WMC Commentary: “Charlie Wilson’s War” and Pakistan at a Crossroads

“Who is this?” I groaned into the phone. It was before noon on a Sunday, and I was a student. Who was up this early? It was my father, having an apoplectic fit. “What the hell are you up to over there? I’ve had some calls from friends that you are causing trouble. You have to concentrate on your studies!”

The “trouble” he was referring to was my having invited Agha Shahi, who had just stepped down as foreign minister of Pakistan, to address students at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

It was 1982, and “Charlie Wilson’s War”—a joint U.S.-Pakistani operation to arm and train Islamic militants to resist a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—was well underway (the war that’s the subject of the Mike Nichols movie opening later this month). It seemed that allowing detractors of this policy, like Shahi, to raise their voice even for an academic audience was “trouble.”

I had already come under pressure from my dean at Fletcher to downgrade the event to a round-table discussion. Now my mail from home carried words crossed out with a black marker. At the time, I remember being impressed that students in Boston could affect policy in Washington and Islamabad.

After all, back in Pakistan, there was no Parliament to question this war, no independent media in existence. The constitutional process had been suspended in 1977 with a military coup by General Zia-ul-Haq, and the former prime minister, Zulfiqar A Bhutto, had been hanged in 1979. President Reagan was determined that Pakistan could bring down the Soviet Union and liberate the nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Zia was a more than willing ally. It was a noble cause in the hands of a military zealot, so we all shut up in 1977 and swallowed the Triple A rhetoric of Allah, the Army and America.

The Triple A’s won in Afghanistan, but when America left, the militants stayed behind. Today, 25 years later we are witnessing another general, Pervez Musharraf, a liberal, secular and jocular sort, undertake another war, this time against those militants, but still with the United States as his ally.

It’s not all deja-vu. Unlike Zia, Musharraf has political parties from left and right to contend with. Leading the two major opposition parties are former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and her former nemesis, Nawaz Sharif, both recently returned from exile. Several smaller parties including a religious right have acquired a new life in opposition to the war on terror.

The flashpoint has been the suspension of civil liberty and rule of law the counter-terror project has entailed. Led by the chief justice, and with heavy coverage from the news media, a group of activist lawyers have been opening missing persons cases and calling government officials into court for questioning, taking both Musharraf and the Bush Administration by surprise The Punjab chief minister, a member of Musharraf’s party, told the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in an interview that the judiciary was becoming “objectionable” and getting in the way of maintaining order.

Firing the Supreme Court including the chief justice, and the declaration of emergency rule were Musharraf’s attempts to regain “order.” Lawyers and journalists have been jailed, civil liberties have been suspended and the independent news channels have been shut down.

Musharraf’s decision to declare Emergency on November 3, 2007, was equally motivated by his own re-election fears. With opposition leaders detained and on the defensive and a puppet judiciary in place, Musharraf’s own renewal took place November 29, when he was sworn in as civilian president. The Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistani government sources claim to have checked the plan with Washington; the reaction was muted.

But for Pakistanis inured by their history to the declaration of such martial laws, it was police brutality towards ordinary citizens—teachers, housewives, students, lawyers—all in the glare of the world’s press that unleashed the avalanche of opposition. For the first time, the authorities took on the elite. Society ladies sipping tea in the audience of a Human Rights Commission meeting were summarily carted off to prison, one still in her chair! Political parties and civil society groups (bar associations, human rights groups, students, journalists) are joining this protest, often through the Internet. We Oppose the Emergency in Pakistan is becoming one of the largest groups on Facebook. Pakistan’s most well-known Sufi rock group Junoon is dedicating its Nobel Peace concert in Oslo to the lawyers’ movement. Indeed, intended to cripple resistance, the Emergency has made opposition stronger, by allying its left and right wings. At protests, the bearded and veiled stand with the jean and tank-top clad iPod generation.

And the United States, which has invested reportedly $11 billion in the war on terror in Pakistan, is caught in the headlights. Dispatching Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to salvage its attempted accord between former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the embattled Musharraf has had limited results. The general has agreed to an election date, January 8, 2008, and has announced he will lift the Emergency on December 16, 2007. He finally gave up his dual post as army chief, on November 28, 2007. But he refuses to release the judges and lawyers, or allow the media channels to come back on. He has allowed Nawaz Sharif’s return from exile, but neither Sharif nor Benazir can hold large public rallies under the Emergency.

In a country with large swaths of illiterate rural population, it is not possible to hold a free and fair election without personal and very public campaigning. This has put Benazir and other political leaders in a quandary. If their parties boycott the elections as a sham, as Sharif has threatened to do, a threat more likely now that his own candidacy has been rejected by the government, the military government and its party will ram through a “coup” against their own citizens. If the major opposition parties participate in the elections they will have fewer seats than in a real, open race and end up in a fractured coalition, unless they can succeed in forging a pre-election coalition. Talks on all sides are still continuing. The key to the government is winning the majority province of Punjab. Two men stand in the balance: Sharif, center right and opposed to Musharraf; and the new chief of the army, General Ashfaq Kayani, whose goals and ambitions are as yet unclear. The best result for Benazir is if Sharif allows his party to stand and it’s a three-way fight.

Historically, dictatorships from European fascism to Afghan Talibanism have risen by convincing people that security comes at the price of freedom. The only positive result of this chaos and uncertainty is that Pakistanis, across the country and the world are standing up to say they refuse to choose between stability and the rule of law. It is crucial for the future of the real war on terror that the United States government not fail them and push in public and in private for a credible election with security and a level playing field for all contenders. The generals, since now there is a new man in uniform, must be persuaded to act with grace and leave politics to the politicians, the law to the judicial system and the press with the freedom to expose “all the news that fit to print.” Perhaps the democratically elected president of Turkey who arrives in Pakistan on December 2nd, fresh from his own victory on civil-military relations, can assure Musharraf that there is life after the uniform.