Remembering Benazir Bhutto
Farahnaz Ispahani
Three years ago today, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. It was a dark day that indelibly changed the direction of Pakistan and I am torn both by personal and political reflections.
I was blessed and honoured not only to assist Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto in the field of communications but also to know her personally. So for me, December 27 is doubly tragic — I miss her skill, her leadership, what she could have accomplished politically for our people. But I also miss her laughter, her humour, her loving attention to her family and her friends. I miss her every day, and I weep for all the ‘might have beens’ if she hadn’t been so brutally assassinated ahead of her greatest electoral triumph.
Some in our chattering class, speaking from the comfort of their couches and their salons, gossip and criticise and dismiss her accomplishments. How many of them — if they had her brilliance, her education at Harvard and Oxford, her beauty, her youth, her family wealth, her loving husband and children — would have sacrificed everything out of personal responsibility and commitment to the people of Pakistan? She had everything to live for. She could have had a life that anyone of us would have only dreamed of. Yet she came back fearlessly to lead us because of her faith in God and the people of Pakistan.
There are tens of thousands of primary and secondary schools across our country that were built during her government. There are thousands of villages that got electricity. There is healthcare in our rural areas because of her programme of 100,000 women health workers being trained in nutrition and pre and post-natal care. There are women abused by domestic violence who can now go to women’s police stations for help. There are computers, fiber optics, cell phones, access to CNN and BBC, an uncensored media and an independent civil society because of her vision. And there are 90 million women in Pakistan who refuse to accept limits on their futures because she broke the glass ceiling for all of us, shattering not only the glass but her very life in the process.
On her first day in office in 1988, she freed all political prisoners, she made student and labour unions legal, she made civil society truly ‘civil’ again, she uncensored the media and opened it, for the first time in Pakistani history, to the political opposition.
And all of that was on her first day. During the 1800 days that she served as our prime minister, she built on this record of human rights, not only in rhetoric but in practice. She appointed women for the first time in our history to superior courts. She freed Pakistani women and girl athletes to compete in international competitions. She created a Women’s Development Bank to provide loans to women to start businesses across Pakistan.
Her accomplishments are not recognised by obscurantists because they do not agree with her vision. Some others fail to appreciate the odds she overcame.
Benazir Bhutto didn’t fear dictators or tyrants. She threw down the gauntlet to jihadists and terrorists and was the face of a modern, enlightened and loving Islam to a world that had condemned us to caricature.
She alone dared to challenge Ziaul Haq in the 1980s and Pervez Musharraf in the new century. Because of her, Pakistan strives to build a thriving and robust democracy, with our constitution restored and the vestiges of dictatorship purged from the laws of our land. No one can take that away from her. And no one will ever be able to take that away from us. Benazir Bhutto was the bravest person I have ever known. She was also the smartest, the most visionary and the most selfless. She didn’t live for herself, she lived for us. And, tragically, she died for us. For me, for Pakistan, and for the entire world, she is irreplaceable.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 27th, 2010.
COIN dilemmas
The writer was a Ford Scholar at the Programme in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security at UIUC (1997) and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Studies Programme
Khar Bazaar in Bajaur Agency has been struck again, the suicide bomber this time leaving in the wake of the attack nearly 110 casualties with over 40 killed and the toll mounting.
The agency has previously seen attacks on checkpoints and, mostly, Salarzai tribal elders (Mashraan) who are pro-government and whose armed cooperation has been essential in securing areas cleared by the army and the Frontier Corps. This time, early on December 25, the target was a World Food Programme (WFP) distribution point for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
This is a classic counterinsurgency problem, where strategy operates along four stages of clear, hold, build and transfer. Securing the area depends on successful completion of all four stages, but does not depend for that process only on military operations. That’s the tough part.
There is a semi-jocular but profound saying in the army that ‘when you secure the area, make sure the enemy knows it too’. In counter-insurgency operations (COIN), the enemy, amorphous and elusive, depends for his success precisely on denying the counter-insurgency force the satisfaction that the area has been secured.
But it is important to define what securing the area means because capturing the area does not necessarily mean it has been secured. When Operation Sherdil began its roll in Sept 2008, the area west and northwest of Barang and Utman khel tehsils was almost completely under the control of the Taliban.
Three operations later, except for some fringe pockets, Bajaur Agency is physically under the control of security forces. But the dilemma is that in COIN operations, capturing physical space is just one aspect of the operations, though an important one because it gives you partial control of psychological space. The next stage is to capture the social space. That’s the real contest because, in theory, that is when the insurgent is really threatened because this means the COIN force is now moving towards ‘securing’ the area. His (that is, the insurgent) asymmetric advantage depends on controlling the population, which he partly exercises through persuasion and largely through coercion. This is what is called shaping the environment.
Now that the forces have captured the area physically and have also begun to make inroads into the social space by co-opting tribes and sub-tribes for multiple activities — patrolling, maintaining law and order, picking up intelligence on unwanted people and ensuring normal social activity — they are moving towards securing the physical, psychological and social spaces. The insurgent is under pressure and has no option but to strike back. His best bet is the suicide bomber, the ultimate smart bomb.
He will, of course, use various methods, for instance the coordinated armed raids on checkpoints recently in Mohmand Agency, which lies south of Bajaur. But armed attack is a tactic better workable in areas where the insurgent can still move relatively freely. Bajaur is more secure that way and offers very little movement to a platoon-sized body of armed men to approach the inner areas of the agency.
The relative physical and social security of Bajaur is what induced the decision to get the IDPs back in various stages. The insurgent’s objective now is to recapture the physical and social spaces by attacking the people — to signal to them that they are not secure; that the area, in real terms, is still held by him.
The insurgent’s task is easier because he needs to choose the right targets and strike at will without exposing himself through heavy movement. A suicide attack every now and then is enough. He knows that for the government to get the people to return also means the security forces will have to loosen security procedures — people gathering to get food make an ideal target from that perspective. But this also means that the insurgent realises he is losing physical and social spaces. He will attack to recapture the psychological space to try and re-dominate the social space.
That is where the contest will unfold. The fact that he is attacking the people is what needs to be leveraged against him. The WFP has suspended its programme. If it remains suspended, the insurgent would have succeeded in thwarting the return of the people and resumption of normal life. This must be avoided.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 27th, 2010.
Ejaz Haider
Give democracy a chance
The writer is professor of political science at LUMS
rasul.rais@tribune.com.pk
Caught in the spiral of multiple problems, capped by insurgency and terrorism, disquiet with the elected governments is natural. Nor have high-ranking government leaders done much to satisfy the common people. Rather, their administrative and political conduct has given enough ammunition to opportunity-seeking autocratic groups to present democracy as an unworkable form of government for Pakistan.
There are influential social, business and political groups in Pakistan that don’t trust the political parties that often get popular support. In inciting the military establishment to take over power and orchestrating hybrid military-civilian regimes, they have played a great role. What motivated this kind of partnership? Neither any enlightened ideology, nor any longer-term interest in state or nation building had any role. Social class and business interests motivated these disparate groups, individuals and party factions. They have always used political connections for moneymaking ventures.
Elected governments have displaced those aligned with the last hybrid regime and have co-opted those who have realigned with the powerful figures and groups in power. Elite social networks are the bedrock of Pakistani politics; party affiliations, identities and labels have no meaning. Restoration of democracy and elections help reshuffle the political pack. The important players change seats, seek new alliances and build new networks with the same motives of greed, plunder and extorting resources.
The moral of this political story is that the hybrid regimes didn’t give us honest people or those motivated to serve Pakistan and its citizens; everyone entered the game with the same interests and motivations which are generally attributed to the elected and electable political class. Look back at the character and integrity of cabinet ministers, governors and those pulling the strings from the institutional walls and you will know how deceptive and fraudulent the gang was.
We cannot allow the same game to be played under what passes for democracy in the post-hybrid regime. Those genuinely elected by the peoples and laced with popular legitimacy to govern have ethical, legal and political obligations to serve the public and national interest. However, it is true that they have failed in many respects and some of the central players of the political game are responsible for the worsening social and economic conditions of the country. What, then, is the remedy?
The remedy lies in democracy itself. There is no other system in the world that can offer anything better or even remotely close to a democratic system. This system grows with experience and takes roots in the society as voters learn how to change the representatives that violate their trust. The leaders and the parties that have popular mandate today may not have it tomorrow if they violate trust, if we give democracy a chance.
Generally, the urban intellectual and conservative affluent sections of the society mistrust the common man and argue that he is easily manipulated and intimidated into voting for the ruling groups. This is a very simplistic view of the common man and his electoral behaviour. Even in developed countries, citizens remain loyal to their parties over generations. But party identities and commitments dissolve when the parties fail to serve the interests of their constituents.
Our history also confirms the view that voters reject leaders and parties that don’t serve them well, and they explore alternatives when they have an opportunity. Let the present assemblies complete their tenure, so that the people have a chance to judge them on account of their performance. This will prove that democracy is a self-perfecting system and hybridism brings distortions into its natural evolution.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 27th, 2010.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais