Author: Ediorial
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: April 2, 2005
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20069-2005Apr1.html
Pakistan's Military ruler, Pervez
Musharraf, once again can boast of the lucre brought to his regime by his
alliance with the United States. Breaking an embargo established under
his father's administration 15 years ago, President Bush has agreed to
sell the Pakistani military dozens of high-performance F-16s, a warplane
capable of delivering Pakistan's nuclear weapons that is coveted by its
generals so as to increase the menace to neighboring, democratic India.
Mr. Bush's decision will bolster Mr. Musharraf's support among the only
political constituency that matters to him, his nationalist generals. It
will also reinforce the political dominance of that faction in Pakistan,
a desperately poor country with a history of squandering its resources
on its army while underfunding such social services as secular schools.
The F-16 deal adds to a long list
of concessions Mr. Musharraf has enjoyed since Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush
administration had written off Pakistani debt, promised $3 billion in aid
over five years and sold another $1 billion in weapons to the military
even before agreeing to sell these planes. It has stood by indulgently
while the general pardoned the perpetrator of the worst crimes in the history
of nuclear proliferation, A.Q. Khan, whose sales of nuclear technology
to North Korea, Iran, Libya and possibly others could not have occurred
without the knowledge of military commanders. Mr. Bush has accepted Mr.
Musharraf's refusal to allow U.S. or other international investigators
to interview Mr. Khan; his administration has also failed to react to growing
evidence that Pakistan continues to seek advanced nuclear weapons technologies
by illegal means, including in the United States.
What has the United States gained
from this relationship? Well, Mr. Musharraf is not himself an Islamic extremist,
though he has done much to bolster militant Islamic political parties at
the expense of the secular democrats he overthrew in his 1999 coup. He
has arrested or killed a few hundred al Qaeda militants, though not Osama
bin Laden or his senior deputies, who almost certainly reside in Pakistan.
He has supported U.S. operations in Afghanistan, though he has flinched
from a concerted campaign against the Taliban forces also based in his
country. And he has made -- and broken -- numerous promises: that he would
reform the Islamic schools educating new generations of extremists; that
he would dismantle the extremist organizations targeting Indian-controlled
Kashmir; that he would give up his position as army commander in chief
and return Pakistan to civilian government.
During her recent visit to Pakistan,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took a first step toward balancing
this lopsided partnership, saying publicly that Washington expected Mr.
Musharraf to fulfill his commitment to hold democratic elections in 2007.
The administration has also rightly made India a more extensive and strategic
offer of cooperation, including military sales and nuclear energy. But
the Bush administration should work harder to support a democratic alternative
in Pakistan, which has a large civil society, independent press and moderate
political parties that ought to have better relationships with Washington.
Buying the allegiance of a military ruler with weapons sales is easy and
may be necessary in the short run, but the Bush administration needs a
policy for Pakistan that is designed to outlast Pervez Musharraf.
