After Bhutto, Pakistan on Edge by Ahmed rashid

After Bhutto, Pakistan on Edge
With the country exploding in anger, Pakistan's fate hangs on how
Musharraf and political leaders decide to restore stability

Ahmed Rashid
YaleGlobal, 1 January 2008

Martyr for democracy: Benazir Bhutto's last speech called on the
people to oppose terrorism and fight Al Qaeda; moments later she paid
the ultimate price (Photo courtesy John Moore, Getty Images)

LAHORE: In the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto,
Pakistan faces the gravest threat to its unity since the country was
born amid bloodshed 60 years earlier.

Although the security of the whole world is at stake from the way
power is transferred in this nuclear weapon state, world leaders can
do little but look on helplessly as Pakistan's cowed political
establishment and dispirited military face the threat of a determined
Al Qaeda–backed Islamic extremists. While enormous public anger and
mistrust swells in the nuclear-armed nation, both President Pervez
Musharraf and his leading backer, the US, have lost all credibility
over managing free and democratic elections, combating extremism or
delivering stability to the troubled region.

Musharraf, in clinging to power, cracked down on Pakistanis who
demanded reform and democracy, and appeased extremists. The US, shrill
in its "war on terror," spent billions propping ally Musharraf and
then, in the face of growing isolation of the general, hurriedly
pressured Bhutto to go along with a power-sharing deal with him.

Evidence is emerging that Musharraf fooled both the Americans and
Bhutto about the power-sharing deal. Until the last moment Washington
wanted to believe that Musharraf was amenable to sharing power with
Bhutto if she became prime minister after winning the January
elections – even though it was clear by November that Musharraf had no
intentions of doing so.

Instead Musharraf, the army and the intelligence services planned to
rig the elections to reelect the same alliance of pro-army politicians
who sustained him in power since the last rigged elections in 2002.
After imposing emergency rule on November 3, Musharraf packed the
Supreme Court and the Election Commission with his own nominees,
stifled the press and put 10,000 civil-society activists in jail. No
state institution was willing to hear complaints from any political
party about rigging.

US diplomats refused to accept that the deal was dead or that
Musharraf may have double-crossed them. US Deputy Secretary of State
John Negroponte traveled to Islamabad in late November, urging Bhutto
to continue collaboration with Musharraf, insisting that the general
was sincere about the deal. In a private conversation I had with
Bhutto three weeks before her death, she made it clear that she
trusted neither the military regime nor Musharraf, that evidence of
rigging was everywhere. But the US applied immense pressure, with
Negroponte ringing her frequently.

During our conversation, Bhutto observed that the US put little
pressure on Musharraf, that the Americans were taking him at his word,
but there was enormous US pressure on her.

In Pakistan, scathing criticism targets the Bush administration for
its naivety. The US role as interlocutor between the army and the
political parties has been shaken by the series of miscalculations by
the US State Department, and the Pakistani government has lost all
credibility with its own people. Opposition political parties now
refuse to have anything to do with Musharraf and call on him to
resign.

Musharraf, long supported by the US, is considered the biggest
obstacle to moving the country towards greater stability.

Mourning for Bhutto is marked by seething anger and bitterness. The
entire country was bought to a standstill for three days as trains,
planes, cars stopped operating and all business and bazaars shut down.
Tens of thousands of people buried Bhutto in her ancestoral village in
Sind province, and millions of people said prayers for her for several
days running at mosques and open grounds around the country.

Most Pakistanis are convinced that the government was either directly
responsible for Bhutto's death or at the very least failed to provide
her with adequate protection. Bhutto's own appeals for increased
security as she campaigned for the 8 January elections were ignored,
even ridiculed by government agencies.

So when just 24 hours after her death the government claimed to have
cracked the case, the media and Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party
greeted the announcement with ridicule. Interior Ministry Spokesman
Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema told a press conference on the evening of
December 28 that Bhutto had fatally cracked her head on the lever of a
sun roof, after bullets were fired and a bomb exploded near her
vehicle. He then released a telephone intercept of Baitullah Mehsud,
the emir of the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering
Afghanistan, congratulating the leader of a suicide squad for carrying
out the bombing.

Despite a heavy crackdown against the media by the regime, Brig
Cheema's comments were met with derision and even abuse by the press.
His comments sounded particularly hollow in the light of demands by
politicians across the country for an independent and international
investigation into Bhutto's death – something that US presidential
contender Hillary Clinton has endorsed and the Bush administration is
weighing. Cheema subsequently retracted some of his remarks, saying he
had been misquoted.

During the past six months, suicide bombers have killed some 700
Pakistanis, but the Musharraf regime has failed to track down a single
culprit behind the blasts. Now it claims to have resolved the Bhutto
murder in 24 hours.

Anger and grief at Bhutto's death is exacerbated by a crisis in which
no political party is willing to accept an election under Musharraf's
auspices. Nobody is willing to accept the government's explanations
for Bhutto's death. And no general or politician has Bhutto's courage,
to stand up to the growing militancy that has gripped Pakistan.

The insurgency launched by the Pakistani Taliban has now spread from
the mountainous tribal areas into the valleys and plains of the North
West Frontier Province, where more than 30 million people live.
Hundreds of soldiers have surrendered, deserted their positions or
fled rather than fight the militants. Al Qaeda uses the Pakistani
Taliban to expand their area of influence and make territorial
conquests so that a liberated area for the new Caliphate, comprising
the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, can be won.

Restoration of political stability is no longer possible under
Musharraf. But he will not resign unless the army pushes him out, the
US withholds support or Pakistanis organize sustained street protests.
New army chief General Ashfaq Kiyani is still a novice, feeling his
way around and surrounded by generals promoted by Musharraf and loyal
to him. The former head of the ISI led the intelligence services
during the past three years as the threat of fundamentalism expanded
across Pakistan, both in tribal areas adjacent to Afghanistan and
urban areas. It is the first time in the history of the Pakistan army
that an ISI chief has become army chief, but Musharraf has always
heavily depended on ISI chiefs for principle advisers. Kiyanai is
American-trained.

The military regime has become a master at playing divide and rule
among the political parties, fragmenting them. It is essential that
all the major parties form a common front, seeking to create a
national government and pledge not to become victim to ISI
machinations.

The parliamentary elections will likely be postponed and we must wait
to see if political parties accept any new date. Few Pakistanis want
another round of military rule. What they would prefer is that
sustained public pressure forces Musharraf to step down and that the
caretaker prime minister, with support from the military, set up a new
national government of all the political parties, which could then
organize fresh elections under acceptable ground rules. A change at
the top is essential if even minimum stability is to return.

Ahmed Rashid is the author of "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and
Fundamentalism in Central Asia" and "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam
in Central Asia" and a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.

Rights:
(c) 2008 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization