Iron curtain and the domino theory
For much of the last decade, NATO has been under severe pressure from its own member countries, the cruise missile issue threatening to split the western alliance. With the advent of Gorbachev, western leaders begin to look jaded as the new Soviet leader caught the imagination of the free world’s masses. With “Gorby” showing signs of overwhelming the polls, the free world’s primary leader, President Bush of USA, opted to take a measured route instead of rushing into media-oriented Summits. Not so much because of the American strategy (or non-strategy) but more so because of political and economic dynamics within the communist alliance, the situation has recently changed dramatically. The communist world is opening up, the iron curtain crumbling down all over the Eastern European horizon, exposing the ugly face of the Soviet-dominated version of communism.
Poland has been shrugging off communism over the last decade, Lech Walesa, a shipyard worker from Gdansk, becoming a household word as the symbol of the SOLIDARITY Union which has now formed the first non-communist government in Eastern Europe. While Gen Jaruzelski remains the President, a Solidarity appointed PM leads a coalition charged with overcoming the deep economic malaise afflicting Poland. In essence widespread economic mismanagement has been the bane of communism, the ills of centrally controlled economies ruthlessly exposed by the unimaginable miseries that the people of Eastern Europe have had to endure behind the great facade of development. The veneer of progress has been wiped away and an ugly reality emerges, in which the socialistic system caters only to a select elite, the vast majority confined to a drab, sub-starvation level of existence while the state media in utter contrast proclaims in Kafka-esque fashion a world of plenty. Poland has adopted “hated” capitalism, not only as a role model to follow but also for economic aid and sustenance.
The next domino to go has been Hungary, with its goulash-brand of communism practiced tongue in cheek over the past decade, the eventual fall was never in doubt. Janos Kadar, the Russian designated leader who replaced Imre Nagy after the 1956 revolution, pragmatically allowed a modicum of a free enterprise system in the economy while keeping the political controls in an iron embrace. While the Soviet system remained solid through Eastern Europe, Hungary’s two systems co-existed without friction, as the wind changed in almost all the Warsaw Pact countries, with the USSR itself providing the lead, Hungary has recently gone overboard, dissolving the Communist Party and opting alternatively for a socialist name to symbolize the change in the space of a few breath-taking weeks! In a poignant moment of posterity soon after the exit of Janos Kadar, Imre Nagy was resurrected in Hungarian history when his body was symbolically transferred into a Heroes’ cemetery. Now, Hungary is even set to leave the Warsaw Pact and take its place among the free nations of the world.
The long-serving (nearly 2 decades) leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, who celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic only a few weeks ago, was removed from his post by his colleagues in the face of continuing street protests. The cosmetic change is unacceptable to the East Germans, who in tens of thousands in recent weeks had defected to West Germany, using Hungary and Czechoslovakia, nominally East Germany’s Warsaw Pact allies as conduits. With the streets of Dresden and Liepzig filled with hundreds of thousands of silent protesters, it is only a matter of time before the whole edifice comes tumbling down. This may not be totally acceptable to the western world since it raises the old spectre of German unification. The world waits to see with bated breath how the cookie crumbles. In Czechoslovakia, Dubcek may yet see the reincarnation of his “Prague Spring” of 1968.
The two most vicious communist regimes in Eastern Europe are Romania and Bulgaria, the leaders of both countries afflicted with acute megalomania, practicing the most blatant repression that can be imposed on human beings. Inspite of this fledgling protest movements are simmering. In Romania, the Caucescu family, husband and wife, hold sway over a famished land, the department stores are bare of consumer goods, the farmers in the process of being re-located from their ancestral homes into concrete blocks of homes in a form of socialistic symmetry. As far as totalitarian Bulgaria is concerned, their policy towards their Turkish minority is abominable. In addition to forcing the minorities to change their Muslim names to something more Bulgarian, they have been subjected to severe economic subjugation and deprivation, culminating in expulsion of tens of thousands of Muslim refugees into Turkey, an unbelievable exodus. PM Benazir Bhutto speaks often about her proposed “Association of Democratic Nations”, yet her Commerce Ministry does not seem to hear about her principles, giving a lie to her preaching, by bestowing the “most favoured nation” status on Bulgaria in an unreal Barter Agreement. Instead of making our anger felt at their treatment of our Muslim brethren by not having any trade with them, we have opened up our treasuries to convert their traded goods from third countries into hard cash in one of the biggest legal scams in the history of the commercial world. While that is bad enough, our counter-intelligence agencies seem to have failed to note that our Federal Commerce and Finance Minister in the first instance and the Ministries of Agriculture and Industries in the next instance are willing collaborators of the minions of the COMECON trade representatives in Pakistan. This is a great and continuing security leak, financed by the “extra” money we bestow on these two repressive countries. The PPP Government is not to blame for this, the Barters were constructed beyond accountability in the previous regime, the present custodians have just joined the gang.
Whatever is happening in Eastern Europe could not have been possible while the Soviet Union exercised total dominance over their satellites. The Soviet Union has been itself subjected to internal buffeting by diverse problems in its many republics, all of whom are now clamouring for greater autonomy. As in Eastern Europe the major problems have been economic, the various nations within the Soviet Union striving to gain more autonomy from the centralized economic planning that has spelled doom for the socialistic system. The economic situation is exceedingly bleak in the Soviet Union, the stores completely bare of consumer items, the peoples’ aspiration raised beyond the ability of the system to satisfy, hunger and cold becoming acute as the winter sets in. While the many ethnic divisions compounded by the rising crescendo for freedom from Russian tutelage demanded by the many republics goes on unabated, the communist leadership is itself been torn apart by Gorbachev’s GLASNOST and PERESTROIKA gambits. The old guard conservatives led by Ligachev have not taken everything lying down and are fighting a last ditch battle, Gorbachev’s own leadership (and political survival) is now more dependant upon external successes overcoming domestic pre-occupations. Being a master politician, Gorbachev has intelligently used the media freedom to exploit his popularity among the populace to browbeat the hidebound bureaucracy which he continues to dismantle, simultaneously replacing the communist hierarchy with his own supporters. Gorbachev is in the midst of a dangerous game, treading a fine line, alternatively blowing hot and cold, his great support is coming from the western countries which have a vested interest in his survival. As a measure of his support, President Bush has just announced a meeting with Gorbachev in the Mediterranean in December this year, symbolically on US and Russian warships.
While Gorbachev breaks the shackles enslaving the captive aspirations of the Soviet people, it is important to understand the complexities of how he has emerged into his pre-eminent position. The answer was given in an oblique manner by his closest confidant and trusted advisor, Foreign Minister Shevardnadze who recently declaimed responsibility on the part of any of the existing members of the Politburo for the ill-considered adventure in Afghanistan. Very much like Vietnam, Afghanistan became a bleeding ulcer for the Russians, as the bodies came home the normal Soviet penchant of honouring their war dead was turned into burials without fanfare, thus humiliating affected members of the populace and thus working to unravel the solidity of system. Sustained by no cause or motivation, the Soviet authorities tried to play down the deaths of thousands of combatants and the injuries to many times that number, causing widespread resentment. In this problem-filled vacuum stepped Gorbachev and one of his first acts was to disengage from Afghanistan to heal the festering sore. Unfortunately for the communist system the decision came too late to delay the rot in Soviet morale and inevitable destruction of the anachronistic Soviet society. The Soviet Union continues to be torn apart by diverse problems, the domino theory taking effect in all of Eastern Europe, maybe a bit too far and too fast for the world to digest.
The present goings-on are vividly representative of the efficacies of the free enterprise system as opposed to centralized control of the economy. While by brute force one can maintain political control for decades the economic aspirations of the people surface eventually. There is no substitute for a free economy, the “mixed economy” prescription for Third World countries where the public and private sector play concurrent roles is only a temporary stop-gap measure, the inefficiency of the public sector being condoned for socio-economic reasons. There are lessons to be learnt from all this for our own economic planners, the main one being that while socialism is an extremely effective palliative for the masses and useful for vote-getting, it is counter-productive for rejuvenating a moribund economy which must be freed if it is to be dynamic.
The freedom fighters of Afghanistan are in fact responsible for all this. In a variation of “The Mouse that Roared” they have spelled doom by their relentless struggle for what former President Reagan once called “the Evil Empire”. The cost has been high, hundreds of thousands of Afghans dead, millions injured, many millions rendered homeless, refugees still. The ultimate tragedy is that their sacrifices have still not got them their freedom but there is some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, internecine quarrels notwithstanding. The Mujahideen can perhaps never really understand the momentous changes they have wrought in the present and future history of the world. In Pakistan we can stand proudly and acknowledge the credit for our unstinting support for the Afghan rebels, in the beginning almost alone, later as the major conduit for western military and economic aid, mainly from the US. This has been a great fight for freedom and whatever our political creed almost all Pakistani political factions have supported the guerilla campaign and the on-going subsequent impending political process. In all this we must acknowledge, whatever may be our reservations about ISI’s previous internal political machinations, albeit at the behest of the then government, the great role played by the ISI in the exit of Soviet military forces from Afghanistan. Not many intelligence agencies of the Third World can boast of such spectacular success against a major world power, not discounting the sacrifices made by the Afghan Mujahideen.
In the years to come when the whole history of the crumbling of the Soviet communist empire is written, there may be quite a few unknown soldiers in this country who can proudly say, “it started in Afghanistan”.
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