Khaki-o’tocracy !

Alexander Pope famously said: “For forms of government, let fools contend. That which is best administered, is best.”

Democracy is rule by the people, for the people and of the people. Autocracy is a dictatorship. Corporatism is when a fascist government subverts the corporate community. Socialism is when the state owns and controls the heights of the economy.

Statism is where the state runs the economy through seemingly ‘independent’ corporations controlled by cronies, competing on an uneven playing field with private enterprise. Capitalism is where private enterprise is the engine of growth in a liberal democratic governance environment where a well regulated open market prevails.

A kleptocracy is a government by crooks who skim off the benefits for themselves. A Meritocracy is where the most competent are given an opportunity to govern.  There are some nations ruled by the military, if not today, in the recent past, and there will be in the future too. Those can be described as khaki-o’tocracies, where khaki or jungle green or camouflage uniformed soldiers call the shots.

Pakistan

In the late 1950s, General Ayub Khan, Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistani Army, declared martial law and ousted the civilian government. The General declared that the Constitution of Pakistan was not suitable and that he was looking for a constitutional model which best suited ‘the genius of the Pakistani people’.

For the people of Pakistan, it has been a long search, still a work in progress. Since then the Pakistan military has ruled the country for more than half of Pakistan’s existence as a nation.

The Pakistan Army 111 Brigade, garrisoned in Rawalpindi, where the General Head Quarters of the Army is located, regularly sallies forth to nearby Islamabad, to oust the civilian government and install a khaki-clad general in power. General Ayub Khan was followed by a whole gamut of khaki-clad officers like General Zia ul Haq and General Musharaff.

The seeds of the Army’s perception that it is the upper guardian of Pakistan’s national integrity lie in the country’s origins. Born out of the British Raj’s India, created through a bloody, vicious and cruel partition, the country has always feared of being swallowed or dismembered by its bigger neighbour, India.

The creation of Bangladesh out of the former East Pakistan, due equally to the arrogant behaviour of the West Pakistani Punjabi dominated political class, administration and military, as well as to the machinations of India’s RAW at the behest of Indira Gandhi, India’s Prime Minister, and the age-old yearning  for freedom of the East Bengalis, the deprivation of the East Pakistanis from their due share of Pakistan resources and the tactical brilliance of the India Army led by the redoubtable General (later Field Marshall) Manekshaw, exacerbated this intrinsic fear.

Military domination

As a result, from inception, Pakistan has had a military and a military budget too big for the country’s size. National budget allocation has been controlled by soldiers, subverting the decisions of civilian financial administrators, greedy for resources and with dangerously interventionist tendencies whenever there is from the military’s perception a threat to the nation or a threat to the gentlemen in khaki.

The military’s perception of itself as the guarantor of national security has led it to abuse its position. For half of Pakistan’s 64-year-old life, the military has governed the country, for the other half; it has fixed and rigged elections, financed politicians it favours and undercut those who it opposed, using the notorious Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

The military also has dominated Pakistan foreign policy. Soldiers are much more focused than civil politicians on the military threat from India and the situation in divided Kashmir. That fear has influenced Pakistan’s dealings with its neighbours. Analysts say that Pakistan’s ISI  plays a well-oiled double game in Afghanistan, the Taliban are enemies, because it is an enemy of Pakistan’s friend, the USA, but also the Taliban are friends, because it an enemy of Pakistan’s enemy, India.

At the time the Sri Lanka Government was fighting the Indian RAW-supported LTTE, Pakistan provided substantial material and other assistance to Sri Lanka. The public perception in Pakistan given the chaotic situation among the political parties and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is that the military is the only professionally organised disciplined force that can impose order on a confused society.

Military economy

The military has a huge business portfolio, Ayesha Siddiqa in her book ‘Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’ has calculated that the military controls a US$ 15 billion empire, with hundreds of companies making everything from fertiliser to breakfast cereal and of course arms and ammunition. The military has its own schools and universities.

The Pakistani military has even produced its own home grown version of the iPad. It is called the PACPAD, PAC stands for the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex at the Pakistan Air Force base at Kamra in northern Pakistan. Pakistani avionics technology, bundled together with Chinese computing hardware, sells for around $ 200. The device runs on Android 2.3 operating system made by Google. The PACPAD sells for less than half the price of the Apple or Samsung devices and low end Chinese tablets on the market.

Pakistan’s ISI’s role in neighbouring Afghanistan, having helped to form, train and arm the Taliban in the 1980s with American help, to fight the Soviet occupation and having in the 1990s used other terrorist outfits against India in Kashmir, has a given it a negative reputation.

The ISI claims that these allegations are gross overstatements. The spokesman jokes, “We are a very responsible organisation; people claim that we are responsible for absolutely everything!”

However America seethes at Pakistan’s refusal to carry out hostile operations against the Haqqani network, a terrorist group, based in North Waziristan Province, in Afghanistan. One time Chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staffs Admiral Mike Mullen called the Haqqani network “a veritable arm” of the ISI. NATO in a recent report of the ISAF operations in Afghanistan alleged that “Pakistan’s manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabated”.

Physical location complications

Pakistan’s physical location in South Asia also complicates its governance. It borders the two fastest growing big economies in the world, China and India. China is building an all-weather deep harbour at Gwadar, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, in the west. Analysts say Gwadar is one of the pearls in the ‘String of Pearls’ harbour network China is developing to encircle India and improve Chinese naval white water presence in the Southern Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port is also being built by the Chinese and financed by expensive Chinese loans. There is also a harbour development in Myanmar connected to the ‘String of Pearls’.

Maldivian unrest

The recent unrest in the Maldives is also connected by some analysts to the fear of both India and China to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Maldives Islands and especially the perception that ousted President Nasheed was pandering to the fundamentalists to bolster his support.

While President Nasheed was seen as a liberal, former President Gayoom was seen as autocratic, who controlled the fundamentalists. Gayoom’s daughter has been appointed a minister is the post coup administration. It is strange that both India and China quickly recognised the new government and the Secretary of India’s Foreign Ministry flew into Male and literally banged heads until the new President Wahid agreed to new elections and tried to browbeat ex President Nasheed to agree to postpone a huge protest, post Friday prayers, demonstration, in Male.

It is reported the Maldivian military and Police held a gun to Nasheed’s head until he agreed to resign. Nasheed has described his ouster as a coup‘d’état. The regional powers would have feared another Islamic khaki-o’tocracy in South Asia.

Baluchistan

Pakistan alleges that India’s secret intelligence service RAW is supporting a Baluch independence movement in Baluchistan. The Maldives location is critical for domination of the southern Indian Ocean sea route through which China, Korea and Japan get 80% of their crude oil and raw materials from the Gulf and Africa.

China has for decades cultivated the Pakistani military and political leaders as a counter balance to her problems with India. The Karakoram Highway across the Hindu Kush Mountains into China was constructed with Chinese help.

China is referred to as Pakistan’s ‘all weather friend’. Recently, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani described Pakistan’s relationship with China as “higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey’.

Islamic fundamentalism fears

The regional powers fear Islamic fundamentalism in neighbouring countries because both China and India have domestic issues with Islamic fundamentalists. Further Pakistan since the time of President Zia ul Haq, who ruled form 1977 to 1988, has taken a fundamentalist path. Under him the school curriculum became far more rigidly Islamic.

The failings of State education meant that more and more children attended fundamentalist religious schools, the madrassas, of which according to a recent study there are about 20,000, with a student body of two to three million.

Pakistani migrant workers from West Asia return home under the influence of a much stricter form of Wahabbi Islamic doctrine than the tolerant mystical saint worship of Pakistan’s traditional Sufi tradition of Islam.

Pakistan has a pernicious blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory death sentence. One time Governor of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, Salman Taseer, a critic of the blasphemy law, was shot dead in the street in Islamabad by his own bodyguard. The murdered was feted as a hero in some Pakistani quarters. There is now is in existence a Pakistani Taliban, which although gained its political legitimacy from the jihad in Afghanistan, now claims that its aim is to establish an Islamic theocracy in Pakistan.       

Egypt, Iran and Burma

Khaki-o’tocracies have also directly ruled or been the power behind the rulers in Egypt, Iran, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, China, Indonesia, Korea  and Zimbabwe from time to time.

In Egypt, the military was firmly the power behind the throne ever since Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Colonel, took power in the 1950s. General Anwar Sadat and Air Force Commander Hosni Mubarak succeeded him. Recently the so-called Arab Spring ousted Mubarak, but his military cronies have assumed power and seem to be reluctant to transfer power to the Islamic Brotherhood whom the electorate seems to have chosen at recent elections. The Egyptian military is estimated to control 10% of the economy.

In Iran, the armed forces and the Revolutionary Guard are firm supporters of the Islamic Fundamentalist Mullahs in power. The Revolutionary Guard runs around 300 companies covering all sectors of the Iranian economy.

In Burma, since the time the military ousted Aung San’s civilian government six decades ago by the men in Khaki led by General Ne Win, his military successors have run a repressive regime. The military establishment has a stranglehold on the Burmese economy.

Recently under intense and sustained pressure from ASEAN and Western countries, with the enticement of the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2014, if the military democratises governance before that, the Burmese military seems to be providing some political space, especially to Aung San Sui Chii , the daughter of the assassinated democratic leader, who won a recent by election to Parliament, but at first balked at taking of an oath to protect a constitution which institutionalises the khaki domination, and which her party has sworn to change. She later relented to get into the system.

The Thai military, with its affiliation with the monarch, has been a huge influence on the country’s politics. The military has carried out regular coup‘d’état, ousting democratically-elected civilian governments, in the name of protecting the kingdom and the monarchy.

China, Indonesia and Zimbabwe

In China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is answerable not to the Government of the People’s Republic of China but to the Communist Party of China. The PLA has vast economic interests. At one time the PLA was running nearly 20,000 business enterprises.

In Indonesia, the military has ruled under General Soekarno and General Suharto for long periods of time. The army role in the liberation war against the Dutch colonialists is their reason to claim a dominant role. Even the present elected leader is a retired general.

The Indonesian Army also has large business interests. In South Korea, Generals like General Park, have ruled with military powers over long periods of time. The military dictatorship sponsored ‘Chaebol’ corporations like Samsung, Hyundai and LG which in time grew to be world class businesses.

General Park’s daughter is now a popular political leader and today Korea is a democracy, but it still has a large and powerful military establishment. In Zimbabwe, dictator Robert Mugabe is supported by the military, which has entered into lucrative joint ventures for exploitation of mineral resources with Chinese state corporations.

Military involvement

From all these examples it seems clear that khaki-o’tocracies come into being in countries which have powerful military establishments and where the military has for whatever reason, fundamentally self-interest,  thrown in its hat with a dictator or seized power themselves.

The military involvement in business and industry, and its humongous budgets, are other factors. A corrupt political establishment, another. Some of these have militaries which have at one time been held in high public esteem due to participation in wars of national liberation or by safeguarding the very existence of the nation state.

It is a small step from the role of liberator and protector of the nation, to one of an autocratic dictatorial establishment, which thinks it knows best for the nation and will not tolerate dissenting opinion. Matters are further complicated by the military’s involvement with religious fundamentalism.

The examples of Pakistan, Iran and most recently the Maldives clearly bring this out. The country examples described show that there are some clear and discernible indicators which show that a khaki-o’tocracy is emerging.

Indian example

In the world’s largest democracy, India, a recent dispute over the Army Commander’s retirement date gave us an example of the potential of the khaki threat. The General sued the Government, asking relief from the Supreme Court.

On the day hearings were to begin, in the early hours of a foggy spring morning, two elite Army units, Paratrooper Special Forces and Mechanised Infantry, moved out of their bases, not far away from the national capital battle ready, and advanced towards New Delhi, from two directions, along the highways. The custom was that the military informs the civilian authorities of such manoeuvres in advance. This had not been done.

A panicked Government deployed civilian Police to place roadblocks on the highway, to slow the threatening advance! The Indian newspapers said it was clearly an attempt to intimidate the Government. Later the Army issued a statement that the exercise was to test the capacity of military units to move under misty and foggy conditions and advanced notice of the manoeuvre could not be given as the prevalence of mist and fog cannot be predetermined!

Best antidotes

The best antidotes for khaki-o’tocracies emerging are institutional checks and balances imposed by constitutional, traditional and conventional means and mechanisms. Civilian control of the armed services, accountability to the elected legislature, an independent judiciary, a free press, an autonomous administrative mechanism, strong civil society, professional institutions and business organisations, a secular state with fundamental human, social and economic rights protected, would be key factors. These factors, combined with the vigilance of the governed, to be sensitive enough to oppose any attempts to curtain fundamental freedoms is essential.

‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’. Unfortunately, the first thing a would-be khaki autocrat does is dismantle and weaken these limitations on the abuse of power. The sad fact is that once a khaki-o’tocracy is established, the road back to good governance is in most cases bloody, painful and torturous at great economic and social cost to the nation.

(The writer is a lawyer, who has over 30 years experience as a CEO in both government and private sectors. He retired from the office of Secretary, Ministry of Finance and currently is the Managing Director of the Sri Lanka Business Development Centre.)