The Situation in Pakistan: What Now?

Pakistan is a nuclear nation of 164 million people. It shares borders with India, Afghanistan and Iran, making a stable Pakistan key to U.S. interests in the South Asia.

President Pervez Musharraf announced he would lift the state of emergency on Dec. 16. On Wednesday, he took off the uniform, relinquishing his position as the head of the army. He had been a part of the military for 46 years.

On Thursday, November 29, he was sworn in as president.

“No destabilization or hurdle will be allowed in this democratic process,” he said on state television and radio, reported by the New York Times. “Elections, God willing, will be held on Jan. 8 according to the Constitution and no one should create any hurdles.”

Musharraf's political moves have left some experts unconvinced.

“If you don't have an effective leadership, it doesn't matter if he's wearing a uniform or not,” said Professor Derrick Frazier, a political scientist specializing in third-party international action at Illinois.

“He's a military man,” he said. “He'll have his tentacles still firmly attached (to the military).”

The U.S. has had a Musharraf centered policy over the last five years, said Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Policy has shift over the past six to eight months, with the return of Benazir Bhutto, a liberal, pro-Western twice prime minister; and Nawaz Sharif, conservative, nativist twice prime minister; the former CIA analyst said.

These political developments have distracted Musharraf, she said. The handing of the bamboo rod (a symbol of military leadership) to General Ashfaq Kiyani should allow the civic and military spheres to focus on their respective goals. The military will be able to focus its attention in the tribal areas in northwest Pakistan, where many Taliban and Taliban-related groups inhabit, Curtis said.

Pakistan is divided outside of its major cities, Derrick Frazier said. Rural areas have a conservative, Sharif-sympathetic population. Appearance of American interaction – in the democratic process or in military action – will swing sympathy rightward, he said.

American operations in those outlying provinces would be problematic for pro-Western candidates, Frazier said.

The Taliban and al-Qaeda are entrenched and may have sympathy in areas like the Swat Valley, Curtis said. Cooperation between Pakistani and U.S. forces will be necessary.

“This is not something the Pakistanis want to advertise,” she said. Political blowback sometimes comes with counter-terrorism successes in Pakistan, she said.

“We have to assume that our military and political strategists are looking at how we can get at this terrorist safe haven. It's the number one counter-terrorism problem today,” Curtis said. “Pakistani forces have not had success on their own.”

Pakistan's recent history is complicated.

“The big change was going from elected government to army rule in 1999,” said Rajmohan Gandhi, a South Asia expert at Illinois. “Not that the democratic rule was good – it was corrupt.”

Musharraf, then army chief, deposed Nawaz Sharif. Sharif went into exile in Saudi Arabia and Britain. He has since returned to challenge Musharraf's rule, declaring that he will boycott elections.

Corruption festered in both cases, Gandhi said. Politicians enabled close relatives to make vast sums of money by giving land or certain licenses.

By 2003, military rule had lost its impulse. The economy improved and the media blossomed, but the government wasn't acting by the will of the people, one of the key causes of the current discord, Gandhi said.

When the politicians failed, the public favored the army in 1999. The army has now failed to serve the people, and Pakistanis are looking for civic leadership.

“In the end, everyone wants a say,” he said. “The voter wants a say in running the show, but the military was not able to make a transition. It was a failure of military rule, to not give back the government to the people.”

And with the change in leadership, be it in Bhutto, Sharif, or a de-uniformed Musharraf, U.S. interests are at play.

The Americans have not taught the Pakistanis smart responses to terrorism, he said. The bombing strategy may kill terrorists, but it certainly kills many non-terrorists. When people lose family members to their own government's bombing campaign, they are shocked, driving up terrorist sympathy.

Afghanis say the Taliban take shelter in Pakistan and Musharraf has seemed unable to do much about it, Gandhi said. America thinks Musharraf has not delivered, he added.

Bhutto has seized on the issue. She said she will be better at coping with terrorists than Musharraf. America bought the line, Gandhi said. U.S. diplomacy has triangulated, emphasizing Bhutto's possible role as a liberal leader.

“There was a rising democratic movement to want that change,” Gandhi said. “It is easy for America to be seen as responding to that wish. America can earn some plaudit for some effort to bring democracy back,” he said.

America has encouraged joint rule, with diminishing prospects. America should focus on the Pakistani people, not manipulating leaders, Gandhi said.

Musharraf has stated plans to move to democratic rule. He said he wants Pakistani democracy, not that in the form of Western diplomats, as reported by the Washington Post. This may be a prudent decision, Derrick Frazier said.

In the long run, democracies are most stable form of government, he said, but in the transitional phase, they are very vulnerable.

Frazier compared Pakistan with the case study of Russia, where democratic changes happened incrementally. Pakistani democracy may not be what America would want for itself, but it might be all that can be expected, he added.

U.S. interests will be served should open democracy take root, Gandhi said.
“It won't happen overnight, it won't be magical – Osama Bin Laden won't be immediately handed over to the U.S. with a democratically elected government – but prospects will improve.”

3k

Pakistan frees 3,000 political prisoners, but things still aren't great.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2214002,00.html

Mush

With my step-father being an attorney, I have heard (and told) an incredible amount of lawyer jokes, as well as heard every proclamation of the civic and civil necessity-cum-privilege of lawyership. The recent crises in Pakistan have raised an awkward question, what happens when the most outright demonstrators in a nation take to the streets in a suit and tie? It's like a riot on Wall Street, with stockbrokers railing against the Fed. Quite simply, things are weird in Islamabad.

So why was the neck-tied silhouette of a man throwing back a teargas canister the top photo on yesterday's New York Times? President and General Pervez Musharraf – unpopular with the Pakistani judicial system – dissolved the Pakistani supreme court and declared emergency rule in the volatile nation. This come on the heels of Bhutto's return from self-imposed exile, and the subsequent assassination attempt. Indeed, there is much instability in Pakistan. This is unsurprising, even though Bush has described Musharraf as a stabilizing force.

“In fact, Western diplomats here said, each step the president takes to strengthen his hold on power in the name of stability generates instability of its own,” said David Rohde in a piece of news analysis for the Times. Rohde also wrote a straight news account of the lawyers protest, a double identity that would make me uncomfortable as a journalist.

Juan Cole writes with insider attitude on Salon, describing the two crises than moved Musharraf to act: an emboldened supreme court, which had rebuked Musharraf's effort to fire Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The court was going evaluate the legitimacy of Musharraf's office, Cole said. The opposite pressure comes from Muslim fundamentalists, including the Taliban, who have challenged Musharraf's secular rule.

Many U.S. interests in the Middle East and Central Asia are contingent upon Pakistan and its regime. Most of the war materials needed for the war in Afghanistan come through Pakistan. America has bankrolled the Pakistani military with $10 billion – with a B – in aid since 2001, the Times reports.

Musharraf seems less than concerned about those interests, such as the War on Terror, than about his political survival, Rohde reports, regarding a meeting between Musharraf and Western diplomats. “There was serious concern that terrorism and security was not front and center. What was really amazing was him going on and on and on about how bad the judiciary was,” one diplomat said.

The poltically aware classes in Pakistan, including academics, students and obviously the lawyers, are rightly upset with Pervez's actions. Emily Wax did the codfish reporting for the Washington Post, ...
Many of have been arrested in the imposition of emergency rule, including attorneys and human rights activists. Over 2,000 have been arrested or place under house arrest since the suspension of the constitution last Saturday, the Chicago Tribune reports.

What we have here is a case of authoritarian action without the benefits of authoritarianism, including stability, which has become one of Musharraf's talking points. Across the country, police that would be hunting terrorists are instead hunting lawyers, Rohde reports. Between this trend and the regime's preoccupation with the judiciary, the increasingly lawless northwestern frontier territory bordering on Afghanistan has grown nigh-ungovernable. Musharraf's actions may increase militancy in those areas, the Tribune reports.

Pakistan is not ready for democracy, Musharraf said, and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand the country. Even the decorum of Western democracy is absent from Pakistan. Musharraf – and U.S. interests in the region – are in a quagmire. Musharraf faces challenges from the left as well as extremists on the right. More and more, it seems America has ventured into a forest of which she knew little, with a general in the most precarious of positions.

More on Pakistan

As last week's Newsweek will tell you, the world's most dangers nation is not Iran, but Pakistan. It is a picture of instability. In recent weeks, it's current head of state (Musharraf and the exiled leader Bhuttu) have each survived assassination attempts, by way of explosion.

Violence continued today when an air force bus was destroyed, again by detonation. The explosion, near the central city of Sarghoda, killed eight and wounded 27 others. It is not a good time to be a symbol of state authority in Pakistan.

The attack was the first on air force personnel, but not the first on the armed forces. The standing army has been attacked numerous times. The attack on the air force is a sign of growing challenge to Musharraf, the New York Times reports:

“His authority has been undermined by growing unrest in tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan, where there has been a rising number of deadly attacks on military targets by militants sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”

“This is an extremely serious situation now,” said Talat Masood to the Times, a retired army general and military analyst. “The militants are trying to overpower, overwhelm the government. It is the military versus the militants, and the people are mere spectators.”

I'll be taking this from two perspectives: historic use of terror and contemporary discord.

This sort of insurgency is an interesting one. The propaganda by the deed here has historical parallels, including, quite obviously, terror in the Middle East. This brand of terrorism has its roots in turn of the century Europe, specifically France and the two rim countries – Spain and Russia.