Author: Selig S Harrison
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: September 14, 2006
URL: http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayItems.asp?id=SEV20060914090353&eTitle=Focus&rLink=0
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is supposedly
a key US ally in the "war on terror." But is he, in fact, more of
a liability than an asset in combating al-Qaida and the increasingly menacing
Taliban forces in Afghanistan?
Since Sept 11, 2001, the Bush administration
has been propping up Musharraf's military regime with $3.6 billion in economic
aid from the US and a US-sponsored consortium, not to mention $900 million
in military aid and the postponement of overdue debt repayments totaling $13.5
billion.
But now the administration is debating whether
Musharraf has become too dependent on Islamic extremist political parties
in Pakistan to further US interests, and whether he should be pressured to
permit the return of two exiled former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif, who have formed an electoral alliance to challenge him in presidential
elections next year.
Musharraf's most vocal defender is former
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who has urged continued support
for him "no matter how frustrated we become at the pace of political
change and the failure to eliminate Taliban fighters from the Afghan border."
Musharraf is better than what might come after
him, Armitage argues, and is a moderate who has done his best to fend off
the entrenched forces of Islamic extremism in Pakistan.
But this argument does not hold up against
mounting evidence that, as an ally, Musharraf has been an opportunist from
the start who has continued to help the Taliban (just as he had done before
Sept 11) and who has gone after al-Qaida cells in Pakistan only to the extent
necessary to fend off US and British pressure.
On Sept 19, 2001, Musharraf made a revealing
TV address in Urdu, not noticed at the time by many Americans, in which he
reassured Pakistanis who sympathized with al-Qaida and the Taliban that his
decision to line up with the US was a temporary expedient.
To Taliban sympathisers, Musharraf directed
an explicit message, saying: "I have done everything for the... Taliban
when the whole world was against them ... We are trying our best to come out
of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban."
He has kept his promise to the latter.
Taliban forces continue to have unrestricted
access to Pakistani border towns as staging areas and sanctuaries. Pakistani
soldiers look the other way when Taliban units cross the mountains at Bormoi.
With US and NATO forces in Afghanistan suffering heavy casualties in the face
of a Taliban offensive this summer, their officers no longer mince words about
Pakistan's role.
Chris Vernon, chief of staff of British forces
in southern Afghanistan, charged recently that the Pakistan border town of
Chaman serves as the "major headquarters" for a guerrilla network
in southeast Afghanistan.
Musharraf sees the Taliban as a pro-Pakistan
counterweight to Indian influence in Afghanistan and wants to keep it strong
in case Afghan President Hamid Karzai is overthrown and Afghanistan collapses
into chaos. As a sop to Washington and London, he ordered raids on two small
Taliban encampments in July, and he occasionally rounds up key al-Qaida figures
- but in many cases only after the FBI and CIA have confronted Pakistani police
with communications intercepts pinpointing their hide-outs.
Even if Musharraf wanted to remove Taliban
and al-Qaida forces from Pakistan, his ability to do so is limited by the
political pact that he made with a five-party Islamic alliance in 2004 to
win state elections in the two key border provinces.
As a result, al-Qaida and Taliban activity
is openly supported by local officials there, and Pakistani groups allied
with al-Qaida are thriving, notably Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
This prevents Musharraf from carrying out his pledge to crack down on madrasas
(religious schools) linked to terrorist groups.
The Islamic parties are flourishing under
the protective umbrella of the Pakistani armed forces. Their growth would
be slowed if secular political forces had a chance to assert themselves through
free elections and a parliamentary system liberated from army manipulation.
Under Musharraf, the army has seized more
power than past military regimes, installing military officers in hundreds
of government posts previously held by civil servants. Army-sponsored conglomerates
control multibillion-dollar enterprises and will not be easily dislodged.
As a Pakistani editor commented, "Most countries have an army, but in
Pakistan, the army has a country."
The US should use its aid leverage to promote
three goals: Bhutto and Sharif should be permitted to return and organize
freely. If Musharraf wants to run for president again, he should step down
as army chief of staff and run as a civilian. Finally, he should turn over
power to a neutral caretaker government that would conduct the elections.
This would be welcomed in Pakistan even by
elements within the armed forces. An open letter in July from a group of retired
generals called for "the disengagement of the military from political
power." As one of its signatories, Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, observed, "There
is a genuine urge and demand in the country to revert to democracy and give
a fair deal to all the parties."
Harrison, director of the Asia program at
the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars,
is a former South Asia bureau chief for The Washington Post.
