As expected, General Pervez Musharraf has received the red carpet treatment in Washington. Most world leaders are not feted at Camp David by the American president. The international media has also wooed him as never before. In addition to the US$1 billion in debt write-off last year from Washington, he has now got Pakistan another US$3 billion, half of it in desperately needed military equipment for the first time in 15 years. The icing on the cake is President Bush’s description of him as a “courageous” man “who wants to build a moderate and tolerant Pakistan”. All this is a reward for standing solidly behind President Bush’s “war against terror” since 9/11.
As expected, too, the opposition at home has pooh-poohed his achievements. One party stalwart says Pakistan has been “short changed” by the US because a Pentagon study calculates Pakistan’s costs after 9/11 at about US$10 billion. Another accuses General Musharraf of “selling-out” to the Americans, implying that his foreign policies are in America’s interest rather than in Pakistan’s. President Bush’s sidestepping of the democracy issue worries true liberals as much as it does Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. On the F-16 count, however, everyone is dismayed because the issue has become a symbol of “national pride” more than “national defense”.
No matter. The truth about General Musharraf’s trip to the US is more complex than his detractors or supporters make out. The fact is that the US considers General Musharraf its “best bet” in Pakistan for the foreseeable future for good reason. General Musharraf didn’t bat an eyelid before facilitating the collapse of the Taliban regime in Kabul. He did much the same when he offered an unconditional and composite peace dialogue with India, thus paving the way for the withdrawal of Indian troops from the international and Kashmir borders and reducing the chances of conflict. Nor did he think twice before leading the hunt for Al Qaeda fugitives in Pakistan and turning them over to the US after they had been nabbed. General Musharraf has also given firm commitments that Pakistan will not proliferate nuclear weapons technology, especially to North Korea or Iran, both of whom are in the gun-sights of the USA. What more could Washington ask for? But the best part of all these initiatives is that they are as good for Pakistan as they are for the US.
However, Washington sees all this in the context of “work in progress”. General Musharraf is expected to do much more to help quell the recent Taliban uprisings in the tribal areas of Pakistan against the US-supported Hamid Karzai government in Kabul. But this is not something that can be wrapped up quickly, considering the fiercely independent and conservative nature of the armed tribesmen of these areas. So progress will have to be demonstrably manifest. Similarly, the peace process with India is stalled for want of sufficient evidence of a lid on Pakistan-based jihadis fomenting insurgency in Kashmir. Everyone admits that cross-border infiltration is much reduced. But a permanent end to it is probably not possible – if only because it would be bad tactics to give up a weapon of the struggle unilaterally – except after a reasonable compromise has been reached over the Kashmir issue with India on the table. So this issue too will continue to crop up in the foreseeable future and Pakistan’s calibrated approach will be measured by the degree of success it achieves in moving the peace dialogue forward with India. Then there is the nuclear issue. Pakistani denials notwithstanding, Washington believes that Pakistan’s military establishment has exported nuclear know-how to North Korea in exchange for missile technology in the past. It doesn’t want this sort of thing happening ever again, given its fear of nuclear weapons falling into the “wrong” (state or non state terrorists) hands. Although the chances of Pakistan crossing this red light are slim, there is now the added fear that Pakistan could fall into the “wrong” (fundamentalist) hands and thereby endanger American and Western interests in the region and the world. All these issues – Jihad, Taliban, Al Qaeda, religious fundamentalism, nuclear weapons – are interlinked in the American mind. So progress on all these areas will be the yardstick by which Washington will measure General Musharraf’s utility and the rewards that will be dished out to Musharraf’s Pakistan will be commensurate with his personal performance on these fronts.
The aid package is all about carrots and sticks. It is spread over five years. This means Congressional and Presidential approval will be needed every year. On the other side, the F-16s have been withheld but not irrevocably denied. Military equipment can be finally bought, but only if it serves Pakistan’s defensive rather than offensive capability. The free trade agreement will also have to be negotiated step by step in the years ahead. And the movement towards institutionalising a western-type democracy must be palpable so that Pakistan doesn’t have to depend on the infallibility of one “courageous” man to deliver the goods in the end. Considering that Pakistan not so long ago was a “pariah state” with a “useless dictator”, this is not a bad beginning in the right direction after all by General Pervez Musharraf.