Attacks on U.S. Drive Pakistan To Crossroads
Musharraf's Backing of U.S. Effort Creates Political Risk, Opportunity
washingtonpost.com
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 8, 2001; Page A15
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 7 -- Pakistan's decision to side with the U.S. anti-terrorist campaign has left this military-ruled Muslim nation in the throes of change as shattering -- and potentially as liberating -- as the air strikes that began tonight next door in Afghanistan.
When President Pervez Musharraf cast Pakistan's lot with the West three weeks ago, he abruptly turned a Muslim neighbor into an enemy, challenged the popular grip of radical Islamic groups here and moved to break their formidable alliance with segments of the Pakistani armed forces.
Instead of grudgingly acquiescing to U.S. demands for support and trying to minimize the political fallout, Musharraf has worked to turn the crisis into an opportunity to bring about far-reaching changes in Pakistan's society, institutions and foreign relations that many people here have felt were long overdue.
But in doing so, Musharraf has also taken enormous risks, sharpening the religious contradictions and institutional divisions in a volatile, impoverished nation of 140 million. Moreover, he has staked his country's future on support from Western powers that have abandoned Pakistan in the past and until recently had shunned Musharraf as a dictator. Only now has the West embraced him out of strategic necessity.
"President Musharraf realized this was a defining moment for Pakistan," said Khalid Mahmood, director of the Institute for Regional Studies here. "He jettisoned a lot of ideological, emotional and historical baggage because he believed it was in the country's best interest. He can neutralize the opposition, but if he is to live up to his new road map, he needs a stronger hand."
By far the most significant step Musharraf has taken is to defy the small but vocal radical religious groups that, with growing influence, have sown violence and intolerance inside Pakistan, tarred its image abroad and held its foreign policy hostage to a militant Islamic agenda.
Over the past 20 years, the mission of Pakistan's army has become increasingly religious, based largely on opposition to Hindu-led India and favoring Islamic-ruled Afghanistan. Pakistan's military intelligence agencies nurtured Islamic guerrilla groups, first to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan with U.S. support and later to covertly fight Indian troops in Kashmir.
Musharraf, a moderate Muslim who pledged to reform and modernize Pakistan when he seized power in October 1999, has tried to curb the influence of these groups ever since. But he has been repeatedly forced to back off -- in part because the groups commanded passionate support from some Muslims, and in part because of the key role they played in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
After the terrorist attacks last month in New York and Washington, a wave of vituperative, anti-American protests was launched by radical Islamic groups who support the ruling Taliban Islamic movement in Afghanistan. They threatened mass violence if the United States launched an attack there.
Until last weekend, Musharraf tolerated the protests. Police were instructed to intervene only if serious violence broke out. But today, Musharraf ordered Maulana Fazl-ur Rehman, leader of the most virulent Islamic group, placed under house arrest, removing him from the scene just before U.S. missiles began to strike.
In a related move today, Musharraf unexpectedly replaced his intelligence chief and other senior generals known to have strong religious views -- even though three of them had been key players in the 1999 coup. In the short term, Musharraf was trying to eliminate any institutional challenge to his leadership during the current crisis.
It was not clear, though, whether these combined actions will be sufficient to quell the threat of violence from other Islamic leaders, who have called for mass protests Monday -- and how the army would now respond. If mayhem does erupt, it could divide or paralyze the armed forces, splinter the country along religious and ethnic lines, and even destabilize the government.
"If we are the guardians of the country's physical borders, these religious organizations have always guarded Pakistan's ideological borders," one senior Pakistani law enforcement official said last week. "It is simply out of the question that the army would turn against them."
In the long term, however, some civilian analysts and moderate government aides said Musharraf has taken a crucial first step toward calling the bluff of Islamic groups and permanently separating the army from their agenda. Some critics, who before Sept. 11 were calling for a quick return to civilian rule, now note that only an army general would have dared make such changes.
Over the past three weeks, moreover, Musharraf's authority has been reinforced by pledges of strong diplomatic and economic support from Western powers that once shunned him and by praise from Pakistani opinion makers who had criticized him.
"I think we are lucky President Musharraf was in power when this happened," said one civilian cabinet minister. "He is a gutsy guy who has made the right decision. He didn't vacillate or panic. This has put Pakistan back on the world map and it can turn the country around, but the implications will be prolonged and difficult to manage."
Musharraf's sudden shift in policy toward Afghanistan has brought its own new dangers and opportunities for Pakistan. Most Pakistanis have little love for the Taliban, a rigid regime that has sent only trouble spilling into their territory. Musharraf's new stance has instantly distanced his government from radical Islam in the approving eyes of the world.
On the other hand, the two countries share a long border and a large floating populace of Afghan descent. Many Afghan refugees in Pakistan are sympathetic to the Taliban and strongly oppose a U.S. attack on their homeland. War in Afghanistan could easily spill across the border, leading to violence and unleashing a flood of refugees the nation can ill afford to absorb.
The United States has pledged to provide economic help, but many Pakistanis do not trust the United States. They bitterly recall the Cold War flip-flops of the 1980s in which the United States sided with Pakistan against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, only to walk away after the Soviets were driven out and bloody civil strife erupted there, sending millions of refugees fleeing into Pakistan.
Pakistan's military and intelligence sources helped to support the Taliban when it formed in 1994, and until recently had hoped that by maintaining cordial ties with the Taliban, they could exert a moderating influence on the movement's behavior. But last month, when the United States asked the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, even Pakistan's intelligence chief could not persuade the Afghans to comply. An angry Musharraf had no choice but to turn against the Taliban.
At the same time, however, he has clung to a second controversial pillar of his foreign policy -- support for separatist Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir -- in hopes of shoring up his domestic credentials as a supporter of jihad, or holy war, and to counter criticism that he has sold out Pakistan's interests to the West.
The insurgency in Kashmir is a far more popular national cause than Afghanistan. Most Pakistani Muslims view it as a justified "freedom struggle" against oppression by India, the much larger, Hindu-led neighbor that is Pakistan's longtime military adversary and more recent nuclear rival.
Musharraf also hopes that by doing the United States' bidding, he can win international pressure on India to negotiate a Kashmir settlement. But U.S. ties with India are closer now than they have been in decades, and the Bush administration has increasingly adopted the Indian argument that the guerrilla movement in Kashmir is part of the regional terrorist threat.
Meanwhile, a second controversial component of Pakistan's rivalry with India, its nuclear weapons program, has suddenly become an international liability.
In 1998, both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, alarming the West and drawing economic sanctions from the United States. But to many Pakistani Muslims, the "Islamic bomb" was a source of national pride, while Musharraf asserted that Pakistan's nuclear capability could deter a military clash with India and ensure regional stability.
After the U.S. terrorist attacks, however, the Bush administration presented Musharraf with an all-or-nothing choice between standing with the West or with terrorism. Suddenly, the Pakistani leader realized that his country's nuclear asset could become a liability, vulnerable to attack by far greater powers than India.
"Pakistan had to choose between going along with America or becoming another Iraq," said Pervez Hoodbhuy, a physicist at Quaid-I-Azam University and one of Pakistan's few anti-nuclear activists. "Our foreign policy was being held hostage by the fundamentalists, and Sept. 11 brought it all to a head."
With Pakistan's pretensions to regional influence suddenly deflated, Musharraf hopes his new strategic alliance with the United States and Europe can at least bring enough economic benefits to reverse Pakistan's downward economic spiral and prove to a skeptical and impoverished nation that he has not delivered Pakistan's support for peanuts.
In the past three weeks, there have been numerous indications that the West intends to offer substantial help. The Bush administration has lifted the economic sanctions imposed after Pakistan's nuclear tests, and it appears likely to lift a second set of sanctions imposed after Musharraf's coup. A sizable chunk of Pakistan's foreign debt has just been rescheduled, and the European Union has promised new economic support.
The most serious sign of commitment, however, came last week from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, until now an outspoken critic of Musharraf. On Friday, he flew to Pakistan and spoke to reporters with Musharraf, praising him and pledging to restore military ties, promote trade and assist with debt relief.
Musharraf's decision, Blair predicted, would be "significant and long-lasting in strengthening the outside world's relations with Pakistan. In Britain we will play our part. We will not walk away, and neither will the others."
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