Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [145]
The number of ‘encounter killings’ of criminals by police in Punjab soared after Shahbaz Sharif became Chief Minister in 2008, though I was told that he also gave strict orders that care be taken that only genuinely violent criminals were to be killed. When I interviewed him in Lahore in January 2009, he was impressively briefed on a great many policy issues compared with the PPP ministers I met, some of whom seemed to be wandering through government in a kind of dream, interspersed with purely ritualistic statements about their policies and ideals.
Party representatives like to stress the middle-class nature of the PML(N) as against the ‘feudal’ Bhuttos. ‘Mian Sharif [Nawaz’s father] was often called Mistri [blacksmith] either as a term of affection or an insult,’ I was told. ‘But he didn’t mind. He used to say, “I am a small man, but God gave me these big hands so that I can work iron.”’
Dr Saeed Elahi, a PML(N) member of the Punjab assembly, told me, echoing the Sindhi PPP leader quoted above:
The middle classes in Punjab see us as their party culturally and in every way; and the poor, well, they think that we have at least brought about some good development for them, more than anything the PPP have ever done. But while the cities have solid PML(N) support and we can choose good middle-class candidates, the countryside is still dominated by biradiris , and by feudals, tribal chieftains and pirs, so we have no choice but to choose feudals with their own followings.29
In most of rural Punjab the party’s leaders are therefore close to those of the PPP in terms of social origin, and the PML(N)’s strategy for gaining and keeping support through patronage does not differ significantly from that of the PPP.
The Muslim League, however, have stressed both their moderate Islamist and their nationalist credentials, seeking thereby to contrast themselves with the ‘Westernized’ Bhuttos. In 2007 – 10, the Sharifs also distanced themselves from the alliance with the US and the campaign against the Pakistani Taleban, without categorically opposing them. Thus in July 2010, following a Pakistani Taleban attack on the great shrine of Data Ganj Baksh in Lahore which killed forty-five worshippers, Nawaz Sharif echoed Imran Khan in calling for peace talks between the government and the Pakistani Taleban:
If Washington says it is prepared to talk to the Taliban who are willing to listen, then a similar initiative should also come from Islamabad. We should not only see what decision they [the Western countries] will make about our fate. We should decide our own fate ... Peace is the priority and for that, ways can be found.30
In March 2010 his brother Shahbaz stated publicly:
General Musharraf planned a bloodbath of innocent Muslims at the behest of others only to prolong his rule, but we in the PML-N opposed his policies and rejected dictation from abroad and if the Taliban are also fighting for the same cause then they should not carry out acts of terror in Punjab [where the PML-N is ruling].31
These statements are an obvious attempt to get the Pakistani Taleban and their allies to stop attacking Punjab and concentrate on other provinces instead. This may not do much for the Sharifs’ standing in those provinces, and as of 2010 also does not seem to be working. The PML(N) government’s failure to prevent massive terrorist attacks in Punjab may well undermine its prestige as a ‘party of law and order’, and while many Punjabis with whom I have spoken continued to support talks with the Pakistani Taleban even after they began to attack Punjab, it is not certain that this will continue if they kill more and more innocent people and target such beloved sites as Data Ganj Baksh.
The PML(N)’s support for talks and distancing from the US form part of a strategy, emphasized to me by the PML(N)’s Information Secretary, Ehsan Iqbal, of seeking to undermine both the Pakistani Taleban and the Jamaat Islami by drawing away their supporters into mainstream