Democracy isn't the best medicine for Pakistan

National Post ^ | 2007-12-28 | George Jonas

[Clive]

An official of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's party emerged from Rawalpindi General Hospital. "She has been martyred," announced Rehman Malik, according to wire service reports. This was how the world learned on Thursday of the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister who had her sights once again set on being Pakistan's prime minister. Someone fired at Ms. Bhutto as she was leaving an election rally at Liaqat Bagh park, then blew himself up, killing and injuring many other people.

Tragic, yes; surprising, no. "Democracy may come to Pakistan before long," I wrote in September this year, "and with it, catastrophe." It required no prescience to make that observation, only some sense of history.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan (to call it by its official name) used to be West Pakistan until it separated from East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh, during the civil war of 1970-71. This was followed by the briefest but bloodiest of Indo-Pakistani wars, the third since independence (1947), after which civilian rule resumed under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto until 1977, when Bhutto was deposed and later executed by the country's third military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq. He started merging Pakistan's common-law based judicial system with shariah or Islamic religious laws, and ruled until his 1988 death in what may or may not have been an accidental plane crash. The election that followed brought to power the daughter of the executed president, Benazir Bhutto, whose regime alternated with that of Nawaz Sharif, until the next military coup d'etat in 1999 brought General Pervez Musharraf into power. Sharif was jailed and later exiled; Benazir Bhutto wisely fled corruption charges in 1999, not wishing to face the kind of court that hanged her father.

Musharraf proved to be an ally in the war against terror, but he's a dictator while the U.S. is a democracy. The inevitable tensions followed. By September this year both Sharif and Bhutto were poised to return to contest a democratic election, Pakistani-style, against Musharraf, who was facing increasing pressure from the Bush administration to allow the exercise. He probably agreed to put his title on the line against his better judgment, but Condoleezza Rice in full flight is hard to resist. She was conveying the U.S. President's message to the general to "restore democracy as quickly as possible" -- but of course democracy needed to be invented in Pakistan, not restored, and the "Land of the Pure" didn't look like the best place in which to invent it.

The White House has clout, so Bhutto returned in a triumphal procession to Karachi in November. As anyone could have predicted, Islamist extremists pounced almost immediately, raining fire on Bhutto's parade, killing and maiming hundreds. They were getting ready to kill and maim thousands more, when Musharraf imposed a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, deployed troops, and locked up hordes of lawyers and journalists, claiming it was necessary to prevent a takeover by the militants of Islam.

Locking up journalists and lawyers comes naturally to strongman, but Musharraf 's concern about militants wasn't unwarranted. At present, a democratic Pakistan is likely to be a brief prelude to the long, dark night of a Taliban-style tyranny. Bhutto, as it turned out, lived only as long as Musharraf 's emergency measures lasted. When he lifted them under renewed American pressure, she died.

Pressuring Pakistan to act out America's fascination with democracy is minimally naive. So is forcing Musharraf, who perches precariously at the edge of a precipice, to audition for a speaking part in a psychodrama called "elections" that Western liberals believe are therapeutically efficacious against every conceivable malady in the body politic. Democracy is strong medicine, every bit as miraculous as penicillin, but some cultures, like some patients, are allergic to it. The best medicine won't help allergic patients, and sometimes it might kill them.#

A suicidal gunman pulled the trigger, but it was America's insistence on a premature experiment that killed the fatally ambitious daughter of the ill-starred Bhutto family. This isn't to blame democracy as a system, or the Bush-administration's attraction to a form of government that works so well for many nations, only to note a fact. Democracy's feeble candle is a pinpoint of light in the pitch-black night of autocracy, and as such it has an allure for moths within flying distance. This set the scene. America's boss moth, Bush, instructed his envoy-moth, Rice, to tell a beleaguered Musharraf that America expected "there to be elections as soon as possible," and the next sound we heard was a sizzle as a local moth flew into the flame.

The question isn't whether Western-style democracy is a good system. The system is fine. The question is whether Western-style democracy can be made to work in an East-ern-style culture. Work, that is, not at some future date, in the fullness of time, when the shrimp learns to whistle (thank you, Mr. Khrushchev) but today, as the date for parliamentary elections in Pakistan, set for January, draws inexorably nearer.

The question isn't whether Benazir Bhutto was a brave woman. She was -- may she rest in peace. But the bomb is ticking. Literally. Iran may wish to have the Muslim bomb, but Pakistan already has it. The question is: Is this the ideal classroom for Democracy 101? I wonder if the late Shah of Iran ever appears in Musharraf's dreams.

[Pietro]

I love articles that tell us we must support the autocrats because the country they rule is too backward for democracy. These are the same savants that condemn us for supporting autocrats when they do something truly repressive such as shut down a newspaper.

Having your cake and eating it too is easy when none of your words carry consequences.

We're in a war. People die in a war. Get acclimated to that reality and lets get on w/ it. Don't navel gaze yourself into sophist nothings.

[org.whodat]

Autocracy is not the real problem in Pakistan, where for a number of years now the mildly oppressive autocracy of Musharraf has been the only thing preventing the country's being taken over by Islamist nutjobs. Anybody who thinks the corrupt "democratic" politicians of Pakistan have the potential to effectively contest control of the country with the Islamist nutjobs without themselves using "undemocratic" means need to find something else to smoke.

I have lived in the hell hole and I can tell you this is an outstanding post. I agree 110%.

[Clive]

One thing that you cannot ascribe to George Jonas is ignorance of tyranny.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There were persuasive arguments that democracy couldn’t work in Japan after WWII. So what was done that resulted in Japan becoming a model of democracy?

MacArthur ruled Japan as an autocrat, but with democracy in mind. It was clear to the Japanese that they had to act to make their nation a democracy, or they would remain under military rule. And those who rejected the concept were permitted no part in any powerful segment of that society.

Democracy in Japan meant everywhere. From the small assembly of people to the national government, everything had to be decided with voting, and with respect to democracy. No leaders were permitted who were not democrats.

To decry democracy was not just anti-social, it was a crime, equivalent to calling for the overthrow of the government.

Now compare this to Pakistan. Right now, nobody rules over all of Pakistan. It is a nation of enclaves. Until it is unified, there can be no real government, much less democracy.

For years, working with Musharaff, the US has tried to strengthen his power, and the power of his military, with this in mind. Because until it comes about, there can be no rule, even autocracy, in Pakistan. Chaos will defeat order.