Author: A.K. Sen
Publication: Outlook
Date: February 25, 2002
Introduction: Mohammed Goes To The
Mountain Musharraf is no longer persona non grata, but it's only a partial
convergence of interests and ties are still hostage to mistrust
Just over a year ago, the question
"Do you know who the head of the Pakistan state is?" flummoxed US President
George W. Bush. A presidential candidate for the Republican Party at the
time, Bush hadn't heard of Pervez Musharraf, nor could he have imagined
how important this Pakistani general was to become for America.
A year later, and four months post
September 11, Musharraf arrived in Washington last week on a wave of locker-room
bonhomie, but the initial enthusiasm over the visit began to wane quickly.
That the one-time commando has a penchant for shooting his mouth off became
obvious when he told a stunned gathering of South Asia experts that India
was on the verge of conducting a nuclear test.
He didn't have substantive proof
to support his allegation. All he could share with the Bush administration
were "indications", "some news" and "some information". No wonder, none
took his allegation seriously. A senior administration official blandly
noted that Washington was pleased that there had been no nuclear tests
since 1998, "and we expect that there will be no more nuclear tests from
either side".
Musharraf's desperate attempts to
politicise the Kashmir issue also didn't find too many takers. Appearing
beside Bush at a White House press conference, the Pakistani president
said he believed the US could "help South Asia turn a new leaf". Bush refused
to be drawn into the dispute. He made it clear that this situation could
only be resolved by a meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan. "The
best our government can do is to encourage both sides to come to the table,
and that's what we'll continue to press for," Bush said.
Analysts say the US will not, and
must not, micromanage the Kashmir dispute. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato
Institute, Washington, hoped "we don't make that mistake"; while Stephen
P. Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, thought this was
"unlikely". Cohen listed Washington's priorities: "Present US policy is
to reduce military build-up (along the India-Pakistan border). Then comes
our interest in seeing a strengthening of economic ties. Kashmir's a distant
third."
Yet, Cohen thinks it's impossible
for India and Pakistan to settle the dispute on their own. Prof Ashutosh
Varshney, director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, too says it's difficult to imagine a situation
where the US wouldn't be involved behind the scenes.
Be that as it may, last week, Musharraf's
fortunes witnessed a change. From being a leader whom former US president
Bill Clinton eyed suspiciously, and whom most accused of derailing democracy
in his country, Musharraf received an extremely warm welcome. Bush reminded
journalists that he hadn't mentioned many world leaders in his recent State
of the Union address, claiming this indicated his sincerity in developing
a strong relationship with Pakistan.
Pentagon's enthusiasm for Musharraf
was no less. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld thought the Pakistani leader
had made "a series of very tough decisions, taken a number of bold steps,
and we certainly welcome his decision to place Pakistan among the ranks
of nations that are helping to deal with the problems of global terrorism".
Musharraf thought he deserved the
debt write-off for his stand on terrorism. But the waiver wasn't complete:
Bush pledged $200 million in economic assistance for fiscal year 2003,
to be used to pay down $1 billion of outstanding debt for Pakistan. The
amount is just a third of Pakistan's total debt.
These figures challenged even the
most brilliant: how could $200 million in economic assistance pay off $1
billion in debt? White House press secretary Ari Fleischer answered: "I
have asked it (this question) to the people who do work in the realm of
international debt.And I have been advised that if you give $200 million
of assistance, it pays down $1 billion of debt. I can only repeat it. I
can't understand it." National Security Council spokesperson Sean McCormack
was equally unsure: "I wish that were true for my mortgage!"
This incomprehension is what epitomises
Washington's present relationship with Islamabad and more so with a dictator
responsible for creating terrorists whom he now disowns. Washington believes
the madrassas in Pakistan are partly to blame for the spread of terrorism
in and around the subcontinent. This concern was reflected in the $34 million
aid for Pakistan to revamp its educational system. This is the beginning
of a multi-year $100 million programme to strengthen Pakistan's education.
But some feel the Bush administration
sought to make a subtle statement through its decisions of providing assistance
for education reform and, simultaneously, refusing to sell F-16s to Islamabad.
Pakistan had signed a contract to purchase 28 F-16s for $650 million in
1989 and had paid for the jets in instalments over the next several years.
But delivery was barred by the Pressler Amendment, which required the president
to certify that Pakistan wasn't developing a nuclear weapon.
Musharraf's chameleon-like quality
also came to the fore on the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl. While talking to Bush at the White House, he said he felt
the abduction was a fallout of his crackdown on terrorists and added he
was "reasonably sure" that Pearl was still alive. But later in an interview
to a news network, Musharraf, when pressed on Pearl's whereabouts, said
he was then only "guessing" about the fate of the abducted journalist.
Undeterred, Bush summed up Washington's
enchantment with Musharraf saying he was "proud to call him friend". While
Cohen noted that Pakistan was moving out of its "nightmare period", former
PM Benazir Bhutto, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, thought the
West had accepted Musharraf for his post-September 11 volte face on the
Taliban and the January 2002 turnabout on terrorism against India. She
claimed that these "strategic somersaults are tarred by unreliability".
For the moment, some might find
Musharraf's dictatorship useful, Bhutto rued, adding an ominous caveat:
"Ultimately, the West's blind eye to democracy and human rights can have
unforeseen and deadly consequences, not just in Pakistan, but for regional
and world peace."
