Pakistan: Army Seeks To Deprive Peasants Of Rights

Naresh ‘Nadeem’

OKARA, an area in the Punjab province of Pakistan, is in news for quite some time. It is because the area has been witness to a powerful agitation by the local peasants for more than a year and a quarter, against the military junta’s attempts to deprive them of their hard-won rights. For some time, the Pakistan media ignored the agitation --- as if it were of little consequence. (Or because it was no saleable news?) Finally, however, the public opinion got concerned with the agitation after news items in the daily Dawn of Karachi took note of it and, in an editorial last month, the paper also warned the authorities of the serious repercussions the agitation could have.

But a sad part of the story is that the country’s mainstream political parties are still not very eager to take up the cause of the suffering and struggling peasantry of Okara. Even if they are concerned about the restoration of democracy in the country, as they profess from housetops, it seems the genuine problems facing the peasantry or other toilers do not form part of a democratic agenda!

The gist of the problem could be put in this way. After General Pervez Musharraf effected his coup on October 12, 1999, and ousted the elected government of Nawaz Sharif, he began to dole out large tracts of land in Okara area to his trusted military officials --- obviously in a bid to ensure their continued loyalty. Thus came into existence what are today known as Okara military farms. But the creation of these huge farms means that the peasants who had been cultivating these lands for generations and had full tenancy rights over these lands since 1874, are being forcibly deprived of their rights. Also, there were news that army rangers were sent to the area to get the unwilling peasants sign the deeds of lease whose text has been craftily drafted by army bosses. Some two months ago, during a clash with the local peasants, these rangers also opened fire on a protesting mass, claiming the life of a 60 years old peasant. Though the army claimed the man was killed because he came in between when there was a firing from two sides (which two sides, was left unexplained), nobody seems willing to buy the story. For some time now, these army rangers have laid a siege of the whole area and are busy going from house to house to intimidate the peasants into signing the said lease deeds.

Right now, there is a stalemate situation in the whole area, with a solution to the problems of Okara peasantry being nowhere in sight. Yet a cursory look at the stories in Pakistan media would convince anyone that the peasants are still full of rage over the whole issue. However, what shape this discontent seething underneath will take, only time will tell.

Recently, in its issue dated May 30, The Friday Times (TFT) also published a small interview under the title “The Disadvantaged Will Organised Themselves Politically And Will Arm Themselves……” The interviewee was Admiral (retired) Fasih Bokhari, the former chief of Pakistan Navy, who was the first to reveal that General Musharraf’s October 12 coup d’etat was a pre-planned event and not a spontaneous reaction to the attempts made by Nawaz Sharif to get the general killed, as the latter propagated for long. Admiral Bokhari is one of the persons who have followed the Okara siege by the military. In September last year, he spoke on the issue at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and expressed sympathy with the peasants’ movement, while urging General Pervez Musharraf to resolve the Okara crisis.

Speaking to Mohammad Shehzad of the TFT, Admiral Bokhari said he got interested in the Okara farms issue after reading a pamphlet titled Malki ya Maut (Ownership or Death), the slogan of Anjuman Mazarieen-e-Punjab (AMP). (The name can be translated as the Association of Punjab Peasantry or Tenantry--- NN.) He said this powerful slogan reflected the peasants’ demand who had tenancy rights under the 1874 Punjab Tenancy Act, but are now being coerced by the army into giving these rights. “A contingent of rangers had been sent to Okara with orders to ensure that the unwilling tenants sign a document relinquishing tenancy rights in favour of lease agreement. The mazarieen believed that the leases would be cancelled in a year or two leaving them without the safety of livelihood they had under the Tenancy Act,” the admiral said.

In the interview, the admiral also said the rangers and local administration tried to restrict his free movement “in my own country on the plea that there were Al Qaeda operatives in the area, from whom they needed to protect me!”

The admiral’s first hand experience of the Okara standoff seems to have convinced him that it “apparently had all the ingredients of our national malaise.” To him, these ingredients are --- “a dictatorial army, a compliant judiciary, a more-loyal-than-the-king administration, personalised autocratic political parties who see no benefit in raising their voice in support of the oppressed, a controlled press that prints the agency version rather than the victims’ version, vested groups trying to make a quick buck, or push their own agendas, and weak civil society organisations trying to do good at the cost of the victims.” To Admiral Bokhari, all this seems to be a microcosm of the cry of the oppressed majority. Thus, “Malki ya maut was the same as (give us back the) ownership (of our country) or death,” he noted.

As for the prospects of a solution to the problem, the admiral does not seem to be very enthusiastic. He is no supporter of the demand that the concerned tenants be made the owners of the farmlands they have been cultivating. Why? Because “our laws, and current psyche, will not allow these tenants (the) rights they could ask for and probably get in a free country.” He categorically says, “These lands are expensive real estate, and given the national psyche, there is no way these tenants, and many like them, who may be suffering more, can hope to benefit at the cost of the army and other large landowners.”

Yet, Admiral Bokhari’s thinking takes a twist when he accuses certain “civil society organisations and other groups” of “actually pushing their own revolutionary Leftist agendas.” The admiral has of course refrained from naming these organisations and groups. In fact, accusing these organisations and groups of “giving false hope and pushing the politically disorganised peasants to confront well-organised power structures,” Admiral Bokhari terms it as “immoral, if it meant that the peasants should face more bullets resulting in more deaths.” It is with this thinking that, even though he warns that “the disadvantaged will organise themselves politically and will arm themselves,” he says that to avoid the imminent bloodshed “the mindset of the privileged must change, and service of the people must become the focus of the servants of the state.”

But is there anything new in it? Is history not replete with the stories of people, some of whom were well-meaning while others were crooks, who had been thinking and propagating that the downtrodden could be provided with justice and the structure of society may change for the better if only there is a change in “the mindset of the privileged” and the goal of “service of the people becomes the focus of the servants of the state”? And is not history also replete with instances that the downtrodden have won justice only by methods which the “privileged” have always termed as “immoral”?