Pakistan News And Discussion-10

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->‘<b>Why is there no mass uprising against the government?’ </b>
Khaled Ahmed -FT
'Soft secession' is more dangerous than a mass uprising because the state is learning, through this process, to quietly let its territory be converted into 'ungoverned spaces' 
   
At times, when Pakistanis insist that the government in Islamabad is illegitimate and unpopular, the Americans ask, “Why isn’t there a mass uprising against the government?”

<b>This question is based on a historical fact: when people become sick of their government they usually stage a grass-roots revolt, forcing the state to retreat.</b>

Mass uprisings can presage revolutions. But if there is no organisation behind an uprising, then it is simply the action of a desperate people. When life becomes intolerable through starvation, for instance, they are forced to ‘rise up’.

A mass uprising presumes a despot in command or a foreign power in a colonial relationship with the people. It also presumes a movement of resistance with ability to organise the masses.

‘Mass uprising’ can be misleading. It conjures up the image of a universal chaos, which it may not be. An uprising at a key location within the state can trigger rebellion within the state machinery to force change.

Actually a mass uprising succeeds when at some point in its unfolding a part of the state caves in and refuses to obey central authority. The movement of resistance backing the uprising however must have a persuasive message.

The conviction of the state is weakened only when its institutions begin to absorb a message coming from the movement of resistance. When the state loses internal cohesion, the government is toppled even when its apparatus may largely remain intact, as happened in the case of Iran.

<b>Today, the state has more capacity to withstand mass uprisings than it had in the past. One reason is the large population which cannot be mobilised under one resistance movement.</b>

Uprisings can be sporadic and fragmented, especially when there is no central organisation to guide their course. This plays to the advantage of the state which can take care of them easily through cooptation or clever application of coercion. One uprising can actually be against the principles of another uprising in the same state.

Mass mobilisation becomes difficult under functioning capitalism and its unequal growth, regionally and class-wise. To rise up, the masses must be equally deprived of the minimum sustenance.

The modern state is also more flexible in the face of large protests. Instead of being challenged it decides to allow the protest to vent itself. Damage to state and private property is permitted.

If mass protests damage private property they become unpopular and the organising parties face the danger of losing public support. Because of a better system of state intelligence, the governments learn to ‘go with the blow’.

Mass uprisings are a ‘triggering mechanism’. It is presumed that the government is thoroughly unpopular and lacks internal conviction and an uprising will simply touch off the process of its internal disintegration. But this is too optimistic and ignores internal dissensions within movements.

Mass movements are easy to organise under foreign rule. To remove an internal ruler a different kind of organisation is needed. The parties who are best able to mobilise mass movements are usually ‘cadre parties’. But if the cadre parties want to stage a mass uprising they must gather under one banner first. After that they must develop a country-wide outreach. For the state to stumble, a universal uprising must be seen to exist. This implies the transformation of a cadre party to a populist one.

If the popular parties with a countrywide appeal are not cadre parties, there can be no mass uprising. They must unite with the cadre parties to create a mass uprising, but in so doing they run the risk of losing the state to fascism.

The mass uprising of East Pakistan in 1971 was against what the masses thought was ‘foreign rule’. Mass suffering after a cyclone speeded up the ‘rebellion’ within the state institutions.

In 1977 Bhutto responded to a much smaller challenge than the ‘million marches’ under Musharraf. The army under Bhutto decided to betray him. Before him, a police revolt of an even smaller scale compelled an internal revolt against General Yahya.

Mass uprising cannot succeed these days because the state does not respond. If it responds and kills the protesters, then the chances of the uprising gathering momentum are brighter.

General Yahya had done the same sort of thing to General Ayub after protests began. In Pakistan mass uprisings don’t usher in democracy, only a harder governance under the mistaken belief that that is what the people want.

The cadre parties decided to stage ‘million marches’ against Musharraf and hoped to make up for their lack of outreach by co-opting the mainstream parties. It did not work. The state proved resilient.

The biggest example of the new resilience was in 2006 when Lahore was sacked by a highly organised uprising outwardly aimed against the Danish cartoons. The government sat back and watched till the masses hated their own uprising.

<b>The 2006 ‘cartoon’ uprising was much bigger and inflicted more property damage than the uprising in Lahore that brought Bhutto down in 1977 after the army refused to shoot the protesters.</b>

Finally, mass uprising proves lethal against an isolated regime. A crucial factor in the governance of Pakistan is external support, mostly from the United States. A ruler becomes desperate only after he has isolated himself from his external props.

<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>But uprisings can come in the future as a consequence of the army supporting the Taliban and losing Pakistani territory to Talibanisation. There is a process of ‘soft secession’ in many parts of Pakistan that can play the same ‘revolutionary’ role of bringing the state down.</span>

‘Soft secession’ is more dangerous than a mass uprising because the state is learning, through this process, to quietly let its territory be converted into ‘ungoverned spaces’.

<b>This is the slow death of the state. This is also the state’s final answer to the danger of mass uprising</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->