Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [124]
My ISI contact was also truthful when he said that the ISI has to work with the grain of the existing political system, and not against it; and that, during elections, its heavy power is usually brought to bear to produce results in particular parliamentary constituencies, rather than across the board – which means that they can have a big effect in a close-run race, but cannot stop a really big political swing, whether to the PPP in 1988 and 2008, or the Muslim League in 1997. As the leading Muslim League politician Chaudhury Shujaat Hussain told me in 2008: ‘The army and the ISI will only go with you as long as enough of the people are with you. They are like a horse that carries you only as long as you have strength in your own legs.’8
One important group whom the ISI can influence very heavily, however, is the senior bureaucracy, because a negative security report from the ISI will blast their careers. This means that while, ever since Z. A. Bhutto’s time, civil servants have been subjugated by the politicians, there is no possibility of a serious movement to resist military influence or a military takeover emerging in the bureaucracy.
A picture of some ISI political tactics emerged in 2009 with revelations from a former ISI officer, Brigadier Imtiaz, about his organization’s role in bringing down the PPP government of Benazir Bhutto in 1990 (‘Operation Midnight Jackal’). This involved, among other things, bribing PPP deputies to defect from the party, and a whispering campaign to the effect that she was about to be sacked by the president for corruption, and therefore that her MPs and ministers should switch sides in order to keep their positions.
HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
Generally portrayed by both Western and Pakistani analysts as wholly negative, the Pakistani political system is in fact two-sided. On the one hand, it is very bad for the overall economic development of the country, for reasons summed up for me in 1988 by former Finance Minister Mehboob-ul-Haq, and equally true twenty years later:
Growth in Pakistan has never translated into budgetary security because of the way our political system works. We could be collecting twice as much in revenue – even India collects 50 per cent more than we do – and spending the money on infrastructure and education. But agriculture in Pakistan pays virtually no tax because the landed gentry controls politics and therefore has a grip on every government. Businessmen are given state loans and then allowed to default on them in return for favours to politicians and parties. Politicians protect corrupt officials so that they can both share the proceeds.
And every time a new political government comes in they have to distribute huge amounts of state money and jobs as rewards to politicians who have supported them, and in short-term populist measures to try to convince the people that their election promises meant something, which leaves nothing for long-term development. As far as development is concerned, our system has all the worst features of oligarchy and democracy put together.
That is why only technocratic, non-political governments in Pakistan have ever been able to increase revenues. But they cannot stay in power long because they have no political support ... For the same reasons, we have not been able to deregulate the economy as much as I wanted, despite seven years of trying, because the politicians and officials both like the system Bhutto put in place. It suits them both very well, because it gave them