Pakistan’s President in a Tough Spot

In demonstrations that have swept Pakistan following U.S.-led military assaults in Afghanistan, a new character has joined the usual suspects being burned in effigy at the hands of angry protesters.

Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, suddenly found himself in the company of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a target of slogan-chanting religious extremists who oppose the military attacks on Taliban strongholds in neighboring Afghanistan.

For Musharraf personally and for Pakistan as a whole, the events of recent days mark a turning point with political consequences--for his government and that of the United States.

Musharraf’s unhesitating decision to join the international anti-terror campaign won him major points in Washington and in European capitals. In fact, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is scheduled to visit Islamabad, the capital, on Monday to reinforce, in word and deed, U.S. gratitude to a man who came to power in a coup.

But critics contend that the Musharraf contract with the coalition came at a Faustian price. The move required a virtual U-turn in Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy, which previously favored the Taliban government as a “stabilizing” force in the region.

It also marked a reversal of the trend toward Islamizing key institutions--including Musharraf’s own army--that began during the rule of the late President Gen. Zia ul-Haq in the early 1980s.

Musharraf’s decision to back the United States comes, of course, with a price tag for Washington. But even if he gets what he wants from the U.S., it is still uncertain whether the concessions will guarantee his political survival.

At a news conference earlier this week, Musharraf made it very clear what he wants from the Americans in exchange for his support.

The allied military operations, he said, should be “short and targeted.” Massive aid should be given in the form of humanitarian relief, water management and infrastructure rebuilding to “rehabilitate” postwar, and post-Taliban, Afghanistan. Whatever government emerges from the ruins of Taliban Afghanistan must be representative of the ethnic Pushtun population that inhabits both sides of Pakistan’s 1,500-mile western border.

Of particular concern to Musharraf is that the main opposition force in Afghanistan--the Northern Alliance, which is mostly ethnic Tajik and ethnic Uzbek--”should not be allowed to take advantage” of the U.S. military actions.

“There will be a void in the area controlled by the Taliban,” Musharraf said. “If this void is filled by the Northern Alliance, I think we will see a return to anarchy.”

Finally, Musharraf said he wanted a more consistent relationship with the United States. For many Pakistanis, the U.S. is like a fickle lover who is only attentive when something is wanted. The previous high points in U.S.-Pakistani relations came in the early 1970s, when the Nixon administration needed help normalizing relations with China, and during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when Pakistan served as the main staging ground and weapons conduit for the CIA-supported moujahedeen rebels.

After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, there was a general feeling here, as one U.S. diplomat put it, that America had “cut and run.” Only a few years after the Soviets left, for example, America closed the large U.S. Agency for International Development mission here. Then Pakistan was hit with successive economic sanctions for its nuclear weapons program and for the 1999 coup that put Musharraf in power.

By the time former President Clinton visited here last year, the relationship was so chilly that Clinton refused to publicly shake hands with Musharraf. In the post-Sept. 11 era, all that has changed. Overnight, the pariah became one of America’s most important partners, leader of a front-line state in the war against terrorism.

But the 58-year-old Musharraf didn’t forget the snub. In the Monday news conference, in which he distinguished himself by answering all questions from all comers with a straightforward clarity not common among South Asian leaders, Musharraf recalled the decade of lost love between the two countries.

“Pakistan was, frankly, left high and dry,” he said. “Pakistanis felt a sense of abandonment. I have been assured that this situation will not be like the last time.”

In addition to the concessions as to a future Afghan government that Musharraf expects for his support of the coalition, the Pakistani leader will also want massive economic aid for his country to help cover Pakistan’s losses during the Afghanistan campaign and U.S. help in Pakistan’s dispute with India over the Kashmir region.

Of all the items on the Musharraf wish list, this last may be the one the Bush administration finds most difficult to grant, although the perceived U.S. “tilt” toward India, most analysts agree, probably ended with the Sept. 11 attacks. On the economic front, the administration and Congress have already come up with an impressive package of aid that may include forgiveness of Pakistan’s nearly $3-billion debt to the U.S.

On the battlefront, U.S. Defense Department officials apparently have contended that they have specifically avoided bomb and missile attacks in areas that would speed the advance of the Northern Alliance. Northern Alliance commanders bitterly confirm this. U.S. efforts to influence a post-Taliban government have concentrated on a return of former Afghan monarch Mohammad Zaher Shah, at least as the convening agent for a new ruling council, or loya jirga.

In meetings with the Pakistani media, U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin has stressed that the post-Taliban government be “broad-based” and “multiethnic”--exactly the words that Musharraf uses to describe the need for Pushtun participation.

In the days before the airstrikes began, Musharraf reshuffled key senior officers in the army, removing those with Taliban sympathies and replacing them with men who share his secular views.

Probably the most critical change was the removal of the army chief of intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed.

Ahmed led two delegations to the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in a failed attempt to avoid war by negotiating the release of Osama bin Laden, suspected of masterminding the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But reports in the Pakistani media suggest that some army brass feel that Musharraf was too quick and too accommodating in his agreement to join the U.S.-led coalition.

A major fire broke out in the army general headquarters early Tuesday. The army reported that the fire, which destroyed the headquarters training and accounting offices, was accidental, but it only added to speculation of unrest in the ranks. So did the removal Tuesday of the commander of the Rawalpindi Corps, the unit that would respond to any attempted coup, added even more fuel to the speculation.

If there is significant dissatisfaction in the military, it most likely centers on the consequences if Musharraf’s vision of a post-Taliban Afghanistan backfires.

“The thinking of the army has always been to have just one front that is India, not two fronts,” said prominent Islamabad lawyer Hafeez Pirzada. “Military commanders would feel really uncomfortable having a hostile India on one side and an unfriendly Afghanistan on the other.”

On the domestic front, Musharraf contends that the demonstrations that have erupted following the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan represent only a small minority of Pakistan’s 140 million people.

“These are some extremists who are going to have some agitations,” Musharraf said. But in a country as poor and volatile as Pakistan, said lawyer Pirzada, “even if this extremist element represents only 10%, it is still formidable.”