The folly factor

The argument offered below is that foolish decision-makers harm a country more than corrupt or inefficient ones. We hear so much of corruption that we normally ignore that leaders can be foolish also. However, in the case of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s decision to return to Pakistan, I am glad that almost all those who have written on it call it a major folly. Some have pointed out that people suffering from delusions of grandeur do not understand reality. Others say that Musharraf was fooled by Facebook fans into believing that everybody loved him. Yet, another explanation was that he was sent off with salutes and parades, so he thought the army would protect him. After all, nothing happens to army generals in Pakistan as the Asghar Khan case and the peaceful retirement of usurpers like Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan after leaving power suggest. But Musharraf was proved wrong because the courts are more assertive today than before, the civil society nurtures a visceral hatred for him and the media is aggressive and also against him. But my point is not about personal decisions. It is that Musharraf was a dangerous leader — even if he was not corrupt — because of his decisions, which affected the country. One such decision was that of sending troops to occupy the heights of Kargil. It is a sobering thought that the lives of millions of people on both sides of the border were put in jeopardy by folly.

If you take major decisions from world history, you will be appalled. Napoleon’s attack on Russia for one, which made the grande armee a mob of straggling beggars; the same decision by Hitler came to the same ignominious end; and the recent American attack on Iraq resulted in the destruction of Iraq, as well as sacrifice of American lives. Going back to other decisions, such as those which led to the First World War and even the Second World War, show the appalling lack of understanding of world leaders who act like gamblers in crises with no compunction about human life. The few exceptions are the Cuban Crisis in which Nikita Khruschev and John F Kennedy prevented a nuclear holocaust though the American generals had advised such a folly. Unfortunately, with a dimwitted man like George W Bush as president and the same kind of advice by the generals, the United States became a major violator of laws against torture and attacked Afghanistan without learning anything from history.

There are many examples but let us take the ones which matter to us in Pakistan. Take the Kashmir War of 1947-48. Basically, soldiers on leave and tribesmen were used by some Pakistani decision-makers to capture Kashmir. Now, consider that units of the Pakistan Army, weapons and ammunition were either in transit or having teething problems and refugees sprawled in appalling squalor in Lahore and Karachi. Was this the time to fight a much larger neighbour? And now, consider that in 1965, the same strategy, if that is what you want to call this folly, was used again. The irony of it is that the authors of it — General Akhtar Malik, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Aziz Ahmed — were known to be intelligent men. And yet, this is the plan they made. And it put Pakistan years behind in development, stopped American military aid (which was not too bad since Pakistan moved on to China) and gave Pakistan the reputation of an irresponsible and aggressive state.

Let us go on to consider Ziaul Haq’s decision to join America’s proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This war is ripe with examples of the folly factor. First, the folly of the Soviet marshals who deluded themselves and the Kremlin into thinking that they could conquer Afghanistan within a fortnight — and this despite the failure of the British nearly a century back as William Darlymple’s latest book points out. Secondly, the folly of the Americans who used Islamic militants and malcontents from all over the world to fight the Russians in the name of faith. And, thirdly, Zia’s joining the war in which we should have been neutral. But Zia’s decision was not out of stupidity. Indeed, he was being cunning. The Americans gave him the legitimacy he lacked and billions of dollars. It was the decision to use the militants in Kashmir later, which was dangerously foolish. And so were the Americans. So, would you agree that foolishness is more harmful for countries than corruption?

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2013.