S “nationalized” foreign currency deposits worth 1.2 billion US dollars that expatriates had left in the country in a misguided fervor of nationalism. The deposits lost 30% of their value over night. It was widely believed at the time that power brokers had been given advance notice. A banker told me that between 50 to 100 million dollars fled the country in forty-eight hours before conversion of dollars into rupees). Banks were on the verge of bankruptcy. They had no hope of ever recovering all the bad loans.
The only enterprises, which mushroomed after denationalization, were private schools and Hospitals. Government schools, never capable of imparting good education in Pakistan, had deteriorated so much in the general uncertainty prevailing in the country that they only promoted delinquency. Nearly all the families who could afford it at all sent their children to private institutes. Parents took two jobs each and paid for tuition at teacher’s homes. It became a thriving nearly unregulated industry. Licenses/registrations for private schools were available from education department for a modest bribe and a monthly retainer.
ZAB had messed up the State schools in Karachi by requiring them to teach Sindhi to Urdu speakers; with out taking measures to provide teachers of the language Riots that had followed the declaration of Sindhi as the official language of the province were aggravated by this dictum. Sindhis had comparatively low literacy. They could not hope to offer adequate number of teachers in the language. Vast majority of students in the province lived in urban areas of which Urdu speakers constituted the predominantly population.
State run schools were so few and so ineffective, that in every city, and on a stupendous scale in Karachi, people converted small houses into a schools by the simple device of putting on a huge sign with an attractive title like Advanced Cambridge Academy. They proceeded to hire a few untrained, some of them even semiliterate, teachers and started admitting students. They kept the parents happy by awarding A & A+ to all children. I have mentioned the case of my daughter elsewhere. Parents would flood every new school with their children.
The schools would be run by a nominal charitable trust . Teachers were made to sign pay slips indicating a much higher salary than they were actually paid. They had to sign; otherwise they would not even get the smaller amount. Jobs were difficult to come by; there were so many unemployed. You could sell the business by getting one set of trustees to resign and replace them with another. As schools rose higher in name and seniority, they raised the fee to exorbitant levels and still boasted of waiting lists. Good standard schools charged fees equivalent to a month’s salary of a midlevel bread earner. Fabulous amounts of money in initial and later donation were demanded.
Old established schools demanded very high scholastic standards, pedigree (parents, siblings, alumnus) and recommendation from high government officials. Police and administrative staff were ranked according to the kinds of favor they could do. Ministers being transient were not highly regarded. The top on the totem pole were income Tax officers. (I have mentioned the case of the husband of one of my patients, on whom I had performed major surgery in the chapter on Karachi. He was a lowly inspector but came through with admission in Karachi Grammar School where BB went as a child).
Hospitals also became a boom industry. Population had burgeoned. Government hospitals, which provided a very basic level of care, could not cope with the vastly increased number. People had gotten more health conscious too. Admission to a hospital was, till not too long ago tantamount to a death sentence. Families would not go near a hospital- given wisdom was that one went there only to die. It was better to take your last breath at home, surrounded by the near and dear ones. It was much more comfortable too to take your last breath at home. Getting treatment from Hakims – Vaids (Native health practitioners), and Homeopaths was the first option. Well to do and literate persons would patronize a general practitioner. Now more and more people wanted hospital care.
Inflow of expatriate money gave a tremendous boost to private health care-as it did to private schools. As in the case of schools, small, medium and large houses in congested areas in already crowded neighborhood were converted into hospitals. The more enterprising entrepreneurs bought whole blocks of dwellings. Never mind if they did not have regular water supply, emergency exits, minimum equipment, adequate ventilation, stable structure, pharmacist or even adequate sanitation. One such hospital, in a bunch of ramshackle buildings evolved into a medical college and a while later into a medical university. The owner is now Chancellor of the university. He did have the good grace to build a campus for basic sciences but the bulk of clinical side is still housed in residential homes. Most private hospitals are virtually death traps. Some-better ones bought floors of commercial buildings. Few were purpose built.
Surprisingly enough, starting a hospital did not require any kind of license, registration or permission from any state agency. One had as great liberty to allow performance of major surgery as one did to sell groceries. The hospitals were inadequate in every way. The level of training of resident medical staff, most fresh out of medical college with no hands on training, was mediocre at best. Good nurses, worth their weight in gold as they used to say in England, were scarce. Equally scarce were well-trained specialists. The ones on hand could range from high to very low competence.
Integrity and simple honesty were rare commodities. Doctors routinely badmouthed each other. (In my entire eight years in Karachi, I came across one Orthopedic Surgeon who was complimentary to others in the field). The patients also encouraged Doctors to pass disparaging remarks about their colleagues. One patient referred to me by one of my in-laws insisted on showing me X-rays before I could examine him. The X-rays looked all right to me and I told him so. He asked me repeatedly if I could find any thing wrong in them. On my negative response he told me the name of the surgeon Professor A.Rahim. The gentleman had been my teacher and the first well trained Orthopedic in the country. When I persisted in paying compliments to the work reflected in the x-rays, the patient told me that the Surgeon had charged him a fantastic amount of money. By this time I was at the end of my patience. In a barely controlled tone I asked him if he had any money left. He said none. In that case, what did he think he was doing in my office? He left in a huff and I became rather unpopular with my in-laws.
Hospitals survived on “panels”. Bhutto had introduced the concept of health coverage as a part of the benefit package provided by nationalized industries and commercial concerns. Hitherto only the government had offered health care to its employees in government run hospitals. A hospital applied to an industry for approval of its facilities. This was called being put on the panel. One got on it by a) wining and dining, bribing, putting on a retainer, and looking for connections with the chief medical officer (CMO) b) Wheeling and dealing with unions and medical staff and paying agreed upon kick back (15-20%) of gross bill (described in more detail under Pakistan 1983-91). C) Recommendation of high-level bureaucrats d) all the above. CMO’s of large corporations acted like petty tyrants. I have seen professors of medical colleges fawning on them. The winning party in union elections would have its own group of medical officers as informal partners. The retainer-kick back would go to the ruling group. The defeated group, for fear of internecine fights, would be given some crumbs.
Another glaring misuse of the system was that patients would wheedle, force or threaten -union officials would employ the latter method- doctors to write prescriptions for expensive medicines and exchange them for cosmetics at drug stores. Private non-panel patients had to pay exorbitant charges to the hospital and specialists. Hospital charges would vary with the locality, structure and external maintenance of the premises. Specialists charged fees commensurate with their name, status, seniority and attachment with medical school etc. Physicians (internists, pediatricians in the US) ran their offices from 5-6 PM to mid night and beyond and would generally spend 4-5 minutes with each patient. They got up late in the morning, made rounds on patients admitted in hospitals after lunch, and then go to their offices. Surgeons kept the same hours, except that they spent morning and afternoon in operating rooms. The teaching staff employed by medical schools would spend an hour or two in the school and the attached hospitals. Exceptions did exist, which, as it were, confirmed the rule.
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If you add non-existent quality control and no state regulation, there is no limit to avarice. (When there is a direct relationship between surgery-treatment and fee, (free enterprise, fee for service) temptation to do unnecessary surgery and prolong treatment is overwhelming. In the USA the tendency is relatively checked by state regulatory control and frequency of mal-practice suits. In Pakistan controls were non-existent. The number of unnecessary procedures was mind-boggling. In Canada and in parts of Europe where they practice socialized medicine, unnecessary treatment is virtually unknown). High education suffered the same fate as medical care did. At the time of independence there were only two medical colleges in West Pakistan, and one in the East wing. In the way of institutes of higher learning all Pakistan could boast of was the Punjab University in Lahore, University of Karachi and Dhaka University in the then East Pakistan. It had one each of engineering college, teachers training college, agricultural college and dental school on the west, none in the east.
The government gradually built more institutions. In 1962, the year I got out of medical college, there were six medical colleges in the West, three in the East and corresponding number of other colleges/universities. For some curious reason, till the eighties, there was only one dental school in the western wing.
General spread of literacy, little thanks to the government, and influx of expatriate money increased the demand of these exalted houses of scholarship. At one time, during Zia’s heyday, the head of a House of Oriental medicine – a Hakim- who was a closet politician, was appointed governor of Sindh. He gave university charter to his friends and admirers, including the one with ramshackle medical school buildings and one to himself as well. That opened the floodgates. All professors of Medical schools, owners of hospitals, dentists and even owners of industries started dreaming of opening medical schools. Universities, dental schools, polytechnics and computer institutes mushroomed. All kinds of charlatans indulged in the game.
One day my wife took the terribly unusual step of waking me up from my afternoon nap. She was very exited. A very highly regarded professor was on line. The gentleman was known for his lack of bonhomie. I did not think he knew me that well. He had been my professor in medical college. It was an honor. I got up dutifully and said hello. The voice on the other end of the line said “yaar” I am so and so. Still half- asleep, I was not able to believe my hearing. This particular professor was a very stern, formal and upright individual. I couldn’t imagine him calling anyone yaar much less me, a former student. The voice expostulated. You didn’t recognize me. I was two years junior to you in medical school. Now I knew who it was. This was too much to take, I burst out “what the devil do you mean by waking me up in the middle of a hot afternoon”. He pleaded please don’t be mad. I want to open a medical college. That served as an electric shock one gives to patients knocked unconscious. I asked where he wanted to open it and what did this have to do with me. He said that he owned a hospital built over 500 sq yards (a little over tenth of an acre), and would start classes on the roof! I said that was fine with me, but what did he want me to do. He wanted me to sponsor the venture. I was perplexed. I had done all kinds of things in my life, but not this. He wanted my permission to put my name on the petition to the university for recognition. That gave me a mischievous idea. I told him that I was planning to return to the USA and gave him the names of all the leading doctors I was acquainted with and gave him permission to use my name as the referee. I had a lot of fun in the following few days. I received dozens of irate calls.
In Bhutto’s time, there was wide spread linguistic strife between Sindhi and Urdu speakers. As noted above he had ordained Sindhi the official language of the province, requiring all students to learn the language. Urdu speakers were up in arms. Their ranks included the militant refugees from East Pakistan who had been trained by the army in guerilla insurgency. Confrontation between the army and the public became routine. Police usually waited for the troops to arrive. Rioters were better armed than they were. Colleges and schools remained closed for months at a stretch. A five-year medical course took eight years to complete, as examinations were postponed again and again. Bribery and other forms of corruption became rampant. It was easier and cheaper to purchase a college degree. With enough funds, you could buy the top rank in an examination. I noted earlier that in 1954 Karachi colleges had looked down upon my Punjab University diploma. Now Karachi employers preferred Punjab University graduates!
Corruption rose to mind boggling heights. Examination halls were sold to entrepreneurs. They would provide answers to questions for a fee. If a student could not afford the charge he was turned away.
I was once visiting a friend, Saleh Memon one of the leading Ophthalmologists in town, to congratulate him on the success of his daughter in a university examination. Another visitor, a high education official came to call soon after I had arrived. My friend had bought a lot of “Mithai” -Indian sweets- for the occasion. The visitor inquired of the reason of festivities. When told of the reason, he was quite put out. “Sain, he expostulated, I your humble servant am the controller of examinations. You did not deign to inform me that my daughter was appearing at an examination (one calls friends children as one’s own and treats them the same way). I could get her any ranking she wanted. My friend was one of the most decent and honest persons it had been my good fortune to come across. He had a hard time dissuading the man from increasing her score. He had to get the girl to tell him that her grades were very good
In his turn Nawaz was dismissed too. He was growing too big for his britches and wanted to take away the power of the President to dismiss the PM and the assembly. That required an amendment to the constitution and a two third support for the measure in the assembly. For that he needed the support of BB’s party. BB, as reported in an interview she gave to a journalist, declined the invitation under advice of the redoubtable Margaret Thatcher. (Thatcher told her to let the President and the PM emasculate each other). The president dismissed NS. NS challenged the dismissal. It was an impasse. The PM and the president issued contradictory orders. The government was paralyzed. The army chief of the staff General Kakar intervened and forced both to resign, ordained an interim administration under an expatriate from the USA. Mid –term elections were arranged.
BB won the new elections and this time secured an over all majority. She had her erstwhile foreign minister Farooq Leghari (Leghari’s son was an undergraduate in University of Rochester NY. The city is eighty miles from us. He brought a special flight of PIA-I think it was a Jumbo-with his entire clan and a horde of sycophants to the graduation ceremony. The plane stood on the airport for days) elected as the President. The man, another scion of a feudal family was a great admirer of her father under whom he had served as a junior minister. She treated the man as a family retainer. The hapless man told the press that once BB had asked him to leave his office, as she wanted a private word with her husband. (She treated the Chief Justice-CJ- of the Supreme Court the same way. When the man protested she brusquely told him that she had appointed him to the post. He cried piteously that madam had made him the CJ, not a peon).
BB had control of both the houses of the assembly, and the President did her bidding. She became totally capricious. Pakistan was her fiefdom, the people her serfs. Corruption, jobbery and arbitrary governance reached new heights. The President warned her in a friendly fashion. She told him to mind his own business. She negotiated with Nawaz. It was her turn to seek his support to repeal the constitutional clause empowering the President to dismiss the PM. Smarting under her previous refusal to lend him support he demanded impossible concessions. BB offered impartial mediation. NS turned her down.
The worm turned. The former retainer sacked her and ordered a new election.
The voters were sick of frequent polls. Nawaz could play the role of a victim very well. His bewildered looks were a great asset. He looked forlorn and appealed for a massive mandate. The public decided to give him a chance. In the ensuing elections in 1997 he won big. He and his minions went about crowing that they had an overwhelming mandate. It appeared that the government would get away with any thing and they did throw their weight around in a most ostentatious way.
NS sent his family attorney to suborn a member of the Supreme Court bench to pass a vote of no confidence in the CJ. When that stratagem did not work he sent gangsters to man handle the CJ while he was presiding over a trial. A minister in the Punjab provincial government and several members of the assembly were actually caught on the camera leading the mob. The CJ was eventually hounded out of office and a family retainer was appointed in his place. NS had a vote of no confidence passed against the President and filled the slot with his attorney. He had requisite number of votes in the houses of the assembly and was able to remove the offending clause from the constitution, which authorized the President to dismiss the PM and the assembly. He undeservedly and presumptuously took credit for the successful atomic bomb explosion in 1998.
He was riding high and overreached himself. Those who ignore history suffer the consequences of its repetition. As powerful a PM as ZAB could not get the better of the armed forces. NS sacked a navy chief. The man had pocketed a lot of commission in purchase of ships-submarines. The army chief proposed a security council , comprising the President as the head and the PM, defense and foreign ministers and service chiefs as members. Nawaz demanded and got the army chief’s resignation. He appointed Parvez Musharraf to succeed in the office, under the mistaken belief that being a Mohajir he will not have roots in the army and would do his bidding with out question. (Bhutto had made a similar mistake. In his case he thought he was appointing a compliant simpleton).
But the armed forces of Pakistan are a malevolent hydra-headed organism. You cut of one head; another grows in its place and is obeyed implicitly by senior officers .
The Lt Generals committee mentioned above decided that they had had enough, and started planning for eventual take over. They manufactured the Kargil crisis. With out so much as by your leave to the PM, they attacked Indian positions. Standing on high ground, and taking the Indian troops by complete surprise they were able to kill several hundreds of Indian forces, inflict serious damage on their positions, and force them to retreat.
NS was left in the untenable position of either repudiating the army action and sacking Musharraf in which event he would be castigated for disowning the Jawans (soldiers are admiringly called Jawans-valiant young men), dishonoring the martyrs or having to endorse the military action after the fact. He not only chose the path of least resistance, but also went a step further and took credit for the misadventure.
When the Indian PM threatened an all out war, NS had to run, with tail between legs, to Washington and beg Clinton for an intervention. Clinton gave him a lecture in norms of international behavior and law, roundly condemned his lack of control over the army and all but called him stupid to his face. He made him sit by while he placated Indian PM Bajpai on phone, and arranged a cease-fire. Nawaz was made to give a pledge to keep his army on a tight leash. As a consolation prize he was given a photo op at a family breakfast with the American President . He returned home a thoroughly chastised person.
As planned the army cried foul. What our Jawans had won with their blood and Shaheeds had given their life for, was lost by a pusillanimous PM. A concerted jingoist campaign was launched. But it did not catch public imagination. It was Bhutto-Ayub all over, except that on the last occasion it was a civilian who had taken the offensive and public had not been so disillusioned of the army yet
N S was advised that he would have to move quickly to replace Musharraf. He wanted his own man in the spot any way. He had found a general Ziauddin with impeccable antecedents. Like his own family the man was of Kashmiri descent. This is an important consideration in a sociologically primitive society. The man would remain loyal to his cultural-linguistic group. He was serving as the head of the notorious Inter services intelligence (ISI) and would know all that was cooking in the army. What made it a practical proposition was that the man was prepared to side step the tradition of the higher ranks of Pakistan army that, come what may, one did not go against one’s superior .
Musharraf got wind of the impending axe. He consulted with his confidants, and confronted N S. N S is timid. He totally denied any scheme of replacing Musharraf. To placate him further, he gave the army chief additional charge of the head of joint chiefs of service committee .
Musharraf was scheduled to visit Sri Lanka on a good will mission. N S thought that would be a good time to replace him. But Musharraf had taken precautionary measures. He had retired two Lt generals, and transferred another two suspected of being in league with the PM, to impotent desk jobs. He had also moved loyal officers to key slots, one as deputy chief of army staff and three others as corp. commanders of Karachi, Lahore and the capital area.
While Musharraf was on his way back, actually in the air en route to Karachi N S announced his dismissal- retirement and replacement by the new man on the radio and TV. After the investiture ceremony broadcast on government controlled media-NS was shown pinning the insignia of rank on the new appointee-the new man went to the GHQ to take over. The deputy chief apologized. Tradition dictated that charge be given by the old chief to the new one. The new man had a handicap. Though head of the dreaded ISI, he did not have a corp. under his command and could not threaten the deputy to come across or else. He slunk back to N S.
The deputy chief, in the meanwhile, sent troops to surround the PM house and take over all the tactically important places. N S and the new chief were unceremoniously taken in custody and for good measure were manhandled a bit too. TV station was captured, and all programs suspended. I t relayed recitation of the Quran. The radio station did the same.
Now unfolds a scenario worthy of a Hollywood-Bollywood thriller (I have carefully researched the news papers of the time and have cuttings of the reports). Musharraf was on a civilian flight back to Karachi. His plane was not allowed permission to land at the civilian airport in the city. The pilot was asked to land at an Indian airport not too far across the border. Musharraf said over his dead body. The plane was running low on fuel. Musharraf was worried over the lives of the dozens of innocent civilian fellow passengers. GOP ordered the pilot to proceed to an airport further inland. Not enough fuel. The local corp. commander Lt general Usmani was waiting at the Karachi airport to receive his boss. He saw the runway blocked by trucks and got worried. He some how managed to get in touch with Musharraf’s plane, asked for latter’s instructions and ordered the pilot to keep on circling. In order to get the runway cleared and over power the air traffic handlers he needed his soldiers in a hurry. His cantonment was less than a mile away. He could not get hold of a phone, and had to drive to his base and bring his troops back with him. Now he was in a position to ask the control tower to allow the plane to land. They would not listen. He threw them out of the control center and got in touch with the pilot himself. His soldiers cleared the runway of the trucks. Musharraf landed with only minutes to spare. All is well that ends well.
This plot has more holes than the proverbial sieve.
First, Air Force has two large runways in Karachi. Both are capable of handling planes of all sizes. In fact before the runway on the civilian airport was enlarged, big commercial airplanes had to use the facility at the Mauripur air base just out side the city. Musharraf was chairman of the joint chiefs of the staff committee, and could legally land his plane there. Second, no Pakistani in his right mind would deny a Lt general the use of a phone. I know Usmani. He was a ferocious bearded giant and would, in any, case not come alone to receive his chief. He would inevitably be accompanied by an honor guard and could easily commandeer airport facilities. Pakistanis have long been conditioned to obeying army officers. Third, Usmani must have known of the appointment of a new chief. He was obviously in the inner circle of Musharraf otherwise he would not have risked his neck by intervening and flouting the PM’s directive. He was not a blithering idiot and must have come prepared. The dash to his base was obviously a subterfuge to deflect attention from a patently premeditated move.
In any event Musharraf landed safely and went into consultation with his fellow conspirators. A few hours later he made a formula speech on the TV and the radio that safety of the country was at stake. It was his duty as an officer and a patriot to protect the nation etc.
Musharraf’s coup was in one way distinct from the previous usurpations of authority. Ayub took over when there was a real fear that the country might slide into anarchy (As noted else where the deputy speaker of East Pakistan assembly was killed when he got in the way of a chair thrown by member to settle an argument with another member. Even Miss Jinnah had initially welcomed the imposition of martial law. Ayub handed over the government to Yahya illegally and unconstitutionally but law and order situation was again fast deteriorating. Zia took over when the law and order had been subverted by the opposition and foreign agencies. It was left to Musharraf to invent a patently spurious excuse.
The period between Zia’s crash and Musharraf’s take over was chaotic, disorderly, corrupt, and high crime era but it was lively. Press had finally acquired freedom and used it to the full. All, high and low were openly criticized, scandals exposed and shenanigans brought to light. One could discern the proverbial silver lining and hoped that after the somersaults the political process would stabilize. Post WWII, it had done so in France and Italy or so we were told by the intelligentia. They conveniently over looked the fact that European countries were fully developed capitalist societies, which had been overtaken by fascists, where as Pakistan was still in the grip of a feudal dispensation.
N S had tried denationalization in good faith but the industries and businesses had taken so much loan, their staff had been so bloated and the balance sheets so much in the red that there were no takers. Capital, whatever there was of it, had flown overseas.
Neither BB nor NS had the vision, capability or the inclination to fund adequately or regulate the education or health sectors. In any case they did not have the where with all if they ever thought of it. After seventy five percent of the budget was allocated to debt servicing and defense little was left for schools and hospitals. Pakistan is among the lowest in the under developed countries in expenditure on social services.
Musharraf appeared to be what the country had been looking for a long time. Sophisticated, well spoken and urbane he seemed to combine compassion with firmness. The enlightened progressive and educated element was happy that he was secular and invoked the name of Kamal Ata Turk the founder of modern Turkey and went around with a lap dog in his arms . He pledged to put the country on the road to modernization and industrial development. Cases of nepotism, corruption, bribery, fraud and loot of national assets were filed in courts in Pakistan and abroad against the deposed Premier Nawaz Shareef and former PM Benazir. Nawaz had been arrested at the time of the coup. BB was out of the country but her much more unpopular husband was duly locked up .
But what he faced was in many ways different from what Mustafa Kamal had to contend with in post WWI Turkey. Turkey had lost the war and all its possessions. In a near superhuman display of daring and tactics he had thrown the British invading army out of the country and reclaimed sovereignty. He was the acclaimed savior of a devastated but united and homogenous populace and was able to drag the country at a breathtaking speed into the twentieth century. In the process he curbed the Mullahs and imposed a secular constitution on a nation whose population was ninety eight percent conformist Muslim.
Musharraf on the other hand had inherited a people disillusioned and at odds with each other. They had seen a highly venal civilian rule in which heads of the government were beholden to the army and had dragged the country into moral and fiscal decrepitude . They had lived under military rulers who had widened the rich-poor divide (Ayub), lost half the country (Yahya) and Zia who had empowered clerics and promoted ethnic and sectarian conflicts and left a legacy of arms and drugs. They had been let down by that false Messiah Bhutto who had given a slogan of Islamic Socialism but had only reinforced the rule of his feudal class.
Times had changed too. Public was no longer frightened of the army and their rule. Mullahs objected to the “najis”- dirty and forbidden lap dog he took around with him. The judiciary put a time limit of three years for his rule. At the end of the period he would have to get public endorsement if he wanted to continue in office and would have to shed his military uniform. Under international pressure he had to let go the Shareef clan into a comfortable exile in Saudi Arabia.
He easily managed an election. Erstwhile supporters of BB and Nawaz fell over each other to get in line for his favors. The Mohajir party MQM was his natural linguistic constituency. They joined hands with anti-BB elements, reactionaries, turn coats and the ever ready feudals to form a government in Sindh . Fundamentalist parties were amenable to a deal that their members would vote for him to remain head of the state and keep his army rank as well. He had given a concession he would live to regret. Conservative groups have since gone from strength to strength and have advanced from margins of society to main stream much as BJP to the ground in India did after they demolished the Babri mosque in UP.
Internationally Corporate neo-imperial dispensation was fully empowered since the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991. The capitalist countries could unabashedly demand restoration of “democratic” rule in parts of the third world while propping up fascist regimes of their own satraps elsewhere. Musharraf was an international pariah from the day he took over. As I have noted in another chapter his fortunes rose with 9/11. Now he could do no wrong. US was pitted against the Taliban which had been created by Pakistan’s notorious military intelligence during Zia rule, funded by Saudi money who wanted the extreme forms of fanaticism out of their hair and trained as an effective insurgency force by the good old American CIA. Musharraf, however, in a devilishly cunning manner kept the Mullahs up his sleeve to be taken out at proper times to frighten the US administration out of their wits and to reinforce the view that his mentors had no other choice.
Things went on pretty much on the pattern. Musharraf selectively favored certain sections of the power brokers and constantly made and remade alignments. He appointed a Baluch grandee as PM. The man in a suitably colonial fashion addressed him as Sahib. In an obvious attempt to placate the corporate interests he ditched the Baluch Sardar for a crony who was conveniently engaged in a mid level position in an American Bank.
In order to take the wind out of the sails of the Neanderthals in the army and to please the overlords he made peace overtures to India. The measure annoyed the Mullahs to no end but made them realize that the devil in them had made a compact with cleverer Satan.
Musharraf and his minions brandished the oxy moronic slogan of enlightened moderation reportedly obtained from Kissinger’s consulting firm . He was all for women’s rights and even ordered the local security agencies to register a case against the perpetrators of Punchayat-local village government- ordained gang rape of the now celebrated Mukhtaran Mai
The outrage was so repugnant that the village Mullah who was totally dependent on the largesse of the members of the Punchayat, was so conscience smitten that he brought the medieval punishment to public notice. The culprits were apprehended, jailed and let off by the provincial high court for lack of evidence. An international uproar forced the government to arrest the accused again and the case is pending in front of the Supreme Court). But the schizophrenia of Pakistani rulers and I must say of the public is such that Musharraf was actually supported by the majority of Pakistanis.
ANAA organized demonstrations at the Pakistan consulate in NY City and at the Embassy in DC to coincide with Musharraf’s yearly pilgrimage to the UN General assembly session. Some one among his sycophants got the bright idea for him to address an invitations only gathering of Pakistani expatriate women in NY City. One member of the audience asked a fairly innocuous question about why he had tried to prevent Mukhtaran from leaving the country. That was lese majeste. Musharraf lost it completely and incoherently threatened the questioner that he was a soldier and knew how to deal with mischief-makers. He had to be publicly restrained by his erstwhile boss the then Pakistani ambassador to the US.
Musharraf continued to play a highly adroit balancing act, keeping all comers uncertain and confused. He kept Washington convinced that he was irreplaceable in the fight against terrorism. Political opponents, I hesitate to aggrandize the tweedledums and tweedledees that pass for opposition in Pakistan with the term, kept themselves salivating for his favor. He even wrote-ghost written no doubt-a book and the publisher cleverly arranged the release with an audience with Bush, pushing the ratings sky high. Detractors claimed that it was a move to “whiten” his ill-gotten fortune.
He finally took a misstep, reportedly at the advice of the corporate implant.
Masquerading as the PM and asked the Supreme court CJ to resign. The man other wise quite compliant who had unhesitatingly endorsed what ever Musharraf had asked him declined the suggestion. He had most likely sensed the regime’s weakness or turned as the proverbial worm. The CJ was kept incommunicado for several hours, and finally sent home, allegedly man handled in the process, under heavy escort to a virtual house arrest. Cases of his “corruption, nepotism and unfair use of prerogatives of office” were referred to the Supreme judicial council he was suspended. When some on pointed out that the CJ could not be suspended, he was made “non-functional” what ever that meant. Uncharacteristically the attorneys went up in arms. They had in the past acquiesced in the shabby treatment meted out by BB to the CJ of the time and the assault of Nawaz Shareef hooligans on the same person. Nawaz had managed to replace the CJ with a family retainer with ease.
The public and students disgusted and disillusioned as they are with the antics of power brokers wished pox on all houses. Attorneys have however shown unusual staying power and continued to boycott court proceedings.
In the mean while some Mullahs in reenactment of the worst excesses of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan “persuaded” a Video shopkeeper to light a huge bonfire of his stock. The presiding Mullah announced the formation of a Shariah court and threatened the very “Islamic’ suicide bombings if the government dared to thwart his wishes. The prelude to all this resurgence was that women from a seminary (I must say I had not imagined Burqa clad women could be so militant) in the capital city had “captured” a library, abducted the keeper of an alleged house of pleasure, overpowered and made hostage of the security agents sent to rescue the woman-all under Musharraf’s enlightened nose in Islamabad.
There the matter rests now.