The Holbrooke mission
By Shahid Javed Burki
10/02/2009
PRESIDENT Barack Obama has departed in a number of significant ways from his predecessor George W. Bush’s style and substance in managing external affairs. Even in the case of intractable problems the US faced in the global arena, the former president famously relied on his gut feeling rather than deep thought and analysis.
When policymaking is done through gut and feel, there is little need for expert advice. Whereas a number of previous occupants of the White House had appointed “special envoys” to help in the making of policy in difficult areas, President Bush let the established bureaucracy take the lead with some broad guidance provided by him. President Clinton, like some of his predecessors, relied on special envoys. Two of these were remarkably successful in carrying out their assigned missions.
The first of these was former Senate majority leader George Mitchell who worked on the Irish problem that had festered for decades. By being patient and showing willingness to understand the points of view of both sides, Mitchell was able to bring together the rivals. The ground was laid on which it was possible to build a political structure that has since become durable. The other envoy was Richard Holbrooke who worked on the Balkans and was able to have the many contestants agree to what has come to be called the Dayton Accord. That agreement has also served to bring peace to a very difficult area.
Both Mitchell and Holbrooke have been summoned back to duty by President Obama. Mitchell will be the “special envoy” working on the Middle East while Holbrooke has been assigned the task of dealing with the problem created by the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and in the border areas of Pakistan.
Richard Holbrooke begins his mission to Afghanistan and Pakistan at a particularly difficult time for the two countries. Much has been said and written about Afghanistan; relatively less on Pakistan. I will attempt to fill the gap for the latter. At this time Pakistan is faced with a perfect storm: its political system and the structure of its economy are in tatters. Both need to be fixed. Doing one without the other won’t work. I will begin with politics.
The free and fair elections held in February 2008 and the successful outcome of the prolonged struggle to send President Pervez Musharraf into retirement created the hope that the country would be able to put in place a political system that would have people’s elected representatives in charge. The transition from military to civilian rule was completed in September with Asif Ali Zardari becoming president.
While the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League, the two main political groupings in the country, had cooperated to force Musharraf out of office, they began to drift apart once Zardari announced his intention to seek the presidency. Zardari won easily. There is considerable political uncertainty at this time with Zardari attempting to consolidate the power of the presidency while the Sharif brothers, Mian Nawaz and Mian Shahbaz, are pushing for a system in which executive authority would be with the prime minister answerable to parliament.
Embedded in this conflict are issues that Pakistan has not been able to resolve for more than 60 years. There are basically four questions to which answers have to be found. The first one relates to the choice of the place from which executive authority should be exercised. There was enormous concentration of power for 44 out of the 61 years that the country has been independent. This was the case when the military was directly or indirectly in power — the years of Presidents Iskander Mirza (1955-58), Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan (1958-71), Ziaul Haq (1977-88) and Pervez Musharraf (1999-08). Even some of the elected prime ministers — for instance, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — freed themselves from the control of parliament.
There are two ways of resolving this tension. One is to fully restore the constitution adopted in 1973 to its original form. This would mean doing away with the 17th Amendment introduced by Musharraf that concentrated political power in the hands of the president. The 17th Amendment was based on the Eighth Amendment introduced by Ziaul Haq before he allowed civilian leadership to share power with him. The Eighth Amendment was repealed by the National Assembly when Nawaz Sharif returned to power as prime minister in 1997. This is what the Sharif brothers want to do with the 17th Amendment. The other option is to go back to the drawing board and remove the ambiguity that exists by adopting a presidential form of government.
The second question concerns the distribution of power between the central government and the provinces. When strong men governed the country there was an understandable trend towards centralisation. This was the case in particular when the military ruled. It is a strong believer in centralised command and control. However, a country the size and complexity of Pakistan cannot be efficiently and effectively governed from one central point. No matter which system of government eventually evolves, there has to be greater autonomy granted to the provinces and to the institutions of local government. The fact that Pakistan has tried five different systems of local government is one more indication of the state of flux in politics.
The third unresolved issue relates to civil-military relations. What kind of role, if any, should be allowed to the military, particularly in foreign affairs? The military has used its self-perception as a guarantor of national security to repeatedly insert itself in politics. It is unlikely that the armed forces will completely walk away from politics unless the two other issues discussed above get resolved.
The fourth question concerns the role of the judiciary in governance. There is a tradition in the country going back to the mid-1950s when the executive called upon the judiciary to provide ex-post legal cover to its clear defiance of constitutional provisions. It started in 1954 when then Governor General Ghulam Muhammad sacked the National Assembly and had his action endorsed by the Supreme Court under the “doctrine of necessity”. It includes the two attempts made by Musharraf to use unconstitutional means to assert his authority by first firing the chief justice in March 2008 and then imposing a state of emergency in November. The role of the judiciary is now being used by the PML-N to challenge Zardari.
How could Holbrooke help the country make progress in developing a system of governance that is durable and meets the wishes of the people? He could possibly play the role of an intermediary for different political groups. However, as I will suggest in this space next week, it is in economics that the United States could be really helpful.