Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [42]
Until 9/11 Musharraf continued to support Islamist militants fighting in Kashmir against India, but at the same time confirmed his secular credentials by taking tough action against Sunni extremist groups which in previous years had conducted a savage campaign of sectarian terrorism against Pakistan’s Shia minority. In 2008 – 9 these groups allied with the Pakistani Taleban, and extended their terrorism from the Shia and Ismailis to Sunni Muslims from the Barelvi and Sufi traditions, as well as attacking state targets.
Musharraf’s administration differed from Ayub’s in two ways – one good, one bad. The good one was that – once again, very surprisingly for a military dictatorship – Musharraf introduced a radical liberalization of the media, something that he was to pay for heavily when the media turned against him in 2007. This reflected the fact that, as a great many senior Pakistanis who dealt with him personally have told me, until things began to fall apart towards the end of his rule, Musharraf was a far more open personality than either Ms Bhutto or Mr Sharif, and was genuinely committed to a form of liberal progress.
The bad difference from Ayub lay in the field of economic policy, and was perhaps a matter of Western influence as much as bad judgement on the part of Musharraf and his economic team. In Ayub’s day, Western development thinking was focused on the need to build a country’s industrial base; and Ayub responded with a very successful programme of industrial growth. By Musharraf’s time, however, the Washington Consensus and the capitalist triumphalism that followed the fall of Communism had shifted Western attitudes to a blind faith in market liberalization and an increase in mass consumption. So while Musharraf’s economic boom did lead to real growth in the economy and a real rise in state revenues, it was also much more shallow than growth under Ayub and left a much smaller legacy.
Musharraf’s finance minister and (from 2004) prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, nonetheless conducted for several years what seemed to be a strikingly successful economic policy. GDP growth, which when Musharraf took over had stood at 3.9 per cent (only a percentage point or so over the rate of population growth), from 2003 to 2008 stood between 6.6 per cent and 9 per cent. Shaukat Aziz’s strategy, however, failed to deal with the underlying problems of the Pakistani economy.14 In 2008, the advent of the world economic crisis led to a sharp drop in the economy, while acute electricity shortages revealed not only incompetence by the new PPP government but also the failure of the Musharraf administration to develop the country’s energy infrastructure.
Given Musharraf’s personal honesty (in marked contrast to most of his predecessors) and progressive credentials, it is in fact depressing to note how little his administration achieved in nine years in terms of changing Pakistan; though perhaps just helping to keep the country afloat in such times should be considered an achievement in itself.
ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO
Bhutto’s government from 1971 to 1977 marked the only time a Pakistani civilian administration has sought to bring about radical changes in the country. His most enduring legacy was the creation of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), one of the dynastic parties (with populist trappings) that continue to dominate South Asian politics. By contrast, Bhutto’s attempts at radical reform largely met the same fate as those of his military counterparts – though with far more tragic personal consequences for Bhutto.
Bhutto’s combination of intense ‘feudal’ and familial pride with an often vindictive hatred of the Pakistani upper classes has been attributed by many to the fact that his mother, Sir Shah Nawaz’s second wife, was a convert from a Hindu family, inevitably