I have been dying to post this article on my blog for a while. The article is written by Muhammed Khurshid for OpEdNews.

Muhammed Khurshid's Message at the very end of the article is simple and articulate, and I find it appropriate to preamble the article with the authors introduction:

Authors Website: www.voiceforpeace.8m.com

Authors Bio: My name is Muhammad Khurshid, a bonafide resident of Bajaur Agency, situated on Pak-Afghan border. Basically I am a journalist, but nowadays I have been working for peace in Bajaur Agency Tribal Areas. During my three years struggle I have conveyed a message to the people that they should abandon terrorism and work for peace. Now the tribal people have decided to extend a helping hand to the civilised world in war against terrorism, but in return they demand of the world to provide them opportunity of education. Education is the only mean of defeating terrorism.

July 23, 2007

Who Will Be Our Leader?

By Muhammad Khurshid

Failure of the rulers in war on terrorism has proved that they have not launched the war with sincerity. Actually they have used the war on terrorism for earning more and more.

Pakistan has been passing through from a critical phase of history. Operation in Lal Masjid, Islamabad in which a large number of people including women and children were killed sparked heated debate. Newsmen, writers and politcians have been holding rulers responsible for the carnage.

They said that the government could avoid the bloodbath in Islamabad if they showed sincerity in the earlier stage of drama. Some of them have been calling for democracy in Pakistan.

One writer Syed Sharfuddin wrote that Lal Masjid nightmare is finally over and so is the All Parties Conference. But the soul-searching that has just begun will remain with us for a long time to come. If we address these questions correctly and draw the right lessons from it now, there is hope for the future.

If we ignore the aftershocks and carry on doing business as usual, the problems that underlie the surface will not vanish on their own. The next showdown with the discontented sections of society may be uglier and far more costly in terms of national interests.

During 2005-6, I visited the Maldives many times to facilitate a Commonwealth-brokered dialogue between the government and opposition political parties on democratic reforms.

Opposition political parties believed that as long as President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was aiming a gun at the political opposition, a dialogue with the government would achieve nothing. Ironically, this metaphor applies more accurately to the situation in Pakistan where a president is indeed holding a gun in his hand in his capacity as chief of army staff for the last eight years. It is also a double irony that perhaps with the sole exception of Ghulam Ishaq Khan, none of the presidents of Pakistan left his office with dignity.

President Musharraf claims to break from the past by allowing the assemblies to complete their full term, but he has shown no sign of leaving his office voluntarily. He should not stay in office until he is forced by circumstances to leave in disgrace following the precedent of his infamous predecessors.

The recently concluded Lal Masjid operation has once again underlined the point which is often ignored by those in the media limelight and high places. That is, no person, group or institution should be permitted to challenge the sovereign authority of the state by taking the law in his or its own hands.

Regrettably, the military establishment has always assumed that it is exempt from this fundamental principle of democracy. Not only have Pakistan’s past military rulers violated the Basic Law, they have also tinkered with it to evade subsequent judicial trails. True democracy has no room for preferential treatment for one institution over the other, nor does it allow double standards to be applied to different individuals.

The Lal Masjid operation has also exposed the poor performance of the intelligence agencies. Contrary to their reports, there were no top-seeded Al Qaeda militants guiding the siege, no belted suicide bomb squads, no hand-held missile launchers nor any land-mined fields in the Lal Masjid compound.

In the absence of such deadly paraphernalia, it is a shame that about 76 half-trained religious teachers, students and militants, with a limited number of Kalashnikovs and light arms kept the elite commando unit of the Pakistan army at bay for eight days.

The authorities should have known each and every person, pillar and beam in the Lal Masjid compound through its intelligence network. If they did not know a public building and its access and cut out points in their own capital city, then either the intelligence agencies failed totally in performing their duty, or there is something missing in the story, namely, that vital information was kept from the authorities to cause them maximum embarrassment in the rescue operation.

If none of this is true, can this inefficiency be ascribed to the fact that our uniformed men have got used to the comforts and complacency of civilian outfits because of their involvement in politics, instead of remaining a professional force concerned only with the defence of the country and attending to extraordinary emergency situations?

If a religious band of extremists can give a tough time to the army for such a long period on its own ground, how can the nation trust the military to defend the country against an external enemy that may have more sophisticated weapons and a superior support base? We might as well adopt a compulsory national defence service for all male adults instead of keeping a large defence force. Is that the reason why our president goes a long way to please those foreign powers that keep asking him to “do more” to achieve their global strategic objectives?

As Imran Khan said recently at the All Parties Conference in London, it is in the nature of pluralistic societies to have their own brand of extremists and militants. They are not specific to Pakistan or the Muslim world. You can find them in India, the UK, the US, Russia and any other country which is trying to grapple with multi-ethnic issues and complex economic and social problems.

There are two ways of dealing with militants. One is the American way — swift military response, no dialogue, massive injections of economic assistance for short-term results, but a huge collateral damage and more long-term instability that prolongs the conflict instead of subsiding it.

The other is the non-American way — remaining vigilant but patient, understanding the core issues and tackling them one by one, talking to the extremists with the aim of winning hearts and minds and preserving the law, democracy and human rights. The latter approach is less visible but more enduring. We need not follow the American way in dealing with problems that reside inside Pakistan.

In a true democracy, constitutions are written to be followed in letter and spirit; these are not amended every now and then to facilitate the long reign of dictators. A functioning democracy which is built on the Westminster model relies on parliament to enact legislation; it does not use the executive and the cabinet to promulgate ordinances to bypass legislature and introduce laws through the back door.

In a credible democracy, political agreements are honoured at all costs; these are not changed at the last minute to save a government. And above all, mature democracies are prepared to dump individuals through such instruments as voluntary resignations and democratic rotation of leaders to keep institutions strong; such societies do not sacrifice institutions to serve the whims of the ruling oligarchy. Apply this criterion to Pakistan one by one and judge for yourself where do we stand in scoring a pass mark in this democratic test.

The judiciary is one institution which was never affected by military coups. Yet, the judges who presided over the judicial case against the first martial law in Pakistan made the fundamental mistake of legitimising it under the infamous doctrine of state necessity. The higher courts that heard the cases of subsequent martial laws did not challenge this theory.

The causes of the judiciary’s compromise with the military rulers lie in two streams — the stream of tradition and the stream of convenience. Traditionally, the judiciary has never been independent in an Islamic polity. In fact, during the glory days of Islamic empires when Muslim armies came knocking at the gates of Europe and Central Asia, the caliph appointed only those chief justices who were prepared to back his policies. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule. But by and large the primary role of the chief justice in a caliphate was to provide legal sanction to the acts of the executive.

Although Pakistan has a modern judiciary far removed from those forlorn days, the judiciary has traditionally continued its role of backing the executive (its recent verdict in the Chief Justice’s case being an important exception). Little wonder then that in their times, Justice Cornelius and Justice Dorab Patel did not feel the need to follow this archaic tradition because they were not Muslims.

The other reason why the judiciary favoured the executive is rooted in convenience. The judiciary chose to support military takeovers in Pakistan on the assumption that if it did not do so, it too would be replaced by military courts.

The judges may have been partially right because they saw how the military permeated the administrative, executive, legislative and political echelons of society under martial laws. But they did not realise that in saving the judiciary from military intervention, they were legitimising a rule which had no legal basis and could not last long on its own.

What is the point of having Article 6 in the Constitution if a court cannot invoke it to deter any one person, group or institution from violating the primary law of the land.

There is increasing demand for a full public enquiry to be launched into the Lal Masjid incident. It is only proper that a commission should be constituted independently under parliament in order to answer the scores of questions that are being asked about the preparedness of the government for dealing with militancy, hostage-taking, and the build- up of small arms in civilian institutions.

It is also important for the independent enquiry to focus on the larger context in which the Lal Masjid episode occurred. What can the state do to balance Islam with secularism, prevent social decay and continue to modernise itself, and manage conflicting views and expectations of people in a pluralistic society?

How can the human rights of prisoners be guaranteed to inculcate a sense of dignity? How can double standards be avoided in relation to treatment of persons, whether supporters or opponents of the government, who are involved in corruption and other criminal cases?

Can police be better trained to exercise its functions in a manner that gives full legal protection to the accused so that those arrested feel confident that they can defend themselves before the courts?

The independent enquiry should focus on lessons to be learnt on restoring the credibility of the government and bringing democratic values.

If this episode is allowed to pass quietly into history, the danger is that many other Lal Masjids will be hatching under the sun to challenge the authority of the state in more chilling ways than what Pakistan has so far witnessed. Wishing it away as paranoia without taking corrective positive action will not help.

The End