The Pressures on Pakistan

Anatol Lieven

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2002

Summary:  Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has supported Washington's war on terror so far. But he rules an impoverished and increasingly radical population and faces a powerful enemy next door. If the economic crisis continues, his government could fall, bringing Islamists to power and giving them control over nuclear weapons.

Anatol Lieven is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

ISLAMISTS IN WAITING

The threat that Pakistan might one day succumb to an Islamist revolution or dissolve into chaos stems less from the strength of its Islamists than from the weakness of their opponents. Together, Pakistan's Islamist parties have never garnered as much as six percent of the vote in a general election. They remain deeply divided by personal allegiances, political opportunism, regional origins, and doctrinal differences. Still, the Islamists have managed to exert a political and ideological influence in excess of their numbers, largely because, absent Islam, Pakistan has little else in ideological terms to keep the country together.

The smaller of Pakistan's two Islamist parties, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), has taken the lead in fomenting violence against the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. The JUI is not only more radical than the larger Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, but is also based among the Pashtun of the Northwest Frontier Province and northern Baluchistan, who have strong links to their brethren in Afghanistan. The Jamaat-e-Islami, on the other hand, draws its main strength from Punjab and from the mohajirs (migrants from India) of Karachi. Although the Jamaat-e-Islami has joined in recent anti-American agitation, it remains less a true revolutionary force than a dissident Islamist part of the Pakistani establishment.

In recent years, the most menacing development related to the Islamists has been not shifts in electoral politics but rather the growth of Taliban-linked radical armed groups within Pakistan. The Pakistani army has actively helped some of these groups by providing them with training camps and weapons, so as to strengthen their cadres fighting in Indian-controlled Kashmir. But such groups have had a destabilizing effect within Pakistan itself. One organization in particular, the Sipah-e-Sahaba, has launched a vicious terrorist campaign against Pakistan's Shi`a minority, killing more than 3,600 people over the last decade. And the largest international group fighting against Indian control of Kashmir, the Jaish-e-Muhammadi, has been officially named a terrorist organization by the United States.

Fortunately, the Jaish-e-Muhammadi may soon become the object of an army crackdown. In a similar vein, although Islamabad's attempts to gain greater control over Pakistan's radical madrassas (Islamic schools) made little progress before September 11, efforts are now being intensified. These include imposing a broad, modern curriculum on the schools, registering all of their foreign students, and forcing them to cut their ties with militant training camps. Washington should keep the pressure on to ensure that Islamabad follows through on these efforts; the madrassas have become training grounds for radical groups all over the Muslim world, and their graduates have caused mayhem in Pakistan itself as well as staffed the Taliban.

If Pakistan were to fall prey to radical Islamists, the blame would lie heavily on the country's secular and mildly Islamic political parties, which have dominated the country for the past 30 years. These parties have failed lamentably to develop Pakistan or improve the living conditions of its people, thus making the radical option seem all the more attractive. One governing politician after another has turned out to be incompetent, nepotistic, and corrupt. And when it comes to government-sponsored human rights abuses, even Musharraf's authoritarian regime has been a good deal less dictatorial than several of the civilian governments that preceded it.

The 1990s were a particularly depressing period for Pakistan in political terms. During that decade, Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party alternated turns in office with Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League, each forming a government twice. And both Bhutto and Sharif were ultimately ousted after their regimes fell into a welter of corruption, incompetence, oppression, and infighting. By contrast, the policies Musharraf has pursued since coming to power in 1999 have been generally progressive -- even, surprisingly, when it comes to freedom of the press, which suffered considerable restriction under Sharif. Musharraf comes from a progressive family; his mother worked for the International Labor Organization. Possibly for this reason, his government has proved one of the most positive in Pakistan's history as far as women's rights are concerned -- introducing, for example, a new rule reserving 33 percent of local council seats for women.

Given the poor record of recent elected governments, Musharraf's openly expressed disdain for his country's politicians is understandable -- as is his refusal to give them a place in his government. Nonetheless, his exclusion of political parties is a mistake, and Washington should gently nudge him to change his approach. Because of the Punjabi domination of the army, military rule increases discontent in Pakistan's other provinces. And such unrest could soon become a serious problem for Musharraf, since many Pashtuns of the Northwest Frontier Province are already infuriated by the Afghan war. Pakistan's politicians, whatever their faults, retain great influence in their home districts, and Musharraf needs to use that support as a buffer against mass discontent.

To ensure that support, however, Musharraf needs to give Pakistan's mainstream politicians a share of government patronage. After all, Pakistani politics run on a mixture of such patronage and kinship. Without perks and government funds to distribute, politicians' influence in their home districts may crumble -- particularly given public unhappiness with the record of past civilian regimes.

One good sign is that Musharraf has already announced his intention to hold national elections in October 2002. The general appears ready to allow politicians to form the government, while he stays on as president and supervises governance through the Council for Defense and National Security -- rather after the fashion of the Turkish military. Much can happen between now and October, however. If, in the meantime, Pakistan's economy deteriorates and the government fails to rally political support and strengthen the mainstream parties, the Islamists might finally become a serious force at the polls. Were this to occur, the military would then face an acutely dangerous choice between canceling the elections and allowing the possibility of a massive hostile vote.