Elite vs. Street
It was the evening
of January 17, 1991. With war clouds
hovering over the Persian Gulf and their
lengthening shadows reaching thousands
of miles away to Washington, the Washington
community was hosting an Eastern Times
Forum in honor of then Pakistan’s
Interior Minister, Chaudhry Shujat Hussain,
who was visiting. As the evening progressed,
news came that the United States had
started bombing Baghdad.
The audience in the room became numb.
Operation Desert Shield had now become
Desert Storm. Chaudhry Shujat picked
up the telephone and called to convey
the news to then Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif, waking him up as it was still
very early in Pakistan.
There was a sense of disarray in the
room where I was also supposed to deliver
remarks, having been an outspoken critic
of the planned assault on Iraq. I decided
to go ahead and give my comments, and
expressed my concern over this development
and its likely implications in the Gulf.
The audience included Americans and
Pakistanis. Afterwards, some members
of the Pakistan-American community told
me that they had felt uncomfortable
with my remarks in that “there
are Americans sitting here and you have
opposed the US military action; …
such utterances can jeopardize the community”.
Interestingly, the Americans present
appeared to have taken my remarks in
stride.
During this period of the Gulf crisis,
the more affluent members of the Pakistani-American
community tended to worry about displeasing
Americans. At the same time, the average
Pakistani was extremely worried about
the fate of the Iraqis as well as the
holy sites there.
When Iraq was overwhelmed, it was dismaying
to see, prominently splashed across
a leading Pakistani paper, photos of
stylish Pakistani girls joyously dancing
in celebrations at the Kuwaiti Embassy
in Islamabad. It was hard to figure
out what there was to rejoice about.
Officially, the Pakistani governing
elite supported the US-led military
action against Iraq, but the street
did not. Such was the pressure generated
by street unrest that it impelled the
Pakistan Army chief to publicly express
empathy for Iraq and its people.
The disconnect between the elite and
the street fuels unrest and is inherently
destabilizing. It also energizes extremism.
For example, the Palestinian elite may
be tolerant of the various peace deals
but the street – at the receiving
end of injustice – is not. While
the Arab establishment is compliant,
the street remains defiant.
1400 years ago, in his landmark letter
to Maalik Ashtar on the principles of
good governance, Hazrat Ali wrote: “The
privileged classes are never grateful
for what is done for them as they have
a sense of entitlement. The average
person, however, is the pillar of the
state and is much appreciative of what
is done for him”. This gulf between
the haves and have-nots highlighted
by Hazrat Ali is one reason why the
so-called ‘roadmap to peace’
in the Middle East has been a road to
nowhere. It also explains why the much-trumpeted
Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords
never really took off at the street
level.
The venality and torpor amongst the
upper echelons is in striking contrast
when juxtaposed against the wider ferment
and rancor which bisects the Muslim
world.
Western diplomats interacting with the
Muslim world can get two vastly different
worldviews depending upon who they converse
with. Elite perspectives, which are
not inclusive of the streets’,
are inherently misleading. For example,
on New Year’s Eve, December 31,
1977, President Carter on a visit to
Tehran toasted the Shah and proclaimed
that “Iran, because of the great
leadership of the Shah, is an island
of stability in one of the more troubled
areas of the world”. Some stability.
Hardly more than a year later, the Shah
was out of Tehran and the Ayatullah
Khomeini was in.
The continuing incapacity of elites
to project popular aspirations and to
reflect the core grievances of the masses
is a key, yet under-estimated, factor
fueling unrest within the broader Muslim
society. Also, it slowly erodes the
legitimacy and moral authority of an
existing order. Addressing this asymmetry
remains a major challenge of the new
century.
