Pakistan's National Tragedy by Aryn Baker

A capsule history of a few aspects of Pakistan from birth to current muddle that attempts to put things in perspective....

Thursday, Jan. 03, 2008
Pakistan's National Tragedy
By Aryn Baker

Pakistan was a country orphaned at birth. Born of hope in 1947, the new nation — an independent state for the Muslim-majority provinces of northwestern and eastern India — promised to be the success story of the subcontinent, a democratic entity divested of India's terrible legacy of caste entitlement. Little more than a year after Mohammed Ali Jinnah signed the document declaring Pakistan a sovereign state, the erudite, Savile Row–suited father of the nation died of lung cancer and tuberculosis, leaving the infant democracy bereft of his enlightened guidance. With him died the charismatic leadership that his new nation, divided into West and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), desperately needed in order to grow as a modern state. In a sense, Pakistan has been searching for its parents ever since.

As the young country staggered through its grief, seeking a unified identity out of dozens of feuding ethnic divisions, history continued to deal blow after blow. Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan's first Prime Minister and Jinnah's political heir, was shot dead in 1951 by a Pashtun separatist. Fifty-six years later, Benazir Bhutto died in the very same park. One of her attending doctors was the son of the physician who tried, and failed, to save Khan's life.

At the death of Khan, Pakistan was inherited by a succession of caretakers more intent on grabbing power than building institutions. The nation was little more than 10 years old when President Iskander Ali Mirza declared martial law to try to save his presidency from growing unpopularity. The army stepped in, overthrowing Mirza in 1958 and establishing a pattern of military "rescues" that has plagued the nation ever since. Not once has the country seen a peaceful, democratic transition of power. While Pakistan considers itself a democracy, its governments rarely have a mandate from the people, and leaders — be they Presidents, Prime Ministers or army chiefs — have catered to the élites, at the expense of the masses.

That was supposed to change in 1967. A young, charismatic politician, born of the ruling class but speaking for the people, rose to prominence, bringing his new Pakistan People's Party to power in 1971, after the civil war that ripped East Pakistan from the nation. For the first time, Pakistan's poor felt they had a voice. "Zulfikar Ali Bhutto taught us to live," says Abdul Shakoor Agaria, a resident of Karachi's notorious Lyari slum. He went on to relate the apocryphal story of a poor farmer who demanded of the young President what he had done for the people. "I have done this," Bhutto is said to have responded. "A poor farmer such as yourself is able today to ask the President that question." For the first time, Pakistan felt that it had regained a father.

But Bhutto's reign was troubled. Military and feudal élites were threatened by his socialist policies, and rivalries over resources between his home province of Sindh and the Punjab of the traditional ruling classes roiled Pakistan. In 1977, the military government stepped in, hanging Bhutto in 1979 over controversial charges of conspiracy to murder. The country's grief turned to rage in its adolescence. The Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan in 1979 sparked a jihad. Death and martyrdom became an honorable answer to oppressive power, a legacy that Pakistan has been unable to shrug off.

When Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 1986 to resume her father's mantle, the nation responded with joy, and a landslide democratic victory. The daughter was accorded her father's adoration, but she also inherited his flaws. Her two truncated terms in office were plagued by incompetence and allegations of corruption. Twice she was ousted, and in 1999 she chose exile over remaining in Pakistan under the rule of yet another military dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Her return eight years later was supposed to herald a new beginning for the traumatized nation.

But it wasn't to be. Hours after her death, the country erupted in spasms of self-destruction. The Lyari slum, which had pinned its hopes on the return of a mother figure, descended into apocalyptic chaos. The streets were blackened with ash, and the burned-out skeletons of scores of buses, trucks and cars smoldered at intersections. Despair still blankets the tiny, ramshackle houses, and shopkeepers linger listlessly at their doors. "There is nothing left," said one. "Only violence remains."
Pakistan will continue on, limping and damaged. But the legacy of loss, from the first father to the last mother, has taken its emotional toll. The cult of martyrdom has taken over where voices fail to be heard. In Lyari, walls are plastered with posters of local boys who died protecting Bhutto when she made her triumphant return to Karachi on Oct. 18. The question for Pakistan is how it can find life without celebrating death.