Pakistan: The Pivotal Nation in The War On Terror

Quite simply, Pakistan is the pivotal nation in the War on Terror. It is where Osama Bin Laden has been hiding for most of the last six years; it is a conduit for British Islamic militants to visit Taliban-run training camps in Afghanistan before returning to plan bombing campaigns here; it is nuclear armed and it has been the single biggest proliferator of atomic military secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Part of the reason is that Pakistan is deeply divided, torn between a pro-Western leadership with no democratic credentials and a deeply conservative Islamic hinterland.

Pakistan bestrides many geopolitical and religious fault

lines: over the simmering territorial dispute with India in Kashmir with its Hindu-Muslim undertones, over Afghanistan where tribal-based Islamic communities make the North-West frontier as lawless now as it ever was in the days of the Raj, and over increasingly polarised Islam within the country. A significant proportion of Pakistan’s population wants to see Sharia law and an Islamic state. The flawed constitution lacks clear-cut delineation between the power of executive and legislature, and MPs have been helpless to challenge the country’s decades-long rule under a state of emergency, which concentrates power in the president. The military remain key political players without whose support no government can survive. While these fault lines have existed for several years, elections due this year are likely to herald a political earthquake.

President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, has promised that proper, open and free elections will be held this year. Though reluctant to subject his political survival to a hostile electorate, Musharraf has also been under huge U.S.

pressure to legitimise his rule.

After seven years in power, Musharraf has been a very lucky man. Predecessors have either been drummed out of office like Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, executed like Zulfikir Ali Bhutto, or like General Zia ul-Haq have died in a mysterious air crash. Musharraf has survived four assassination attempts, and as his unpopularity in the country deepens, there could well be more. Yet despite U.S. pressure, Musharraf is leaving little to the whims of the ballot box. He has attempted to pack the Supreme Court with supporters to block legal challenges to getting himself re-elected. To do this he in March suspended the chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary, who had taken an independent stand against the general’s plans. Instead of taking this lying down, the eminent judge has become a rallying point for all those who oppose Musharraf’s rule. While the judge has been kept under house arrest, first lawyers and then opposition political parties have denounced Musharraf’s brazen action in a groundswell of opposition and demonstrations that has continued to mount.

Though no date has been set for elections, they should be in October. This would match the expiry of the five-year mandate from elections in 2002, even though these were boycotted by most opposition groups and widely denounced as rigged. According to Pakistan experts, the timetable will be tweaked to produce a surprise ballot in September, to make it harder for former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, currently based in Britain, to organise her participation. In an open and free election the view is that Bhutto might win, but for the long-simmering corruption allegations against her and particularly her husband, Asif Ali Zadari. Pakistan’s energetic pursuit of these allegations through Swiss courts are a complicating factor in any electoral deal. The Pakistani press is full of speculation that Bhutto and Musharraf will come to a deal in which the Pakistani leader ends the corruption enquiry in exchange for her endorsing him , but that would hardly clear her name and is considered unlikely by Pakistan watchers.

Dealing with Musharraf has been little short of excruciating for the United States. President Bush needs his co-operation to continue the hunt for bin Laden, and is hugely frustrated by the lack of progress. Though there have been no repeats of Al-Qaeda attacks on the scale of September 11 2001, the organisation has extended its reach in other ways. In an echo of business practice, Al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Zawahiri says he is "franchising" the organisation’s operation. That means attracting recruits to Iraq or Afghanistan from across the Arab world, training them, putting their beliefs into an Islamic framework, and sending them back to local organisations. The proof is the terror bombings in Algeria this month, which killed 33, and were claimed by ‘Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb’. This organisation is an Islamised rebranding of the GSPC, a secular guerrilla group which fought in the civil war of the 1990s, and had in the past eschewed attacks on civilians.

Al-Qaeda is still directed from Pakistan, yet despite intense American pressure, and mounting British and American casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Musharraf has been unable or unwilling to assert his power. Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives continue to move freely in the federally-administered tribal areas.

Pakistan experts suggest that the country would be torn asunder if the Pakistan military, or worse still a joint force with the U.S., were deployed directly in the area in an exhaustive manhunt for bin Laden. Musharraf revealed in his biography that Richard Armitage, former deputy U.S. secretary of state threatened to "Bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age," if Pakistan failed to help avenge the September 11 attacks. It has turned out to be an empty threat. Musharraf, ineffective, unpopular and illegitimate remains the least-worst ruler that Pakistan could offer the West. He has army links that Bhutto could not match, and is less hated by Islamist than she would be.

Yet the political cost of having Musharraf as an ally is not small. His disdain for fair elections makes a hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s democracy agenda, as does the U.S. alliance with feudal Saudi Arabia. Since taking control of Congress last November, U.S. Democrats have gone out of their way to upset the cosy relationship between the Bush administration and Musharraf, demanding that Pakistan cracks down harder on Al -Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants at home. Oddly enough, the more U.S. politicians bash Musharraf, the less unpopular he becomes at home.

Though it is not a great producer of any of the world’s mineral resources, Pakistan has an economic importance because of its 168m population, which makes it the world’s second most populous Muslim nation (after Indonesia). Unusually for an emerging market economy, services already account for a majority of its GDP, and the rapid pace of economic growth under Musharraf has

been one of the few boons of his rule.

As the election approaches, and the protests against Musharraf’s arrest of justice Chaudhary grow, the stakes get higher. Latest opinion polls show if an election was held now Bhutto would get 20-25%, Musharraf 40-45% and the Islamic parties 10-15%. However, no-one expects this to be a fair election.

Constitutionally, the best result for Pakistan and the world would be for Musharraf to lose to Benazir Bhutto.

In this unlikely outcome Democracy in Pakistan would be strengthened, but despite her connections in the West, Ms Bhutto would be still less able to deliver Washington’s geopolitical goals. The army dislikes her, the Islamic parties despise her, and as a westernised woman she would be even less popular in the western tribal areas than Musharraf is.

The most likely result is that Musharraf’s party emerges as the largest. An outright Musharraf victory is unlikely, unless the election is obviously rigged. His legislative programme will thus depend on the support of some of the Islamic groups. Either way, Musharraf is likely to stay on for five more years, while retaining the controversial post of head of the army. This is likely to stir hard-line opponents and terrorist groups to try once again to have him assassinated. If he was killed, General Ahsan Saleem Hayat would take over as the military, while Mohammad Mian Soomro, Senate chairman, would takeover as president. With two centres of power, neither of them well-understood in Washington, this would be a harbinger of more dangerous times. But then, dangerous times are never far away in Pakistan. No-one knows that better than Pervez Musharraf.

Regards,
Nick Louth
For the Daily Reckoning


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