Sixty years old this August, Pakistan has been
under de facto military rule for exactly half of
its life. Military leaders have usually been
limited to a 10-year cycle: Ayub Khan (1958-69),
Zia-ul-Haq (1977-89).

The first was removed by a nationwide
insurrection lasting three months. The second was
assassinated. According to this political
calendar, Pervez Musharraf still has another year
and a half to go, but events happen.

On March 9 this year, the president suspended the
chief justice of the supreme court. Unlike some
of his colleagues, the judge in question,
Iftikhar Chaudhry, had not resigned at the time
of the coup, but like previous supreme courts,
had acquiesced to the bogus "doctrine of
necessity" that is always used to judicially
justify a military takeover. He was not known for
judicial activism and the charges against him are
related to a “corrupt misuse of his office”, but
its hardly a secret that Chaudhry’s recent
judgments against the government on a number of
key issues, including the rushed privatisation of
the Karachi Steel Mills in Karachi, the demand
that “disappeared” political activists be
produced in court and taking rape victims
seriously, panicked Islamabad. Might this
turbulent judge go so far and declare the
military presidency unconstitutional? Paranoia
set in.

TV stations engaged in objective reporting were
raided by the police, thus destroying the
regime’s proud boast (hitherto largely true) that
it interfered less with the media than all its
predecessors.

The decision triggered off a remarkable social
movement. Initially confined to the country’s
80,000 lawyers and several dozen judges, it soon
began to spread. This in itself came as a
surprise to a country whose people have become
increasingly alienated from elite rule whose
roots are rotten. Also worth noting is that this
civil society opposition to a crude decision had
nothing to do with religion. It was a defence of
judicial independence (however nominal) against
the executive. The lawyers who marched on the
streets did so to insist on a separation of
constitutional powers. There is something
delightfully outmoded and old-fashioned about
this struggle. It involved neither money nor
religion, but principle. As respect for the
movement grew, bandwagon careerists from the
opposition (some of whom had organised their own
thuggish assaults on the supreme court when in
power) made the cause their own.

As often happens in a crisis, Musharraf and his
advisers, instead of acknowledging that a mistake
had been made and moving rapidly to correct it,
decided on a test of strength. As Iftikhar
Chaudhry’s cavalcades became more and more
popular, Islamabad plotted its counter-strike.
The judge was due to visit the country’s largest
city, Karachi. Political power here rests in the
hands of the MQM, an unsavoury outfit created
during a previous dictatorship, addicted to
violence and protection rackets and insensitive
to moral and human realities. It consisted
largely of poor muhajir families (Muslim refugees
who fled to Pakistan at the time of partition in
1947), who felt abandoned by the state. Musharraf
too, hails from a middle-class refugee
background. For this reason, the MQM adopted him
as one of their own (even though Musharraf’s
mother was a Communist sympathiser and the family
as a whole was progressive).

On Islamabad’s instructions, the MQM leaders now
decided to prevent the judge from addressing any
meeting in Karachi. That is what led to armed
clashes and nearly 50 deaths in the city a few
days ago. Footage of the killings, screened on
Aaj (Today) TV led to the station being assaulted
by armed MQM volunteers. All this provoked a
successful general strike, isolating the regime.
Were a presidential election to be held today
there is little doubt that the judge would defeat
the general. Justice Chaudhry’s popularity can
only be understood in a context where traditional
politicians had become thoroughly discredited.

The failure by Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan People’s
Party) to do anything substantial for the poor
who had voted her into office resulted in mass
disillusion. She was removed from office,
allegedly for corruption, and in the subsequent
elections her old rival Sharif (Pakistan Muslim
League) won a large majority on the basis of a
very low turnout (under 30%). Bhutto’s disgusted
supporters stayed at home.

Nawaz Sharif made his brother Shahbaz the chief
minister of the Punjab. His late father became
the unofficial president of Pakistan and was
involved in negotiations with a disaffected army.
It was old man Sharif who advised his sons that
generals, not being angels from heaven, could
also be bought and sold in the marketplace. But
not all of them. And not Musharraf. Nawaz
Sharif’s comic-opera attempt to retire Musharraf
backfired disastrously.

9/11 made Pakistan’s president a key player in
the region. For the native elite this was a
godsend. Money began to pour in, nuclear-related
sanctions were lifted, and the EU granted trade
concessions worth over a billion euros and
simultaneously relaxed tariffs on Pakistani
textile exports. As the US became more closely
involved the Pakistani military and political
elite fell into line. Everyone - venal
politicians,
grovelling high officials, and harebrained
society hostesses - applauded Pakistan’s return
to its old status as a frontline state. Not the
Islamists, of course, since the new war was
against them and their friends in Afghanistan.
For a while the only opposition to the regime
came from the Islamists, moderates and extremists
alike, though the methods were different in each
case.

The attempt to browbeat a judge has released a
new fissure in Pakistani society. The violence in
Karachi makes compromise difficult for both
sides. There is an easy solution. The general
should discard his uniform, the judge should
forego his black robes and the two men should
battle it out on the electoral terrain without
hindrance from the MQM or the numerous
apparatuses of the state. It may seem like
attempting to square a circle, but there are
imminent dangers unless the generals agree to
compromise.