Sharif and Musharraf: The same old dance

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "I refuse to hear this case in such circumstances," said Pakistan's High Court Justice Shabir Ahmed on Jan. 13, ordering the arrest of several of the intelligence agents who packed the Karachi courtroom as deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif and six co-defendants began their trial for kidnapping, hijacking, terrorism and attempted murder. But it was just a hiccup. The trial got underway before a different judge.

Pakistan's courts retain a certain independence, but its military rulers -- like Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the man who overthrew Sharif last October -- generally get their way in the end. That must be rather worrying for the ex-prime minister, since the last Pakistani military dictator to put his ousted civilian predecessor on trial, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, ended up by hanging him in 1979.

It could happen to Sharif, too. The charges he faces are different (former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was condemned on a trumped-up murder charge), but several of them bear the death penalty. He is being tried in a special anti- terrorism court that is intended to produce a verdict within seven day, and Musharraf's prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, which the general could then graciously commute -- maybe.

The key charge facing Sharif is that he 'hijacked' an aircraft on the day of the coup. It only arose because when Sharif decided last Oct. 12 to replace Musharraf as Chief of Army Staff by one of his own closest allies, Gen. Khawaja Ziauddin, head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organization, he took the elementary precaution of making the change while Musharraf was abroad, attending a conference in Sri Lanka.

Musharraf got advance warning from his allies in the army early in the afternoon. He immediately instructed them to begin a military take-over, and took the first flight back to Karachi: a Pakistan International Airlines scheduled flight with 198 civilian passengers.

Prime Minister Sharif announced that Musharraf had been replaced on the 5:30 p.m. television news, but by 6:30 p.m. troops commanded by a Musharraf ally had seized the television center in Islamabad, the capital -- and the PIA plane with Musharraf aboard was approaching Karachi airport.

In a bid to decapitate the coup, Sharif ordered the Karachi control tower to divert the incoming PIA flight to Nawabshah, an airfield about 100 miles (150 kilometers) away, where security guards loyal to Sharif were waiting to nab Musharraf. The Karachi runway was blocked and the airport lights extinguished, but Musharraf ordered the PIA pilot to continue circling overhead, counting on pro-coup troops to seize Karachi airport before the aircraft ran out of fuel.

They did, and Musharraf finally landed at 7:47 p.m. -- allegedly with only seven minutes of fuel left. Obviously, neither Sharif nor Musharraf gave a damn about the safety of the 198 civilians aboard, but it was Musharraf who prevented the pilot from diverting to Nawabshah and kept the plane in the air over Karachi.

Since he thereby escaped arrest and won control of the country, however, it is Sharif who now faces the death penalty on charges of hijacking and terrorism.

At the formal reading of the charges, Sharif defiantly told the court that "actually, Gen. Musharraf hijacked the plane himself. He (also) hijacked the democratically elected government of Pakistan." All true, but it's unlikely to save Sharif. It's not clear what can save Pakistan, either.

The problem is that Sharif richly deserved to be overthrown: for corruptly enriching himself and his family, for undermining the independence of Pakistan's courts, parliament and presidency, and for trying to politicize the army by promoting Islamists and Sharif loyalists like ISI chief Khawaja Ziauddin over professional officers.

He did little to repair Pakistan's ruined economy, and let himself be duped (by none other than Gen. Musharraf) into a futile and ultimately humiliating military incursion into Indian- controlled Kashmir last summer.

All of Pakistan's elected civilian leaders have richly deserved to be overthrown. Sharif's predecessor, Benazir Bhutto, was removed by her own hand-picked president for corruption and mismanagement in 1996, and sentenced to five years in jail last April for accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks from two Swiss firms. Even her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, prime minister in the 1970s, was guilty of many crimes, though probably not the one he was hanged for.

This explains why Pakistanis celebrated Sharif's overthrow, and a snap poll by Gallup Pakistan found almost 75 percent of the population in favor of military rule. Half of Pakistan's 135 million people are under 25 years old, after all, so memories of the last military dictatorship have grown dim. But the mustachioed military leaders who have ruled Pakistan for almost half of its 53-year history have done no better than the civilians.

Two of Musharraf's military predecessors stumbled into wars with India which they promptly lost, and none of them ever made serious inroads into the massive corruption that cripples the country. Musharraf will doubtless stay in power for years while 'preparing' the country for a return to democracy, but he won't change things either. He can't: the army is part of the system too.

There's a joke going around Islamabad that Pakistan only escaped being named the world's most corrupt country by bribing Nigeria to take the No. 1 spot. It would be a lot funnier if Pakistan didn't have nuclear weapons.