Washington Post: March 1, 99

Pakistani Army Takes On An Expanded Civilian Role
Fears Mount About Future Influence of Miltary

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 1, 1999; Page A13

KARACHI, Pakistan—A decade after democracy was restored in Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is relying ever more heavily on the army to hold the divided country together and to perform basic tasks, such as collecting unpaid electricity bills, building roads and fighting crime.

For many Pakistanis who remember the dreaded years of military dictatorship, which lasted for about half their nation's history, the current state of affairs represents a troubling shift toward authoritarian rule and a reason for pessimism about the nation's future.

"I'm more anxious about this country than I've been at any time in the past except once," said Eqbal Ahmad, a historian who has returned to Pakistan after retiring from teaching at Amherst College. "The last time I felt this way was in '70-'71, when things ended up with the military intervention in Bangladesh."

That was when the Pakistan that was created out of British colonial India in 1947 broke apart, its eastern wing declaring independence as Bangladesh, largely because ethnic Bengalis felt the government did not represent them. While no separatist movement of similar strength has emerged since and military commanders appear committed to a civilian government, other trends -- the growing concentration of authority in Islamabad, ethnic and sectarian tensions and the expanding role of the military -- recall Pakistan's most traumatic period since the birth of the Islamic republic.

Smaller provinces are grumbling more loudly than usual about the political dominance of the ethnic Punjabi majority, to which Sharif and nearly all top leaders except the army chief of staff belong. About 60 percent of the nation's 130 million people live in Punjab province, home to the ethnic group whose members have dominated the military and bureaucracy since independence. The other provinces -- Sindh, Balochistan and the Northwest Frontier -- have distinct ethnic identities.

"In the past 50 years, Pakistan has not been a success in national integration," said A. R. Siddiqi, a retired general who directs a Karachi research and analysis group. "We are falling apart."

The biggest ethnic divide is in coastal Sindh, the second-most populous province. The group that gave the province its name has become a minority, surpassed in numbers by the descendants of Muslim migrants who came from northern India a half-century ago. In neighboring India, by contrast, Hindus who migrated at the same time from areas now in Pakistan have been fully intergrated into national life; Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani grew up in Karachi, for instance.

Yet Pakistan's migrants have remained marginalized even though they are the principal speakers of Urdu, the national language. "We have to be accepted as bona fide citizens; unless this acceptance is there, I don't think anything else matters," said Nasreen Jalil, a senator from Karachi and a member of the migrants' political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).

Last November, Sharif imposed martial law and suspended civil rights in Sindh in an attempt to curb ethnic violence involving two MQM factions and security forces in Karachi, the provincial capital. Military courts also were established to dispense swift justice for serious crimes in the city of 10 million, but the Supreme Court ruled the tribunals unconstitutional two weeks ago.

The military measures have been credited with reducing the number of murders in Karachi -- there were about 800 in 1998 -- and had won support from residents. "The city used to have a deserted look after sunset" before the Supreme Court ruling, Col. Ashfaq Hussain, an army spokesman, said. "People have gained a lot of confidence." Martial law remains in effect in the province, and thousands of paramilitary troops continue to patrol Karachi's streets.

In the Punjab, sectarian violence this year between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites persisted through the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Relatively small militant groups on both sides have been blamed for the violence, which has been fed by the rising popularity of Islamic fundamentalist parties among Pakistanis disenchanted with the scant material benefit they can see from four democratic governments in a decade.

Sharif has attempted -- so far, unsuccessfully -- to co-opt the fundamentalist agenda by moving to make Islamic law supreme under a proposed constitutional amendment that appears to be stuck in the Senate, where his Muslim League party lacks a majority.

The possibility that Islamic fundamentalism will prevail here has frightened many members of the educated elite. A young professional couple in Karachi recently arranged standby immigration visas to Australia so they can escape Islamic rule if it does come about. A Shiite member of Sharif's cabinet, while supporting the constitutional amendment, has contemplated which country would offer the most comfortable exile should Sunni fundamentalists win the next election -- due in 2002.

In the current political situation, Sharif has methodically vanquished his competitors in the government and concentrated so much power in his own hands in his two years in office that critics call him an "elected dictator." His backers maintain that Sharif has made reasonable efforts to reduce the power of officials and military men who lack a political mandate, such as the Supreme Court's chief justice, the army chief of staff and the indirectly elected president.

But the levers of civilian government have grown so weak that the powerful premier has had to rely more and more on the military, Pakistan's most stable institution. Besides fighting crime in Karachi, the army has conducted the national census, taken over the largest power company and built roads in the Punjab. One Western observer has described Sharif's increasing dependence on the military as "a coup by invitation," while a recent book published in India asks if Pakistan has become "a withering state."

Abida Hussain, a cabinet member who served as ambassador to Washington in the early 1990s, said Sharif has made a pragmatic decision to deploy the army temporarily to deal with serious national problems. "I believe the army is the best-trained personnel we have," she said.

In any case, the army appears unenthusiastic about its new duties and is widely thought to be uninterested in an outright government takeover, partly because the United States -- which retains considerable influence with its former Cold War ally -- would strongly object to such a move.

"I think there is little chance of the army taking over," said Ahmad, the historian. "But you can never rule it out in this country because the warrior class has not been tamed by civil institutions."

Special correspondent Kamran Khan contributed to this article.