Courtesy ballyhoo only America could give him, Gen. Pervez Musharraf is demonstrating just how difficult relations can be with one of Washington’s most critical allies in the war on Islamofascism. His memoir’s ghostwriters may have overshot. But even in the Indian subcontinent where bizarre contradictions are the norm, Pakistani anomalies have always been extravagant. In his way, Musharraf’s problems for U.S. policymakers are only another manifestation.
“The pure land” was dreamed up by a poet, created on a figment of unity among South Asian Moslems, but implemented by secularists. One irony of the desperate British Raj’s 1947 Partition was Moslems had historically sparked Indian nationalism. And when they abdicated an independent united India, almost as many Moslems were left back. Bengalis proved in 1971when they seceded, less than 25 years later, ethnicity trumps religion. It’s one of many reasons Musharraf still rides a tiger.
Traditionally Pakistan’s army – that early photograph of him, his wife, and their lapdog was the dead giveaway he is in the line — has been more pukkha than its parent the old British Indian Army. When I tagged along with Jackie Kennedy visiting Pak regiments at the Khyber in 1962, she found silver service, medals, and old weapons respected much as when Kipling was a young reporter in Lahore..
After secularist father of Pakistan Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s death, subsequent assassinations and bitter partisan wrangling and corruption virtually stalemated government, the army took power. And, in fact, the country has been ruled more by military regimes than it has elected government. Again, traditionally, solders had nothing but contempt for “the mullahs”, the country’s small religious political minority. That was true even though much of its recruitment came from the Frontier where traditional forms were honored. Conversely, it was also where Mohandas Gandhi’s Indian National Congress had great political following opposing Pakistan – in part causing Musharraf’s current problems there.
Not unlike earlier military figures, Musharraf came to power incidentally – because he was in the sights of then civilian politicians. But as his predecessors, he fronts for the military, secure only as long as a tradition of seniority holds. In a new century how much has the old sheen of professionalism given way to new converts to the hysteria sweeping the Moslem world? For Musharraf must not only maintain a façade of parliamentary government — under constant pressure from Washington and London to democratize – but he must placate army elements who might get out of line. Pakistan’s coup concept goes back to 1956 when young leftist military masterminded by a Stalinist poet tried unsuccessfully to take over.
And although Musharraf — target of at least three attempted assassination — epitomizes old Pakistan military template, equilibrium is now much more complicated. A refugee from north India, he must maintain his position dealing with majority Punjabis, vocal Sindhis, and the other ethnic-provincials in an impoverished society.
When civilian politicians — including two previous presidents — call for return to democracy, they really mean to a feudal fiefdom of landlords and tribal chiefs. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, her civilian predecessor presidential father hanged by the military as scapegoat for loss of Bengal, comes by such support naturally. Her family, one of few Moslem landlords in Shindh before Partition, were notorious for oppression of their peasantry. Bhutto is under indictment in Switzerland for money laundering. When Musharraf’s military last month hunted down and killed in a cave on the Afghan border, a rebellious Baluchistan feudal tribal chief [albeit an Oxford graduate], Musharraf’s opponents successfully presented it as a fight for justice in the country’s largest, least populated, but strategic and resource rich western province.
That’s why Musharraf is on the money when he publicly warns his Afghanistan colleague President Hamid Karzai Kabul faces an ethnic revolt in border areas. “Pushtoonistan”, a demand for another cuntry carved from tribals in border areas, is an old propaganda tool used by Moscow — and India — usually against Pakistan. Musharraf’s recent deal cut with tribals after significant Pakistan army losses chasing terrorists is an old British way [and by his Pakistan predecessors] of handling it.
But the game has become much more complicated. British-bred terrorists feeding back into rebel areas must come as a shock even to Musharraf [who once saw himself as a follower of Turkey’s Attaturk]. Laying hands on Osama Ben Ladin, were he still alive, and turning him over to Washington as a martyr to much of the Islamic world, might be worse than letting him plot with a truncated network.
The all pervasive feud with the Siamese twin, India, over Kashmir — forever a nest of agitation against both central governments — is sometimes eclipsed by these considerations.
If New Delhi is currently giving Musharraf some slack, it is because the Indians, too, know penetration of their 150 million Moslem elite is evidenced in professionals turning up as terrorists. Nor can Delhi take comfort, however much they lay their problems on Musharraf, a half million Indian security forces has not quieted Kashmir.
That’s not to say Pakistan as problem is not a reality. Nor, for example, to wonder how India would stabilize its western frontiers if Pakistan were to implode. But it does explain some unanswered questions in jovial exchanges among President Bush and his interlocutors in our own heated pre-election environment.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
