Author: Ahmed Rashid/Islamabad
Publication: Far Eastern Economic
Review
Date: June 19, 2003
URL: http://www.feer.com/articles/2003/0306_19/p012region.html
Facing an unexpected challenge to
his power from Islamic fundamentalists in the provinces and defiance from
the parliamentary opposition, President Musharraf may counter-attack
The Pakistan military has long given
strategic and covert support to the country's Islamic fundamentalists,
but that policy appears to be backfiring as the religious radicals mount
a challenge to central power. This, coupled with President Pervez Musharraf's
failure to win parliamentary support for the military's continuing political
dominance, has led to fears that he may be on the verge of dissolving democratic
legislatures and reimposing military rule nearly four years after overthrowing
an elected government in a bloodless coup. "The present army leadership
has developed utter contempt for civilians and democracy," says a retired
general who used to be close to Musharraf. "It's a very dangerous situation
for Pakistan and the region."
The current crisis has given added
importance to the president's visits in the second half of June to the
United States and Britain, say Western diplomats. They believe he will
ask U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
to back his position in return for his continuing key cooperation in the
U.S.-led war against terrorism, holding talks with India on the disputed
territory of Kashmir and sending troops to help establish stability in
Iraq.
The Bush administration has formed
a strong bond with Musharraf since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
in the United States and still sees him as the only glue capable of holding
Pakistan together. "You've got a government who is simultaneously trying
to move democratically, fight a battle against terror and right an economic
picture which was terribly skewed," notes U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage, while acknowledging that Musharraf did not come to power
democratically.
But clearly U.S. politicians are
worried about Pakistan's domestic political situation and would like to
see the Islamic fundamentalists reined in, particularly in rugged areas
bordering Afghanistan. "Our question always is the degree of control that
President Musharraf has on all the elements in his country and we hope
that it's substantial. But we are worried from time to time because of
activities in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border," Republican Senator
Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, told
the REVIEW in an interview on June 2.
It's in the border area that Musharraf
is facing his latest crisis, which threatens to reverse decades of modernization
and secular rule. On June 2, the Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance
of six Islamic parties, pushed through a bill imposing sharia, or Islamic
law, throughout the mountainous North West Frontier Province.
The MMA had won control of the provincial
assembly during the general election of October with the help of the military's
powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, according to army officers. The ISI
is also accused of helping deliver national power to an alliance of pro-military
politicians led by the weak but pliant Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali.
Even before the sharia bill was
approved, an MMA-declared anti-obscenity drive had prompted Islamic militants
to charge round the provincial capital Peshawar tearing down advertising
hoardings showing women, destroying cable TV dishes and attacking the offices
of foreign multinationals.
Sharia promises to turn the North
West Frontier Province into a carbon copy of neighbouring Afghanistan under
the Taliban's harsh 1995-2001 Islamic rule, which was admired by the anti-American
MMA. It will bring the province's educational, legal and financial systems
in line with fundamentalist Islamic laws. Under sharia all offices, shops
and schools must close five times a day at prayer times; schoolgirls have
to wear head scarves, boys must sport traditional dress and men are required
to grow beards.
Other features include compulsory
prayers for the entire male population, media censorship, veiled women
and religious police answering to a newly formed Department of Vice and
Virtue and wielding large sticks to enforce the laws. Next, the MMA hopes
to impose sharia in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, where it
shares power. Ultimately, it wants strict Islamic law imposed throughout
the country.
The MMA's plans are causing tremors
in both Kabul and Islamabad. "The MMA's agenda is a disaster for both Pakistan
and Afghanistan because the Taliban and Al Qaeda will be immeasurably strengthened,"
says a senior aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Pakistan's lame-duck prime minister,
Jamali, reacted by belatedly replacing some senior bureaucrats and police
officials in the North West Frontier Province in a bid to demonstrate central
government control. But Musharraf was silent until June 9, when he told
a meeting of lawyers in the northern city of Lahore that "the people of
Pakistan do not want a theocratic state and are strongly opposed to Talibanization
. . . personal liberties and freedoms should be respected." MMA Secretary-General
Maulana Fazlur Rehman claimed a day later that the party was "doing everything
according to the constitution."
Yet the crisis is almost entirely
of the military's making, as it refuses to share real power with civilians,
insists on being the only decision-maker and covertly arms the fundamentalists
to fight its proxy wars in Kashmir and, allegedly, Afghanistan. "The army
has wilfully distorted the political system and denied space to secular
parties and civil society while favouring the fundamentalists," says Samina
Ahmed, regional director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based
think-tank.
For decades Pakistani generals and
politicians raised the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism to elicit Western
support for their regimes. That, allegedly, is why the military helped
the MMA win power in North West Frontier Province. In fact, the country's
rulers cultivated the militants as a vital foreign-policy tool, especially
in dealings with India--the Islamic warriors waged the war to reunify Kashmir
that Pakistan's army could not do itself.
But now the tables have been turned
as the fundamentalists--no doubt alarmed at Pakistan's betrayal of the
Taliban and growing friendship with the U.S.--see their moment to turn
the country into a theocratic state. And the MMA is banking on its support
base within the military to help move the country towards Islamization.
Thus even as the MMA reviles Musharraf as an American stooge, it praises
the army's commitment to Islam.
Some opposition politicians and
journalists are convinced that the crisis has been set up by elements in
the ISI. "Far from criticizing the MMA or reining in its militants, the
military's intelligence agencies have worked overtime to pave the way for
their forceful entry into the corridors of power," claimed the Friday Times,
a leading liberal political weekly, on May 30.
The MMA's sharia initiative, however,
is something Musharraf seems not to have predicted. And he was also wrong-footed
by the refusal of both Islamic and secular opposition parties in parliament
to endorse him as concurrent president and army chief for the next five
years. They also rejected his package of constitutional amendments, the
so-called Legal Framework Order (LFO), to institutionalize the military's
role in government and reduce the powers of the premier.
In opposing the LFO, the combined
opposition has disrupted every session of the National Assembly, paralyzing
parliament and the Jamali government. Not even the recovering economy can
sway the opposition, which on June 7 tried to drown out Finance Minister
Shaukat Aziz as he presented the budget for the next fiscal year starting
on July 1.
The ISI held negotiations with the
Islamic opposition to try to work out a compromise, but Musharraf is adamant
on being both president and army chief. "I hold the two offices not by
choice but by compulsion of events," he said on June 9. And Prime Minister
Jamali's attempts to justify the LFO have been mocked by the opposition,
further weakening the image of the government.
Musharraf seems to be genuinely
concerned about what he has described as "Talibanization" in the border
areas and angered at the lack of support for his continuing role as president
and army chief. It seems that he miscalculated in his belief that he could
control the Islamic parties and the democratic process, and it's likely
that, facing a challenge to his power in the provinces and a refusal to
recognize his power in parliament, he will take steps to rectify that.
There is now a widespread perception
that the president is planning a second coup that would be backed by Washington.
This would most likely see him suspend or even dismiss the national and
provincial assemblies. The transition in power would not be difficult--despite
the return to civilian rule, more than 600 military officers occupy key
jobs in government ministries and state-owned corporations, while the military
controls foreign policy.
But going it alone again, even with
the likely support of Washington, carries big risks. "When you grossly
distort and manipulate a political system to stay in power, the foundations
are so fragile that they crumble," says the ICG's Ahmed.
