Asia’s New Hotbed of Moderation

President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to reshape Pakistan as a moderate Islamic state carries implications that extend far beyond its borders, many people in this region believe.

Among other things, they argue, Pakistan’s new moderate course will:

* Undercut extremist groups from throughout the Arab and broader Muslim world that have used Pakistan as both an important support base and a way station in the conduct of global terrorism.

* Ease long-standing tensions in Central and Southwest Asia that in many instances date back to the end of the Cold War.

* Give hope to political moderates in other Muslim countries as they watch one of their own reset the course of a nation by means of a carefully argued case against militant Islam as a social ill.

For Pakistan itself, Musharraf’s plan--outlined in an address to the nation this month--signals an end to a quarter-century in which political power has flowed gradually yet steadily in the direction of conservative religious forces, turning the country into a haven for extremists.

Police Hold 2,500 With Alleged Ties to Militants

In the last two weeks, police have rounded up 2,500 people suspected of links to five banned militant Islamic groups. Although smaller sweeps have occurred before, only to be followed by the release of the detainees a few days later, the extent of the current operation and assurances from the government that many of those taken into custody will be prosecuted under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law have lifted the crackdown to another level, observers believe.

After two weeks of relative calm, those affected by the crackdown have begun to react. On Sunday, about 2,000 religious conservatives staged a demonstration in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, demanding an end to Musharraf’s new path. In Karachi, a group called Harkat Moujahedeen is believed to be responsible for the kidnapping Wednesday of 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Although some moderates worry about a greater backlash and about Musharraf’s resolve to follow through on his plan, they still view the fast-unfolding events as a watershed.

“It’s the first time in the history of our country that these people are being pushed into retreat,” said Kamila Hyat, joint director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “It’s going to change the way we live and think.”

Because Musharraf’s speech was timed mainly to defuse the immediate threat of war with India--by signaling to New Delhi that he was prepared to crack down on terrorist groups launching attacks against India from Pakistani soil--some listeners questioned both the sincerity of Pakistani intentions and the breadth of the initiative.

However, reflections of the shift--including announced reforms of hard-line religious schools known as madrasas, a noticeable easing of long-standing constraints on intellectual debate, and apparently broad-based public support--have combined to convince many observers that it is not only real but highly significant.

One example: Najam Sethi, editor of the country’s most liberal weekly newspaper, the Friday Times, said in an interview that he is suddenly receiving invitations to address groups that once banned him as too provocative.

“It’s amazing how expression has been freed,” said Khaled Ahmed, a columnist who serves as the paper’s most aggressive public voice. “One speech, and the entire nation has turned moderate.”

One Pakistan-based Western diplomat who tracks political developments in the region is convinced that the U-turn is genuine.

“We’re watching the world’s second-largest Muslim country moving from extremism to moderation,” he said. “This is hugely important.”

Others seem to agree.

“Historic,” said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of Musharraf’s speech and the course it charted. During a stopover this month in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) called it “one of the most powerful, meaningful . . . consequential speeches we’ve heard from a leader in this region for a long, long time.”

The enthusiasm is understandable.

For the last 25 years, Pakistan has hosted an array of Islamic militant organizations drawn first by the Muslim world’s jihad against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan and later by other causes, including resistance to Russian forces in the breakaway region of Chechnya, to ruling Arab elites in Algeria and Egypt, and to post-Soviet governments in Central Asia.

Pakistan was also the preferred transit route into Afghanistan for members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organization. Many observers are convinced that without Pakistan’s kid-glove approach toward extremist groups, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States would have been far more difficult to carry out.

“For militants from all over the Arab world . . . Pakistan has been crucial,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, director of the Area Studies Center at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. “Here was a large political and social space to organize, plan, strategize, regroup or seek shelter. Now this space is no longer available.”

Friday Times columnist Ahmed claimed that the brother of one of the assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat used to taunt Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, from his haven in Peshawar by sending Mubarak threatening telex messages.

More recently, Arab recruits have been seen moving through the cities of Lahore, on the Indian border, and Karachi, on the Indian Ocean, apparently to terrorist training camps in the remote frontier areas of Afghanistan and eventual missions beyond. About 25 Arabs were spotted recently by one observer in the anteroom of the Lashkar-e-Taiba extremist group’s office in Lahore.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has been linked to several terrorist operations in Indian-controlled areas of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and to a deadly attack on the historic Red Fort in New Delhi in late 2000.

Extremist Groups Had Government Allies

Evidence, mainly anecdotal, indicates that these extremist groups often operated with the protection and tolerance--and sometimes with the full cooperation--of the Pakistani government. One political insider in Islamabad recalled an incident in early 2000 when senior members of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, sat around a table plotting strategy at the Islamabad Hotel with the head of the extremist Hezb-ul-Moujahedeen, Syed Salahuddin, at the same moment that Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar was telling a news conference a few miles away that his country had no ties with terrorist groups.

The government offered such support because many of its conservative leaders saw these groups as sharing Pakistan’s national goals--such as maintaining strong ties with Afghanistan to the west and breaking India’s grip on much of Kashmir.

“Most jihadis are natural allies of the army,” said former ISI Director Hamid Gul, widely considered the midwife of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. “They are pursuing the same objectives.”

But on Jan. 12, Musharraf rejected the extremist option and declared these groups de facto enemies of the state.

The crackdown on militant groups is expected to further calm tensions in parts of Central Asia already quieted by the Taliban’s demise. Nations headed by former Soviet-era leaders had come to view Pakistan as a troublesome accomplice to the Taliban and a supporter of extremist groups.

Uzbekistan, for example, claimed that an Islamic militant named Juma Namangani had used Karachi as his starting point and the Afghan border areas as his launch pad for a guerrilla campaign against the Uzbek government.

“Musharraf’s new direction will provide a better understanding for Pakistan’s relations with these countries,” Rais said.

The impact of Pakistan’s shift on the larger struggle between advocates of moderate and extremist Islam is far harder to assess, Pakistani observers believe. Newspaper editor Sethi believes that the collapse of the Taliban and the rout of Al Qaeda have already triggered a reassessment in the Muslim world about the limits of hard-line Islam.

“People all over the Arab world who were drifting to the extreme are now coming back toward the center,” he said. “Musharraf has demonstrated a state can do this too.”

Others, however, note that cultural, linguistic and historical differences are likely to diminish the impact of Musharraf’s move in the Arab world.

Javed Iqbal Cheema, head of the Interior Ministry’s National Crisis Management Cell, which is coordinating Islamabad’s crackdown against extremists, agreed that Pakistan’s new course will affect Arab governments’ thinking. But Cheema quickly echoed the sentiment of many moderates here: The international community, he said, must work to resolve disputes in the Middle East and Kashmir that feed extremist sentiments.

Cheema added that Musharraf’s new policy was timed not just to defuse the threat of war over Kashmir but also to crush extremists while they were still reeling from the defeat of their cause in Afghanistan.

“They are confused, in a state of shock,” he said. “Now is our chance.”

Deeper change in Pakistani society--erasing a generation’s worth of conservative religious influence in areas such as the judiciary, education, civil service and the military--could take decades, observers believe.

“There will be dogged resistance,” Sethi predicted.

The extent of conservative Islam’s inroads in Pakistan was illustrated several years ago when Bashiruddin Mehmood, then a respected member of the nation’s Atomic Energy Commission, delivered a scientific paper at a seminar proposing that the country’s energy problems could be resolved by harnessing the power of Muslim supernatural beings known as jinn. Mehmood was arrested in October in connection with unspecified activities in Afghanistan, though he was later released.

Broadening both public education and the narrow Koranic focus of the madrasas is seen by many as the key to long-term change.

“Education is crucial,” noted Anis Ahmad, a scholar at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. “It’s values that change a society, not a police crackdown.”