June 26th 1999

ASIA

Who really runs Pakistan?

I S L A M A B A D

A question over the country’s leadership emerges as the battle in Kashmir continues, neither side retreating er mlitarily or diplomatically

NAWAZ SHARIF, Pakistan’s prime minister, presides over a robust parliamentary majority, a tame army and a nervous press. But his image of omnipotence has been called into question by the violent dispute with India over Kashmir. Surely, the man who invited his Indian counterpart to talk peace in Lahore four months ago would not snatch Indian territory from behind the shield of nuclear weapons? India’s government, reluctant perhaps to admit it has been taken in, suggests it was the Pakistani army’s idea to send hundreds of fighters to grab Indian mountain peaks. Maybe Pakistan’s soldiers are reasserting their traditional primacy, or preparing for a coup. It is not clear who is calling the shots. Because of that, India’s home minister, L.K. Advani, said on June 23rd: “It would be prudent on the part of India to be prepared for war.”

Pakistan’s official line is that Kashmiri “mujahideen” are acting on their own. Many unofficial Pakistanis admit that the government has some hand in the incursion. But few think that the army acted against the prime minister’s wishes. “The army would do what the government authorises it to do,” says Nishat Ahmed, a retired general, “nothing more, nothing less.”

Approval, though, is not the same as guidance. There is speculation about who planned the incursion and how involved Mr Sharif was. The thread running through most of it is that Pakistan seized an opportunity but did not plot a strategy, and that Mr Sharif may not have realised the consequences. The picture that emerges is of a man who compounds his intellectual limitations by isolating himself from the influence of everyone but his domineering father and a few advisers. He is said to spend more time at the family compound near Lahore than in Islamabad, the capital, and almost never goes to parliament. He makes decisions impulsively and circumvents institutions that might check his whim.

And so it may have been with the decision to cross the line of control, the de facto border, in Kashmir. The defence cabinet committee, which ought to discuss such things, rarely meets. Lately, Mr Sharif has been talking to his advisers, but the impression lingers that he is not getting advice from people who would encourage him to think things through. The foreign minister is regarded as an eloquent messenger but not a member of his inner circle. And the deferential culture of the Pakistani state does not foster dissent or independent thinking.

Mr Sharif’s plan for converting impulse into victory seems to depend on the rest of the world suspending its critical faculties as readily as his functionaries suspend theirs. Pakistan has started a diplomatic offensive to persuade outsiders that because India has sinned in Kashmir—by oppressing its people and killing civilians on the Pakistani side—it should talk rather than fight. But most major powers have already indicated that they expect Pakistan to pull back first.

Pakistan claims as well that India is occupying territory at two points on its side of the line of control. If true, India, which champions the “sanctity” of this provisional border, would indeed have a case to answer. A senior diplomat denies it categorically. “There has never been a single instance in the last 17 years that [the Pakistanis] at any level have ever claimed we violated the line of control,” he says. Even if India is lying, Pakistan would still be under pressure to pull its intruders out. India might then talk more seriously about Kashmir, allowing Mr Sharif to claim at least a partial victory.

If Mr Sharif uses his powers clumsily, he remains adept in acquiring them. Najam Sethi, a critical journalist who was recently arrested on trumped-up accusations of spying, has been released, but on June 23rd had his passport taken away to prevent him leaving the country. Such intimidation has induced a sense of caution, verging on self-censorship, among other journalists. On the subject of Kashmir—where debate is most needed, newspapers are especially reluctant to take on the government.

Mr Sharif has also tightened his control over Sindh, Pakistan’s second-most-populous province. Last autumn, he had imposed direct rule by the central government, primarily to bring order to violence-prone Karachi, the country’s commercial centre. Last week Mr Sharif suddenly sacked the governor responsible for restoring order and appointed a loyalist. The lunge for power was made even more explicit by the transfer of the governor’s powers to a specially appointed adviser to the prime minister on Sindh’s affairs.

Mr Sharif’s foes detect dark purposes behind this manoeuvre. His Pakistan Muslim League is in a minority in the provincial assembly. The new adviser is expected to try to lure members of the opposition to support the Muslim League and seal Mr Sharif’s control over a province in which he would be unlikely to win an election. The move has enraged Sindhis, who, like ethnic groups in the two smallest provinces, were already chafing against the growing dominance of Punjab, the prime minister’s home state.

Control of the Sindh assembly, if he achieves it, might help Mr Sharif in a bigger quest, enshrining sharia—Islamic law—as the supreme law of Pakistan. The sharia bill is the most hotly contested issue in a war between liberals, who want to preserve a balance between Islamic and modern values, and traditionalists who would nudge the country towards theocracy. It scares women and minorities, many of whom already feel threatened by the legal uses to which the country’s Islamic ideology is put. Pakistan’s Senate, which is controlled by opposition parties, has so far blocked the sharia bill. But part of the Senate is up for re-election by the provincial assemblies early next year. If Mr Sharif can boost his support in Sindh’s assembly, he will come closer to reaching the two-thirds majority he needs.

Holy law and holy wars are a distraction from the woes of the economy, which ought to be Mr Sharif’s prime concern. His record is not all bad. Under the lash of the IMF, he has cut the losses of the electricity utility by deploying the army to collect payments. State-owned banks have new managers and are attending to bad loans. But Mr Sharif has a way of taking the shine off his own achievements. The budget, presented on June 12th, was a farrago of inflated expectations about growth, exports and tax revenue. The government shies away from collecting taxes from its supporters, especially in the retail trade, and loans from some of its friends. If revenues fall below expectations, spending on the poor is likely to suffer as it did in the current fiscal year, says the Islamabad branch of ABN Amro, a Dutch bank.

The clash in Kashmir is bound to cut further into development spending and could kill off a faint revival of confidence among investors. If it escalates, it could make the economy irrelevant. Mr Sharif may be in charge of Pakistan, but will Pakistan survive?