By H.D.S. Greenway
The Boston GlobePublished: August 26, 2008
Pervez Musharraf has left the stage, but the Pakistani drama continues, mostly to very bad reviews.
The government has lost control of large swaths of territory to Islamic extremists. Bombers roam at will, bringing havoc and destruction in cities across the country. Rising food and fuel costs are wasting a once-vibrant economy. Inflation is raging above 20 percent, and investors are fleeing.
The coalition government headed by Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari had little to show for its six months of power, and has now fallen apart over the issue of reinstating supreme court justices.
In addition, that old insolvable, the Kashmir, is heating up again with huge and angry demonstrations egged on by Muslim separatists and Hindu nationalists. The result is increasing tension between the Indian and Pakistani armies facing each other along the line of control.
Musharraf's position had become untenable, and he was right to step down rather than put up a distracting, and ultimately losing, battle to retain power. He saw that the army, still the most powerful institution in the country, was not going to back him - not this time around.
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The history of Pakistan has been a long cycle of civilians gaining power through democratic elections, only to mismanage the affairs of state, ruin the economy, and sink into marshes of personal corruption. Then the army steps in for a period of military rule before the country goes back to elections again.
The sad thing is that Musharraf was the best of the current lot. Pakistan rejoiced when Nawaz Sharif was ousted in 1999. Musharraf brought stability with a lack of personal corruption. He and his pro-free market prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, brought surprising economic growth. The press was less restrained than it had been. And Musharraf got serious about trying to resolve the Kashmir question with India.
Most importantly for the United States, Musharraf joined the post-9/11 effort to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan, as well as bring Islamic extremism under control within his own borders. He cooperated with the United States in rounding up many high-level Al Qaeda members hiding in his cities.
Washington became impatient with him for not pursuing the Taliban as vigorously as the United States would like, and some of his attempts at cease-fires in the northwest provinces proved ineffectual.
But the United States never fully understood the tenuous relations between the Pakistani state and the peoples of the frontier, a muddled legacy of tribal territories left by the British. The political reality was that it was not always possible to be as tough as the Americans wanted if Pakistan was to be held together.
I believe Musharraf was sincere about wanting a secular, moderate country free of extremism, and that he might have been the best person to restore democracy. But his tragedy was that he began to believe that the state was him and he was the state.
All that he had achieved began to unravel when he dismissed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and his fellow judges, perhaps because Musharraf feared an independent court would challenge his election as president. Lawyers took to the streets. Popular support drained away like blood from an open wound.
Army morale is in trouble, Pakistan having lost many soldiers and gained few victories against extremists. Having been organized to fight India, the army knows it must retrain to fight an insurgency and gain the confidence of the people. It is willing to cooperate with the new civilian government. But both Sharif and Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zadari, have long histories of corruption and the politics of personal gain.
I am sympathetic with the Bush administration's backing of Musharraf, given the alternatives. Pakistan's strategic importance dwarfs that of Afghanistan, and the country seems dangerously adrift.
Pakistan is a resilient country, and it would be wise to be supportive, but let Pakistan sort itself out on its own without American interference.
As Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, says: "In the final analysis, Pakistan will only be as strong as its political system."
It would be grotesque, however, if the politics of revenge were to lead to Musharraf's imprisonment.
