Author: Alfred Stepan and Aqil
Shah
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: May 5, 2004
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2332-2004May4.html
Amid the turmoil in Iraq and signs
that Afghanistan still lacks a viable state, it's not surprising that doubts
about the ability of the United States to support democratization are growing
in the Middle East and even in the United States. This is all the more
reason why the success of a homegrown democratic process anywhere in the
Muslim world is so important -- especially in a strategically located nuclear
state such as Pakistan. But is U.S. policy helping to achieve this end
in Pakistan?
Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage has called Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf "the right man
at the right time." President Bush wants Congress to reward the Musharraf
government with a five-year, $3 billion assistance package, even as his
administration turns a blind eye to the Pakistani military's possible involvement
in proliferation of nuclear materials to North Korea, Iran and Libya. Indeed,
the Bush administration recently proposed that Pakistan be designated "a
major non-NATO ally."
Much of Musharraf's status as the
"right man" stems from Pakistan's help against al Qaeda and, crucially,
the belief that Pakistan's military is the best bulwark against the growth
of Islamic extremism in a nuclear state. As proof of the threat in Pakistan,
it is noted that two of the country's four provinces are already much under
the sway of Islamic extremists in the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) or United
Action Forum, an alliance of six Islamist parties.
But before Congress authorizes the
"bulwark fee" to Musharraf, it should consider the following: In the 1993
elections, fundamentalist parties won only nine of the 217 national assembly
seats. In the 1997 elections, they were reduced to two. But in October
2002, three years after Musharraf's 1999 coup, the MMA Islamist alliance
secured 45 of the 272 national seats, and in the strategically crucial
North-West Frontier Province, it won 48 of the 99 contested provincial
assembly seats.
More directly damning for the bulwark
thesis, there is strong evidence that Musharraf and the Pakistani military
contributed to this result. Two major moderate parties, Benazir Bhutto's
center-left Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's center- right Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz, won about 70 percent of the vote (and seats) in the
general elections of 1993 and 1997. Musharraf and the military correctly
viewed these two parties -- and especially their leaders -- as the most
powerful challengers to his claim to rule in the "supreme national interest,"
and they have kept the two former premiers virtually in exile. On April
12 Javed Hashmi, acting president of the Muslim League, was sentenced to
23 years in prison for defamation of the military. The military regularly
used force to curtail the freedom of the two moderate parties in the 2002
elections. Meanwhile, it gave the Islamists free rein to hold rallies.
Among many other ways the military
aided the fundamentalist parties was by decreeing that only candidates
with a bachelor's degree could run for national or provincial election.
This disqualified about half the previous incumbents of moderate parties
from competing. At the same time, graduation from madrassas, the Islamic
religious schools, was allowed to count as a bachelor's degree, so virtually
no MMA candidates were blocked.
Despite all this military help for
the Islamists, the surprising but under-recognized fact is that the MMA
won only 11.1 percent of the total vote in Pakistan's last national elections.
Our evidence suggests that far from being a "bulwark," the military is
actually a facilitator of Islamic extremism. Worse, after helping to marginalize
the traditional moderate parties, the military is in danger of becoming
beholden to the extremist parties, which in fact cast the deciding vote
to constitutionalize many of Musharraf's self-granted powers.
Congress is considering the administration's
$700 million annual budgetary request for Pakistan. It might also decide
to discuss legislation, introduced by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), stipulating
that the president must certify that a country is a democracy and is participating
with the United States in advancing global nonproliferation efforts before
declaring it a "major non-NATO ally."
There is much else to consider.
The president's Pakistan aid package calls for $300 million a year in military
aid but only about $20 million for primary and secondary education. One
of the reasons so many poor Pakistanis send their children to madrassa
hate factories is that the amount Pakistan spends on public education is
among the lowest in the world as a percentage of its economic output.
Democracy in Pakistan has not been
weak because of Islamic extremists. In the six national elections held
since 1970 for which party-based vote shares can be determined, extremists
have not managed to garner more than 12 percent of the vote. Elected politicians
have not covered themselves in glory. But one of the major reasons that
democracy has been weak in Pakistan is that, in its 56 years of independence,
not one elected government has been allowed to finish a full term.
The "right person" for the United
States and Pakistan is a prime minister put in office by free elections
and allowed by the military to finish his or her full term of office.
Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre
professor of government at Columbia University. Aqil Shah, a former Rhodes
Scholar from Pakistan, is a visiting research fellow at the National Endowment
for Democracy. He will answer questions about this article Thursday at
1 p.m. on www.washingtonpost.com.
