By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Mar 29 2006 (IPS)

As the polycentric sixth World Social Forum (WSF) drew to a close in Pakistan’s principal port city, on Wednesday, participants were left wondering what kind of impact it would have on the military dictatorship that hosted the five-day event

”The whole Pakistani structure is catering to the military. The WSF is just a drop in the ocean and this will not affect the regime in any way. But during the forum, in this one sq km, one noticed all the myths of intractable hostility between India and Pakistan, between other ethnic groups and between our provinces -it was all humbug,” said Tarek Fatah, Pakistan-born host of ‘The Muslim Chronicle’, a weekly show on Canadian TV.

Other participants thought that by hosting the WSF, the regime gained in legitimacy. ”This (forum) will help in the image building of Pakistan and the military would be happy about the anti-fundamentalist nature of the WSF. But if you think it will affect the regime in any way, then I think that is erroneous. It will not cause any upheaval, not even a dent,” was the view of a correspondent for ‘The News’ daily.

Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who assumed power in October 1999 in a bloodless military coup, that was curiously welcomed at that time by elite sections of the country’s society, has promised to hold free and fair elections next year. And the WSF has provided a rare opportunity for activists and thinkers to come together and air views on touchy subjects like democracy, internal conflict and regional peace.

Fatah thought that peace between India and Pakistan was needed for demilitarisation but added that this would lead to a situation in which the ”Pakistan military would have no role to play, no raison d’ etre.” Pakistan, he observed, ”is not serious about the peace process and the Indian side has an obsession to control Kashmir.”

Prof. Syed Jafar Ahmed at Karachi University told IPS, ahead of the WSF, that the very fact that Pakistan ”continues to be ruled by a general in uniform shows it has no stable political system, although the Musharraf regime, in a strange way, is strong and faces no serious threat to its survival.”

Musharraf, said Ahmed, enjoys the full support of the United States because his cooperation is considered vital for its ‘war on terror’ and its Afghanistan policy. But the academic added that the cooperation was happening against the background of ”widespread terrorist politics inside Pakistan”.

But the boldest and most thought-provoking views came from Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington and author of the soon-to-be-published volume, ‘Military Inc., The Politics of Military’s Economy in Pakistan’, the product of six years of painstaking research.

”It’s not a book about Pakistan, it could’ve been any military, it just so happens I’ve used Pakistan as a case study to explain a certain type of military capital. It is a critique of a certain behaviour not the institution itself,” Agha told IPS in an interview.

Yet, the title of the book and its contents are bound to make the men in uniform, who run this country squirm. It dwells on the predatory nature of Pakistan’s most powerful institution and one which has ruled the country for most of the years since independence from colonial rule in 1947. ”I have already ruffled many while doing the research,” she said.

”Of course there is a personal interest to understand the relationship between the military and civil society which has been, for far too long, held hostage by the elite. I am a Pakistani and not against the state. I’m just like millions of others who are trying to find a better space for ourselves – perhaps more proactively,” Agha said.

The questions that Agha raised at the WSF were explosive. ”Why is our civil society inherently elitist? Why is there a disconnect between the four federating units and why are three provinces (Sindh, North West Frontier Province and Balochistan) wary of one (the Punjab)?”

Punjab province dominates the country and, most importantly, the all-powerful army.

While making her criticism, Agha also suggested options in the hope that ”some day, somebody may get a discussion rolling on how to strengthen the political space and invest time in building the political structure.”

She looks circumspectly at the hegemony of the Pakistan military, ”a major political player, in the driving seat, especially after April 2004 when the National Security Council was formed and the military formally got a carte blanche to have a hand in its policy making”.

”I’m trying to look at and understand a specific military capital which is found the world over be it the U.S. or Britain or Africa or even India. It is the one acquired and used for personal gratification of the officer cadre.”

This pattern, she says, depends on the strength or weakness of a state’s political institutions. In Pakistan’s case, political instability has helped the strong (the military) replace the weak and institution building has been neglected in the process, she said.

”Military penetration in the economy depends on political influence on the armed forces and the relationship between politics and civil activism,” Agha said. ”In the case of Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan, to name a few, the military has been the dominant player and one that exploits the state’s resources.”

”The military becomes inherently predatory and it also encourages its fraternity (serving and retired military personnel) as well as its cronies and partners (part of the elite who hold the socio-political power) to predate and perpetuate their power.”

In such a scenario, Pakistan cannot shrug off feudalism as the two forces (feudalism and militarism) support each other in their drive for short-term gains and thus democracy remains a dream, she says. ”Unfortunately, even the politicians have refused to examine the issue. Therefore, not only has the political space become claustrophobic but there is no richness in the political thought.”

And that is precisely why holding the WSF is valuable for Pakistan says Karamat Ali, a member of the WSF organising committee. ”Popular participation in such democratic events is the need of the hour. This will lend strength to our weak civil society.”

Excerpt: