M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Although it would be a tad
unfair to compare him to a confidence trickster, Pakistan's army-appointed
President Pervez Musharraf has survived by convincing a series of patrons to
back him, only to let them down later.
After the dour but straightforward Jehangir
Karamat was sacked as the army's chief of staff by former Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif for publicly asserting that the military had the decisive say in matters
of national security, Musharraf' convinced Sharif that he would be a pliant
replacement for the sacked general. This was an important consideration at a
time when both Sharif and his brother Shahbaz were reported to be examining the
military's links to the immensely lucrative narcotics trade.
For decades, ever since the Afghan jihad
began in 1980, opium and its derivatives have been leveraged by elements in
uniform in Pakistan to generate cash, not just to send their children abroad to
study, but also to fund such "black" operations as the jihad against
Indian rule in Kashmir. Politicians in Pakistan, not known for abstemious
behavior, watched with envy the flow of profits from the illegal trade -- the
primary reason the military wanted to retain control of Afghanistan through the
Taliban -- and looked for an opportunity to muscle in.
With the assumption of office by the
"spineless" Musharraf, that moment appeared to have arrived. It
vanished in a cloud of dust, however, when U.S.-supplied tanks buttressed a
coup in 1999 that once again put the military in the driver's seat. Less than a
year later, the four army generals who had launched the coup that placed
Musharraf in power were themselves edged out by a "chief executive"
(later president) of Pakistan eager to show who was boss.
Since then, Musharraf has placed no fewer
than 37 presumed loyalists into top command positions within the military. He
has given their men -- being a Wahabbi state, the women of Pakistan are not
considered good enough to command -- hundreds of well-paying (in both salary
and bribes) jobs in the Pakistan state sector.
After charming first Nawaz Sharif and
thereafter the corps commanders of Quetta, Rawalpindi and Karachi and his
deputy chief of staff -- and then discarding them -- Musharraf turned his
attention to U.S. President George W. Bush. Bush has remained faithful to the
man who helped train the Taliban for four years in such useful tasks as the
making of bombs and the killing of targets, till the (then U.S.-backed) militia
were enabled to capture power in Afghanistan by 1996.
Soon after the terror attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, the Bush administration made the fateful decision to spurn an offer of
help by the Indian armed forces -- which had fought jihadis to a standstill in
Kashmir since 1989 and were the most experienced army internationally in
"CI Ops," or counter-insurgency operations. Although a few military
facilities in India were quietly used to launch strikes on Afghan territory, it
was the Pakistan army that was asked to provide the logistical, intelligence
and backup manpower needs of NATO forces.
Pervez Musharraf, aware that the Pashtun
and jihadi elements within the ranks of his senior commanders would turn on him
unless he protected the Taliban, ensured that the leadership of that extremist
group escaped to safety from Kunduz and other locations, with the United States
looking the other way. Since then, Musharraf has played a cat-and-mouse game
with Bush, giving just enough help to keep the United States guessing about his
real intentions and interests, even while permitting clandestine replenishment
of Taliban forces.
Today, a rejuvenated jihadi force is on the
cusp of once again launching major operations against a NATO force that has
killed many times more civilians than actual combatants, often because of
intelligence provided by Taliban moles acting through Pakistani channels.
Simultaneously, under pressure from both Musharraf and his clueless European
allies, Bush has succeeded in emasculating the only significant native
anti-Taliban force in Afghanistan, the former Northern Alliance. This group has
been divested of most of its authority and forces in a (Pakistan-inspired) rush
to pamper the unreconciled Pashtun element in Afghanistan, the way the radical
Sunnis are being pampered in Iraq. Winning the war -- and thereafter losing
what could have been the peace -- seems to be the signature tune of the Bush
administration, a dirge in which Pervez Musharraf has played a considerable
role.
This columnist was the only commentator to
warn in mid-2003, in an article in India's "Sahara Time," that before
the year was out, ultra-fanatics would seek to take out the Pakistan president.
The information came from within the "China lobby" in the Pakistan
military -- men unhappy with the way their chief seemed to be genuflecting
before their civilizational enemy. Although two attempts were in fact made on
the life of Musharraf toward the end of that year, neither was successful.
Today, the same sources say the Pakistan
president has been advised by his comrades in uniform to doff his uniform, thus
making him an irrelevance in a country still dominated by the army. Despite
owing their promotions to him, most corps commanders favor his stepping down
from the post of army chief of staff, and have reportedly told him as much.
Not coincidentally, the numerous jihadi
movements within Pakistan are now openly demanding his head, backed by their
military patrons. Only tacit support from the all-powerful cadre of corps
commanders could have emboldened the Pakistan Supreme Court to challenge the
dictator by re-instating his nemesis, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chowdhury, whose
quarrel with Musharraf seems to be rooted more in ethnic considerations than in
any commitment to democracy.
During the past few years, those considered
to be "closet Qadianis" (a sect vilified in Wahabbi Pakistan as
"un-Islamic") and Mohajirs (those whose ethnic origins can be traced
back to northern Indian provinces) have been given repeated boosts by
Musharraf. This angered Punjabis who had previously taken the major share of
plum appointments. The spat with the chief justice appears to be linked to this
tension between the community and Musharraf, who has further antagonized the
Punjabis by preferring (the Sindhi) Benazir Bhutto over Punjab's own Nawaz
Sharif to kick-start the so-called "democratic process" in Pakistan.
Not surprisingly, perhaps in reaction to the closeness between Bhutto and the
United States, the "China lobby" within the Pakistan military is
giving its tacit backing to Sharif.
After a lifetime of successful sleight of
hand, Pervez Musharraf seems to have reached a dead end. He enjoys the
confidence of neither the military nor the jihadis, despite having done much
for both. Ironically, it is the man he betrayed through his reluctance to
seriously engage the Taliban, George W. Bush, who may yet rescue Musharraf from
the oblivion that he seems to be hurtling towards. With "friends"
like Musharraf, the United States has no need at all of enemies.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University.)
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