Stratocracy or Democracy in Uniform?
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Danville, California

When the 19th century English writer, Thomas Carlyle, penned Sartor Resartus, he noted, “Clothes make the man.” Little did Carlyle know that he would find a receptive audience in Pakistan a century or two later. “What shall I wear today” is a very important daily question for President Pervez Musharraf.
If he wears “khaki” apparel, he becomes the military man and guarantor of national interest. If he wears western suits, he becomes the enlightened man who is much needed by the West in the Muslim World. If he wears a sherwani, he becomes the president of Pakistan whose power derives from the Quaid-i-Azam. If he wears a vanilla desi outfit, he becomes the dispenser of poverty-alleviation remedies.
Despite all this variety, his wardrobe essentially consists of either khakis or muftis. He cannot dispense with either one. Like an investor who needs to have both stocks and bonds in his portfolio, the general has to diversify his risks.
In more than one way, this duality of attire brings to mind the comic book hero, Superman, a man of steel from another planet Krypton who lived on earth as Clark Kent until it came time to carry out grand rescue missions. Then Clark Kent would enter the nearest phone booth and come out flying as Superman causing bystanders to proclaim, “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman!”
In one musical, the man of steel was portrayed as saying that it was a great feeling to know that when he hung up his Superman cape at night, he had prevented “Murder, larceny and rape.” He added, “Other men have their work to do. But as for me, I must live. Not one life but two.”
He confessed that it was hard to keep on wearing the old Clark Kent smile but the disguise of a bespectacled meek and mild man was essential for him to carry out his mission for the good of the world. The people, pleased with his dual role, chimed in, “In a world of evil and doubt/We need him/We need him. Trouble looms and somehow he knows. We need him, we need him. Down he zooms and that’s the end of those/Who fight him/And that’s why we need him. Yes, when the world’s moral standards grow murky/We need him.”
Does this not read like the script for the play that is being acted out on Pakistan’s political stage by the president-general? One might be forgiven for thinking that the honorable Sheikh Rashid moonlights as a writer of musicals.
Musharraf, along with his three military predecessors constitutes Pakistan’s “Fantastic Four.” A film of that name, based on the Marvel Comics series, is playing these days in American theatres. The special effects seem to have been developed by a teenager on a desktop computer. The whole experience, according to one film critic, reminds one of contestants at a high school costume party. No wonder it has been dubbed the Fantastic Bore.
Pakistan’s Fantastic Four have tried to pass themselves off as democrats and, for a variety of reasons that have been discussed in past columns, found ready believers in Republican presidents in the White House. Field Marshal Ayub paired nicely with Eisenhower and not so well with Kennedy. Gen. Yahya paired nicely with Nixon. Gen. Zia did not pair well with Carter but bonded well with Reagan. And Musharraf did not hit it off at all with Bill Clinton but developed excellent rapport with Bush.
After spending five days on a state visit to India, Bill Clinton only allocated five hours to a Pakistani stopover. The general was not allowed to meet with him in uniform and even in civilian dress, was not allowed to have a photo-op with the American president.
Such a dual-attired lifestyle has of course not been the exclusive preserve of Pakistan’s military rulers. The same lifestyle was favored by many a military ruler in Latin America, including the infamous General Augusta Pinochet in Chile. But Pakistan’s khaki kings have brought it to perfection.
Ayub was old fashioned and switched out of khakis in just two years time. Henceforth, he would only dredge out the uniform on ceremonial occasions, such as awarding 1965 war widows posthumous medals on the September 6th holiday.
Yahya did not stay long enough in power to even worry about retiring from the army or dispensing with the tired martial law routine. He made no pretense of being a democrat. Thus, he served unabashedly as the Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) and his two provincial governors were Martial Law Administrators (MLAs). Further down the chain of command there were deputy martial law administrators (DMLAs), sub-martial law administrators (SMLAs) and lesser minions all the way down to the unlucky fauji havaldar.
Zia decided to wear the uniform over the long haul and developed the dual wardrobe into a political instrument. Richard Reeves discussed this sartorial weapon in his book, Passage to Peshawar. Musharraf, of course, has outdone Zia by introducing Armani suits into the panoply. They let him keep a safe distance from Osama bin Laden’s shalwar-kameez fatigues.
It is time to add a word to Pakistan’s political lexicon. The word is “stratocracy (struh-TOK-ruh-see)” and it means military rule, just like democracy means rule of the people. It comes from the Greek, where “stratos” means army (from which comes the word strategy and stratagem) and “-cracy” means rule.
The most cited use of the word is due to British natural law political theorist, Robert Filmer. In response to the ousting and execution of King Charles I and to Cromwell’s seizure of power, Filmer wrote in his classic work, Patriarcha or the Natural Power of Kings, in 1630 that the English “…fell to be governed by an army. Their monarchy was changed into a stratocracy, and not into an aristocracy or democracy.”
In spite of its elegance of construction and rich pedigree, stratocracy is not widely used today. Given the durability of Pakistan’s tradition of democracy in uniform, and its deep-rooted acceptance of Kelsen’s Law of Necessity, the term is a natural fit. It is more compact than “military rule” and certainly more politically correct than “military dictatorship.”
Stratocracy would also serve as a form of political anodyne. Most people would not know what it meant and may simply think it is a form of democracy that suits the “genius of the people.” Nothing would please the generals more. Whichever Section Officer in the Information Ministry gets the term first to Sheikh Rasheed has a very good chance of getting promoted to the rank of Information Secretary.

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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