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Opinion
Geez! So many of you!
Ejaz Haider
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Under politico-legal pressure, former General Pervez Musharraf has gone on the offensive. As an officer from a fighting arm, he knows that active defence means taking the war to the adversary. His latest interviews show he has decided to ride out and meet the enemy outside the castle walls.
Except, there’s a problem. A big one. He is expecting that he is not riding out alone, that as he crosses the moat, his former comrade-in-arms will send in the troops necessary for this battle.
Will they?
Let me here clarify for ‘sharper’ minds that generally thrive on literalism and conspiracy theories that my reference to Musharraf’s charge and the army sending in troops is purely metaphorical. So, no, the infamous 111 Brigade is not about to move.
The issue is whether the army is lending Musharraf the support he needs to signal to the government, and other political parties, that this business of Article Sixing him could turn foul.
There seems a general view that such is the case. That the army has assured its former boss that he is not alone. Two arguments are being trotted out in support of this theory. The first is a known one – ie, for the army, this is primarily an institutional issue. The person of Musharraf is secondary. The second is the disquieting silence of the army following Musharraf’s statement that the army stands firmly behind him.
There is merit in the first one. The army – the military, in fact – does act as one. It also safeguards its interests. Moreover, while the army’s capacity to influence decisions has eroded, it still retains enough muscle to bend the politicians to its will on matters involving its core interests. Musharraf symbolises the very powerful office of the army chief. If the army cuts him loose, a precedent will have been set and precedents have a nasty habit of becoming customary practice.
Yet, the goings-on might not be so linear. If an assurance has come from the army, what could possibly be its nature and scope? There is also the possibility, given what we know of Musharraf, that he also surprised the army. That would mean forcing the army’s hand. The truth might just lie somewhere in-between. The army is definitely worried about him. Under the previous leadership, the GHQ didn’t want him to return. But return he did. Now he has doubled down. That puts the new army chief in a tight spot.
The real question is, what can the army do even if it wants to help Musharraf get out of the hole? Add to this the fact that whatever it can or wants to do cannot be direct. In other words, the GHQ will have to find a workaround. What could that be apart from backchannel pressure on relevant people, the last category being the government?
Not much, I am afraid, and for a simple reason. Too many people are baying for Musharraf’s blood. Certainly, the political opposition. For them, it is a win-win. Not so for the government. The government’s case is already half-hearted, going by the charge sheet. It wants to focus on Musharraf and leave out the second clause of Article 6. Musharraf’s obvious strategy would be to focus on that clause and expand the ambit of the trial. That’s a number too big and too troublesome for the government to net. The clause is there, however, and the government can’t cherry-pick from the constitution. In fact, there is an organic linkage between the clauses that make up Article 6.
So, we have two worried actors here: the army and the government. The army is in no position to directly jump into the arena. The government is in no position to burn itself. Both have a problem, both also have a commitment. What could they possibly do?
If we use a game-theoretic model, our first assumption must be that the actors are rational and want to maximise their gains. In this particular case, while they have their respective interests, the risk is mutual too. And in a game of brinkmanship, if the risk is mutual, no one can afford going off the hill.
As I wrote elsewhere in an article authored with Moeed Yusuf, political scientist George Tsebelis, in his celebrated work on nested games within consociationism, argues that what look like suboptimal choices of actors are actually owed to the observer’s incomplete perspective and because the observers may be focusing on the ‘principle arena’ in which the actors are engaged. But actors are always engaged in more than one arena and ‘the payoffs of the game in the principle arena vary according to the situation prevailing in other arenas’.
This is the ‘wheels within wheels’ scenario and the actors are supposed to be involved in multiple games at different rungs of a non-linear ladder. An actor may seem to be behaving irrationally in response to a particular goal but that could well be because he is after something else, something more important. In pursuit of this ultimate end, the actor is willing to sacrifice a lesser interest (an example would be giving up something in the short run to gain in the long run, a normal enough activity with state actors, though not confined to them).
Consociationism provides an explanation for why deep political and social cleavages do not necessarily lead to blatantly conflictual outcomes. The onus lies on the political elites who could behave in an accommodative manner or create pacts whereby one actor gives in on a particular issue while the other does on another. This is especially possible in iterated games, where one favour can be traded for another as the game goes on.
The sticking point will be the application of Article 6 in toto. The only way Musharraf can find some space is if the necessity and impracticality of the second clause can be successfully argued. In other words, if the second cannot be brought in, the first must be dropped too. The army’s line of argument, through the backchannel, would precisely be this. The support elements, as Musharraf rides out of the castle, will not just be the current team in the GHQ but also the ‘abetters’!
And as the abetters go, I am reminded of Rowan Atkinson’s skit in which he, acting as the devil, is categorising sinners and says, “fornicators on this side” and follows it up by hammering the punchline, “My god, there are so many of you!”
The writer is a newspaper man. He tweets @ejazhaider.
Geez! So many of you!
Ejaz Haider
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Except, there’s a problem. A big one. He is expecting that he is not riding out alone, that as he crosses the moat, his former comrade-in-arms will send in the troops necessary for this battle.
Will they?
Let me here clarify for ‘sharper’ minds that generally thrive on literalism and conspiracy theories that my reference to Musharraf’s charge and the army sending in troops is purely metaphorical. So, no, the infamous 111 Brigade is not about to move.
The issue is whether the army is lending Musharraf the support he needs to signal to the government, and other political parties, that this business of Article Sixing him could turn foul.
There seems a general view that such is the case. That the army has assured its former boss that he is not alone. Two arguments are being trotted out in support of this theory. The first is a known one – ie, for the army, this is primarily an institutional issue. The person of Musharraf is secondary. The second is the disquieting silence of the army following Musharraf’s statement that the army stands firmly behind him.
There is merit in the first one. The army – the military, in fact – does act as one. It also safeguards its interests. Moreover, while the army’s capacity to influence decisions has eroded, it still retains enough muscle to bend the politicians to its will on matters involving its core interests. Musharraf symbolises the very powerful office of the army chief. If the army cuts him loose, a precedent will have been set and precedents have a nasty habit of becoming customary practice.
Yet, the goings-on might not be so linear. If an assurance has come from the army, what could possibly be its nature and scope? There is also the possibility, given what we know of Musharraf, that he also surprised the army. That would mean forcing the army’s hand. The truth might just lie somewhere in-between. The army is definitely worried about him. Under the previous leadership, the GHQ didn’t want him to return. But return he did. Now he has doubled down. That puts the new army chief in a tight spot.
The real question is, what can the army do even if it wants to help Musharraf get out of the hole? Add to this the fact that whatever it can or wants to do cannot be direct. In other words, the GHQ will have to find a workaround. What could that be apart from backchannel pressure on relevant people, the last category being the government?
Not much, I am afraid, and for a simple reason. Too many people are baying for Musharraf’s blood. Certainly, the political opposition. For them, it is a win-win. Not so for the government. The government’s case is already half-hearted, going by the charge sheet. It wants to focus on Musharraf and leave out the second clause of Article 6. Musharraf’s obvious strategy would be to focus on that clause and expand the ambit of the trial. That’s a number too big and too troublesome for the government to net. The clause is there, however, and the government can’t cherry-pick from the constitution. In fact, there is an organic linkage between the clauses that make up Article 6.
So, we have two worried actors here: the army and the government. The army is in no position to directly jump into the arena. The government is in no position to burn itself. Both have a problem, both also have a commitment. What could they possibly do?
If we use a game-theoretic model, our first assumption must be that the actors are rational and want to maximise their gains. In this particular case, while they have their respective interests, the risk is mutual too. And in a game of brinkmanship, if the risk is mutual, no one can afford going off the hill.
As I wrote elsewhere in an article authored with Moeed Yusuf, political scientist George Tsebelis, in his celebrated work on nested games within consociationism, argues that what look like suboptimal choices of actors are actually owed to the observer’s incomplete perspective and because the observers may be focusing on the ‘principle arena’ in which the actors are engaged. But actors are always engaged in more than one arena and ‘the payoffs of the game in the principle arena vary according to the situation prevailing in other arenas’.
This is the ‘wheels within wheels’ scenario and the actors are supposed to be involved in multiple games at different rungs of a non-linear ladder. An actor may seem to be behaving irrationally in response to a particular goal but that could well be because he is after something else, something more important. In pursuit of this ultimate end, the actor is willing to sacrifice a lesser interest (an example would be giving up something in the short run to gain in the long run, a normal enough activity with state actors, though not confined to them).
Consociationism provides an explanation for why deep political and social cleavages do not necessarily lead to blatantly conflictual outcomes. The onus lies on the political elites who could behave in an accommodative manner or create pacts whereby one actor gives in on a particular issue while the other does on another. This is especially possible in iterated games, where one favour can be traded for another as the game goes on.
The sticking point will be the application of Article 6 in toto. The only way Musharraf can find some space is if the necessity and impracticality of the second clause can be successfully argued. In other words, if the second cannot be brought in, the first must be dropped too. The army’s line of argument, through the backchannel, would precisely be this. The support elements, as Musharraf rides out of the castle, will not just be the current team in the GHQ but also the ‘abetters’!
And as the abetters go, I am reminded of Rowan Atkinson’s skit in which he, acting as the devil, is categorising sinners and says, “fornicators on this side” and follows it up by hammering the punchline, “My god, there are so many of you!”
The writer is a newspaper man. He tweets @ejazhaider.
