Pakistan: a Changing Picture

Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq was a brutal politician who hanged his predecessor, ordered his opponents flogged, called and then canceled elections on whim and seemed unable to tolerate any semblance of democracy. And yet, now that he is dead, the world may be a more dangerous place.

After seizing power in a 1977 military coup, Zia had such a stranglehold on Pakistan that his stunned countrymen are uncertain just what the future will bring. Like most dictators, the general never groomed a successor; in fact, he aggravated the power vacuum three months agoby dismissing Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo and the first civilian government since the coup. Now there is concern that the armed forces will assert themselves, declare martial law and suspend the national elections that Zia had called for November. But it is encouraging that, as of late Wednesday, Zia’s underlings were living up to the terms of the Constitution, and the head of the Senate, the next in line, had been named acting president.

Early on, Zia was deservedly treated like an international pariah, largely because of the show trial and hanging of his predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. But all that changed in late 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan to prop up a Marxist regime there. Soon Zia was hailed as an important ally of the United States and a determined anti-Communist; he was praised for sheltering millions of Afghan refugees, for maintaining ammunition depots and open supply lines for the moujahedeen rebels fighting the Kabul government, and for throwing his support behind the United Nations agreement on the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan.

Zia, in fact, became so key to U.S. interests on the Indian subcontinent that the United States managed to overlook its misgivings about Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program and about its role in international heroin traffic; about $4 billion in U.S. aid has been pledged over the next six years. Now official Washington is awash in anxiety, too, about what Zia’s death will mean. Will any other leader have the clout to hold up Pakistan’s end of the Afghan peace treaty? Will the Soviets slow their withdrawal in hopes of improving the survivability of the Kabul government? Is there anyone who can keep both the restless Pakistani armed forces and the country’s vociferous Islamic fundamentalists, whom Zia pandered to but never completely placated, in line? Who knows?

Benazir Bhutto, the charismatic daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, remains a force to be reckoned with. She has unified the opposition and mounted a surprisingly stiff challenge to Zia since her return from exile two years ago. But she is in the late stages of her first pregnancy, and is often too uncomfortable even to appear at rallies, lessening the chances that her Pakistan People’s Party and the larger opposition coalition will make a strong showing in November. The election rules that Zia established, forbidding the parties to enter slates and requiring candidates to run without party identification, may hurt her, too.

What the United States can do is push, as it did before Zia’s death, for free and fair elections. The U.S. ability to influence events in Pakistan may have been reduced somewhat by the tragic loss of Ambassador Arnold L. Raphel, who died with Zia in the crash of the C-130 transport; Raphel, fluent in Urdu, close to both Zia and Benazir Bhutto, knew Pakistan as few other American diplomats do. But, as Pakistan re-orients itself and investigates Wednesday’s crash and faces a future without Zia, the United States ought to do everything within its power to nudge that country back on the road to democracy.