Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [146]
The party is making no visible headway in winning over the violent radicals, who have long since moved beyond the reach of Pakistani mainstream politics. As regards the Jamaat, however, this strategy does seem to have had considerable success; and to judge by my interviews, the soaring popularity of the PML(N) in opinion polls in 2008 – 9 owed a good deal to the perception that the Sharifs ‘would defend Pakistani interests against America, not sell them like Musharraf and Zardari’, as a Lahori shopkeeper told me. This perception was also boosting PML(N) popularity in the NWFP, increasing the party’s chances of permanently expanding beyond its Punjabi base.
All this has led to fears among Western observers and Pakistani liberals alike that in government the PML(N) will turn Pakistan away from the alliance with the US, and towards a much more Islamist system at home, akin to that introduced by General Zia. There are nevertheless limits to how far the party can go in either of these directions. More perhaps than any other group in Pakistan, the industrialists who support the Sharifs know the disastrous economic costs of a radical break with the US.
Businessmen also know how dependent Pakistan will be on US aid, and, although they will undoubtedly try for greater distance, in the end their policies towards the Afghan Taleban are likely to be much the same mixture as those of Musharraf and Zardari. The Sharifs’ business and ‘feudal’ support also means that unlike the Jamaat and the Taleban they cannot even flirt with ideas of Islamist social and economic revolution.
When they come to power, the Sharifs will also probably continue a tough line against the Pakistani Taleban, along the same lines as their past toughness with sectarian extremists in Punjab (as described in the next chapter). This is not so much a matter of ideology as of a passionate commitment to being in charge and suppressing revolts against their government. When I asked a senior PML(N) figure about whether the party would show any toleration to the spread of Islamist extremism in Punjab, he barked at me:
This is our province, and we mean to keep it that way. We are responsible for government and development here. Apart from anything else, our whole image is built on order and good administration. Of course we are not going to allow any terrorism and disorder by miscreants here, no matter if they say they are doing this in the name of Islam and against America.
Finally, in terms of their personal culture, while the Sharifs are quite far from the Bhuttos, they are also very far from the buttoned-up, puritanical Jamaat, described in Chapter 4 on religion. Close associates have described them as not personally bigoted, and generally relaxed about religion. They like good food, ostentatious luxury and above all women, for whom both brothers have a considerable appetite which they hardly trouble to disguise. They are, however, strict about not drinking alcohol.
This may well seem a hypocritical mixture, but unlike the open Westernization displayed by some of the PPP leadership, and the strict Islamism displayed by the Jamaat, it may be rather close to the basic attitudes of a majority of male Punjabis – who, as described in the next chapter, are also far from puritanical in their basic attitudes to life, while regarding themselves of course as good Muslims and insisting on strict behaviour by their own women. Imran Aslam of Geo described what he called ‘the Sharifs’ Pakistan’ as
Conservative with a small ‘c’. It is a form of religion that gives stability and comfort but is not fanatical, and is at peace with itself – unlike our psychologically and culturally tortured liberals, and equally tortured Islamists.32
The Punjabi conservative attitude to the Sharifs may therefore be compared to the conservative attitude of the American South to the youthful George Bush’s escapades with drugs, alcohol