PAKISTAN IN 2001 The Afghanistan Crisis and the Rediscovery of the Frontline State
Iftikhar H. Malik
Pakistan, which initiated the new year as an isolated and globally shunned state had, toward the closing months of 2001, reemerged as a front-line partner by reestablishing a new bipartisan relationship with the West. Its own geographical location once again had figured prominently as the U.S. planned and then pursued aerial strikes on Afghanistan following the massive human losses in the terrorist attacks of September 11. By offering political, logistical, and vital intelligence support, in addition to three crucial air bases, to the Anglo-American alliance in its operation against the Taliban- led Afghanistan, Pakistan, as in the 1980s, became an active partner in a global alliance. By ditching its erstwhile allies— predominantly Pushtun Taliban—President Gen. Pervez Musharraf not only legitimatedhis rule but also rehabilitated his country within the mainstream international community. Though quite dramatic and temporarily advantageous, Pakistan’ s somer- sault—justified in the name of its national interests and a policy of virtual realignment with the U.S.—also added to its regional isolation as well as to domestic social tension. Pakistan’s security dilemma toward the end of the year was no more confined to its ever-turbulent eastern borders; with an ever- vigilant India intent on raising stakes, even the western borders, generally considered less insecure and manageable, now lay vulnerable to a fallout from shifting loyalties and alliances in Kabul. Pakistan could ill afford to host the crestfallen Taliban and their Arab allies such as Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group, especially with American troops on their heels. Un-
Iftikhar H. Malik is Senior Lecturer in the School of Historical and Cultural Studies, Bath Spa University College, Bath, U.K. Asian Survey , 42:1, pp. 204–212. ISSN: 0004–4687 2002 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Send Requests for Permission to Reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704–1223.
204 PAKISTAN IN 2001 205 doubtedly, Pakistan was left with a bitter aftertaste in the form of almost three million Afghan refugees, an angry Afghan populace, and a disen- chanted Pushtun tribal belt that had lost many of its own warriors, earlier misled by their fundamentalist mullahs. On the domestic front, Musharraf weathered the storm, though uncertainty remained ascendant on the national horizon because of the lack of any major economic uplift, the internal political situation, uninterrupted Indo-U.S. de- fense cooperation, and a populace increasingly disturbed over growing pov- erty, political waywardness, and an insecure future in an unstable as well as hostile region. Pakistan once again was in the throes of a domestic and re- gional crisis, though its reentry into global politics added to its confidence and boosted the stock markets. Musharraf seems to have played his cards dexterously by making personalist decisions on vital issues with the assis- tance of a small team of military advisors and a coterie of technocrats. His visit to India in July and then to the U.K. and the U.S. in November enhanced his self-confidence and profile, while on the home front the threat from Jihadi elements and sectarian groups decreased considerably. The political forces demanding the reestablishment of democracy were equally in disarray, espe- cially after the American strikes over Afghanistan, as the moderate elements among them supported Musharraf on eradicating the fundamentalist and ter- rorist threat to the country. In a significant way, the Western support to General Musharraf only weak- ened the morale of the democratic forces as London and Washington no longer insisted on being shown a road map to democracy from a newly dis- covered loyal ally. Opposition to Musharraf’s rule had already been weak with all of its major leaders being either abroad or investigated for alleged cases of corruption. As in the 1980s, neither the U.S. nor Britain was eager to press for democracy with a military ruler in Islamabad serving their geopo- litical needs assertively. The Pakistani state was once again prioritized over the dictates and imperatives of Pakistani civil society, strengthening fears that a convergence between the army brass and the Western metropolis had pushed democracy still farther from the country’s horizons.
Governing Pakistan The ongoing governability crisis in Pakistan, patterned on longer military rules interspersed with shorter democratic interregnum or interim govern- ments of technocrats, reveals the persistent imbalances within the country’s power structure. The lack of consensual politics, enduring constitutionalism, and a properly agreed mechanism for transfer of power is reflected in the country’s periodic phases of political instability. Such intermittent crisis, multiplied by an uneasy ethno-regional pluralism, have often allowed ana- lysts to view Pakistan as either a failed or a failing state. 206 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 General Musharraf’ s coup against the second administration of Nawaz Sharif on October 12, 1999, has become a rather academic issue, especially after Sharif’ s secretive agreement to leave the country for a safe haven in Saudi Arabia in return for a premature retirement from politics. Sharif’s exile with his family members on December 12, 2000, not only weakened his Mus- lim League (ML) party, it strengthened Musharraf’s own position, though the judicial verdict on the latter’ s move demanded the restoration of electoral politics by late 2002. The military regime tried to co-opt the second-tier leadership of the Paki- stan People’ s Party (PPP) by extricating them from Benazir Bhutto. How- ever, such efforts to woo Amin Fahim, the acting chair of the PPP, and Qaim Ali Shah, a former PPP chief minister of Sindh, did not materialize. The third major party in Pakistan is the Muhajir/ Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), whose leader, Altaf Hussain, had been living in exile in London for the last decade and recently naturalized. The absence of these three main political leaders, accompanied by an organized campaign for depoliticization, has helped the military regime by keeping the opposition forces at bay. However, the drive for all-round accountability seems to have petered out by late 2001, when the military regime started looking for political allies. By that time, it was quite clear that Musharraf was there to stay and ready to make some compromises with like-minded political elements. Some smaller parties, such as the Awami National Party (ANP) of Khan Abdul Wali Khan, now headed by his son, Asfand Wali Khan, felt that the military regime could still be led toward full democratization. By denouncing predominantly Push- tun Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, they made visible not only a grow- ing wedge between religious elements and moderates but also a major shift in their policy on Pushtun political identity. The ANP’ s former colleagues in the two factions that comprise the Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Islam (JUI) Party, which is led by Pakistan’s two leading Deobandi clerics, Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, and is largely confined to the Pushtun areas of the Frontier and Balochistan Provinces, were more eager to reassert their ideo- logical fraternity with the Taliban. Such divisions served the military regime well, as it could isolate the few pro-Taliban splinter groups from mainstream Pushtun society, which was not enamored with Taliban-style, anti-urban ex- tremism. By the middle of 2001, it was quite apparent that Musharraf was engineer- ing a framework that combined the legacies of his two military predecessors from the 1960s and 1980s, Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq. Musharraf held local council elections with promises of decentralization and the reservation of one-third of the seats for women, though his moves stopped short of ending separate electorates. The MQM stayed away from the local polls in Karachi, but other parties, under different names, allowed their followers to run in the PAKISTAN IN 2001 207 local contests. When the new administrative system finally was introduced on August 14, considerable uncertainty remained over the separation of pow- ers between the local bureaucracy and the elected councilors. It is interesting to note here that Musharraf did not go through these councilors to get himself elevated to the presidency in 2001; he simply eased out Rafique Tarar to don the presidential hat just before his visit to India in late July. But Musharraf’s move met with virtually no popular outcry within Pakistan. He now held all the highest and the most powerful offices in the country, with no possible role for Sharif or Bhutto visible on the country’ s horizons. Musharraf’s critics had no major political constellation behind them, nor did the criticism from Qazi Husain Ahmed of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) register any significant response. Musharraf knew his military com- manders were behind him and the judiciary earlier on had overwhelmingly given him extra-ordinary power to change the system to his own desire. In a speech delivered on August 14 to the national convention of Nazims in Is- lamabad, Musharraf took credit for establishing democracy at the grassroots and reiterated his commitment to hold elections in October 2002. 1
Mullahs and the Military: From Collaboration to Confrontation Pakistan’s political culture has suffered immensely from a persistent military- led hostility toward politicians, political norms, and the idea of achieving a broad-based national consensus through democratic means. The country’ s civil bureaucracy has been equally wary of political elements, though in re- cent months one has been able to notice a widening chasm between the khaki and the official. Musharraf has tried to rein in the country’s Jihadi elements, but their intri- cate networks and linkages throughout the establishment, including the mili- tary and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, did not allow him enough space. Even the efforts to monitor madrassa (Islamic school) curric- ula and the funding of Jihadi organizations were stubbornly snubbed by re- ligiopolitical elements. Many observers felt that the air strikes on Afghan- istan that put the Taliban on the run and left Pakistanis generally shocked over the rapid crumbling of the Afghan regime offered Musharraf a unique opportunity to distance his administration from a greater dependence on fun- damentalists. But even before the air strikes, Musharraf was able to ban two sectarian outfits: the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Sipah-i-Muhammad, the respec- tive Sunni and Shia underground militant groups that had been engaged in
1.Ihtashamul Haque, “CE Gives Roadmap for Democracy: General Election in October Next Year, Power Transfer in Nov.,” Dawn , August 15, 2001,
Rebuilding the Economy Pakistan’s travails are rooted in the imbalances of its political economy. The ever-escalating, non-development sector, growing economic disparities, a narrow tax base, and massive defaults on loans and assets combine to make Pakistan more and more dependent on foreign loans. The fiscal system re- mained in doldrums. The army’s campaign to recover loans and tax revenues registered mixed results and by the end of 2001, the accountability drive seemed to have been almost shelved. Pakistan’s annual budget presented in June featured no radical policy deci- sions and followed the usual patterns. The total outlay was 751 billion ru- pees, with fiscal income projected to grow by 5% but expenditures estimated to grow by 7.6%. Defense allocations registered an increase of 7.7%. Unlike Zia before him, Musharraf received no major aid package from abroad, but the offer of some financial incentives, a rescheduling of loans, and assistance from the U.S., the European Union, and Japan built up confidence, at least for the time being. By mid-November, Pakistani reserves had exceeded $3.5 bil- lion, a comparatively impressive amount though the country’s long-term dif- ficulties in terms of foreign and domestic loans remain unresolved. The massive total of external loans— nearing $39 billion—stood defiantly. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other multinational lend- ing institutions tried to inject some funds and confidence in the country’ s economy, but donors offered only a rescheduling of the external debt rather than relief.
From Isolation to Alignment and Neo-isolation Since the 1999 coup, Western countries had shunned Pakistan because of its negative image as a fragmented society, now vulnerable to Islamic funda- PAKISTAN IN 2001 209 mentalist or Jihadi elements. The rest of the world snubbed Pakistan and severed military and other high-profile linkages with it. However, this world that had turned up its nose at Pakistan rediscovered the country following the brutal terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, and Musharraf suddenly was cat- apulted from being a pariah on the international scene to an active partner in it.
Dialogue with India Musharraf’s own transformation from ambitious general to rising statesman began in the summer, when both India and Pakistan agreed to resume sum- mit-level talks in Agra. Musharraf’s visit to India in late July created quite a fanfare and indirectly boosted the people-to-people dialogue. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee spent several hours with Musharraf, though they could not agree to a joint declaration. Despite the greater trans-regional desire for a solution to the Kashmir dispute, realists on both sides agree that it will take many more such efforts and, maybe, an outside nudge to both sides for a real breakthrough to occur. Officially, Pakistan projects Kashmir as the core point of contention and has tried to internationalize the issue. Incidents of violence between Kashmiri militant groups (now called fedayeen) involving some Pakistan-based organizations such as Jayash-i- Muhammad and Lashkar-i-Tayyaba continued throughout 2001 with the same intensity as previous years. In early October, a suicide bomb attack outside the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly building cost more than 25 lives, while a similar incident on November 18 resulted in the deaths of 10 policemen and several other individuals. The unexplained attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 by a few militants raised the tempo considerably with India, which amassed its troops on the western borders and mined them thoroughly. The spectre of a nuclear exchange was feared all over the world, although the South Asian Summit in Kathmandu tried to slightly defuse the situation. Tony Blair’s visit to South Asia—originally planned to sell weapons to India— also helped in easing regional tensions. India blamed Pakistan for abetting Kashmiri militants and demanded the closure of training camps in Azad Kashmir and asked for the handover of 20 suspects, including five Sikhs, five Indian Muslims, and some Kashmiris and Pakistanis. Musharraf came under great pressure and by reit- erating his resolve to curb militancy refused to surrender Pakistan’ s long- standing stance on the Kashmiri right for self-determination. Many analysts thought that the Indian government was intent upon seeking its pound of flesh from Pakistan at a crucial juncture to whip up fledgling Hindutva senti- ment to win forthcoming elections in the U.P. and other crucial states. Despite the collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the persistence of vio- lence in Kashmir suggests that several networks have been operating autono- 210 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 mously and have cashed in on the massive disillusionment there with Indian control. While the war in Afghanistan progressed, both Washington and London privately advised both India and Pakistan to tone down the rise in volatility over Kashmir. In his visit to Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged the centrality of the Kashmir dispute in the Indo-Pakistani relationship, but stopped short of offering to mediate. A few days later, the U.S. ambassador to India reaffirmed Washington’s deep com- mitment to an ever-growing Indo-U.S. bilateralism.
Afghanistan, the U.S., and Pakistan The U.S. military action in Afghanistan sparked protests in Pakistan. The anti-war demonstrations in the country stemmed from a number of reasons and sources. The overwhelming majority of protesters feared greater mis- eries and refugees and perceived a sheer and brutal quest for vengeance in the American-led campaign. But Pakistanis also worried about further regional instability and, given the country’s porous borders, feared that the retreating Taliban might end up in their tribal belt. The JI and the two factions of the JUI tried to make the U.S. strikes into a populist issue, but the military regime was able to contain their campaign. Pushtun tribals of the Shariat Movement under the leadership of the fiery Sufi Muhammad from Malakand formed part of a huge volunteer group that went to Afghanistan to help the Pushtun-dominated Taliban regime. However, the JUI, JI, and the Shariat Movement were deeply embarrassed over having irre- sponsibly led so many enthusiasts on what turned out to be a march into death. Indeed, the Taliban forces themselves opted to surrender. The fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance was viewed across Pakistan as having been the U.S. strategy, despite prior assurances to Musharraf to the contrary. Pakistanis wanted post-Taliban Kabul to be a demilitarized zone under a U.N.-led peace-keeping force until a broad-based government could come into place. The U.S. persistence in bombing the Taliban even after their government had fallen apart was seen as a possible effort to eliminate a trans-tribal Pushtun factor from Afghan politics. And the reemergence of regional warlords and the resumption of an internecine warfare in the wake of the Taliban’s collapse was of immense concern to many Pakistanis. Pakistani support for the Taliban was not confined to the Pushtun elements of the JUI, the JI, or the all-Pushtun party of Mullah Sufi. The Taliban’ s other sympathizers in Pakistan were mostly among the madrassa-related youths who had earlier begun to idealize the Taliban and their comparatively dramatic rise over and above ethno-tribal schisms. But the Taliban’ s rapid collapse was deeply shocking to its supporters within the military regime itself. Though Musharraf had sidelined such elements through an early PAKISTAN IN 2001 211 purge, public criticism of the ISI and its monopolist and rather dangerous hold on foreign policy worried articulate public opinion. The Taliban’s fall has generated an interesting debate within Pakistan over several issues. First and foremost among them is the debate over the future regime in Kabul. Islamabad has continually demanded that a broad-based regime be put in place. The mechanics over achieving such an arrangement and deciding on the leadership of an interim regime, as witnessed in the Bonn Conference, remain quite crucial. Such discussions of course are not con- fined to Pakistan; London and Washington have differed on the future West- ern role vis- a-vis` Kabul, for example. Many elements in Pakistan felt that, given the past contacts with the Northern Alliance’ s Burhanuddin Rabbani and others, Pakistan must offer the Alliance new incentives and should not wait any longer for a new coalition to emerge. Pakistan’s role in the eco- nomic reconstruction of Afghanistan and Pakistan’ s links with Zahir Shah, Hamid Karazai, and Yunas Khalis— Afghanistan’ s three main Pushtun figures—also gave hope to such opinions. Pragmatists advised against wallowing in bitterness over the fall of and fragmentation among Afghanistan’s Pushtun elements. Equally, civic groups began to make vocal criticisms of the total control over Pakistan’ s foreign policy by intelligence agencies and a small group of individuals, sometimes even in conflict with broader national interests. But the military regime, basi- cally a pro-status quo bureaucracy, seemed unwilling to broaden the debate over the country’s vital domestic and regional policies. The debates over Afghanistan also focused on the future nature of the rela- tionship with the U.S. There were fears that Washington would soon lose interest in the country after having killed a large number of Taliban and their Arab and other associates. Many felt that by having singled out Taliban- Pushtun clusters in its sustained bombing campaign and subsequent ground operations, the U.S. by default had allowed Russia, Iran, and India easy entry into the political vacuum in Kabul. The Northern Alliance’s rejection of Brit- ish troops as part of an international stabilization force in November was seen as proof of such a situation having been created. Pakistanis also worried about the reinvigorated Indo-American relation- ship, especially in view of U.S. reluctance to arbitrate on Kashmir and the vocal and rather blunt statements made by the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi. To the great chagrin of many Pakistanis, the Bush administration re- fused to deliver F-16 aircraft to Pakistan that the latter had paid for more than 12 years before. Musharraf raised the issue with the Bush administration during his November visit but to no avail. Finally, concerned Pakistanis believe that fundamentalist forces across the Muslim regions will stay afloat. In addition, the continued political dis- empowerment of Muslim masses by authoritarian regimes and the severe 212 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 problems of economic adversity will continue to provide willing recruits to fundamentalist outfits. What this will mean for Pakistan’ s future remains worrisomely unclear.
Conclusion Pakistan, toward the end of 2001, was under the firm control of a well-en- sconced military regime. This regime at some later stage, may allow the formation of a new political structure, but it will be one that is obliging and dependent, only operating as a “B” team that works within controlled param- eters. Thus, ironically, full-fledged democratization will remain chimerical. As for the country’s economic situation, in the short-term it may stabilize, as the effects of repayment adjustments and some external monetary injections begin to be felt. On the international front, there were fears of a stalemate in Pakistan’ s relationship with India in 2001, though the new opening of a window to the West offered some respite to the ruling generals and the country’s modernist elements. But Pakistan’s western borders may continue to be restive in the coming year, given an unstable, tribalized, and angry Afghanistan with mil- lions of refugees on the Pakistani side of the border, as well as an unstable tribal belt in Pakistan whose pride has been injured. Some observers believe the instability may offer a golden opportunity to push for better and complete integration into the country of this free-for-all tribal belt and the persistence there of an anachronistic system and notorious gun running, religious mili- tancy, and drug trafficking. The tribals themselves in fact wanted their re- gions to be properly integrated into the rest of Pakistan, but the country’ s nonrepresentative and temporary administration seemed to shy away from undertaking such overdue measures. Pakistan also sought new allies abroad, but Iran—moving irresolutely be- tween an Islamic postulation and ethno-sectarian dispensation—appeared re- luctant to redefine its relationship with a rather eager Pakistan. China still was viewed as the most reliable ally for Pakistanis across the board. Yet despite a precarious geopolitics, the year ended with Pakistan still having opportunities to radically redefine its domestic and regional policies.