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.

ALLAH, THE ARMY, AND AMERICA

The survival of Pakistan in its existing form is a vital U.S. security interest, one that trumps all other American interests in the country. A collapse of Pakistan -- into internal anarchy or an Islamist revolution -- would cripple the global campaign against Islamist terrorism. Strengthening the Pakistani state and cementing its cooperation with the West have thus become immensely important to Washington.

So far, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appears firmly committed to the U.S.-led coalition, and he seems to have the solid support of his military high command. In the short term, the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan will strengthen Musharraf's domestic position. Most of the causes of Pakistan's decline over the last few decades, however, remain in place and have not been changed by the war against terrorism. If these serious flaws in Pakistan's governance remain unaddressed, the country will sooner or later slip into a profound state of crisis. Even in the shorter term, growing unrest as a result of economic crisis could well prompt Musharraf's military colleagues to shunt him aside in favor of a civilian government less supportive of the United States. Musharraf's power depends very much on the will of the military, and if faced with its disapproval it is unlikely he would stay in office very long.

Were a replacement government to pursue a pragmatic but more moderate course -- somewhere between absolute support for Washington and outright hostility to it -- it would not pose a dire threat to the U.S. antiterror campaign. Limited numbers of Pakistani tribal and religious volunteers slipping over the border will not revive the Taliban. Outright support for the Taliban from a radicalized Pakistani state, however, could do just that.

To avoid Musharraf's fall, Washington has already begun to deliver a significant flow of economic aid, some of which was blocked after Pakistan tested its first atomic weapons in 1998. A limited resumption of military assistance may also be forthcoming. To keep Musharraf in power during a global economic recession, however, more will be needed; the money given so far has not made up for the negative economic consequences Pakistan has suffered from the war in Afghanistan. Musharraf has promised his people that they will reap rewards from siding with the United States. But up until this point, such claims have been met with widespread public skepticism, based on partly accurate -- if exaggerated -- perceptions that the United States has broken its promises in the past. Washington has yet not done enough to prove that this time will be different.

BLOOD TIES

The United States also does not seem to fully appreciate the centrality of India in Pakistani thinking about the current crisis. Strong popular support for the Taliban was present only in Pashtun areas of Pakistan, closely linked to the Pashtuns of Afghanistan. But Pakistan is dominated by its Punjab province, and it is Punjabis, not Pashtuns, who have always decided the fate of the country's regimes. Punjabis account for 63 percent of Pakistan's population and an even higher proportion of the army, the officer corps, and the administrative elite. Pashtuns, meanwhile, make up only 10 percent of the population.

Relatively few of Pakistan's Punjabis -- many of whose parents fled India as refugees during the dreadful communal massacres that attended partition in 1947 -- seem to share the pro-Taliban attitudes of their Pashtun neighbors. In October 2001, for example, when Pakistan's ethnically Pashtun regions saw serious demonstrations against the Musharraf government, the mood in most of neighboring northern Punjab remained relatively calm. People there may have been unhappy with the U.S. air campaign, but they never came close to taking up arms.

Similarly, Pakistan's long-standing policy of seeking an allied or client state in Afghanistan has never been driven mainly by affinity for the Taliban. Rather, Pakistan's chief motivation has been the fear of strategic encirclement by India (which could occur if a pro-Indian regime took power in Kabul) and the wish to achieve strategic depth against India. Musharraf has sold his support for the current U.S. war effort to his fellow citizens by convincing them it is the best way to avoid the formation of a hostile alliance between Washington and New Delhi. And most of the population seems to agree; in an October Gallup poll, 56 percent of Pakistanis declared their support for Musharraf's strategy, even while 83 percent expressed opposition to the U.S. campaign.

To preserve this delicate balance within Pakistan, the United States will have to avoid tilting one way or the other in its relations with the subcontinent. Within Pakistan, the army will have to be treated once again as the United States' key working partner. The army is Pakistan's only effective modern institution and the backbone of the Pakistani state. It is largely thanks to the army's discipline and unity that Musharraf has been able to keep protest against the U.S. campaign within bounds. Maintaining a military focused on Pakistan's core national interests, therefore, remains the best way to save the country from being caught up in international revolutionary Islamist delirium.