The Pakistani senator gazed at the headline in despair. It read "US weighsnew covert push in Pakistan". Washington was authorising "enhanced CIAactivity" in the country while Democratic candidates declared they were allready "to launch unilateral military strikes in [Pakistan] if they detectedan imminent threat." Hillary Clinton wanted "joint US/UK oversight" ofPakistan's nuclear weapons. In a country where anti-Americanism is almost areligion, said the senator, this is "an answer to a Taliban prayer."
I am convinced that those whom the gods wish to destroy they firstcurse with foreign policy. For the third time in twenty years the west ismeddling with the world's sixth largest state. It did so to promote theTaliban against the Russians in the 1980s, then to attack al-Qaeda after9/11 and now to "guard" Pakistan's bombs against a fantastical al-Qaedaseizure. Needless to say the sole beneficiaries are the Taliban and theforces of disorder.
That said, few other conclusions can be drawn from a country which,more than any I know, is Churchill's riddle wrapped in a mystery inside anenigma. Pakistan has as many paradigms as pundits. You can take yourchoice. Thesis A is that President Pervez Musharraf is a well-meaningdictator who sought rapprochement with Bhutto to "transit" to democracy,and who still remains the best hope for guiding his country to civilianrule. Thesis B depicts him as a popinjay dictator who kills people, locksup judges, censors the media and runs a brutal fascist party, the MQM. Hehad no intention of working with Bhutto, whom he detested, and has so muchblood on his hands as to be easily capable of consenting to her death.
Thesis C has Bhutto herself as a perfidious and corrupt hereditarymonarch in thrall to a monster husband whose base was limited to Sindprovince and London's media drawing-rooms. She indulged Washington's JohnNegroponte in his ham-fisted attempt to prop up Musharraf last year, butonly so as to escape corruption charges and enjoy a modest taste of power.
Thesis D says this is outrageous. Bhutto was the one Pakistanipolitician with experience and stature at home and abroad. She knew shecould rule only with army permission but could have faced down themilitary, negotiated with the Taliban districts and steered Pakistan todemocracy. Her going is a catastrophe.
Forget that, says thesis E. The American-backed Pakistan army,responsible for almost a quarter of its economy, will never cede power. Itis the sole embodiment of central control in this 60-year-old federalstate, and its guarantor against another partition like Bangladesh in 1971.It cannot afford to trust unruly politicians such as Bhutto and her ilk andmust be trusted by Pakistan's allies abroad.
Rubbish, says thesis F. Pakistan's army makes Saddam's RepublicanGuard seem a bunch of pansies. Its Punjabi oligarchs and their agencieskill at will and feud even with their Taliban allies, as in last year'sslaughter at Islamabad's Red Mosque. It has failed to curb the Taliban andnobody, not even Musharraf, is safe from it.
As for Pakistan in general, thesis G has it teetering on the brinkof breaking apart, as the army readies itself to nullify next month'selection with rigging and corruption. A bloodbath will follow in which Sindprovince defects and the north-west become an al-Qaeda enclave, loweringover Kabul.
No it will not, says thesis H. Pakistan is made of rubber, bouncingback from every reverse. It has a mature "civil society" of lawyers,businessmen, politicians and even some generals, sensitive to their imageabroad and deeply ashamed of their dictatorship. The elections may be amess but they will somehow move Pakistan, stumbling and trembling, toeventual civilian rule. Religious parties are supported by barely 10 percent of the electorate and even the army is overwhelmingly secular. Anislamist state is inconceivable.
Since there are grains of plausibility in all these theses, muchindeed turns on the fate of next month's elections. Musharraf, weakened byhis November 3rd coup, still has 60 top judges imprisoned, including thenation's chief justice locked up with his disabled son. With thecharismatic Bhutto dead and the Negroponte intervention shattered, he is ina tight spot. He may yet cancel the vote and invite mayhem onto thestreets.
There is certainly an openness to Pakistan's dictatorship comparedwith other Islamic states and some westerners have appeased Musharraf as"our" dictator, operating a "doctrine of necessity". But there is nothingin this man's track record to suggest that he is not a paid-up member ofthe dictatoring classes. His agents treat democrats with contempt and hefunnels huge sums into his pockets and those of his generals.
Some 80 per ent of US aid to Pakistan since Musharraf came topower has gone on military assistance, less than a quarter of it used evenremotely against the Taliban. The virtual collapse of the state schoolsystem has followed a fall in education spending from four per cent to 1.8per cent of gdp, one of the lowest in Asia. In its place have mushroomedthe free madrassas, from a few hundred to over 10,000, financed by wahabistSaudi money and formerly in league with American-financed mujahedintraining camps. Intended to fight the Russians in Afghanistan they havesince become a network of "faith training" for the poor, teaching littlebut the koran. This is Musharraf's (and America's) most lethal bequest toPakistan's political economy.
America's clodhopping sponsorship of Musharraf drove him to renegeon the treaties with the tribal states, crazily fomenting a Pashtuninsurgency. The Afghan frontier has duly proved al-Qaeda's juiciest huntingground, aided by every American bombing raid and every Pakistan armyatrocity. The Pashtun Taliban (whose American backers are well-documentedin the film, Charlie Wilson's War) is a Frankenstein monster that hasturned its vengeance on Musharraf, Afghanistan and Washington alike.
Whatever the defects of democracy, and in Asia they are legion, itremains the least worst way of curbing authoritarian power. There is noalternative. America's handling of Musharraf since 9/11 - essentially tocapture one man, bin Laden - has rendered swathes of his country, fromBaluchistan in the South to Swat in the north, wholly insecure. Even thegrand trunk road from Islamabad to Peshawar is patrolled by Taliban. Theidea that Musharraf's troops, let alone the CIA or the US air force, mightsuppress a people who have worsted every empire from the moghuls to theBritish is ludicrous. Modern armies are no agents of pacification. Civiliannegotiation in a context of democratic assent is at very least worth a try.
Backing Musharraf has always seemed "a good idea at the time". Thenext person to be cursed with Washington's favour appears to be Musharraf'ssuccessor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani. But by opting for therealpolitik of dictatorship the west has not just repressed democracy butaided insurgency and terror. It has yielded no security benefit to anyone.If indeed this country becomes a "failed state", the failure will in largepart be one of democratic imagination in Washington and London. We simplyrefuse to practice what we preach.