Author: Chris Patten
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: May 10, 2006
URL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114722640638448531.html
Four and a half years after the fall of the
Taliban, Afghanistan is still highly unstable. And it seems to be getting
worse rather than better. Every few days now, the resurgent Taliban carry
out another deadly attack on school children, aid workers, or local or international
security forces. It is a grim return on the outside world's huge investment
in Afghanistan. Yet while the international community has done an enormous
amount to help the country recover from its failed-state condition, it has
resisted tackling the problem at its very root -- Islamabad. Truth is, Afghanistan
will never be stable unless Pakistan's military government is replaced with
a democracy.
Pakistan's primary export to Afghanistan today
is instability. On the most basic level, attacks in Afghanistan, including
suicide bombings, are often planned and prepared at Taliban training camps
across the border. Islamabad claims to be doing all it can to stop this infiltration.
But President Pervez Musharraf's protests ring hollow when he has done so
little to address the concerns raised by his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai,
that Taliban leaders are operating out of sanctuaries in Pakistan.
One needs only to look at the military's close
relations with religious radicals to understand how unreliable a partner it
is in stabilizing Afghanistan. Militant Islamist groups that Mr. Musharraf
banned under the international spotlight following 9/11 and the 7/7 London
bombings still operate freely. Jihadi organizations have been allowed to dominate
relief efforts in the aftermath of the October 2005 earthquake. The military
has repeatedly rigged elections, including the 2002 polls, to benefit the
religious parties over their moderate, democratic alternatives.
In short, Pakistan is ruled by a military
dictatorship in cahoots with violent Islamist extremists. The military has
no interest in democracy at home, so why does the outside world expect it
to help build democracy next door?
If we are really going to get to the core
of Afghanistan's instability, therefore, we must tackle Pakistan. Above all,
this means returning the country to democratic rule. After seven years under
the military, this is not an easy task, but some institutions are still surviving
-- just. The judiciary, for example, has been badly degraded under Mr. Musharraf
and his army colleagues; but there is enough left to give hope for some kind
of gradual resuscitation.
Moderate political parties are also struggling
to hang on; down but not yet out, they could recover relatively quickly if
given a democratic chance. Pro-dictatorship voices regularly argue that those
parties were highly corrupt and that it was their corruption that justified
the 1999 coup that brought Gen. Musharraf to power. But they refuse to condemn
or even acknowledge the military's large-scale, institutionalized corruption.
So much has been grabbed by the military that
it will take years just to catalog it. The military has acquired vast tracts
of state-owned land at nominal rates; its leaders dominate businesses and
industries, ranging from banking to cereal factories. Their control of the
economy has grown so great it will present an enormous challenge to any future
democratically elected government.
That civilian government, when it comes, will
also be moderate in character and far more inclined to tackle, in earnest,
the scourge of Islamic radicalism. Even in the rigged 2002 election, the religious
parties polled only 11% of the vote. A fully free and fair race will squeeze
out radical forces that have thrived under military rule and which play havoc
with Pakistan's weak neighbor to the northwest. In addition, unlike the military,
which always thrives in a hostile environment, a civilian government will
have a stronger interest in peace with India. And who wouldn't sleep safer
knowing that Pakistan's nuclear bomb was in democratic hands?
Democratic governance would also bring a much-needed
opportunity to overhaul the country's education system. As the state system
has consistently failed young people for decades, madrassas have taken up
the slack, with the most extreme religious schools helping to radicalize tens
of thousands of Pakistanis -- and Afghans -- filling heads with intolerant
visions of Islam, far from the mainstream of South Asian Muslim society. The
country needs a properly funded, state-run, secular education system.
Bringing all this about is an enormous task,
but demilitarizing and deradicalizing Pakistan is truly the key to bringing
about stability in Afghanistan and the wider region. Governments now working
so hard to support Afghanistan will only be spinning their wheels until they
make Pakistan a top priority and apply maximum pressure on Islamabad to ensure
the 2007 elections are actually free and fair, by applying clearly defined
benchmarks and insisting on competent international observers. As long as
the military and the madrassas rule just across the border, Afghanistan will
never find peace.
Lord Patten, former EU commissioner for external
relations, is chairman of the International Crisis Group and chancellor of
Oxford University.
