Should Bush
Continue Supporting Musharraf?
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
The last time a serving American
president visited Pakistan was six years ago.
Bill Clinton dropped in for all of five hours,
on the heels of a five-day visit to India. No
details are available yet about President George
W. Bush’s visit to Pakistan but it is expected
to involve an overnight stay. While Clinton was
not anxious to be photographed with General Musharraf,
since that would have meant endorsing his usurpation
of power, we can expect Bush to be seen very visibly
with Musharraf, who is his strongest ally in the
war against terror.
Bush spoke about the need to resolve the Kashmir
conflict while addressing the Asia Society last
week in Washington. He has come a long way since
his first presidential campaign, when he failed
to name Musharraf correctly in response to a reporter’s
question. Early into his first presidency, during
the big India-Pakistani standoff, it was not uncommon
to encounter cartoons in the American press depicting
Bush’s ignorance of the Kashmir issue. One
showed Bush and Cheney in the White House, with
a puzzled Bush asking his VP why India and Pakistan
were fighting over a (Cashmere) sweater and the
VP telling him it was a piece of land.
In public, Bush is likely to be seen as discussing
security and energy issues with Musharraf. In
private, he is likely to bring up an issue that
the general will find rather nettlesome: restoring
sovereignty to the people of Pakistan by letting
them choose their own rulers through free and
fair elections next year.
The Bush administration has made a global commitment
to carrying out a strategy of “transformational
diplomacy,” which the US Secretary of State
has indicated would require working “with
our many partners around the world, to build and
sustain democratic, well-governed states that
will respond to the needs of their people and
conduct themselves responsibly in the international
system.” Rice is on the record for saying,
“Democracy is hard and democracy takes time,
but democracy is always worth it.”
The US cannot make an exception for General Musharraf,
because Pakistan is in a unique situation, as
the general is wont to say. There are some in
the US who credit Musharraf for making major changes
in Pakistan’s policies by defusing the conflict
with the world’s largest democracy, India,
and by giving a liberal and moderate interpretation
of Islam. However, this glosses over the fact
that Musharraf implemented these policy changes
only after 9/11 and that he was the military commander
who attacked Kargil in the spring of 1999. It
also ignores the fact that extremism in Pakistan
was cultivated as a policy by the Pakistani military,
initially to cultivate an insurgency in Kashmir
and later in Afghanistan. The mujahideen spawned
the Taliban, all under the watchful eye of the
military. Finally, all major states in South Asia
besides Pakistan are democracies, so why make
an exception for Pakistan?
Musharraf, of course, has a delusion that he is
an elected president and that but for his wearing
the uniform, Pakistan would be an ideal democracy.
Bush needs to disabuse him of this notion. In
Pakistan, neither the parliament nor the courts
have any real authority. The constitution has
been rendered meaningless by the wholesale incorporation
of Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order.
To some Americans, Pakistan comes across as a
country governed by an enlightened ruler who is
fighting terrorists at great personal risk. To
most Pakistanis, Musharraf is an army chief who
deposed a democratically elected government. Even
Pakistanis who initially welcomed the coup have
become tired of him. Recently, Musharraf has suggested
that he is likely to be “re-elected”
by the existing assemblies in 2007 for a five-year
term and that parliamentary elections may be deferred
until 2008. He has dropped hints that the uniform
may not come off even after he is “re-elected.”
So, under a democratic façade, Musharraf
is just another general interested in self-perpetuation.
Every major decision — whether to build
a major port on the Arabian Sea or a dam on the
Indus River — bears his imprimatur.
Chronic military rule in Pakistan has repressed
minorities and women and worsened inter-provincial
relations. It has led to extremism in religion
that has manifested itself in sectarian killings
and terrorism. Neither has it been able to tame
a culture of tribal justice that lets the perpetrators
of gang rapes go free. In urban areas, the residents
live at the mercy of armed robbers and kidnappers.
The army has a free hand in setting its budget
and has squandered precious lives and national
resources in a dozen wars that it has instigated
since independence in 1947. After its major defeat
in 1971, it initiated the country’s nuclear
weapons program. The program was developed surreptitiously
and, ultimately, it allowed nuclear technology
to proliferate to other countries through the
same back channels. When this story broke, courtesy
of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, the army turned
the country’s top nuclear scientist into
a scapegoat. But could he really have pursued
such a strategic venture without the military’s
knowledge?
The military has been complicit in all major problems
faced by Pakistan from Day 1. Over time, it has
systematically pillaged and destroyed all civilian
institutions. In what other country do serving
and retired military officers head schools, colleges,
universities and large industrial corporations?
Where are they given so many plum diplomatic assignments,
including that in Washington?
Pakistan’s problems are inherently political
in nature and cannot be solved by people in uniform.
Only under a democratic dispensation will Pakistanis
develop a give-and-take attitude and use parliamentary
debate for resolving their disputes rather than
resorting to street violence. Pakistan would have
a bright future if the generals would return to
the barracks.
In his second Inaugural Address, Bush said that
it was “the policy of the United States
to seek and support the growth of democratic movements
and institutions in every nation and culture with
the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
Bush should speak directly to the people of Pakistan
through national radio and television. He needs
to reassure them that his global commitment to
democracy does not exclude the 160 million people
of Pakistan.
When America can help bring constitutional rule
to countries that have no real democratic tradition,
it has all the more reason for bringing it to
Pakistan, which does have an intermittent history
of democratic rule and whose founder was a democrat
par excellence. Doing so will go a long way toward
stemming the rising tide of anti-Americanism in
the world’s second largest Muslim state.
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