Speculation is rife regarding Mr Richard Boucher’s latest trip to Islamabad in the midst of a simmering political crisis. So this is the right time to examine the evolution of US policy towards Pakistan since the coup in 1999. Interestingly, it is precisely at moments of popular strain that nuanced shifts in US policy are lost on leaders and lay men alike.
For various reasons, especially General Pervez Musharraf’s misadventure in Kargil, Washington was fully behind Nawaz Sharif when the 1999 coup occurred. Thus, General Musharraf became an international pariah until 9/11 compelled President Bush (who didn’t even know the general’s name before he was elected) to renew contacts with Pakistan’s military leadership.
From 2002 to 2005, General Musharraf became the best ally of the international community when he cracked down on Al-Qaeda in the urban areas of Pakistan and in Waziristan. The original American demand for “democracy” in Pakistan was now replaced by gushing appreciation of General Musharraf’s policy of press freedom, enlightened moderation and economic revival. The mainstream American media generally followed this trajectory of comment and assessment.
After 2005, however, Washington began to express public reservations about General Musharraf’s “capacity” to “do more” in the war against terror, although it still insisted it didn’t doubt his “sincerity”. This nuanced shift followed mounting American problems in Afghanistan posed by resurgent Talibanism exported from safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas and was in reaction to a policy reversal by General Musharraf when he halted army action in Waziristan and made “peace deals” with the American enemy. The American media duly echoed its “do more” reservations but continued to hail General Musharraf as the best man for the job, a view which climaxed with the launch of his best-selling memoirs last September in which he boasted before clucking American hosts of his “democratic credentials” and scorned the “corruption” of past prime ministers.
By 2007, however, Washington had begun to publicly criticize General Musharraf’s “inability” to stem the Taliban spring offensive while the US media was now questioning his “willingness” and sincerity. Indeed, when General Musharraf seemed unable to roll back political Islam, as during the Hafsa issue and when Talibanised tribesmen started to bomb video and music shops, the western media was ready to rebuke an increasingly “useless dictator” with a dwindling domestic support base. The proposed solution to his diminishing “capacity” was to consider bolstering him with support from the liberal, pro-West, and popular Peoples Party of Benazir Bhutto. So when Ms Bhutto began to get a hearing in Washington, it was a signal that thoughts of ditching General Musharraf for an uncertain military replacement in an increasingly Islamic and anti-Western Pakistan had been replaced with the idea of a “deal” between Ms Bhutto’s populist forces and General Musharraf’s moderate army to oversee Pakistan for the next five years. In NGO parlance, this is called “capacity building or enhancement”.
But before the “deal” was done, General Musharraf provoked a judicial crisis and transformed it into a political crisis by his blundering tactics. Popular pressure now compelled Ms Bhutto to step back from the deal. This forced Washington to sit up and take note. Its original view was that the judicial crisis could not last long, let alone become a political crisis. But after the Karachi violence, and the relentless chants of “go, Musharraf go”, it began to have second thoughts. The government’s crackdown on the media and its heroic resistance was the proverbial last straw. It indicated that General Musharraf was isolated and slipping fast. So Washington made another nuanced shift in policy. Where it had hemmed and hawed in the past, it now lent its weight to a future power-sharing arrangement between General Musharraf as president without uniform and a democratically elected civilian government on the basis of acceptably free and fair elections.
This revision is based on the understanding that the military on its own, whether under General Musharraf or any other general, cannot uproot radical Islamism or provide economic and political stability to Pakistan. Similarly, the “democratic” politicians on their own, without support from the powerful stake-holding military, cannot do the job. Under the circumstances, it is a good idea if General Musharraf is able to supervise the “transition” to “greater” democracy by sharing power rather than hogging it. Of course, should General Musharraf be hoist by his own petard, Washington would fall in line behind the demand for an immediate return to full civilian “democracy” rather than risk further anti-Americanism by nodding at another general to take over.
The writing on the wall should be clear to General Musharraf. The US is not talking about a return to undiluted democracy immediately. It is talking about a transition to greater democracy. General Musharraf will be totally isolated at home and abroad if he insists on going it alone. If he doesn’t get ready to share power he will lose all power. And the US won’t be able under a Republican administration or willing under the Democrats to bail him out.