Author: Paula R. Newberg
Publication: The Los Angeles Times
Date: October 11, 2001
WASHINGTON -- If there is a place
condemned to repeat history, it may well be Pakistan. This year, Pakistanis
have good reason to approach the second anniversary of Gen. Pervez Musharraf's
coup with apprehension. As a U.S.-led coalition prepares to strike at global
terrorism and sets its sights on the Taliban, it should read recent Pakistani
history with care and ensure that sorting out Afghanistan does not again
leave Pakistanis out in the cold.
When the Soviet army marched into
Afghanistan in the waning days of 1979, the world had virtually lost patience
with Pakistan. Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq had seized power in July 1977 from
Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose lust for power, regional meddling,
authoritarian habits and nuclear ambitions had consigned him to the outer
reaches of U.S. foreign policy. But two years later, Zia's repressive habits,
and his execution of Bhutto, had strained Pakistan's relations not only
with the West, but also with his backers in the Muslim world. Moscow's
incursion into Afghanistan changed everything. Soviet Premier Leonid I.
Brezhnev's "Christmas gift" to Zia, as local commentators dubbed the ensuing
Afghan war, resulted in an international campaign to bring down the Soviet
Union. Pakistan became the staging ground for a complex network of armed
Afghan exile groups and foreign fighters who helped transform a local conflict
into a global campaign to change the face of governance in the region.
At home, Zia used the Afghan war to justify the wholesale denial of civil
liberties to Pakistanis who opposed his rule, to prop up Islamist parties
and fringe groups to create the appearance of popular support for dictatorship,
and to solidify the military's hold on the country's domestic and foreign
policies.
When Zia took power, Pakistan was
burdened by the combined weight of Iran, then consumed by the hostage crisis
and its own Islamic revolution, and India, which was on at the cusp of
economic reform. In response, Zia changed Pakistan. With a handful of ordinances
and regulations, he rewrote Pakistan's political script, stripping secularists
of their constitutional rights and setting the stage for a foreign policy
that blended militancy and military might. Although his regime ultimately
imploded--felled as much by its own weight as by Zia's death--his civilian
successors never got a handle on the army and, worse, couldn't grasp control
of the state.
Fast-forward to 2001. The parallels
are eerie. Musharraf appropriated power Oct. 12, 1999, overturning the
weak-limbed, intermittently cruel, corrupt and nuclear-minded government
of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif followed Zia's chief tenet: Might
makes right, even when it's dead wrong. But his nuclear testing in 1998
wasn't bellicose enough for Pakistan's army. Musharraf, the army chief,
wanted decisive victory in Pakistan's continuing struggle for Kashmir and
a clear say in Afghanistan's conflicts, and he toppled a civilian regime
to try to achieve both.
But Musharraf couldn't pull off
the promise of his coup. The Kashmir engagement and Afghanistan's war drag
on, captive to extremists who have compromised South Asia's security and
to terrorists who have endangered the rest of the world. It didn't take
long for the international community to dispense with Musharraf, leaving
Pakistanis to cope with a contorted politics, vanishing civil rights, rising
sectarian conflict, looming military debt and the terrors of isolation
in an increasingly global economy. But for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
in New York and Washington, the pendulum of Pakistani politics might well
have swung away from Musharraf.
Once again, international actors
are likely to influence Pakistan's political choices. When Soviet troops
arrived in Afghanistan, the U.S. appeared at the Khyber Pass to pledge
arms for Afghans. Zia turned that vow into a U.S. commitment to sustain
military rule in Pakistan for eight more years, and U.S. policy followed
the Cold War playbook.
This wasn't inevitable. The U.S.
could have contained Afghanistan's civil conflict rather than wage an enormous
proxy war. It could have treated Pakistanis--as distinct from their oppressive
government--as allies rather than as pawns in a struggle against a distant
enemy. When the Soviet army marched home in 1989, the U.S. could have stayed
to rebuild Afghanistan rather than try to manipulate vestigial moujahedeen
groups, and watch Afghanistan wither away. And it could have reinforced
the small stirrings of democracy in Pakistan, instead of turning away from
the hard work of stabilizing a Cold War-weary state.
Pakistanis link their domestic historical
markers--coups, wars and occasional elections--to the beginning, middle
and incomplete end of the Cold War. Threaded among these events is Pakistan's
roller-coaster relationship with the United States, and the sad fragilities
that military alliances have imposed on Pakistani civil society.
Neither the U.S. nor Pakistan need
repeat its mistakes. Pakistan has everything to gain from fighting terrorism
at home and among its neighbors. To rid their landscape of extremism, however,
Pakistanis need the same rights protections that Americans claim--and they
need to know that when the U.S. makes deals with the military, it also
stands for the promises of democracy.
The United States and its allies
are preparing to do business with all manner of governments and fighting
factions across South and Central Asia. Hoping to unseat extremists, they
can easily fall prey to the same false policy distinctions between security
and rights that weakened countries like Pakistan and created conditions
of profound instability. Guarding against easy answers is the only insurance
against backlash, blowback and reinforced belligerence. Otherwise, the
new century's background noise will be the sound of history repeating itself
in Pakistan.
