The Travails of Pakistan’s Sharif

[DV RULES]

Following the initial sense of jubilation over the magnificent victory of Pakistan Muslim League led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in last week’s parliamentary poll, the inevitable reality check is about to commence. A mixed picture is bound to emerge.

On the face of it, Sharif’s party secured 126 seats out of the 273, which were up for grabs in the poll. This is a most impressive tally and by far exceeds the prognosis by sympathizers and well-wishers within Pakistan and abroad.

This performance all but ensures a “strong” government. Sharif hardly needs to depend on other political parties to establish his majority in the new parliament. He will be leading veritably a single party government.

But on closer examination, it also emerges that out of the tally of 126 seats, Sharif’s party garnered as much as 118 from a single province, namely, Punjab, while it could secure only 8 seats from all the remaining three provinces combined – Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The new government in Islamabad, in short, is virtually an “all-Punjab” phenomenon. The implications for Pakistan’s federal polity are at once obvious, given the deep-rooted antipathies over perceived Punjabi domination of the political economy.

Simply put, Sharif needs to carry the other provincial governments along, which requires evolving a good working relationship with at least the two main opposition parties Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf [PTI]. But consensus politics in the best of times demands a mature political culture and Pakistan’s limited experience with democracy poses a handicap for Sharif. The PTI, in particular, can be expected to differentiate itself from Sharif’s policies on any issue – domestic and foreign – in any whichever way it can. The party has performed well by projecting itself as a quintessential “outsider” looking in and offering “change” and has shown the readiness to tap into the religious and militant groups wherever it could and to unabashedly exploit the pervasive “anti-Americanism” in the Pakistani public opinion, which the established mainstream parties shied away from.

To cut a long story short, Sharif’s predicament is going to be that Pakistan’s domestic and foreign policies are inextricably linked. His main preoccupation in the coming weeks and months is going to be the efforts to revive the economy. And it is a foregone conclusion that Pakistan needs the crutch of an economic bail-out from the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. But then, Washington’s blessings are a prerequisite of the situation, too. Put differently, Sharif needs to build good equations with the Obama administration.

However, this won’t come easy. On its part, Washington is called upon to judiciously blend the US’s long-term goals of a stable, secure, democratic and prosperous Pakistan (which is a nuclear power) with its short-term objectives of the war in Afghanistan. In immediate terms, Washington will expect Sharif’s cooperation with the US’ regional strategies during the critical period that lies ahead as Afghanistan tiptoes toward the post-2014 transition and the nine American military bases get established, anchoring an open-ended American military presence in the region.

Can Sharif deliver on the Obama administration’s expectations? Put differently, how high will be the US’ bar of expectations? Any close identification by the new government in Islamabad with the US’ regional strategies will open the door for criticism by the political opposition such as the PTI (and its allies among the religious parties and extremist groups) that Sharif is presiding over a comprador regime. Sharif’s dilemma is compounded by the fact that the PTI is all set to form the provincial government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan. Sharif has begun well by reaching out to Khan.

Besides, Sharif himself has taken a highly critical position on the key issue of the US’ drone attacks, where the Obama administration has shown little inclination to heed Pakistani criticism. Again, Sharif has argued consistently for a political dialogue with the militant groups in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where the US targets the drone attacks, branding these groups as Al-Qaeda affiliates.

The point is, Sharif’s capacity to poach into the Pakistani military’s exclusive preserve in crafting and navigating the Afghan policy is rather limited as things stand today. From the US viewpoint also, Pakistani military leadership in Rawalpindi will remain for practical purposes its principal interlocutor rather than the civilian leadership in Islamabad. It is here that the much larger question of civilian supremacy in Pakistan’s political economy comes into play.

The matrix is extremely complex because it also involves the political will and the capacity of the elected government led by Sharif to bring the terrorist groups under control, which today pose a grave danger to Pakistan’s internal security and stability, without which an economic regeneration program becomes a non-starter. The leading Pakistani newspaper Daily Times neatly summed up the gravity of the challenge facing Sharif’s government:

“Nawaz Sharif has billed the economic revival of Pakistan as the top priority of his government after it takes office. He wants to mould Pakistan’s foreign policy to match this objective… However, wresting control of the foreign policy from the military and dealing with the militant groups within Pakistan, long patronized by the state to achieve foreign policy objectives, will present a major challenge for the new government. Pakistan’s foreign policy cannot be reoriented without dealing with the question of domestic and regional terrorism. Some of the militant groups that were used by the security establishment to hurt India in Kashmir and to manoeuvre the situation in Afghanistan have now rebelled against the Pakistani state. Domestic terrorism, which has been one of the major causes of a steep decline in the economy, is deeply connected to regional terrorism.”

The policy dilemma gets far more compounded if and when Sharif begins to work on improving Pakistan’s ties with India. There is no clarity so far that the Pakistani military, which has been in charge of the country’s policies toward India, is anywhere near shedding its perceptions of India as an enemy country and is willing to fall in line with Sharif’s sincere desire for normalizing Pakistan’s ties with India and for fostering close trade and investment links. In the circumstances, New Delhi too can be expected to wait and watch how the keen political tussle between the elected government and the military plays out before taking any initiatives. The bottom line for New Delhi would be that Sharif’s government conclusively dismantles the infrastructure of militant groups based on Pakistani soil, which threaten India’s security.

Given the close nexus between the Pakistani military and most of these militant groups, what is needed is nothing short of a paradigm shift. To quote Daily Times, again, “That India is ready to work with the new government in Pakistan is clear… It is hoped that the PML-N and the military leadership will develop a healthy working relationship and reorient Pakistan’s foreign and security policies with the goal of peace and economic prosperity in Pakistan and the region.”

But then, the daily adds, “This goal is [also] linked to peace in Afghanistan.” It is here that the Obama administration’s attitude toward the Sharif government assumes critical importance. Even as Sharif begins to walk a tight rope while negotiating with the military on his foreign policy, which is of course inextricably linked to Pakistan’s domestic policies as well, he should be able to rely on the support of the international community and the US in particular.

However, the jury is still out whether the US will show the foresight and wisdom to position itself in this case on the “right side of history.” If Turkey’s Recep Erdogan could push through his assertion of civilian supremacy over the Pashas and make the latter accountable, it was due to the unwavering support and encouragement he received from the west. To put it mildly, Sharif cannot claim to enjoy any such advantage.

The heart of the matter is that for Washington, its regional strategies come first foremost, and here it is the Pakistani military that counts. Besides, Washington has been so used to dealing with the Pakistani military as the key promoter of the country’s foreign and security polices that a leap of faith is needed on the part of the Obama administration. As of now the signs look tentative at best.

Of course, the fact that President Obama broke protocol and phoned Sharif and complimented him about his “personality” and conveyed the expectations of an early meeting between them will have great resonance in Pakistan. Indeed, Sharif has some good things going for him, too, as the phone calls from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi would bear out. To be sure, Sharif enjoys goodwill amongst the political elites in New Delhi despite India’s fair crop of “hawks” who choose to neither hear or see any ray of hope whatsoever in India’s ties with Pakistan now or beyond.


The Travails of Pakistan