General Pervez Musharraf has made a number of candid statements recently that provide a valuable insight into his mind. Since he is expected to be in charge of Pakistan for an untold period ahead, they may be worth dissecting for more than their intrinsic value.
He recently told an American journalist that “the three most difficult decisions in his life” were the about-turn on Afghan policy shortly after September 11, the crackdown on religious extremists that followed, and the handshake with the Indian prime minister at the SAARC summit in Nepal last month as a gesture of friendship. We empathize with him entirely.
No Pakistani politician, let alone an army chief, has ever had the guts to call a spade a spade on each of these issues. Indeed, most have blithely supported the opposite initiatives in order to further short-term personal ends or long-term state goals, which is why these “problems” acquired such significant proportions in the first place.
But in General Musharraf’s case, too, it may be noted that when he took power he was gung-ho about a hands-on Afghan policy, a hands-off fundo policy and a no-holds barred India policy. And why not? The three postures are interlinked. If you want to bleed India, you need the jehadis. If you need the jehadis, you have to condone their religious intolerance and sectarianism in Pakistan. You also have to train them in Afghanistan. And if you need Afghanistan, you have to condone the Taliban and turn a blind eye to their friends in Al-Qaeda. Everything, clearly, hinged on our India policy.
But in a curious way, it wasn’t India that triggered the need for these difficult decisions in the opposite direction. It was, in fact, America who demanded that Pakistan help catch the Al-Qaeda tail that was wagging the Afghan dog. But helping America go after Al-Qaeda meant going after the Taliban who were protecting them. Going after the Taliban meant going after the religious extremists and jehadis who supported them in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And going after these elements meant antagonizing or alienating important elements of the anti-India strategy network, including sidelining its most ardent traffickers in the army and intelligence agencies. Therefore it is difficult to escape the suspicion that the “hand of friendship” to India was a direct and necessary diplomatic consequence of this dialectic, which included a military threat from India, rather than the effect of any change of heart in General Musharraf’s institutional view of India-Pakistan relations.
This impression would unfortunately seem to be reinforced by General Musharraf’s speech in Muzaffarabad on 5 February (Kashmir Day) in which he reiterated Pakistan’s long-standing official position that the fighting in Indian-held Kashmir was the result of an indigenous insurrection that deserved Pakistan’s support. As a worried editorial in the Washington Post on the day of General Musharraf’s meeting with President George W Bush pointed out, “the problem is that Pakistani governments for years have used this formulation as a cover to foment and supply the Kashmir insurrection”. The WP also feared that the crackdown on religious extremists and jehadis was not uncompromising as officially billed since “many of the militants have been allowed to remain free in exchange for lying low”. Such fears were heightened when General Musharraf blamed India for conniving the kidnapping of the American journalist Danny Pearl – “an irresponsible and implausible suggestion that is not backed by evidence” according to the WP. In the event, feared the WP, “where the extremists’ cause intersects with that of Kashmir, Musharraf may feel tempted to pull his punches”.
We hope not. The decisions General Musharraf has taken may have been difficult, given his institutional training and motivation, but they were the correct decisions to take in the long-term interests of the country. Therefore, as a logical follow through, the Pakistan army must decisively break with theories of strategic outreach, stop molly-coddling the jehadis and make durable peace with Pakistan’s neighbours. But much more than that could be at stake. An alliance between the jehadis and the intelligence agencies in the past was used to undermine democracy and politicians and stake out a permanent political role for the armed forces in the body politic of the nation. This must stop. Civil society and the military should join hands to break from the past rather than woo the fundamentalists and extremists to undermine each other as in the past.
General Pervez Musharraf has also claimed that God has ordained him to be President. Of course, as Believers, we know that not a leaf stirs without divine intervention. But much more than that is implied by the president’s statement. It suggests a delusion of power that is totally unacceptable in a society struggling to find rational, democratic moorings. It reminds us of the Amir ul Momineen status sought by Zia ul Haq and then Nawaz Sharif in their quest for absolutism before they fell from grace. It is not a thought that we would wish to associate with General Musharraf. His strength lies in his vulnerability to civilian notions of freedom and moderation and not in his rigidity as a military dictator.