The two terrorist attempts within 11 days on the life of Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf demonstrate just how much the forces of disorder and bigotry formed around Al-Qaeda have been infuriated by Musharraf’s strong line against them.
Pakistani security officials are saying little about the manner in which the president survived both attacks. However, allegations that security around Musharraf has become a shambles are alarming. It appears that signals to the radio-controlled bomb in the first attack were jammed by equipment in the president’s convoy until he had passed. But it was pure luck that the double truck attack on the presidential motorcade in Rawalpindi failed — the terrorists simply picked the wrong vehicles. At the very least, it would seem that details of the president’s schedule are leaking out.
Pakistan needs Musharraf’s leadership at this dangerous moment in its history. The country is emerging as one of the bitterest battlefields in President Bush’s war against terrorism. Not only are Al-Qaeda and its supporters basing themselves along the border with Afghanistan, where they play cat and mouse with US and Afghani forces; terrorists are also seeking to foment unrest and rebellion among border communities, which have traditionally had little respect for the government in Islamabad. Pakistan’s president is confronting these threats with considerable determination, if not yet overwhelming success.
In addition, Musharraf’s political courage in abandoning the plebiscite condition for Jammu and Kashmir has opened the first real chance of a settlement for a problem that has distorted the foreign policy of both India and Pakistan since independence. On top of this Musharraf has accepted the demand of his Islamist legislators that he give up his army rank and agree to go through the courts before dismissing a government. Though he came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, this is nothing like the behavior of the ruthless despot that the terrorists claim he is. However, it is because Musharraf’s powers have been and will remain extensive that a Pakistan without him would be in desperate straits. The military might be reluctant to follow another ambitious general into power while the restored democratic parties would reject a return to the rule of soldiers. Yet no one of the stature and clean reputation of Musharraf is obviously waiting in the wings to take up the leadership.
Had either of the recent attempts on the president’s life succeeded, Pakistan would already be drifting into danger as rival political interests failed to agree on anything. This would be just the disorder for which the terrorists are working and from which they might hope to brew up a civil conflict of some sort — anything, indeed, that will frustrate President Bush’s war against them.
There will come a time when Musharraf’s steady hand is no longer needed, but that time is not now.
