The burden of history

The burden of history

Dr Maleeha Lodhi

The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News. Anniversaries are moments for national reflection. General Ziaul Haq's death anniversary today provides just such an opportunity. Why should an era matter that ended over two decades ago? Because the country's longest-serving ruler left the most enduring and troublesome legacy. A review of that period helps to understand the roots of many of the imposing challenges that Pakistan is struggling with today. So much of what happened during 1977-1988 shaped the country's political and social landscape and cast a shadow on subsequent years. Four aspects of Zia's legacy had deleterious long-term consequences for the country. One, the external and internal policies he pursued led to the growth of religious extremism and inducted militancy into the country. Pakistan's long and deep engagement in the US-led campaign to roll back the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan mired the country in a war of unintended consequences from which the entire region was to reap a bitter harvest. Two, it was in the Zia era that the roots of the country's chronic fiscal crises, financial imbalances and indebtedness are to be found. Three, his eleven years in power left Pakistan institutionally impoverished, undermining the foundation for later democratic rule. Four, the parochialisation of politics during his era left society deeply fragmented and a polity defined more by patronage than by policy or issues. Zia would not have survived in power so long if he hadn't been such a wily manipulator who vigorously exploited opportunities to his political advantage. He leveraged western support for his role as a 'frontline' leader to consolidate his initially shaky position. Using classic divide-and-rule tactics, he manipulated the polarisation between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's followers and opponents – that had paved the way for the 1977 coup – to orchestrate the execution of the country's first popularly-elected prime minister. He turned his ostensible 90-day operation into a long career, twice promising and cancelling elections, in 1977 and 1979. Combining the post of army chief with that of president gave him virtually unfettered power. More instructive than a chronology of his political manoeuvres are the four aspects of his rule that have left such a toxic legacy. The repercussions of Pakistan's geo-political engagements in the region turned out to be the most explosive. The Afghan enterprise, in partnership with the United States, was marked by a series of strategic mistakes the most spectacular of which was to deploy religious militancy to fight communism. This unleashed the blowback of militant radicalisation that engulfed the neighbourhood and eventually came to endanger Pakistan itself. A willing recruit to the western-led coalition's campaign to defeat the Russians, Zia failed to anticipate how this involvement would import diverse sources of instability and compromise Pakistan's own security. Other than militancy the witches' brew of problems the country inherited from its complex involvement in Afghanistan included the weaponisation of society (spawning a 'Kalashnikov culture'), proliferation of drugs, the exponential growth of madressahs, and the influx of millions of Afghan refugees. Some 20,000 to 30,000 nationals from about 20 Muslim countries were encouraged by the US-led coalition to train and fight in the 'jehad'. Several of these Mujahideen were to morph into Al Qaeda. The last of the Cold War conflicts was to lead to the first military intervention of the 21st century in reaction to 9/11. Zia's external policies were accompanied by domestic measures aimed at "Islamising" society and patronising the religious Right. The use of Islam to legitimise his rule fanned the growth of religious extremism, fostered the forces of intolerance in society, and unleashed passions that polarised as well as pulverised the nation. Violent sectarianism had its roots in these policies. As also in the state's deliberate patronisation of countervailing groups to undercut and weaken certain religious sects and ethnic groups. The consequences of the economic mismanagement of the Zia years were equally disastrous. Annual GDP growth averaged six per cent in the 1980s. But this statistically impressive growth rate was achieved by running down physical and social assets and through higher levels of borrowing. A unique opportunity was squandered to translate a combination of fortuitous factors – significant western aid and inflows of remittances from overseas Pakistanis – into investment in productive sectors, infrastructure and human development, including education. Instead, this windfall was used to finance consumption. The profligacy and fiscal indiscipline of the regime's economic policies touched new heights when in 1984-85, current expenditure exceeded total revenue, becoming a turning point in the country's budgetary history. Unwilling to broaden the tax base or curb spending, the regime began to borrow excessively to finance not only development expenditure but also consumption. The crisis of an unsustainable resource imbalance, reflected in the twin deficits of the budget and balance of payments, was firmly rooted in the Zia era. This also inaugurated an inglorious tradition, followed by both his civilian and military successors, of using economic largesse from overseas to avoid or postpone structural reforms that could place the economy on a viable footing. The costs of delayed or no reforms have since trapped the country in a vicious cycle of external dependence, fiscal imprudence and financial crisis, over and over again, necessitating one IMF bailout after another. The third pernicious aspect of the Zia legacy was the political and institutional erosion bequeathed by the country's longest period of martial law. The prolonged prohibition on political activity, ban on political parties, assault on the independence of the judiciary, curbs on press and academic freedom, all served to undermine the institutions of civil society. Weakened institutions in an increasingly fragmented society made governance a much more formidable challenge in the post-Zia era. Although politicisation of the civil bureaucracy had begun under his predecessor, Zia's actions hastened the descent into administrative chaos. Political manipulation of the institutions that had long provided administrative order produced a predictable erosion of authority. With the administrative and police machinery increasingly denuded of any 'neutrality' and distorted to serve political ends, its efficiency underwent precipitous decline. Finally, there were a complex array of consequences that ensued from Zia's policies of depoliticisation and parochialisation. This meant several things. Parochialising politics implied encouraging and channelling the expression of civic demands and grievances in ethnic or sectarian terms. This was accompanied by efforts to promote countervailing political and ethnic groups to undercut support for opposition parties not amenable to the regime's control. These policies fostered parochial trends that divided and atomised society. With national issues deliberately eclipsed by the promotion of local politics, a new genre of politician was spawned. This patronage-seeking politician was tied to the regime by new, 'clientelist' networks resting on the distribution of state largesse: urban land, bank credit and 'development' funds. This set in train a process that opened up vast opportunities of loot and plunder of state resources. This patronage-driven, local influential in turn ensured that the controlled politics of the Zia period was devoid of any issue orientation. This changed the very complexion of politics, as well as the country's political culture. Seeking elected office to leverage state resources became the name of the political game. This produced a range of perverse effects: the triumph of politics without public purpose, the abuse of public office for private gain, the draining of state coffers, the haemorrhaging of state-run banks and corporations, and ultimately the pervasiveness of corruption throughout the system. What Pakistan's most accomplished historian Ayesha Jalal calls "the monetisation of politics" was born in the Zia period. Supporters of the late President Zia often point to economic growth and political stability as the ostensible achievements of his years in power. But that claim is contradicted by the facts: an official economy left in ruins, society more violent, intolerant and fragmented than ever before and state institutions with much weaker capacity to govern.