To a large extent, there were two separate struggles being fought in Pakistan. One was a domestic political battle between a military that played divide-and-rule games with an anaemic civilian leadership. The other was a half-hearted struggle against insurgent groups in Pakistan’s border areas, insurgents who combined tribalism with militant Islamic ideology. These two struggles overlapped intermittently. The military used the insurgents for their own ends at times – such as keeping Kashmir on the boil. They also attacked them when they got out of hand and went after the United States. Because the insurgents were Washington’s obsession, civilian leaders would promise to fight the insurgents in return for US support. With Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, these two struggles have merged into one.
This convergence has been evident for some time now. The Lal Masjid attack in Islamabad and the subsequent suicide bombings in the heartland of Pakistan, for example, had signalled that the firewall between the two struggles was coming apart. Bhutto’s death by a suicide bomber and the knowledge that her political re-entry was treated with fear and loathing by two groups – hardliners in the military and Islamic militants – should hopefully put an end to the Islamabad elite’s belief that tribal insurgency was basically a US problem. It isn’t.
In its own befuddled manner, Washington understood that the restoration of democracy was the long-term solu tion to Pakistan’s ailments. However, its legacy of treating the military as its most dependable ally in all things pertaining to Pakistan made the US push for unreal solutions like the cohabitation of Bhutto with Pervez Musharraf. The US is not the only country that tended to look to Pakistan’s military as the simple shortcut to getting things done in Pakistan. India has traditionally believed a Kashmir settlement would be best done with a military man. Elected governments have been seen as wishy-washy and ineffective.
Bhutto’s assassination underlines a simple truth: other countries, most notably the US, need to recognise that the embrace, even the toleration, of Pakistan’s overtly politicised military may fulfil selfish, short-term interests. However, this embrace is slowly but surely destroying the nation of Pakistan. It is short-circuiting the steady flow of its political development. It is also leaving a political space for militant Islam. Finally, it allows the military to treat terrorism as simply another tactical weapon that at worst should be stored in the armoury for use in the future. Bhutto’s followers are calling her a “martyr for democracy”. If the world at least realises that only the full flower of democracy can save the rapidly desolate political landscape of Pakistan, then she would have genuinely played that role. Pakistan’s military is a cancer within its society . It is time that everyone understood there is nothing benign about this malignancy in khaki.
Source: HT (December 29, 2007)
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It would be tempting for the west to immediately condemn Bhutto’s assassination as yet another example of Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremism attempting to undermine what chances Pakistan may have at stable democracy. It would be just as convenient for the western press and liberals, both Pakistani as well as international, to immediately make Bhutto out to be a martyr who championed the cause of enlightened liberalism.
The temptation to view every event through the prism of occidental thinking and short-sighted western interests, while convenient, is nevertheless inaccurate. It is no less simplistic than the visceral anger being vented against President and former General Musharraf by Bhutto’s shaken and traumatised Sindhi power base.
It is amusing that the outpouring of grief against Bhutto’s murder seeks to make Musharraf the scapegoat, while he continues to remain Pakistan’s (and indeed the world’s) best bet for peace and stability in the region. This despite the General himself having been a target of more than one unsuccessful assassination attempt upon his person by the very same radical Islamic elements the PPP now claims to despise.
The fact is Bhutto during her previous terms as Prime Minister between 1988 and 1996 assiduously cultivated the Taliban (and as a consequence the proto Al-Qaeda) well before Musharraf took charge of Pakistan in 1999, deposing Sharif in a bloodless coup. In this she was merely following in the footsteps of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s misguided and eventually doomed confrontational (and India-specific) international policies that led to the wars of 1965 and 1971.
Neither the 1966 Tashkent summit between her father (and Ayub Khan) and India’s Lal Bahadur Shastri, nor Zulfikar’s recalcitrance over accepting Mujibur Rehman’s victory in the 1970 elections preceding the Bangladesh war and eventual creation of Bangladesh out of what was then East Pakistan, could convince Benazir of the inherent disadvantages in forming alliances with radical militant outfits.
Small wonder then she was held in such contempt by the Pakistani military. Her run-ins with successive Pakistani Army Chiefs in the nineties, along with her disavowal of the Taliban when it suited her purposes simply reminded the Pakistani army brass of her father’s volte-face against Ayub Khan in 1966, and his shameful abandonment of Pakistani troops stuck in Bangladesh in 1971. Even India’s National Security Advisor, Narayanan and the Indian Intelligence Wing (RAW) could scarcely conceal their distrust for her, preferring to regard Musharraf (and as an extension the ISI, with all its faults) as the more credible interlocuter.
In a striking display of political naivete, the US state department and Rice and her minions thrust Bhutto as a secular moderate alternative to Musharraf, not appreciating the fact that both Bhutto and Sharif owed their lives in exile to Musharraf’s largesse and genuine commitment to change and non-vindictiveness. It is no use now for Bush to telephone Musharraf after an event and address the Press in a shaking voice. He has learned the hard way just how much power Musharraf wields (even if by proxy) and just how aggrieved his closest coterie were over the US and its roughshod treatment to their leader.
And so it came to pass that Benazir was killed in the same garrison town of Rawalpindi in which her father was hanged by General Zia in 1979. Musharraf was cleverer than Zia – he chose to bide his time till he resigned as Army Chief (or perhaps the ISI and several senior army staff who were waiting for an opportunity to set things straight were biding their time till Musharraf fell from public view and some of the heat was taken off him at least temporarily).
It is said that General Zia with his ‘retribution first, elections later’ policy of the PNA formed in 1977 to overthrow Zulfikar, said upon learning of the Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision upholding Bhutto’s sentence to hang, ‘It is either his neck or mine! … I have not convicted him, and if they hold him guilty, my God, I am not going to let him off!’
One wonders what Musharraf who looks at an almost certain victory for his party on January 8 would be thinking now.