America's
Musharraf Dilemma
By Najum Mustaq
03 March, 2007
Foreign Policy In
Focus
Stung
by a spree of suicide attacks, Pakistan's military junta this week had
to take in an unannounced guest bearing ill tidings. The United States
wants General Musharraf to do more to crush al-Qaida, Vice President
Dick Cheney told his host during a surprise secretive trip to Islamabad.
After being defeated in Afghanistan, America's bin Laden-led enemies
are regrouping in Pakistan's tribal region, said Cheney. He is reported
to have warned Musharraf that if Pakistan does not produce more results,
the Democrat-dominated Congress may review and revoke the American military
assistance program resumed after September 11, 2001. The military's
status as a major non-Nato ally of the United States could also be in
danger.
Pakistan, the fifth-largest
recipient of American aid, is set to get $785 million in President Bush's
next budget. That includes $300 million in direct military aid, a sop
to Musharraf's domestic power base in the armed forces. More than just
military aid is at stake. Worse could come to pass if the United States
decided to take out al-Qaida targets in Pakistan with unilateral air
strikes. Although White House Press Secretary Tony Snow tried to soften
Cheney's message, the Pakistani general is clearly looking down the
barrel if not yet in the line of fire. A visit by Dick Cheney, who is
not exactly a gun control advocate, serves as perhaps the last warning.
Flawed Assumptions
Washington's Pakistan policy
is based on two dubious and misplaced assumptions. One, that Pakistan's
military -- and therefore General Musharraf -- is the only viable option
to govern the country. Musharraf and the military remain indispensable
in the Bush administration's war on terror. Two, American policymakers
tend to put an excessive emphasis on al-Qaida and the Taliban: capture
and kill so-called al-Qaida operatives and Taliban leaders, and the
war on terrorism will have been half won. This simplistic approach ignores
other strands of religious extremism in Pakistan that run parallel to,
and often in concert with, the international network of terrorism.
The Bush administration says
it does not doubt Musharraf's intentions or his regime's commitment
to the anti-terror cause. Pakistan, after all, is itself hit hard by
terrorists. No other country has shipped more al-Qaida suspects to the
United States than Pakistan. More than 70,000 of its troops are stationed
in the tribal region along the Afghan border. The military has absorbed
significant human and material losses in its campaign against the militants.
Yet both at home and abroad
Pakistan continues to be viewed with suspicion. The military regime
suffers from a crisis of credibility. Islamic militants of all hues
remain powerful in many parts of the country. They frequently show their
destructive prowess within Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan. Doubters
like Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and think tanks like the International
Crisis Group believe that the Musharraf government is, at best, ambiguous
and ambivalent in its approach and a reluctant partner in the war on
Islamic extremism. At worst, they accuse the military government of
allowing the Taliban, al-Qaida, and other militant groups to "regroup,
reorganize, and rearm" themselves.
The gap between Musharraf's
policy pronouncements and his government's failure to achieve those
policy objectives is jarring but not inexplicable. There are three sets
of limitations on the Musharraf government that impede and undermine
its anti-terrorism effort: conceptual fallacies, domestic political
expediencies, and operational miscalculations.
Musharraf's Limitations
The basic flaw in the anti-extremism
policies of General Musharraf is conceptual. His government officials
regularly describe the Taliban as an "Afghan problem"; make
spurious distinctions between Islamic freedom fighters, especially those
active in Kashmir, and international al-Qaida-type terrorists; and yet,
in the same breath, they berate domestic sectarian terrorists. These
categorizations are facile.
Three strands of jihad converge
and feed off one another in Pakistan's radicalized Sunni mosques, madrasas
and other religious institutions like the Jamaat-e-Islami. The three
operate at different levels: domestic, regional, and global. The most
active are domestic jihadis and anti-Shia sectarian militants (Sipahe
Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi). Jihadi groups for regional Muslim causes
(Hizbul Mujahideen, Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Kashmir, Hezb-e-Islami of Afghanistan)
not only share the same sectarian ideology but also have organizational
links with the local Sunni political parties and militant groups. And
terrorists with an international, anti-West agenda -- the al-Qaida genre
-- have sought refuge in Pakistan's tribal areas since the fall of the
Taliban in 2001 and have been the focus of Pakistani military's anti-terrorism
drive.
This rather arbitrary division
of jihadists into the good (regional), the bad (domestic), and the ugly
(global) has led the Musharraf government to adopt incoherent, conflicting
policies. It has also meant that the crackdown on militant groups is
selective, reactive, and sporadic. Whereas the "ugly" -- al-Qaida
and the Taliban -- are pitched against the 70,000 or so troops stationed
in the tribal areas, their ancillary domestic outfits have only faced
cosmetic bans and partial, on-off police action. The leaders of the
"good" jihad meanwhile lead an active and highly visible public
life, appearing in the electronic media, running radical madrasas, and
regularly issuing calls for jihad from the pulpit. Their organizations,
too, remain as active as ever.
Almost all the jihadi organizations
banned by the government are plying the trade by other names. Many of
them appear in the guise of charitable organizations and have earned
praise from the highest functionaries of state for their relief work
after the 2005 earthquake. Since normal political activity remains dormant
under Musharraf's rules of the game, militant organizations like Sipahe
Sahaba and Taliban-like groups in the tribal areas are even trying to
occupy the vacant political ground.
The Musharraf government's
dilemma of legitimacy is another stumbling block in its anti-terrorism
policy. Much of the ambiguity found in the government's anti-terrorism
policy emanates from its reliance on the religious political parties
to sustain the tenuous trappings of democracy. On paper the government
and its principal opposition party --an alliance of religious parties
known as Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) -- have unbridgeable ideological
differences. In practice, they work together in pursuit of a common
political agenda, such as keeping out moderate political leaders like
former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and opposing
Baloch and Pashtun nationalists. In return, Musharraf has been unable
to move forward on madrasa reforms, the cornerstone of his anti-extremism
policy, and has extended a slew of other concessions to the religious
lobby.
This untenable position compounds
the military government's credibility deficit. Little surprise then
that the government's international commitments of running off the Taliban
and al-Qaida are falling short of the promised mark as it makes ungainly
and often inexplicable retreats in the face of pressure from the MMA.
One of the MMA's coalition
partners, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) is a traditional and longstanding
ally of the military, but it is no less vocal in its opposition to the
government's anti-extremism policies. The JI regards Musharraf as a
passing phenomenon and deems the core of the military to be sympathetic
to its Islamic agenda. This view may not be much wide of the mark.
Military Miscalculations
Pakistan's military operations
in South and North Waziristan since 2004 --demanded by the United States
to target al-Qaida and Taliban militants -- have been marred by a blatant
misreading of the social and political climates in the tribal areas.
These ill-conceived military operations have alienated the local population
and, by default, strengthened the very forces the government had planned
to defeat. It is not only the Taliban who have made gains in the ongoing
operation. The Hezb-e-Islami of Hekmatyar, the Afghan ally of the Pakistani
Jamaat-e-Islami, has also resurfaced with a vengeance.
The most telling but least
publicized factor, however, has been the reluctant attitude of the Pakistani
troops to wage war against those whom not many years ago they had supported,
encouraged, and trained to fight against the communists on behalf of
the U.S.-led Free World. Many retired and serving soldiers betray intense
emotions and resentment about fighting a war they neither bargained
for nor want. Indeed, stress levels and casualty rates among the troops
remain high. Their morale has been one of the major reasons why the
government has been making hasty peace pacts with the militants. Pakistani
troops in the tribal areas have achieved the very opposite effect of
what was intended. Rather than being defeated or marginalized, the Pakistani
Taliban have gained unprecedented power. In some areas, they run a parallel
administration. Islamic vigilante groups are even replacing the traditional
Pashtun tribal structures with strict Sharia laws.
So, even if one were to give
the Musharraf government the benefit of the doubt and take its pious
policy declarations at face value, it cannot be absolved of gross incompetence
and myopic politics. Power -- rather, the illusion of enjoying power
-- is its prime objective. In order to maintain and expand this power,
General Musharraf has made pacts with the devil in both camps of the
war on terrorism. Support from the United States has facilitated his
authoritarian rule and exposed the reality of its much-hyped agenda
of bringing democracy to the Muslim world. Support from religious parties
like the MMA --to achieve domestic goals --comes at the expense of Musharraf's
anti-extremism campaign.
Caught between Cheney and
jihad, Pervez Musharraf ought to rethink his -- and his military's --
role in domestic and international politics. At this crucial juncture
in its history, Pakistan needs an elected representative civilian government
not a self-perpetuating dictator and his puppet politicians. The cause
of defeating extremism will be best served by a Pakistan where the military
is a professional institution, subservient to civilian rule, and not
a preeminent political actor.
Washington would do well
to help General Musharraf dismount from the tiger he's been riding since
staging a military coup in 1999. A timeline for the military's withdrawal
from the realm of power is long overdue. The disastrous result of propping
up a seemingly moderate and liberal dictator is evident in the content
as well as the context of Cheney's Pakistan sojourn. Relying solely
on military means to defeat an enemy whose ideological influence and
operational reach go far beyond Pakistan's narrow tribal belt is self-defeating.
And relying solely on a military to find a sustainable solution to the
complex political problem of religious extremism and militancy, as Pakistan's
case graphically illustrates, is more likely to exacerbate the turmoil.
Like all wars, this war is too serious a business to be left to generals
--or to one general in Pakistan.
Najum Mushtaq
is a journalist and contributor to Foreign
Policy in Focus.