I.A. RehmanLahore, September 25
General Pervez Musharraf was quite frank when he told the people of Pakistan that he had decided to support the USA in its campaign against Osama bin Laden and his protectors as this was the less costly of the two options available. In reality, he had no two options. Whatever the circumstances in which he had to take his decision, he realised that the unavoidable consequences of saying no to Mr George Bush ruled out that course as any option at all.
It must be said to the General’s credit that he grasped Washington’s agenda fairly well – that what Mr Bush had in mind was not a hit-and-run operation against Osama but destruction of the Taliban’s military strength and a change of rulers in Kabul as a first step towards attacking radical militants of different hues elsewhere. Staying out of the coalition Washington was building up would have meant putting Pakistan in the list of targets. That was no option anyone could have considered. The General took the only course open to him.
The immediate task before General Musharraf was to rationalise his decision in a manner that also enabled him to devise a damage-control mechanism. Anticipating criticism that he was abandoning Afghanistan or the Afghans or that he was violating the bonds of Islamic fraternity, he decided upon a pre-emptive strategy. Without breaking off the ties with the Taliban, he argued that an attack on the Taliban did not amount to a war against Afghanistan or the Afghan people. Sending a delegation to talk to the Taliban leader to persuade him to give up Osama and thus avoid war was a sound strategy in that it implied Pakistan’s continuing concern for the Afghan people’s welfare.
The second part of the defence was an elaborate argument that far from breaching Islamic solidarity, the decision to back the USA was in fact in accordance with precedents from the most glorious phase of Islamic history. What could be better than telling the Pakistani people that the path delineated by the Holy Prophet himself had been rediscovered.
It is difficult to assess the impact of these arguments on the audience, but there is reason to believe that General Musharraf’s plea in defence of Pakistan’s national interest had the desired effect. National interest demanded, he declared, that Pakistan’s ability to pursue the Kashmir case was not compromised, and that its strategic assets (nuclear capacity) were not threatened. These were the two emotive issues on which the people were called to rally behind the government. The reference to the need to save Afghanistan from passing under a regime unfriendly to Pakistan was outside the comprehension of the masses. The General said nothing about the wages for the services to be rendered and that was left to the imagination of the people – which was rightly presumed to be boundless.
Thus, General Musharraf has won the first round on the home front, perhaps more comfortably than he expected. The moral issue — whether the pursuit of some people suspected of a great crime could justify a war against a whole people — has been bypassed. It is raised only by small peace activists, whose call is unlikely to be heeded by the masses. The political groups, with the sole and intriguing exception of the Nawaz Sharif faction of Muslim League, are competing with one another in enthusiastic endorsement of Islamabad’s policy. They have been joined by a host of opinion-makers who are always eager to capitalise on a strong lead.
Many believe that Pakistan is about to receive a windfall of the kind General Zia had benefited from in the eighties. That expectation has been reinforced by the US decision to ease sanctions and official comments that the country’s economic worries will be greatly reduced. That leaves only the religious parties and their militant formations in the camp opposed to the government policy. For some reason the government believes these jihadis can be contained.
That in the process General Musharraf’s popularity graph at home has gone up should not be doubted. One did not need Mr Colin Powell’s testimony to offer a verdict on the stability of his regime. The external pressure on definite movement towards a return to democratic dispensation has apparently disappeared. Domestically, too, such pressures are likely to ease. But at the same time, the feeling that when the country is faced with a grave crisis it needs a political, consultative decision-making apparatus will get stronger. General Musharraf himself may realise that he has to broaden the base of authority beyond the military council because the fact of Pakistan being on a short leash cannot be ignored.
So far the government has been concerned with preparing the ground for a role Pakistan may be asked to play in the gathering storm. And the exact parameters of that role are as yet unclear. How many of the present assumptions will survive if the conflict in and over Afghanistan gets prolonged, the number of Afghans seeking refuge in Pakistan becomes unmanageable, and people see on TV images of women and children getting killed? Even if Pakistan takes every possible step to demonstrate that it is not at war with brotherly Afghans, the task of countering public perceptions to the contrary will be far tougher than what General Musharraf has so far accomplished.
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The writer is a veteran journalist and well-known political commentator.
