One of the more interesting moments in my conversations with senior Western diplomats here was being told that in the event of a coup by militants the US had a plan to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, using troops specially trained for the purpose who are based in Pakistan. When I mentioned this to Pakistan’s foreign minister he looked at me with amusement and said, “But we have a plan to counter the plan.” At this point, I thought, international politics is nothing but machismo where face and swagger replaces careful thought.
No one should doubt that Pakistan is the world’s haven for its most committed anti-Western terrorists. Al-Qaeda is here and so are the Taleban — President Pervez Musharraf was quite open with me on that. It is well within the bounds of possibility that Osama Bin Laden is here too. But this does not mean that violent Islamists are about to overthrow Musharraf and take over the country. Whilst some of the more extreme ones have already tried — and nearly succeeded — in assassinating Musharraf, militancy actually practiced with violence is a fringe activity in Pakistan and one largely under the government’s control. While there is in the country at large a latent sympathy for the terrorists who work to undermine India’s grip on the disputed province of Kashmir, the sympathy for Al-Qaeda and the Taleban is highly concentrated in the so-called tribal areas and Balochistan on the border with Afghanistan.
When it comes to parliamentary elections the Islamist parties — who formally abjure violence and are free to campaign even under army rule — only gain between 5 and 8 percent of the vote. Even in 2002, when behind the scenes the army manipulated the vote in their favor, they only won 11.1 percent.
After years of political restrictions and the exile of its leader, Benazir Bhutto, the very secular Pakistan People’s party (PPP) remains the most potent political party in the country. And its rival, the Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif, (despite its name a secular party) although carved to pieces by Musharraf, still fills a defined political space and along with the PPP makes it very difficult for the Islamist parties to grow further.
In local and provincial elections the religious parties fare better. In Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province they are in office. Here they have been able to offer if not shelter at least a blind eye to terrorist organizations. But when it came to a nationwide effort to organize large-scale protests against the start of the Iraq war in 2003 the religious parties were unable to mobilize the masses. Musharraf’s campaign to explain to the public that Pakistan could not afford to alienate the US was widely accepted.
The army too remains essentially a secular organization. Robert Kaplan has written that if Musharraf goes “after him come the men with the beards”. But the fact is the army is fairly representative of the country and Islamists make up probably no more than 10 percent of its higher ranks, if that.
It is doubtful that Musharraf is playing a complicated double game, as Kaplan and others suggest, whereby he appears to be trying to repress terrorists but privately is nurturing them, or at least turning a blind eye. There is no doubt the umbilical cords that gave succor to both the terrorists operating against India over Kashmir and those working with the Taleban have long ago been cut. If Musharraf doesn’t close down the anti-Indian ones is it is because he would rather know where they are, than forcing them to hide in the mountains and join hands with those trying to assassinate him.
If Musharraf doesn’t move more forcefully against the Taleban, although thousands of Pakistani troops have perished in the attempt, it is because they are sheltering among the three million Afghani refugees in Pakistan and, as he says, “if I sent in the army into the refugee camps and hundreds of women and children died as we tried to root out the terrorists the world would be up in arms against us.” Musharraf is no saint but he impresses a wide range of people — even those who oppose army rule — with his integrity. Yet this is not a good enough reason for refusing to push hard for the return of full democracy in time for October’s election, as many Western governments appear to have concluded.
Only with democracy will the Pakistani electorate mature. And only with democracy will electoral competition in the northern tribal areas break up the power of the religious parties and make the life of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda more difficult. This is the subtle work Western diplomacy needs to concentrate on, not elaborating scenarios for dealing with a highly unlikely — in fact impossible — coup by militants.
