Author: Editorial
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: June 30, 2003
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49302-2003Jun29.html
Though he once criticized what he
saw as the excessive personalization of diplomacy by his predecessor, President
Bush continues to lean heavily and exclusively on a handful of heads of
state to advance crucial American interests. He's still courting Russia's
Vladimir Putin, despite Mr. Putin's curtailment of democracy and obstruction
of the U.S. mission in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the White House counts on
one man, Hamid Karzai, who rules little more than the palace he lives in.
Now Mr. Bush has placed another huge stack of chips on Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
the self- appointed president of Pakistan, which since 9/11 has become
the world's single largest haven of Islamic terrorists -- including most
likely the fugitive Osama bin Laden. Last week Mr. Bush invited Mr. Musharraf
to Camp David and offered him $3 billion in military and economic aid over
the next five years, as well as what a White House briefer called "a long-term
commitment to build a relationship." That is a huge boost for a man who
overthrew Pakistan's last elected civilian government in a military coup,
presided over his country's delivery of nuclear weapons technology to North
Korea, directed its last military offensive against India and broke his
promises to restore democracy and crack down on extremist Islamic groups.
It's fair to ask what the Bush administration will get in exchange.
Mr. Musharraf argues that he has
already done plenty to help the war on terrorism, at considerable personal
risk. After 9/11 his government withdrew its support for the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan and allowed U.S. warplanes to operate from its territory.
Pakistani officials say close to 500 al Qaeda members have been arrested,
including the most senior operatives in U.S. custody. Mr. Musharraf also
claims to have shut down Pakistani extremist groups, some of them allied
with al Qaeda, that sponsor terrorism against India, and to have done "everything
humanly possible" to stop the infiltration of Islamic militants from Pakistan
to Indian-controlled Kashmir. Despite his military background, the president
is known for delivering soaringly liberal speeches outlining a vision of
a moderate, democratic Pakistan that would respect human rights and promote
a tolerant version of Islam.
That rhetoric, plus Mr. Musharraf's
willingness to cooperate with the Pentagon and CIA, may be enough to convince
many in the Bush administration that the general is their best chance in
an unstable and dangerous country with its own nuclear arsenal. Yet the
reality is that Mr. Musharraf has consistently failed to live up to his
promises. The extremist groups he says he disbanded have been reconstituted
under other names; al Qaeda and Taliban remnants still use Pakistan as
a base to attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan; Islamic militants continue
to infiltrate into Kashmir. Most grievous, Mr. Musharraf's attempt to restructure
Pakistan's political system to permanently empower the military has pitted
him against the country's secular civil society and ended up boosting fundamentalist
Muslim politicians. These now control one of the two provinces bordering
Afghanistan and have begun to implement repressive social policies reminiscent
of the Taliban.
Bush administration officials describe
the new aid package with Pakistan as implicitly conditioned on Mr. Musharraf's
further cooperation against terrorism, renunciation of trade in weapons
of mass destruction and return to genuine democracy. If the history of
the past three years is repeated, Washington will get, at best, only partial
compliance. Mr. Bush has chosen to overlook Mr. Musharraf's weak and disturbing
record and to hope that more aid will buy better results. If his bet on
this general is wrong, the consequences for Pakistan, and U.S. security,
will be dire.
