Author: Tunku Varadarajan
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: November 20, 2001
URL: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/?id=95001492
Which president, of a country that
is ostensibly--and ostentatiously--a part of the international coalition
against terrorism, made the following public remarks (and numerous others
like them)?
"Jihad is not terrorism. Mujahideen
organizations are not terrorist organizations. Jihad had been revived during
the Afghan war and now it is jihad in Kashmir. Muslims from different parts
of the world are coming together to support their oppressed brothers and
sisters." -- Feb. 5, 2000
"The Taliban are the dominant reality
in Afghanistan, and the international community should engage rather than
isolate them." -- Aug. 14, 2001
The answer is Pervez Musharraf,
the general who led a coup against the democratically elected prime minister
of Pakistan--admittedly a corrupt man, but isn't that something the voters
of that country might have been expected to address the next time around?--and
who now swans about the world wearing a badge, "President of Pakistan,"
to which he has no moral or constitutional right.
This man, this military adventurist,
was a near-pariah who was kept on the sidelines of the international stage
in the days before Sept. 11. After that date, he has stolen the limelight.
Members of the Bush administration describe him as a "kind of Ataturk"--a
reference that must make old Mustafa Kemal gyrate in his grave--and he
has been lauded, by people who should know better, as "responsible," "farsighted,"
"statesmanlike," "courageous," "moderate," "Westernized" and "brilliant."
Of these adjectives, the only one
I would accept is the last--brilliant--and I would adjust even that, for
right and truthful nuance, to "supremely wily."
Gen. Musharraf is a nakedly opportunistic
man. He may be doing The Right Thing so far as the West is concerned, but
he is hardly doing it for the right reasons. He has allied himself with
the forces of good in the current war in Afghanistan for only one reason,
and it has nothing to do with conviction, integrity, humanity, or a revulsion
against international criminality. He is on board, quite simply, because
the U.S., after Sept. 11, had him by the short-and-curlies. A conversation
along these lines took place between the general and senior members of
the administration:
U.S. Interlocutor: "We need your
airspace and landing rights in Pakistan."
Musharraf: "But, but . . ."
U.S.: "No buts. You're either with
us on this or against us."
Musharraf: But . . .
U.S.: "What did we just say? The
Taliban are your guys. Osama bin Laden has their protection. We just lost
6,000 people. We're in no mood for games. You join us, or you face our
wrath too."
Musharraf: "bu . . . oh . . . OK.
You can have everything you want."
That India--secular like the U.S.,
democratic like the U.S., and, like the U.S., a victim of Islamist terrorism--wasted
no time after Sept. 11 in offering its resources, intelligence and goodwill
gave the general even less wriggle room than he might otherwise have had.
Thus was born an "act of statesmanship," in which Gen. Musharraf, dictator
of a sectarian Muslim country, came to be portrayed as someone who was
laying his life on the line for universal ideals.
In the Western press, as if by some
miracle, articles started to appear that emphasized the great personal
risk he was running in offering to help the U.S. The general, of course,
had much to gain from this perception. After all, if his land were to look
like a place in ferment, a place wracked with angry, riotous dissent, the
general's image would acquire a new sheen. Instead of being regarded as
a man with no choice but to jump to attention on America's orders--orders
the U.S. was fully entitled to issue, given Pakistan's sponsorship of the
Taliban--the general gained in stature. So much so that seasoned Pakistan-watchers
came to suspect that many of the pro-Taliban, anti-U.S., anti-Musharraf
demonstrators who milled about on the streets of Lahore and Rawalpindi
in the days after Sept. 11 were induced to do so by the general's own administration.
How much of a threat there really was to Gen. Musharraf's survival could
be gauged by the fact that he felt free, and safe enough, to visit the
U.S. recently, without fear of being toppled.
Right from the start of the war,
Gen. Musharraf has played a double game. In the first weeks, he urged and
counseled and wheedled against any attacks on the Taliban frontlines, on
troops who were, in effect, damming the advance on Kabul by soldiers of
the Northern Alliance. This was accompanied by a litany of libel against
the Northern Alliance, painted by Pakistani propagandists as barbarous
animals who would descend bloodthirstily on a hapless population, raping,
killing, pillaging, looting, razing buildings to the ground. Against this
vision of hell was ranged the risible idea that there was--there is--within
the ranks of the Taliban an element that might be described as "moderate,"
which was better fitted to ruling Afghanistan than the "rabble" and "ragtag"
forces of the Northern Alliance.
Of course, what Gen. Musharraf was
hoping to do was to buy time for the Taliban, to prevent their forces from
being decimated in air strikes, and--here's the key objective--to secure
a postbellum order in Afghanistan in which Pakistan would continue to dominate.
The same thinking informs his preposterous insistence that the war in Afghanistan
halt for the month of Ramadan. (Question for Gen. Musharraf: Will your
no-combat rule for Ramadan apply to Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in Indian-administered
Kashmir? Or does the rule apply only to infidels waging war on pious Islamic
types?)
The outcome of the war so far suggests
that Gen. Musharraf may come badly unstuck. Before Sept. 11, he had a client
government in Kabul and was able to pursue Pakistan's terrorist agenda
in Kashmir pretty much unchecked. Now Kabul has fallen to the Northern
Alliance, and if there's anything the Northern Alliance hates more than
the Taliban, it's Pakistan. Worse, the alliance has the backing of India,
which has--without declaring so publicly--consistently bolstered that grouping
with matÈriel and, on occasion, medical personnel, not to mention
the most valuable contribution of all, unflinching diplomatic support.
Can it get worse for Gen. Musharraf?
Yes. With the Northern Alliance likely to insist that Pakistan play no
role in a postwar settlement, the general's utility to the coalition--exaggerated
even at the best of times--becomes truly Lilliputian. The U.S. can dictate
terms to Pakistan more openly than would have been politic just two weeks
ago; witness the Bush administration's refusal to transfer F-16s to Islamabad.
(Of course, Colin Powell cannot have been unaware of the dangers of supplying
such aircraft to the likes of Gen. Musharraf. The last time Pakistan took
receipt of U.S. warplanes, the craft were rewired and made nuclear-capable.)
What the U.S. should insist on now
is accountability for the masses of aid that will soon start to go Gen.
Musharraf's way. Washington has already sought guarantees that the money
will not be channeled into the purchase of weaponry that will be turned,
later, against India. The American taxpayer is not inclined to fund an
arms binge by an unelected soldier-president who might, at any time, be
replaced by another goon in uniform.
Pakistan needs to spend its war
booty on educating its population, and on replacing its hundreds of madrassas,
or Islamic seminaries, with proper, civilized schools. These terrorist-factories
need to be shut down, and replaced. They pose a threat not just to neighboring
India--which is likely to see an influx of bellicose Islamist terrorists
now that the paths to adventure (and heaven) in Afghanistan are being cut
off. They pose a threat also to the West.
Frankly, when I hear talk--and there's
much of it--of the need for nation-building in Afghanistan, I think of
something else, arguably just as pressing.
Isn't it time, too, for some nation-building
in Pakistan?
(Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial
features editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Tuesdays.)
