Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [40]
Apart from anything else, Atatürk and his movement rode to power on the back of military victory against the Greek, Armenian and French troops which had invaded Asia Minor at the end of the First World War. Ayub’s attempt at military victory over India in 1965 ended in failure, and the wave of nationalist fervour that he had aroused then blamed him for the inevitable compromise peace, and contributed greatly to his downfall. In the process, Ayub discovered the severe limits to America’s alliance with Pakistan, to which he had committed his administration. Musharraf’s experience in this regard was even harsher.
Both Ayub and Musharraf followed strongly free-market economic policies, though, compared to Musharraf’s, Ayub’s administration did far more to build up the industry and infrastructure of the country. In one respect, Ayub went further than Musharraf, and further than any other government except that of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s. Ayub’s administration introduced a land reform in 1959 which, if it fell far short of India’s and was largely frustrated by the big landlords, nonetheless contributed to the break-up of the biggest ‘feudal’ estates, and their transformation in northern Punjab (though barely elsewhere) into smaller-scale commercial holdings.
Ayub’s land reform in turn helped spur the successful ‘Green Revolution’ in the area. However, this commercialization of agriculture, and the spread of mechanized farming, also led to new unemployment and dispossession among agricultural workers and marginal tenants. These moved to the cities and swelled mass unrest against Ayub.
In 1962, Ayub created the Convention Muslim League as a political party to prop up his rule in the face of political pressure that he could not crush through repression (because of his own character, the weakness of the Pakistani state, and the fact that the opposition adoped as its presidential candidate the iconic figure of the Qaid-e-Azam’s sister, Fatima Jinnah). Ayub’s ‘party’ was an alliance of independent local notables and bosses, and in no sense either a mass movement or a modern political party staffed by full-time professional officials and volunteers.
The Convention Muslim League was therefore part of the familiar pattern whereby would-be reformist administrations have to depend on traditional – and strongly anti-reformist – power-holders to maintain their rule. This has always inevitably involved turning a blind eye to their corruption, and rewarding them with patronage which has undermined good government and the state budget. This was just the same with the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam), or PML(Q), the ‘King’s Party’ that Musharraf put together to support his rule and contest the elections of 2002. This party was made up chiefly of defectors from Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League (N), and was a typical grouping of opportunist landowners and local bosses. Musharraf was therefore also forced to follow the old pattern.
Thus in his first years in power Musharraf pursued anti-corruption and revenue-raising strategies which won praise from Transparency International and international financial institutions. In advance of the parliamentary elections of 2002, however, a whole string of cases for corruption, non-repayment of loans and tax evasion were dropped against politicians whose support Musharraf needed.
In consequence, tax collection, which had edged up to 11.4 per cent of GDP in 2001, fell again to its historic rate of around 10.5 per cent – low even by the standards of the developing world. Given Musharraf’s need for the courts to legitimize him and elected politicians to support him, it seems questionable whether he should really be called a military dictator at all. He was certainly a very weak one by international and historical standards.
Musharraf followed Ayub in attempting to increase the power of local municipal bodies elected on a non-party basis. In both cases, this strategy had both an opportunistic and an honourable side.