POLITICS
What Pakistan needs now is a Franco or a Pinochet
BRUCE ANDERSON
Pakistan's history is a depressing spectacle. Much more homogenous than India, it should therefore be easier to govern, yet it has made almost no political progress since independence. Every day, India seems to provide renewed evidence for Adam Smith's dictum that there is a lot of ruin in a nation. Yet the pullulating chaos of Indian political life which both amuses and appals the visitor — there is no more infuriating or absurd creature than the average Indian petty bureaucrat — disguises a deeper stability. Its political structures have survived adversity, largely because they rest on twin indispens- able foundations: civil society and — to an extent — the rule of law. Pakistan's defi- ciencies in both those respects explain its failure in constitutional evolution, Hence the need for another military coup; hence also the fatuity of Western condemnation.
Any British politician with a sensitivity to irony might have recoiled from condemning the Pakistani generals on the eve of Jiang Zemin's visit to this country. The Chinese leader is to be accorded every respect that official Britain can bestow, including an interview by Lord Rees-Mogg in the Times of a grovelling obsequiousness unmatched since the days when Robert Maxwell was cultivating his publishing links with the Soviet empire. Where was your sense of shame, William? On a par, it would appear, with Robin Cook's sense of irony.
The government, as opposed to the Times, is right to treat Mr Jiang in this way; China is far too important to be subjected to an ethical foreign policy. But even without a Kantian insistence on absolute moral stan- dards, we should at least clear our minds of cant. Pakistan has been condemned by a Commonwealth ministerial group chaired by a Zimbabwean, Stan Mudenge; if he is so concerned about democratic standards, why does he not start at home? The ghost of the British empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof, the Commonwealth is hardly a serious organisation any more than Robin Cook is a serious Foreign Secretary.
It would be insane to treat Pakistan as a pariah state; it could easily become one, while equipped with nuclear weapons and in one of the world's more unstable regions. Here, the Indians are by no means the wis- est custodians of their own self-interest. They enjoy nothing more than playing diplomatic one-upmanship with their neigh- bour, and in their eagerness to induce inter- national forums to condemn the Pakistanis, they often lose sight of the need for peace- ful co-existence. We should be less excitable — but with Mr Cook at the FO? Even by his own standards, his visit to the subconti- nent was ignominious, and he seems to have learned nothing from the experience. But who ever thought that he would? The Pakistani public's reaction to the coup demonstrated that they understand the limitations of their democratic politi- cians, even if Robin Cook does not. We should also be impressed by Imran Khan's response. An honourable man and a patriot, he also made the Pakistan cricket XI play as a team rather than as a group of talented but warring individuals; there are worse qualifications for political leadership. If he gives the generals his cautious approval, he might be proved right.
The Commonwealth is not only guilty of hypocrisy. It is fatuous to prattle on about democracy as if it were a simple answer to every country's problems. Admittedly, Pak- istan's recent pseudo-democratic rulers could have been worse; they were not as bad as Robert Mugabe or Julius Nyerere. But this only proves that democracy can cover a multitude of sins. If we woke up tomorrow to learn that the army had seized control in Russia during the night and that 5,000 mafiosi were already in custody awaiting rigorous interrogation, ought we to be alarmed, or relieved? It would all depend on the quality of the generals.
This raises another problem. It is unques- tionably true that the three greatest states- men this century from outside Northern Europe or the USA were military rulers: Ataturk, Franco and Pinochet, all three of whom saved and then transformed their countries. In our own history, even a High Tory ought to acknowledge the achieve- ments of that brave bad man Oliver Cromwell, while regretting Charles I's incompetence; Cromwell was a constitu- tional datalyst.
For every Franco or Pinochet, however, there has been a score of squalid, corrupt generals who would seem to belong to a bad comic opera except that their misdeeds were desperately serious. Pakistan has had its share of such characters; Generals Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Zia ul-Haq were mostly boneheads who should not have progressed beyond lance-corporal.
The weakness of Third/developing World democracy is that it is almost impossible to get rid of a head of government, even when he is useless from the outset like Mugabe, or if he outlasts his former usefulness, as Dr Mahathir of Malaysia has done, a man whose considerable contribution to his country's development is now jeopardised by his remaining in office. When it comes to the removal of the unfit from office, however, military regimes are not necessar- ily an improvement, reminding one of Churchill's observation that democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the alternatives.
Pakistan is years away from being a democracy in real terms. The West is now talking about a timetable for the restoration of democracy, when it would be much wiser to encourage the generals to instal some of the necessary infrastructure without which democracy cannot flourish. Economic devel- opment; the elimination, or more realistical- ly the curbing, of corruption in central and local government; an independent judiciary: these should be the priorities, and it is in those areas that the West should give dis- creet — because more likely to be heeded — encouragement and practical assistance.
Apropos of the judiciary, there is one ground for optimism. When the late Premier Bhutto wanted to eliminate some political opponents, one of the crimes for which he was subsequently and justly hanged, he had to have them murdered; he was unable to organise their judicial murder. That would not have been a problem in China.
In one unfortunate respect, China and Pakistan are similar. Both their nationals find it easier to flourish abroad than at home. The Chinese have mastered every art except politics, and their nation's future is still in the grip of a potentially tragic anti- nomy. China is far too large to be run as a unitary state, yet its history offers no exam- ples of devolution without chaos. It may therefore be condemned indefinitely to a sterile, centralised regime.
Pakistan's prospects are better, even with generals in charge. As in Turkey, the army has helped to keep the country together, and a bad general is preferable to anarchy and breakdown. Despite the naiveties uttered by Mr Cook and the Common- wealth, there is no easy answer to Pakistan's difficulties. We just have to hope that the right generals are in charge. What Pakistan needs now is a Franco or a Pinochet.
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