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Barely 14 months after an unprecedented democratic transition of power in Islamabad, Pakistan is on the brink of a political conflict that threatens to undermine the country's democratization. Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan's party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, has demanded that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government resign. Party supporters will undertake a long march to the capital and stage a sit-in on Aug. 14. That date is the 67th anniversary of Pakistan's founding as a sovereign country and is normally a day when Pakistanis come together to celebrate, despite the problems Pakistan has experienced since its earliest days.
The party's demand has created the country's largest political crisis since the uprising against former military ruler President Pervez Musharraf. Even if the competing political forces can reach a compromise, this standoff will enable Pakistan's army to revive its position in the political system and prevent the state from focusing on the twin crises of dire economic conditions and violent religious extremism.
Ever since the May 2013 elections, in which Khan's party came in a distant third place with 35 seats against Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, which garnered 166 seats, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has charged that the polls were marred by massive electoral fraud. Khan's party has managed to tap into a widespread national perception that Pakistan's democracy is a sham perpetrated by a corrupt political elite and has mobilized a mass Azadi (freedom) movement. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's abrupt rise in last year's vote -- going from a single seat to 35 seats in parliament and winning a clear majority to head a coalition government in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province -- indicates that Khan can easily bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. Between his core support base -- the largely urban, educated middle class -- and the entry of several seasoned politicians and businessmen into the party's fold ahead of last year's election, Khan's camp represents not just a political party but also a social movement seeking an overhaul of the political system.
An Accidental Alliance
Inadvertently aiding Khan's efforts is religious scholar-turned-politician Tahir-ul-Qadri, who recently returned to Pakistan from Canada. During the past two years, Qadri has been mobilizing his Pakistan Awami Tehreek movement to foment a revolution intent on undoing the incumbent political system.
Khan and Qadri (along with the ruling party and many other forces) are ideologically right-of-center, but there are key differences between the two. While Qadri established Pakistan Awami Tehrik approximately a decade before Khan launched his Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf, the religious scholar's movement is not as big as the former cricketer's. Khan's political machine is well-established, while Qadri leads a social movement that is not geared toward winning elections. Qadri's movement is not Islamist, but its followers are religious conservatives who subscribe to the majority Barelvi (Sufi) school of thought, which is opposed to the now heavily radicalized Deobandi sect as well as the much smaller Salafist camp. He has the support of the Barelvi-oriented commercial class that is concerned about the threat posed by the radicalization of their interests. Khan is a national hero, especially for leading the country to a World Cup victory in 1992 and for his humanitarian work, particularly the establishment of a major cancer treatment hospital. Qadri does not have Khan's standing, but he could produce a turnout of a few hundred thousand demonstrators.
Although these two movements are not exactly allies, they are trying to benefit from each other's moves. The key difference between the groups' agendas is that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf is trying to pressure the standing government enough to force fresh elections while Qadri's movement wants to go further and call for the army to support a mass revolution, which it believes will create a just political system. Thus, within a year Pakistan has swerved from a path toward democratic consolidation back to uncertainty.
The Government's Responses
The ruling Pakistani Muslim League's behavior toward both groups shows it is deeply intimidated. This has further emboldened the government's opponents and brought smaller right-wing and Islamist parties into the fray. The prime minister's younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, heads the provincial government in the core province of Punjab. His administration was involved in a violent clash in Lahore on June 17 between Pakistan Awami Tehreek activists and police that led to the death of 14 people and forced the provincial government to fire its law minister. More recently, in the wake of Khan's threat to lead a long march to Islamabad, the federal government deployed troops to provide security in the capital under a constitutional stipulation that allows the government to use the armed forces to aid civilian law enforcement agencies.
The ruling party thought this would deter Khan and Qadri by demonstrating that the government and the army were on the same page, but the move has backfired in several ways. First, the main opposition Pakistan People's Party, along with the two left-of-center secular regional ethnic groups, the Awami National Party and the Mutahiddah Qaumi Movement, criticized the move as being detrimental to the cause of democracy. While these parties oppose the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf and Pakistan Awami Tehreek's moves, believing they are undermining the democratic system, they also have an interest in seeing the ruling party weakened. Moreover, they oppose the government's invitation of the military to help contain the unrest.
Most important, the government's reliance on the army has given the military's leadership the means to revive its political influence, which was weakened during the Musharraf era. It has already gained considerable social capital, given its role in the decisive military offensive against jihadists in North Waziristan. Now that the government has sought its help to deal with the threats from Khan and Qadri, the army has regained the role of systemic referee.
The Military's Position
The army was not happy with the weakening of its position as Pakistan moved toward civilian leadership -- especially under Sharif's watch because the prime minister has had bad relations with the general staff. Therefore, the army is finding the unrest fomented by Khan and Qadri a useful tool to contain Sharif and regain the upper hand. However, military leaders know there is no such thing as managed chaos.
The military has no interest in derailing democracy. On one hand, it does not want to see democratic consolidation; on the other, it does not want the constitutional process to be so upset enough that it endangers the republic. Military leaders have no desire to see Khan and Qadri advance their agendas, but they have figured out how to prevent them from quickly becoming threats instead of opportunities.
Qadri is not much of a problem because he has no stake in the current system, and his goal depends greatly on the army. Khan, on the other hand, saw his party gain strength in last year's elections and feels that it is now or never for the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Regardless, the army has no intention of using force against the demonstrators who are expected to take to the streets. Doing so would undermine the military's efforts to remain above the political fray and enhance its position as the guarantor of state stability.
In the case of political gridlock, the army does not want to step outside its constitutional bounds, given that coups are no longer a viable option. Not only would a coup be difficult to accomplish, given the rise of civilian forces over the past seven years, but the army has no interest in actually governing, given the conditions in Pakistan. Moreover, the military's main focus now is the war against the jihadists, which it wants to complete before the security situation in neighboring Afghanistan deteriorates in the wake of the NATO drawdown.
The army would like to allow a standoff to develop, after which it can jump in, separate the two sides and steer them toward a compromise. While Qadri will be easy to persuade, Khan feels confident that his party is best positioned to win mid-term polls and does not want to wait until 2018 to become prime minister. He feels his social and political capital will deteriorate by then, since euphoria does not last long, and since by then his party will be judged by how well it runs the provincial government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Thus, it will be difficult to convince him to back down from his demand for early elections. Khan is hoping that there will be enough people on the streets for a long enough time that the army will be forced to press Sharif to step down.
Even if that happens, Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf remains unlikely to win a majority, given that Sharif's support base remains intact. However, the ruling party might not retain the sizable majority it currently enjoys and could be forced to form a coalition government. Should Khan's party go from third to second place, the two right-wing rivals likely would have to share power, which would complicate matters even further.
Regardless of the outcome of a fresh vote, the very act of forcing early elections after just a little more than a year would set back the process of diminishing the military's hold over Pakistan. The constitutional process has already been weakened by the growing public sentiment that the country needs a revolution guided by religious principles to fix its problems. It is unlikely that the military will take over, but it would benefit from the fact that new political forces such as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Pakistan Awami Tehreek are not willing to let the democratic process play itself out. Meanwhile, the more established parties -- especially the ruling Pakistan Muslim League -- have not been able to negotiate their way out of the crisis.
Courtesy : Stratfor (www.stratfor.com)