Indian Press on Pakistan Opposition Alliance and Pakistan Generals: New Age Islam's Selection, 27 October 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Bureau
27 October
2020
•
Pakistan Opposition Alliance’s Political Inclusivity Is Both Its
Strength And Weakness
By Shyam Saran
• Outwitting The Generals
By Bhopinder Singh
• Chittagong Hill Tracts: Factional Clashes:
Factional Clashes
By S. Binodkumar Singh
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Pakistan Opposition Alliance’s Political
Inclusivity Is Both Its Strength And Weakness
By Shyam Saran
October 27,
2020
Leaders of
opposition party 'Pakistan Democratic Movement' Maryam Nawaz, second left, and
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, right, wave to their supporters as they arrive to
attend an anti government rally, in Karachi, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2020.
(AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
It is
strange that the momentous political developments currently unfolding in
Pakistan have barely registered here in India. The Pakistan Democratic Movement
(PDM) was formed in September by the leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam,
Fazal-ur-Rehman, but constituted by 11 political parties, representing
virtually the country’s entire political spectrum. It has brought together the
two mainstream but rival political parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)
led by Bilawal Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) led by the exiled
Nawaz Sharif, but currently headed by his daughter Maryam. More significantly,
the PDM has also given a national platform to regional parties and provincial
leaders from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who have been targeted by the
Pakistani military for demanding regional autonomy and an end to repression.
This is the
first time that the Punjabi heartland was listening to voices from the
periphery and connecting with its hitherto marginalised people. This is an
important development in itself. The PDM has so far held three massive
political rallies, in Pakistani Panjab’s Gujranwala on October 18, in Karachi
two days later, and in Quetta on October 25. A certain political momentum has
been generated and is gathering strength and this could trigger significant
changes in the nature of the Pakistani state and how it engages with the
outside world, including India.
The
political inclusivity that the PDM represents is both its strength and its
weakness. It has politically isolated Prime Minister Imran Khan and, therefore,
undermined the credibility of his powerful military backers. That he has
managed to inspire such disparate parties to come together on the same platform
to oppose him, speaks to his incompetence. But in demanding his ouster, the
PDM’s real target is the powerful military.
In his
speech broadcast from London, Nawaz Sharif explicitly accused the Army Chief
Qamar Javed Bajwa and the ISI chief Faiz Hameed as responsible for rigging the
last elections and installing Imran Khan as prime minister. This is a frontal
attack on the army and if allowed to snowball, it has the potential of eroding
its overpowering influence in the country’s politics. In the past, the army has
been able to manipulate political parties and leaders, playing off one against
the other. If the coalition holds together, this tried-and-tested playbook may
not work. But while the PDM has come together to oust Imran Khan, it does not
seem to have a game plan for the day after.
How do they
propose to bring the military to heel? What kind of federal structure could be
put in place to address the deep grievances of smaller provinces and ethnic
groups? At what point would the movement consider its mission accomplished and
revert to competitive politics, which is the essence of parliamentary
democracy? How do the PDM leaders propose to tackle the acute economic crisis
that Pakistan is facing, compounded by the pandemic? On all these and other key
issues, the disparate nature of the group may preclude even a broad
convergence.
The
Pakistani Army may believe that given these contradictions within the PDM, it
may be best to let it roll on and then dissipate. If that were indeed to
happen, then the military would end up even more entrenched than it already is.
It is possible that the PDM may continue to gather popular strength and support
and this may be seen as an existential threat by the army. It may resort to
violent repression and assume power frontally as has happened in the past. This
could add to Pakistan’s external isolation, particularly if a Democratic
administration takes office in Washington. However, China, which has deep and
longstanding relations with the Pakistani Army, will continue to provide it
political shield and economic support. A weak Pakistani military or one which
is forced to return to the barracks does not suit China, even though Pakistani
civilian governments have also given priority to the relationship.
As a
liberal democracy, India would normally welcome the emergence of the PDM and
its struggle to establish a truly civilian democracy in Pakistan. A diminished
political salience of the Pakistani military could only be a positive
development from India’s point of view. Unfortunately, the PDM leaders had
harsh words to say about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and bracketed Imran Khan
with him. Imran was accused of complicity in “selling out” Kashmir. Just as
Pakistan has become a ploy in India’s domestic politics, so is India on the way
to performing a similar role in Pakistani politics. Not long ago, we had
marvelled at the fact that in the Pakistani elections in 2013, which brought
Nawaz Sharif to power, India was barely a factor in the election campaign. This
new dynamic will make it difficult for the two countries to deal with each
other as they would any other state based on a cold calculus of interests.
In managing
India’s relations with other states, one must retain the space for constant
calibration and adjustment, particularly when the external environment is in
constant flux as it is today. India’s neighbourhood first policy must include
the means to manage the relationship with Pakistan in order to ensure that it
does not become an enduring constraint. If any shift in posture is precluded by
domestic political compulsions, the calibration required by foreign policy
imperatives becomes impossible.
Despite the
fraught state of India-Pakistan relations, we should take a keen interest in
the exciting political drama unfolding among “the people next door.” Whichever
direction the movement takes, whether it fails or succeeds, its impact will
reverberate outside its borders, affecting our region and beyond. On balance,
its success could open the door to a potentially positive re-engagement. And,
perhaps, there is a lesson here for India’s own fragmented political
opposition, struggling to retain its political relevance in a BJP-dominated
universe.
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-ferment-next-door-6887969/
-----
Outwitting the Generals
By Bhopinder Singh
27 October
2020
In one
stroke, Sharif has torn the traditional Pakistani cover of the ‘civilian govt’
and made the military directly accountable and responsible for the country’s
fate
Mian Saheb
is an unlikely Pakistani politician who has spent a career trying to be someone
he really isn’t. When the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and
former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, was incarcerated in jail and
was asked about his health, he had spouted Mirza Ghalib, “Unko dekhne sey jo aa
jati hai muh par raunaq, woh samjhtey hai ke bemaar ka haal acha hai (On seeing
her, my face lights up and she presumes that I’m much better now).” The portly
Punjabi politician is the principal Opposition leader to the reigning Pakistani
Prime Minister, Imran Khan, except that he is not based out of Pakistan
(declared “absconder” of bail and currently in the United Kingdom) and is
actually of Kashmiri ethnicity (paternal side from Anantnag and maternal side
from Pulwama). Nevertheless, the thrice elected and the longest-serving PM is a
trapeze artist who revels in managing contradictions. Sharif has now fired his
most calculated salvo against the Pakistani “Deep State” or military.
In
Pakistan’s stuttering democracy, the ubiquitous shadow of barrel-chested
military men operating out of Rawalpindi headquarters is mentioned only in
deferential whispers — addressed euphemistically as Farishtas (angels) or
Khalai Maqlook (alien creatures), who usually manipulate from the background.
And occasionally they step in formally, like Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq
or Pervez Musharraf. But the veteran of Pakistani intrigues has broken
traditions of indirect allusions and brazenly name-called the Chief of Pakistan
Army Staff, General Qamar Bajwa, along with the infamous Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) to be the real movers and shakers of Imran Khan’s
Government. In one stroke, Sharif has torn the traditional Pakistani cover of
the “civilian government” and made the military directly accountable and
responsible for the country’s ongoing and inevitable fate and predicament in
the public imagination.
Sharif’s
current democratic grandstanding notwithstanding, he himself is a product of
the Pakistani military establishment and its machinations. While it is widely
presumed that Sharif was born of the former military dictator, General
Zia-ul-Haq’s personal preference, it was actually another quintessentially
slippery Pakistani General, Ghulam Gilani, to whom Mian Saheb owes his
political initiation.
Lieutenant-General
Ghulam Gilani’s colourful past had included taking a year-long sabbatical to
fight in the Kashmir valley as an “irregular” (Indo-Pak war of 1947-48),
fighting the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars, serving as the Director-General of
the notorious ISI, partaking in Zia-ul-Haq’s coup d’état, which was ironically
code-named “Fair Play” and ill-advising Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto till his end to
the gallows.
Later,
General Zia appointed Lieutenant-General Ghulam Gilani as the Governor of the
all-powerful Punjab province, where he deliberately plucked out an ostensibly
safe, non-feudal and pliant industrialist, Nawaz Sharif, to be the Finance
Minister of Punjab. The urbane, obliging and malleable Sharif soon wormed his way
to be the Chief Minister in the dark and transformational days of Zia’s
Shariaised Pakistan, even though Sharif was hardly a modicum of religious
piety.
Though not
really a Punjabi, feudal or a military man, Sharif was a player, manipulator
and a survivor. Soon after Zia’s mysterious plane crash, he tactically aligned
with religious parties, took ISI’s beneficence and split with a rival faction
within Zia’s political party, Pakistan Muslim League (Pagara group) to later
form Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML-N. Sharif’s then rival Benazir
Bhutto (Pakistan People’s Party) had earlier paid a more personal price of
losing her father in the fight against the Pakistani Generals but Sharif was
more conversant with the inner workings of the “Deep State.”
But even
the wily Sharif has erred, miscalculated and underestimated the power of
Pakistani Generals. Mian Saheb has had to deal with six Pakistani military
chiefs (including appointing four of them personally) and has the dubious
record of fractious relations with all, without exception. Sharif’s first
appointee, General Waheed Kakar, had later pressurised him into resigning as
the PM. By Sharif’s second term, he had inherited Benazir Bhutto’s appointee,
General Jehangir Karamat, with whom Sharif
differed and who he forced into a premature resignation. In hindsight,
hardly-the-wiser, Sharif selected an ostensibly safe Mohajir, General Pervez
Musharraf, who not only initiated Kargil on his own but also bumped off Sharif
to Saudi Arabia after yet another coup d’état. In his third innings as the PM,
Sharif had to tread carefully with the unpredictable General Pervez Kayani
(appointed earlier by Sharif’s bête noire, Pervez Musharraf), who, too,
extended his tenure unilaterally. Sharif’s third personal and unlikely (again
superseding others) choice of General Raheel Sharif was to be no different with
the “Army House” routinely calling all shots and defining the “red lines” for
the Sharif dispensation.
General
Raheel Sharif elicited embarrassing retractions (for example, post Ufa summit),
policy flip flops and publicly lectured the civilian Government on corruption
(for example, Panamagate). But it is the fourth personal choice of Sharif who
is at the centre of the ensuing gambit, General Qamar Bajwa — who too superseded
others and was supposedly apolitical and low profile. The Generals have
historically got the better of Nawaz Sharif, because they consistently
outwitted or bulldozed Mian Saheb by tactically propping his political rivals
with no real ideological preferences, except for protecting their own
institutional turf. The invaluable cover and protection to the Pakistani
military was afforded by the façade of the civilian Government.
This time,
Sharif has drawn blood, redrawn the battle lines and for once, boxed the
military generals into a huddle. Unfortunately, for the Pakistani generals, the
Imran Khan Government is failing desperately at all levels and the “Deep State”
or the Pakistani military is unable to
extricate itself from the “Titanic” portents.
The Pakistani
public is increasingly restive, suspicious and convinced of the military ghosts
at work. And the Generals cannot be saddled with the “failures” of the civilian
Government as they delegitimise the institution that has thrived despite the
humiliations of 1965, 1971 and Kargil. Sharif has punted on forcing the
military establishment to pull the plug on the Imran Khan Government, as they
have historically done, whenever in such situations. This time, Mian Saheb may
just have outwitted the Generals?
https://www.dailypioneer.com/2020/columnists/outwitting-the-generals.html
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Chittagong Hill Tracts: Factional Clashes
By S. Binodkumar Singh
October 26,
2020
On October
20, 2020, Ratan Chakma (24), a member of the MN Larma faction of the Parbatya
Chattogram Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS–MN Larma) was shot dead by unidentified
assailants in the Babupara area of Baghaichari Upazila (Sub-District) in
Rangamati District of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). PCJSS-MN Larma blamed
the members of the Santu Larma faction of the PCJSS (PCJSS-Santu Larma) for the
murder.
On October
15, 2020, Sa U Pru Marma, a former Union Parishad (Local Government Body)
member, was shot dead in the Rowangchhari Upazila of Bandarban District in CHT.
He was a supporter of the PCJSS–MN Larma. Locals said that he might have been a
victim of long-standing factional clashes between the PCJSS–MN Larma and
PCJSS-Santu Larma.
On October
10, 2020, Bachmong Marma (45), an activist of PCJSS–MN Larma, was shot dead at
a tea stall at Jamchhari Bazar under Sadar Upazila in Bandarban District.
Locals said that the victim was pulled out of the tea stall and shot dead at
point blank range in front of the local people.
CHT is
spread across 13,189 square kilometres and consists of three Districts –
Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban. The region experienced two decades of
insurgency, between 1977 and 1997, over the ethnic tribals’ demand for autonomy
and land rights. More than 6,000 Government soldiers and rebels, as well as
2,500 civilians, were killed during the conflict. Though the insurgency
terminated with the signing of the CHT Peace Accord on December 2, 1997,
between the Government and the undivided PCJSS led by Jyotirindra Bodhipriya
Larmaaka Santu Larma, violence in the region continued due to rivalry between
splinter groups of PCJSS.
According
to reports, till June 2020, more than 600 people have been killed in CHT in
such clashes, since the signing of the Peace Accord in 1997. These include over
200 members of PCJSS-Santu Larma, 312 members of parent United People’s
Democratic Force (UPDF), 85 members of the PCJSS–MN Larma, and 10 members of
UPDF-Democratic.
After the
signing of the Accord in 1997, factionalism became rampant in PCJSS ranks and
the group witnessed multiple splits. The first split came in 1997 itself, when
Prasit Bikash Khisa formed UPDF-Prasit Khisa, after leaving PCJSS in protest
against the Accord. The second split occurred in 2007, when a faction led by
Sudha Sindho Khisa formed PCJSS-Reformation. The parent group split again, into
PCJSS-MN Larma and PCJSS-Santu Larma, in 2010. In the meantime, UPDF-Prasit
Khisa also suffered a split with the formation of UPDF-Democratic, led by Tapan
Jyoti Chakma aka Borma aka Jalwa in November 2017. All these splinter groups are
currently working as regional political parties. The other regional political
parties active in CHT are Somo Adhikar Andolon (SAA) and Parbattya Bangalee
Chattra Parishad (PBCP).
Meanwhile,
according to locals of the region, all factions are involved in extortion from
the wood trade, kitchen markets, cattle markets, transport and others.
Intelligence sources indicate that these groups are collecting millions of BDT
from people from all walks of life in CHT and are buying weapons with part of
this money. According to law enforcement and intelligence sources, all factions
have special armed wings, with sophisticated arms like rocket launchers,
automatic sniper rifles and heavy machineguns.
On October
13, 2020, two members of the Prasit Khisa faction of the United People's
Democratic Front (UPDF-Prasit Khisa) were killed and a Bangladesh Army soldier
was injured in a gunfight in Rangamati District's Naniarchar upazila. The
incident took place in the Burighat area of the Upazila, when an Army patrol
went to the spot to arrest some armed extortionists of UPDF-Prasit Khisa.
Meanwhile,
these regional parties are gradually losing control over CHT politics. In the
last General Elections held on December 30, 2018, the Awami League won all
three constituencies in the CHT. The Awami League-backed candidates also won
the majority of the chairman and vice-chairman seats during the Upazila
Elections held in five phases on March 10, March 18, March 24, March 31 and
June 18, 2019. In the earlier General Elections held on January 5, 2014, PCJSS
senior leader Ushatan Talukdar defeated the Awami League-nominated Dipankar
Talukder in the Rangmati Hills, though the Awami League bagged the Bandarban
and the Khagrachhari seats.
In another
sign of their weakening political status, the UPDF-Democratic and PCJSS–MN
Larma formed an alliance with the Awami League on December 16, 2018. This
created a sense of panic among the other factions of the PCJSS, as they feared
losing their long-standing political influence in the area, apprehending that
Awami League's increasing influence would further diminish their long-standing
sway in CHT. These developments have made the various factions jittery,
contributing to escalating tensions and violence between the splinters.
However,
Dhaka's failure to implement the 1997 Accord in a timely manner has also
provided these groups with the grounds to 'justify' their actions. On December
1, 2019, Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma aka Santu Larma, President of PCJSS-Santu
Larma, at a press briefing on occasion of the 22nd anniversary of signing the
CHT Peace Accord alleged,
Although
the government is claiming that they have implemented 48 articles of the
accord, the truth is that they have so far implemented 24 articles, with 15
others partially implemented. Some 34 articles are yet to be touched.
There are
72 articles in the CHT Peace Accord.
Echoing
similar sentiments, on August 6, 2020, Bangladesh Adivasi Forum General
Secretary Sanjeeb Drong asserted,
Awami
League in their election manifesto for the 2008 national polls, promised the
country's ethnic groups that they will form a land commission to protect the
rights of the indigenous people living on plain lands. Even in the manifesto
for the last general elections, the ruling party said they will continue their
efforts to establish the promised land commission. But nothing official has yet
been done regarding the issue.
Land
disputes are the main issue in CHT. Even if all the provisions of the CHT Peace
Accord are implemented, without a solution to the land disputes, the locals
insist, everything else would be meaningless.
The core
issue is that Bengali settlers have grabbed land of the indigenous Jumma
people. According to the Census of 2011, CHT has a population of around 1.6
million, including around 845 thousand indigenous Jumma people and 752 thousand
Bengali Muslim settlers. In 1947, the Jumma population was 98 per cent and
Bengali population was around two percent of the total population of CHT.
According to the CHT Peace Accord, the land occupied by the Bengali settlers
was to be given back to the indigenous Jumma people.
Strong
action by the Security Forces against the armed factions is, of course,
necessary to contain their violence and restore peace to CHT. However, unless
the issues of land disputes and the full implementation of the 1997 Accord are
addressed, the tensions and resentment of the indigenous people is likely to
translate into periodic upsurges and violence. Dhaka’s fulfilment of its
promises to the tribal people of CHT is a necessary condition for an enduring
peace.
-----
S. Binodkumar Singh is a Research Associate,
Institute for Conflict Management
Source: South Asia Intelligence Review
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