Imran's Second Innings

By Amir Zia
The News
November 17, 2014

Imran Khan’s political isolation, his unfulfilled expectations from the shadowy umpire and his party’s organisational weakness do not mean that the tough days for the Sharif government are over. In any political tussle, conflict and war a lot depends on the tenaciousness of the key protagonists.
 
More than three months after the launch of his campaign to oust Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from power on August 14, Imran Khan now apparently seems to have landed himself into a blind alley. All the odds appear to be stacked against him.
His Islamabad sit-in has fizzled out. The massive crowds which Imran Khan hoped and promised to bring to Islamabad at the start of his ‘Freedom March’ never materialised. His main ally Allama Tahirul Qadri has taken a ‘short break’ from his ‘revolutionary’ struggle, casting a serious blow to the ‘Go Nawaz Go’ campaign. The series of public rallies the PTI has been holding in various cities – though huge and emotionally charged – are doing little to intensify pressure on the Sharif government. And the elusive umpire is now no longer even part of the mainstream political discourse.
The Sharif government after showing obvious signs of nervousness during the initial weeks of the ‘revolutionary and freedom’ marches and sit-ins by the PTI and the PAT appears to be breathing easy and hoping that in the long run it will be able to wear out its political opponents. And it has reasons to believe this.
Firstly, Imran Khan is a solo flyer. Barring a working alliance with the PAT and support by Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed’s small Awami Muslim League, he has failed to form a broad-based anti-Sharif alliance – a prerequisite in South Asian politics if any opposition is serious about challenging a well-entrenched government.
The parliamentary opposition, comprising the PPP and most of the traditional religious, nationalists, ethnic and political forces has put all its weight behind Sharif – or what they call saving democracy. The PTI has even been unable to take the Jamaat-e-Islami, its ally in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly, on board its venture to dislodge the Sharif government.
In fact, the PTI is being targeted and attacked by most opposition parties – from the PPP to the ANP and JUI-F to Baloch and Pakhtun nationalists – as much as it remains under fire by the ruling party. The friction between the PTI and the rest of the opposition is understandable given Imran Khan’s attempt to create political space for his party by eroding the vote bank of these traditional forces. On the one hand, he is trying to woo the right-wing vote bank by his strong anti-US rhetoric and sympathetic stance towards the local Taliban militants, while on the other he is attracting the liberal as well as onetime apolitical element which is fed up with the old guards due to their alleged corruption, misrule and bad governance.
But despite his popularity among many Pakistanis, Imran Khan stands politically isolated. Will he be able to broaden his anti-government campaign in the days to come by bringing other disgruntled political forces such as the MQM into its fold? The bigger question perhaps is: does he even intend to take this course?
Secondly, Imran Khan’s hopes that he will be able to cash in on Sharif’s estranged ties with the mighty military establishment also did not happen. His campaign only helped expose Sharif’s vulnerability and forced him to backtrack on key security and foreign affairs matters, but shrinking of this space for the civilian government went more in the favour of the military establishment than benefiting the PTI. 
With these two odds firmly against him, realistically speaking Imran Khan holds little chances to take his anti-government movement to the next level – at least for now. He needs a new element to bolster his flagging drive, which appears nowhere in sight.
Yet, call it Imran Khan’s determination or rigidity, his unyielding optimism or grand disillusion, that he is tenaciously trying to bowl hard and fast on a political pitch, which after showing some promise and unpredictably in the initial overs has apparently become dead and slow. The coveted wicket of Nawaz Sharif stays intact despite the initial ferocious spell by the PTI chairman. It appears that the World Cup winning captain has to settle for a long haul without any guarantees that at the end of it all he will be able to lift the dream cup of his political career.
In a way, at the Nov 9 rally in Rahim Yar Khan, Imran Khan climbed down a notch or two from his initial demand of Sharif’s resignation when he asked the government to form a judicial commission by November 30 to investigate the alleged rigging charges in the last elections. Imran Khan wants the commission to also comprise ISI and Military Intelligence officials and furnish its report within four to six weeks of its formation. Until then, according to Imran Khan, Sharif can stay in the office but should resign if the charges of electoral rigging prove correct. 
Imran Khan has vowed to not let the government function after Nov 30 if it fails to meet his latest demand, but the idea of including military personnel in the commission has already been shot down by Sharif’s team.
This means that Imran Khan will try to fulfil his promise of disrupting government functioning through protests, but does his PTI have the organisational capacity and ability that was possessed by the Jamaat-e-Islami, the MQM and the PPP of the olden days to launch street agitations and strikes as advocated by Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed. The PTI cadre has yet to prove its mettle in this regard.
However, Imran Khan’s political isolation, his unfulfilled expectations from the shadowy umpire and his party’s organisational weakness do not mean that the tough days for the Sharif government are over.
In any political tussle, conflict and war a lot depends on the tenaciousness of the key protagonists. In his play, Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw summed it up so well in these words; “You should always attack; and if you only hold on long enough the enemy will stop first....”
Okay, the imagery of Joan of Arc does not gel with Imran Khan – the poor girl was burned on the stake for her conviction and simplicity. But calculated aggression and tenaciousness sometimes do work.
The political alignments can change anytime, the opponent can commit blunders (Sharif and his team have a great inherent capacity to open unnecessary fronts and take on useless fights) and help sometimes can come from the unknown quarters. Imran Khan seems to have the political stamina for a protracted fight, which is likely to keep the government on tenterhooks.
A prolonged tussle is ominous for the country and its economic and political fallout will hurt the government more than the opposition. While Imran Khan can afford to keep the pot on the boil, the government must show urgency to resolve the crisis in its own enlightened self interest. So far the government appears to be in no mood to avail the opportunity, which the backing of parliamentary parties has provided to it, and move quickly for a political settlement. 
The government can take the initiative by requesting at least for the formation of a judicial commission to probe the alleged charges of rigging in the 2013 elections, and acting swiftly for electoral reforms along with reopening of talks with the PTI and PAT. Unfortunately, it has been dragging its feet even on these issues.
As a result, the impasse is intensifying the country’s political instability and adding to the prevailing sense of uncertainty. The brewing crisis has all the potential to spin out of control if it is not managed now – before the start of the next round.
Imran Khan may look less threatening today than he was on August 14. Many of his demands may appear flawed or even unprincipled, but he has the hunger to make his mark and disrupt the apple cart. Sharif can afford to disregard him at his own peril.
For in practical politics, nothing succeeds like success. There is nothing moral or immoral – it is an amoral game. The ultimate goal justifies the means. Who should know this better than Nawaz Sharif, our most experienced third-time elected prime minister?

The Deepest Cut

Amir Zia

November 10, 2014

The News

Do we now stand on hopeless grounds? Is the growing tide of extremism irreversible? The answer to these questions lies on whether our prime minister will be able to match his words with actions and we as a nation are able to rise and unite to save Pakistan and its soul from extremists. The wound of the Kot Radha Kishan tragedy must force us to act.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issued a politically correct statement that a responsible state cannot tolerate “mob rule and public lynching with impunity.” The statement came in response to the horrifying act of vigilante violence in which a Christian couple – accused of desecrating the Holy Quran – was severely tortured and then burnt to death in a brick kiln by a mob in Kot Radha Kishan, barely 60 kilometers from Lahore.

The incident has sparked the usual flurry of angry statements from rights groups, some leading Islamic scholars and clerics, political parties and official quarters, which unanimously condemned the brutal double murder and called for stern action against the perpetrators of this heinous crime. The words of Prime Minister Sharif, too, appear to assure – at least on paper – that the state has to proactively act “to protect its minorities from violence and injustice.”

But haven’t we all heard such politically correct statements scores of times in the past as well whenever such brutalities are committed on an individual or collective basis by the religious zealots? Have these statements made any difference in the 21st century Pakistan where religious intolerance and extremism appear to be on the rise? Have the state and its institutions managed to punish those responsible for such barbaric acts?

The November 4 public brutality in Kot Radha Kishan, in which the Christian couple – Shahzad, 35, and his pregnant wife Shama, 31 – lost their lives, is not the first and will certainly not be the last one in our Islamic Republic.

Given the eroding writ of the state and the growing religious bigotry, this dangerous trend is all set to continue. A mere allegation of blasphemy has now become enough to seal the fate of an accused in today’s Pakistan. There is not even any room left to hold the trial of the accused under the country’s blasphemy laws. If the person accused of blasphemy is saved from the mob, he or she can be killed in police custody or in jail.

The state has become too frail and too feeble even to properly prosecute individuals who kill and resort to violence in the name of religion – especially on unproven charges of blasphemy. 

A case in point is that of Joseph Colony, Lahore where rioters torched more than 150 houses and two churches on March 9, 2013 over allegations of blasphemy against a Christian man. The police arrested more than 100 rioters, but all of them were set free as none could be proven guilty.

One can keep counting cases of murders and vigilante violence, from the high-profile assassination of Governor Salmaan Taseer in January 2011 in Islamabad to the burning to death of a mentally disabled person in Bahawalpur in July 2012, in which the state failed to get a single conviction.

Should we expect any different results from the arrests of people accused of the Kot Radha Kishan tragedy? If the past is any witness, then there is hardly any hope.

Most of the recognised Islamic scholars have a broad consensus that vigilante violence and taking the law in one own hands stand against the tenets of Islam. Only the state can punish a person once charges of blasphemy are undisputedly proven. The country’s religious-political parties also have a similar position.

Veteran scholars like Mufti Muhammed Naeem of Jamia Binoria, Karachi and Allama Tahir Ashrafi, Chairman Ullman Board Pakistan, have expressed their angst over the burning to death of the Christian couple and demanded that the government administer swift justice to those responsible for the crime.

They have argued that the inaction of the state and its inability to punish the culprits are the main reason for the surge in such acts of mob and individual violence.

Certainly, the government needs to show zero tolerance when it comes to dealing with such cases, but more importantly and as a long-term measure it has to create an environment where religious diversity and tolerance is celebrated.

That remains a tall order and requires, as a first step, reforms in our mainstream education system as well as seminaries. 

Preventing the misuse of pulpits in many of the mosques for inciting religious or sectarian hatred and fanaticism is also easier said than done. In fact, barring the lip-service to this cause, the government has failed to take any meaningful step in this direction, including framing effective laws or implementing the ones already on the books. 

It is not just the Sharif government, but most of the past governments as well which stand guilty of apathy and paralysis when it comes to taking on the challenge of religious extremism, intolerance and lawlessness in our society.

The failure of successive governments to tackle religiously-motivated violence and extremism sends the message that one can get away even with murder by exploiting the sacred name of Islam.

This has resulted not just in an unending vicious cycle violence against ordinary Pakistanis, mostly Muslims, and sectarian killings, but has also made the religious minorities excessively vulnerable.

Religious minorities – mainly Hindus and Christians – comprise a little over three percent of Pakistan’s population according to the 1998 census. (The figures can be grossly misleading as there has not been an official census in the country for the past 16 years.) 

According to Sadiq Daniel, Bishop of Karachi and Balochistan Diocese, never in the past have Christians and Hindus living in Pakistan felt so threatened, helpless and weak.

“I am saying it for the first time that religious minorities are afraid of living in Pakistan… I never said this before, but today I am forced to say this,” he told the scribe while discussing the Kot Radha Kishan atrocity. “If there is no space for religious minorities in Pakistan, simply tell us.”

Similar sentiment is shared by many other leaders of the country’s religious minorities – perhaps in much stronger words. They say that false allegations of blasphemy are being made against members of the religious minorities to settle personal scores or over disputes on financial matters.

This was apparently the case with Shahzad and Shama who, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had a dispute over wages, or recovery of advance money that the kiln owner had extended to two families of Muslim labourers who had escaped. “The kiln owners had asked Shahzad to repay the amount extended to the escaped families because he had introduced them to the owners”, the HRCP said.

He levelled charges of blasphemy against them following which announcements were made through mosque loudspeakers, provoking hundreds of villagers.

Similarly, the name of religion is exploited for abducting women and even young girls belonging to minority communities and their forced conversions to the Muslim faith. Neither any Islamic scholar nor the constitution of Pakistan allow brutalities and discrimination against religious minorities, but sadly they have become a norm in today’s Pakistan.

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s dream that in this state of Pakistan, “you are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship”, stands trampled.

Reclaiming Jinnah’s Pakistan, freeing it of religious bigotry, extremism, intolerance and violence remain the biggest challenge for our generation. We appear to be losing this fight at the hands of the same mindset from which the country’s founding fathers had once liberated us to create Pakistan.

Do we now stand on hopeless grounds? Is the growing tide of extremism irreversible? The answer to these questions lies on whether our prime minister will be able to match his words with actions and we as a nation are able to rise and unite to save Pakistan and its soul from extremists. The wound of the Kot Radha Kishan tragedy must force us to act.

Sharing Sindh

By Amir Zia
November 3, 2014
The News

Let’s try to live as one people and share Sindh rather than raising the slogan that ‘we will die but not hand over Sindh to others’. In today’s world, the battle-cries of the 19th century are not likely to work.

Our good luck that Cyclone Nilofar bypassed Karachi and other coastal parts of Sindh – but that does not mean that citizens of this restive province can breathe easy now. The political atmosphere continues to remain overcast and has all the ingredients to stoke a perfect storm in this ethnically diverse and poorly governed province.
The MQM’s recent parting of ways with the PPP – the fifth since December 2010 – is just a symptom of the brewing storm in Sindh. The exchange of angry, bitter and provocative statements between the two sides is not the cause but the manifestation of major contradictions which the political stakeholders in Sindh have failed to address on the basis of give-and-take.
The emotional slogans for the creation of a Mohajir province – from which the MQM has been quick to distance itself – and the PPP’s young chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s reiteration of the historic 19th century battle cry of Hoshu Mohammed Sheedi against the British forces – ‘Marvesoon, Marvesson, par Sindh na Desoo’ (We will die but not hand over Sindh to others) – are mere distractions from the core problems of this province. 
However, such emotional slogan-mongering has all the potential to ignite passions of hatred and aggravate violence and lawlessness in Sindh, which has a long history of low- to high-intensity bloodletting on one pretext or the other. Political and ethnic turf wars, sectarian and religiously motivated killings, terrorism, and organised crime coupled with a dysfunctional civic, administrative and judicial system make Sindh, especially its urban centres, one of the biggest governance challenges in the country. The thin veneer of apparent normality can shatter anytime if the political stakeholders continue to stoke ethnic passions for their narrow self-interests.
Ironically, these grave issues do not even appear on the agenda of the major parties for a serious and dispassionate debate and discussion, let alone any meaningful efforts for their resolution. 
What ails this resource-rich province?
You ask the PPP leaders and they will come up with a long list of complaints against their former ally, the MQM, about how it brutalised and criminalised politics in urban Sindh – especially Karachi. They blame the MQM’s unbending desire to dominate and monopolise politics of the province’s urban centres as the major source of conflict and discord.
You ask the MQM and hear graphic details about the PPP’s pathetic governance record, massive corruption and indifference toward the issues of both the urban and rural population. The MQM’s long list of complaints include the PPP’s unwillingness to hold local bodies elections, and its controversial decisions to place urban institutions – such as the Karachi Building Control Authority – under the provincial government by rechristening it as the Sindh Building Control Authority.
In a nutshell, the MQM demands devolution of power and a fair distribution of financial resources and jobs, though it usually fails to effectively articulate the case of urban areas because of its penchant for aggressively raising non-issues that overshadow even its fair demands.
A case in point is how the MQM reacted to the PPP’s senior leader Syed Khursheed Shah’s alleged derogatory remarks about ‘Mohajirs’ and accused him of blasphemy. Mercifully, MQM leader Altaf Hussain gave prudent advice to his local leadership to stop targeting Shah in their statements and refrain from raising sensitive issues. But that happened after a lot of bad blood had already been created. Many wondered about the direction of this urban-based party, which wants to portray itself as a liberal, moderate, progressive and democratic force.
The MQM’s efforts to emerge as a multi-ethnic party, with roots in all the provinces, face an obstacle from within as its lawmakers and representatives keep returning to the Mohajir card. This has happened too often in recent years. The MQM painstakingly takes 10 baby-steps to dispel the perception that it is an ethnic party, but then one giant leap backwards wrecks all the previous hard work.
The MQM think tank needs to ponder over this dilemma. Creating a multi-ethnic party should not be a matter of mere political slogan, but an unwavering belief.
If the MQM is serious about transforming itself into a national party, it should try to unite people on the basis of common issues rather than narrow ethnic lines. Given the fast changing demography of urban Sindh, perhaps this is in the enlightened self-interest of the MQM or any other political force aiming to do popular politics in Sindh.
The absence of a mass-transit system in Karachi, a mega city of more than 18 million people, hurts people belonging to all the ethnic groups. They need a champion to raise this demand. Similarly, soaring crimes, terrorism and extremism affects every Karachiite – new or old. The demand for an effective local bodies system, devolution of power to the district level, rule of law, the dream of living in a modern, organised, and peaceful city – these issues are close to the heart of all sane minds, regardless of their sectarian, ethnic or religious affiliations.
Even those political forces that practically abhor the idea of strong local governments and devolution of power – as is the case with both the PPP and the PML-N which derive power from their respective provincial governments in Sindh and Punjab – are not in a position to openly oppose these demands on principle. At best, they can apply delaying tactics as they have been doing since 2008 and blunt the local bodies system by curtailing its powers – as has been the case.
The pro-devolution forces, however, can mobilise public opinion and launch protests to get their demands accepted. It would be a tall order, but is doable within the norms of democratic and constitutional struggle. The only challenge is how to articulate, present and fight the pro-people case.
On its part, the PPP has long abandoned the politics of Sindh’s urban areas. It seems content being the party that overwhelmingly represents the interest of the ruling elite of rural Sindh. The poor and downtrodden people, including the landless peasants, of Sindh continue to be mesmerised by the Bhutto card.
But the question is: for how long? When it comes to delivering the fruits of democracy – which go beyond the mere right to vote – the PPP has been unable to bring about social and economic development even in its rural bastion of power and the smaller cities and towns of Sindh. Poor governance and rampant corruption is not just a perception about the PPP, but a reality.
In Karachi, the party empowered gangs of criminals in a few of its remaining strongholds including Lyari. It failed to take ownership of the provincial capital, which has become more inhospitable, uglier, lawless and chaotic under the stewardship of former president Asif Ali Zardari’s near and dear ones. Yes, the ageing Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah is only a symbolic head; the real power in Sindh is in the hands of Zardari’s chosen ones under whom all sorts of mafias have prospered and thrived – starting from encroachment and builders’ mafias to those running water hydrants, and those placing billboards on every available space, even on the fast dwindling footpaths.
It is a city where civic services are on the brink of collapse, water has to be bought from truckers, and a vast number of people have to travel on the rooftops of rickety passenger buses and vans. One can keep adding to this list, which makes Karachi a hard, dangerous place to live and where crime and politics feed one another.
No wonder there is so much rage and pent up emotions among the dwellers of Karachi. They want a change. Will the PPP, the MQM or any other force manage to transform itself inside out and lead the way? Objectively speaking, this miracle seems nowhere in sight. 
But for a change, let’s try to live as one people and share Sindh rather than raising the slogan that ‘we will die but not hand over Sindh to others’. In today’s world, the battle-cries of the 19th century are not likely to work.